Overly Stuffed: When Your Plate Is Full & What to Do about It
“You have a lot on your plate.” This statement is a frequent flyer in my office. I often defer to it when a client of mine is overly busy as a way to acknowledge and validate their feelings of overwhelm. I love the imagery of having a full plate and the visceral reaction you may experience when thinking about eating when you are already overly stuffed. My mind immediately pans to the scene from the movie Matilda when Bruce Bogtrotter is forced to eat the entirety of a very large chocolate cake in front of the school. He enjoys it until he is full and then appears to become very sick. Feelings of fullness are helpful cues of satiation that the need for food in that moment has been met and to stop eating. I help my clients increasingly tune into their feelings of fullness surrounding doing in order to make more space for being and more intentional, value-driven action.
We live in a society that often tells us to do more - work long hours and after hours, have a side hustle, also be a full-time and fully present parent, have an organized and well-kept house, and enroll children in all the extracurricular activities. Most people appear chronically overworked. For these reasons, I often hesitate to ask my new clients to do more, like adding in mindfulness practices or self-care activities right off the bat, which may feel like another to-do and for which the person may not have the space or capacity. Instead, we often start with the initial goal of having them do less.
I once heard a clinical supervisor of mine say that if a room is on fire, we would not want a patient to just deep breathe their way through it in order to feel less stressed about it. 🙂 Meaning, sometimes our emotions fit the facts of the situation that are telling us a problem needs to be addressed. Putting out the fire can be the most effective emotion regulation strategy. Let us consider where your life may metaphorically be on fire and take action steps to put it out in order to restore your life so that it works better for you.
Write About It & Do Something About It: Take Action:
To examine what you may have on your plate that is contributing to feelings of stress or overwhelm, I encourage you to take a blank, full sheet of paper, draw a medium-sized circle on it, and pretend that the circle is an empty plate.
Write different descriptions of how you spend your time inside the circle (like where the filling of a pie would be) like you are creating a pie chart but the pie is unsliced. Example headings could include school/work & career, family & caregiving, household responsibilities, volunteering & community involvement, hobbies & leisure activities, health & self-care.
Draw straight lines from each heading to just outside the circle. Near the line for the corresponding heading, I encourage you to list everything you are doing related to it, such as all major tasks and activities in the surrounding blank space.
For example, work & career could include checking and responding to emails, attending meetings, preparing reports or presentations, scheduling appointments or managing calendars, commuting, collaborating on projects, and conducting research.
Household responsibilities could include specific chores like laundry and cleaning, home maintenance, grocery shopping, and other errands.
Then slice the pie by drawing lines to delineate the portion of time spent in each of these different areas with one heading in each slice.
Look at your plate and just notice your thoughts and feelings about it. Write about it in a journal if you would like.
Use your emotions as information about what, if anything, you can or would like to change.
For example, if you feel overwhelmed viewing everything on your plate, start to consider what could be fully or partially removed to make your demands more palatable and align more with your values or capacity, like your needs, energy, or other resources.
If you feel sad or regretful, consider what might be missing from or overshadowed on your plate.
If you are resentful, consider whether certain tasks have been assumed or placed on your plate unfairly or unequally. This can be especially important to consider in the context of household responsibilities and family & caregiving.
Consider your values and how your plate is aligned and misaligned with them.
For example, if you value social connection, consider whether there is time devoted to regularly reaching out to and/or spending time with family and friends.
If you value health, consider whether a portion of your plate has been devoted to movement and physical exercise or allows for the planning, cooking, and consumption of healthful meals.
If you value creativity, consider whether you have left room on your plate for writing, photography, pottery making, drawing, painting, music, or however else you uniquely live or would like to live this value.
Take steps to clear your plate.
Consider if there is anything on your plate that you can take off entirely, such as leaving a volunteer or other professional role, saying “no” to a work project or assignment, advocating to work at home even one day a week to gain back time spent commuting, or setting a boundary to refrain from checking email after hours.
Consider delegating tasks or sharing responsibilities with another person like a colleague, partner or other adult family member, appropriately-aged child, or hired professional (e.g., a virtual or in-person assistant, nanny or babysitter, cleaning person, landscaping service, or home health aide).
Make the phone call or send the text or email to respectfully decline, delegate, hire, or make a related request.
Add back to your plate. Consider adding one thing (even just a small bite) to your plate that may bring more meaning, purpose, joy, fun, or rest into your life - a step that aligns with your values and the life you want to live.
Consider letting the calendar do the work for you by blocking off time for the action step and/or by scheduling recurring time blocks to more reliably incorporate these activities into your weekly routine.
Periodically revisit and redo this exercise when feeling the need to regroup, reassess, and change your life.
Talk About It:
Behavior change can be uncomfortable and difficult. If you notice resistance to making desired changes to your life, therapy may be helpful in understanding any roadblocks which could include fear or other strong emotions, strong beliefs about productivity and/or worth or feelings of being undeserving of contentment, and real, systemic or objective barriers to making space on your plate that may require more nuanced discussion and problem-solving. If you believe it would serve you, consider reaching out to a therapist today. Help is available.
