A Guide for Tending Overwhelm

For heavy days, when nothing feels like enough and we are overwhelmed by what we see, read, hear, or witness in the world’s heartache.

Note: This is not a step-by-step to instruct you how to stop doom scrolling or tools for grounding or somatic practice. This is a guide to help you understand that your emotional or somatic response of collapse invites us to do something different. (Witnessing trauma can be triggering. If you find yourself suffering from symptoms of prolonged trauma or PTSD, please seek mental health support.)

Injustices across the world and in our backyard. Refugee crisis. Climate breakdown. Palestine. But don’t forget the Rohingya, all eyes also on DRC, what about Sudan? All eyes on… all eyes on… all eyes on. We wish the world would stop for these intolerably heart-achy things.

I too often feel drained by doom scrolling, too paralyzed to post anything in fear I am amplifying my own voice, and taking away from those whose voices need to be heard, and yet angry at what I see and judging of others’ silence. I then feel ashamed that my only power seems to be posting, liking, and sharing, then fearing that I am just being performative… I shrink and end up doing nothing, then feel ashamed and the cycle begins again (oh, I see you anxiety spiral). 

We probably won’t get it right (but what if we do), AND what if we allow our overwhelm to invite us to consider that collapse and expansion are part of our resilience and resistance.

Understanding pendulation and oscillation

A resilient nervous system is one that can ebb and flow between action and rest, overwhelm and resource. We don’t need to be constantly regulated. Trauma interrupts this cycle and keeps us stuck. Resourcing is the practice of attuning to goodness. Activist and therapist Gabes Torres provides a framework of how to nourish sustainability in social movements through the idea of oscillation. She defines oscillation as “the nonlinear swing, the circular dance, a dynamic spectrum, or the back-and-forth movement of: processing and digesting collective trauma, grief, and exposure to violence and suffering, to taking a step back from it, and returning to collective, direct action.” Similarly, in somatic experiencing we talk about pendulation, like a grandfather clock that moves between expansion and contraction. Like breath, like ocean tides that rise and fall. Resilience is you moving between overwhelm and resource. So what would happen if we followed the trust that we will move from overwhelm into something else.

Honour your capacity and know your Power

Of course we are overwhelmed and dysregulated by what we see. This makes you human. It feels too big because it is too big. Overwhelm can show up with a lot of different emotions like anger, guilt, loneliness, or collapse/ paralysis. We start by acknowledging your capacity and emotions.

Feeling exhausted? Practice Rest. Look away. Taking breaks is not avoidance. Because we trusting that knowing you, you won’t look away forever. Turn down the sound on that video. Put your phone down and feel the ground beneath your feet. Put your hands in the soil. Ask the trees what they might tell you. This is a small act but you are allowing your nervous system a different experience from the overwhelm.  It is impossible to contain all the suffering, so look to what does feel containing. 

Guilty and anger are common feelings of overwhelm that might be banging at your door. Your guilt and anger is a sign that you care so much about something that feels out of your power. Let your guilt move you to action. Allowing ourselves to move through this dance gives us capacity and power to resist. Write your reps, create, organize, donate, volunteer, post, amplify, march, stand with, pour into your community, educate yourself, challenge. 

Feeling utterly alone? Join others in the process of digesting what we are witnessing. When we fall into despair, we must fall into connection. Trauma and stress expert Gabor Mate writes “What’s missing in our world isn’t just justice- it’s the recognition that healing is a collective process, not an individual one”. Maybe text a trusted friend: “I am just feeling bit heart-achy about the world right now.” That's all. You are letting your grief show up right to another’s witness. Whether it is a friend, family member, or counselor, connection is where trauma can be metabolized.

So no judgement to you, emotions-thoughts-body, you are just telling me something is not well with the world. As it feels like the world is increasingly churning towards despair, bless your body for ways you are feeling both the overwhelm and the resourced state, and oscillate into rest, action, and connection.

.In solidarity.
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Educational lineage:

Gabes Torres’s Oscillation Guide: A Framework for Sustainability in Social Change movements: (Please give her a follow and support her work.)

Peter Levine: Somatic Experiencing

Other writings for that are bringing me out of my overwhelm at the moment:

Post June 2025, by civil rights movement and land activist from Turtle Island Kaitlyn Curtis

My Place in the Cosmos, by humanitarian and writer Oddney Gumaer