Do you find yourself with too much on your plate? So busy you forget to slow down and take care of yourself? You're not alone.  We live in a time where wherever we turn something seems to be demanding our attention - whether it's emails, adverts, social media, phone calls or texts and all of this is on top of our usual work routines and personal responsibilities.

Our to-do lists seem to be never-ending and this can all lead to feelings of being overwhelmed.

Overwhelm presents itself in different ways - it may cause a change in your eating habits; eating less or more, you may find yourself sleeping at strange times or struggling with fatigue, a loss of focus is quite a common symptom as is withdrawing from those around you, becoming forgetful, feeling numb, headaches and a loss of motivation.

With less time for our own needs its easy to feel stressed and overwhelmed. You'll be pleased to hear that there are some ways to help you get your mojo back.

It is natural to want to please people, but this feeling can cause us to feel uneasy when we say no, but saying yes when we mean no can leaves us to sacrifice our own emotional peace and energy as our tasks stack up and we are struggling to deal with all that we have on our plates. Try saying no when you mean it. Practice small at first if you must but start to say it. Even the small 'no's' can feel like a big victory for your peace of mind.

Try a shift in mindset! We expect that we should be able to do x.y, z without a problem and get anxiety as we feel pressure on ourselves to complete all the things on our list. Try managing your expectations so that you only take on what is acceptable and not all tasks of all people. Part of managing your expectations is also realising that we don't have to be perfect! It's ok for things not to go exactly as planned them. We put a lot of our energy in to making things exactly right and this is a recipe for stress. It is not easy or always realistic for everything to go just as we have planned, and we can't control all circumstances to make sure it happens the way we want it to. The sooner we realise this the better for our mental health. Breathe. Let the changes come and deal with those rather than trying to pull things back to your original plan.

If something in particular is causing your overwhelm try stepping away from the situation; take some time out. This will give you the opportunity to view things from a different perspective. This is obviously difficult during lockdown but try getting out for a walk or taking an indulgent afternoon bath. This may seem counterproductive but stepping away can be the best thing to do to help you get clarity and actually increase your motivation and productivity.

Reprioritise your tasks. Go back to basics and focus on what is important now rather than all of the things that you feel you need to do.

Overwhelm leads to a jumble of thoughts inside our heads. It can be a good idea to use a journal to 'dump' all of these thoughts on to a page.  Grab a pen and a piece of paper and start writing. Don't think about what to write, don’t edit it or make it look pretty - it doesn’t have to be perfect remember. Just get it all out. It could be a list, it could be a brainstorm, it may be a story, or random words - its ok. Its personal to you and the aim is just to get some head space. If it is on paper you wont forget it, it's written down.

Set a time limit to help you designate specific time for you to relax for example; if the housework isn't done by teatime it can wait until tomorrow. I found this one particularly useful for me a few years back and hopefully it will help you too.

And last but not least delegate. This one goes hand in hand with 'no'. Practise asking for help, you don’t have to struggle alone.  Whether it is reaching out to your boss or asking a parent or partner to help with kids, let people know if you need a hand getting things done or something picked up from the supermarket. This is another small thing that can work wonders and the best part is the more we do it the easier it becomes and others start to realise that just like them - we need help sometimes too!

Tamsin x