I woke up this morning thinking about writing a blog post that said “How to Feel Positive When the World is Burning”.

But the only response that I could think of was “…. don’t”.

Yes, you can feel gratitude for the fact that you are privileged enough to be about to go for a walk, buy a sandwich, or speak to a police officer without fearing for your life. But right now, that does not feel like a reason for celebration.

You can also remind yourself that the media sells sensationalism, and that COVID is apparently now old news in the light of the protests breaking out across the US. You can remember that for every act of violence and horror happening in the world, there is a far less “newsworthy” story of love, beauty and compassion playing out somewhere.

And you can remind yourself that, in the end, we are all stardust… stardust that somehow became conscious, whatever consciousness might be, and that in the grand scheme of the cosmos our little earth-based dramas may be as insignificant as the brutal wars happening in the ant kingdom are to us.

But you can also remember that emotions are data - and that pain, anger and fear are messages that tell us that something is wrong, and that something needs to change.

You know that feeling in your gut that tells you something is wrong?⁣ ⁣ What if, instead of trying to numb it and ignore it, you were to listen to it?

What if you invite that emotion in and ask "what are you trying to tell me?"⁣ ⁣

So many people think they are broken because they can't stop feeling the pain and anxiety of the world. ⁣ ⁣

You are not broken, my dear. You are sensitive. And that's not a bad thing, despite the many ways you may have been told over the years that you're "too sensitive".⁣ ⁣

This was never made clearer to me than in Glennon Doyle’s telling of the story of her daughter, Tish, who was in Kindergarten when her teacher casually dropped the fact that the Polar Bears were dying because their home was melting. While the other kids happily trotted off to recess, Tish stayed in class, frozen in horror. Wait a minute…. the polar bears are dying? Because of us? Do the grown ups know about this? What are they doing about it?!

I LOVED Glennon’s interview with Marie Forleo, which you can catch here (somewhere around 10 minutes in she tells this story), and in her wonderful booked Untamed she drops this little bombshell:

“In most cultures, folks like Tish are identified early, set apart as shamans, medicine people, poets, and clergy. They are considered eccentric but critical to the survival of the group because they are able to hear things others don’t hear and see things others don’t see and feel things others don’t feel. The culture depends on the sensitivity of a few, because nothing can be healed if it’s not sensed first.
But our society is so hell-bent on expansion, power, and efficiency at all costs that the folks like Tish - like me - are inconvenient. We slow the world down. We’re on the bow of the Titanic, pointing, crying out “Iceberg! Iceberg!” while everyone else is below deck, yelling back, “We just want to keep dancing!”. It is easier to call us broken and dismiss us than to consider that we are responding appropriately to a broken world.”

What if the problem is not with YOU, for feeling too much, but with the world, for telling you to carry on and keep consuming and to ignore everything that's going on?⁣ ⁣

What if the problem is that we've all been gaslighted into thinking that we should spend our time and money on distractions, on “retail therapy”, and when the emptiness and unexplained anxiety gets too much, on therapy… when we should actually be out there, standing with our brothers and sisters, demanding justice?

What if the problem is with a system that denies the interconnectedness of all living beings, telling us that if WE have our basic needs met and we’re able to afford a new car or a nice holiday then we should shut up and be grateful, rather than working to make sure that we are co-creating a society that we can be proud of? Rather than making sure that seven generations from now, children will be able to access clean drinking water and enjoy the right to play, learn, and feel loved?

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Jiddu Krishnamurti

Of course, there are ways that Psychology and mindfulness can help. You can demand justice from a place of infinite love and compassion, rather than from anger and hate.

You can feel the pain and suffering of all beings and then act from a desire for a better world, rather than from a need for revenge. ⁣ ⁣

But that doesn’t mean that anger and hate should be ignored, pathologised, or pushed away. When we deny and ignore our shadow side, we live in denial of who we really are. And trust me, that shadow will eventually find a way to come out.

It is possible, of course, to incorporate ALL the feelings - “good” and “bad” - and it is important to find ways to take care of yourself so that you're not always acting from survival mode. It can be helpful to question what has triggered you, or to find ways to take care of yourself if you find that you’re burning yourself out through trying to save the world (all by yourself).

But at the same time, healing the individual is JUST ONE PART of creating a better world. Without healing our institutions and creating systems where people can be supported, without healing the environment, battling injustice and human rights abuses, then Psychology, psychiatry and coaching risk becoming unwitting tools of the system, nudging us into compliance, telling us that if we sense a problem with the status quo then there must be something wrong with us.

So what can I do with all these emotions?

Nobody WANTS to feel anger, grief, fear or pain. They are unpleasant by their very nature - they are emotions that demand action. They evolved within us to spur us into action - whether running away from danger, standing our ground against an enemy, or conserving energy after a loss. Everything in our being cries at us to do something to get rid of the unpleasant emotion.

The problem is that we’ve been taught that we can only get rid of the unpleasant emotions by ignoring them, numbing them, or talking to a therapist to discover what deep-rooted insecurities and childhood traumas we need to untangle… in order to be able to live in constant happiness.

Few seem to stop and suggest that perhaps it’s spending the majority of our lives in isolation behind a screen doing boring and meaningless work, disconnected from nature, in denial about how we really feel, being bombarded with messages that tell us we’re not good enough and stories about how the world is falling apart, eating food loaded with junk, and having no idea of who or what information sources we can trust, might be - you know - having somewhat of an effect?

My dear, I don’t have a quick soundbite for you to take away, because answering this question - “How can I continue to live in this world, being happy and making the best of my life, and yet also contributing to the greater whole and making sure that I am part of co-creating a brighter future without burning out from giving too much? How can I allow in the full range of human emotions without being so overwhelmed by them that I can barely get out of bed?” - is the main focus of my life, and I try to answer it every day.

What I can tell you is that most of us are afraid of really letting the grief, pain, anger or fear in because we are convinced that once we let it in, we will never again be able to function. And this might be true - for some of us, it could be too much, unless we have amazing social support to help us process it all. Or we might transform so much that the thought of returning to our old jobs becomes repulsive and laughable - making it very hard for us to “function” in the Capitalist sense of the word. We don’t all have the privilege to be able to throw away our sources of income for idealistic reasons, either, and so I will never push anybody to open that Pandora’s box when they are certain that they don’t want to.

However, I just want to reassure you that it is normal to feel awful when we watch images of our fellow beings suffering. It is normal, and you are not broken if you find it hard to just carry on with your life as if everything is just fine.

Unfortunately, sociopaths rise to the top in our society, and so those in power are disproportionately likely to turn a blind eye to suffering in exchange for power and profit. Those same sociopaths will gladly tell us that we are overreacting, broken, or crazy when we threaten their status.

—

My upcoming course Unlocking Resilience (from July 20th) delves into this question in a variety of ways, over six weeks, bringing in tools and techniques from Psychology, Mindfulness, the Work That Reconnects, and Emotional Intelligence work - while it is not specifically created for people who identify as Highly Sensitive, empathic or intuitive, I have found that pretty much everybody who is drawn to working with me fits into that category!

If you're interested in how the Work That Reconnects can help you recognise, accept, and then transform your grief and pain for the world into beautiful, compassionate action, then come and join the 6-week journey Radical Self-Care in Times of Crisis, starting Thursday June 4th! This one is aimed more specifically at environmental activists and others who are specifically working towards change, although anybody who feels moved to make a difference in the world is welcome.