All of us at one time or another feel overwhelmed; some more than others:
 

• Those who have a stressful job feel it every day when faced with constant decisions to make, bosses to please and deadlines to meet.

 

• Those who live in a large city are faced with fighting your way to get to work on time, fighting to feel safe in your environment and fighting fear of feeling alone while surrounded by so many.

 

• Those who have young children are faced with trying to balance child rearing with a job, or if you have more than one child you can feel overwhelmed trying to keep up with all you have to do each day and trying to keep your sanity.

 
However, as stressful as these circumstances are there are others who have their stressors with them through each moment of the day:
 

• When we battle emotional pain, it is easy for us to feel overwhelmed by every little thing, whether it’s your job, living in a large or small city or raising children everything is set on high on your emotional stove.

 

• And when a big thing comes along, we can feel powerless and feel we have no control of your life. This in turn can lead to fear that we will lose hold of your emotions.

 
Huffingtonpost.com, in their article, “How to let go of Overwhelm,” provides some signs that you’re overwhelmed such as:
 
You feel like you have no inner space, you experience constant pressure, and there’s no fun in your life.
 
Some of the ways we can combat overwhelm are having the courage to stop what you’re doing, let go of some things, and commit to less stress. You can find the rest of the list in the article above.
 
Feeling overwhelmed can leave you spent; all done with life; or simply not wanting to try any more. When you feel like that, take a look at the Bible verse above and you’ll see that the writer of the Psalm felt like death was entangled around him and not just a small flood, but torrents of destruction can cause us to feel overwhelmed. When we feel like that, we can know that God will be with us through it all just as he was in the verse above. So, take a deep breath and ask God to take away the feelings of being overwhelmed. He will send you peace from on high and dash away this feeling of being overwhelmed.

Empathy. Empathy, according to Wikipedia, is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.
 

• Unless you’ve broken a bone, you don’t know what it feels like to experience pain while the bone heals.

 

• Unless you’ve lost someone you love, you don’t know what it feels like to cope with a death in your family or a friend.

 

• Unless you’ve moved around a lot, you don’t know what it feels like to not have a place to call home.

 

• Unless you’ve felt anxiety and depression, you don’t know what it feels like to battle a mental illness.

 
Unless.
 
Because you haven’t been there.
 
Unless you have struggled with what someone else has gone through, you can’t know how it feels.
 
But regardless of whether or not you’ve walked in another person’s shoes, you can perhaps relate it to something that you struggle with.
 
Verywellmind.com in their article, “Importance and Benefits of Empathy,” discusses types of empathy, explanation of how empathy works, emotional explanations, the benefits of empathy, how you can influence people, and why people lack empathy.
 
Empathy means reaching out to someone who has experienced a trial in their life, and even if you haven’t experienced it, you can still water their hearts with your compassion showering a sweet balm upon them.
 
Lastly, take a look at the Bible verse above, it calls for all of us to strengthen and steady those who are in a situation that you might not have been in but you can still stand by their side and help them through the trial.

We’re broken, hurting people. Some of us have lost a loved one and it still may hurt. Another may have suffered an injury, but it hasn’t healed yet. Some of us have broken relationships with no clear way of putting the pieces back together. However, there are things we can do to help bring healing:
 
The first thing is to pray. Whether you’re involved in a tragedy or know of someone who is, praying is your first line of defense. Next, it may be difficult to do but talking about what happened with a friend or perhaps with a therapist. Talking can allow the pain you feel inside to come out of your heart and into a place where you can get help. Third, if it’s a tragedy that was on the news, it may be important to stop watching the news over and over on TV. Yes, we need to keep up with what’s happening around us, but we can also become overly obsessed with it.
 
Take a look at what huffpost.com, in their article, “8 Things to do to Help Heal Your Broken Heart.” Some of their suggestions include: Go for a long run, take a road trip, learn something new, move to a new city and make someone’s day.
 
Also, remember that God was right there when your tragedy happened. He was there wrapping us in his arms of comfort. God can also be your comfort as you go through the process of healing so that you don’t feel like the Bible verse above says forgotten and like you’re dead and like broken pottery. 

​Our world is full of opposites that happen at the same time:
 

• Even what’s sweet can taste bitter when you have too much of it.
• It can be 75 degrees inside during the winter and you feel cold, but it can be 75 degrees in the summer and still feel hot.
• You can feel overweight at 140 pounds, but 140 is a great number if you used to weigh 180 pounds.
• You can live inside your home, but you also live outside of the city.
• So it is with our lives - There can be something bad going on at the same time as something good.
• You can have a headache yet still enjoy your ice cream.
• And, you can feel upbeat while everything around you is pulling you down into the downbeat.

 
Even though our world tries to drag us down into the darkest pit because of all the anger that rages around us, it still boils down to our perspective.
 
Each day we have the choice to allow the world to cause us to live in the downbeat pull of negativity and never measuring up, or we can choose to take the perspective of what is good.
 
So choose and don’t conform any longer to the pattern of this world, as the Bible verse above says. Then God will show you what to do with your day, and it may just surprise you, when you find yourself more and more living on the upbeat. Society would want us to conform to its own perspective instead of seeing life in a more positive perspective. Preusscoachleader.com, in their article, “It’s a Matter of Perspective” talks about how perspective can change your life. We can fall into perspectives that keep us closed to possible opportunities or find opportunities that open a path we hadn’t thought about before.
 
Sometimes all it takes is to change your location. If you’ve lost sight of where you’re going with a project, it may help to take your laptop and move your “office” to a park bench. This may be just the change that it takes to move forward and complete the project you’re working on. But sometimes you can’t move to a new location. Try to put up some beautiful pictures around you. Then you can still gain a new perspective even though you haven’t left your office. Then when you but heads with opposites in our world, you can find focus on the positive approach instead of being sucked into the valley of conformities.