12. Overwhelm or Confusion? Your Growth Edge Decoded
What’s new: We’re decoding two powerful emotions that often show up during growth: confusion and overwhelm.
Why it matters: These feelings can make you doubt yourself—but they’re actually signs you’re leveling up. Understanding them is critical for building resilience, leading well, and expanding your capacity.
In this episode:
Why confusion is a signpost, not a stop sign
What overwhelm is really trying to tell you
Common mistakes that keep you stuck
Practical tools to move through both states with more clarity and strength
The bottom line:
✨ Confusion asks you to skill up. Overwhelm asks you to slow down. Both require you to come back to center—so you can lead, create, and grow with more ease.
Go deeper:
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brene Brown
💬 Love it? Share with a friend or tag @MichelleKayAnderson on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Podcast Theme with music:
What if success wasn’t about working harder—but about expanding your capacity? Welcome to Upleveling Work, where we explore the real strategies that help leaders and professionals step into their full potential. This season, we’re decoding personal growth: how to overcome fear, navigate uncertainty, and build the habits that lead to lasting success.
I’m Michelle Kay Anderson—executive coach, systems thinker, and your guide to making work more human. Whether you’re leveling up in leadership, shifting careers, or just trying to stay sane in a high-pressure world, this podcast is here to help.
Let’s break old patterns, build new possibilities, and make work work better.
Opening
Welcome to Upleveling Work—I’m Michelle. Season two is a guided journey into the personal growth behind professional evolution.
Let me ask you something: Ever stared at your to-do list, chest tight, brain foggy, thinking—“Where do I even start?”
Or maybe you’re leading a team through complexity, trying to stay calm, supportive, and strategic while everyone’s in high-stress mode.
Maybe you’re holding it all—your people, the pressure, the unknowns—and you’ve reached a point where you think, “I’m at the edge of what I can carry.”
One of my clients said recently, “I’m trying to be empathetic and problem-solve at the same time. But I can’t be a martyr—I need to be cognizant of myself before I lose my shit.”
And that moment right there? That’s what we’re talking about in this episode.
Because confusion and overwhelm aren’t signs that you’re broken. They’re signs that you’re growing—and that your old strategies might not be enough for where you’re headed next.
Today, we’re unpacking two emotional states that often masquerade as failure: confusion and overwhelm.
We’ll explore: – Why your brain leans on these states to protect you – What they’re actually signaling – And how to move through them without spiraling
These aren’t blocks to success—they’re part of the path. Let’s decode them together.
These feelings don’t show up by accident. So let’s start by understanding why they happen—and what they’re trying to tell us.
PART 1: UNDERSTANDING THE WHY
Let’s start with confusion.
In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown defines confusion as "an emotion critical to knowledge acquisition and learning... it can motivate us, lead to deep learning, and trigger problem-solving." It’s a sign that you’ve hit the edge of what you know.
And here’s the reframe: Confusion isn’t failure. It’s feedback.
It’s your brain saying, “I’ve never done this before,” or “I need more tools to solve this problem.”
But our brains tend to freak out at the first sign of confusion - like a toddler with a temper tantrum. That’s not a reason to shut down—it’s an invitation to grow.
When you’re confused, your job isn’t to have all the answers—it’s to stay in the game. To get curious. To ask better questions. To seek support. To take the next step, even if it’s messy.
Confusion often shows up when we try to uplevel, take a new path, or build something meaningful. And if your vision for your big, juicy life is bold enough? You should feel confused sometimes.
Now let’s talk about overwhelm.
Brené defines it as "an extreme level of stress, emotional and/or cognitive intensity to the point of feeling unable to function." Overwhelm happens when something feels too big, too uncertain, or too urgent.
It’s not just that you have too many things to do. It’s that your nervous system is saying, “I can’t handle this.” And that feeling can be real—even if the story it’s based on isn’t.
Overwhelm is closely linked to burnout. It drains your energy, makes it hard to prioritize, and often causes people to check out or spiral.
So we want to be able to discern when you are in confusion or if you are facing overwhelm.
And there’s one more state that I want to briefly name, even though we won’t go deep into it today: flooding.
Flooding is a different kind of shutdown. As Brené describes it, it’s “a sensation of feeling psychologically and physically overwhelmed during conflict, making it virtually impossible to have a productive, problem-solving discussion.” When you feel flooded, your brain has likely been hijacked by the amygdala—you’re not just overwhelmed; you feel threatened. You might shut down, dissociate, lash out, or freeze.
You might notice patterns like perfectionism, people-pleasing, or complete emotional numbness. These can be trauma responses—signs of deeper nervous system dysregulation. And if that resonates, I want to gently say: this may not be something you can coach your way through. It may require trauma-informed therapeutic support. And that’s okay. You deserve safety, support, and healing.
And if you are in an environment where you feel flooded frequently, we want to understand what is going on for you.
For today, we’re going to focus on confusion and overwhelm as part of the natural learning and growth process. But I wanted to make that distinction—because your nervous system is always trying to protect you. And the more we understand it, the more choice we have.
Here’s what I want you to know: both confusion and overwhelm are NORMAL. They’re not evidence that something’s wrong. They’re evidence that you’re at your growth edge. That you’re stepping into a bigger vision.
So let’s talk about how to work with them.
PART 2: COMMON MISTAKES WE MAKE
I want to start by sharing some common mistakes we make when overwhelm or confusion shows up:
Fighting the Feeling: When we resist confusion or overwhelm—when we get frustrated or try to push through—it usually makes it worse. Step one is to pause and name what’s happening.
Assuming It Means You’re Not Ready: Especially for high achievers, confusion can feel like failure. But confusion is a signal to skill up, not a reason to stop.
Letting “I Don’t Know” Be the End of the Conversation: We use confusion as a full stop. Instead, treat it as a comma. What do you need to know? What’s one experiment you could run? Trust that you can figure it out.
Trying to Outrun Overwhelm with Willpower: If you’re in true overwhelm, white-knuckling your way through it will only lead to exhaustion. We need to get to the root cause, because when you run out of will power you will still be in a crappy emotional state. Its like going on vacation and expecting a toxic work situation to magically resolve itself when you get back. Usually you feel like you are sucked right back into things, as though you never took a vacation.
Comparing to Others: Especially in moments of vulnerability, we imagine everyone else has it all figured out. They don’t.
Ignoring the Fear Beneath the Feeling: Overwhelm often masks a deeper fear—of failure, success, or being judged. Name the fear, and you take away some of its power.
PART 3: PRACTICAL TOOLS + REFRAMES
Let’s talk tools.
If confusion and overwhelm are natural parts of growth, how do we meet them in a way that builds our capacity instead of draining it?
Here’s how to work with each, not against them.
When you’re feeling confused:
Reassure Your Brain: Nothing has gone wrong. This is part of growth. We are trying to calm down your nervous system so you can get access to that wise part of your brain that can figure out your next steps.
Reframe Confusion as a Signpost: Ask yourself, “What skill or knowledge would help me move forward?”
Take Action Anyway: Even a small step builds clarity. You don’t have to be certain to begin. Experiment like a scientist exploring a hypothesis.
Try This Phrase: “I’m learning how to do this.” That feels very different in your body than “I have no idea how to do this!”
Ask Better Questions: What am I assuming? What do I know already? Who could help me with this? What resource might help?
👉 Now let’s talk about overwhelm.
We are going to explore burnout later this season, so the guidance that follows assumes that you want to work with the emotion of overwhelm as you build your capacity and skills. But there are times when you are physically exhausted - when you didn’t sleep well cause your infant was up all night, or your neighbor made a ruckus - and your body is telling you it needs rest. If you feel like you could lay down and sleep - go take a nap. When you are going through stressful situations, it is most important that you are attending to your health. Make sure you are getting adequate sleep, good nutrition, some exercise, etc. so you can physically meet the task at hand.
Recognizing and managing overwhelm is crucial for growth - sometimes we are trying to do too many things in not enough time or without the resources needed to meet the deadline. Other times it is because of the story we are telling ourselves about our situation. Discerning between which of these is present for you is essential because if it is the first - you are going to have to adjust expectations or your deadline and focus on the most important elements.
But if it is the second, you’ve got to learn how to turn down the temperature on your thoughts and process your emotions so you can show up with more energy and clarity to the task at hand.
The process I’m about to walk you through, will help with both scenarios - it’ll help you figure out what to prioritize and how to find some relief from the stress.
When you’re feeling overwhelmed:
Name It: Try saying, “I notice I feel overwhelmed right now.” That creates space.
Regulate: Take three deep breaths. Step away for five minutes. Get into your body. Nature. Drink of water.
Challenge the Story: What exactly feels like “too much”? Is it truly urgent? Don’t let brain get away with vague feelings. Get into the specific story you are telling yourself about your situation.
Affirm Your Capacity: The antidote to overwhelm is capacity. It is entirely possible that everything you are telling yourself about your capacity or limits is wrong. So we want to consciously affirm your capacity with self talk like: “I can handle this. I’ve done hard things before. I have the energy. I am capable. I’m safe.” This is vital for directing our brain and overcoming limiting beliefs. Negative self-talk ("Iʼm so burned out. This is exhausted.") should be actively noticed and challenged.
Break It Down: What’s the next micro-step? If you want a specific way to help you do this - In episode #9, I shared an Eisenhower matrix that helped Jeanna break down her next steps when she was in a stressful situation - I’ll include a link to the worksheet in the show notes. The goal is to break things down into steps that feel so silly or small, that your brain will not throw up resistance. Any progress counts!
Reconnect to Your Why: Sometimes it helps to remember what this is all for. But you can’t sit around waiting to feel motivated or more energized - you’ve got to get out of dread or hopelessness and into action if you can. And having a big, juicy vision of what your building can help you get moving.
Both overwhelm and confusion are invitations. One asks you to skill up. The other asks you to slow down. And both require you to return to your center - So you can see things more clearly and make decisions from a more grounded place.
Closing
If you’re in a season of confusion or overwhelm, it doesn’t mean you’re behind—it means you’re in the work.
These emotions are signals, not stop signs. Confusion means you’re learning. Overwhelm means you need care.
Keep breathing. Keep choosing growth.
If you feel like you need more support, reach out to me at michellekayanderson.com.
Next week on Upleveling Work: we’ll unpack the difference between clarity and certainty—and how to keep going when the path is still unfolding.
Until then, keep going. You’re doing beautifully.
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