The Biology of Overwhelm: Why Small Demands Feel Impossible
The Biology of Overwhelm: Why Small Demands Feel Impossible
Many people feel constantly exhausted and easily overwhelmed, even when they’re doing everything “right”. They’re eating well, exercising, and trying to manage stress. They can’t understand why small things overwhelm them so much or why they always feel so tired and stressed. One simple email or a broken appliance can completely derail their day, leaving them feeling like they’re barely keeping it together.
In this episode, Dr. Aimie Apigian explains how your body doesn’t react to stress based on what’s happening to you. It actually reacts based on whether you have enough energy left to handle it.
Think of your nervous system like a bank account. Every challenge, decision, or demand, no matter how small, takes energy out of your account. When you’re already running low from everyday stressors, even tiny problems can push you into overwhelm and emotional shutdown.
This isn’t about changing your mindset or trying harder. It’s about understanding what’s actually happening in your nervous system when you get overwhelmed by daily life, so you can start making small changes that add up to feeling stronger and more resilient.
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Guides, Tools & Resources:
- Biology of Trauma book – how the body experiences and holds fear, pain and overwhelm, and how to heal. Pre-order now and, at the time of this recording, you’ll get over $400 in bonuses included! Those bonuses are only for the pre-order window which goes until Sept 22, 2025. When you’ve already pre-ordered it on Amazon head over here to receive your bonuses.
- The Foundational Journey – If you’re ready to create a felt sense of safety in your body and experience the benefits of 26% decrease in daily physical pain, 28% decrease in sleep issues and digestive issues, 30% decrease in anxiety, depression, or want to learn how to do this for those you help – join me.
In this episode, you’ll hear more about:
- [3:52] The simple difference between life’s demands and your energy to handle them
- [5:32] How small events can feel overwhelming
- [9:36] The daily energy “drains” that add up over time and quietly exhaust your system
- [11:51] What’s actually happening in your body during shutdown and overwhelm
- [8:06] Why even good things (like travel or celebrations) can still drain your energy
- [17:11] How to build up your reserves so you’re ready for unexpected challenges
- [19:33] Simple ways to reduce daily energy drains and add small “deposits” back to your system
Why Small Things Break You: Understanding Your Nervous System's Capacity Crisis
Maya wrote to me after her dishwasher broke and her kids were fighting. “I completely fell apart yesterday,” she said. “Why do the small things sometimes feel impossible when I’ve survived much bigger challenges?”
I knew exactly what she meant. In fact, my body used to go into trauma response every single day. And yours might too.
What Really Causes Emotional Overwhelm in Daily Life
Emotional overwhelm happens when the demands on your nervous system exceed your available capacity to handle them. Your nervous system constantly runs an unconscious calculation—comparing every demand against your current energy reserves. When that calculation comes up short, you shut down, melt down, or break down. The size of the demand doesn’t matter; what matters is whether you have enough capacity left in your account to meet it.
Think about your nervous system like a bank account. Every demand requires a withdrawal. Running a marathon takes a withdrawal. Running from danger takes a withdrawal. But so does checking email, navigating traffic, or deciding what to wear.
When I first started studying my own nervous system, I thought trauma was something big and bad that hopefully never happened. Then I realized my body was going into a trauma response every single day. The broken toilet that sent me over the edge made no logical sense—I’d been through much harder things in my life. But it took a withdrawal more than what I had in my bank account that day.
How Your Body Decides When to Shut Down
Your nervous system makes a simple calculation every moment of every day: capacity versus demand. When the demand exceeds your capacity, your body shuts you down. This is the trauma response—not even trying because your nervous system has already decided you can’t overcome it.
The trauma response says it doesn’t matter if I try. I’m not going to be able to overcome. So let me just curl up into the fetal position and wish it would go away.
I watched this happen to myself yesterday. I got an email from a contractor I’ve had for three years. All it said was, “Do you think we could sit down and chat sometime?”
Immediately, my gut twisted. He’s leaving. He’s abandoning me. What am I going to do? My whole life played out in front of me as if he had already left. I had the response as if he had already told me he was leaving.
The Daily Energy Drains You Don’t Notice
Internal stress from worry or self-doubt creates a steady drain of energy that most of us never track. We add another layer through self-imposed expectations—holding ourselves to perfectionism, feeling pressured to please others, or consistently ignoring our body’s needs. These self-imposed demands drain our account until one day we realize we’re running on empty.
Your nervous system can be on high alert from infancy. Think about how much capacity that drains. If your nervous system constantly feels unsafe, it’s always on guard, waiting for the next big unexpected thing.
When I got on the phone with my contractor, he simply told me he was leaving his company to serve me directly as a client. Nothing was wrong. But because I had that moment when I thought it would be bad, it took a withdrawal from my account.
Later, when I tried to sit down and work, I noticed I was more tired than usual. I wondered why—nothing bad had happened today. Well, in my head it did. Something bad did happen because I had the response as if it had already happened.
Why Even Good Things Exhaust You
Even joyful events like celebrations or travel require capacity in your account. Joy takes energy. Excitement takes energy. Learning something new takes energy.
When I opened my first bank account at twelve, I learned to save money for the things I wanted. But when I got my first car, I had to use more of that money for insurance, gas, and maintenance. I remember the anxiety as I would look at the number in my account and calculate if I had enough to pay the bills.
Managing our capacity works the same way. We need enough to cover all the basics—our digestion, immune responses, hormone production. But we also need to cover checking email, having conversations, preparing meals. Some days, we want more than just the basic functions. We want to start a new project, travel to see family, learn a new skill, or hike a mountain. These require a larger payment from our capacity account.
Micro-Moments That Drain Your Capacity Account
Every startle response, every moment of worry, every “what if” thought takes a withdrawal from your capacity account. These micro-moments throughout your day add up, even when nothing actually goes wrong. A phone call that might bring bad news, an unexpected email, a strange noise—each one triggers a withdrawal before you even know whether there’s real danger.
I see this in my own life constantly. The water pipe breaking shouldn’t overwhelm someone who’s been through hard things. But when it happens on a day when my capacity account is already depleted, that small demand becomes the thing that breaks me.
These moments, these demands, are what we actually need to pay attention to. Not because we want to eliminate all stress—that’s impossible. But because when something genuinely challenging happens, I want to have the capacity for it. I want to be ready for it.
Simple Ways to Stop the Energy Drain
The daily decisions you make determine whether you’re constantly draining your capacity or slowly building it back up. I start everyone with my 21-day journey because it allows me to slow down the daily withdrawals from my capacity account.
First, identify what’s unnecessarily draining your energy. Decision fatigue about what to wear every day? Plan your outfits for the week. Meal planning taking too much mental energy? Simplify to a few go-to meals.
The key is to look for small things. Neuroscience 101 tells us we won’t be successful changing something big. Start with what you can do right now. If your whole house feels messy, don’t try to clean everything. Find one bookshelf. Then another bookshelf. Then the whole room. Build momentum.
Making Small Deposits Back Into Your Account
Slowing down the drain is only half the equation. You also need to make deposits back into your capacity account. Not big deposits—small ones that add up over time.
A micro-moment of joy watching a hummingbird out your window—that’s a deposit. But you can only notice it if you’re not feeling like you’re fighting for survival. Creating a felt sense of support through somatic practices—that’s a deposit. Taking three deep breaths before checking email—that’s a deposit.
I went from always feeling unsafe to only sometimes feeling unsafe. Now I had more capacity in my account because it was only sometimes that I was feeling unsafe, not every single moment my body felt like it was fighting for its life.
Building Your Capacity Reserves for Life’s Challenges
The important thing is maintaining reserves in your account for when the unexpected comes. Like financial management, we know not to use up all our money for small things. We save for big purchases we want and keep an emergency fund for unexpected expenses.
Your nervous system needs the same approach. Save your capacity for when you really need it. Eliminate unnecessary drains to the fullest extent you can. Then when the unexpected happens, you’ll ride the wave instead of drowning.
This is why I get so worked up about this topic. When life happens—because it will—I want you to have the capacity for it. The daily somatic practices you choose bring your body back to safety as soon as possible, so you don’t stay in that alert, guarded state that drains your capacity.
How to Calculate Your Current Capacity
Right now, take inventory of your capacity account. What’s the balance? Are you running on empty, or do you have reserves?
Look at your daily life through this lens: What are the demands versus your capacity? Every responsibility, decision, and moment of presence is a demand. Being present on a Zoom call requires more capacity than reading a book. Having a difficult conversation requires more than sending an email.
Demands aren’t bad—they’re just demands. The problem comes when there’s a gap between your capacity and the demand. When that gap exists, your body goes into a trauma response.
The Science Behind Nervous System Overwhelm
Your nervous system’s calculation of capacity versus demand happens at an unconscious level, milliseconds before your conscious mind even registers what’s happening. This is your neuroception—your body’s automatic threat detection system.
When your nervous system detects that a demand exceeds your available capacity, it doesn’t wait to see if you might figure it out. It immediately shifts you into a protective response. This could be fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown.
The trauma response is essentially your nervous system saying, “We don’t have enough resources to handle this.” It’s not about weakness or failure. It’s about energy economics in your body.
Practical Steps to Increase Your Daily Capacity
Start tracking your energy throughout the day. Notice when you feel depleted versus energized. What activities, people, or situations consistently drain you? Which ones give you energy?
Create boundaries around the things that drain you unnecessarily. This might mean limiting certain conversations, changing your environment, or restructuring parts of your day.
Add in practices that specifically build capacity. These include breathwork, gentle movement, time in nature, quality sleep, and nourishing food. Each of these makes deposits into your account.
Why This Matters for Your Healing Journey
Understanding capacity changes everything about how we approach healing. We stop pushing ourselves to handle more than we have energy for. We stop feeling guilty about being overwhelmed by “small” things. We start making strategic choices about where to spend our limited capacity.
Most importantly, we recognize that building capacity is a daily practice, not a one-time achievement. Every day, we have choices about what withdrawals we’ll allow and what deposits we’ll make.
The goal isn’t to have unlimited capacity—that’s impossible.
The goal is to have enough capacity to meet the demands of your life while maintaining reserves for the unexpected.
Your Next Steps for Building Resilience
To answer Maya’s original question: You fell apart over the dishwasher and fighting kids because your capacity account was already depleted from daily withdrawals you probably didn’t even notice. The solution isn’t to be stronger or try harder. The solution is to slow down the daily drain and make consistent deposits back into your account.
Start today with one small thing. Choose one unnecessary energy drain to eliminate or one small deposit to add. Don’t try to change everything at once.
Remember, it’s the daily decisions that determine whether you’re ready for life’s challenges or constantly overwhelmed by them. Your capacity is not fixed—you can build it, one small choice at a time.
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