When the World Feels Too Much: News Anxiety and Collective Grief

How to stay present and emotionally resilient when everything feels chaotic.

If you've felt overwhelmed by what's going on in the world at the moment, you're not overreacting - you're paying attention. The constant stream of headlines, political divides, disasters, deep injustices. It’s a lot. And it’s easy to feel helpless in the face of it all.

There’s a strange pull to stay plugged in to the news. A sense that if we just keep track of it all, refresh one more feed, read one more article, we might gain some kind of control. I’ve noticed it in myself, too. That quiet hope, when I open the news in the morning, for some kind of relief. A sign that leaders are listening. A breakthrough. A ceasefire. And yet, more often, what we’re really doing is trying to soothe a nervous system that’s been on high alert for too long. It’s reassurance-seeking in disguise - the hope that the next update will give us a light at the end of the tunnel.

For some of us, especially those who are neurodivergent and experience monotropism, this can land even deeper. Monotropism is a way some neurodivergent minds focus - intensely and deeply on one thing at a time. It can help us connect the dots and make sense of what we're feeling, but it also makes it harder to shift attention away from things. When our thoughts and feelings lock onto things like fear, injustice, or grief, they don’t let go very easily. I would describe myself as a monotropic empath. One powerful image from a news story can linger for a long time. That intensity doesn’t make us "too much". It means we care - a lot. Therapy can help us find ways to carry that care without letting it carry us.

So what’s happening here, psychologically?

Compulsive news-checking often mirrors patterns of rumination - a repetitive focus on distressing thoughts that doesn’t always lead to relief. Particularly for people with monotropism, this can create a bottleneck effect. The brain isn’t just seeking information, it’s seeking safety. But the news rarely offers that. Instead, it loops the nervous system into hypervigilance.

This isn’t just anxiety, it’s a trauma response. The body reacts to global crises just like personal ones: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. And when the threat is abstract and ongoing, like climate change or political instability, we can get stuck in a cycle of that activation. It’s exhausting.

There’s also something deeper at play - collective grief. It's not a personal sadness, but quietly shared with others. For the things we’ve lost, the futures we hoped for the next generation, and the values we thought were shared. Unlike individual grief, which often follows a cycle, collective grief pretty much goes on without closure. We’re grieving things that are still happening: wars that haven’t ended, systems that haven’t changed, futures that still hang in the balance. That ambiguity can leave us stuck in a kind of emotional limbo. (Cue recurrent news-checking for that glimmer of hope).

Therapeutically, collective grief can show up as:

• Emotional fatigue that doesn’t seem tied to any one event

• Hypervigilance or a sense of waiting for the next crisis

• Disconnection from others or from the things you used to enjoy

• Guilt for not doing more, or for feeling okay when others are suffering

That’s why boundaries matter, whether that's emotional or informational. Not to shut the world out, but to stay engaged without becoming engulfed.

So what actually helps?

• Reframing rumination. Rather than trying to stop rumination, we can explore how to redirect it. Treat it as a signal that something needs attention. From a trauma perspective, rumination is thought of as unfinished processing. Your brain is returning to something it hasn't put to bed yet, not because it’s broken, but because it’s trying to make sense of something important.

• Start moving. Rumination thrives in stillness, so doing something active (cooking, walking, or organising something) can help. You're not avoiding the tough thoughts, you're just loosening their grip a bit.

• Grounding. If you struggle with cognitive strategies when you're hyperfocused or overwhelmed, try grounding. Tune into sensation using temperature, movement, rhythm, or even noticing colours in your environment. Techniques like 5-4-3-2-1 (naming five things you see, four you can touch, three you hear, two you smell, one you taste) can coax you back into the present.

• Get it out. Set a “rumination window.” Ten minutes to let the thoughts run their course. Scribble them out, all of them, no editing required. Then close the notebook or put the page in a jar, whatever works. You’re not pushing it away, you’re just giving the spiral a container, so it's not all on you.

• Connection. And not just anyone - your people. The ones who get why this is really weighing you down. Send a voice note. Share the article. Rant, if you want. And sometimes that connection comes through community - a Facebook group, a forum, even a grassroots activist group that aligns with your values. But choose with care. Some spaces soothe, while others can become echo chambers and fan the fires. Find one that steadies you.

• What's in your control? Stephen Covey's three circles of influence have been helping people through the chaos for decades:

  • What you can control (your actions, choices, responses)

  • What you can influence (conversations, relationships, local decisions)

  • And what’s simply in your concern (wars, elections, the economy, the big stuff that keeps you up at night but sits far outside your reach)

  You don't have to tune out completely, but by separating what you feel you "should" do and what you "could" do can help break away from spiraling thoughts when you feel helpless about something bigger than you.

  
  

We also talk about media boundaries. Not to disengage entirely, but to preserve the capacity to care. That might mean checking the news once a day instead of ten. Choosing sources that inform rather than inflame. Letting yourself not know everything, all the time. (The "not knowing"... now there's a tricky place to sit.) You already have a tonne on your plate - protect your brain space.

I’ve worked with people grieving ruptured relationships, torn apart by political divides. It feels more than just a fallout, because it's our core values clashing, everything our sense of self is based on. Is their love still unconditional if I voted a different way, or supported the other side of an international conflict? What will they think of me? But also, how do I still feel about them? Therapy becomes a space to sit with that grief and start making sense of what connection can look like now.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world, you’re not alone. You’re responding to something real. You don’t have to do it alone, and you don’t have to stay stuck in it.

Therapy holds space for the personal and the political. If that sounds like something you need, get in touch.