The Truth About a Frustrating Teacher

Is there any value in a feeling that occasionally makes you want to run away to a mountaintop and silently live off of berries?

You know when you’re already stressed about introducing yourself to a new group of people, so you don’t listen to anyone’s name? And then the organizer asks you to name your Rose, Bud, and Thorn of the week. Now you can’t even remember your own name because you need to think of something mildly memorable but also not overly trite, or else everyone rolls their eyes. No worries, though. While you think of yours, I’ll start.

Rose, Bud, Thorn of the Month:

Rose: Temptation Island
Bud: The writing this show is bound to inspire
Thorn: Not knowing when Season 2 will come out

Most months, I let a topic quietly root itself in my mind. I wait, turning it over from different angles, letting it settle before I write. But some months are overtaken by a single, dominant feeling. You know those mood-tracking apps? If I had logged mine this month, it would have looked fairly homogenous: overwhelmed.

Now, you may be part of the one percent who has never felt overwhelmed. And to that, I say, “Thank you for your time.” You may now leave the island. For the rest of us, I want to talk.

I like to think we all carry a toolkit and some kind of armor to help us move through life. Most of the time, they do the job. Maybe some weeks your tools get a little blunt or your armor a little heavy, but overall, you manage.

Then there are months when things unravel. You’re rushing between commitments, and then you trip, and everything spills. Suddenly, the armor that once protected you starts to weigh you down. You can’t move forward until you strip it off.

This is when Temptation Island comes into frame.

If you haven’t watched it, I recommend you do. I don’t usually gravitate toward reality TV, but this show surprised me. Quick summary: four couples come to the island to test their loyalty by separating and living among singles, with the option to explore new connections or strengthen their current ones.

What caught me wasn’t the drama but the emotional intelligence that emerged. Temptation Island may be packaged as entertainment, but it ends up exploring real questions around trust, self-worth, guilt, and shame. These are the very things we dance around in our own lives. Most importantly, before any breakthroughs happen, every single cast member hits a wall of overwhelm.

Mark Walberg (not the actor, but now my favorite middle-aged host turned shrink) offers a line when members reach their breaking point that stuck with me:

“Uncomfortable means something is happening. Comfortable means nothing is happening.”

After I spent plenty of time taking anxiety naps and my bed started to feel more like a prison than a safe haven, I turned to a Spotify meditation. Except I was so agitated by the grating voice telling me to release my worries that I shut it off, convinced I was a lost cause. Frustrated, I went for a walk to find a pick-me-up.

I tried to actually stay with the feeling of overwhelm instead of escaping it. What could it teach me, if I listened?

In my reflection, I realized that overwhelm doesn’t start as a flood. It builds. A string of manageable days is followed by a few where stress quietly starts to seep in. You’re still functioning, still saying “it’s fine,” but beneath the surface, something is percolating. Then one day, you’re asked to push a little more. You rise to meet it, but it takes your last bit of calm. And later, walking home, something breaks. The emotions you’ve been holding back all fight to get through the door at once, and you’re working twice as hard to hold it shut.

Maybe that sounds dramatic, or maybe it sounds familiar. I think we all have our version of greeting overwhelm. If life moves in seasons, every season has its storm —whether it’s snow, wind, or rain. Overwhelm isn’t the storm itself, but the moment just before it hits. The pressure drop. The sudden stillness.

This month, though, I realized that I don’t need to treat overwhelm as a failure of control or poise.

It’s not a fire or a crisis. It’s discomfort, made visible. And sometimes, discomfort is exactly what we need.

If we felt calm all the time, maybe nothing around us would be shifting. That’s fine for a while. But over time, either extreme — constant calm or constant chaos — keeps us from growing.

I don’t think I’ll ever seek out overwhelm. But I’m learning to respect it. When it arrives, it’s often trying to tell us something. That something has to change. That something is out of alignment. If we let it show its hand, I think it would point us toward our realest desires, the truths we don’t always want to face.

It’s difficult to admit, but overwhelm is another tool in our intuition box. We all have it, but we don’t always listen. And maybe the intensity of our overwhelm is a direct measure of how far we’ve drifted from what we truly need.

So, the next time overwhelm creeps in, I hope we can allow it to be. Maybe we don’t need to immediately fix it or remove it. Rather, we can ask it to share its honesty with us.