“I don’t know how everyone else is just living their lives right now.” Camila said to me as we pushed our kids’ strollers down the snowy sidewalk.
“I look around and people are just smiling and laughing and acting like everything’s normal. Like everything’s fine! But it’s not.” Her voice got loud and her body got big, and then shrank back down.
She went on, “I don’t know. I don’t wanna sound like a douche bag but it’s like… I just don’t want to care this much.” I heard a self-doubt I was all too familiar with.
“I just can’t turn it off. Maybe if I wasn’t so damn sensitive this wouldn’t hit me so hard…”
I stopped in my tracks and grabbed her arm. “You’re not the problem here. The newness of it all is.”
When It Starts To Feel Like Something’s Wrong With You
Camila’s spiral is all too familiar. I hear different versions of it often.
It often begins by looking around. Seeing other people living their lives, seemingly unaffected by everything going on. They talk about weekend plans, the latest show they’re watching, what they just ordered online. You watch them laugh, complain about small things, keep things moving and wonder, are we really living in the same world?
If everyone else seems fine, then maybe the problem is me?
That’s when the thoughts start to turn inward. What begins as a response to what’s happening in the world becomes a verdict on self.
Maybe I’m too sensitive. Maybe I’m not resilient enough. Maybe I’m not built right.
Other people seem fine—why am I not?
Underneath those thoughts is often something a bit deeper and more complicated. A clash of values that goes something like:
Caring this much is costing me something. I don’t know how to live my life holding all of this. Being open feels unsafe. Paying attention hurts.
And so the question shifts from what’s happening to how do I make this stop?
When the weight has nowhere to go, it turns to a familiar and understandable conclusion: maybe I should shut down. Going numb is better than being raw. So you stay busy, keep things light, avoid certain conversations, scroll without really reading. Not fully disconnect—just turn the volume down reeeaal low.
Over time, it can feel like there are only two choices: feel everything and fall apart, or shut down in order to survive.
And once it’s framed that way, it’s easy to conclude that the ‘feeling’ part of the equation is the problem. That feeling as much as you do is what needs to be fixed.
This Isn’t Personal Failure. It’s Humans In Transition
But here’s the thing that often gets missed:
We are not just reacting to world events. We are being changed by what we see.
Never before have we had such a continuous, intimate view of what’s happening in the world. Not in fragments. Not after the fact. But in real time. What was once distant, now lives in our pockets, serving as a constant backdrop to our minds.
This level of proximity doesn’t just inform us—it changes us. And this process of being changed has just begun.
We are humans-in-transition, not individuals-failing. The spiral Camila described makes sense. Disorientation, grief, wanting to shut down, look away are normal responses to change.
Astronauts talk about the Overview Effect, the experience of looking down at Earth from space and being profoundly changed by what they see. Their sense of our interconnectedness heightens, a responsibility to take care of the planet blooms.
Seeing from a new vantage point changes them, whether they want it to or not. The astronauts can’t necessarily prepare themselves for it (well, maybe with a little LSD…), or anticipate the impact, but they are forever changed because they have seen something they can’t unsee. An internal reorganization has taken place.
From Burden to Resource
This is the same that is happening for us as a people.
When we say, “I can’t hold this much,” we’re not describing a personal flaw. We’re describing what it feels like to be in transition: between an old way of relating to the world and a new way that hasn’t yet fully formed.
When there’s no context for what’s happening, sensitivity becomes a burden. But feeling this much isn’t a problem in and of itself. The problem is trying to support what we’re experiencing with outdated models that treat emotions as private, feelings as weakness, and “being normal” as being unaffected. These frameworks no longer hold.
What feels like a burden can become a resource when we have the right ways to relate to it. When we have ceremonies, language, and collective support that helps us change. We need tools that help us ebb and flow and evolve alongside the world herself. And that create the conditions for the depth of what we feel to become the real resource that they are.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Reflection Prompts to Take Home With You
In what ways, consciously or subconsciously, have you looked at your feelings as a personal flaw? Especially as it relates to what’s going on in the world.
What’s it like to shift towards seeing them as part of an ongoing process we’re in the midst of? As a reflection of humans being in transition as opposed to an individual failing?
