How to Regain Calm When Life Feels Overwhelming
Guide on how to come back to yourself when it feels like your life is out of your control
There are moments when life feels like it’s happening to you instead of with you. You’re doing your best, showing up, keeping things afloat… but it still feels like you’re being tossed around in a storm you didn’t ask to be in. Whether it’s uncertainty about your future, a wave of personal setbacks, a loss, or just the accumulation of too many hard days in a row. Sometimes, it all just becomes too much.
You look around and wonder how everyone else seems so steady. So composed. The quiet panic builds under the surface. You feel behind, lost, out of sync. And suddenly, even small decisions feel impossible. You wake up with a knot in your stomach. You fall asleep questioning everything.
This isn’t going to fix it all. It’s not a cure or a shortcut. What it is, is a way to gently re-anchor yourself when the ground beneath you starts to feel shaky.
Start with letting the spiral happen (yes, really)
When the panic hits, let it. If the tears come, let them out. You’re not weak for feeling overwhelmed. You're responding to a very real thing: your brain and body sensing that something is off, out of control, or unsafe.
Cry in the middle of your work day if you need to. Text a friend. Sit in your car and just breathe. You don’t have to perform strength right now. There’s power in naming your exhaustion. In letting the pressure release.
Spiraling isn’t failure. It’s feedback. It’s your nervous system asking for care. It’s saying, “I’m scared. I’m maxed out. I need a minute.” So give yourself that. Let the wave pass through you, not over you. And when it does (because it will), there’s room again to return to yourself with a little more gentleness.
Coming back to yourself with a soft re-entry
After the emotional storm, don’t immediately leap back into action. That instinct to fix, to solve, to do something, is often just anxiety in a different outfit.
Pause. Breathe. Return to the present. Not to perform, but to remember: your life is still happening. It hasn’t stopped, even if this part feels stuck.
Here’s how you can start to ground again, slowly and intentionally:
1. Learn something (that has nothing to do with fixing your life)
When your brain is spiraling, it craves relief. Something small, and safe. Learning just for fun activates your brain’s reward system, offering a quick hit of dopamine without pressure or stakes. Try a new recipe. Watch a video on how to draw. Learn to dance. Seriously, anything curious, random, playful. It shifts your brain out of survival mode and into curiosity, which is essential for calming anxiety and restoring creative thinking.
2. Start a small, tangible project
When life feels big and abstract, do something small and concrete. Build a playlist. Organize your pantry. These little projects are more than distractions, they’re forms of behavioral activation, a clinically backed way to interrupt anxiety and low mood. Completing something reminds you: “I can affect my environment. I have agency.” And that’s powerful when everything else feels untouchable.
3. Move your body, especially in the morning
Movement metabolizes stress. Literally. Anxiety often builds up as physical tension, tight chest, shallow breathing, restlessness. A walk around the block, ten minutes of stretching, dancing in your kitchen all help. Morning movement, in particular, helps regulate cortisol and resets your day before the spiral can gain momentum. It reconnects you to your body, which is one of the safest places to come back to when your thoughts are spinning.
4. Be around people, even quietly
You don’t have to pour your heart out. Just be near others. Sit in a coffee shop. Browse in a bookstore. Visit a friend and read side by side. This is called co-regulation. Your nervous system borrowing calm from someone else’s. It’s real, and it’s healing. Light presence, shared space, silent company… all of it tells your brain: “I’m not alone. I’m safe.”
5. Care for your space
Make your bed. Light a candle. Open a window. These aren’t just chores. They’re rituals of care. When life feels uncontrollable, reclaiming your environment, even a tiny corner, gives your mind a break. External order creates internal calm. Your space becomes a reflection of safety. These small acts send a powerful message: I deserve to feel grounded, even now.
6. Listen to stories of other people’s chaos
Find podcasts, memoirs, YouTube interviews, anything where people talk about falling apart and starting again. When you’re deep in uncertainty, you forget how common this is. Hearing others share their messy, nonlinear paths reminds you that no one has it all figured out. Sometimes you’re just in a middle chapter.
7. Go outside, see the real world
Step away from screens and into something alive. Trees. Wind. Dirt. Time outside lowers blood pressure and cortisol, and it quiets the anxious part of your brain that loops and obsesses. There’s a reason we feel better near oceans and forests and fields.
8. Set a personal goal that feels slightly ridiculous
Not one that’s strategic. One that’s playful. Run a 5K. Make a zine. Host a dinner party with a theme. These goals reconnect you with joy and boldness. They build something that’s called identity capital. The confidence, curiosity, and self-trust that comes from doing things just because you want to. When life feels out of your hands, these small acts remind you that you can still choose yourself.
This isn’t avoidance, it’s regulation
Let’s be clear: you’re not checking out. You’re checking in. You’re not ignoring your problems, you’re getting steady enough to face them without collapsing. Rest isn’t the opposite of growth, it’s the foundation for it. Sometimes, clarity only comes when you stop sprinting and finally sit still.
Sometimes the best thing is not to keep pushing but to pause. To feel. To care.
You’re being re-rooted. Strengthened in ways you can’t see yet. Maybe you don’t need a breakthrough right now. Maybe what you need is a warm meal, a good cry, a quiet walk, and someone to remind you: you are still wildly creative, capable and full of life, even in the mess of it all.
So breathe. Take your time.
You’re still allowed joy and peace. Even here. Even now.
Helpful, beautiful. Thank you