How do we cope in the face of world events?

I’m part of an amazing community of female entrepreneurs on Facebook (it’s called Dreamers//Doersand truly, it’s amazing), and we often converse about things beyond the scope of our businesses. This past weekend, our founder shared a beautiful post about how challenging it can be to cope with the news of tragic or unsettling world events. She posed a question, which I’ll rephrase like this:

How do we cope with the intense emotions that come up when we watch the news and process these events? Are we bad people if we disengage?

Especially since the events in Orlando, I too have been asking myself how to engage with everything. I’m active on social media but it’s my tendency not to post much about it when something of this magnitude happens. I’m not totally sure why that is…maybe because it’s hard to know what to say. But especially as the magnitude of these events increases, I think it’s crucial to dive into these questions. How do we stand beside those who need our support without becoming overwhelmed ourselves? Since I study the body and the voice, I approach all this from a unique angle… from the angle of what it means to embody our feelings and share them. As I crafted a response in our Facebook group, I realized this was a huge, important topic and I wanted to elaborate further. Here are my thoughts…

Our human nervous systems don’t differentiate between others’ suffering/anxiety/grief and our own.

To our nervous system, a stimulus is a stimulus. Pain is pain, panic is panic, and sadness is sadness. It does not matter where the trigger comes from…once the electrochemical cascade is moving through our system, the result is the same. This is why a flashing neon sign in Times Square can just as easily send us into fight or flight mode as coming face to face with a saber-toothed tiger.

It’s a survival mechanism, then, to disengage from processing all of this information. If we truly let all of the emotion of the sad events in the world sequence through our nervous system, we’d be incapacitated. What purpose would that serve to support those suffering? To move the collective consciousness forward? We must disengage, because instead of remaining stuck in grief, we must – quoting Gandhi – be the change we wish to see in the world. So I don’t believe that we are bad people if we turn off the TV or close the browser. Our human bodies are only programmed to process so much, and in this world of complete and utter overstimulation, it is imperative that we create boundaries.

That being said, can we honor the events of the world by reading articles, feeling our sadness, and sharing our emotions? Absolutely. I am in no way saying that we shouldn’t feel our feelings. Quite the contrary – in order to be healthy human beings we must feel our feelings! It’s just that physiologically, we’re not designed to stay stuck in our feelings.

On a physiological level, our emotions are meant to move through us and out of us.

Let me say more about this. A very smart neuroscientist named Candice Pert wrote a book called “Molecules of Emotion” in which she suggests that in addition to our nervous system, the physiological basis of our responses (our emotions) also lies in the molecules of our endocrine system: our hormones. Scientists have come to call this interwoven system the “neuroendocrine” system. Another very smart neuroscientist named Jill Bolte Taylor says in her book “My Stroke of Insight” that it takes, on average, 90 seconds for an emotion to be activated in the neuroendocrine system, for the chemical cocktail to surge through our body, and for the reaction to dissipate. If the physiological basis of our emotions lasts longer than that 90 seconds, it’s because we’re choosing to let that circuit continue to be triggered.

The significance of what Candice and Jill are saying is HUGE! It means that our emotions have the capability to CHANGE every 90 seconds. As human beings, we’re designed to feel our feelings in the moment, and then move on to the next moment. I think what this teaches us is that it’s fine, necessary, and good to feel our feelings about these tragic events. But it’s very important not to grasp onto them. If we’re going to be part of healing the world, then we’re not helping by staying stuck down in low-vibration emotions like sadness, anger, and fear.

We have to focus on the thoughts that raise our vibration, and the vibrations of all those around us… the thoughts that are of LOVE, JOY, and SERVICE.

Yes, it’s totally important that we acknowledge the pain and tragedy of the world. And yes we can vote, write to our congress-people, donate money, and volunteer. But we are not bad people if we disengage from the flow of news that perpetuates darkness. In fact, at a certain point we must disengage so we can be part of the solution. We must infuse our mind with thoughts that focus on love and healing. My way of focusing on love is teaching, writing this blog, and spending quality time with the people I adore. Your way will be whatever brings you joy. Pursuing your joy may not seem consequential in the larger scheme of things, but it is. Make no mistake: when we pursue our joy, live in love, and share our truth we raise the vibrations of the whole world. Sure it might take awhile for that energy to reach the deepest darkest corners of consciousness, but as many wise people have said…

Love is always louder.

And love will always win.