Caring for yourself when current events feel heavy

During times when the news feels heavy and constant, many people struggle to carry the emotional weight of what’s happening around them. A steady flow of difficult headlines, community stressors and public tension can quietly accumulate, leaving people feeling drained.

When people feel overwhelmed, their minds and bodies can respond by feeling anxious, sad or angry. Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate or remember things. Tasks that you can usually do quickly and easily take longer and take more energy to do. Feelings tell us what is going on around us and inside us.

While people are impacted by current events in varying degrees, social division can affect everyone. In a 2025 report by the American Psychological Association, about six in ten adults said that growing social division had become a significant source of stress. The same research shows that around half of adults often experience feelings of isolation, loneliness or being left out.

Here are some suggestions that can help if you are feeling down or cut off from friends or loved ones.

Recognize your symptoms

The mind can be thought of as a rechargeable battery. When people engage in activities they don’t enjoy or face uncomfortable situations, some of that battery power is used up. When the battery is at 50% or higher, most people are fine. At around 90% or higher, they’re living their best life. But once the battery drops below 50%, people start to feel the negative effects.

Everyone responds to stress differently. However, nearly everyone has at least one symptom when they feel drained, and most people experience more than one.

1. Internalized symptoms: Such as anxiety, depression, difficulty with memory, obsessive thoughts, difficulty focusing on what is happening here and now.
2. Externalized symptoms: Examples include yelling at other people, being violent or just having a very irritable mood.
3. Somatic (body) symptoms: Common ailments include headaches, stomachaches and rashes.

Take care of yourself

The best way to deal with this is to recharge your batteries by doing things you enjoy. This will help you relax and recover.

• Exercise. Think heart-pumping activities like running, biking, rowing or weight training. Thirty minutes of exercise a few times a week has been shown to be as effective, if not more, as commonly prescribed anxiety medication.
• Eat a balanced diet.
• Get enough sleep.
• Spend time with people who care about you.
• Get outside.
• Do activities that bring you delight whether it's cooking, hiking, listening to music or watching a favorite movie. Engaging in activities you enjoy will help you relax in a healthy way.
• Take breaks. If you have been working for a while and notice you’re less productive than usual, it might be a good time to recharge your battery. It's amazing how much you can get done, when you’re operating from a place of capacity instead of a place of deficit.

Limit exposure to distress as much as possible

Life can be stressful, and sometimes that's out of your hands, but there are steps you can take to limit some life stress, too.

• Limit social media: Think about how much time you spend on social media and consider limiting your exposure to it. Social media has been shown to make people of all ages and backgrounds less happy with themselves, even in relatively small doses.
• Limit your news consumption: Think carefully about how much you read or watch the news when the focus is on stressful topics. Your brain is naturally inclined to pay attention to things you consider to be threatening or dangerous, but you do not need to watch every video or read every article. Make choices about media consumption that preserve and protect your own inner peace.

Understand that views may differ

People can, and should, disagree. The human mind is extremely complex, with an estimated 86 billion brain cells. With that much variation, it’s impossible for two people to think exactly alike. Differences in perspective are normal, healthy and essential for strong communities.

Healthy relationships aren’t built on agreeing about everything. Research shows they are built on how people treat each other through respect, listening, celebrating successes and offering support during difficult moments. This area of psychology is known as attachment, and nowhere does the science suggest that people must share the same opinions to have a strong, healthy bond.

Of course, disagreements can feel uncomfortable. Hearing someone challenge a deeply held belief can be irritating or even hurtful. In those moments, it helps to avoid sensitive topics unless everyone involved wants to talk about them and can do so respectfully. And it’s important to remember: what feels obvious or important to one person may not feel the same to someone else.

It’s also unlikely that a single conversation will change someone’s mind. Meaningful change usually happens through new experiences over time, not through debate. Movies and TV may show big transformations in a moment, but real life rarely works in that scripted way.

This doesn’t mean anyone should stay connected to people who are harmful or intentionally hurtful with their words or actions. But having different ideas isn’t the same as being unsafe.

The key is focusing on what you share: the interests, values or activities that bring you together. Differences in opinion will always exist, but they don’t have to get in the way of meaningful, supportive relationships.

Use techniques to ground yourself

Grounding techniques do not solve the world's problems, but they can help us reset temporarily when we are feeling a little overwhelmed. One great way to do this is by using the 3-3-3 technique. It helps us refocus our minds away from difficult thoughts and feelings and on the present moment.

Here is how to do it:

• Name three things you can see.
• Identify three sounds you can hear.
• Move three parts of your body.

If you’ve taken steps and are still having anxiety symptoms, consider making an in-person or virtual appointment with a mental health provider. They can work with you to develop personalized tools for managing your anxiety.