How we feel about our current moment is much more in our control than we think. Below I will share an exercise to help with this.
Sure, our environment and how much chaos there is can produce a destabilizing and disorienting feeling within us.
Palestinians walking about as the threat of a bomb that could end their life is an immediate threat. They are in a true war zone and it makes sense that their body reacts as such.
But the cultural “warzone” we drum up around politics and long-term policy decisions is not the same thing. Yet if we are not careful, our biology will react as if the cultural warzone is as serious as the daily life of Palestinians right now.
This is the richness of the human experience and the reality that indeed our current situation does affect our biological entity and our mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.
Welcome to Earth.
But as the world does indeed become more chaotic, our ability to regulate our stress physiology and not have it become our baseline becomes very important.
Why do some people become so stressed out by the state of the world while others, who are also in the know, do not?
Why do some watch a video or read an article and become triggered or afraid by it while others do not?
Why do some feel this election is the biggest moment in history and are panicked about it, while others see a sense of seriousness to it but remain calm and steer clear of hyperbole, cynicism and war-like mindsets?
Many things are at play here, but the big piece I want to focus on is how much stress is built up in our system day to day, and what that means when it comes to how “on edge” we are. This greatly plays into how easily we can feel overwhelmed.
The Current Mood
First, let’s consider the mood in the US leading up to the 2024 election.
I don’t live in the US, but I have family and friends there, and I keep a good sense of what people are saying online.
Almost everyone I speak to brings up how edgy things are right now. How intense it feels. How many arguments people are getting into and how they are worried about what one side or the other will do given the election result.
Media outlets on the Left and the Right, alternative or mainstream, are all spewing hyperbolic exaggerations in favor of swaying the vote to one side or the other.
The statement I’ve heard many times over is:
“This is the most important election in US history.”
The only problem is, that statement has been said for the last 4 or 5 elections in the US. And I’m sure it was said prior as well, I just haven’t looked back to find out.
At this point, it has become empty words and marketing. A statement to get everyone to pay attention and buy into THIS ONE.
And while an argument can always be made around why NOW is the most important time, the statement is hyperbole.
Stress Makes Things Seem More Serious
From my perspective, that statement comes from the same repetitive orientation toward current events that emerges every 4 years in the US: that suddenly, it all comes down to this. Then things go back to business as usual after election fever wares off… until suddenly, predictably, it all comes down to this yet again.
If you’ve been reading my content long enough you know I feel that real and true change will not come from an election, but from a much deeper change in humanity and then how that affects our outer world. Instead, I believe this panicked orientation toward this election primarily comes from stress and our survival physiology.
The kind of stuff that primes our body and brain to go on the attack, seek out an enemy, and imagine them as something we need to stop at all costs – or else.
This is the hijacking of public consciousness. It brings us into a polarized, divisive, and stressed out state that can make us short sighted and reactionary. Prolonged, we feed this chaos back into our society and it becomes a perpetual loop.
We must consider that unless we have a very real, very immediate threat RIGHT in front of us, we do not want our stress physiology turned on. That is not how humans see or think about complex situations clearly. It’s not how humans thrive.
Sadly though, the vast majority of us are living with some level of our stress physiology turned on almost all the time. This is nervous system dysregulation – it’s where the nervous system subconsciously perceives immediate threat even when it’s not there. Simply put, we have become overly oriented towards being in survival.
I define this as humanity’s current predicament. All the rush, anxiety, go, go, go, worry, fear, panic, polarization, hopelessness, cynicism, inability to focus etc. of our modern world thrives on a baseline of some level of nervous system dysregulation.
We feel chaotic and we create more chaos. The more we feel it inside, the more we create it and see it in our world.
While some level of chaos in our world is truly happening, the way we orient to it truly matters in how much it affects us, how we make sense of it, and what we do about it.
Before you think: “But wait, who gets elected matters and that is an immediate threat. Danger is REAL down the line!”
If you feel that way, that’s OK for now, but this “threat” is not the equivalent of a tiger chasing you RIGHT NOW. In the tiger situation, you have control over how you get out of that situation, defend yourself, or be eaten. It’s immediate.
With an election or other current event, you have no immediate control. No matter how you cut it, the influence each of us has on worldly events has to be held realistically. This means holding and acknowledging where we do have control, how immediate it is, and how that shapes the way we orient to an event.
Once we know it’s not truly immediate, we can settle and save ourselves from wasting a boatload of our well-being and energy trying to control something we truly don’t have much control over. All while having a settled mind and body to engage wisely with what we might do next.
What we want is to be able to address short and long term social upheaval from a calm, centered and wise mind/body – not one in survival. We want to also be able to understand what we truly have control over and what we don’t and settle into our physiology accordingly.
The challenge is, the way culture, media, social media, and those favorite influencers orient toward our current moment is often urging us into more survival if we are not conscious of steering clear of it. They do this because the collective baseline is that of survival which shows up as frequent: angstiness, hopelessness, frustration, lethargy, impatience, worry, exaggeration, polarization, divisiveness etc.
What I describe above feels normal to most people. “That’s not survival, that’s life.” Hence why I believe humanity’s current predicament is that nerous system dysregulation is widespread and seen as normal.
We don’t have great public knowledge about how our physiology works, what stored survival stress does to our health, how it shapes our emotions and thinking, and how to properly mitigate stress as it builds in our system daily.
Below, I share a quick practical exercise you can use to destress in real time. That is to say, when you feel the go, go, go of life, the edginess or right now, the nervousness of what’s happening, the fear or anger or judgement that inevitably arises right now, try out the simple exercise and watch how your body and physiology shifts.
This moment does not need to feel as stressful as it does for most people.
Destressing In Realtime
This exercise is meant to bring us back to the present moment and settle our stress physiology. It helps to break what can be mental patterns where we get stuck in thinking or orienting toward future events that cause us stress.
This exercise is meant to take 60 seconds to 3 or 4 or even 5 minutes depending on how you want to explore it. Go slow with it and don’t underestimate its simplicity. It plays on various physiological cues that orient us back to the true present moment powerfully.
As you do this, hold the intention that this exercise brings you back to the moment. That it tells your nervous system, brainstem, amygdala, and adrenal glands (what we can casually call “stress organs”) to take a little pause. Settle just a little.
- Pause and feel your feet on the ground. Notice the way the ground supports you and makes contact with your feet.
- While you notice your feet, also bring attention to your breath. Without changing or controlling it, just allow your breath to move in and out, witnessing it for a few moments. Gently oscillate back to noticing your feet on the ground from time to time, perhaps spending 10 seconds or so focused on each.
- Keeping awareness of your feet and breathing in the picture loosely, bring your hands together and feel them. Get curious about how they feel and continue to slowly and gently oscillate attention between your hands, feet and breath. Perhaps spending 10 seconds focused on each.
- Finally, notice your pelvis and lower body – bring it into the mix with the others. Feel the strength and support of your lower body and how it can bring us even a small sense of power. Continue with an open awareness of the various parts above.
Anyway, that’s it! Let me know how it goes. You can try it right now and even just notice what changes in your physiology.
