sarah peyton presents
From Powerlessness to Agency: Working with Overwhelm
Are you feeling worried, sad, angry, helpless, and underwater about current events? Join Sarah Peyton for an eight week class exploring how to work with overwhelm in order to re-find our agency in a fast-moving world.
Are you numb with horror about everything that is happening politically in the United States and elsewhere? Are you overwhelmed by the rise of the right wing throughout the world? Do you long for a clear path forward but have no idea what that could possibly be? Are you so busy trying to survive physically that you don’t even have enough bandwidth to care for your emotions?
Taking in too much makes us powerless and immobilizes us. It stops us from being able to differentiate, to discern, to decide. We are stopped in our tracks, we are frozen. And if we think that we are supposed to be digesting everything that’s going on, then all of our effort is spent on trying to metabolize the un-metabolizable instead of being able to remain fluid and responsive and in touch with who we are.
These last weeks, since the 20th of January, have been a case study in how immobilized I, Sarah Peyton, can become with overwhelm. I have been waking up at three o’clock in the morning most nights in a worry for everyone who has been made vulnerable by the changes that are happening in the United States and around the world. I worry about each group in turn: folks who are not white, folks who are not heterosexual, folks who are not cis-gendered, folks who are losing their job, folks who are losing their medical care, folks who are not citizens. I’ve been lying in bed wide-eyed, devising complete fantastical solutions that include me running for office and becoming the president myself.
It has been like trying to drink out of a firehose, and the level of harm being done in my perception is immeasurable and difficult to recover from. I’ve been in the emergency room twice, and am struggling daily with the effects of such extreme insomnia and anxiety.
Mostly this is happening because of my longing to be able to have agency in a difficult time, to be able to help people that I care about, and because there’s a way that I wish that I got to be god, or the divine, and make things happen the way I want to happen. For the planet to be safe, for people to be safe and fed, for us to be maximizing the beauty of the human potential rather than losing everything to the greed of people who already have more than they could ever need.
So the problem here is that I am in protest of how the world is moving. I am in an internal battle with reality. When I ask myself, What is mine to do? The answer is everything.
This is, as I said, a case study in overwhelm.
And so, how do I bring everything I know about neuroscience and resonance to this dilemma, in order to make things more livable for myself and let me have access to my deep love and my gallows humor and my sense of right-sized agency?
There are two very important elements to becoming the right size again, in the face of history as it is evolving. One of these is the surprising need to have a healthy disgust circuit. A circuit that not only tells me that I don’t like what’s happening morally, but that also tells me when I’ve had too much bad news and too much thinking about things I cannot control.
The second surprising thing that needs to happen, is that I need to come into a good relationship with my desire to be god, or the divine. And to find out whether this is really what the universe wants for me, or if the universe is just fine with me being my own size. This is called the false bodhisattva vow work. Both of these pieces of work return us to our deep love and our gallows humor. This is the work that we will be doing in this class.
By awakening the right hemisphere and bringing resonance to the brain, we will be able to move from being tumbled around in a tsunami to being able to safely get to high ground and take a look around and decide, from there, what to do.
In our most recent community-wide survey of what classes the community wanted us to teach, this class was the clear winner. Nearly every single person who responded to the survey put this course as their number one choice for what would be meaningful for them to explore. In response to this, we’ve changed our events calendar in order to get this class on the calendar as quickly as possible.
If you are similarly struggling right now with the devastating impacts of immobilization, I encourage you to join this course. Together, we will find our right size, high ground, and the delicious feeling of agency that we are so deeply needing, in order to be resourced right now.
This 8-week class series meets each Tuesday morning from April 29 – June 24, 2025
We will meet online from 10:30 AM-11:55 AM PDT | 1:30 PM EDT | 5:30 PM GMT (convert to your time zone here)
Where?
The course will meet via zoom. We welcome participants from all time zones who wish to learn asynchronously for some or all of the sessions. Recordings and visuals will be made available to those who are registered for the live program (typically available within 72 hours of the live session).
When?
This 8-week course runs from April 29 – June 24, 2025, skipping May 20, with classes meeting once a week on Tuesday morning from 10:30 PM – 11:55 AM Pacific Time (To convert to your time zone, please click here)
What You'll Learn Each Week:
Week 1: April 29, 2025 – The Surprising Importance of a Healthy Disgust Circuit
Week 2: May 6, 2025 – Releasing Contracts to Take in Too Much
Week 3: May 13, 2025 – Felt Sense Time Travels for our Powerless and Dissociated Selves
Week 4: May 27, 2025 – Disentangling Agency from Doing Harm
Week 5: June 3, 2025 – Agency and Relationality: Making Agency Less Instrumental
Week 6: June 10, 2025 – Relieving Transgenerational Powerlessness
Week 7: June 17, 2025 – Stepping Away from Overwhelm and Back Into Our Bodies
Week 8: June 24, 2025 – Celebrating Our True Agency
**Skipping May 20, 2025
Who Is This Course For?
This course is for anyone who has ever felt frozen by the weight of too much—too much information, too much suffering, too many decisions, too much to hold. When we take in more than we can metabolize, we lose our ability to discern, to act, to stay connected to ourselves. This course is designed for those who long to move from immobilization to agency, from powerlessness to choice.
If you find yourself lying awake at night, consumed by worry for others, overwhelmed by injustice, or longing to make a difference but unsure how, this course is for you. If you’ve ever felt stuck in a battle with reality—wishing things were different but unsure how to engage without drowning in the enormity of it all—this course offers a path forward.
Through this learning and exploration, you’ll discover ways to stay fluid and responsive, to remain connected to yourself even in the face of overwhelm, and to reclaim a sense of agency in a world that often feels unmanageable.
This Course Includes Resonant Assistant Support
Get assistant support during classes – experience resonant support from experienced practitioners when you need it during class times. Often, this work can have unexpected depth and touch on deeply held subconscious awareness and pain. Getting support when we need it most helps participants to integrate, regulate, and have a felt experience of the transformative power of resonance.
Cost
Early bird price: $270
Regular price: $300
Some partial scholarships may be available for this course. Please write to [email protected] after April 8, 2025 to inquire.
Continuing Education (CE) Credits
We are delighted to offer 11 CE hours for this course for licensed psychologists, social workers and counselors in the state of Illinois* ($55 additional fee). Per state regulations, as close to 100% live attendance as possible (or watching the recordings, with verification email) is required to receive CEs. Thank you, and we appreciate you for planning accordingly if you wish to receive CEs.
Please note our new sponsor organization: CEs are being sponsored by Centered Therapy Chicago (CTC), an accredited CE provider by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (Lic #268000085). CTC is able to provide CEs to licensed psychologists, social workers (LSWs and LCSWs), and counselors (LPCs and LCPCs) in the state of Illinois.
*For licensed professionals outside of the state of Illinois, it is your responsibility to inquire if our courses comply with the criteria set forth by your state licensing board.
Please Note:
- Your tuition payment is non-refundable (but it is transferable).
- This course will be recorded for those who want to learn asynchronously for some or all sessions.
- This work is not therapy and is not a substitute for therapy. If you have a sense that you would be destabilized by yourself or others speaking about difficult events, then this course may not be for you. While we hope that the processes and information that we share can be of use in your journey, we do not have the resources to support extreme psychological difficulties.
Register
From Powerlessness to Agency: Working with Overwhelm
$300.00
*PLEASE NOTE:
- Your tuition payment is non-refundable (but it is transferable).
- This course will be recorded for those who want to learn asynchronously for some or all sessions.
- This work is not therapy and is not a substitute for therapy. If you have a sense that you would be destabilized by yourself or others speaking about difficult events, then this course may not be for you. While we hope that the processes and information that we share can be of use in your journey, we do not have the resources to support extreme psychological difficulties.
About the Instructor
Sarah Peyton, Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication and neuroscience educator, integrates brain science and the use of resonant language to heal personal and collective trauma with exquisite gentleness.
Sarah is a sought-after expert who brings neuroscience expertise together with depth work, self-compassion, and the transformative potential of language. She works with audiences internationally to create a compassionate understanding of the effects of relational trauma on the brain, and teaches people how words change and heal us.
Sarah teaches and lectures internationally and is the author of four books on relational neuroscience and self-compassion: Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing, the companion Your Resonant Self Workbook: From Self-sabotage to Self-care, and Affirmations for Turbulent Times: Resonant Words to Soothe Body and Mind, and The Antiracist Heart: A Self-Compassion and Activism Handbook, co-authored alongside Roxy Manning, PhD.
