Ever feel overwhelmed? (I know, silly question.)

Ever feel stuck because you know you have all these things to do, and they’re all important, and they all have to get done, and you’re not sure where to start because doing one thing means not doing another? Do you find people’s advice to “just prioritize” really unhelpful because they’re ALL priorities?! This life challenge is all the more frustrating for a survivor of narcissistic abuse who was molded from the jump to people-please and focus on doing for others, nearly always at their own expense. So often, instead of successfully attending to the things we need to do in any satisfactory way, we end up in task paralysis mode. It’s even worse when priorities are recurring. It’s a revolving list where getting something done means you can check it off, but it doesn’t leave the list, it just moves down a few places until you need to do it again.

Honestly, it reminds me of a Ferris wheel, and this metaphor has turned out to be surprisingly useful. Think of yourself like the operator of the Ferris wheel. All the carts on the Ferris wheel are where you house each of your priorities, and you’re the one in control of: how fast the Ferris wheel goes; how many carts you put on the ride and what you put in them; which priorities you allow off their carts so you can take care of them at any given point; and, how often you open each cart to address that priority (some priorities need tending to more frequently than others).

You cannot run the Ferris wheel too fast, or it will be too unsafe and priorities will fall out everywhere and nothing will get done well. You cannot overfill the Ferris wheel past capacity, either, for those same reasons. All priorities will have their time for tackling, but you cannot do it all at once, you can’t let them all off the Ferris wheel at the same time; they’ll all crowd into each other and overwhelm you. They have to wait and take turns, and sometimes they don’t get to have their turn when you anticipated. Sometimes they have to go around for another cycle until you are ready for them.

It’s not that anything is more, or less, important than anything else. It’s all important. Rather, it’s a matter of what you, the ride operator, are able to manage with the participants of your Ferris wheel within a given day, or week (or whatever your timeline looks like).

Here’s a more concrete example of what I mean; here’s my Ferris wheel. I have a five year old and a dog and a husband, and a house to take care of, and I teach full time, plus I teach Sunday school and often I teach Tuesday nights as well. I’m a writer and artist, and those creative outlets are crucial for maintaining my mental health. I love to read. I have weekly therapy sessions. I also have chronic pain and health challenges which tend to impede my ability to manage everything in my life, though I fight like hell to resist that reality. I am starting to realize that I need to actively build rest time into my lifestyle, to literally let my body recuperate and recharge so I have enough energy to get things done. But, what things, right? All the things? That’s not sustainable anymore (admittedly it probably never was).

So, my Ferris wheel has my daughter and dog in a cart, my husband in another; my therapy appointments, managing my health needs, managing the house (dishes, putting away laundry, that kind of thing), school stuff, creative outlets, and now “rest time” which I’m identifying as a priority for the first time in my life, are each in their own carts. They’re all important! They’re all priorities! But I cannot contend with all of them at once all of the time. I’ve tried, it hasn’t gone well. I am learning how to better balance it all so my Ferris wheel doesn’t explode or fall over and cause a metric fuckton of damage to me or those around me. Now, I know that I have a weekly commitment to a therapy session, so that is a cart for which I stop the wheel consistently. School stuff also is something that gets on and off the ride frequently, with some level of regularity in terms of timing. One thing the ride will stop for at any given point, regardless of routine, is my daughter (and to a very slightly less degree, the dog as well). They’re dependent on me and have needs I have to meet, full stop.

The other priorities riding along on my Ferris wheel — again, no less important! — may at times ride a few more times around than those other priorities. The key is to make sure that all priorities do have their turn for attention, even if they don’t all get that attention at the same frequency. And, most importantly of all, they cannot all get their attention simultaneously. That’s not how the ride operates. It would cause the wheel to collapse which is literally my worst nightmare about Ferris wheels and why I do not ride on them!

Now, things will happen in life that will impact the way you operate your Ferris wheel. That doesn’t mean the priorities stop getting tended to; it just means that you adjust how you do it. For example, over the summer I’ve had my therapy sessions in the morning, but once the school year starts again, that will no longer work for my schedule. I am not going to stop prioritizing therapy because of this, it doesn’t get permanently removed from the ride. This just means that I will change the time of my appointments to a time that’s more suitable for what my weekly life will look like then.

My Ferris wheel does feel a little unbalanced lately, so I am working on adjusting things to improve that situation. Like I said, accepting that I need to legitimately let myself rest is a huge step for me. Both an intense sinus infection and a broken big toe have forced me to rest a lot this past week and a half or so, in a way I so rarely do, and it’s given me a bit of a reckoning about what my body needs — spoiler alert, it’s not categorical denial of my limitations! Who’da thunk?!

A Ferris Wheel of Priorities gives you the opportunity to organize your priorities evenly, acknowledge that they all matter, and assure that they will all be attended to at the right time for the operator (you) to do so. I invite you to be that Ferris wheel operator. Go ahead. Admit all your priorities onto the little carts, tell them to step on up and keep their hands and feet inside the cart at all times, fasten their seatbelts…and enjoy the ride.