When the World Becomes Too Much

A Handout

Thank you, Perplexity and Claude, for giving me the foresight that I lacked.

Sometimes the world seems larger than one can carry. News, disasters, wars, political debates — they all push themselves to the foreground, loud, urgent, without pause. What was just far away suddenly stands right in the middle of our living rooms, delivered via screens, comment sections, constant availability. Added to this is the private sphere: illness, loss, ageing — or simply the exhaustion of trying to do justice to everything.

This overwhelm is not merely weakness, but a symptom of our time. We are informed, connected, involved — but often without filters, without what once was called distance. One might think that more knowledge leads to more understanding; yet often it only leads to more inner noise. Topics such as justice, identity, discrimination, equality are important — and yet their constant presence on social media can turn everything into agitation: every question a declaration, every disagreement a declaration of war. It becomes easy to lose sight of where concern ends and fear begins, where engagement tips over into exhaustion.

Sometimes what is missing is not courage, but perspective. Perspective means stepping back — not to turn away, but to see depth again. Life does not take place only on the front line of events, but also in between: in conversations, gestures, routines, in catching one’s breath. One may withdraw in order to stay with oneself. This is not a retreat from responsibility, but a form of protective maintenance for the soul.

Ways Back into Everyday Life

When everything becomes too much, “everyday life” is not trivial, but a rescue frame. It provides structure where events are chaotic, and limitation where news and worries appear limitless. Returning to everyday life does not mean pretending nothing is happening, but reconnecting with what carries you.

A few building blocks can help:

Routines as railings
Fixed times for getting up, eating, sleeping, small walks outside, recurring activities such as cooking, reading, walking stabilise inner experience. They remind us that one’s own life is more than what happens on screens.

Limiting news, creating presence
Instead of constant scrolling, fixed “windows” for news help — for example twice a day — and clear cut-offs: no news immediately after waking or before going to sleep. In between, focus may deliberately rest on one’s own reality: on what one sees, hears, smells, touches. This reduces slipping into a permanent global state of alarm.

Small islands of self-care
Not as a grand programme, but as micro-rituals: consciously drinking a cup of tea, a short breathing exercise, five minutes at the window, reading a page in a book. Such mini-pauses act like small sparks of normality in an overfilled day.

Setting boundaries — internally and externally
Saying “no” — to additional responsibilities, to endless online debates, to chats that only agitate — is an act of self-care, not selfishness. Internally, one may also allow oneself: “I do not have to understand everything today, not carry everything.”

Returning to one’s own circles
Helpful is the question: what truly lies within my sphere of influence today? One can donate, vote, object, engage — but not everything at once. Everyday life begins where one is allowed to act within one’s own radius again, instead of merely watching.

Using relationships, not only topics
It can be relieving to talk not only about crises, but also about the everyday: what did you enjoy today, where was a small moment of light? Contacts in which one does not constantly have to take a position, but may simply be present as a human being, quietly bring one back into the normal.

When Mental Illness Is Added

Those who are already vulnerable often experience the world even more directly. Depression, anxiety disorders or trauma-related effects alter perception: sounds become sharper, news heavier, messages more threatening. Where a walk helps others, one’s own protective space becomes smaller and more fragile. Self-care then does not mean wellness, but survival in small steps — structure, rituals, preserving a remnant of normality.

In such situations, many of the building blocks above must be radically simplified and more strongly protected: smaller steps, fewer inputs, clearer boundaries. “Returning to everyday life” may then mean keeping an appointment, showering, eating, calling one person — not enduring the whole world. Mindfulness here is not a lifestyle term, but a quiet practice: noticing what is still possible right now, and acknowledging what is not.

Sometimes support is needed for this: therapy, hospital treatment, outpatient help, a trusted person who can endure that nothing “works” at the moment. The protective space may then look different than for those who are psychologically stable. It may be smaller, time-limited, seemingly unspectacular — as long as it conveys safety.

From Self-Care to Attitude

It would be too easy to stop at self-care. For the overwhelm described here does not arise solely from personal vulnerability, but also from something else: from the knowledge that things truly are bad. That people suffer, that injustice occurs, that violence reigns. Simply pushing this knowledge aside would be cynical. Suppressing it would not relieve exhaustion in the long run, but deepen it.

The question therefore is not: how do I switch off?
But: how do I stay with myself and with the world at the same time? How do I find an attitude that can hold both — my own limitations and the suffering of others?

Attitude begins where one admits: I cannot do everything. I cannot ease every suffering, fight every injustice, prevent every catastrophe. But I can do something. And this something only becomes possible when I do not constantly collapse under the weight of the whole.

Attitude means: I choose. Not arbitrarily, not indifferently, but with care. Where can I truly have an effect? What lies close to my heart, not merely as a moral demand, but as a genuine connection? Engagement that arises from duty drains; engagement that arises from inner resonance nourishes — even if it is arduous.

Attitude also means: I may remain human. With doubts, contradictions, bad days. I do not always have to see clearly, act correctly, be strong. Sometimes it is enough simply to be there — for myself, for someone nearby, for a small gesture that goes unnoticed except by the person who receives it.

Humanity in the Small

When “big issues” are discussed — climate crisis, war, social division — one’s own actions quickly seem tiny. What use is it to be kind to the cashier when bombs are falling elsewhere? What does visiting a lonely neighbour count for when the world is burning?

And yet: humanity does not occur in abstractions, but in the concrete. It does not show itself in the perfect political stance, but in the moment someone listens instead of scrolling on. In the half hour one gives to someone who no longer knows how to go on. In patience with oneself when one realises: today I cannot save the world — but I can be present for what lies before me.

This is not a plea for small-mindedness. It is a plea for scale. For not playing the large against the small, but allowing both to stand. The large structures need change — but they do not arise without the many small actions in which people see one another, take one another seriously, carry one another.

Those who care for their own mental health do not do so only for themselves. Those who set boundaries also protect the strength needed to stand by others. Those who learn to deal with their own vulnerability become more sensitive to the vulnerability of others.

Enduring, Not Hardening

In an overwhelming world, the temptation is strong to harden oneself: to feel less, to take less in, to grow thicker skin. But hardening is not attitude. It makes one insensitive, not resilient. It may protect against acute pain, but it also cuts one off from what makes us human: the capacity to be touched.

Attitude means the opposite: enduring without becoming hard. Feeling without drowning in it. Going along without losing oneself. This is difficult. It means repeatedly seeking the balance between closeness and distance, engagement and withdrawal, empathy and self-protection.

Sometimes this does not succeed. Sometimes one slips — into cynicism, resignation, numbness. That too is part of it. That too may be. The only question is whether one notices it, and whether one is willing to turn back again: back to vulnerability, back to openness, back to what connects one with others.

What Carries When Nothing Carries?

In the worst moments — when the news is unbearable, when the private sphere collapses, when one’s own psyche finds no hold — very little often remains. Not the big answers, not the clever strategies, not perfect self-care.

What remains is sometimes only: the next breath. The hand of another person. A moment in which nothing is expected of you. The experience of not being alone — not with the overwhelm, not with the fear, not with the feeling of failing.

In such moments, humanity does not show itself in someone having the solution ready, but in someone enduring what is unsolvable. In someone staying, even when you yourself are not “functioning”. In someone saying: you do not have to perform now, not understand, not be anything other than what you are right now.

This is not weakness, but the opposite: it is the recognition that we all — each and every one of us — are finite. That we have limits, breaking points, moments in which we cannot go on. And that this is precisely why it is so important to hold one another.

A Few Thoughts at the End

The world does not become smaller when we limit ourselves. But it becomes walkable again when we allow ourselves to take only one step at a time. Everyday life is not a betrayal of the big issues — it is the prerequisite for being able to endure them at all.

Attitude is not a rigid position, but a mobile equilibrium. It does not arise from perfection, but from the attempt to remain with oneself and with others despite everything. It does not mean enduring everything, but knowing when one must protect oneself and when one can open up.

And humanity? It does not begin with grand gestures, but in the everyday: in listening, in enduring, in being there. It shows itself where someone sees that another person can no longer cope — and does not reproach them for it, but simply stays.

In a world that becomes too much, this may be the most important thing: not to overwhelm one another with expectations, not with demands for strength or optimism or solutions. But to allow one another that we all sometimes reach our limits. And that it is precisely then that it matters to be there for one another — not as saviours, not as therapists, but simply as human beings.

This is not a heroic answer to the great crises of our time. But it is an honest one. And perhaps honesty — towards oneself and towards others — is the first step towards an attitude that carries, even when much is not bearable.

Written on February 05, 2026 at 09:40. © 2026 Whisper7. All rights reserved.