Brain Shut Down When Overwhelmed

[reyes]

My brain seems to shut down whenever I become overwhelmed. So if multiple stressful events occur within a given time span or if I overcome four out of five hurdles in an attempt to complete a task and then get stumped by the fifth step, well then there seems to be a cumulative effect that puts me over the edge, and I go into 'default' mode which is 'shut down,' 'brain fog,' mode. I know from that point on I will confront any given task with a cognitive deficit---it's like being immersed in a clear gelatinous fluid and trying to negotiate visual and auditory processing through that medium.
Does anyone else suffer from this? What do you do? I've heard mindfulness meditation is wonderful for this but I've not had much success with it so far, granted I've not been consistent with it.

[Tom fod]

I think this is something that affects a lot of us. While it is not exclusive to dyspraxics, I do consider it a Dyspraxic thing.

I wonder if part of it can be connected to our seeing the bigger picture and our sensory input being more sensitive and having a lower saturation threshold.

I try to talk through or sound out my worries, not always easy as sometimes my head is full of all that which has gone wrong or the potential consequences and self recrimination so I might not want to share.

I should probably try mindfullness too. CBT has helped but it doesn't always enable me to arrest my panic early enough.

[michael]

Tom,
I think you may have hit the nail on the head. Thank You for your input.

[RenegadeDyspraxic]

Sorry to be a bit late with this response but hope I can still be of some help. Anyhow when I get overwhelmed, I tend to find the best approach is to chunk things down into smaller steps and focus on only one step at a time until it is complete.

I recently learnt how scientifically speaking, there is a part of our brains called the Amygdala. This part of the brain produces adrenaline and causes us to experience the infamous fight or flight response when faced with immenent danger, such as when faced with a man eating lion.

Yet what most people don't realise about the Amygdala is that when we are confronted with something which is too overwhelming (such as a massive workload) the Amygdala can still be activated. Even though we know that this massive workload isn't as dangerous as a man eating lion, the stress we feel when facing an overwhelming situation can still activate the Amygdala. And this as such is what causes the overwhelm that we are feeling to cause our brains to shut down.

What we have learnt applies not just to a Dyspraxic brain but even a non-dyspraxic brain as well. Yet with Dyspraxia, because we have concentration issues, it means we might not need as much overwhelm to reach the points where our brains feel like shutting down.

Fortunately by chunking down what is overwhelming you into tiny pieces, and than focus on only working on that one piece at a time, you can literally side step the overwhelm. As such you can prevent your brain from activating the Amygdala and as such, shutting down.

Hope this helps.

[reyes]

That makes a lot of sense. Could also explain why stress absolutely drains all of my energy.

[reyes]

That's good advice put partialization unfortunately is not always an option. If we are at work and have to complete a large workload withing a given period of time, well then we have have limited options with regard to partialization. Also, if you're at work and are receiving training on something, you can't realistically say "well, that's enough for today," I mean we are often not in a position to avoid being overloaded. I'm just wondering how this works for most people in this world we live in