“Multiple Overwhelmings”

A dear colleague and friend Julie Beedon sent me an article “A spirituality for Multiple Overwhelmings” written by a feminist theologian called Nicola Slee.   

The term was coined by David Ford, the Regius Professor of Divinity at University of Cambridge, who speaks of the normative experience of being human, especially in the context and conditions of life in the twenty first century.

This condition of being overwhelmed in multiple dimensions, according to both Ford and Slee is not an occasional occurrence, but something that is part of our humanity, part of life. So knowing how to cope with this normative aspect of life is important in our day to day living.    

Why does one feel overwhelmed? A myriad of factors - some positive, negative, or both. They roughly fit into four general categories:

·        Normal occurrences of life – just living (paying bills, buying food, cooking, making repairs to the house, coping with different types of neighbour, etc.), working, relating, fulfilling obligations, going beyond our capacity to cope with “just a little bit more” in order to live and exist.

·        Living with human fragility (ours and others) – our struggles over money, power, sex, violence, images around the world – civil war, massacres, financial market collapse, election outcomes, divorce, ill health, redundancy, bereavement, tragic happenings among friends and family, etc.

·        Mismatch between our inner resources and external demands over a prolonged period, and the impact of our personality and life history – which shape the way we look at any of the above and our behaviour patterns particularly in response to imperfection in lives.

·        Living with the sheer joy of life – the birth of a baby, the impressive heroic action of others or ourselves, immense natural beauty, people you care overcoming serious challenges, miraculous events, happenings beyond your belief, unexpected kindness from others, undeserved gifts or awards, etc.

Slee groups the “overwhelmings” into six categories, which is more conceptual but just as real:  

·        personal and domestic

·        professional

·        political

·        historical

·        socio-cultural

·        cosmic/ecological   

Whatever the categories are, or whether they are positive or negative, in Slee’s description, the experience of being overwhelmed always comes with some sort of sensation like being caught up, carried along, over which one has no control. Hence, while it can be marvelous and uplifting, it can also often be terrifying, anxiety provoking, energising, paralysing, joyful, or simply “overwhelming”. It has a quality of pervasiveness, enormity, and all embracing.  

Slee’s article then focuses on the spiritual responses to this state of “multiple overwhelmings”, which is very helpful to those of us who have a religious faith. But in this blog, I want to look at this state mainly from ONE dimension:  as a personal self-care phenomenon for those of us who work with and support others.

In my supervision of OD practitioners, I pay attention to the overall sense of well-being of my supervisees. I believe that our effectiveness to discharge our duties in this helping profession will be compromised if we stay overwhelmed most of the time. Knowing how to support ourselves in the ongoing multiple overwhelming experiences may give us a better chance to a) experience our own humanity, and b) to fulfill Marvin Weisbord’s charge for OD practitioners – “to return humanity back to work place”.

How to live with “multiple overwhelmings” in our personal life:

The consonance of this article’s key message hit me the minute I sat down and read - because I am going through multiple overwhelmings at this minute, not only in personal but also in my professional life as an OD practitioner.  May I use data from my life to help illustrate this.    

On the personal front, I am currently in the depths of:

·        De-cluttering 20-some years of family possessions as part of downsizing - moving from a large family home to a house half the size;

·        The stress from the actual buying and selling house processes;

·        Ending a major assignment in Singapore after close to 4 years, saying good bye to the nation and people I have come to love, but knowing that episode of my life is over, and hence I will not be able to maintain those relationships;

·        Ending 4 more key client relationships because it is time for me to step out voluntarily and turn the work over to others;

·        Packing up the work done over 30 years as part of the process of moving to a new office;

·        Discarding more than 2000 business cards, recalling most of those people that I have worked with at some point in my life with memories of joy and regrets, and to throw away the associated work record;

·        Coming to the end of a number of roles that have been instrumental to my growth and helped me to fulfill my value in action;

·        Suffering phenomenal pain from an infection of my fistula (a super vein that was built for my dialysis) with blood clots since end of January, etc.  

·        Returning to being a student, wanting to keep learning in areas that have been fascinating to me;

·        Witnessing both my daughters doing amazing things.

On the professional front:

I work with clients and organisations who are in a constant “super scale” of multiple overwhelmings.  The challenging situations of so many of them become a challenge for us who do the supporting, especially if we are of an empathetic and caring nature.

The experiences of those whom we support can be typified by what one client said to me recently:   “It is no fun for me now as I travel around the world to say to so many people, “you are very talented and we value your contribution, but because of where we are financially, I am sorry that we have to make you redundant.”” He has had to close some of the country offices. This individual, like so many others, feels multiple overwhelmings as he and his team have to devise new ventures, pursue and execute continuous growth strategy, acquire new businesses, and do whatever necessary to ensure the acquisition will add value to the shareholders, while also pursuing constant efficiency savings, maintaining a “high touch” customer care strategy, engaging in talent wars, and fighting to engage with the workforce when the resources are cut to the bone while relying on them to give even more to the organisation, etc.

On the other hands, many HR teams whom those leaders rely on to help the organisation through restructuring, downsizing, post-merger integration are doing their best to be professional while living with the constant uncertainties of whether after this round (and there have been many rounds before) they will have a job or not.

So, the challenge for us is how to support these overwhelmed clients to keep going and help them to discover how to manage their own overwhelming sense of being, while not being sucked into their quicksand. Or how to maintain our professional boundary while staying empathetic, useful and strategic. The challenge is how to stay supportive without letting their overwhelmings compound with our own to drive us into a semi-paralyzed state of functioning.  

Three Imperatives and some practical actions:

There are a number of things that I have found useful which often come from working with skillful therapeutic professionals, but I will share that after we look at the gentle advice from Ford and Slee.

In his 1997 book, Professor David Ford suggested there are three things we can do, which he called the imperative:

(1)    “Name it” – To bring into language that which is fearful, inchoate and beyond understanding or control.  

Mee-Yan note: As we all know, this naming process is part of the exposition of Social Discourse theory, Gestalt psychology, and other psycho-therapeutic writings. By giving what has a gripping power over us a shape, a name – we turn what is hard to grasp because of its “floating” presence to something that has shape and solidity, which in turn will give us a better chance to work with the “overwhelmings” in a more “objectifying” way.

(2)   “Seek someone to listen to us” - After naming them, we need someone who is willing to listen to our description of these multiple overwhelming experiences, sharing the narrative of what they are, how they interact, how we experience them, the impact they have on us emotionally, physically, cognitively, spiritually, etc.  

Mee-Yan note: By talking about the nature, the texture and the timbre of the overwhelming experience, we will discover and get in touch with our own internal narrative which often  that shape both our emotional response as well as our action logic. It is by sharing the life journey as we experience it—sometimes using metaphor e.g. a flood, landslide, falling off a cliff, etc. we begin to take hold of the story in its richness and depth.

There is a powerful Jewish Old Testament image, “sit by the pool of…and wept”. When we narrate our overwhelming experiences to others, we are in fact creating the pool (or container) to start making sense of what are the totality of the confusing happenings around us.  Perhaps this is what Slee calls immersion.

According to Slees, rather than fighting, or denying the forces of overwhelming, in a ritualistic way we give our consent to it, releasing the energy spent in resenting and resisting it. By “accede to swim or dive deeper into the ocean, to walk out unprotected in the storm...” and accept that an essentially creative greater and fuller life experience can be birthed through this form of overwhelming at that stage in life. 

(3)   The third imperative that Ford shared is that we must “attend to the shape of living”. By that I think he means when we are in a state of feeling very overwhelmed, we either face the great temptation of giving up hope and allowing ourselves to declare our despair of “drowning” or we become fixated on some of the non-essential details in order to gain back some sanity and control, or the alternative is to get up and attend to the shape of living.   

Mee-Yan Note:  When overwhelming experiences strike, it is natural that we turn myopic by looking at “parts” of living (our experiences), not the “whole” (the impact of our sense of overwhelming on those around us) or “greater whole” of being human (the whole idea of being a highly connected and interdependent human race). Therefore, it is important to try to stay systemic and attend to what the Gestalt writers call “the here and now” of living – cooking, feeding, attending to those who depend on us, going to the retreat centre to have a few days of silent reflection, taking a weekend trip to refuel the tank, as well as making doable plans to restore the “groundedness” of who we are, and basically by attending the shape of live, we prevent ourselves from “drowning”.

In the past, I reacted badly to those people who reminded me of having choice in those circumstances. That is because my reaction reflected my fear of owning that grain of truth. I would rather believe that It is the forces out there that led to these overwhelmings, and it was fine that I drown in my own self-pity (which of course is also a real human reaction to pain). But in the end, Ford’s admonition about attending to the shape of living means that when we choose to get up in the morning, feed the troops, go off to do a good piece of work that people pay us to do, exercise kindness to a homeless person, the energy will slowly shift from “drowning” or “being submerged” by the flood to having the resilience to take baby steps to emerge and learn that we can swim with rigour to stay on top.  

I found those three imperatives extremely helpful. So, the few tips below is to make these imperatives even a bit more practical.  

1.      Bracketing – similar to Ford’s third point - focuses on the “here and now” (concepts from working with Gestalt colleagues) and the act of temporarily putting a bracket on things that are disrupting effective functioning by focusing attention on the requirements of the moment – e.g. finishing the design work, meeting the deadline, attending to a client in need. Focusing on what is required in the here and now by bracketing those multiple overwhelmings often helps to refuel the energy tank as I have managed to get going even though all I want to do is to have a duvet day at home (which is also acceptable). It is important to note that bracketing is not the same as repressing, which is an act to bury or deny the existence of the feeling. Bracketing only means I have temporarily stored the feeling into a “container” so that its impact will not leak everywhere.

2.      Build in some positive “overwhelming” experiences – Taking a long walk with my family;  enjoying being together with a girlfriend; going down to London to have a meal with one of my daughters; trying a new Japanese restaurant in Oxford; watching a comedy show; counting my blessings and staying grateful; dipping into a gripping novel with a positive ending (I always read the ending first); finding all the clothes that need repair and taking them down to my local mending and dry cleaning shop which is run by a Syrian family and catching up with them. The aim is to do something that will give me JOY and rest bite . Sometimes, what gives us joy may be as trivial as, e.g. organising my socks drawers?  

3.      Asking for help. I engaged a transition coach 20 months ago to kick start my transitional journey. With the coach and my transitional journal, I get to name the what? the so what? the gentle possibility of now what? I have had a spiritual director who worked with me and guided me in crucial moments. I have a good friend who, when I ask her for a “samosa” moment, knows exactly what I mean – as when I need someone to listen to me, we meet in this café where I always have a samosa to go with my coffee (sounds weird but Indian spice and strong coffee do make a potent combination). When I have had jobs that overwhelmed me, I engaged a technical supervisor to guide me through the methodology. I am also not ashamed to ask others which key text I should read, or whether they will give me a 30-minute lecture on how this type of situation works. Through these activities, I always find – by connected to people in my community, I become less overwhelmed. 

4.      Chunking. My default position is always to look at and respond to the totality of the situation which, can be ever more overwhelming. Instead, I have learned to name all the issues that create the multiple overwhelmings experience on a sheet of A3 paper (my pool, my container), and after I have named them, I ask myself how I feel. Sometimes I surprise myself, feeling calmer simply because I have named them. Sometimes I sit down by the pool and have a good cry, allowing myself a legitimatised self-pitying moment by “immersing into the flood”. But after that, I set up a number of buckets, put labels onto them, and populate each of the buckets with similar issues that I have dealt with. By chunking the overwhelming things into doable actions, I am no longer stuck. Through the years, I have learned to value even the snail’s pace movement is a sign that I am not drowning.

Whoever you are reading this, you must have your own “imperatives” to work with multiple overwhelmings in your life. So, continue to record what works, what helps and come up with your own list for how you live with multiple overwhelmings, and share them with others. .

Last Remark:

What is so helpful from Slee and Ford is that through their writings they remind us that this experience is a normative and constitutive sense of life and humanity, hence self. They encourage us to learn to accept that a level of overwhelming is part of living. We can either fight and resist it, resent and reject it, turn to anger, justify being aggressive and grumpy to people (I have become very grumpy recently), engage in escapism, or we live with the knowledge that the multiple overwhelmings are part of life itself. Through time, we learn to become more realistic, neither being reductive nor claiming omnipotence, but with less despair, less diminishing of self, and more prepared not to be overwhelmed by these multiple happenings. The important thing is to ensure what is transient will remain transient. If we can all emerge from these overwhelmings to the other side with stronger inner muscles without being cynical and still willing to wear the innocent lenses of wonder in life, then that is where true growth lies.

Finally, I want to acknowledge what I, or even what Slee and Ford have shared will sound like pious nonsense or cheap shallow talk if the scale, scope and nature of “multiple overwhelmings” encompasses deep suffering. For example, I personally know of a woman who lost her husband while her three children ended in intensive care after a car accident caused by a drunken driver; or a colleague who from the time of diagnosis of terminal cancer to the last day of life took only 6 weeks; or a client who lost her job and had her home repossessed; or a colleague who saw his child mental illness progressively worsen with limited hope of recovery; or a staff member with a spinal tumour which through surgical error rendered her losing 75% of her mobility; or losing children through various circumstances, etc. These multiple overwhelmings will take a long time to emerge from. The experience of being submerged in the flood is real, the experience of immersion into the experience is no longer a choice.

The encouraging thing for me is that even those people have come through those situations and continue to learn how to find light from a constant intense overwhelming experience of grief, of pain, of despair. The widower of the colleague who died has managed to host regular lunch gatherings and so by engaging in the here and now of planning menus, food shopping, cooking and seeing old friends, he faces his overwhelmings of grief with courage. He has even started a “come to learn about opera” in his house with those who have never tasted opera before. The mother who lost her husband with three children in intensive care sold the house and used the insurance money to build a smaller house so that there was extra money to raise the boys. She channeled her pain by supporting others. She did “meals on wheels” to elderly housebound people till she herself was in her late 70s. The staff member who had her mobility reduced is one of the most cheerful people I have known. 18 months ago, she went into hospital for some maintenance and preventative minor surgery, but ended up staying in the hospital over 14 months, partly because they could not find social care to support her at home - and yet she is still smiling. 

I wanted to end with these stories as I would like us to be “overwhelmed” by their inspiring stories – despite of their multiple overwhelmings, continue to find hope and possible joy in life. They all have the same “life force”, that is within each of us. May we continue to discover how robust our life forces are and through that, we will witness the birth of something that will stand strong and enduring.

I hope this short article help to explain what OD calls “self care” and why “self-care” is such an important practice in the field of Organisation Development.