Becoming So Overwhelmed

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I have a Regional Center counselor & an Independent Living Skill person. When people here get ask tooooo many questions & you get so overwhelmed & then you might cry, how do you handle it? The last time I met with my counselor, she asked me toooo many questions & I got so overwhelmed & I cried. I don't want to give them too much information.

Tell her to slow down

^^^ agreed. OR, you can say "I'm starting to shut down. I won't be able to answer any more questions today." Or something like that.

It's perfectly all right to do that.

Hope you have a good day.

I've had the experience a number of times where a helping professional, say an investment counselor or a physical therapist, will be offering more and more information or asking me to make decisions. I just candidly tell them, "I think I've reached my saturation point" or "I can't handle any more information, could we stop for today?"

If you don't indicate what's going on for you mentally, it often can be nearly impossible for the other person to know when to stop. If you keep nodding and saying uh-huh, they think all is well.

This is an easy skill to learn. Just don't be surprised when you have to use it in any of a number of situations. Like one time at a Mexican restaurant, I decided to live dangerously and order a margarita. Well the waitress asked, do you want this kind or that kind, salt on the rim or no, blended or shaken, up or down, this liquor or that liquor. Finally I told her, if you ask me one more question about it, I'm just cancelling the margarita altogether. I didn't expect it to be so hard to order a drink!

She's a real counselor, she works at Regional Center, she helps me in life. We have meetings every 3 months. I told her in an email that I'm depressed & very overwhelmed in life, she didn't care, she told me the meeting will be a hour. When I'm depressed & very overwhelmed, I don't feel like talking too much & it hard for me think. She care more about her job than one of her clients. We have a meeting this Friday at 10 AM, she set up the appointment without telling me first. I can't see her anyway, I'm getting my hair done. Why is it that just because I'm not working, people will think that I will be home all day everyday? I may not have too much of a life, but I still want to go out & get a life.

If you cannot explain yourself in words verbally, explain yourself in writing. The email was a good idea. Another idea may be typing out your thoughts, printing them out and bringing them with you to the appointment.