How To Keep Living When The World Is Burning
Our country feels heavy right now.
Assassinations, mass detainings, school shootings, rising polarization, and social media that floods us with it all in real time.
Our brains and bodies are not built to metabolize this constant stream of threat and then go to desk jobs as if nothing is happening. And yet, our culture gives us little space to feel, grieve, or process what we’re carrying (and how we’re carrying it) in order to move forward.
(And if you’re reading this wondering how moving forward is even possible right now as long as xyz exists, then I encourage you to keep reading.)
If you have been feeling anxious, fearful, rageful, or powerless, you’re not alone. When we go through too much too fast, we contract. Our work is not to get rid of the anxiety, fear, rage, or powerlessness. It’s to have more space in our bodies to be able to feel them so that we can move forward.
And we must move forward. It’s our human nature.
In order to do that, here is the paradox I want to name:
The Paradox
Danger and safety can and do co-exist. Our survival depends on us being able to orient to both— not just even during times of threat or activation, but especially.
Yes, danger exists right now. But so does safety, pleasure, and connection. And our nervous systems require safety, pleasure, and connection in order to survive and resist. History shows us this again and again. The impulse towards life has always existed alongside danger, and it is this very impulse that has carried humanity through.
We can both stay aware of danger and orient towards what sustains us. In fact, we must. And luckily, we were made to do just this. This is not weakness or denial of threat or wrong doing— it is honoring the essence of our humanity.
Even in writing this, I notice my own freeze response creeping in: I’ve been procrastinating. And when I do sit down to write, I type and delete. And underneath that freeze is the activation: What if I say something wrong? What if I’m misunderstood? What if I make people angry? What if it doesn’t matter? My body tightens. I feel the pull of paralysis. And yet I have a choice: to collapse into that sense of powerlessness, or to anchor into something that makes me feel just 1% safer, enough to move through freeze and keep writing.
This is the paradox in action.
The Collective Trauma
I do want to name my position of privilege in even being able to reflect and write this piece. And I want to acknowledge that each person reading this is impacted in a different way and to a different degree by today’s current events.
Still, what’s true for all of us is this:
There is collective trauma right now. So if you have been feeling anxious, fearful, rageful, or powerless, I want to give you some language for how your body might be experiencing this trauma:
For some, the weight of current events registers as shock trauma—the overwhelm of something unexpected, too much too fast. Shock can leave us disoriented, frozen, and unable to process what just happened.
For others, it lands as horror trauma—the unbearable knowing that human beings can do devastating things to one another. Horror rattles our core beliefs about humanity and the world. We can feel vengeful, frightened, or shameful.
And for many, it evokes inescapable attack trauma—the sense that danger doesn’t just “exist” but is imminent and inescapable. This lives in the body as hypervigilance, bracing, and never feeling fully safe, or, powerlessness, collapse, and defeat.
Our responses to these types of trauma are not flaws. They are intelligent ways of survival wired into our biology.
How & Why We Keep Living
But our humanity does not just stop at survival. Just as deeply as we are wired to endure, we are wired to connect, to seek safety, to reach for repair, to feel joy, and to make meaning.
Even in times of war, people still fall in love. Even in times of illness, people still celebrate birthdays. And even in uncertain and unprecedented times, children still play.
In writing this, I am reminded of Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, who wrote in his memoir of his time in a concentration camp of the small, ordinary ways people preserved their humanity and oriented towards safety and connection even in the most dehumanizing conditions: a joke shared, a memory of a loved one, pausing to notice a sunset. He observed that meaning and dignity are not destroyed by suffering but are in fact, the very things that can never be taken away from us.
What’s happening in our communities and around the world is awful. But orienting toward safety, pleasure, and connection matters.
Why not just keep up the fight? or collapse into powerlessness? Why bother orienting towards safety and connection when the world truly is dangerous and some people truly are evil?
Because to live only in vigilance is to let trauma write the whole story. Because safety is what restores the capacity to grieve and resist without burning out. Because joy and meaning are acts of quiet defiance. And because when we claim them, we preserve our dignity and our humanity, and we pass on resilience to those who come after us.
Because it is human nature to do so.
6 ways to build capacity & create safety in times of threat:
Orient – Notice 3 things in your environment that are neutral or pleasant.
Pendulate – Oscillate between activation and a resource (e.g., feel the tightness in chest → feel your feet on the ground).
Co-regulate – Call a friend, hug your child, or sit near someone safe.
Allow joy – Do something playful or nourishing, even in dark times.
Set boundaries – Limit doomscrolling, curate when and how you engage with news.
Ritualize safety – Daily practices (tea, prayer, movement, walks) that signal to your nervous system: “I am here, I am alive.”
