How to Manage Anxiety When It Feels Like the World is Falling Apart

It’s been a wild few weeks - here are my thoughts on coping

Sep 16, 2025

ICYMI 👉

🙋🏻‍♀️ Join me LIVE TODAY, Tuesday 9/16, at 5 pm ET — I’ll be talking with psychiatrist and mental health advocate, Dr. Jessi Gold, about PRACTICAL TIPS TO MANAGE ANXIETY.

Bring your questions, and join us here! 👯

This story is told with permission from my patient. (Her name has been changed.)

Deborah came to my office last week for a routine blood pressure check. When her readings were repeatedly elevated, I asked her what was going on. She described restless sleep and a racing heart. She was having difficulty concentrating at work and felt an uncontrollable urge to drink wine in the evenings while checking news alerts about the latest shooting.

"I feel like I'm losing my mind," she told me, her hands trembling as she twisted a tissue. "How am I supposed to control my blood pressure when the world is on fire?"

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, another school shooting in Colorado, and ongoing political unrest, many of my patients are asking variations of the same question. They wonder if their heightened anxiety is simply the new normal, if persistent worry is the price of being alive in the modern era.

I’ve been wondering the same things. How about you?

Welcome to Being Human

In moments of national crisis and violence, it’s normal to experience distress. We are wired for survival. Anxiety evolved as a protective mechanism, alerting us to potential dangers and preparing our bodies to respond. Your amygdala, the brain's threat detection center, doesn't distinguish between a saber-toothed tiger and a troubling news headline. Both trigger the same physiological cascade: elevated heart rate, shallow breathing, muscle tension, and a flood of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.

This response is brilliantly designed for immediate physical threats that require quick action. It's far less helpful when the "threat" is an endless scroll of national crises on your phone or a vague sense that something terrible might happen tomorrow.

What makes this particularly challenging is that these responses aren't entirely irrational. The world contains real danger. But when anxiety becomes chronic, it stops serving its protective function and starts becoming the problem itself.

Medical Reality vs. Psychological Experience

When I talk with patients about anxiety, I encourage them to recognize three interconnected dimensions of their experience:

BODY: You might notice racing heart, shallow breathing, muscle tension (e.g., jaw, neck, back), digestive issues, fatigue, sleep disruption and appetite changes. Blood pressure and blood sugar readings tend to increase. These are measurable, biological responses to psychological distress.

MIND: You may be stuck in loops of catastrophic thinking, constantly scanning for threats, or consuming news compulsively as if more information will somehow make you safer. You might find yourself marinating in “what ifs,” imagining worst-case scenarios for you, your family, or your community.

BEHAVIOR: How you're responding to these experiences. You might be avoiding places that feel dangerous, checking locks obsessively, withdrawing from social activities, or self-medicating with alcohol, food, or endless scrolling. Or, you might be overfunctioning—working harder or trying to control everything you can because so much feels uncontrollable.

Understanding these dimensions matters because each offers a different entry point for intervention. You don't have to address everything at once, but recognizing the pattern helps you choose where to start.

The Anxiety Spectrum

Many people I see don't meet the full criteria for an anxiety disorder but are still significantly distressed. They exist in what we might call the "middle ground" of anxiety—not incapacitated, but living with enough background anxiety that interferes with their quality of life.

In clinical practice, we often find ourselves working with categories and thresholds. Does this person meet the diagnostic criteria for generalized anxiety disorder? Is this level of distress clinically significant? These distinctions can be helpful for treatment decisions, but they don't always capture the lived experience of anxiety.

The reality is more nuanced. Anxiety exists on a spectrum, not as an either/or proposition. Each of us has a baseline level of vigilance in the face of uncertainty, and we move along this continuum depending on our circumstances, resilience factors, and coping resources. Some amount of anxiety is adaptive, even productive. You need a little adrenaline to file your taxes on time. But too much becomes problematic. And the point at which it crosses from helpful to harmful varies tremendously from person to person.

During times like these, even those with typically robust mental health may find themselves experiencing more anxiety than usual. This doesn't necessarily mean something is "wrong" with them; it might simply reflect a normal response to abnormal circumstances. Conversely, just because you can point to a cause for your anxiety doesn’t mean you don’t need medical or psychological support.

So how do we navigate this complex terrain of anxiety? I suggest a framework I've found helpful with my patients:

Step 1: Validate Your Experience

Recognize that your response to threats is biological. In fact, fighting it or denying its existence only creates more suffering. For Deborah, helping her didn’t mean “fixing” her feelings or convincing her the world was safe. It also required more than a blood pressure pill. Instead, we started with validation—acknowledging that her distress reflected the depth of her caring about her family and community, while recognizing the limits of her control. “You’re more normal than you think,” I told her.

Research shows that people with cognitive flexibility—specifically those who develop the ability to hold two seemingly contradictory truths at once—show more resilience and experience less "wear and tear" on their body and mind during periods of distress. For example, you can acknowledge that violence is real and also recognize that you are currently safe. You can care deeply about others' suffering while also protecting your own well-being. You can stay informed about important events while also limiting your consumption of traumatic content.

This isn't about minimizing real dangers or adopting false optimism. It's about staying in the present moment and sticking with the facts rather than getting lost in fear.

Step 2: Practice Acceptance

In twenty-five years of seeing patients, I can confidently say that the patients who navigate crisis most effectively are the ones who cultivate a relationship with uncertainty itself. Instead of treating uncertainty as a problem to be solved, they learn to see it as a fundamental condition of human existence—something to be acknowledged rather than eliminated.

This doesn't mean becoming passive or resigned. It means realizing that much of our mental anguish stems from attempting to control what lies beyond our influence: other people's ideas or behaviors, random acts of violence, or an uncertain future. It means recognizing that some degree of risk and unpredictability is woven into the fabric of life, and that our attempts to achieve perfect safety or control often create more suffering than the original uncertainty we're trying to manage.

When we accept uncertainty as normal rather than seeing it as a sign that something has gone wrong, we can focus our energy on what actually lies within our control: how we treat our bodies, what we do with our minds, how we show up for the people we love, and how we contribute to making our communities slightly more safe and connected.

Acceptance is the opposite of surrender. It is a clear-eyed recognition of reality. The benefit of clarifying what you cannot control is that you can redirect energy toward areas where you can.

Step 3: Exercise Agency Where You Have It

During vulnerable times, the goal isn't to eliminate difficult emotions but to build a more sustainable relationship with uncertainty. This requires attention to all three dimensions—body, mind, and behavior.

BODY: Try deep breathing techniques that emphasize longer exhalations activate your parasympathetic "rest and digest" response, essentially telling your body that you're safe in this moment. (Personally I love 4-7-8 breathing.) Regular physical movement releases accumulated stress hormones and tension. Adequate sleep, nutrition, and hydration provide the physiological foundation for emotional regulation.

Pay particular attention to stimulants like caffeine and depressants like alcohol, both of which can amplify emotional volatility when your system is already sensitized. One of my patients discovered that eliminating her afternoon coffee dramatically reduced her 4 AM anxiety spirals.

MIND: This isn't about positive thinking or pretending everything is fine. Instead, it's about developing a more balanced relationship with worried thoughts. When you notice catastrophic thinking, gently ask yourself: What's the evidence for this fear? What's most likely to happen? What would I tell a friend having this same worry?

Download the meditation app you’ve been recommended, and try it. Lie on the floor in a dark room, listening to calming music and settling your mind. Consider implementing a "media curfew"—no news after 7 PM, designated times for checking updates rather than constant scrolling, or choosing one trusted source instead of consuming multiple anxiety-inducing feeds.

BEHAVIOR: This is about creating support when the world feels chaotic. Resume regular therapy. Set your morning alarm 15 minutes earlier to avoid feeling harried before starting the day. Build pleasurable activities and meaningful connections into your week. Set boundaries with people or conversations that consistently trigger distress protects your emotional resources. Sign up for a weekly yoga class or plan a regular dog walk with a friend. Establishing routines provides predictability during uncertain times.

For Deborah, meaningful action involved setting that media curfew, establishing a bedtime routine with calming activities, and scheduling a weekly Zoom call with her best friend from childhood. These changes didn't eliminate her anxiety, but they created enough space around it that it no longer dominated her life. The physiological result? After a few days, her blood pressure came down to its baseline.

When To Seek Professional Support

Sometimes self-care strategies aren't sufficient, and professional help becomes essential. Consider reaching out if you're experiencing persistent sleep disruption, panic attacks, intrusive thoughts about violence, social withdrawal that affects your relationships or work, or if you're using substances to manage distress. A skilled therapist can help you develop more effective coping strategies, process feelings that seem overwhelming, and maintain perspective when everything feels chaotic.

Medication can also be valuable for addressing the biological aspects of anxiety and depression that often accompany periods of social stress. This isn't about numbing yourself to reality; it's about giving your nervous system enough stability to engage with challenges more effectively.

Taking care of yourself during times of collective trauma is not selfish, it's strategic. This means saying “no” to some requests for your energy and attention. It means asking for help when you need it. It means recognizing that you cannot solve everyone's problems or protect everyone from pain.

The Upshot

The events of recent weeks have shaken many people's sense of safety and predictability. This distress is valid and normal. At the same time, you have more power than you might realize to influence your own experience of these challenging times.

Your task isn't to eliminate your distress or pretend everything is fine. It's to develop a more conscious, sustainable relationship with difficulty—one that allows you to stay engaged with what matters while protecting your own well-being.

Start small. Choose one dimension—physiological, cognitive, or behavioral—and implement one change this week. Maybe it's taking five deep breaths when you notice your shoulders tensing. Maybe it's setting a timer for news consumption rather than scrolling endlessly. Maybe it's scheduling a coffee date with a friend instead of isolating with your worry.

You don't have to transform your entire relationship with stress overnight. You just need to start with self compassion, the same gentleness you would offer a friend in this moment.

What helps you feel more grounded during times of uncertainty? Reply and let me know—I'd love to hear from you.