Ever find yourself frantically scrolling through your to-do list thinking, what next?

When you're overwhelmed, your brain basically blows a fuse.

So today, let's talk about eight simple tips to help you reset your mental circuit breaker.

Welcome back to savvy psychologist.

I'm your host, Dr. Jade Wu.

Every week I'll help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a

sympathetic ear, and zero judgment. Many of my clients at some point,

particularly the high achieving,

nothing can't be mastered with hard work ones.

Experience a tipping point at work.

They freeze up as if their brain has blown a fuse.

They find themselves mindlessly clicking a retractable pen for minutes at a time

or frantically scrolling through documents without even seeing them.

Sometimes they feel paralyzed by indecision, even as the urge to do a thousand tasks

swirls in their mind. Their brain's power grid is overloaded, so the result is like a summer in the city when everyone's running an air conditioner. The lights flicker and then go out. Sound familiar? Well, when you're overwhelmed you can't

function. It may seem silly, why would you let a to-do-list hijack your brain?

But it's simple. Your brain doesn't just see a to-do list.

It sees the threat of scarcity. Not enough time, not enough energy, not enough

magical ability to fit everything into 24 hours.

Or it sees the threat of failing, the threat of disappointing others, the threat of feeling incapable. And guess what? Our bodies

react to threats the same way every time. Fight, flight, or freeze. That's true whether the threat is a bus hurtling toward us or a to-do list that makes us feel like we can't breathe

Usually we land somewhere between freeze and flight, which shows up as procrastination.

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