What do you do when life is completely overwhelming?

Just as McKenzie and I were starting to get back into the swing of things with Mom2MomEd, I got blindsided by one emergency and then another. And, that's after finally fully recovering from my own health crisis. 

I'm not ready to dive into details about the family emergencies, but I do want to talk about how I'm handling life right now.

It hasn't been particularly pretty...

After returning home from an out-of-state emergency, I hardly slept at all and had to work three 12-hour shifts. And, of course, my dogs were freaking out after not having me at home for several days, and I'm sure they picked up on my stress and exhaustion which only made them freak out more.

Then, I slept for almost three days straight through, only waking to use the bathroom, occasionally eat, and to take my dogs out to do their business.

And, my son has been picking up on my stress too and kind of acting more teenagery than usual (he's 18).

I had a brief moment of energy Tuesday and started to deep clean my kitchen and then went right back to bed, despite my best intentions to deep clean the bathroom and more of the kitchen.

Today is Wednesday, and I slept most of today too. I finally got up and started to get some stuff done in the mid-afternoon. I cleaned up a little bit of my living room, but wasn't able to get much done before a crisis erupted, requiring my immediate attention.

I. AM. EXHAUSTED. 
I. AM. FRIED.
I. AM. OVER. IT!

I've not been handling overwhelm very well lately, even with the help of counseling. I started going to counseling a couple of months ago, and it was helping a lot until the past couple of weeks. It feels like one problem just gets resolved and replaced with a bigger problem, and the bigger problems seem to be ones over which I have very little control.

And, when things start going wrong, my control freak comes out larger than life on the areas of life that I can control!

I just spent the last 20 minutes creating a medication schedule for a relative, organizing a meeting with several people involved in the second crisis, and making plans to organize several other things.

My already freakishly organized and color coded calendar is now in overdrive.
My son and I are working out a chores calendar.
I'm planning every freaking day of my summer as much as I can.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with my therapist and to take my car in for service. I also plan to talk to a friend that needs to be looped in about crisis number two, and I need to make two doctor's appointments for myself.  I also have a ton of research to do regarding crisis number two.

So what do I do when life gets completely overwhelming? I let my inner mama bear come roaring out. She is a planner, a doer, a protector, a make-things-happen-in-the-face-of-the-impossible kind of woman. But, she also can tire herself out easily.

I'm hoping to get help from a group of friends and the local medical community, possibly also from a local charity that deals with crisis number two (sorry to be vague). 

If there's one thing I know, it's that you can't handle every crisis alone, and I've got more than one going on at a time. 

I need help.

Everyone needs help at one time or another.

How do you handle it when life completely overwhelms you?

If you are feeling overwhelmed too, know that you aren't alone. Check out these other posts about how McKenzie and I deal with the various stresses in life:

And, of course, check out our Etsy shop for printable lunchbox notes, meal planning sheets, and more: