Finding Ground When Everything Feels Unsteady: Understanding Your Inner Experience During Collective Trauma

 By Aimee Prasek, PhD

Are you feeling stressed? Overwhelmed? A sense of helplessness? Irritable? Yeah, I hear you. The aim of this [too-long?] post is to provide some information and practices to help make sense of what so many of us are feeling right now and help us take some small actions to feel better. 

Here’s just a bit more context though…

The last two bedtimes at our house have been rough. Our 7-year-old has come down both nights crying and saying, "I'm scared of ICE. And I'm scared for my friends."

Our kiddo goes to school not too far from the [next-to-last]  ICE shooting. They had classroom discussions about the event as two of her classmates live in the neighborhood of the shooting. 

We continued the conversations around the dinner table both nights, had a post-dinner dance-off to shake out some stress, and still had rough bedtimes.

And it makes sense. Kids offer a more accurate metric of disconnection and distress. They haven't yet mastered the art and science of "manning up," "getting over it," or squashing their feelings. They have visibly rough bedtimes when stress, chaos, and volatility are around them.

Adults? We don't usually throw our toothpaste at the wall or kick a Barbie down the stairs while screaming, "YOU AREN'T THE BOSS OF MEEEEEEEE!"

Nah, us adults usually squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom up and brush our adult teeth for two whole minutes without stomping our feet. Then we stuff down our feelings and lay down our heads (and doomscroll to the glow of our cell phone).

The truth is that these feelings of fear and anger are real. And at the same time, those same feelings don't need to trap us. It's not a personal weakness if you're feeling "off" in ways you can't quite name, if your sleep is disrupted, if you're more irritable or numb or scattered than usual. That's your nervous system responding exactly as it's designed to during times of threat and uncertainty.

It's essential during times like this that we understand what's actually happening inside us and how we can navigate these experiences so that we can exit a cycle of stress and get back onto solid ground. Below are a smattering of common experiences and strategies to consider to help you feel better amidst the collective stress we’re facing. 

What Collective Trauma Does to Your Nervous System

When something traumatic or “bad” or stressful happens in your community, you don't have to be directly involved to be affected. This is called collective trauma or secondary trauma.  

It might seem like the brain is really bad at specificity considering this. However, it’s just more evidence that we’re wired to survive and thrive in communities. So, your brain really doesn't need to distinguish much between direct threats and threats to those around you. Both of these activate similar stress responses because both of them are equally harmful to the individual.

To quote Wendell Berry: "I believe that the community—in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures—is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction of terms"

Collective trauma can feel like: brain fog, sleep problems, appetite changes, feeling jumpy, physical tension, digestive issues, feeling either revved up or shut down.

Window of Tolerance: Psychologist Dan Siegel describes our "window of tolerance" as the zone where we can handle stress and respond in healthy ways. During collective trauma, that window gets smaller. Way smaller. And a smaller window means you can’t get a good visual of the stressor (which creates more uncertainty and fear) and it’s harder to wave for help (it’s hard to see you in that tiny window). 

If you’re encountering stressors beyond your window of tolerance, you might find yourself swinging between states of:

• Hyperarousal: Anxiety, panic, racing thoughts, anger, hypervigilance

• Hypoarousal: Numbness, disconnection, exhaustion, brain fog

The super important point here is that neither state is wrong. Both are protective responses. Your nervous system is doing the best it can in some really trying times. Additionally, the goal isn't to “stay calm” all the time. The goal is to recognize which state you're in and offer yourself what you need (be sure to catch our series on self-connection at the Joy Lab Podcast this month as we really dig into this and offer lots of resources– the series starts with episode #243).

Gaslighting and Cognitive Dissonance: When Reality Gets Weaponized

If you've felt confused, frustrated, or mentally exhausted lately, there's a good reason. When we receive conflicting and/or false information about significant events (especially from sources we're supposed to trust) it can create cognitive dissonance. And when that false information is designed to make you question your own perception of reality, that's gaslighting.

What Gaslighting Actually Is

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation where someone (or a group of someones) causes you to question your own memory, perception, or sanity. The term comes from a 1938 play called Gas Light… and it’s definitely getting its biggest audience in 2025 and 2026.

In a community context, it might look like:

• Being told what you witnessed didn't happen the way you saw it

• Having your emotional response labeled as an "overreaction"

• Being presented with “facts” that contradict reality

• Having your concerns dismissed as misunderstanding

• Being told you're too emotional or too biased to see the "truth"

The goal of gaslighting is power. It's pretty simple. Gaslighters want to take away your agency.

How This Affects You

Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort when we hold contradictory beliefs or when beliefs conflict with reality. Your brain desperately wants things to be sensible and tidy, so when information doesn’t make sense together, it works overtime (though often not rationally) to resolve the conflict.

Gaslighting ignites this process because it doesn't just present conflicting info. Gaslighting burns at your own sense of reality and challenges your perception and trust in yourself and others. 

After sessions of gaslighting, your exhausted brain goes into overdrive wondering: "Am I remembering wrong? Did I misunderstand? Am I being too emotional? Maybe I'm crazy?"

This might show up as:

• Obsessively seeking information to "prove" what you know (doomscrolling)

• Difficulty making even small decisions

• Mental fatigue or brain fog

• Questioning your own judgment

• Physical symptoms: sleep disruption, headaches, digestive issues

You're not going crazy. Your brain is working exactly as designed when faced with this one-two punch of gaslighting and cognitive dissonance. The stress comes from trying to resolve the unresolvable. You’re trying to make "what I witnessed" and "what I'm being told" to both be true. It’s exhausting.

The Freeze Response: When You Can't Make Yourself Do Anything

If you're feeling overwhelmingly "meh" and lacking motivation, you might be experiencing a freeze response. When your nervous system perceives a threat with no clear escape or if danger feels too big to fight, it may shift into a freeze response. This looks like procrastination, feeling stuck, watching events with detachment, and exhaustion.

This isn't laziness or apathy, it's actually a smart survival mechanism. The freeze response served our ancient humans well since there was no good reason to waste precious energy on something that didn’t have a solution. Today, it can feel like our worst enemy though as we watch others take action and feel shameful that we can’t muster up the same courage. But, again, this is a protective feature (not a personal failure) and once we acknowledge that, then we can work with it rather than against it.

Moving through freeze often requires gentle activation: small movements, mindful breathing, connecting with safe people, or activities that create accomplishment without overwhelming your system.

Helplessness Isn't Learned

Here's something empowering: Researchers who coined "learned helplessness" realized 50 years later that they got their theory backward. Helplessness isn't learned. Helplessness is actually our brain's default when facing overwhelming, seemingly unchangeable situations. A deep brain structure triggers this shutdown to conserve energy.

But here's the good news: control is learned. When your brain detects that your actions make a difference, your prefrontal cortex steps in and overrides the helplessness response. Neuroscientists call this the "hope circuit." Even better, this sense of agency has a cross-stressor effect—when you take action and see a positive impact in one area, you're more likely to believe your actions matter in other stressful situations too.

This doesn't mean you can control everything. It means identifying what you can influence: how you talk to yourself, who you connect with, what information you consume, how you care for your body, small acts of service, boundaries you set, and values you live by.

Each small choice reminds your nervous system: I have some agency here.

Moral Injury: When Your Values Are Challenged

VanderWeele and Wortham describe moral distress as: 

“Distress that arises because personal experience disrupts or threatens: (a) one’s sense of the goodness of oneself, of others, of institutions, or of what are understood to be higher powers, or (b) one’s beliefs or intuitions about right and wrong, or good and evil.” 

And, if that distress is repeated, then it results in a ‘moral injury.’ 

That’s a meaty definition that’s helpful to dig into (I had to re-read it many times until I thought… whoa, yeah, that’s how I’m feeling…). But to summarize, it's the psychological, social, and spiritual impact of participating in or witnessing events that contradict your deeply held values or moral beliefs.

You might be experiencing moral injury if:

• You feel shame, guilt, or disgust even though you’re not directly involved in the event

• You're questioning fundamental beliefs about safety, justice, or humanity

• You feel betrayed by institutions or authority figures you trusted

• You're struggling with a sense of meaninglessness

• You feel disconnected from your previous sense of self or purpose

This is where our self-connection work at Joy Lab can be super helpful as moral injury thrives in disconnection and can be navigated through reconnection to self, values, and community.

Grief in Disguise

“Grief is a crafty little f*cker. It sneaks up on you.” (Paul, AKA Harrison Ford from the show Shrinking).

This might just be the biggest thing draining our collective resilience. Grief isn't just about death—it's about loss. And we're dealing with a lot of collective losses: loss of a sense of safety, loss of trust in institutions, loss of a worldview that made sense, loss of a future we imagined, and loss of community cohesion.

Grief can show up as anger, numbness, exhaustion, difficulty concentrating, appetite changes, anxiety, feeling like nothing matters… and so much more (the crafty f*cker). If you're experiencing this, you're not broken and you may be grieving. There’s no quick fix here. Grief requires patience, gentleness, and the willingness to feel what you're feeling without rushing to fix it. 

We’re doing a whole big series on grief in February and March over at the Joy Lab podcast, so tune in for those episodes.

The Double Bind of Staying Informed

Many of us are caught in what's called a double bind—a situation where you feel damned if you do and damned if you don't:

• If you stay constantly informed, you overwhelm your nervous system 

• If you disconnect from the news, you feel guilty, uninformed, or like you're abandoning your values

This creates psychological stress because there's no "right" answer that feels good. Research on media consumption during traumatic events shows:

• Constant exposure to traumatic content can create symptoms similar to direct trauma exposure

• Complete disconnection can increase anxiety (the uncertainty feels worse)

The sweet spot is mindful, controlled engagement:

• Check news at specific times rather than constantly

• Choose one or two trusted sources (preferably a local newspaper that doesn't thrive on clickbait, helps anchor you in community, and that requires you to physically turn the page)

• Balance distressing content with nourishing content (cute dog videos are legit here, but also consider going for a walk and savoring nature IRL)

• Allow yourself to not know everything immediately (head to our Joy Lab Podcast ep. #162 “Getting Comfy w/ Not Knowing” for more on this)

From Co-Dysregulation to Co-Regulation

Research on "social baseline theory" suggests humans didn't evolve to regulate our nervous systems alone. Instead, we're wired to exist in connection with others as our baseline state. Our brains literally process threats differently when we're with safe others versus when we're alone.

But here's the challenge: co-regulation works both ways. Just as a calm nervous system can soothe an activated one, dysregulated nervous systems activate each other. This is co-dysregulation.

When collective stress is high, everyone's activated. You're picking up on others' stress signals, there are fewer calm nervous systems available to help regulate yours, and stress becomes contagious. This creates a feedback loop.

What This Looks Like

You might notice increased reactivity in relationships, difficulty finding comfort even with trusted folks, withdrawing despite feeling lonely or craving connection, heightened sensitivity to others' stress, household tension, or feeling alone even when surrounded by people.

This isn't anyone's fault. It's what happens when entire communities experience threats simultaneously.

The Power of Connection

Studies show that if we’re holding the hand of a trusted person amidst stress, our brain's threat response actually decreases.

This is why intentional connection matters. Even brief moments help: a 20-second hug (oxytocin!), a conversation where you feel heard, snuggling with a pet, eye contact with someone you trust, sitting quietly beside someone safe.

And you don't need someone perfectly calm. Simply connecting with someone slightly less activated than you can still help. And being honest about your state ("I'm really stressed right now and just need to be near someone") can create a deep connection and make co-regulation possible.

Your Psychological Immune System

Just like your body has an immune system for physical threats, you have a psychological immune system. The most powerful aspect of this system are the conscious skills you can build to protect your mental health and build your resilience. 

And let’s be real, your psychological immune system is working real hard lately. There’s just no way it can sit back amidst the stressors. And, like your physical immune system, it can become depleted and needs support. To help, prioritize:

• Rest that feels nourishing

• Connection with supportive people

• Meaning-making practices (e.g., make a values tattoo! We’re talking about this in our self-connection series at the Joy Lab Podcast this month)

• Savoring small wins (notice and give yourself some gratitude when you take a bit of effort to support your mental health)

• Boundaries around the media you consume

• Self-compassion

Self-Awareness and Self-Acceptance During Collective Trauma

Traditional self-awareness asks you to observe thoughts and feelings without judgment. During collective trauma, we add a layer: understanding that what you're observing is often a normal response to abnormal circumstances.

Self-awareness right now includes:

• Naming your nervous system state: Am I in fight, flight, bite, or fawn (this is a kind of people-pleasing response)? Am I above, below, or within my window of tolerance?

• Recognizing protective responses: That urge to scroll news for hours? It’s likely your brain trying to predict and prevent danger. That numbness? It might be your system trying to protect you from overwhelm.

• Tracking your capacity: What could you do yesterday that you can't do today? What small things feel manageable?

• Noticing your grief: Where are you in your grief process? What have you lost that you haven't acknowledged?

• Identifying your cognitive patterns: Are you catastrophizing? Minimizing? Stuck in all-or-nothing thinking?

This awareness isn't about fixing or changing these responses—it's about understanding them as information about what your system needs. We talked about self-awareness in our last episode of the Joy Lab Podcast (ep. 244). Head there for more.

Self-Acceptance When Everything Feels Wrong

Here's where self-acceptance gets complicated during collective trauma: How do you accept what's happening internally when what's happening externally is so messed up?

The key is understanding that self-acceptance has three distinct domains (Henry and I are talking about this next week on the podcast):

1. Acceptance of your outer situation: Something traumatic happened in your community. This reality is creating ripple effects. You don't have to accept that it's okay, instead you're accepting that it's real and happening.

2. Acceptance of your inner experience: This is where the work really is. Consider accepting some new truths:

• Your stress responses are evolutionary strategies, not failures

• Your grief is appropriate

• Your fear is a reasonable response to perceived threat

• Your anger carries information about your values

• Your numbness is protection, not weakness

• Your confusion is normal when facing cognitive dissonance

3. Acceptance of true self: Beneath all the stress responses, beneath the confusion, beneath the grief and fear—there's a part of you that hasn't been shaken. This is your authentic self or psychological core. It's where your wisest self resides. And you can access it.

We're In This Together

Ok… that was a lot of stuff. Did any of it resonate? I’m feeling a smattering of symptoms and discomfort from all the categories. If you're experiencing any of what I've described, just know you're not alone. These are shared human responses to overwhelming circumstances.

So, please know that it’s totally reasonable to throw the toothpaste at the wall, to kick a Barbie down the stairs, and to yell to these collective stressors: "YOU AREN'T THE BOSS OF MEEEEEEEE!" 

Then, take a full, deep breath and stay connected to yourself. Listen to what your body is telling you. Connect with people who support you and who help ease your nervous system. The goal isn't to make these responses go away—it's to understand them, work with them, and stay connected to yourself and others while you navigate them.

And when we take care of ourselves amidst collective stress, then we can come together to take wise, collective action. 

You can do this. We can do this.

Wishing you good bedtimes,

Aimee