It means the intensity of your experience is causing you to feel like you have no control over your behavior or how you react to the experience.

One of the main lessons of this program is understanding IN Order vs. Disorder. Being overwhelmed is a stage or state that corresponds directly to the disordered reactions we try to recognize in the exercises of our IN Order vs Disorder Course. We teach each person to take into account the behaviors that can slow your progress or reverse it all together, or the behavioral choices that will speed your progress. How many times have you started down a path and been unable to continue because repeated behaviors eventually created a situation where you could not succeed? IN Order vs. Disorder is taught every quarter because it is such an important concept to master.

Behaviors associated with being overwhelmed are not the experience or feelings themselves, but the result of adverse or harmful reactions to those feelings. People will describe shutting down, being emotionally unavailable, they stop talking, they don't participate in conversations or mutual decisions, and many other descriptions of becoming withdrawn. The extreme edge of these feelings might produce suicidal thinking and despair. Others may become overly involved in diversions, actions that have nothing to do with the source of the problems, focusing on anything else with extreme interest. They distance themselves completely from the physical, emotional or mental circumstances that are producing the sensation - so much so that others wonder about the appropriateness of their activities.

What Does Overwhelmed Mean?