What to Do if You're Feeling Overwhelmed (Part 1 of 2)

Silky's family was not in a good place.

She was failing as a wife and mother, but her arrest was the last straw. Focus on the Family helped me find hope. You never give up on helping others, for spreading the word of Jesus.

I'm Jim Daly. Today, Silky's family is thriving. Working together, we can help rescue and strengthen more families like hers.

Give today at FocusOnTheFamily.com slash Real Families. I manage a lot of details at work, and sometimes it just feels overwhelming. We have a pretty large family, and I think sometimes trying to keep track of everyone's birthday and making them feel special on their birthday can be overwhelming.

Family health issues is always hard to deal with. I am at my church for at least three services a week, sometimes more, and it's just really hard to keep up with that and life. What I find overwhelming are deadlines. It seems as soon as I finish one and try to take a breather, oh, I've got another one.

Ah! Well, maybe you can relate to those comments. We all have overwhelming days.

How do you cope with those? Today on Focus On The Family, we're going to look at some of the common reasons for the stress and the pressures we all face, and we're going to shift our focus to God's truth instead. Thanks for joining us today. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. John, something that we try to provide families every week on this program is perspective, especially in the parenting category, because you can get down into the nitty-gritty and forget what it's going to look like 30 years from now.

Hopefully very different than picking up crumbs off the table, right? God has a plan and purpose for your marriage, certainly, but He also has a plan to accomplish things through your children. And I guess the question is, have you ever stopped to think about that?

What does God want to do through my kids, and what's my responsibility in raising them in such a way that God can use them for His goodness and His glory? The fact is, family life is crazy busy, right? We all have these demands upon us and challenges, and as a result, life becomes overwhelming pretty much all the time. And today we're going to talk to an expert who has so many great stories of her own, which is far better than using our stories.

I think it's much better, yes. About our imperfection. But we are going to touch on this idea of how to kind of declutter our lives is probably a good way to talk about it. Yeah, and Kay Wyma is an author, speaker, blogger, video podcaster. She's written a number of books about life in the context of family. She's been here before.

Probably her leading credential is she's the mom to five kids. That is good. Kay, welcome to Focus. Thank you. Welcome back.

Thank you. And I had to laugh at that intro about the birthdays, because we do have five kids. And so for me, some of the most overwhelming moments come when I have to fill out forms for them, and I cannot remember their birthdays.

And I'm not exactly sure who I did or who I didn't. I signed one of them up for camp one year using her brother's birthday. That went down real well.

Don't do that when you apply for passports. Oh my gosh. That could become a real mess.

It's so stressful. All right, you've got this great title, Not the Boss of Us. Now this sounds like it's coming right from the kids union.

Yeah, it does, doesn't it? They got together and said, Mom, you're not the boss of us. Hey, we're claiming it.

No, we're claiming it. How did you come up with this? Well, because I actually say that to my kids all the time, believe it or not, because they walk into these situations that are stressful because it's stressful and overwhelming just with all the stuff we have going on. But for the kids, it's so stressful and overwhelming just with all the pressures that's upon them.

And they live it from the time they're little bitty. And I've embarrassed my children with that statement. I yelled at one of them as he was getting out of the car and going into his freshman year at high school. He was changing schools. He had already tried out, like kind of gone for the cross country team. He didn't really like it. It was too competitive. It was sort of like Goldilocks.

It was too competitive. He gets to the soccer and there's a yelling coach and I'm like, you know, the coach might just like yelling. So it doesn't have anything to do with you. Just just go out there, you know? And so he's getting out of the car. There's people everywhere.

He knows no one. I roll the window down and I'm like, hey, don't you forget this stuff's not the boss of you. And then I added to my total embarrassment, you're a child of the king. And I was like, and he looked and he was like, please, you did not just say that. And I rolled up the window and I drove away.

And and so I really have told them from the get go, these pressures, these circumstances, all that is saying to you, you have to do or be in order to be OK. That's not the boss of you. And then I go in and tell him, what is the boss of you? Hopefully not quite as embarrassing as you're a child of the king. Maybe privately. Yes. Usually with the windows up. Not in front of girls for sure.

Well, it was in front of everybody. Yeah, that's good. You didn't mention the retainer, I hope. Here's your retainer. Is that the truth?

I would not do that. But you are one smart mom. OK, let me let me go back to another funny story about school. I love your school stories.

With five kids. You've got lots of stories. But you you're in the drop off zone at school.

And what happened? Oh, I mean, you're cracking me up. I mean, I've set the bar low for you people.

Like, we really do bring it in low so that you can go high. So you're there. All your kids pile out. They pile out. And as is often the case, trash is flying out with them, including embarrassing trash like McDonald's wrappers and things like that. And I'm cringing. I'm like, just shut the door. And this sweet teacher is running after the wrapper as it's floating around in the sky. And I'm just like, run with it.

Just be calm. And that was just the beginning of a day that was overwhelming because from from there, I pick up a kid from school and took him to get his hair cut because he needed a haircut. And unbeknownst to me, as the person is cutting his hair, she comes over to me and says, as I'm sitting by all these people, I can't cut his hair. And I'm like, well, why not? Because he has lice. And I'm like, because what?

And she says, because he has lice. And so here's this little kid shamed. And all the mothers are, you know, they've moved clearly away from this. They're not next to me. And it was our first time. He's our fifth kid.

It was our first time to go through life. So we've had public shaming both in the carpool line and now at the haircut place. And then I leave there.

And this seriously is all in one day. I get a notice from the bank that somebody is having a high time on the hog at the dart station with my credit card because my car actually, I thought it quite possibly had been broken into at the school parking lot, but I didn't know because sometimes I leave the door open. I just never know, you know, running in and out. And sure enough, someone had nabbed my purse.

And so I've got all this going on one day in the same day. But thankfully, as you pull back and breathe, because you really could, that could sink a person or you can just fight to find your solid ground. And so rather than, you know, crater in the moment, I go to the bank and I'm like, is there any way to stop this? And a very nice person helped me walk through, stopped all the charges. We lived through the lice.

I'm sure we made whoever was behind us in the carpool line feel really great about themselves because at least trash wasn't flying out of their car. And so here we sit in the moment, not being overwhelmed by these things, which really can tank a person, but heading to the place where we're like, we can live through this. We're going to get through this. So let's, for those that are going, okay, overwhelmed, I feel overwhelmed sometimes. What's the definition of overwhelmed? Well, I think overwhelmed feels a certain way, like you actually feel a heaviness come upon you. And it can come in all sorts of fashions.

Like, it could even come with a text. If you had a text coming from someone that you had a strained relationship that can overwhelm you, a calendar can overwhelm you. One of the silver linings, I think, of this environment that we've been in over the last years, we've had a lot of stuff pulled off of our calendars. So the busyness part has exited in a lot of circumstances.

And it's like one of those things as we move back in to being able to fill our calendars, may we be reminded of how, number one, we survived without everything on it. And number two, we still can live balanced because the hard part is, is overwhelmed tempts you to be unbalanced in whatever area you're being overwhelmed by something. Well, I would think people are overwhelmed at different levels. You know, some people can take a lot.

They have broad shoulders, you know, all those comments that we say. So how does it relate to our ability, our temperament? Does overwhelmedness play into that?

Or? You know, it's one of those things that I think it's worth being honest about where you allow yourself to take on feelings that may not necessarily need to be taken on. And we're so used to it, especially in the United States, the intensity, I think, and we love the intensity. And so we're accustomed to these feelings of always having to measure up, always having to do in order to be, always having to, you know, strive with the enough category where I've got to keep going and be and do and more and more and more. And it brings with it overwhelmed whether or not we want to call it that or not.

And so as we sat in the middle of all this and, you know, usually these books come off of me as a mom being frustrated with something that's stealing from the people that I care about, my friends and my kids. And I sat there going, if I'm going to be overwhelmed, why not? Why not reframe it and do it for good? Because why aren't we overwhelmed by truth instead? Because we usually put that on a back burner, so to speak, or maybe we categorize it and put it in a box one place. But it can inform all of this stuff. And so it's why why not lead with being overwhelmed by truth instead of letting the other take the lead.

And that's where we're going to the last part of the program, we're going to talk a lot about that. You had a story about a pivotal moment in your life, you had an eating disorder. I did. What happened and what did you learn through that experience? Okay, so one of those things, it's a pressure on that I felt to have to look a certain way in order to be okay. And maybe it was pressures from all over because I've decided it's these coping strategies that we use to deal with pressures. For me, I chose food. And so I chose to control the feelings that I had by controlling my food and to the point where I actually needed help. And I recognized it one day in college going, this is stealing for me. I can't do this anymore.

I'm not living healthily. And so I exited and got full time help. And when I came back out of that, a friend of mine saw me and she's like, man, that must have been really hard.

And because they controlled everything, they literally controlled everything to help me be able to grow in my soul, to be able to walk life. And the first thing she said to me was, gosh, you can finally start eating how you want because, you know, your pants look a little tight. And I was like, I was sitting there going, did you seriously just say that?

I was like, I just I had no response. And thankfully, the Lord moved my thoughts to something that has been so freeing to me because as I stood there, I thought I have a couple of choices. I can exit and not have this relationship be a part of my life, which I did not want to do. Or I can recognize the fact that the situations aren't going to change. I have to change how I function in them. And I was like, I can change how I function in these situations, because if I go to truth, then I'm going to let the truth inform me so that I can walk in wholeness in any situation rather than the situation owning me.

And I think it's important we're going to get to some more stories here, but I think it's important. God, where is God in this struggle that you've had with being overwhelmed? I don't know that overwhelmed is a word that you see in scripture a lot.

It comes out in different ways. Yeah. You know, being joyless, like the one probably. But what about this issue of anxiety? I actually think it comes anxiety pervasive through scripture, even the performance pressures in scripture. The New Testament.

Jesus spends so much time with the Pharisees who absolutely are dying under performance pressures. Well, that's for sure. Yeah. And so he addresses it head on and he addresses it with the greatest words. You are mine. I see you. You are known.

You belong. I know your name. I mean, one thing I know every hair on your head, every hair and every tear. Have you ever thought about every tear?

Because if you're grabbing a coping strategy or any, you know, any situation, I could have a kid walking into a new high school crying because they're not sure who they're going to sit with at the cafeteria, you know? And it's like every tear. You have no clue how many tears you've cried because they tend to be in a stream. And so you none of us can count our tears.

And yet it is that important to God to be able to know every single hair and every single tear. You know, in that category of heaviness, I mean, what teenagers are carrying today, the depression and suicide rates are skyrocketing. You had a situation, I think, with one of your daughter's teen friends.

Yes. Explain what happened and how you and your family coped with that. Well, it was just hard to think that even because they were 14 and undeniably, it was the pressures that weighed down on this very amazing young lady who just one afternoon decided she couldn't take it anymore. And she was one of those kids that was had bought the language that you really do have to be good at everything. So she was a phenomenal student. She was a phenomenal in the orchestra playing. She was phenomenal at every club that she joined because you have to join every club because if you don't join the clubs, then how are you going to fill out your resume when you get out of school to be able to get into college? Because she believed it.

She believed every AP course, no matter whether she was gifted in math or English, because most people aren't gifted in both. But this intense pressure to have to be everything it won. And it just was a terrible day that day. And I'm just going to be honest with you it.

When you walk along someone that has done that, it impacts the people that live it for a very long time. And it made me so mad. It's still I mean. Sorry.

It is just so wrong. It's still a lot and it doesn't get to steal. And I thought if she knew, really knew that she didn't have to be all those things or do all those things, if she knew how much she was loved, if she believed how much she was loved, you know. And I would think, you know, when you see that result from that pressure, that overwhelmness, it goes right to John 10 10. You know, the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy.

And that day, unfortunately, he won. And that that is something as a parent, you need to be mindful of. You know, we've got a great resource, the Live to Thrive, to inform parents and teachers and coaches and youth workers. It's absolutely free.

And you can just come to focus on the family. Call us or get on the Web site and you can download the material because we want to help save as many of those kids as possible. And our own voice out friends that have done that. I don't know if there's anyone that hasn't been touched by it. I was thinking about that before coming here.

Is any does anybody live unscathed by it? And so it's like, please, let's not be afraid. Please. Let's because one of the most important things is to talk. And I've sat by these girls that walked alongside her, each one of them thinking, was it my fault?

Did I not say something? I mean, gut wrenching. And it was like, if only she had said. And then the tables turn to we have to say it's like you've got to talk about these taboo subjects, not in fear, but in strength. And I think the strength comes from being overwhelmed by the truth of God.

That's really good. Appreciate your continual drive back to the scriptures. And as Jim mentioned, we have our curriculum, our help online for you to better understand teen suicide and coping mechanisms. We've got a lot for you at the Web site. It's in the show notes or call 800 the letter A in the word family. And be sure to when you get in touch, ask about Kay's book, not the boss of us putting overwhelmed in its place in a do all be all world.

It's a terrific resource. Kay, let me ask you when it comes to this idea of performance in the book, you mentioned performance mindset versus purpose. Explain the difference and why it's so important for us as parents to pursue a purpose orientation to how we teach our kids how to live rather than performance. Yeah, it seems like one invites wholeness and the other invites a lot of striving. Yeah.

And how does that work practically? Let's just take a child who's struggling in math and you're saying, OK, man, you're getting a D or maybe an F. Can we do better? Are you getting the homework done? I mean, that's communicating performance, I know. But yeah, how do you turn that into purpose?

Because you live in the world and, you know, it's always this admonition live in the world, but not be of the world. OK. And so I think that's the difference. So the performance pressures are absolutely intense here because everyone's looking and grading. You know, even when you come home from the hospital with a baby, you come home with a chart, you know, and so you have to fill out. Did you have to do that? Yeah.

I'm thinking of the app store. Right. Right. Babies born, you know, is it a one or a nine?

Oh, my word. Isn't that the truth? I mean, you're getting a number from the get go. And so, I mean, and then there's nothing wrong with the number. Right. But if you're letting the number somehow define you or inform your identity, it's there's just a problem because the numbers always change.

With my kids, you know, we've got five. Let's just use the SAT scoring mechanism as an example. Because in my small time engaging with the lovely entrance exams, the SAT has changed three times. The scoring mechanism has and it's disappeared because like this year I have a senior.

We both have seniors. You don't even have to have an entrance exam to get into college this year for the kid that's not good at math. The kid either is not trying. So that's one thing. Or the kid's not gifted in math, which actually could be the case.

And that's OK. Everybody doesn't have to be everything. Right now, mathematics is celebrated as is computer science. Things in that genre, because that's where the jobs are. That was not the jobs. You know, gosh, look at the centuries that involved the phenomenal artists like Mozart or, you know, any time that you had painting artists, you had Monet and you had Picasso. They were not really, you know, struggling with English or math because it wasn't even that same mechanism of education. And so education in and of itself is slightly manmade, which is fine. And we live in it. But if we let it own us, there's a problem because we in it owning us. I'm saying that my identity as an honor student or my identity as a failed student has determined my worth. Sure. And therein lies the problem.

All right. So switching it to purpose, which goes with your giftedness, changes the trajectory completely. It allows you to live in these performance areas wholly because every single person is uniquely created.

Every person. And I find this phenomenal. We were talking about how science proves scripture. Well, it does in this case, too, because now that they know more about the genome, they're realizing that people actually really are completely different with unique giftings. Right.

Which is fascinating. And so it's like find out what your unique gifting and purpose is, because you're actually happiest when you're doing that and then celebrate it and move your kids towards that. And even as you do that, you might figure out your own gifting and purposeness, which likely we all sort of shirked that or maybe we were lucky and landed in the career like you two gentlemen have, because you're so fun. And you totally have to do if you didn't get to talk like have with you such a winsome gift of making people feel great. And it's like, what if you were stuck in a cubicle, never able to speak to anybody? What a shame.

I'd go crazy. Let me ask you, though. No, go ahead. Finish that thought. I was going to say, so let's get in the lane of where our wheelhouse and giftedness is, because it is woven within you. And it really is a part of the Lord himself that he has put in you. Even when we get to heaven, we're going to be celebrating.

We're not going to be comparing. And we'll be relishing in each of the gifted that each one of us has, because we'll actually learn a little bit more about the Lord by celebrating in those gifts. Yeah. And finding those strengths can really alleviate that pressure we feel and that sense of being overwhelmed. Yeah. And it puts it in its place.

Yeah. You know, the probably one of the biggest issues for teen girls is appearance and beauty and the push for that. I mean, boys have it, too. They don't, you know, you don't want a lot of acne.

You want to have a, you know, you want to work out and look good. So it does affect both boys and girls and recognize that. And it's, you know, one of the most overwhelming messages for young people today. You dealt with this during a shopping trip, I think, with your daughter. These are so good.

Your stories are so good. But it was the swimsuit outing. It's because we have so many kids. And I mean, it's like, you can't make it up. But what happened in that in that shopping day? We walked in so happy.

Yeah, right. It's the big day. And so in the start, well, it just was sort of like, hey, you know, the summer's coming and it's like, let's go. We were by the Nordstrom Rack. So we went in.

We were like, this is awesome. Oh, there's swimsuits. Let's look at the swimsuits. And so they start looking.

And I have two girls, which I should have known was a problem to begin with because I started watching the air being sucked out of the room pretty quickly as one is in one size and the other is in another size, which is a problem right then and there. And so they pick their swimsuits and then we go to the back in these terrible dressing rooms that have fluorescent lights, you know, and of course, a three way mirror that makes anybody look terrible. And they start to try on their swimsuits. And it was amazing how they couldn't stop looking at each other and going, I wish I looked like her. And the other one is saying, I wish I looked like her, which was fascinating to me because they were born with different body types. Like one has even blonde hair, blue eyes. The other has brown hair and brown eyes. And I mean, they're just different.

And I watched their psyches completely tank in this dressing room. And I'm like, yeah, we're so done. You know, by that point, I don't put up with this stuff anymore. If it's stealing, we're out of there. And so we let we stealing what stealing their joy.

Yeah, it was stealing their joy. And nothing is worth that. It just isn't. And we'll come back or we'll talk about it and go back whole, you know, because that's a great opportunity in any way, shape or form. When you see your kid tanking, get to the why what's going on because I want to know what you're thinking because nine times out of 10 you're thinking something not right about you. So if we went into it with a whole mindset, this is a gift that's been given to me, I'd like to steward it well, rather than I have to sculpt this so that I look okay next to everybody else.

One's going to give you life, the other is going to steal from you. As we were checking out of the, you know, of the swimsuit store. And there was a little baby in front of us and it's little in its tiny little cart and I look at the girls and I've seen they're going, that baby has no idea what size diaper has on, you know, it's happy because a baby isn't going, Oh, I'm a four.

I'm horrible. You know, it's like it could be, I would put our youngest one when he was little in a size six so he could wear it all day. You know, I just was sort of like, I know, and it worked. It was a great diaper. And so he wasn't down on himself because he was wearing a six diaper and I looked at them and I was like, please do the same thing.

Don't let a size or a number mess you up. Let's go to the place where we can be surrendered to the Lord's goodness and his definition of beauty, because his definition about us in Ephesians 2 10 is that we are a masterpiece. He uses the Greek word is poema, which is the, and it's something that's one of a kind and its beauty is so far surpassing and it's, and I know my kids are like, well, well, well, well, well, well, you know, they get so sick of me. I do because, you know, another part of the Bible, Samuel says that the words don't fall to the ground and I'm sort of like made those take root.

They're getting so much other stuff. Why not pour truth on them? Because the truth words don't fall to the ground and I might not see when it starts to sprout, but they're not my words. Those aren't my words.

Yeah. Okay. This has been so good.

I want to come back next time, continue the discussion and get even deeper into this and have some more fun with your stories. Not mine, but what a great concept, not the boss of us. And it really is to relax a little and live this life in such a way that honors the Lord and those around you by loving them well and not being stressed out or overwhelmed with everything coming at us. I think that fits. Like you said earlier, so much of the scripture, it's so obvious when you read it, that's what the Lord is saying to us.

My yoke is easy. This is it. Which doesn't sound right, does it? No, it's not the way we're living. Everything's chaotic and yet He brings peace. And that's really our bottom line message, giving you godly hope right where you are today. That's what Focus on the Family exists to do, to give real hope to real families. If you're feeling overwhelmed, there's several things you can do.

One is to call us. We have caring Christian counselors who can encourage you, pray with you and point you in a better direction for your family. We also have an extensive counselor referral network.

I'm sure we know somebody in that network who's near you and can provide ongoing help. And of course we have Kay's great book, Not the Boss of Us. There's such good content in here and I want to put a copy into your hands. When you send a gift of any amount to Focus on the Family to be part of the ministry, we'll send it right out to you as our way of saying thank you for being a part of our family building team. And that's how we can do ministry together with your generous support. And we're going to bundle Kay's book with a CD of our conversation both today and next time as well.

And that way you can listen again or pass it on to a friend who might be feeling overwhelmed right now. Contact us, let us know how we can help and donate as you can. Our number is 800-AFAMILY.

800-232-6459 or click the link in the episode notes to learn more. Kay, that was great. I'm looking forward to next time. Thanks for being with us. Thanks so much for having me. And on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today.

I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Silky's family was not in a good place. She was failing as a wife and mother.

But her arrest was the last straw. And I felt guilty. I felt guilty and I felt ashamed.

And I was in my deepest pit. Thankfully, Silky became a follower of Christ in her jail cell and soon she was discovering how to restore her marriage and family with our help. Focus on the family helped me find hope because they never give up. They continue being there for us, for the families, for the children. They never give up on helping others, for spreading the word of Jesus. And I'm grateful for that. I'm Jim Daly. Working together, we can rescue and strengthen more families like Silky's. Can we count on your support? Give today at FocusOnTheFamily.com slash real families.