Your Nervous System Needs a Plan Right Now

So I made you one.

I can imagine that if you’ve been paying attention to <waves around at everything>, you’re feeling anxious, angry, numb, exhausted, on edge, and emotionally over stimulated to the max.

I am here to hold your hand as a therapist when I tell you that you are having a normal reaction to a completely abnormal situation. Meaning, that this current era of history that we’re living through is chaotic, unpredictable, confusing, and heartbreaking.

Your entire nervous system is responding to social unrest, perceived and real threats, chronic uncertainty, and political instability. No one’s nervous system is strong enough to come out of that unscathed and every one is going to need to take a few beats to try and make sense of all of it.

However, I do have a bit of a hot take:

Just because it’s overwhelming to take care of ourselves and our nervous systems right now does not excuse us from not trying. In fact, I believe that it is IMPERATIVE that we individually be figuring out how to care for ourselves right now.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to go live on Substack with Amanda Nelson (@amandasmildtakes) and what I said then, I am going to say again to you now:

Now, more than ever, we need people who are WELL. ‘Well’ meaning, people who know how to care for themselves, have an understanding of their values and how to live them, have a stable community that they are apart of, have a sense of resonsibility to the greater good, and have a desire to make the world a better place for all of their neighbors, known and unknown, as opposed to a world that benefits 7 rich white dudes.

When we get to the other side of this (which I firmly believe that we somehow will), we are going to need people who are stable and cognizant of the work that needs to be done to dig ourselves out from under this disaster. And I believe that you and I are firmly capable of doing that.

So! With that said, I understand that that comes across as a tallllll order given everything that has happened in the last week, let alone the last year, and quite frankly since a human Cheeto came down an escalator in 2015.

So I am going to lay out some real, genuine, can be used in real life coping strategies that you can use to be well while we ride out this storm. These are strategies that I am actively living and they have helped immensely.

Here’s the list:

Stop Minimizing Your Reaction

If you feel overwhelmed, it’s because you’re overwhelmed. We don’t need to judge it, we need to sit with it and figure out what it’s telling us.

When you’re feeling emotionally flooded, your body starts doing exactly what it’s designed to do when it perceives danger or instability: it utilizes anxiety, anger, numbness, and exhaustion to give warning signals that danger is around. And each of these feelings are all normal responses to prolonged stress.

So, give yourself permission to feel what you’re feeling, even just for a few minutes. Let yourself be human. Cry, scream into a pillow, zone out, yell at the sky, whatever you need to do to actually channel the emotion to the external.

Then set a boundary with the feeling. Not to suppress it, but to prevent it from taking over your entire day. Feel it, name it, and then choose one small action that helps you re-anchor. Allow yourself time to be nice to yourself while you’re riding the emotional wave.

And remember, the goal isn’t to eliminate emotion because emotion is health and learning how to experience it is a healthy skill. It’s to prevent emotional flooding, which is what causes us to feel paralyzed and trapped in fear.

Self-Care Means Going Back to the Basics

If you’re feeling flooded, your best coping strategy is not another scroll through thousands of opinion pieces or putting together another list of things you “should” be doing.

It’s going back to the basics:

• sleep

• food

• water

• movement

• sunlight

This isn’t glamorous, but it’s foundational. You are essentially a plant and need to be cared for as such from time to time.

You cannot think clearly, make good decisions, or engage meaningfully from a disregulated body. Regulation comes first. Action comes second. Always and forever.

Create Information Boundaries

Being informed is not the same thing as being inundated.

Doomscrolling creates a constant adrenaline loop that your nervous system cannot sustain. It keeps your body in a near-permanent state of fight-or-flight.

Try this instead:

• choose one or two trusted sources

• set limits on how often you check the news

• read the news more often than you watch it

Less stimulation. More discernment. There is a point where you are no longer retaining new information or news, you are simply bringing in peoples opinions and interpretations of what is going on. And that has never lead to anything productive, ever. So put the phone down and take a deep breath.

Stop Arguing Online

No one’s mind has ever been changed in the comments. Not once. Not in the history of the internet.

Online arguments aren’t activism, they’re emotional self-harm disguised as righteousness.

Save your energy. Protect your nervous system. Scroll past the rage bait.

There are better places for your care and your effort.

That’s all I will say about that.

Pick Your Lane (yes, you, you little perfectionist)

Part of what’s stressing you out is the belief that you should be able to fix everything immediately. You want all of this wrapped up in a bow so that you can give your nervous system the all clear.

Unfortunately, you can’t. And that doesn’t mean you don’t care. We didn’t get here in a day and we’re absolutely not getting out of it in a day either.

With that said, choose a lane:

• mutual aid

• organizing

• education

• donating

• community support

• voting strategy

What are your values? What are your strengths? What do you care about? What is directly impacting you and your family? Allow yourself space to be a human with limited energy and instead laser focus on something you can actually impact. Focused consistency will always outperform scattered urgency every single day of the week.

Build a Grounding Ritual

When the world feels out of sorts, routines give you a place to land.

You don’t need a full life overhaul. You need a few reliable anchors.

Pick two or three:

• a morning routine

• a daily walk

• journaling or a spiritual practice

• an intentional evening shutdown

And then do your best to commit to following through on them at least once per day. Small rituals create safety in the body and safety creates capacity.

Honor the Grief

A lot of what people are feeling right now isn’t just stress—it’s grief. We are being inundated with devastating information on a daily basis. We are grieving for things like:

• Grief for lost safety.

• Grief for broken trust.

• Grief for futures that no longer feel guaranteed.

• Grief for our neighbors and strangers.

• Grief for watching people lose their lives on a phone screen.

Grief is devastating, no matter how its experienced, and it often needs space, expression, and people to witness it. You don’t need to rush it or reframe it away. You need to let it move through you and honor your humanity.

Be Around People (even when it takes effort)

Isolation makes fear louder.

Connection doesn’t require deep conversation or emotional processing every time. Sometimes it just means being in the same room, sharing a meal, or taking a walk with someone who knows you.

Text a friend.
Call someone you trust.
Join something local.

Let your community carry some of the weight with you.

Rest on Purpose

Honestly, the ‘I don’t know how to rest’ narrative is starting to annoy me. At some point, you are going to need to challenge your beliefs about rest. It will not get easier to do, so it’s time to buckle down and make it happen.

You are not weak because you need it.
You are not selfish for taking it.

Constant overwhelm doesn’t make you more useful, it makes you resentful, reactive, and depleted. If you’re always saying yes, always busy, always stretched thin, the resentment you feel isn’t evidence of how much you care. It’s evidence that something needs to change. And lashing out at people because you feel overwhelmed due to taking on too much is a YOU problem.

Pull back. Re-evaluate. Find moments to pause.

You, and the people around you, will be better for it. And you will find that you are able to actually be productive.

Final Thought

As a student of history, this moment is our historical moment. Multiple issues are converging into one mass of problems that need our immeidate attention. It is a moment that we will be asked by people not yet born ‘what did you do?’ ‘what was it like?’ ‘how did you feel?’ This moment requires steadiness, not urgency without direction.

You don’t need to do everything.
You don’t need to be perfect.
You don’t need to stay activated all the time.

You just need to show up and do the best you can with what you have. And a plan that keeps your nervous system intact long enough to stay in the work.

And now you have one.

With nuance,

Sam