When the World is Too Much

There are seasons when the collective grief arrives faster than we can metabolize it.

Names stack up. Stories blur together. Headlines press against the chest like a held breath that never quite releases.

And it isn’t the tidy kind of hard.
Not the “I need a better planner” hard.

It’s the bone-deep, nervous-system-wide exhaustion that makes your body feel like it’s been bracing for impact for days. The kind of weight that has you scrolling searching for one sentence that might soften the blow.

 

If you’re here, I know something about you.
You’re trying to live inside this world without losing your tenderness.
Your discernment.
Your sovereignty.

This isn’t about bypassing the pain.
It’s about learning how to stay with yourself while it’s happening.

So consider this a soft landing.
A velvet-edged survival guide.
Something to save, return to, tuck into the back of your journal like a whispered incantation.

Because we’re going to need practices like this again.
And again.

First, a truth your body wants you to remember

When you’re activated, overwhelmed, or spiraling…

Your body is not asking for more information.

It’s asking for safety.

And the modern world is exquisitely designed to deny it that. The endless updates. The outrage cycles. The illusion that if you just read one more post, one more thread, one more breaking alert, you’ll finally feel prepared.

But your nervous system does not speak information.

It speaks rhythm.
Breath.
Hormones.
Muscular tension/relaxation.
Rest.

So if you’re going to survive this era with your softness intact, you have to learn how to speak back to it in its own language.

Here are a few ways to begin.

1. Choose to be informed — without being immersed

There is a moment when information stops being helpful and starts being harmful.

Once you understand what’s happening, continuing to scroll doesn’t soothe your system. It inflames it. Your mind starts building a case against reality while your body is sounding every internal alarm:

We are not safe. What should we do? Run? Hide?

And the algorithm, ever devoted, responds:

Here are more threats, and more, and more.

So try something radically self-honoring:

Decide your enough.

Read the update.
Breathe.
Close the app.

You are allowed to care deeply without destroying yourself in the process.
You are allowed to stay awake and regulated.

And if you find your hand reaching for your phone again and again, let’s be clear; that’s not a character flaw. That’s a nervous system searching for relief with the only tool it has access to.

Which leads us to…

2. Give your mind a soft place to land

When your brain is replaying images, stories, fears; logic won’t interrupt the loop.

But repetition can.

Simple, low-stakes, visually absorbing activities offer your system an off-ramp. They give your mind something gentle to hold while your body exhales.

Play a game.
Color.

Wash dishes slowly, like you’re washing the “ick” out of your own energy field.

 

Minutes are enough.
No productivity required.
No insight necessary.

This isn’t avoidance.
It’s regulation.

3. Feed your body like it matters (because it does)

Overwhelm turns even the most capable humans into wandering spirits in their own kitchens.

So let this be your permission slip:

The simplest nourishment is sacred.

Not the perfect meal.
Not the optimized plan.

Just something warm, familiar, anchoring.

Soup.
Eggs on toast.
Pasta with oil and garlic.


Familiar foods are grounding because your body recognizes them. They carry memory. They whisper, You’ve survived before.

Eat what you can.
Drink water like a small devotion to your future self.

Stability, at its core, is physiological.

4. Let the emotion move. Softness still has teeth.

You cannot think your way out of activation.

Feelings leave the body through the body.

So move.

Shake.
Stomp.
Dance like you’re letting an old timeline burn off your skin.

Put on music that makes your chest crack open. Sing loudly. Let your voice tremble or roar. Cry if it comes.

This isn’t drama.
This is intelligence.

This is frequency medicine.

 

Softness is not passivity.
Softness is resilience that knows how to circulate energy instead of storing it.

5. Do one thing that restores your sense of agency

Helplessness is accelerant.

So choose a single, tangible act that reminds your body you are not powerless.

Check on someone.
Give what you can.
Offer help where it’s needed.
Clean something.
Create something.

One action won’t fix everything.
But it will shift you.

And that shift matters.

One thing, repeated, is how nervous systems recover.
One thing, repeated, is how hope stays alive.

Call To Action

My Mentor's request is this – the same one I give myself when the world is burning:



This is not aesthetic self-care.
This is survival.

Because systems built on chaos rely on your exhaustion. On your numbness. On your disappearance.

So don’t give them that victory.

You don’t have to carry the world in your body.
You don’t have to be endlessly optimistic.
You don’t have to get it right.

You only have to keep choosing yourself in small, quiet, powerful ways.

If today is heavy, choose one practice.
Just one.

And if all you can do is breathe and keep reading?

That counts.



You are still here.
And that matters more than you know.



Until Next Time...