You may have been taught to push through problems: “Try harder.” When you feel overwhelmed, your instinct may be to do the same. But in the case of overwhelm, pushing through is more likely to make things worse than to solve the problem.
When you are overwhelmed, your nervous system is already at or beyond its limit. Pushing through means demanding even more from it. If you plug too many electronics into a single circuit (your nervous system in this metaphor), the circuit breaker flips and everything stops working. It shuts down because the demand is too high.
Pausing helps prevent that kind of shutdown. Shutdown can involve a loss of time or awareness and may delay progress longer than taking a brief pause to recover some capacity.
This page is part of the Why Slowing Down Can Help Trauma Healing Move Forward section of the CommuniDID site, which explains how respecting limits, pacing emotional work, and reducing demand can protect long-term healing capacity.
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