If you're overwhelmed the overwhelm it self may stop you being able to take action to ease the overwhelm - which is why it's useful to remember just like the tide that overwhelm ebbs and flows.

That is, when overwhelm is like high tide it's all you can do to cope with the sheer volume of water, when it's like low tide you're in a much better place to take action to get off the beach and away from the sea.

How can you pay attention to the ebb and flow or the high or low tide of your overwhelm?

Easing overwhelm & impatience

Other Landscaping Your Life (LYL) posts and videos using nature and metaphor to help you see a situation you're struggling with recently written on easing overwhelm include:

• Why overwhelm isn't a helpful word to use because it restricts solutions emerging
• What to do if you're feeling like a fish out of water (a metaphorical exploration of the idiom for insight)
• If your overwhelm was like winter what solutions might there be (I particularly love the idea of swapping to using winter tyres to keep us safe on the roads as a reminder to swap to saying no more to keep myself safe from the overwhelm)
• If your overwhelm was like a cup of tea what perspective emerges (I particulalry love the invitation to tidy my tea cupboard and throw out the teas past their use by date as a reminder to do the same with my to-do list)
• 3 suggestions when you're feeling overwhelmed - insight from the archives
• If the overwhelm feels like you can't see the wood for the trees stop planting more trees

I've covered in a seperate post why, after 25 years of using metaphor as a creative coaching tool, that I believe not talking about your problem and using metaphor instead is a fabulous method for getting insight to help you move from overwhelmed to calm, from stuck to unstuck, or from not knowing to knowing what to do.

And aligned with what might be fuelling the overwhelm, here's some posts/videos on the negative impact of impatience that often doesn't serve us making progress towards our goals

• How is impatience setting you back?
• What a Heron can teach us about patience, trust and not giving up
• Letting go of impatience
• Stop chasing the tide - a poetic exploration of releasing the impatience

What action can you take to ease your overwhelm?

Other tools to ease overwhelm

Other solutions in my creative coaching and problem solving LANDSCAPE toolkit that might also help ease the overwhelm include:

• Using my prescription for wellbeing template
• Drawing your overwhelm as a mountain
• Taking your overwhelm on a Landscaping Your Life walk and use nature as your coach
• Using patterns in nature as a metaphor
• Listening to poetry such as this poem entitled 'pushing the same boulder up the same hill'
• Drawing a line in the sand (yes literally as you'll see me demonstrate)
• Stop planting more trees - especially if you can't see the wood for the trees
• Do something different everyday (ideally for 28 days)

My name is Alison Smith and for 25 years I’ve used nature and metaphor to help you see the wood for the trees, get out of the rut, stop going round in circles, turn a corner and shift from not knowing to knowing what to do.

There’s posts, poems, blogs, Landscaping Your Life YouTube channel, Landscaping Your Life with Alison smith podcast episodes (my own and as a guest), a Landscaping Your Life newsletter, ezine, pdfs (there’s even one on helping you see the wood for the trees), two books (Can't see the wood for the trees - landscaping your life to get back on track and Your Prescription for Wellbeing Journal) all sharing insight to help you when you’re overwhelmed, stuck or lost.