Push notifications almost took me out.
What a marketplace listing reminded me about my nervous system.
Moments after I hit ‘publish’ on the online marketplace listing, the notifications started. Dozens of them.
Backstory, quickly: This summer we decided to sell our house in Seattle after a year of operating it as a furnished rental, and what I posted online was the announcement of our estate sale last weekend.
Is this still available? Would you take X dollars for this? Can I pick this up Monday? Tuesday?
I’d answer one person’s message, and two or three more would pop up.
Is this still available?
It felt like I was playing Whack-a-Mole, anticipating the next message so I could whack it back.
It was novel at first. It was exciting to think about selling it all.
But the notifications kept coming.
I noticed my jaw was tight. My chest had that familiar fluttery, revved-up feeling. And underneath it all was this urgency, this conviction that I owed every single person an answer RIGHT NOW.
I was convinced that I could and should manage these messages in an orderly fashion. Get back to everyone promptly. Remember who reached out first and about what.
An internal voice was keeping score. Don’t be rude! Don’t leave them hanging! Which, I’ll point out, was not helping.
The messages kept filling my inbox. I felt like I was drowning. I was at the mercy of everyone’s questions and requests.
I didn’t like it.
So I closed my laptop and silenced the notifications on my phone. This bought me about four minutes of quiet and short-lived relief. The messages were still coming. I just couldn’t see them.
Still, I’m pretty proud of myself for stepping away that fast. In the past, I would have stayed buried under incoming requests, trying and failing to stay on top of them.
What helped was something that I remind my clients of almost every week.
“We can’t control our circumstances, but we CAN choose how we respond to them.”
Basically, we don’t have control, but we DO have the power or ability to act and make choices that shape our lives and experiences.
Why your body labels push notifications a threat
Let’s back up for a moment and talk about what actually happens in our nervous system when we get overwhelmed.
Some of the oldest and most replicated findings in stress research are about controllability. Researchers have found that when subjects have, or believe they have, control over a stressful situation, they feel less threatened, less anxiety, and less pain than their counterparts who don’t perceive they have control. Even when the stressor is identical.
Emotional resilience and adaptability strengthen with perceived controllability. Wild, right?! (nerd alert)
So, with this in mind, picture my situation. I couldn’t control how many people messaged me. And initially, I didn’t believe I had any agency. So with every unanswered message, a feeling of helplessness grew and my body reacted. Tension, shallow breathing. My body was doing exactly what bodies do when they perceive a lack of control.
This wasn’t a malfunction. It was a default reaction to the circumstances.
‘Learned Helplessness’ isn’t actually learned
Psychologists and researchers Steven Maier and Martin Seligman spent decades understanding the idea of “learned helplessness.” But in 2016, they published a revision of their theory based on new findings.
Their revised conclusion: helplessness isn’t learned. It’s the default. We are hard-wired to shut down under prolonged, uncontrollable stress.
What we learn is controllability. A region in the prefrontal cortex detects a path forward, as if saying, “wait, I have a say here.” And when it fires, it puts the brakes on the physical stress cycle turning toward overwhelm.
This is so, so important to remember the next time you’re feeling down on yourself and stuck in a spiral.
The flatness, the pity, the collapse, the ‘why even bother’ isn’t a flaw in your character. You are not weak, too much, or overly dramatic. And you’re definitely NOT the only one feeling this way.
It’s biology, baby!
Which means the goal is not to stop reacting. The goal is to notice the reaction and explore what choices we have.
More than just ‘think positive’
Let’s be clear. This isn’t me, or the research, saying to ‘just think positive thoughts’ and everything will be rosy. Or to just ‘keep calm and carry on’ [which I wrote a bit about the other week].
It’s less about flipping the negative to a positive and more about noticing the narrative and poking holes in it. The holes let the light in. They remind us there are other places to look. They show us that there could be other options.
Speaking of noticing… Solid research shows that naming our current experience or physical state… saying “my jaw is tight, I feel urgency,” quiets activity in the brain’s threat circuitry. Labeling helps us recognize our experience as something that’s happening, rather than something we are.
The path forward
When I untangled the external circumstances from my felt experience, I saw options.
I could intentionally keep my notifications off.
I could rewrite the listing with more clarity so half the questions wouldn’t need to be asked.
I could decide to answer in batches instead of the second my phone buzzed.
None of that was control. People could keep messaging me all day. But it was agency. I flipped my experience when I disrupted the default helplessness and saw where I had choice.
When I got a little elevation, enough distance to hear that scorekeeping voice as a part of me rather than actually judgment, my body settled. The flutter softened. I released my jaw and shoulders. I let myself fully exhale.
Nothing had changed, yet everything had.
A 2-minute practice for when you’re overwhelmed
Name the impact. Take inventory of what you notice within: “My jaw is tight. My chest is fluttery. I feel urgency.” No judgment. Just inventory.
Catch the sentence. Listen for the all-or-nothing, helpless thoughts: “I’ll never get on top of this” or “Why won’t it stop?!”
Look for alternatives. What can I adjust to change the experience? Ex. silence the notifications. Schedule time to engage. Clarify your message.
Choose your terms. Ex. “I will make space to address these at 5 pm.” Notice what shifts in your body.
Also, I want to offer a BIG caveat here. We don’t always have a lever of control. Some circumstances genuinely suck, and sometimes what’s happening is truly unjust and not yours to fix. In those moments, you deserve tenderness. You deserve to be seen and supported.
Reframing your experience doesn’t right an injustice.
But more often than we think, there are small ways that we have a lever, not over the circumstances, but over how we engage with what’s in front of us.
If you read this far, I would love to hear where you flipped the script and found a lever of control this week during a stressful situation!
xo, Beth
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