How to Stay Sane When the World is Falling Apart

The world is falling apart, and it’s easy to fall into crippling despair, but you can stay sane whilst taking steps to pull the world back together. Our mental health is always important, but it’s even more important during times of turmoil. This post gives you tips on how to stay sane when the world is falling apart.

We are witnessing a significant time of upheaval that will be recorded as a pivotal period in world history. If you haven’t yet realised that something significant has happened in the USA that changes the whole world order, then it’s time to inform yourself. Essentially, the USA government under Donald Trump no longer stands for and protects democracy, freedom and the rule of law. Recent actions have made it clear that Trump is turning the US into a dictatorship and the US government now stands with Putin’s Russia against its historical democratic allies.

There’s nothing wrong with you if you’re feeling despair, depression or anxiety – in fact if you haven’t felt some of that, then you’re probably not paying attention – but instead of running away from our fears or falling under their weight, we can acknowledge our feelings and remain sane – or become saner – even when the world is falling apart.

Acknowledge How you Feel

Emotions are natural. Ask yourself, ‘How do I feel right now?’ and acknowledge the feeling. Just putting a label on the emotion helps you to separate yourself from the feeling so you can see that it is just an emotion, nothing more. You are not your emotion. E-motion is just energy moving through you. Knowing that allows you to step outside of the feeling so you can watch it pass through you without allowing it to sweep you off your centre.

The energy of emotions is not the problem with emotions; getting caught up in that emotional energy is what causes the problems. Dwelling on the emotion and acting out of emotions just keeps the emotion hanging around and dragging us down. If we keep going over in our mind what has caused the emotion, we will keep arousing it, and if we try to squash the emotion, it will also stay around and get stronger until it’ll likely burst out at an inappropriate moment.

If we leave our emotions alone, they will pass, naturally fading away. If we are crumbling under the weight of emotion, unable to let it move through us, we need to change our focus. Get out of our heads, away from our screens and nurture our soul – see point 5.

You could say to yourself, Emotion is just energy moving through me, and practice acknowledging how you feel and then letting the emotion pass unhindered.

Be Informed and Aware

Many young people don’t watch the news because it can be depressing. I get that, and though I think we all need to be informed as to what’s going on in our world, in normal times if knowing what’s happening in the world isn’t good for your mental health, then not watching news is a good strategy. However, these are not normal times, especially for those of you in the USA.

If we don’t know what’s going on, we won’t know if our democracy is being dismantled, and our rights and protections stripped away. And if we don’t know about it, we can’t do our bit to stop it.

So having information is important. But we need to be careful where we get our information from. We need to know what events are happening, not people’s opinions on those events. Avoid anything parading as news when it’s presented by someone who is giving their opinion on the events. We need old-style journalism: facts, not opinion. We need to be able to form our own opinion. Otherwise, we could be swallowing propaganda.

It’s dangerous to get our news from social media. Given how easy it is for propaganda and disinformation to proliferate and for bad actors to manipulate what we see on social media, we’re unlikely to get the full picture. Instead, we’re likely to be presented with divisive opinions, disinformation, propaganda, and click bait. Tiktoks, reels, podcasts and so on are pretty much all opinion. It’s nice if we agree with someone to hear them echo our feelings, but we need to have a trusted source outside of that echo chamber, so we can make your own interpretation of events. Find a news outlet that separates opinion from fact. They will have columns labelled as ‘opinion’, and their articles will be reports of events backed up by verifiable sources.

This article on the 10 most unbiased news sources will help you choose reliable news sources. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is good for old-style facts-based reporting they didn’t mention, and True North News on Substack is another good one for Aussies:

It’s a great daily round up of current events as reported by those unbiased (or only a little biased) news sources.

The awareness part of this point is about balance. We need to be informed but not become glued to the news every moment of the day. I can easily become too fascinated with an unfolding situation and spend far too much time reading about it. Other things in my life may fall by the wayside – it’s a neurodivergent tendency I have – and I have to be very disciplined to make sure that I also make time for the other things in my life that I need to do.

Awareness also means being aware when the news is becoming overwhelming. At that point, we have to back off, turn off our device and take our attention elsewhere. If overwhelm or depression from hearing news is an issue for us, we could work with a friend to make sure that we are informed of any unfolding situation we need to know about without having to check the news daily. Our friend could check the news one day and to let us know if there’s anything important that we need to know, and we could do it for her the next day. And when things settle down, we can check the news less often.

The key point here is to be aware of when you need to step back from information gathering.

Look for the Light

No matter what’s happening in our life, a key factor for good mental health at any time is looking for the light in your life. There is always good and beauty in the world; we just have to look for it. No matter how dire situations have been in the past, there have always been people who shine, people who show the best of humanity, even when the worst plays out around them.

Even when the world is falling apart, if we keep looking, we will find people standing up for what they believe in, people being kind to others and people making inspiring speeches. We can celebrate these, and even if they seem small; they are sparks of light in the darkness, and from small sparks infernos can grow if nurtured and supported.

When I’m feeling despair at the state of the world, I find it helpful to look at my life and practice gratitude for the blessings I have. I take a walk in the garden and practice gratitude for the trees and plants.

Part of looking for the light is not repeatedly looking into the darkness. We need to know what is in there so we can defend against it, but if we look only at the darkness, or look at it disproportionately to the light in our life, it will grow in our mind and blot out the light. That sets us up for despair. A Buddhist saying that is relevant here is: Water the seeds of joy. That refers to the point that whatever you put your intention on is what will be dominant in your mind. So be careful what you’re watering.

Another part of looking for the light is making sure that the people we surround ourselves with are those who shine with love and compassion – and preferably wisdom as well. When things are dire, we don’t have the energy for getting into arguments with people who will never see the situation through a different lens. There is no point engaging with argumentative people, especially on social media. We can never ‘win’ against such people, never convince them that they are wrong – and they may be Russian bots anyway.

If we can’t have an open-minded civil conversation with someone, walk away. The same goes for anyone who sucks our energy or dwells in the darkness with no attempt to find the light. Best we walk away. It is not our responsibility to save them from their delusions, and many are determined to cling to their delusions no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented to them.

What if there really isn’t anything other than darkness in our life, if we just can’t find anything to lighten the darkness?

We do have light inside ourselves. The very fact that we are reading this article shows the light in us. We want to hold it together even when the world is falling apart, and that desire is the first step in doing exactly that, not just for ourselves but for others as well.

The rest of these points should also help you find the light in yourself.

Reaffirm Values

When things get really dicey as they are in the USA right now, reaffirming our core values will give us strength. We need to find and reaffirm the values that are worth fighting for, and then we can connect with others who share those values. And those values may well transcend political parties. Make a list of what’s important to you.

Nurture Your Soul Daily

We need to get out of our head for a time every day and experience moments free of our concerns. It’s about taking a break and doing something that will stop us mulling over the state of the world or mentally reliving the things that stir up our emotions. The point is to depressurise. This is where hobbies such as art, craft, sport, gardening, active meditation or walking in nature come in. I need a nature walk everyday or I don’t sleep well. But it’s not just a walk in nature, it’s a mindful walk or walking meditation, where I focus on the nature around me – the sounds, sights, smells, and sensations – and let my thoughts and emotions fall away.

Gardening, reading fiction and being creative are other emotional regulation supports that I use often. But if could just be doing something that makes our heart sing, like having a cup of tea and a piece of cake. The point is to do it mindfully, focusing on thoroughly enjoying the activity so that it feeds our soul.

Connect With Community

Find like-minded people and support each other in taking whatever action you can to protect what’s important to you. When things are falling apart, it can be hard to know what to do, and if it’s not clear to us, then we need to look to those who have ideas. Of course, we need to evaluate those ideas and make sure any suggested course of action is in accordance with our values before we make a move, but we will eventually find people to rally around, so we won’t be acting alone.

Out of every emergency people arise who are an inspiration to others, people who others can rally around, people with integrity who stand for those values you hold dear. Find those people. We might even become such a person ourselves.

Accept What Is and Do What You Can

The first step to changing a situation is to accept what’s happening. Refusing to believe it or just railing against it only exhausts us. Only after accepting the situation and acknowledging how we feel about it will we be able to see clearly what we can do.

Blaming is also a waste of energy. No matter how a situation came about, it is what it is. Our job is to decide what is most important for us to protect or change and focus on how we can do that. We can’t work on everything. If we try to, we will only become disheartened and burned out. We have to choose something we can manage and focus on that. If we’re organised in our community, different people could work on a different aspects, so together we cover a lot of ground.

In the present situation in the USA, I suggest you don’t wait for another election because there may not be one, and if there is, it will be rigged because it’s in Russia’s interest to have Trump in power. There is power in numbers and in the support of a community. Talk to your neighbours. Ask questions. Find out what you can do together.

Have Faith

Faith is a word mostly bandied about in a religious context, and certainly if we have a religion that gives us faith that everything will turn out okay, then we can turn to that. But faith can also be in ourselves and the functioning of the universe itself. We can have faith that no matter what happens, we will be able to cope, that we will do our best and make the best of any situation that arises. Just having that faith will help us make it so. Religion aside, I think we need to develop that kind of faith in ourselves.

We also need to have faith in our actions. People power has brought down regimes, and every action helps, even if it may seem small. Social media has torn people apart, but it also gives us access to initiatives that we can all be part of no matter where in the world we live – like boycotts.

Faith in the universe is a long game. The human race has a brutal history, and there is much brutality today still, but over time we have become a more just society. It’s often a matter of one step forward and two steps back – we are presently in a backwards motion – but as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Work for the best but be prepared for the worst.

I pray that the American people can save their democracy through peaceful protest, and I hope the points in this post will help them stay strong.

Thanks for reading! This post might help a lot of people, so please share it.

What helps you handle the bad times? Please share in the comments below.

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