Respecting yourself when you're overwhelmed?

[Giantslullaby]

How do you treat yourself with kindness when you feel totally overwhelmed and responsible for too much? Generally , I do ok.
I have a lot on my plate (understatement of the century) and I've come through a traumatic event (still standing) .
How do you remind yourself that enough, is good enough, and really believe it?

to elaborate a little...
I berate myself constantly for not performing miracles in my everyday life. The reality is that in light of recent events in my world , the miracle is that I manage to function at all. But how do I reassure myself I'm doing ok? The world keeps turning, life goes on, I have a family with varying needs to balance and feed, money to make .... Etc etc
(Head explosion)

You plough on. You get up, get dressed, get out and keep going. You are doing ok because you are still here.

I often think of that quote - ‘When you are at the end of your rope...tie a knot in it and hang on.’

Have you got anyone you can speak to or rely on IRL?

I'm sorry you are having a tough time at the moment OP. I hope the worst passes soon.

When I feel like this I tell myself to 'keep on keeping on', which is a lyric from a Bob Dylan song. And I give myself permission to not be perfect, to just get through the day. If it's really bad I break the day into hours and face them one at a time.

I tell myself that no feeling is final (look up the Rilke poem with that line, it's good) and I sit with it for ten minutes and do what I need to let the feelings pass, then I do something I enjoy (meditation, swimming, a short walk, a xchat or phonecall with someone, get a nice snack etc).

On easy days the time flies by, on hard days I do chunk them into an hour at a time like a PP, or sometimes even ten minutes at a time.

I think about everyone else I know and I realise that no one would pretend to find this shit easy. That helps, just to acknowledge that it's genuinely tough and that I'm not being weak/spoilt/whiney etc.

Just someone else showing genuine empathy is enough to give me the strength to carry on.

It's good to think about what you would say to a good friend in the same situation

This is cheesy, but can be a very powerful mantra for life. There is also a recorded version you can search for.

www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html

Similar to Snog, I ask myself what I'd say to my daughter if it were her in that situation.

I like doing a gratitude list at the end of the day - as part of that is forcing myself to find achievements in my day to be grateful for - it can take a few minutes (!) but eventually I can usually drag a few out and then usually go to bed on a positive note. If you do it regularly then you get better at appreciating the little wins throughout the day too.

Thank you everyone .
I don't have a lot of real life support.
I do have a lot of people around always... A massive family, good friends. I had some counselling.
But I felt I had to protect a lot of people I love from the full extent of my experience. The therapy did nothing for me. Also I protected myself from people's ignorance in a way... It was too hard hearing people repeatedly say ridiculous things or respond to the situation with their own anecdotes . I know that sounds absolutely awful and self indulgent . But one of the worst things about my experience is that I've seen lots of sides to people I'd rather not have seen. On the flip side others just shone, were incredible. But mostly , I feel as though everything in my life was a big facade

I can't work out actually, if the fact that I always have my make up on and am generally upbeat , makes people think I'm too proud to discuss anything. And that I'm trying to just carry on as normal . Or if people think I'm just over it ?

I think when you put a positive face on to the outside world, people just take it at face value.

I’ve had a pretty tough year, had some health issues, thought I might have to stop working. Even though I got better, the negativity got the better of me. Had a conversion with DH last week and then he sent me this video. It’s 8 minutes long but it’s worth watching in full. It challenged me to challenge my inner monologue in a way I never have before. I’ve had counselling on several occasions and it’s never helped as much as this video did! I’ve been applying it for a week and already feel better in myself and think I’m doing better at work. I hope it helps.

And for the first time in my life.
Two new things have arisen.
The first is that I feel vulnerable. I've always been a take-no-shit type of girl. But I kind of feel so desperate for change, or for a magic ticket out of the everyday, that I give time to things I wouldn't have before .
So this is men that want to chat/ salespeople/ people talking bullshit etc etc/magic lotions and potions that promise miracles.
And the other is that I can't make decisions. Going through something off the scale and unexpected means I now don't believe in the future. Like when people say... 'Let's have coffee on Thursday' I'm sat there thinking 'how lucky you are to believe so absolutely that we'll all still be here on Thursday, and everything will be ok'
And this in itself is totally nuts, and kind of manifests as a low level anger towards people who are innocently inviting me for coffee!!! It's so fucked up

@OMGtwins I love Rilke

Thank you @FaithEverPresent
That's good video.