One Wednesday, back in November, I sat down for my weekly online lesson in American Sign Language. The instructor signed hello to each of us and asked how we were doing. Normally I would rely on my basic sign vocabulary to answer “good,” “fine,” or some other common nicety. I must have been feeling particularly honest that day, because I made the effort to awkwardly fingerspell the word “overwhelmed.” Nodding, my instructor held her hands in front of her, palms facing her body, fingers pointed towards each other. In one swift movement, she lifted them over her head. This gesture, combined with an appropriate facial expression, forms the sign for “overwhelmed.”

A few weeks later, I failed to show up for my final ASL class. I had been struggling to make it to them due to my work demands and other commitments, but this wasn’t planned. I had looked at my calendar early in the day and made a mental note that the lesson was coming up at 3pm. Usually, this would suffice. But that evening as I crawled into bed I realized I had forgotten all about it. More significantly, at some point I had forgotten what day of the week it was.

* * *

In retrospect, it seems like one of those odd little coincidences that a friend reached out shortly after this incident to inquire about a book she had loaned me months ago – The Age of Overwhelm: Strategies for the Long Haul. When she gave it to me I had warned her that I would take ages to read it, if I ever even did. She assured me this was fine, there was no rush. And true to my word, I hadn’t cracked it when she messaged me. She assured me there was still no rush on returning it, but I declared that I was going to read it over the holiday break, in part because of that whole coincidental timing thing. Signs from the universe, and all that.

The Age of Overwhelm is written by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, founder and director of The Trauma Stewardship Institute. Over the course of the book Lipsky lays out what it means to be overwhelmed, at both an individual and societal level, drawing upon personal experiences and the thousands of hours spent working in trauma-informed practice. Her strategies for action are (to her own acknowledgement) nothing earth-shattering, representing a return to ancient practices with some modifications in line with modern concepts of basic self-care. Taken together, they are best summed up by her advocating for you to do more of what sustains you, and less of that which erodes you, within the constraints of the conditions you find yourself in. The brutally difficult trick of this, though, is existing in a state of awareness that leaves you available to tell the difference between the two. Even when things are going well, we live in an unprecedentedly complex environment that challenges our decision-making availability and overwhelms us with information. Lipsky’s recommends common strategies for navigating this environment but frames them in light of their power in staving off overwhelm rather than as efforts to lead our most productive lives. It’s a nuanced but effective shift. The greatest strength of Lipsky’s work, however, may be her ability to communicate what being overwhelmed feels like, and the toll it takes on ourselves and those whom we are responsible to. She conveys the differentiation between feeling tired, run down, or over-scheduled, and the state in which “your own day-to-day life feels like a lot, and your very well-being is at stake.”

The Age of Overwhelm was published in 2018, but felt like an especially timely read at the close of 2020 – a year that, for reasons you do not need me to recount here as they are likely uniquely ingrained into your own nervous system – felt like the poster child for the condition. I was in my own personal state of overwhelm during the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. There were obvious causes – a world-wide pandemic, questions about school closures, and insecurity around recent employment. But underlying – or perhaps surfaced by – all of these was a post PhD defense crash that I was not prepared for. Having barely dragged myself to the finish line at the end of 2019, I had naively imagined I would find myself lighter at the outset of 2020 – unburdened by the weigh of a difficult task completed under difficult circumstances. What I did not anticipate was what the task had taken from me when it left. I was experiencing a profound sense of depletion – an emptying out of reserves, stamina and any ability to deal with what life had to throw at me. Like many other folks, I set goals for myself at the outset of 2020 that seem wildly laughable in retrospect. We plan, god laughs – so the proverb goes. I didn’t realize that 2020 would, in actuality, be an exercise in reserves replenishment. As Lipsky notes:

There is value to us fostering stamina so we can move through our days with more levity and more confidence that we can tend to whatever may arise. Additionally, when the unexpected arises and requires us to find that gear we’re not sure we have, having reserves, having a baseline that isn’t collapsed, having some stamina, can make a huge difference in how we fare managing our saturation or keeping overwhelm at bay. Remember, less is more.

The strategies Lipsky recommends for dealing with depletion – one particular manifestation of overwhelm on a broader continuum – include focusing on that which is within our control, building in regular daily routines that reduce decision-fatigue, practicing mindfulness and learning when to step away from situations or relationships that fail to sustain. In other words – simplify, simplify, simplify. The pandemic lockdown likely helped me in this regard. Many of my usual obligations, distractions, and points of decision-making have been made unavailable. I have been forced to sit with my depletion, understand it for what it was and take tenuous steps towards rebuilding my baseline.

* * *

If present-me could speak to past-me, embarking on 2020 with a misplaced sense of optimism, I’d tell her to consider the gift she’d just received from her partner. It’s a beautiful framed photograph titled Haenyo Emerging for Air, taken by Ian Baguskas. It depicts a form clad in a wet-suit, shoulders and head above water in the calm open ocean, nothing but the horizon in the background. She is a member of a declining group of deep sea diving women in Jeju-do, South Korea. The photograph is a symbolic representation of us both coming up for air after an arduous phase of our lives. I would encourage past-me to focus on the photo and rest assured that, for long periods of time, it will be sufficient to merely stay afloat. That the time for deeper dives is coming, and, when all else fails, to keep her eye on the horizon. Having learned my lesson last year, I have resisted the urge to set proper goals for 2021. The SMART kind – measurable, time-sensitive, designed as a means to a productive end. Instead, I have some rough ideas of how I would like to be in the world, and how I might get there. I even resisted the urge to sign up for my regular sign language classes, a decision weighted with feelings of responsibility and, subsequently, guilt. I resigned myself to the fact that – at least in the immediate short term – I didn’t have the capacity to show up and be appropriately present. For now, I’m grateful to know the sign for overwhelmed, and hopeful that I’ll have less need to use it.