Emotionally Overwhelmed: Signs, Causes, & Coping Techniques

What Does It Mean to Be Emotionally Overwhelmed?

When emotions come on rapidly, such as during a difficult or emotionally charged event, it can feel like you are being emotionally flooded. Likewise, it can happen due to feeling overwhelmed by stressors in your life or all of the negative things happening in the world.

Although they can seem similar, being emotionally overwhelmed is different from ordinary stress. Whereas with everyday stress, you can often decrease the symptoms by leaving the environment- such as clocking out at work at the end of the day- emotional overwhelm can feel paralyzing and inescapable.

The table below shows how everyday stress differs from emotional overwhelm:

What Are the Signs of Emotional Overwhelm?

It can be difficult to recognize when you are struggling, but knowing what signs to look out for can help. Some of the key signs and symptoms that indicate someone is emotionally overwhelmed are persistent anxiety, irritability, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating, among others.

Some examples of responses when someone is emotionally overwhelmed include:¹

• Having a disproportionately big reaction to an insignificant situation, such as going into a panic if you misplace your phone or car keys
• Increased forgetfulness or brain fog
• Decrease in productivity
• Increased symptoms of anxiety and depression
• Difficulty making decisions or concentrating on tasks
• Decline in ability to engage in self-care
• Decreased ability to manage conflict with others
• Increase in unhealthy eating habits
• Increased stress on your family or relationships
• Increased negative or harmful coping skills

Impact of Emotions

Emotional overwhelm rarely stays in one place. It spills from one stressful area of life into your work, relationships, and daily functioning. In the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Stress in America survey, one in three adults (33%) said they feel completely stressed out no matter what they do to manage it.¹

Some emotions can feel more overwhelming than others. For example, happiness and excitement are likely easier to manage than feelings of worry, fear, or anger.

What Is the Window of Tolerance, and Why Do You Get Overwhelmed?

The window of tolerance is the range of emotional arousal in which you can feel stress, think clearly, and stay connected without shutting down or spiraling. Psychiatrist Dan Siegel introduced the term in his 1999 book The Developing Mind to describe this optimal zone. When feelings push you past the top edge, you move into hyperarousal, which looks like panic, racing thoughts, or anger. When they push past the bottom edge, you drop into hypoarousal, which looks like numbness, exhaustion, or feeling frozen. Emotional overwhelm is a form of emotional dysregulation, and it is what it feels like to be knocked outside this window.

Your window is not a fixed size. Chronic stress narrows it through a process neuroscientist Bruce McEwen called allostatic load, the cumulative wear on the body and brain when stress-response systems stay switched on too long. Poor sleep, illness, an overloaded schedule, and a history of trauma all shrink the window, which is why you can tolerate a lot on a good week and unravel over something small on a bad one. Grounding, rest, and support do not just calm a single moment, they widen the window so future stress is less likely to tip you over. Therapy, including trauma-focused approaches, can help expand and stabilize it over time.

What Causes Emotional Overwhelm?

There are various factors that can lead to feeling emotionally overwhelmed, including personal stressors, major life changes, work-related stress, and underlying mental health conditions. You are more likely to feel emotionally overwhelmed if you are dealing with multiple stressors at the same time.

Feeling emotionally overwhelmed is a common experience, with most people having experienced it at some point. The issue comes when you feel overwhelmed all of the time with difficulty getting relief.

Some common triggers leading to emotional overwhelm include:

Personal & Professional Stressors

Experiencing personal and professional stressors, such as relationship issues or high-pressure work environments, can contribute to emotional overwhelm. If you spend all day stressed at work, for example, you may be more likely to become easily frustrated with traffic or a burned dinner.

Underlying Mental Health Conditions

The presence of any underlying mental health conditions, such as anxiety or depression, can exacerbate feelings of being overwhelmed. Those with anxiety, for example, can be prone to feeling emotionally overwhelmed due to worry and frequent intrusive thoughts. In turn, many with mental health symptoms that contribute to overwhelming feelings may try to avoid the situations that cause overwhelm, such as social situations.⁸

Some conditions that may increase the risk of becoming emotionally overwhelmed include:

• Anxiety disorders
• Depression
• OCD
• ADHD or autism
• Dementia
• Trauma history
• PTSD or CPTSD
• Having an intellectual disability
• Cognitive impairments such as a traumatic brain injury

Minority Stress

Belonging to certain groups can also make someone more likely to experience emotional overwhelm or stress. In APA surveys, LGBTQIA+ adults were more likely than others to rate their stress at the top of the scale (29% vs. 19%), and adults ages 18 to 34 consistently report the highest overall stress.¹

Physical Pains or Illnesses

Dealing with physical pain can exacerbate emotional stress. In turn, unresolved emotional stress or overwhelm can increase physical pain. There is a link between mental health and physical pains, with each affecting the other if they are not dealt with.³

Emotional Burnout

Dealing with emotional burnout can lead to feeling emotionally overwhelmed. This can happen during introvert or autistic burnout, or other ways of social or emotional burnout. It can also happen during occupational burnout such as at one’s job.

How Do You Cope With Feeling Emotionally Overwhelmed?

You can reduce emotional overwhelm in the moment with grounding techniques, relaxation practices, boundary-setting, and reaching out to someone you trust. Having these strategies ready helps you lower the intensity as overwhelm builds.

Some coping strategies to reduce feelings of emotional overwhelm include:

• Grounding techniques: grounding techniques are when you bring your mind and focus to the present moment in order to reduce stress. This can help people who are emotionally overwhelmed by decreasing stress and worry.
• Progressive muscle relaxation: progressive muscle relaxation is a structured relaxation practice where the body is given focused relaxation. It can help someone reduce emotional overwhelm by focusing the mind on the body away from stressors, and also removing physical tension in the body.
• Guided imagery: guided imagery is when you follow a visualization scenario as a form of a relaxation technique. This is a great way to help relieve emotional overwhelm.
• Set boundaries: It is okay to set boundaries around things that make you feel overwhelmed. For example, if you are invited to multiple social events over one weekend, it is okay to decline some of them.
• Be open to others: Opening up to loved ones about how you feel can help them better understand and support you. If you are feeling especially overwhelmed during a stressful event, share this with a friend or partner.
• Limit exposure to triggering situations: If you can avoid situations that make you feel emotionally overwhelmed, such as spending holidays with family or friends who make you feel uncomfortable, this can help avoid negative feelings.
• Stay hydrated: When we are dehydrated, our anxiety can feel worse, which can increase feelings of emotional overwhelm.
• Set limits: We can only juggle so many things. If you have a long to-do list for today, see if there is anything that can wait until tomorrow, or even next week.
• Prioritize self care: Maintaining adequate self-care can help keep feelings of overwhelm from getting too intense by giving you time to decompress and manage stress.

How Can You Prevent Emotional Overwhelm?

Preventing emotional overwhelm over the long term comes down to a balanced routine, regular exercise, good sleep, and a steady support network. Building these habits reduces how often overwhelm shows up and how strong it feels.

Some strategies to help prevent emotional overwhelm include:

• Building emotional resilience: Building emotional resilience can help in the long term because it can help you prepare for difficult moments.
• Improved sleep hygiene: Not surprising, there is a connection between sleep and mental health. Developing good sleep hygiene can help someone who’s feeling emotionally overwhelmed by ensuring time for rest of the body and mind.⁴
• Social support: Social support is extremely important to mental health and longevity.
• Therapeutic support: If you have a history of trauma, or mental health conditions such as anxiety or depression, maintaining proper therapeutic support is an important part of preventing emotional overwhelm.
• Establishing a routine: Keeping a routine can help many people avoid emotional overwhelm due to removing the stress that can occur with frequent schedule changes.
• Engaging in regular physical exercise: Engaging in regular physical exercise can help manage mental health symptoms as well as decrease chances for emotional overwhelm.
• Get treatment for any physical concerns: Because physical pains can increase mental health stressors, making sure to get medical treatment for any injuries or pains can help avoid emotional overwhelm.³

How Is Emotional Overwhelm Treated?

Therapy for stress can be a helpful treatment option for people who are feeling emotionally overwhelmed and want support dealing with these feelings. Therapy is effective for overwhelming feelings related to mental health symptoms such as anxiety.⁸

Common types of therapy used to help people deal with difficult emotions include:

• Cognitive behavior therapy: CBT helps people deal with emotions by teaching ways to identify the thoughts and beliefs related to behaviors and how they all contribute to feelings and emotions presenting.
• Acceptance and commitment therapy: ACT is a modality that teaches that difficult feelings are an inevitable part of life and that it is better to learn how to deal with them when they come up to help empower the person.
• Interpersonal therapy:  IPT is a technique that focuses on solutions to issues and concerns. It focuses on the connection between the symptoms that the client is experiencing and the interpersonal stressors that may be contributing to the symptoms.
• Psychodynamic therapy: In psychodynamic therapy, the therapist works with the client to develop self-awareness to decrease symptoms.
• Art and music therapy: Art and music therapy engage the creative parts of the mind to help decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety, and can help decrease intense feelings. This can help those who are experiencing frequent moments of emotional overwhelm.⁵
• Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT): DBT for depression is a therapeutic modality that teaches clients how to cope with distressing emotions that arise, and can be a great tool for those who frequently experience episodes of emotional overwhelm.

How Therapy Can Help With Emotional Overwhelm

When you find that feelings of stress and emotional overwhelm make life unable to manage, therapy is the first recommendation of treatment. Therapy can help people sort through difficult emotions, particularly those occurring as a result of stress or trauma.

Some ways therapy helps with emotional overwhelm include:

• Learning the root cause of your overwhelming emotions
• Address interpersonal stressors that are contributing to your emotional overwhelm such as work or family stress
• Help you learn ways to communicate your stress and feelings to others
• Learn new coping skills to self-soothe
• Develop self-awareness into triggers and situations that can provoke overwhelming emotions⁶
• Treat any co-occurring mental health symptoms such as depression and anxiety

Where to Find Professional Help

While feeling occasionally overwhelmed is normal, some people find that they are experiencing these feelings all of the time, and may struggle to deal with them. If you can relate to this, look for an online therapist directory or online therapy platform for a therapist who can help.