When overwhelm isn’t the pressure… it’s the pace and the path your mind keeps wandering down.

Most people describe overwhelm as having “too much to do,” but in sessions with clients across Cheltenham and Gloucestershire, a different pattern appears again and again. 

It’s rarely the amount that overwhelms people. It’s the pace they’re trying to keep up with and the way their attention keeps drifting to anything except the thing they intended to do. 

You sit down to start something important and suddenly you’re checking something unrelated, reorganising a drawer, answering a message, opening three new tabs or doing anything except the task in front of you. 

On the surface, it looks like procrastination, but underneath, something else is happening. 

Your mind isn’t being difficult. It’s trying to protect you.

Procrastination isn’t a lack of motivation. It’s often fear wearing a clever disguise — fear of getting it wrong, fear of disappointing someone, fear of it not being good enough, fear of what happens next once it’s finished or simply the fear of the emotional discomfort inside the task. 

When that fear appears quietly in the background, your mind steers you towards something safer or easier without you even realising it. 

This is why overwhelm builds so quickly. Pace, pressure, emotional blockers and scattered attention create a perfect storm. 

Your mind is trying to avoid discomfort while still keeping everything moving, and because this process is silent, people blame themselves instead of recognising the pattern.

One of the biggest contributors is what I call “butterfly brain” — the way attention flits from task to task, never settling long enough to get anything done. 

This isn’t a personality flaw. It’s what happens when the pace becomes too fast, the emotional load is too heavy or the fear underneath the task hasn’t been acknowledged. 

The mind moves away from discomfort and towards anything that feels lighter or more familiar. 

This is where the speed bumps insight from an earlier Lesley Logic becomes important. On the road, we naturally slow down for speed bumps. Some need only a tiny pause, others require more, and some require almost stopping so we don’t damage the car. Your mind works the same way. 

Different emotional loads require different speeds. The mistake most people make is treating every task as if it’s flat road. They push. They rush. They expect themselves to move at the same pace regardless of what the task brings up internally, and that’s where overwhelm begins.

The solution is not to move faster. It’s to move at a pace your mind can actually support. And there is one simple sentence that can interrupt overwhelm immediately: “This isn’t the task I intended to do.”

That tiny moment of awareness breaks the spell. It interrupts the distraction loop, slows the pace, resets attention, reduces emotional tension and brings you back to the task that matters. It’s small but powerful, because overwhelm is rarely about the task itself. It’s about the internal chaos around it.

In consultations at Phoenix Hypnotherapy here in Cheltenham, people often describe the same experience: “It’s not that I can’t do it. It’s that my mind runs off in ten directions before I’ve even started.” Life in Cheltenham and Gloucestershire is full, and when you add work, family, expectations, traffic, appointments and internal pressure, it’s understandable that the mind tries to cope by scattering attention. 

This isn’t a personal failing. It’s a natural response to carrying too many competing demands at a pace your nervous system can’t comfortably maintain.

The good news is this: when you slow the pace, the pressure reduces on its own. When you steady your attention, clarity returns. 

When you notice the emotional blocker underneath that procrastination, it immediately loses some of its power. 

Most people don’t need more motivation. They need breathing room, steadier pacing and a mind that doesn’t feel pulled sideways. 

If you’ve been feeling scattered, stuck or behind recently, it might not be the workload. It might simply be that your pace has outrun your capacity and your attention is trying to protect you from something uncomfortable. 

The way forward isn’t to speed up. It’s to notice the speed bumps, steady your internal “torchlight” and take the next step at a pace your mind can actually sustain. 

That’s where overwhelm loosens and forward movement becomes possible again.

If procrastination is something you recognise, I explore its protective role in more depth in another article here. 

The wandering attention and internal blockers discussed here also link closely to how the unconscious mind drives everyday behaviour, which I talk about more here 

If subtle, quieter changes resonate with you, I explore why small shifts matter just as much as big breakthroughs here.