Why May Feels So Overwhelming: Stress, Burnout, and Self-Care During Busy Seasons

May calendar, coffee, notes, glasses, flowers displayed on a table

Why May Feels So Overwhelming: Stress, Burnout, and Self-Care During Busy Seasons

At first glance, May feels hopeful. The weather is warmer. Summer is approaching. School is winding down. Vacations, graduations, celebrations, and longer days finally arrive after a long winter.

Yet, for many of us, May can feel less like a fresh start and more like a stressful sprint to the finish line. Calendars become packed with concerts, recitals, sports tournaments, graduations, weddings, travel plans, end-of-school events, teacher gifts, childcare planning, and mounting work responsibilities before summer begins. 

Those of us who are parents are juggling logistics while trying to help overstimulated children make it through the end of the school year. College students and teenagers are navigating finals, transitions, uncertainty, and social pressure. Adults are trying to hold everything together while wondering why we feel so emotionally exhausted.

Maycember & Our Nervous System

We’ve heard May jokingly referred to as “Maycember” because, for many of us, it carries the same frantic energy as the holiday season. Much like November and December, May can become packed with endless events, social obligations, family commitments, performances, celebrations, and pressure to make everything feel special and meaningful. Many of us find ourselves trying to keep up with overflowing calendars while also wanting to show up fully for the people we love, all without falling apart in the process.

If you are feeling more irritable, anxious, emotionally reactive, forgetful, or depleted this time of year, you are not alone. Perhaps you are struggling with headaches, disrupted sleep, stomach issues, or feeling emotionally spent. Or maybe you are procrastinating, shutting down, or snapping at people you love.

What makes May especially difficult is that so much of the stress comes from things that are, objectively, good things. It’s important to remember that we do not need to experience a crisis, tragedy, or major setback to feel overwhelmed. Our nervous system can become overloaded from too many demands, transitions, decisions, emotions, and expectations happening all at once, even when many of those things are meaningful or joyful.

In fact, that can make stress during this season even more confusing. Many of us genuinely want to feel excited about the sunshine, the celebrations, the social opportunities, the vacations, and the milestones. When we find ourselves feeling anxious, exhausted, irritable, or emotionally depleted instead, we may feel guilty, judging ourselves for it. 

Feeling stressed during overwhelming seasons means we are human, and our minds and bodies may be asking for more care, rest, and recovery than they’ve been getting. 

Why May Can Feel So Emotionally Exhausting & Stressful

One reason May can feel so challenging is that it rarely exists in isolation. By the time we reach this point in the year, many of us have already been experiencing chronic stress for months.

Work deadlines, caregiving responsibilities, parenting demands, financial pressure, political stress, social obligations, and constant digital stimulation accumulate over time. Some of us move through the winter and early spring in “survival mode,” relying on adrenaline and productivity to get through packed schedules. 

Eventually, our nervous system starts asking for recovery. Then, May hits and instead of slowing down, life speeds up. Psychologists sometimes refer to this as cumulative stress load. Even when individual stressors seem manageable on their own, the total volume of demands can overwhelm our ability to regulate emotionally and physically. 

Transitions also require psychological energy, even positive ones. The end of a school year, a graduation, a summer schedule shift, or a child moving into a new stage of development can all activate uncertainty and emotional adjustment. This can be especially true for those with trauma histories.

For many parents, May can feel particularly relentless because children are often dysregulated during this time of year too. When routines change, sleep schedules may shift, excitement may increase. Kids may become more emotional, impulsive, clingy, or reactive just as adults are reaching their own capacity limits.

There is also a more subtle emotional layer to May that often goes unrecognized: comparison and pressure. Social media can make it feel as though everyone else is effortlessly managing busy schedules while also creating magical family memories, maintaining friendships, exercising regularly, traveling, succeeding professionally, and enjoying every moment. When we inevitably fall short of those absolutely impossible standards, we can blame ourselves instead of recognizing these unrealistic expectations.

The Pressure to “Push Through” Stress

With Summer plans just weeks away, many of us respond to May stress by trying harder. We may push through exhaustion, overcommit or ignore our own instincts about what we can actually maintain. While understandable, this approach often backfires.

When our nervous system remains activated for too long without adequate recovery, we become more emotionally reactive and less resilient. This is when small frustrations begin to feel enormous. Our patience shrinks, motivation drops, and/or relationships become strained.

Self-Care Is A Necessity When We Feel Depleted & Stressed

Ironically, we often become least compassionate with ourselves precisely when we need self-care the most. 

Some examples of self-care include: 

In overwhelming seasons, nervous systems usually need less stimulation, less perfectionism, and more recovery. Slowing down, not speeding up, is the better move.

Part of caring for ourselves during overwhelming seasons involves accepting that life is often both beautiful and difficult at the same time. Mindfulness teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn describes this tension as “the full catastrophe” of being human: joy and stress, gratitude and exhaustion, celebration and overwhelm existing together all at once.

What Actually Helps Reduce Stress?

The good news is that stress management does not have to be complicated or expensive to be effective. Research consistently shows that relatively simple, accessible practices can meaningfully reduce stress and improve emotional well-being, when practiced consistently.

One study found that both deep breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation significantly increased psychological and physiological relaxation after just twenty minutes of practice. Interestingly, the effects were comparable to guided imagery, suggesting that multiple approaches can effectively help regulate the nervous system.

Mindfulness practices also continue to show strong evidence for stress reduction. In one study of adults with anxiety, an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction program demonstrated benefits comparable to the antidepressant escitalopram on a widely used anxiety severity measure. Other research has found that even brief daily mindfulness practices can reduce stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms while improving sleep quality.

Importantly, mindfulness does not have to mean sitting perfectly still for long periods of time. For many of us, that feels unrealistic during stressful seasons. Mindfulness can simply involve paying closer attention to the present moment with less judgment. That might look like noticing our breathing while sitting outside, paying attention to physical sensations during a walk, or intentionally slowing down while drinking our coffee in the morning.

Staying Active, Even If Briefly, Can Reduce Stress

Physical movement is another well-supported stress reduction tool. Research suggests that exercise can be just as effective for stress reduction as mindfulness meditation or biofeedback interventions. And despite what social media might suggest, movement does not need to be intense to help. Gentle walks, stretching, gardening, yoga, dancing in the kitchen, or short periods of movement throughout the day can all support nervous system regulation.

Yoga in particular has demonstrated meaningful and lasting reductions in perceived stress in multiple studies. Some research has also found that yoga breathing and meditation programs significantly reduced symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression among physicians experiencing burnout.

Apps To Support Mental Health

Mobile health apps that guide breathing exercises, meditation, or muscle relaxation techniques appear to offer measurable benefits for stress reduction. We personally use Insight Timer. While no app can replace meaningful support or therapy, these tools can help us build small moments of regulation into our busy days.

One of the most important findings across the research is that no single stress-management strategy appears dramatically superior to all others. Breathing exercises, mindfulness, physical activity, yoga, and relaxation techniques all appear beneficial. In other words, the “best” self-care strategy is often the one that feels realistic, accessible, and sustainable for you.

Making May Stress More Manageable

During stressful seasons, we often assume we need to do more to feel better. In reality, many nervous systems need less. Often, what our nervous systems need most during stressful seasons is less: less pressure, less overcommitting, less perfectionism, and less constant stimulation. 

Questions To Ask Ourselves To Protect Our Mental Health 

If May has been feeling overwhelming, it may help to ask ourselves:

We do not need to make giant changes to positively impact our mental health. Rather, sometimes small adjustments create meaningful relief.

7 Ways To Protect Our Mental Health In May (& Other Stressful Times)

We’d like to recommend some simple ways to reduce stress and prioritize self care. However, please don’t read this as an invitation to do more work. Ideally, we will be working smarter, not harder, with just a couple of tweaks to our routines. 

Protect Recovery Time

Many of us schedule obligations but never intentionally schedule recovery. We can choose to intentionally create space after a long day. Even one protected evening per week with less stimulation and fewer demands can help our nervous system recalibrate.

Lower the Bar

During high-stress seasons, “good enough” is often healthier and considerably more realistic than perfection, given that perfection is an illusion anyway. 

Build in Transition Time

Unless we are intentional about it, it is common to leave very little emotional space between activities. Even five minutes between tasks to breathe, walk, stretch, sit quietly, or reset can reduce stress accumulation throughout the day.

Prioritize Sleep

Sleep is often the first thing sacrificed during busy months, despite being one of the most important factors in emotional regulation and stress resilience. 

Spend Time Outside

Research consistently shows that time in nature can support mental health and reduce stress. This does not have to mean a major outing. Sitting outside briefly, taking a walk around the block, or noticing the environment around us can help interrupt stress cycles.

Try To Reduce Comparison

If social media is increasing feelings of inadequacy or pressure, it may help to step back or limit exposure during already overwhelming periods. Comparing our normal life to someone else’s highlight reel is simply unfair. 

Stay Connected

Stress often makes us withdraw or become irritable. Gentle connection with supportive people can help regulate the nervous system and reduce feelings of isolation.

For Parents Trying to Hold Everything Together

For those of us parenting children under our roof during May, it makes sense if we feel overwhelmed. Many parents are carrying invisible labor that intensifies dramatically this time of year. We’re trying to do it all because a lot is being demanded of us. This may include coordinating schedules, managing emotions, planning summer activities, keeping up with end-of-year obligations at school, attending events and performances, and helping our children manage transitions. 

At the same time, children themselves are often more emotionally dysregulated in May. Increased excitement, disrupted routines, fatigue, and anticipation about summer can all impact their behavior.

One of the most helpful things parents can remember during stressful seasons is that perfection is not the goal. Children do not need endlessly calm, optimized parents. They benefit most from caregivers who are human, emotionally attuned, and willing to repair when stress inevitably spills over.

Sometimes the healthiest thing we can model is recognizing our own limits. 

You Do Not Have to “Win” May 

It can be tempting to approach May like something to survive perfectly. Yet, perhaps the goal is not to “win” May. Maybe this year we can set a goal to simply to move through it with more awareness, more self-compassion, and more intentional care for our nervous system.

If you find yourself struggling more than expected this time of year, you are far from alone – and we are happy to help. We invite you to reach out to our Client Care team via email, telephone, or by scheduling a brief call.