When someone we love is overwhelmed, most of us do the same thing: we jump into fix-it mode.
We offer solutions. We try to solve the problem. We think that’s helpful. It’s usually not.
Here’s the truth: overwhelmed people don’t need solutions. They need support. And the most effective support is the kind that’s customized to what’s actually keeping them stuck.
This question came up during a recent private event Q&A while I was facilitating my Overwhelm Culprit™ workshop. In this post I’m breaking down exactly how to support someone overwhelmed – culprit by culprit.
How to Support Someone Overwhelmed: The Most Important Shift
Overwhelm is not a reflection of someone’s capability. It’s a reflection of their capacity.
I say this over and over – because it’s that important. When someone is overwhelmed, they often already know what the problem is. They know what they need to do. They just don’t have the capacity to do it alone.
So the goal isn’t to solve it for them. It’s to provide support that frees up their capacity – so they can solve it themselves.
I know this from personal experience. Throughout my life I’ve navigated miscarriage, an abusive marriage, a high-conflict divorce, and a suicide loss – all while leading a team and being the sole breadwinner for my family. The only person who could solve those problems was me. But the support around me is what gave me the capacity to do it.
The fastest way to right-size that support? Identify which of the Five Overwhelm Culprits™ your person is dealing with and customize from there.
How to Support Someone Overwhelmed: By Culprit
Lack of Clarity — Support a New Widow or Anyone Starting Over
When someone lacks clarity, everything feels impossible. They don’t know what’s next. Decisions feel paralyzing. Their whole world has been turned upside down.
Here’s how to support them:
- Just listen. Let them verbally process without jumping in to fix anything. The act of talking through it out loud is how clarity starts to form.
- Ask clarifying questions. As they talk, ask questions that help them go deeper. “Why is that important to you?” is one of the most powerful tools I know. Keep asking why until you hit the root.
- Coach them through decisions – don’t make the decisions for them. Ask questions that help them arrive at their own answers. That’s where real clarity comes from.
Lack of Confidence — Support a Newly Promoted Colleague
Someone who’s been promoted into a role they feel unprepared for is going to struggle with confidence. They don’t know what they don’t know. They may feel like an imposter even if they’re exactly where they’re supposed to be.
Here’s how to support them:
- Be their mirror. Help them see what they can’t see in themselves. Reflect back their strengths, their skills, their accomplishments. Sometimes people just need someone to hold up the mirror.
- Be their sponsor. A sponsor is someone who talks about you in rooms you can’t be in yet. Advocate for them. Talk up their capabilities. Be their champion behind the scenes.
- Validate their abilities. Tell them directly that they are good at what they do. In my book I share the story of my “summer of selfies” – posting daily lipstick photos because I needed to hear from other people that I looked good, after years of being told otherwise. Validation matters. It moves the needle.
- Encourage them to take the scary leap. When they mention they might try something risky – encourage them. The act of doing scary things is how confidence actually builds.
Lack of Community — Support First-Time Parents
It takes a village and a lot of people today don’t have one. First-time parents are a perfect example. They’re isolated, exhausted, and often surrounded by people who don’t understand what they’re going through.
Here’s how to support them:
- Just be there. Show up. Call them. The physical act of presence – or even just the sound of a familiar voice – creates connection when someone feels isolated.
- Suggest specific things you can take off their plate. Don’t ask “what can I help with?” – that just adds another decision to their already overloaded mind. Instead, drop off a meal. Show up to babysit for two hours so they can shower. Be specific.
- Reach out just to check in. Sometimes they just need to know someone is thinking about them.
- Suggest activities you could do together. Get them out of the house. Be part of building the community they’re missing.
- Respect their boundaries. Community craving doesn’t mean they want company every single day. Check in and honor what they actually need.
Lack of Conditioning — Support Someone Recovering From Burnout
When the conditioning culprit is at play, someone is physically and mentally depleted. They need to rebuild their health and wellness – but often have no capacity to do it alone.
Here’s how to support them:
- Be an accountability buddy. Offer to meet them for a daily walk. Check in on their sleep. Show up for their habits alongside them.
- Suggest healthy activities you could do together. Instead of late night drinks, suggest a smoothie bar or a morning workout.
- Give them time and space for self-care and encourage them to actually use it. A lot of high performers put their own wellness last. If you’re one of the people they’re caring for, create the space for them to care for themselves too.
- Respect their wellness boundaries. If they’re trying to get to bed early or eat better, don’t suggest a late night dinner at a fried chicken place. Work with their goals, not against them.
Lack of Consistency — Support Someone in a High-Pressure Season
Think of a working mom managing a full-time job during the holidays. She knows what needs to happen. She just can’t keep up with all of it at once.
Here’s how to support them:
- Help identify roadblocks. Sometimes just helping someone brain dump or map out what they need to do removes the mental block that’s keeping them stuck.
- Share tools and resources that have helped you. A pre-made holiday gift checklist. A Google sheet you use every year. Small practical things make a big difference.
- Take tasks off their plate. If they’re supposed to bring cookies to the school bake sale, offer to double up so they don’t have to worry about it.
- Offer accountability check-ins. Be the person who asks how they’re doing with their goals – consistently. That kind of steady support keeps people moving.
The Best Way to Support Someone Overwhelmed: Stop Solving. Start Supporting.
The most powerful thing you can do for someone who is overwhelmed is stop trying to fix it for them.
Instead, ask yourself: which culprit are they dealing with? And what kind of support would actually free up their capacity right now?
That’s how to support someone overwhelmed in a way that actually moves the needle. Not by solving. By showing up in exactly the right way at exactly the right time.
Share the Free Overwhelm Culprit Quiz With Someone You Love
If you have someone in your life who is overwhelmed right now, share the free Overwhelm Culprit Quiz with them. It takes three minutes, identifies their specific culprit, and gives them two weeks of customized content to start addressing it.
And when you know their culprit, you’ll know exactly how to support them — using the tips in this post.
Share the free Overwhelm Culprit Quiz here.
Go Deeper With the Book
I cover all five Overwhelm Culprits™ in full detail in my book — including the strategies, stories, and frameworks to address each one. Whether you’re the one who’s overwhelmed or the one trying to help, this is the resource that ties it all together.
The Five Overwhelm Culprits™: Strategies to Save Your Sanity Without Sacrificing Your Success is available now everywhere books are sold.
CLICK FOR TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] What are some effective ways to become a supportive ally and help others overcome a Overwhelm Culprit™? This is a question I received during a recent private event Q&A while facilitating my ‘Create a Strategy to Cure Your Overwhelm Culprit’ workshop. And I realized it’s a great topic to cover here due to how common it is to have friends, family, colleagues, neighbors around us who are overwhelmed and not being sure what we could do to help.
Here’s the truth. Everybody assumes when people are overwhelmed that they need solutions, but the truth is they need support. The tough part is identifying what type of support makes sense for what they are specifically overwhelmed by. So if you have someone that you care about who is overwhelmed and struggling, then you’re gonna wanna stick around, because by the end of today’s episode, you’re gonna know the best ways that you could support them so that they can get unstuck and back into confident action fast.
[00:01:00]
If you’re new here, my name is Corrie LoGiudice. I’m otherwise known as Corrie Lo, and I’m a professional keynote speaker, facilitator, leadership expert and author who helps high achievers transform overwhelm into confident leadership action, even in times of crisis.
So the problem is everyone assumes when people are overwhelmed that they need solutions. How often is it that we go into a scenario like that or say you’re even overwhelmed and everybody just jumps into trying to solve the problem for you? But the truth is, when we get into these kind of scenarios, we don’t necessarily need solutions, we need support.
Because one of the reasons that we are feeling so overwhelmed by everything is because we don’t feel like we can handle the overwhelm alone. It’s a capacity issue, so we need support to manage our capacity. We don’t necessarily need solutions for our problems. Yet a lot of times, we know what the problem is, and we know what we gotta do to [00:02:00] solve it, but we just don’t have the capacity to do so. Overwhelm is not a reflection of someone’s capability. It’s a reflection of their capacity. And I say this over and over and over again. It’s a sign that something has changed and they need help navigating a strategy to accommodate that change.
Throughout the course of my life, I’ve had multiple major life challenges, all while having to lead a team and be the breadwinner and sole provider for my family.
And some of these challenges include things like having a miscarriage, I was in an abusive marriage, I had a very high-conflict divorce and then a couple years later I experienced a suicide loss where I was the one to discover my loved one. And the only one who was able to solve the problem, was me.
However, the support that I needed to create the capacity to solve the problems came in multiple different ways from the people I had surrounding me. So one of the easiest ways to do this is to right-size the support you’re [00:03:00] providing for people by customizing it based on their Overwhelm Culprit™.
I’d love to know, have you ever felt challenged by not knowing what to do to support someone going through a difficult time? Comment below. It happens more than you know.
All right, so let’s break things down on how you can help better support your loved ones, your colleagues, your neighbors, people in your community, by identifying their Overwhelm Culprit™.
So first Overwhelm Culprit is Lack of Clarity. So as an example for this, let’s say you’re supporting a new widow and they’re at this point in life, a lot of the challenges that come with that is you have to start over.
You don’t know what’s next. You have to make a lot of decisions. There’s a lack of clarity surrounding everything. Their entire life has been turned upside down because they lost their partner and the love of their life. So some ways that you can help support people through Lack of Clarity would be, first and foremost, just listen.
Let them [00:04:00] verbally process what they need to process to be able to gain the clarity that they need. Another thing that’s very, very helpful is asking clarifying questions. So as they’re verbally processing, ask them questions to help them further process what they’re thinking through. And then last but not least, you can coach them through making decisions for themselves.
So one of my favorite strategies when it comes to coaching people through things is asking the question why. “Why is that important to you? Why, why, why, why?” Because that helps you get to the root of the core issue.
Now, for the Lack of Confidence Culprit. Let’s say you have a colleague who is newly promoted and they’re really, really overwhelmed by everything that’s going on that they don’t know what they don’t know and they feel in over their head and they may feel like an imposter. So how do we support this person?
First is be their mirror. Help them see what they can’t see inside themselves. There’s a reason that they may have been promoted, as an [00:05:00] example. So you need to help reflect back to them so that they can see all those amazing traits and skills and talents that they have for themselves. Next is be their sponsor.
So the definition of a sponsor is somebody who is talking about you in rooms that you can’t be in yet. So be that person’s sponsor. Talk up their capabilities. Be their advocate. That’s one of the best ways that you can support somebody who doesn’t have the confidence to do it themselves. Next up is validate their abilities.
A lot of times folks just need to hear from other people that they are good or they have the ability that they are unsure of that they have. So I share as an example in my book, The Five Overwhelm Culprits™, I went through a phase where I had been told for years that I looked terrible wearing lipstick from my ex-husband.
And so I went to Sephora, I got a makeover and I bought all these different lipsticks. And even though I felt like I looked amazing in the lipstick, I still felt this need [00:06:00] and my friends called it the summer of selfies, where I every single day would post a selfie of me with a lipstick and I basically was searching for people’s likes and comments that I looked good.
So being able to validate people and their confidence is oftentimes very, very helpful for folks who need it. Eventually, you have to learn how to source it within yourself. But to start, if you’re supporting somebody who is challenged with confidence, validating them is so amazing for that. And then lastly, encourage them to try things that scare them.
If they mention that they’re potentially gonna take a risk on something or they wanna try it, it’s up to us to encourage them to go and do that, to be able to grow.
For the Lack of Community Culprit, let’s imagine we’re trying to support first-time parents are a great example of this. They say it takes a village to raise a child and it is true.
In these days and times a lot of first-time parents don’t have the village that they used to. So some of the ways that you can help support people who have a lack of community would be to just spend [00:07:00] time with them. Be there for them. The physical act of spending the time or picking up the phone and calling them and being with them is so, so important to have that sense of connection.
The next thing that you could do is suggest things that you could take off their plate. Don’t ask them, “What can I help with?” Just basically make an educated guess for them based on what you know that you needed during a similar time and take it off their plate. It could be dropping off a meal train. It could be showing up to babysit the baby for a couple of hours so that they can get a shower.
It could be any number of things. But you suggest what you could take off their plate. Also, just reach out to ask how they’re doing. Sometimes they just need to feel like they’re not alone, that there are people who are thinking of them. Another thing you could do is suggest activities that you could all do together.
Be part of the community. Suggest gathering and get them out of their house with the kid to go and do things. And lastly, make sure too that you respect their boundaries. Sometimes [00:08:00] people, while they really crave community and need that connection, they don’t need it every single day.
They need their space. So making sure that you’re respecting their boundaries is a really great way to honor that and to honor the relationship.
Next up is Lack of Conditioning. So when I talk about this culprit, it’s the lack of physical and mental health and wellness. So great example of this is somebody you may know who has experienced burnout and is in recovery. So one of the first things that you could do that is excellent is offer to be an accountability buddy towards whatever it is that they need to build up.
It could be that they need to get more sleep or they need to eat better or they need to exercise is a great one. Offer to be an accountability buddy to meet them for a daily walk or something. You could also suggest healthy activities that you could do together. So maybe instead of going out for drinks at night, maybe you’re meeting up at a smoothie bar or something instead.
You can also provide them with time and space for self-care. So for a lot of folks, [00:09:00] especially folks who are in partnerships, they will basically put their own self-care on the back burner because they’re always concerned with the wellbeing of other people. So if you are one of those other people, make sure that you provide them with the time and the space that they need to care for themselves as well as encourage them to use that space.
And then also similar to community, you wanna make sure that you respect their boundaries, especially regarding mental health and wellness. So if you for example, have a friend that’s really trying to eat better and make sure that they get to the gym in the morning before they go to work then respect those boundaries by maybe suggesting things like an earlier dinner time and eating at a healthier restaurant and not at like a fried chicken place.
And then lastly, the last culprit is Lack of Consistency. So for this example, let’s imagine somebody that you know who’s in a very high-pressure season. One I can think of off the top of my head is any mother that you know that works during the holidays.
When you’re dealing with a [00:10:00] full-time job as well as the full-time job of trying to manage the holidays.
So first is help them identify any roadblocks that are preventing them from doing what it is that they need to do. So this could be helping them basically map out step-by-step things they need to take care of or helping them brain dump. These are great ways you can support people with consistency because when you remove the roadblock, you re-engage the action again.
Next is help by providing tools and resources that have helped you with whatever it is they need to be consistent with. So using the holidays as example, maybe you have a pre-done checklist that you use every single year for Christmas gifts. And maybe that’s a resource, it’s a Google sheet or something that you could share with them.
So provide tools, resources, tips, strategies that may have helped you during the same type of season. Offer to take tasks off of their plate. Instead of expecting them to bring cookies for the school bake sale, maybe you offer to double up on what you have to help them out so that they can still show up and still be [00:11:00] consistent with everything that they’re looking to do.
And lastly, suggest consistency and accountability check-ins. If there are things that they are really working towards that they are struggling, offer to be that checkpoint where you check in with them on a regular basis and see how they are progressing towards that goal.
So to recap how to best support someone who is overwhelmed, first, don’t try to solve the problem for them. Support them so that they can free up capacity so they can solve the problem on their own. Then from there, customize how you’re gonna support them based on their Overwhelm Culprit™.
And again, the five of them are Lack of Clarity, Lack of Confidence, Lack of Community, Lack of Conditioning, and Lack of Consistency. So hopefully you found my sharing this helpful today. If you have a question that you would like for me to answer whether it be regarding this topic or maybe even a brand new topic feel free to leave a comment because I just may feature it on a future episode.
And if you have someone in your life who is overwhelmed, please feel free to share my free Overwhelm Culprit™ [00:12:00] Quiz with them. It’s gonna provide them with over two weeks of customized content to tackle the strategy side of their culprit, while you can learn how to best support them by knowing what their specific culprit is and using the tips in this episode. The link for the quiz is in the show notes.
And you can also learn more ways to work with me, whether that be one-on-one through coaching and advisory, or whether it’s with your organization or team through my speaking and keynote offers in the show notes as well. Thanks so much for being here, and I will see you on the next episode.
I’ll see you then.
Thanks for checking out the Next Step with Corrie Lo. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review. Together, we’ll transform overwhelm into action, and we’ll keep taking the next step towards confident leadership. See you next time