Meg Van Deusen

The Power of Eye Contact: A Free and Easy Stress-Reducer

In a world of screens, a moment of warm eye contact can offer something easily overlooked: the feeling of being seen. I explore the links between compassionate attention, social connection, and relief from stress.

Read article

Loving Kindness Meditation: A Response to Loneliness

How can sitting quietly with yourself help you feel less alone? Loving-kindness meditation offers a way to notice self-judgment, practice compassion, and approach both yourself and others with greater warmth and connection.

Read article

Five Things To Do When Feeling Defeated and Overwhelmed

When life feels like an endless treadmill, pushing harder may leave you more depleted. These five steps begin with a pause and lead toward understanding your needs, clarifying what matters, and taking one small step forward.

Read article

Help Relieve Stress by Cultivating Hope

Chronic stress can narrow our view until problems seem like all there is. I explore how noticing what is good, treating ourselves kindly, and creating a practical path toward meaningful goals can help restore hope.

Read article

Meditation Benefits

Stress can make it difficult to focus, regulate emotions, and think through decisions. I look at how mindfulness meditation may help us pause, steady our attention, and respond from a calmer place.

Read article

Reducing Stress In The Classroom

What changes when a teacher asks what a student has been through before judging their behavior? A conversation with an experienced educator explores how understanding trauma, collaborative learning, and restorative justice can build trust and reduce classroom stress.

Read article

Social Media (for better or worse?)

We often reach for social media to feel connected, yet leave feeling lonelier or less satisfied. I examine that tension and share ways families, schools, and communities can support healthier habits and more time together in person.

Read article

Could Your Gut Be Causing Your Anxiety and Stress?

Stress can unsettle the gut, but could the gut also influence how we feel? I explore the two-way relationship between the microbiome and the brain, including the promise and limitations of early research on probiotics.

Read article

Coping with Holiday Stress

The gap between an ideal holiday and the one we actually experience can bring disappointment and tension. Through one family’s story, I explore how compassion, flexible expectations, and intentional choices can make room for a more meaningful celebration.

Read article

Anxiety Self Help Tips

Worry can keep us circling problems we cannot control. Through one father’s experience, I explore how compassionate engagement with the people we love can interrupt anxious rumination and strengthen our sense of connection.

Read article

Living in a World of Information Overload

Constant messages, notifications, and news can leave little room to hear ourselves think. I explore the pull of always being available and how stepping away from our devices can create space for calm, curiosity, and genuine connection.

Read article

Feeling Lonely

Why can someone surrounded by people feel lonely while someone living alone feels deeply connected? I explore the role of perception and self-judgment, and how hope, compassion, and openness can help us feel a greater sense of belonging.

Read article

All writing

Five Things To Do When Feeling Defeated and Overwhelmed

When life feels like an endless treadmill, pushing harder may leave you more depleted. These five steps begin with a pause and lead toward understanding your needs, clarifying what matters, and taking one small step forward.

Are you feeling defeated and overwhelmed? Life can feel like a treadmill sometimes. You’re running, exerting effort, but don’t feel you’re going anywhere.

And feeling as if you’re going nowhere, despite energy output, can be discouraging and defeating. Your motivation begins to wane and anxious or depressed feelings creep in. If you are experiencing this kind of repetitive cycle, if you find yourself tending to a to-do list that never ends or working day in/day out to no financial or emotional avail, here are five things you may want to do to change your experience.

1. Take a break when feeling defeated and overwhelmed

Take a break. In order to get perspective, it is imperative that you take a break from your routine, even if for twenty minutes. Get out of the office, the house, wherever you usually spend your time and pause.

Pausing creates space and time so you can sit and breathe without attending to anything—no phone, no to-do list, no interaction with others. Pausing and simply breathing disrupts the treadmill running just enough to change course. It can decrease the stress hormone, cortisol, it can lower your blood pressure and it can give you clarity of mind.

2. Ask yourself how you are

Ask yourself how you are. Now that you have broken the relentless running and replaced it with sitting and breathing, ask yourself how you are. Are you tired? Are you hungry? Are you sad? Are you worried?

Tune into yourself with non-judgmental compassion. In other words, don’t criticize how you should be feeling. Just listen to how you are feeling and be kind to yourself in response.

3. Tend to the feeling

Tend to the feeling. If you’re tired, close your eyes and let yourself rest. If you’re hungry, take the time to get some healthy food. If you’re sad, find out why and offer yourself words of encouragement. And if you’re worried, bring yourself to the present moment and take in what is right, what is good, what is going well.

4. Create a vision

Create a vision. It is imperative that you define what it is you desire in life. Is it more sleep, more time with your children, a less demanding job? Think about what is really important to you and imagine it.

Even better, write about it. In a paragraph or two, write about how you want your life to look. This exercise can clarify your values and create a realizable dream or goal that, perhaps, you thought was unattainable or had forgotten about. Be thoughtful, not reactionary, when you write so as to be true to yourself.

5. Start with one thing

Start with one thing. Read the vision you’ve written and take a step today toward changing your life for the better. If you want more time with your children, perhaps you turn off your phone at a designated time every day and spend an hour playing with them.

Set an alarm to make sure this happens. If you want more sleep, perhaps you start winding down earlier in the evening so as to move up bedtime by thirty minutes.

Starting small means more likelihood of success. If you want a different job, perhaps you begin by perusing job openings, talking to others in your desired field or revamping your resume.

Start with one thing and take action every day toward this goal. In this way, you won’t overwhelm yourself with a full life overhaul or set yourself up for failure because you’ve written too tall of an order.

Feeling defeated and overwhelmed: Conclusion

While you sometimes may feel that you are at the mercy of your circumstances, the above five steps can help you take charge of your life. Take the time to tune into yourself, listen to yourself and respond to yourself with compassion and agency.

In this way, not only do you build a more solid relationship with yourself, you free yourself from feeling overwhelmed and defeated. The key is to step off the treadmill, for just twenty minutes, so as to implement steps two through five.

If you don’t take the break, you won’t get off the merry-go-round of overwhelm and defeat. So, make the decision to do it today, perhaps even right now and take back the wheel of your life.