You’re Not Lazy — You’re Overwhelmed

There’s a particular kind of shame that comes with not being able to do the thing you know you should be doing. The dishes sit unwashed. The emails go unanswered. The idea sits untouched. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice starts whispering:

“You’re just lazy.”

It’s quiet, but corrosive.

You tell yourself you’re just not trying hard enough. That if you were more motivated, more disciplined, more like them, you’d have your life together by now. You’d be productive. You’d be thriving. You’d be better.

But what if the problem isn’t laziness at all?

What if the problem is that you’re overwhelmed?

The quiet confusion of shutdown mode

I remember sitting at my desk one afternoon, staring at a report I’d been putting off. It wasn’t even that difficult. I knew what I had to do. I had time, I had space, I had clarity. What I didn’t have was momentum. Every time I tried to begin, my brain felt like it was wading through syrup.

So instead of working on it, I checked the news. Then my inbox. Then I refilled my coffee. I bounced between tabs for nearly an hour. And the whole time, I was scolding myself internally.

“You have no excuse.”

“Just get it done.”

“Why are you like this?”

But I wasn’t lazy. I was exhausted. Not just physically, but mentally. Emotionally. Existentially. And my nervous system had quietly shifted into shutdown mode, the way a laptop goes dim when it’s been overworked for too long.

Overwhelm doesn’t always look like panic

Sometimes it looks like paralysis. Distraction. Delay. The complete absence of urgency, even when something is urgent. And that’s what makes it so hard to recognise. We expect overwhelm to feel like chaos, like spiralling or racing thoughts. But often, it feels like fog. Like nothing.

And when that fog sets in, our internal narrative kicks in hard. Most of us don’t say, “I think I might be at capacity.” We say, “I’m useless.”

Why we mistake overwhelm for laziness

It’s easy to assume you’re lazy when you’re not doing anything. But what we rarely consider is how much effort you’ve already been putting in — quietly, constantly, invisibly.

You might be managing a household, caring for family, navigating a stressful job, holding space for others, or mentally spinning five plates at once. Emotional labour, decision fatigue, and the pressure to "keep it together" all accumulate.

And then when the system starts to falter, you tell yourself it’s a motivation issue. But it’s not. It’s a bandwidth issue.

If your laptop froze after running twelve programs at once, you wouldn’t call it lazy. You’d say it was overloaded. So why are you any different?

The trap of the “lazy” label

Labeling yourself as lazy doesn’t create movement. It creates shame. And shame doesn’t get you unstuck. It keeps you there.

The more you believe the story that you’re not trying hard enough, the more pressure you put on yourself to push through. And the more pressure you apply, the more likely you are to freeze or disengage altogether.

It’s a loop that reinforces itself:

You feel tired. You can’t get started. You judge yourself. You try to force it. You get more overwhelmed. You shut down again.

A different way forward

What if, instead of trying harder, you paused?

What if you gave yourself permission to acknowledge what’s really going on?

That you are overwhelmed. That your system is overstretched. That your tiredness is real.

And what if, from that place of honesty, you chose something smaller? Gentler?

This is where the idea of a Minimum Viable Day can be a game-changer — asking yourself, “What’s the smallest version of today that still counts?”

Maybe it’s showing up to the meeting, feeding yourself something nourishing, texting one person back. That’s enough.

You don’t have to do it all to be doing enough.

You don’t need fixing. You need space

Overwhelm doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’ve been running too hard for too long without enough recovery time.

What you need is room to exhale. You need clarity, not intensity. Stillness, not hustle. Encouragement, not criticism.

So if your body is dragging and your brain feels like it’s full of static, know this:

You are not lazy.

You are overwhelmed.

And you are allowed to slow down.

Final thought: Let this be your permission slip

You don’t have to earn rest by reaching breaking point. You don’t need to prove your worth through relentless productivity. You’re already enough.

If all you do today is pause and realise that, then that’s progress!

—MRB

My goal is to help people thrive in a complex world. While I write as a psychologist, this content is general in nature, does not constitute a therapeutic relationship, and is not a substitute for personalised mental healthcare advice. Further, some posts may include affiliate links to resources I recommend. Read my full site policy here.