There's a mental move a lot of us learn — when something feels crushing, rise above it. Imagine the problem small against the whole landscape of your life. Zoom out until it fits in a field.
Sometimes that works. The proportions genuinely shift and you feel it in your chest.
But I've started wondering whether the helicopter view is always a reframe, or whether it can be a way of not quite arriving at the thing. There's a difference between perspective and altitude. You can stay high enough that nothing has to be faced properly.
I suspect it helps most when the problem is genuinely small and the fear has made it large. It helps least when the problem is real and close and requires being sat with rather than floated over.
When has it worked for you — actually changed something? And when has the view from up there turned out to be just a very scenic form of avoidance?