Do You Feel Like You Are Drowning?

Do you feel that you have lots of responsibilities and you cannot say ‘no’ to people? This is an example of 'Drowning' which is one of the behaviours in the Manage Your Emotions on line Programme. 

What drowning is

There are times when everything is too much for you.
You may feel as though you are drowning.
You don’t know whether to say something, to leave, to sit down and cry, you can’t decide on anything.
You tend to feel frozen as if you’re not really there. It’s as though events were happening to someone else: you don’t know how to react, so sometimes you just ‘clam up’ and look at others.

Understanding drowning

When you are overwhelmed your emotions are stuck. This means that in some way you are not allowing yourself to ‘feel’ anything.
Feeling ‘overwhelmed’ helps you to avoid things. It may happen when you are doing too much, or you feel that you have too much responsibility and you are unable to say ‘no, I don’t want to do this’.
Your body, mind and emotions will make sure you slow down. Feeling overwhelmed is a way of doing just this, to make you feel that life is happening to someone else and that you do not own your body any more. You are saying that ‘you can’t take any more and you need a break!’

Drowning behaviour hides very important emotions: Fear, Anger, Shame and Sadness

It would be helpful for you to understand each of the emotions which are probably stuck under your Drowning Behaviour. Emotions often go around in pairs or groups:  your Sadness is connected to your Anger. 

• It will take some effort make incremental changes to your Drowning Thinking. Perhaps it is the way you have always behaved and it makes you feel ‘safe’. Remember, no one can change you, except you.
• If you want to carry on behaving in a Drowning way you will always feel like you do now. 

If you feel you would like to understand more about 'Drowning' behaviour or work through the emotions which are underlying this behaviour please visit our website www.myenow.com and take part in the questionnaire.