Collective Trauma and the Nervous System: How to Stay Grounded in an Overwhelming World

If you’ve felt more on edge lately, you’re not imagining it. Many people in the U.S. are living inside a constant hum of stress: community violence, political division, climate anxiety, ongoing wars, economic uncertainty, and a nonstop stream of distressing news. Even when these events aren’t happening in your immediate environment, your body is still taking them in.

This is what we call collective trauma.

What Is Collective Trauma?

Collective trauma occurs when communities, cultures, or entire societies experience overwhelming events that disrupt our sense of safety, stability, or trust in the world and the societal systems that are supposed to protect us. Unlike individual trauma, collective trauma is shared. It lives in the social field, the cultural atmosphere, and the nervous systems of the people within it.

Our nervous systems are deeply relational. They are wired to track threat and safety not only within our own lives, but also within our families, communities, and broader culture. When the collective is hurting, our bodies feel it too.

Stress vs. Trauma: Why Ongoing Stress Can Become Traumatic

Stress and trauma are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same.

Stress is a natural nervous system response to challenge or demand. When stress is time-limited and we have enough support, rest, and resources, the nervous system can move through it and return to baseline. Stress, while uncomfortable, is often manageable.

Trauma, on the other hand, occurs when an experience is too much, too fast, or too overwhelming for the nervous system to process and integrate. Trauma is less about the event itself and more about what happens inside the body when there isn’t enough capacity, safety, or support to metabolize what’s happening.

Stress can become trauma when it is chronic, repeated, and inescapable—especially when there is little opportunity for regulation or recovery in between. This is where collective trauma often takes root.

Ongoing exposure to global crises, political unrest, violence, and human suffering—paired with constant media access—can overwhelm the nervous system’s ability to cope. Even if these events are not happening directly to you, your body may still experience them as threatening due to:

• Deep empathy and emotional attunement to others’ pain

• Relational or identity-based connections to the events (such as shared race, gender, geographic area, values, or lived experience)

• A history of earlier trauma that lowers the threshold for overwhelm

  
  

When stress accumulates without enough resolution, the nervous system may begin to respond as if danger is ongoing. This can lead to trauma responses such as hypervigilance, shutdown, emotional numbing, reactivity, or a persistent sense of unsafety.

Signs Your Nervous System Is Responding to Collective Trauma

You might notice:

• A persistent sense of dread or “waiting for the other shoe to drop”

• Numbness, shutdown, or avoiding the news because it feels overwhelming

• Increased anxiety, irritability, or snapping at loved ones

• Trouble sleeping or waking up already tense and exhausted

• Guilt for experiencing joy when so many others are suffering

These are not personal failures or signs that something is “wrong” with you. They are understandable nervous system responses to prolonged, collective stress.

A Polyvagal Perspective on Collective Trauma

From a polyvagal lens, repeated exposure to threat—whether direct or through constant media consumption—can push the nervous system into survival states.

This might look like:

• Hyperarousal (fight/flight): anxiety, agitation, hypervigilance

• Hypoarousal (freeze/shutdown): numbness, collapse, disconnection

  
  

Over time, it becomes harder to access the ventral vagal state: the place of groundedness, connection, and presence where we feel safe enough to engage with life.

How Constant Crisis Coverage Impacts the Brain

As we talk about collective trauma, it’s important to remember that it isn’t only direct exposure to events that shapes our nervous systems. Even when something isn’t happening to you personally or within your immediate community, the chronic, ongoing nature of crises unfolding across the country and around the world can still have a profound impact.

Living inside a 24-hour news cycle means our nervous systems are repeatedly exposed to threat, uncertainty, and human suffering, often without enough time to recover in between. We weren’t designed to take in this much information, this quickly, for this long.

According to the American Psychological Association, more than half of U.S. adults report that following the news causes significant stress, including anxiety, fatigue, and sleep disturbances. This isn’t a personal weakness, it’s a nervous system capacity issue.

From a nervous system perspective, repeated exposure to distressing images and stories, especially through social media, can signal ongoing danger to the brain. The amygdala activates, stress hormones increase, and the nervous system shifts into chronic hypervigilance (fight/flight) or shutdown (freeze). Over time, this can mirror trauma responses such as numbness, irritability, hopelessness, or feeling disconnected from daily life.

This is one of the primary ways collective trauma is taking shape today. Even when we are physically safe, our nervous systems may not feel safe because they are continually absorbing cues of threat from the larger cultural environment—often without community processing, rituals of meaning-making, or space for integration.

Supporting Your Nervous System During Collective Trauma

We can’t opt out of the world, but we can tend to our nervous systems with compassion and intention. Small, sustainable practices matter.

Name what’s happening and make room for your feelings. Gently acknowledging, “My nervous system is responding to collective stress and trauma,” can normalize and help you relate to your experience with more kindness.

Lean into community, co-regulation, and creativity. Nervous systems regulate best in safe connection. Text a friend, spend time with like-minded people, cuddle a pet, join a supportive activist group, or host an art or post card making gathering or a civics 101 party.

Right-size your media intake.You don’t need to be available to the news 24/7 to be informed or caring. Setting boundaries around doomscrolling, limiting exposure before bed, and choosing a few trusted sources can make a difference.

Let the body lead.Gentle movement, shaking out your arms and legs, walking outside, or feeling your feet on the ground helps your body release stress that thinking alone can’t resolve.

Practice micro-moments of safety.Notice small cues of safety throughout your day: sunlight on your skin, a warm mug in your hands, a kind interaction. These moments remind your nervous system that safety and goodness still exist alongside hardship.

Practicing Regulation During Political Upheaval

Being in recovery from past trauma doesn’t require turning away from injustice or suffering. It invites us to stay engaged in ways our nervous systems can tolerate.

That might mean:

• Checking the news at specific times instead of continuously

• Taking breaks when your body shifts into alert mode

• Balancing hard news with stories of repair, resilience, and care

Protecting your nervous system isn’t selfish. It’s a trauma-informed way to remain present, compassionate, and resilient for the long haul.

Tools for Regulation

When we’re living inside ongoing collective stress, one of the kindest things we can offer ourselves is a gentle way to complete the day. Winding down isn’t just about sleep or calm, it’s about helping the nervous system shift out of “on guard” and into a state where safety, digestion, and repair are possible.

One supportive place to start: simple, predictable routines.When what’s happening in our communities, country, and world feels unpredictable, routines give the nervous system something steady and reliable to hold onto. Even small, consistent rhythms can increase a felt sense of safety.

You might try:

• Waking up, eating meals, or going to bed around the same time each day

• Pairing an existing routine with something regulating, such as gentle stretching, a short walk, or listening to calming or delta-wave music before bed

• Creating a brief, repeatable wind-down ritual to help your body transition out of the day

It’s very common, especially during collective stress, to feel pulled away from routines

toward coping strategies like junk food, endless scrolling, or constantly researching the news. These urges are understandable attempts to soothe and regain control. With compassion, setting boundaries around media consumption and recommitting to simple routines can help your nervous system regulate over time.

Rather than making you disconnected or uninformed, this kind of structure supports resilience. It helps you stay grounded, engaged, and available to show up in ways that align with your values and strengths for the long run.

Simple regulation tools, practiced consistently, can help your body feel supported rather than depleted. You are not meant to carry the weight of the world alone but you do deserve a nervous system that feels steadied as you move through it.

Ready for Deeper Support?

If you’re noticing that collective stress keeps overwhelming you, or that old wounds are getting activated alongside new global or community trauma, you don’t have to navigate this alone. I offer trauma-informed therapy, including EMDR, to help your nervous system process what it’s been carrying so you can feel less flooded, more grounded, and more like yourself again.

Trauma-informed therapy can support you in gently processing collective trauma and political events without reliving it, strengthening your capacity to stay present in the world, and reducing the intensity of anxiety, shutdown, or reactivity when new stressors arise.

If you’re ready to explore working together, I invite you to reach out and schedule a consultation. Support is available, and healing doesn’t happen in isolation.

With compassion,

Mindy

mindy@healingresourcesmentalhealth.com