When the Chaos of the Public Sphere Enters Our Nervous System

Have you noticed how much the chaos we see in government, social media, news, and the broader public sphere can affect your nervous system?

You may not personally know the people involved. You may not even agree with the people or movements you're watching. And yet, after repeatedly seeing humiliation, fear, outrage, scapegoating, hostility, or dehumanizing language, you might notice yourself becoming more anxious, angry, hypervigilant, distracted, or emotionally exhausted.

Sometimes you may find yourself checking the news or social media repeatedly even when you know it isn't making you feel better.

You may have difficulty concentrating.

You may feel increasingly polarized.

Or you may simply reach a point where you want to shut everything out.

If you've experienced this, you're not alone.

And I think there is an important conversation we can have about what happens when patterns that we recognize from dysfunctional relationships and families begin appearing on a much larger, public scale.

Recognizing familiar relational patterns

When I talk about emotional and psychological abuse, I'm not saying that every disagreement, political conflict, or upsetting interaction is abuse.

That distinction matters.

But there are recognizable relational patterns that can become harmful when they are repeated.

These can include:

• Gaslighting — attempting to undermine someone's perception of reality.
• Projection — attributing one's own feelings, motives, or unwanted qualities to someone else.
• Scapegoating — placing disproportionate blame for problems onto an individual or group.
• Triangulation — bringing a third person or group into a conflict in ways that intensify division.
• Shaming and humiliation — attacking someone's worth or dignity rather than addressing a specific behavior.
• Fear-based control — using fear, threat, or intimidation to influence behavior.
• Dehumanization — talking about people or groups as though they are less worthy of dignity, care, or belonging.

We've probably encountered some version of these dynamics in our personal lives.

Maybe it happened in a family.

Maybe it happened in a romantic relationship.

Maybe it happened at work or school.

When these dynamics occur repeatedly in public life, however, they can become much larger than an individual relationship.

They can shape the emotional environment we are all participating in.

Your nervous system doesn't exist separately from your environment

One of the things I've learned through my own personal and professional journey is that healing isn't only about what happens inside of us.

We're relational beings.

Our nervous systems are continually responding to our environments, our relationships, and our perceptions of safety and threat.

So when we're repeatedly exposed to conflict, humiliation, threats, hostility, scapegoating, or dehumanizing language, it's understandable that some of us may experience increased anxiety, hypervigilance, anger, difficulty concentrating, compulsive information checking, exhaustion, or even emotional shutdown.

Social media can intensify this because emotionally activating content tends to demand our attention.

The result can be a cycle:

See something upsetting → become activated → seek more information → encounter more emotionally activating content → become even more activated.

Eventually, being informed can become difficult to distinguish from being chronically activated.

And those aren't the same thing.

Being informed and being chronically activated are not the same thing

I believe it's possible to care deeply about what's happening in the world without consuming every piece of information about it.

You can stay informed while also recognizing your limits.

You can care about injustice without spending every waking moment immersed in conflict.

You can pay attention without allowing outrage to become your entire emotional environment.

Sometimes the most grounded response isn't to consume more.

Sometimes it's to pause.

Take a breath.

Step away from the screen.

Notice what is happening inside your body.

Ask yourself:

Am I learning something right now, or am I becoming more activated?

That question doesn't mean ignoring reality.

It means becoming aware of how you're relating to reality.

The danger of becoming what we are trying to heal

There is another layer to this that I think is especially important.

When we're repeatedly exposed to hostility, contempt, humiliation, and dehumanization, we can begin to mirror those patterns ourselves.

We might become quicker to assume that someone who disagrees with us has bad intentions.

We may begin speaking about entire groups of people as though they are the problem.

We may shame people rather than challenge their behavior.

We may stop seeing individuals and start seeing categories.

And this can happen across political, religious, cultural, and ideological divides.

This is why healing requires more than identifying who is wrong.

It requires us to continually ask:

What am I contributing to this emotional environment?

Not because we are responsible for everything happening in the world.

But because every interaction gives us an opportunity either to reinforce a relational pattern or interrupt it.

Discernment without dehumanization

Discernment is essential.

But discernment isn't the same as condemnation.

A political disagreement isn't automatically manipulation.

Someone having a different belief isn't automatically abusive.

And identifying a genuinely harmful pattern doesn't require us to hate the person engaging in it.

We can look at behavior.

We can look at patterns.

We can consider context.

We can consider power and impact.

We can ask whether there is accountability.

And we can establish boundaries when necessary.

But we can do all of this while remembering that another human being is still a human being.

That doesn't mean excusing harmful behavior.

It means refusing to reproduce the very dynamics we are trying to heal.

What might this look like in everyday life?

It might sound like:

"I disagree with you, but I won't humiliate you."

"I can recognize harmful behavior without hating the person."

"I can set a boundary without dehumanizing you."

"I don't need to consume every piece of information to remain informed."

"I can step away when my nervous system is overwhelmed."

And perhaps most importantly:

"I don't have to become what I am trying to heal."

These aren't invitations to passivity.

They're invitations to remain conscious.

Healing ourselves while remaining engaged with the world

For me, this is where personal healing and collective healing meet.

We don't heal by pretending difficult things aren't happening.

We also don't heal by allowing ourselves to become consumed by them.

There is another possibility.

We can see clearly.

We can name harm.

We can protect ourselves and others.

We can speak truth.

We can establish boundaries.

We can hold people accountable.

And we can refuse to surrender our humanity in the process.

This is especially important because the emotional patterns we practice privately don't necessarily stay private.

How we speak to our families matters.

How we speak to strangers matters.

How we talk about people who disagree with us matters.

How we respond when we're angry matters.

The question isn't whether we will ever experience anger, fear, grief, or outrage.

Of course we will.

The question is what we do with those emotions.

Can we feel anger without becoming cruel?

Can we experience fear without making someone else the enemy?

Can we grieve without losing our capacity for compassion?

Can we recognize darkness without believing that we have to become darkness in order to fight it?

We don't have to escape the chaos to create something different

I don't believe healing the world means escaping the difficult parts of being human.

It may mean learning how to remain human within them.

We can recognize that there are harmful patterns in our families, relationships, institutions, communities, and public conversations.

We can work to interrupt those patterns.

And we can begin with ourselves.

Not because everything is our fault.

Not because we can personally fix the world.

But because the way we participate matters.

Every time we choose connection over contempt, curiosity over assumption, boundaries over retaliation, and dignity over dehumanization, we're practicing a different way of relating.

For me, this is part of what it means to bring spiritual awakening into embodied life.

Love isn't the absence of discernment.

Compassion doesn't require the absence of boundaries.

And choosing love doesn't mean refusing to see darkness.

It means learning how to see clearly without losing ourselves in what we see.

Returning to love

This is at the heart of my work and of my book, The Divine Within: Healing Ourselves to Heal the World.

I wrote the book to explore the intersection of spirituality, psychology, trauma healing, shadow work, and embodied awareness—and how we can develop a deeper relationship with ourselves and what we understand as the divine without surrendering our discernment.

My hope isn't to tell you what you should believe.

It's to offer tools for exploring your own inner life and relationship with others with greater awareness, compassion, and groundedness.

I believe we can name what is harmful without becoming harmful ourselves.

We can disagree without dehumanizing.

We can establish boundaries without hatred.

We can remain informed without living in chronic activation.

And we can see the darkness clearly while still choosing love.

Because perhaps healing the world isn't about escaping the chaos.

Perhaps it's about learning how to remain human within it.

See the darkness clearly. Still choose love.

About Allison Batty-Capps

Allison Batty-Capps is the author of The Divine Within: Healing Ourselves to Heal the World and a consciousness guide who integrates spirituality, psychology, relational healing, mindfulness, and embodied awareness.

Her work explores how spiritual awakening and emotional healing can become grounded in everyday life—not as a hierarchy of who is more awakened, but as an invitation to become more fully ourselves and more connected to one another.

Allison helps people integrate spiritual awakening, emotional depth, and relational healing into grounded, embodied living so they can feel more connected to themselves and others.

Learn more about Allison's work and The Divine Within at blossomingheartwellness.com.

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