“All the Things” Isn’t Failure — It’s Information

There’s a phrase I find myself saying and I hear again and again from capable, empathic women-

“It just feels like all the things.”

It’s usually said with a sigh and quiet resignation that that’s just how life is.
Sometimes with frustration. Sometimes with a shake of the head.
Often with a level of acceptance and quiet layer of self-judgment underneath.

That it’s fine, I’m fine, we’re fine (but we’re really far from ‘fine’)

Because we’ve been taught that when everything feels like “all the things,” it means we’re overwhelmed — and overwhelm is often treated like a personal failure.

As if it’s proof that something has gone wrong.

Or that we should be handling life better by now.

Or that we’re missing the thing that will make everything feel smoother and fall into place.

But here’s the reframe I want to offer you-

“All the things” isn’t failure.
It’s information.

And for empathic nervous systems, the people who feel all the things, it’s often very specific information.

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If you’re someone who prefers to watch/listen or just want to hear it talked through, you can catch a 5-minute summary on YouTube.

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What “All the Things” Usually Means

When someone says they’re holding “all the things,” they’re rarely talking about one problem. It’s literally a swirling tsunami of pressures wrapped in different packages across the spectrum of our lives and the society we live in. Between the volume and the pace, it is hard to get a grip on any one thing or find a rhythm to help you find flow.

You’re often holding-

• tasks that haven’t been sorted yet

• emotions that don’t fit neatly into words

• decisions that require discernment, not urgency

• other people’s needs

• and your own quiet knowing

All at once.

Homework assignments that get adjusted due to snow days, unnamed doubts that you’re doing enough, of the right things to raise good kids while maintaining a relationship, thinking ahead to needing to buy a new car sooner than later, family health issues and life changes and how you can support them and what my own heart is drumming about pursuing, each draining my capacity in different ways.

That experience can feel like chaos — but it’s more accurate to think of it as unorganized data.

Information has arrived.
It just hasn’t been mapped yet.

And mapping is very different from fixing.

A Moment When Everything Felt Like “All the Things”

I’m in this swirl right now. We are starting Little League for both of our kids and it’s new for all of us.

The baseball registration that requires forms from school that I don’t know who to ask to sign, worries about how we’ll rejuggle our time to show up for practices and games with clean uniforms, knowing this new experience is going to bring up new experiences and emotions to navigate and require new patterns and habits.

And that tsunami feeling I mentioned above, it’s been looming over me. These new systems to learn, feelings to feel for myself and help me kids feel theirs, worries that this will be an epic failure or waste of money, stresses that we’ll have to be in two places at the same time.

I see how much organized sports adds to the family schedule and knowing how this will be a good growth experience for the boys, but it will come with growth edges has been a lot, and we’ve only just made it through the registration process. It’s already felt like ‘all the things’ just getting to this point of completing the registration and has started to overwhelm me for what’s still coming.

Even with this being an experience we are choosing and will include moments that help us grow, it still makes it hard to feel confident that I’ll figure out how to make it happen without draining me to make it feel worth it.

The Problem With Simplifying Too Early

There are plenty of people out there with life hacks meant to help you tame that overwhelm and whip your life and to-do list into shape. One of the most common responses to “all the things” is advice like-

• Simplify.

• Narrow your focus.

• Just pick one thing.

And sometimes that advice is helpful — later.

But for empathic women, simplifying too early can actually make overwhelm worse. The picking the ONE thing advice I think frustrates me the most- like HOW do you pick one thing when they are all interconnected?!

Because when you know your Glow, you recognize that before you can reduce anything, you need to understand-

• what’s actually present

• what belongs together

• what’s asking for attention versus what’s just noise

Without that orientation, simplification can feel like self-betrayal.

Not because you’re resistant — but because something important hasn’t been seen yet. As a sensitive person who picks up on the nuance of what’s happening underneath the surface or what’s not being said, trying to push through without this deeper understanding can make you feel even more lost or disconnected from the path through it all.

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Curious about how you can start to know your Glow?  Discover how you can create your own Glow Map and orient your energy.

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Overwhelm Isn’t a Verdict

You are not broken or doing it wrong when you get overwhelmed by the overwhelm and there doesn’t seem to be an easy way through. This is an important distinction to take to heart, especially as someone who takes everything to heart-

Overwhelm is not a verdict about your capacity.
It’s a signal about context.

There is so much shame and guilt around not having it all together. There are whole industries focused on helping you “get it together” and life transforming organizational systems. We don’t need to add to this judgement by inflicting more of it upon ourselves, building a bigger story about what’s happening that we feel and weighs us down. Depending on what season of the Glow Compass you are in, this can lead to drifting toward coping mechanisms that lead you further from clarity, but numbs the overwhelm or rushing to find solutions, but not having the capacity to implement or maintain them.

It’s important to remember that overwhelm isn’t a problem. It’s a signal. This sense of overwhelm often shows up-

• before clarity

• before decisions

• before action

Not after.

Which means that when you’re in “all the things,” you’re often earlier in the process than you think — not behind.

Pause for a moment… how does that make you feel?

When I Tried to Plow Through Instead of Orient

Now even though I guide people through the Glow Compass framework, it doesn’t mean that I always follow it myself. Part of the human experience means that we stumble and learn, not faulting ourselves when we stray from “perfection” and giving ourselves grace as we experiment and navigate life.

I get caught up in the swirl, the overwhelm. I lose track of what my Glow capacity is telling me. But the key is that I know how to catch myself sooner, how to reorient myself and redirect my actions and perspective so that I feel grounded and know ‘where’ I am again.

We hybrid homeschool, so each on-campus day is critical to their learning (and my sanity). This week when we had a snow day and a building problem that kept the kids home both days. Thankfully, they were able to notify us the night before, but when that text came through, I felt the weight of everything crash down and I cried in front of the bathroom mirror.

And the next day, I felt the overwhelm when I looked at our revised homework lists and felt like had gotten nothing done, even though we had probably been even more focused than normal. The “snow day” assignments we now needed to do at home felt like they were piling on more than the snow, adding to my doubts of how we were going to get through everything.

My first impulse was to force us to focus and just GET IT DONE so that I could shed the pressure, the doubt, the mom guilt. And we did. We tried that. We plowed through.

And after big feelings and making little progress, I went through the assignment updates and updated the sheets I create to track what we have to do. Once I remembered I could name to tame the overwhelm, slowing the swirl down enough to understand I have to tools to figure it all out once I orient myself.

A Quieter Question That Helps

Knowing your Glow is like having a dashboard you can check in with and more readily notice the dynamics of what’s going on. This framework helps you gain perspective when the world wants to swallow you and go deep into the nuance when you are focused on addressing friction and improving flow.

When everything feels like “all the things,” the instinct is to ask-

• How do I fix this?

• What’s wrong with me?

Those questions assume something is broken.

A more useful question is quieter-

What is trying to come into focus here?

That question doesn’t demand answers.
It creates orientation.

And orientation is what allows information to organize itself over time.

Where Glow Fits In (Gently)

This is where the idea of Glow becomes useful — not as a framework to apply, but as a way to understand context.

Different energy states experience “all the things” differently.

Sometimes overwhelm is asking for-

• rest

• clarity

• boundaries

• expression

Without knowing what kind of energy you’re in, every response defaults to pushing. With each swirl of overwhelm, it has something to tell me, letting me know what my Glow really needs this time. It helps me remember to step back, step out of the swirl and look at the bigger picture.

With energy literacy, the experience changes — even before anything external does.

A Small Shift That Changed How Overwhelm Felt

As I shared above, I was not handling the overwhelm of added school work, compounded by the pressure to figure out how to get the things done I was planning on in my business. When I stopped trying to handle everything, paused to give me some perspective and actually named the things that truly needed done, I felt so much better.

I felt like I could control the ship again and navigate our path because I knew the navigational beacons we need to keep it between.

That relief helped that tsunami start to feel more like rolling waves we could start to anticipate and prepare for, and we are finding a new rhythm to follow. And even though we are actually further ahead than we normally would be by this point in the week, the real ‘win’ is that we’ve been having more fun getting the things done.

I’ve been noticing and appreciating how we’ve been approaching each task and getting it done with more flow. When I share that with the kids, I can see them light up and feel the pride for themselves. It creates evidence that we can do hard things, that we have the capacity to be resilient and that life has a way of showing us that things are working out for us, not against us.

Let This Be Enough for Now

Tuck this away to remember then next time the tsunami of overwhelm looms over you. If everything feels like “all the things” right now, nothing has gone wrong.

You don’t need to resolve it today.
You don’t need to reduce it yet.
And you don’t need to judge yourself for it.

Overwhelm is not a failure of character or discipline.

It’s often the beginning of sense-making.

And signals soften once they’re understood. So don’t push yourself into ‘fixing’, into action, without taking the time you need to orient yourself in swirl.

A Gentle Invitation

If you’ve been craving a way to understand what you’re holding — without forcing clarity or rushing action — that’s the work I do through my Glow Clarity Sessions.

They’re a nervous-system-attuned way to orient, notice patterns, and understand your energy — so “all the things” can begin to organize naturally.

And if not, let this reflection be enough.

Stay curious.
Let clarity arrive in its own timing.

If you’d like to watch the companion video where I explore this idea out loud, you can find it here.

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Stephanie Rose is the founder of Firefly Scout, where orientation comes before action.

She supports intuitive, sensitive people in navigating complexity by helping them notice patterns, understand their inner rhythms, and cultivate clarity that works with — not against — their nervous system.

Her work draws from lived experience, grounded frameworks, and intuitive insight, offering guidance that feels both practical and deeply human.

You can explore more through her weekly field notes or begin with the Firefly Scout resources.

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