In this episode, Nick discusses overwhelm and how it relates to trauma. By understanding that overwhelm can occur when multiple things happen all at once, and our nervous system perceives it as a threat. Self-awareness in recognizing and managing overwhelm is highly important, and taking a step back, breathing, and reflecting on the situation to prioritize tasks can help you move forward with clarity.

“Overwhelm can feel like you just shut down. What happens in that moment is cognitive fatigue—too much mental action happening.”

“We have the power to stop and slow down. It takes awareness.”

“Cognitive fatigue occurs when the brain is trying to maintain a high level of activity without rest.”

About Nick McGowan

I’m Nick McGowan, entrepreneur, podcaster, and mental health advocate, and I’ve been on a 20+ year journey of personal development, learning to master my mindset, emotions, and the art of living with purpose.

As a Mindset and Self-Mastery Mentor, I work with ambitious men and women who want to live their most authentic and joyous life, by helping them master their mindset, emotional awareness, and authentic communication. My mission is to empower people to lead lives that feel aligned, grounded, and truly their own.

Throughout my career, I’ve built teams, streamlined systems, and improved client experiences across SaaS, media, marketing, and personal development spaces. Whether I’m leading cross-functional projects, optimizing SEO, Podcasting, designing strategies, or guiding clients through transformation, I bring a hands-on, solution-focused approach to everything I do.

I’m also the host of The Mindset and Self-Mastery Show, where my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us, challenge us, and ultimately guide us back to who we are at our core. On this show, we uncover the secret gems others have discovered through trial, error, and breakthroughs so you can fast-track your growth, and master your mindset on your pursuit toward self-mastery. 

With years of podcasting and two decades of marketing experience, I’ve mastered the storytelling, interview flow, strategy, and technical production that elevate a podcast from “just content” to something truly impactful. Whether you’re a leader looking to amplify your message, or a seasoned speaker and podcast host looking to sharpen your edge or even a beginner who is wondering how to share their message, I mentor thought leaders through every step of having the conversation they’re here to have on this planet.

So, what message are you here to share?!

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Interested in starting your own podcast or need help with one you already have? Send Nick an email or schedule a time to discuss your podcast today!

[email protected]

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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”

Nick McGowan (00:04.038)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan, and today on the show, I wanna talk about something that I am sure we all go through at some point, most every week, maybe not every single day, but there’s some point that you go through this. And what I’m talking about is overwhelm, moments where you just feel like everything is happening really too fast, even too soon, and all at once.

And if you think about it, that actually really ties directly into a trauma. And not to say that we go through traumatic experiences every single day or every single week, but there are things that are similar to that. And to our nervous system, it doesn’t really notice the difference. It feels that fight, flight, freeze, and can feel the trauma or the trauma response that comes in from that. And it can be as simple as,

just a handful of things happening all at once. For those of you that have kids, if you have multiple kids that are in school, getting out of the house in the morning can be traumatic at times. I remember what it was like growing up and the three of us trying to get out of the house and doing different things, going different places and all that. And I could only imagine how my parents at some point at the end of that morning must’ve been like, my God, some of those days. But getting into an office.

having conversations with clients or colleagues, working from home. Really anything that happens throughout the day can happen too quickly and sometimes take over what we’re doing and avert us from the task at hand. For some people, that can be really difficult to be able to be pulled away from those things and then have to try to get back into it. I remember a lot of people in the beginning of the whole COVID thing.

figuring out how do I work from home? How do I live and work in the same space for the people that weren’t used to that? They weren’t remote workers or entrepreneurs that worked from a home office or something like that. And it was really difficult. I remember talking to somebody who said, I feel like I’m just going to do the laundry nine times per day. And I’m sure maybe they did for a little while and then they got used to it. But getting used to something is vastly different than accepting something. Like if we live through traumatic experiences every single day.

Nick McGowan (02:28.347)
It can be really difficult to be able to grasp what’s good what’s okay What needs to be changed etc and without going deeper into that like for those of you that really deal with the traumatic experiences every single day either in the profession that you’re in like health care or People you work and live with that’s a little bit of a different topic that we’re not really gonna dive too too much into I want to talk about you and what happens when you start to feel that overwhelmed

And it can be really easy for me to talk about from my perspective. So I’m going to be able to talk really of both of our perspectives in a sense. Now, I don’t know you as you listen to this, where you’re at today in this moment, or even how often this happens. Being able to sit with you in this to say, when something happens and we feel overwhelmed, what do we do? And that’s part of the beauty of this conversation that we have on the podcast, either me along with you.

or me with a guest on the show being able to talk about these things. I think we can really get into the deep and dirty per se of what are you doing those moments? How do we actually do this? Like now that we’re in a calm space, what do we do so that we can be better prepared as those situations happen? But let’s think about overwhelm. You get an email, somebody says something, somebody else has a client needs this thing and

There are things that need to happen tonight and the car needs to be taken in and just all these things can happen all at once and it can feel like you just shut down. What happens in that moment, I think is really a cognitive fatigue where just too much mental action that’s happening. Again, if we look at what trauma is and the definition, it’s anything that is too much, too soon, too fast to our nervous system to really handle it and especially to

reach a successful resolution within it. So that can be the same thing as getting a handful of emails that come in, urgent requests from clients, something from one of your family members or a colleague, Amazon at the door, like all these different things can feel like it happens all at once, too much, too soon, too fast. And not allowing you to actually come up with a resolution. Now there are certain times, and you might say this, because I’ve said this to myself before, look, I’m on my game at different times.

Nick McGowan (04:52.046)
I can know I don’t have to get the Amazon door because they’re just going to leave it there. I can know that I can get back to this one client because they always ask for all these other things. I can know that there’s a problem with this thing. It’s going to take me two minutes. You can think through those things to expect yourself to always be able to almost like bam, bam, bam, hit those things and deal with the traumas as they come can be a good thing. But you need to be able to make sure that

you’re able to work through each of those and that you can separate the time and space within them. What I mean is actually understanding that your nervous system is telling you, this is all feeling like it’s too much and that is real. You cannot deny that. It is the feeling that your nervous system is telling you that. Even if you know there are times where I can hit these different things, I can answer the questions, I can do all this stuff. And other times where maybe I do it but it’s a little slower.

If your nervous system is telling you that, take that as a sign that there’s something to do with it. It’s just like our emotions. Our emotions aren’t the living breathing thing we are, but the emotions are telling us in their signs, warnings, letting us know there’s something there to be concerned with or to check on. Same deal with your nervous system. So when you feel overwhelmed, and I don’t care if you’re just a worker in an office, if you’re a worker outside, if you’re somebody who deals with combat zones,

Being able to slow yourself down, take a beat, breathe for a second and work through those things, even when it feels like everything’s coming at you, can still feel like a lot, even if you’re really good at being able to do it. Sometimes you can be really good at being able to do it because you dealt with so much trauma for so long. And it’s like a superpower that’s come out of all of it. But again, there are different times where you can just feel too overwhelmed.

And now if we look at that time of overwhelm and figuring out what do we do, it’s looking at it from the lens of cognitive fatigue, which is just a type of mental exhaustion. It occurs when the brain is trying to maintain that high level of activity, but it doesn’t have a moment to be able to rest. Again, you’ve maybe seen and experienced times where you’re like, I can hit this, I can hit that, I can answer this, I can do this, I can do all these things. Then you may miss one. And that might throw you off.

Nick McGowan (07:14.64)
You might just go, damn, and you keep going. But that’s not always the thing that will be able to happen. And even if it’s something that happens more often than not, you can still be mentally and cognitively fatigued. So understanding that you’re overwhelmed and your trauma kind of ties together and that it’s really a fatigue, well, we need to take a rest. But it can be difficult in that moment. I think of like back in the day with Saved by the Bell.

and Zach Morris would just call time out in the middle of the show, everybody would stop. I remember being a little kid thinking, shit, that would be awesome. I’d love to just go, hold up, time out. Give me a minute, let me process. Let me take the time to be able to do this. It’s not really how that works in this world. However, there are still times and spaces where we can slow things down a little bit, or we can even reflect upon them later, or like how we are doing this right now with this podcast episode.

being able to work on this stuff now so that when it does come up, we go, okay, I’m a little bit more equipped with this. Maybe you listened to this episode recently or it’s just something that has been on your mind for a while. So looking at slowing down and the essential piece to that is being self -aware. As overwhelmed as happening, you can feel it. We can all feel it. Some of us, can see it on their faces. I think I’m one of those people where I could.

You could just say it. I’m like, man, fucking stop. Sometimes, not every single time, but you know, they, the feeling comes out of like, I just wanted all the stop. We have that power to be able to stop and to go, okay, I need to slow down right now. So it takes us being aware. So first step of this is awareness, just like everything else. If you’re not aware, then how the fuck are you going to know that there’s anything to work on or anything to do with it?

Once you’re self aware of it and you understand I’m being overwhelmed right now. I feel like everything’s happening too much, too fast, too soon. Like there’s just a lot. Take a beat. There’s different episodes where we’ve talked about this. We’re just being able to take a step back, take a beat, take a breath.

Nick McGowan (09:30.968)
and then moving along. That doesn’t mean taking that breath to only just jump right back into the shit storm, taking your breath to step outside of it. Go, okay, I’m gonna slow down a little bit. Once you’re able to rest, you can then reflect on what’s happening. I think about it in the sense of like literally moving your body. If you go.

and you step away as you breathe, you can literally reflect upon what’s happening right now. Do I need to get back to that email right this second? Do I need to do anything with the door, Amazon? I need to do anything about any of these other things. yes, there’s this thing I need to do. And your intuition will pop that up. You’ll be able to see a bit more clearly what’s actually the priority here. Is any of it a priority? It’s a lot of it, or most of it, just noise.

And yes, it may be things that you do need to do something with, but I think from the perspective of the getting things done formula of being able to see the four different boxes, if you look up GTD or getting things done, that first box that he talks about in the four quadrants, the first one is something that has to happen right now and it can be done and taken care of within two minutes.

anything outside of that will fall into one of the other boxes that really becomes more of a project. And sometimes one of the best things to do in those situations of feeling overwhelmed after you become aware of it, you step to the side of it and you start to reflect upon it, you can then just make a quick little list. I think of a mind dump at different times and I’ve got a notepad right on my phone, right on my laptop here that I just mind dump little things. And then there are other systems and softwares I use to be able to track

projects, client work, personal tasks, things of that sort. Sometimes just getting the crap out of your head and just putting it onto a piece of paper or digital paper just to be able to say, this is it. These are the things that are currently taking up space. Sometimes you’ll see that those things are pretty high priority and then you can actually figure out what needs to happen first and what should happen next. Some of them you might see, lot of this is just.

Nick McGowan (11:48.464)
crap and I don’t need to do anything with them right now. Then you can just push it off to the side, but at least you’ll have it in front of you. So being able to slow down and reflect upon it and then just maybe make a little mind dump or a little journal entry or even just a note for later of like, Ooh, this is the big thing. This is the thing I should do at a later time. And being able to make sure that you’re aligning your actions along with the priorities and really what your

long -term goals are here. If some of the things that are taking up a lot of the space in your mind and that are making you feel overwhelmed are things that are way in the future or something that really just needs to be set aside and deeply thought through and considered, then allow that to be the case. Move those to the side, set time apart, schedule some time on your calendar, tomorrow afternoon or sometime over the weekend to be able to have a concentrated amount of time you actually work through that.

Can’t we agree that right now it’s not doing you any good? And if you’re feeling overwhelmed because of that Take that quick second to be able to be aware of it. I step away and breathe Reflect on it and then just set aside some time specifically to work through that thing I’ve done that in the past before where I’ve kind of done that whole process and I’ve stepped and I’ve moved away and This is this bigger thing. That’s more than 10 minutes or 20 minutes even or even just

a few minutes to do something here, I need to set two hours aside. I’ve done it where I’ve set that time aside and it really only took me maybe 30 minutes to work through it. There are other times where those projects then open up other doors and other doors and it turns into much bigger things. Having a concentrated time to work through that will allow you to actually explore it in the right way. Instead of really half -assing it in the moment when you’re just feeling overwhelmed,

And that cognitive fatigue is really just looking for a resolution where all it wants is just to be resolved and just let me check a couple things off, like give me a win here sort of thing. So being able to set those things apart, those larger things can really help and allow you the time to be able to actually dive deeper into those. Some things that can help also is making sure that you’re really, you’re set up for the day properly. For me, I like to meditate in the morning.

Nick McGowan (14:14.022)
and sometimes I’ll meditate at night, even if it’s a quick one, but my meditations will fluctuate at different times. They can be guided meditations, they can just be silent meditations. I like to use an app, the Insight Timer app, where I can have music or I can follow a guided or I can just go along on my own and just use it as a timer, but I’ll make sure that I do at least three to five minutes in the morning, if not longer. A 10 minute, a 20 minute, great.

I’m sure you hear different people that are like, so -and -so meditates for six hours a day. That’s cool. That might not be your jam. If it is, have at it. But being able to be mindful and having a practice that can set you up for success in the morning is really helpful throughout the rest of the day. I think really no matter who you are or what you’re doing, because if we get up and we instantly just start reacting to things, then you’re just.

in that flow of just reacting instead of in the flow of creating and building and seeing what feels right for you to do next. But if you start off in the morning, being able to just spend a few minutes and some time with yourself to be able to wake up into the day and feel into your body and feel if there’s anything that’s potentially going to

hold you back throughout the rest of the day or instantly start to overwhelm you. That’s why I bring meditation or really mindfulness practices into this is you can see and feel that there might be something that is already nagging at me. Like there are different days I’m sure where you wake up and just not feeling it. Other days you wake up and have no idea why you feel so great. Other days I’m sure you wake up and you know why you feel like crap or you know why you feel great. Being able to actually

have just a few minutes at least to align with that and then see it and then do something from there. You might then go into a spot where you could almost feel overwhelmed, but no, it’s really in the back of my mind, this thing that I had some weird dream last night or I just feel a little off. You can work on that so that it doesn’t affect the rest of the day or at least deeply affect the rest of the day. And then break down some of the things you wanna do throughout the day. For me, I have…

Nick McGowan (16:35.62)
my software and different services that we look at to really be mindful of personal projects, business projects, client projects, just all the things. And there are different softwares that help with that. I’m sure you’ve used different ones, Asana, Monday, Notion, whatever CRM you use, all that different stuff. But there’s also a notepad, like I mentioned earlier, that I use where there are important things that were top of mind for me last night.

or top of mind this morning when I did a little bit of a mind dump of like, these are the major things that I want to hit today. And then I’ll look and see within the pieces of software, what needs to be done and what I want to move off or what I can do a little later, or maybe what’s really faster to do. And only takes me two minutes to knock out. If you work out in the field or you are in some other position where you’re not constantly in front of a computer or something, this can look different, but

it can still look similar, either on your phone or in a notepad of like, are the things I really want to make sure I get done today or some goals. You can then break them down. I’m not the type that’s going to say you need to have goals for every single thing that you do. Everything needs to be lined down to the minute unless your energetics and your type of person really works well that way. If it doesn’t, I’m just saying as a quick, easy way for all of us is

Just grab those things that are really top of mind that feel like they’re high priority to then make a list of those, go, great, I’ve got them right here. Then I get to do something with them. You can create small actionable steps and find out that some of those really may not need to be done just in that one day, but really might need to take a week or two weeks or what have you. And you can start to chunk out small pieces from there.

For some people, it might be great for you to feel like you’re having progress as you work through that. Others, it might just be simple clarity to go, great, I can knock out these small pieces throughout this day or the next few days and everything will be okay. Again, those daily rituals like meditation, reading or praying and all of that, whatever feels right and fits right for you, being able to come back to yourself.

Nick McGowan (18:55.054)
and understand as a body scan, what’s going on? Is there something happening or something I need to be mindful of? And then getting some of the things out of your head can help you then walk into the rest of the day. And really, no matter what’s thrown at you or however many things are thrown at you, you have a better chance of being able to manage that stronger and with more clarity than you would have if you still had all this stuff that’s going on in the back of your mind. It does also help you build resilience.

resilience too. There’s a lot that can happen with a lot happening, like a workout where you can have this crazy heavy workout and you can break your back. But if you do it right, you can have this crazy heavy workout that’s really strenuous and you can build some incredible muscle and you can tighten your body up and you can do a lot of great things for the systems within your body. But it takes strategy to be able to do that. And it takes

being able to slow down and understand how do you go about this? Like one thing that you won’t often see is people just crazy rushing through things and hitting everything accordingly. Having a little bit of a plan and some strategy in place can be helpful. If your energetics and the way that you work is in that way, that’s totally fine. I’m sure we can both agree that even just slowing down a bit and being able to say, I’m gonna move strategically through this.

You don’t always have to move through and just break things. You can move through and be mindful of what you’re doing. But the resilience that can come out of all of this can be, I think, double, if not triple or more, if you go into a situation of overwhelm, being better equipped. Let me take a step back. If you prep yourself in the beginning of the day, before you get into anything else that you do,

you’re in better shape mentally, maybe physically, but overall cognitively to be able to handle the potential overwhelm that comes your way. And in that way, you can then have a better workout and you can become more resilient because you were in a better situation to be able to handle that. Makes sense, right? And if you’re not, and if there’s things that are tugging on you or like a computer programs that are just…

Nick McGowan (21:17.102)
working in the background that just eating up your CPU, then you’re not going to get as much out of that. You’re not going to build as much resilience. You might build more resentment or different things like that because you feel really overwhelmed when you’re in this situation, maybe with this person or something. You see where I’m headed with that. But being able to explore how you handle things and how you can be more resilient and stronger from those things when you’re in a better situation going into them.

and you’re more rooted when you go into them, work through that and explore it, enjoy it, test it even. If you feel overwhelmed and you didn’t do anything to kind of prep yourself for the day, be mindful of that time when again, the next day or two days later, you did prep yourself in the morning and you did feel overwhelmed, but you were able to handle that a little differently. And I kind of look at it like it’s a science experiment in a sense.

We’re all just constantly evolving and growing. And this is a way for you to be able to see how do you operate under these different circumstances and situations and where do you best work? So all of this is about being able to be self -aware, looking at the overwhelm and being able to actually take a step back, take a beat, breathe for a second, slow down, reflect upon what’s going on and then start to move on that.

But look, I’m not an idiot. I know that that’s not easy to do and it’s not really ever easy to do like that. When things are happening and everything’s happening all at once and you feel like everything’s overwhelming and your brain just wants to shut down, these can be nice words to say, slow down, step back, take a breath, but in all reality, sometimes it’s just reminding yourself of this. Slow down.

Step back, take a breath. And the perspective of that. So next time you feel overwhelmed, I do want you to do that. I want you to be mindful of that. And I’m saying this to myself even. It’s something I say to myself pretty often. As I feel something coming up and you become aware of it, and you’re aware and you can do something about it. So next time you’re aware that you’re feeling overwhelmed, be aware of that. And be aware of you being aware of that.

Nick McGowan (23:45.786)
to then say, let me take a step back and breathe. Let me reflect on what’s going on right now and then moving accordingly. Again, I know this can be easier said than done, but this is why we do the work in the times when it’s not crazy. So that when we’re in those times of craziness, chaos and just challenging chapters, we get to then do something differently than we would have before because of the things that we’ve learned. Now you may have traumas.

You may have past experiences and situations that have happened that really hold you back from doing some of that, just stepping back and being aware of it and all. And if you have situations and things that constantly hold you back or you feel like they are blocking you, I encourage you to look into subconscious processing and being able to really get all of that trauma out of yourselves, get it cleaned up, cleaned out, and reorient to the new way that you are. And if there ways that

We can help you with that. have mentoring. We have processes we can walk you through. We have AccuSesh sessions and just different ways that we can help. Please, I encourage you to reach out to us. And if it’s not to us, reach out to a therapist or somebody who can help you work through these things in a modality that works for you. But I hope this is helpful. And if you have any questions, we’d love to hear from you.