Shobukai Shift

Three Mindset Shifts for When You're Overwhelmed

• Mary Schaub • Season 1 • Episode 11

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In this episode of Shobukai Shift, Mary Schaub discusses the feelings of overwhelm that many experience in today's rapidly changing world. She shares her personal struggles with overwhelm and explores three mindset shifts to cope with these feelings: sublimation, stoicism, and the anthropologist's perspective. Each shift offers practical strategies for redirecting emotions into constructive actions, fostering resilience, and maintaining a sense of agency amidst uncertainty. The conversation emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and intentionality in navigating life's challenges.

 

Takeaways:

💡Many people are feeling overwhelmed in today's world.

💡Venting does not alleviate feelings of anger or frustration.

💡Sublimation is a healthy way to channel overwhelming emotions.

💡Stoicism teaches us to focus on what we can control.

💡Embracing challenges can lead to personal growth.

💡Living for the greater good provides deeper fulfillment.

💡Curiosity can transform overwhelming experiences into learning opportunities.

💡It's important to have coping strategies ready for difficult times.

💡Repressing emotions is counterproductive to emotional health.

💡We are both the writer and main character of our own lives.

 

Compelling Quotes:

🎤"Sublimation helps us grow through mastery"

 

Show Links:

Timeline of World History | Major Time Periods & Ages


Keywords:

✅ overwhelm ✅transformation ✅coping strategies ✅sublimation ✅stoicism ✅emotional regulation ✅mental health ✅self-improvement ✅personal growth ✅mindfulness

 

#overwhelm, #transformation, #coping strategies, #sublimation, #stoicism, #emotional regulation, #mental health, #self-improvement, #personal growth, #mindfulness, #personalcoaching

Disclaimer:

***The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice.***

Credits: Written, produced and hosted by: Mary Schaub. Theme song written by: Mary Schaub. Mixing Engineer: Dylan Yauch

Contact: Tell us how your transformation is going. Email us at Shobukai_Shift@mschaubadvisory.com or leave us a voicemail at ‪(631) 371-3240‬ and we may play it on a future episode.

Website: M. Schaub Advisory (MSA)

** Shobukai Shift is a MSA Production **

Mary Schaub Hi, gentle warriors. How are you? Welcome to Shobukai Shift, where we talk about transformations that matter. Today, we're talking about dealing with feelings of overwhelm. I was gonna talk about something else, and then I became personally aware of just how overwhelmed I was feeling. And I felt like this might be a slightly more useful topic, for me anyway.

 

I'm doing what my friend Patrick Scott Welsh calls, me-search. Shobakai roughly translates to a community or group of open-handed warriors. I'm talking about those of you trying to navigate life in an intentional way with the goal of becoming the best version of yourself possible. You're doing this because you feel an inner calling to learn and grow and evolve. Many of you are trying to find your place in the world.

 

You may even wish to leave the world a little better than how you found it. But if fighting purpose and meaning in life isn't hard enough, we have another challenge we're all dealing with, and that is the challenge of being alive in 2025. And what does this have to do with transformation? Well, everything. What we're experiencing today is very broadly and objectively speaking, profound change. So,

 

I wanna talk about this last week. And I wrote this in early March, the show will be out in about a month and a half. But I'm gonna be super honest with you. the last week living on planet earth was pretty difficult for me. And if you're still listening, maybe it was for you too. I woke up Saturday morning and I felt,

 

Like I couldn't move. I mean, there have been some flus and neuroviruses going around and I thought, well, okay, maybe I have one or I'm fighting, getting sick or, you know, know that feeling where something's just off, but you're not technically sick. So I rested in bed and by the afternoon it was clear I wasn't sick, but I could not fucking move. And then I made the mistake of going on social media.

 

You might remember

 

I deleted all the apps from my phone so they'd be less accessible during the day, but I still have them on my iPad. And I was hanging out in bed, feeling overwhelmed about the world, and I ended up going on social media and I ended up binging. There's really no other way to describe it. I hadn't looked at social media for maybe two weeks, and then literally I spent most of Saturday on it and I couldn't stop.

 

even though I was completely sure it wasn't really making me feel any better. And even though it was stirring up some really strong feelings in me and bringing out really pained and angry sides of myself. And after a few hours, well, I mean, kind of like eating junk food, I guess. You know, have one bowl of Doritos. What does it matter? Just fuck it, finish the bag and right off the day. Well, that's what Saturday was. Just a digital binge of social media and news.

 

And I felt sick. I felt depressed and tired and emotionally raw. You know, of course I indulged in expressing my feelings a little bit, which, you know, I mean, let's be honest, we all know it does no good. Like no good. You're not gonna change anyone's mind online. You're not gonna move the needle on societal problems. You aren't going to wield justice with your clever posts and opinions. It's really just digital rage.

 

Speaking of which, did you know that there's conclusive research that venting actually does not make you feel better? So there's something called the catharsis myth, and it's the idea that venting helps release pent up anger. Well, studies show that venting, especially through aggressive outlets, for example, hitting a punching bag, yelling, or rage posting on social media,

 

actually increases anger and aggression. So there was a classic study by Bushman et al. in 1999, which found that people who vented by punching a bag felt angrier than those who engaged in no distraction or any venting at all. But that's not all. Venting to other people can reinforce negative emotions, making them more persistent rather than dissipating them.

 

I used to believe that venting with a friend was like letting the steam escape from a boiling tea kettle. But venting can lead to rumination, which is continuously rehashing the problem. Do any of you do that? man, sometimes I'm in the car and I am just monologuing grievances. And by the way, I don't do this once. I'll take something that's bothering me and I will go over it six or seven times.

 

it ends up almost feeling like I'm purging the feelings out of my body. I used to imagine that it was like a food sickness where you feel terrible and you know it's not gonna end up well and there's an urgency to throw up and then you do, you throw up and like you feel almost immediately better. But research from Nolan Hokusama in 2000 shows that doing this

 

actually worsens stress, anxiety, and depression. And none of us need any more of those things, do we?

 

Now, this isn't to say that constructive venting, where emotions are expressed in a positive way that leads to problem solving or emotional support, isn't beneficial. Talking to supportive listeners like grounded friends, coaches, or therapists can help validate feelings without escalating negativity.

 

People who can listen compassionately and hold space for us while we express what we're feeling in a controlled way can help us regulate our own emotions. The problem is if we're venting in a blame driven or hostile manner, it will actually increase our distress. So back to my Saturday strategy, totally wrong. It made my distress much worse. And I'm joking about it being a strategy.

 

I didn't want to do those things. But because I was inside and sedentary, I didn't give myself an opportunity to properly process and work through my feelings. And I'll be honest, it resulted in me feeling not so great for a few days afterwards too. So today we're going to talk about three easy mindset shifts to cope with overwhelming feelings, particularly ones that are outside of our locus of control. So let's get started.

 

Number one, sublimation. I love this one. This is one of my favorites and a pretty accessible one at that. I've been using sublimation since I was a teenager, though I didn't realize what the hell I was doing. It's considered one of the most adaptive defense mechanisms because it allows people to channel overwhelming emotions into constructive, socially acceptable, and often personally fulfilling activities. Here's why it's a healthier way to cope.

 

So first of all, it redirects intense emotions into positive outlets. For example, let's say you had a really bad day at work. Your boss was giving you a really hard time about something that wasn't your fault. And so you felt appropriately pretty angry. But instead of saying something to your boss or venting to coworkers or family or friends, you end up just going for a long run or maybe lifting some weights.

 

This is win-win, right? You transform the negative feelings for your boss, avoid hurting yourself by acting them out with others, and then use those feelings as fuel for your workout, which in turn supports your mental and physical health. Now, you may be saying, okay, I'm angry, but like, I'm also exhausted at the end of the day and the exhaustion keeps winning. I can feel the anger, but I'm not able to make it fuel to sublimate it into a run.

 

I get it, I was like this for many years. And by the way, there is a threshold where I can pass, like last Saturday, where I'm just too upset and sublimation isn't available to me. And I'll talk about other ways of dealing with that in a minute. But if you can't access it at first, it might just be that you need to try a few times. Like anything, it takes some practice. So for example, you're pissed at your boss, but you're tired.

 

and you can't imagine going for a run or lifting weights. Okay, no worries. Just go for a walk. I mean, even 20 minutes. Start there just to get your mind and body used to the idea of movement as a way of processing these feelings. When I was a kid, I was going through a lot of difficult stuff at home and it negatively impacted my schoolwork. So by the time I was heading to high school,

 

I wasn't the best student, but I had the luck of having a few teachers who cared about me and opened up the joy of learning to me my freshman year. And when I tell you it was like a light switch turned on, I found sublimation in the form of studying and learning and being a good student. My teachers gifted me this through their kindness. I imagine they were able to see that beneath that depressed, angry teenager,

 

was just a hurt and scared kid who was actually pretty intellectually curious. So from freshman year on, I became obsessed with school, just like that. I took all of my feelings and I redirected them toward learning.

 

I just wanna note something that's really important. I wasn't repressing my feelings. I was still very much aware I was angry and sad and depressed, okay? This is really important because repressing emotions does not work. You are kidding yourself and biding time until all those things you're stuffing down come out and they will, one way or another.

 

I was focusing on school because it was where I felt seen and understood and cared for. I mean, on some level, I probably wanted to please my teachers and reciprocate their investment in me by doing good. And also very practically, I told myself that if I got the grades, I'd be able to get out of a negative place where I was not happy. So I was taking all of my feelings and focusing on going away to college.

 

My feelings were fuel to help get me to a better place.

 

In addition to being fuel for positive action, sublimation helps us grow through mastery and increases resiliency and emotional regulation. These in turn make us stronger, both socially and professionally. What I did as a teenager though, I had no clue I was doing it. I was really just problem solving my way out of a situation by determining what I could and couldn't control.

 

I taught myself how to be a planner. I knew where I was, certainly, and I knew where I wanted to go. And in my own teenager way, I created a roadmap of sorts, how to get myself to where I wanted to be. And by using goal-directed behavior, I helped regain a sense of control over my emotions and my environment. And spoiler alert, it worked. I went from being a not-so-great student in junior high school

 

to being on the high honor roll AP classes in high school. I was accepted to my first choice university, NYU, not too shabby. I mean, it did take four years of consistent discipline to get there, but it worked. And by succeeding, I built a sense of agency and self-esteem that I had been lacking. All of this was instrumental to building a 30 year career, which coincidentally,

 

was focused on helping people and organizations succeed doing change. So I wanna wrap up talking about sublimation, our first mind shift to dealing with feelings of overwhelm, by talking about the process of redirecting. We covered the first one, anger, right? Anger comes up, exercise is your answer. Again, even just going for a long walk is great.

 

just move. Next feeling I want to talk about is anxiety, something else that I dealt with as a teenager. What's a great way to redirect anxiety? Well, studying, learning, researching, just as we hold anger in our body and exercise is a way of getting it out, anxiety is in our mind and studying or learning helps us cognitively exercise

 

using our intellect to wear our anxiety down. Maybe this is why we see people get sucked into conspiracy theories. Okay, next feeling, frustration. What's a great way of dealing with frustration? Activism. So for example, I'm a big animal lover and an animal rights advocate. And I often get these emails from organizations or even people.

 

with like a really disturbing article or like a dog that's four hours away from being euthanized. And I really was very, very disturbed by it. So some years ago, I started to volunteer at a no-kill shelter where I socialized animals so that they had a better chance of being adopted. Does it stop animal abuse everywhere? No, of course not. But activism, including volunteering, can help us replace those feelings of helplessness

 

with self-empowerment. Okay, next and last emotion I wanna talk about is grief. This is a really powerful and a difficult feeling to accept. It doesn't necessarily mean the death of a loved one either. It could mean the end of a friendship, the loss of a job. It could even mean letting go of an idea of something that you held dear. I know some women who came to learn that they couldn't have children.

 

felt a great deal of grief for the role of mother that they would never be able to hold. How can we redirect feelings of grief in a healthier way? Journaling, writing, painting, music, dance, all of these artistic endeavors are fantastic for this one. I mean, I believe we all have some art form that we're pretty good at. Even if you think your watercolors are crappy and you

 

don't deserve to consider yourself an artist, it's still an expression of art. It's still an expression of you. For me, it's writing. What's yours? Okay, so that covers our first mindset shift for feeling overwhelmed. Sublimation, check it out. Okay, second mind shift for dealing with feelings of overwhelm, stoicism.

 

Stoicism is a philosophy of the ancient Greeks. It's seeing a resurgence today because its principles offer a practical framework for navigating uncertainty, stress, and adversity, all of which we have no shortage of today, that's for sure. So here are some key stoic ideas that resonate strongly for me right now. The stoics postulated that we cannot control external events, only our response to them.

 

This is helpful because it offers us a sense of agency when we feel things are out of control. When we feel powerless, focusing on our mindset, our actions, and our personal resilience helps us to feel better. So for example, instead of doom scrolling like I did Saturday, I could have focused on starting a daily yoga practice or learning three new AI skills every week. Next Stoic Principle.

 

Don't be ruled by emotions. Observe them, but act rationally. This cognitive reframing relates to what we talked about in terms of sublimating, right? It's a structured way to deal with emotions without being consumed by them. Again, on Saturday, I could have meditated, journaled, gone for a walk, gone to the gym. Remember, we're not talking about suppressing or repressing our feelings here.

 

We're acknowledging them and going, okay, yep, got it. This sucks. I don't like how I feel. I can't do anything about this problem. So I'm gonna go do this thing over here and redirect my overwhelming feelings of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty by using the energy from these feelings to fuel a healthy and productive activity. Okay, next dog principle, don't resist fate.

 

embrace challenges as opportunities for growth. We live in a time of rapid, often painful change, so the idea that suffering can be transformed into strength can be very appealing. Again, using these feelings for fuel for growth. Another Stoic principle, practice living with less to build resilience and to detach from materialism.

 

In a previous episode, we discussed unlearning to learn and the role our attachments play in holding us back. Today, many of us are reevaluating priorities, choosing simplicity, minimalism, and in some cases, deciding to be less identified with our jobs or our things. Some people are even quiet quitting to prioritize wellbeing over endless striving.

 

here, the Stoics are talking about voluntary discomfort as a means to build our inner power and letting go of our attachments. You hear people today talking about doing digital detoxes or juice fasts, cold exposure therapy, people moving into those little mini houses or moving off the grid or into a trailer. All are about discipline.

 

non-striving and non-attachment. Next stoic principle is using the awareness of death to live meaningfully and with urgency. Uncertainty about the future and things like global pandemics, wars and economic crashes remind people of their mortality. This in turn helps us prioritize what truly matters, health, close relationships, a life of purpose.

 

COVID and climate disasters have definitely made this one resonate with people. During COVID, many people quit their jobs, moved, or otherwise completely changed their lifestyle. This has been true throughout our history. There's a great video out there, check the show notes for a link, which walks through the timeline of world history, covering major time periods and ages. One thing that I learned in this fabulous video from UsefulCharts,

 

I learned about all of the major ages, early bronze, bronze age, iron age, classic antiquity, middle ages, and the modern age, which is what we're in now. So what I learned is like research shows that three major things tend to occur when we're shifting from one age to another. Do you wanna guess what these three major events are? One, pandemics, two, mass migrations, and three, major climate events. Sound familiar?

 

This confirms for me what scholars, including those at the World Economic Forum, have already said. We're shifting into a new age. Moving out of modern and into postmodern or technical or the age of AI, whatever they'll end up calling it. I keep saying here, because I think it's important, what we're all experiencing is quite profound. It's not your fault you're feeling scared or overwhelmed or frustrated. It's not due to any lacking on your part.

 

We're going through a major shift in the world and much of it we can't change. But back to Stoic principle number one, we can work on how we adapt and react to it. Okay, final Stoic principle, live for the greater good, contribute meaningfully and act with virtue. I think this resonates with people who are looking for community. Many people today are feeling lonely and alienated.

 

And a life of service provides deeper fulfillment than individual success does. Most of us know that while modern culture encourages self-promotion and wealth generation, even after you attain the attention or money you're seeking, you're likely to still feel unfulfilled. This is why so many people are now shifting careers to more purpose-driven work. So that wraps up number two, stoicism.

 

In our modern age, it's not so much an abstract philosophy as it is a reframing tool, a way to remain calm, clear-headed, and strong in difficult times. It's a blueprint for inner peace and personal strength in a world that feels increasingly chaotic. All right, moving on. The third and last mindset shift to deal with overwhelming feelings is what I call the anthropologist's perspective.

 

Three areas of the anthropologist's perspective are, phenomenological attitude or observing experience without imposing preconceived judgments, simply noting what is. This encourages stepping back and analyzing a situation as it unfolds rather than reacting emotionally. So my very first job after college was at an insane

 

skincare company. And it's actually still in business, which shocked the hell out of me. So I'm not going to name it, but it was run by this nuts CEO lady, very Devil Wears Prada kind of vibe. Now this was 30 years ago when being publicly abusive to your employees was somewhat more acceptable. I wasn't dealing well with a toxic environment. I'm talking stomach aches before work.

 

crying in the elevator because I just hated working there. This woman had a pattern of choosing one employee to pick on every day. And there were only women working there when I was there and we were all very trauma bonded. I had no choice. I had a lot of student debt and was supporting myself and living alone. So I had to tough it out. So I came up with some

 

weird mind trick to cope with the insanity. So this was at a time when reality TV was really just becoming mainstream as we know it today. I think MTV had like the first one where all these people lived in a house together. so every day in the elevator, I imagined I was being followed by a producer and a film crew that was documenting my day at work.

 

I didn't know it at the time, but I was taking what I'm calling this third-person objective viewpoint, right? This anthropologist's perspective.

 

And I was doing this to make the entire miserable experience feel somehow less personal and less lonely. Emotions feel more manageable when we view them as less personal.

 

I should say that I eventually did quit after six weeks and found another job and that I am not at all advocating staying in abusive situations. You absolutely should focus on health and safety. And if you're in an abusive situation, you need to do everything you can to get yourself out of that, including finding resources that can help you do that. For me, I was, I was soldiering on.

 

and this is how I dealt with it. Another aspect of this anthropologist perspective is accepting that our understanding of the world is limited and evolving. This helps me with feeling overwhelmed by giving space for uncertainty instead of needing immediate answers or control of it. The history video I mentioned earlier is a great example of this. We feel pretty superior to people living 2000 years ago.

 

and people 50 years from today will feel superior to us. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is openness and curiosity. Rather than feeling anxious, curiosity helps us focus on the opportunity for things to unfold naturally so that we might learn from the experience. So the anthropologist perspective is one of curiosity and objectivity, transforming overwhelm

 

from something to fear into something to study.

 

Instead of drowning in emotions, you analyze them like an outsider. Over the last 10 difficult years, I've found this one to be pretty helpful. I imagine myself as an alien here on earth, observing this interesting species called human beings as they navigate one time period to the next. So give this one or any of the others a try and see what works best for you.

 

Some may be better suited to specific moods or areas of your life.

 

All of these strategies you might have noticed have some similarities and overlap, which I actually find very comforting. It tells me that I'm gravitating towards something that's working for me when I'm seeing a commonality to things that I gravitate to. Have you ever gotten a big group of your friends together? Like maybe you have like high school friends and college friends and work people and neighbors and friends and family, you know, all these people in one room.

 

Did you ever notice by the end of the night, you'll start to see people from different areas of your life form friendships with one another? I always find that to be a good sign. And that's how I feel about these three mindset shifts. They are compatible and have some overlap, but there's enough variety so that if one isn't accessible to me, I can call on another. So for example, sublimation is great, unless I'm really overwhelmed like I was on Saturday. So,

 

know, yoga and walking even wasn't accessible to me then. I really should have tried journaling, but in the end I put on Netflix and chose distraction with a fair bit of dissociation.

 

It wasn't a strategy that made me feel better, but it was where I was at the time. And that's okay. I've put this show together for myself and for you. It's helpful to have these ideas in mind when you're feeling okay or even good. Don't wait until you're really down and upset to research how to cope. If you're feeling good today, make a note about some of these mindset shifts.

 

Like literally write them down or type them into your phone and use it as a prescription to try when you need to. Okay, protagonist ponderings, each one of us is both the writer and main character of our own story, of our lives. We write it through our decisions and then we live it through our behaviors. How do we change the direction of our lives? Well,

 

We might first examine our inner motivations and our behaviors and then reverse engineer them so that we can be more intentional about doing things which result in getting us what we really want. Here are some protagonist ponderings to leave you with today. What are some ways you cope with overwhelming feelings? Are these strategies working for you?

 

Send me an email with your answers and I'll read some of them on our next show. Until next time, remember you are the change you and the world are waiting for.