Certain aspects of the disclosure relate generally to uplink flow control of wireless devices for mitigation of overload issues. A user equipment (UE) may reduce an average transmit power for the uplink channel based on whether an overload metric (e.g., temperature metric) exceeds a threshold value. The UE may perform duty cycling for an uplink control channel when an overactive uplink control channel is a dominating factor in a thermal issue. The UE may further reduce a maximum power transmit limit (MTPL) for one or more uplink channels, such as physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) and physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH).