- Tension: We’re processing collective trauma while maintaining productivity demands that pretend nothing has changed.
- Noise: Self-care industry profits from selling individual solutions to systemic breakdowns.
- Direct Message: Your nervous system isn’t broken; it’s responding accurately to unprecedented instability.
To learn more about our editorial approach, explore The Direct Message methodology.
Last week, I sat in a coffee shop trying to write about nutrition myths while my phone buzzed with another climate disaster notification.
The woman next to me was on a work call, discussing quarterly projections while wildfire smoke drifted past the window. My partner texted from the ER about another surge in mental health emergencies.
And there I was, editing a paragraph about antioxidants like the world wasn’t visibly coming apart.
The disconnect felt absurd. But I kept typing because rent was due, and that’s what we do now. We watch democracy teeter, ecosystems collapse, and economic systems fail while still showing up to meetings about workflow optimization.
The wellness industry wants to sell you resilience
Every wellness platform is pushing the same message right now: you just need better coping strategies. More meditation apps. Better morning routines. Adaptogenic supplements. They’re making billions selling individual solutions to collective crises.
During my years teaching yoga, I watched this pattern intensify. Studios marketed classes as “stress relief from uncertain times” while charging prices that only the financially secure could afford. The irony wasn’t lost on me. We were teaching breathing techniques to people anxious about healthcare costs in rooms they could only access with disposable income.
The industry benefits from keeping the focus on personal resilience rather than systemic failure. If you’re burnt out from watching society fracture while maintaining your productivity metrics, that’s positioned as your inadequacy, not a rational response to an irrational situation. There’s a supplement for that. A workshop. A retreat.
But here’s what the research actually shows: chronic exposure to uncontrollable stressors fundamentally alters our stress response systems. No amount of individual optimization changes that.
A study found that perceived societal instability correlates with increased cortisol dysregulation regardless of personal coping strategies. Your body knows something is wrong even when you’re doing all the “right” things.
Your nervous system is working exactly as designed
When I worked at the CDC, we studied how populations respond to ongoing threats. The data was clear: hypervigilance in unstable environments is adaptive, not pathological. Your inability to fully relax while democracy erodes and climate systems fail isn’t a personal failure. It’s your nervous system accurately assessing threat levels.
The wellness industry frames this as something to fix. They profit from convincing you that with the right tools, you should be able to maintain equilibrium regardless of external chaos. But evolutionary biology tells a different story. We’re wired to respond to environmental threats with heightened alertness. That response is supposed to be temporary, activated when danger appears and deactivated when it passes.
What happens when the danger never passes? When every morning brings fresh evidence of institutional collapse? When you’re watching humanitarian crises unfold on your phone during lunch breaks?
Your nervous system doesn’t have a setting for “maintain normal function during civilizational decline.” The constant activation you’re experiencing isn’t a bug. It’s your body doing exactly what it evolved to do in response to genuine threats. The problem isn’t your stress response. The problem is being forced to suppress that response to maintain economic productivity.
The gaslighting of “keep calm and carry on”
There’s something particularly cruel about the expectation to perform normalcy while everything destabilizes. We’re told to separate our “personal” and “professional” lives as if watching democratic norms crumble doesn’t affect our ability to care about spreadsheets. As if climate anxiety should politely pause during business hours.
My partner sees this firsthand in the ER. People arrive in crisis, not from individual pathology but from the accumulated weight of societal fractures. Housing instability. Healthcare inaccessibility. Climate displacement. They’re labeled with diagnoses that frame their distress as personal rather than political.
The message is clear: your inability to compartmentalize collective trauma while maintaining productivity is your problem to solve. Buy this course. Try this supplement. Optimize your morning routine. The focus stays on individual adjustment rather than questioning why we’re being asked to perform stability during visible collapse.
This serves someone’s interests, and it’s not yours. Employers benefit when workers internalize systemic problems as personal shortcomings. The wellness industry profits from selling solutions. Politicians avoid accountability when citizens blame themselves rather than systems.
What the evidence actually tells us
Research on collective trauma shows that acknowledging reality is more psychologically protective than forced positivity.
A longitudinal study found that people who acknowledged societal instability showed better long-term mental health outcomes than those who maintained artificial optimism.
The data on community response is even clearer. Social connection and collective action correlate with better psychological outcomes during societal stress. Not individual optimization. Not personal resilience. Shared acknowledgment and coordinated response.
Yet we’re pushed toward individual solutions. Download another meditation app while democracy crumbles. Practice gratitude while ecosystems collapse. The advice isn’t just ineffective; it’s actively harmful when it prevents us from accurately assessing and responding to real threats.
Moving forward without false comfort
I’m not going to end this with a list of coping strategies or wellness tips. That would be repeating the same pattern of individualizing collective problems. Instead, I want to offer something simpler: permission to acknowledge that this is not normal, and your response to it doesn’t need to be either.
Your anxiety about institutional collapse is proportionate. Your difficulty focusing on routine tasks while humanitarian crises unfold is rational. Your nervous system’s refusal to calm down in an actively threatening environment is functioning correctly.
What helps isn’t pretending things are fine or optimizing your response to chaos. What helps is finding others who acknowledge the same reality. Building networks based on shared truth rather than performed stability. Creating pockets of genuine support within systems that demand artificial normalcy.
We don’t need better coping mechanisms for civilizational instability. We need honest acknowledgment that asking people to maintain productivity during collapse is its own form of gaslighting. Your distress isn’t a personal failing. It’s an accurate response to an unprecedented situation.
The path forward isn’t through individual optimization but through collective recognition: we’re all struggling to function normally because the situation isn’t normal. And maybe that shared acknowledgment is the first step toward building something better than just coping.
