Protecting Your Peace in a World That Profits from Panic
A reflection on overwhelm, boundaries, and the slow work of staying human
In January, I shut everything down.
No more doomscrolling. No reels, no updates, no curated chaos coming at me through a tiny glowing screen. I stepped away from social media completely, not because I had a grand plan, but because I was unraveling in ways I couldn’t ignore anymore.
It wasn’t one thing. It was everything.
The constant news cycle. The ads that knew just where to poke. The way every scroll felt like taking on the weight of the world while also being reminded I wasn’t doing enough. Or being enough.
I stopped because I couldn’t breathe.
And something shifted in that silence.
I remembered that I’m not here to carry it all.
Some of us were born with spongy hearts absorbing everything around us like second nature. We notice the way a room changes. We feel the collective ache before it’s named. And when the world screams, we often whisper, “What can I do?”
But here’s the thing no one profits from you knowing:
You don’t have to hold it all.
You were never meant to.
There’s an economy that runs on your anxiety.
When you feel like there’s an emergency at all times, you’re more likely to scroll. To click. To buy. To join. To fix.
And the body? It doesn’t know the difference between a real emergency and a digital one. It just knows there’s something wrong, all the time. And eventually, it starts to shut down or speed up in ways that feel like they’ll never stop.
The wild part is that your nervous system, this ancient, beautiful system inside you, is still wired for what it was thousands of years ago. It’s scanning for danger, for change in the environment, for what’s safe and what’s not. It wasn’t made to absorb the heartbreak of the entire globe before breakfast.
It makes so much sense that you're overwhelmed.
It’s not a personal failure.
It’s a human response in a world that doesn’t stop yelling.
After I stepped away from social media, it took a while to come back to myself. It wasn’t instant peace. I’d been living outside of my own body for too long. The static was still there inside me even when the screens were gone.
But I started to build some rhythm again.
Not some Pinterest version of a morning routine, just small ways to tell my body, “You’re safe now.” Ways to anchor back into the moment. Ways to hear my own thoughts again instead of the algorithms.
For me, that looked like vibrating on a vibration plate (strange but magical), humming quietly in the morning before my thoughts got too loud, and pressing a cold orange to the back of my neck when I felt my anxiety rising. Yes, an actual orange from the freezer. It smells like grounding and feels like relief. These things may sound small, yet when my nervous system panics, they remind my brain that there’s only one emergency at a time, and usually, it isn’t happening right now.
And when I need to come back fast, when I feel myself spinning out, I come into the body first.
This is where somatic awareness helps.
Instead of saying “I’m panicking,” I say, “There’s tightness in my chest.”
Instead of “I can’t handle this,” I ask, “Where do I feel this in my body?”
I notice my feet on the floor.
I name five things I see, four things I can touch, three I can hear, two I can smell, one I can taste.
I breathe low and wide, even if my brain’s still in chaos.
And slowly, sometimes very slowly, my body starts to believe me when I say we’re safe.
These are the quiet, steady things that bring me back to presence.
Not perfection. Not positivity. Just presence.
Eventually, I came back to Facebook, mostly because I needed it for my business. But I came back on purpose. I set time limits. I check with intention. And the moment it starts to feel like too much again, I step away. No guilt. No explanation.
Protecting your peace isn’t a one-time act.
It’s something we do over and over, gently and fiercely.
If you feel scattered or burnt out or just weirdly tired all the time, you’re not broken.
You’re likely dysregulated.
You don’t need a whole new life, you just need to come back into your body.
One breath. One choice. One small practice at a time.
Here are a few that help me when I feel far from myself:
- Turn off notifications.
- Step outside barefoot.
- Hum until I feel the vibration in my chest.
- Name what I’m feeling in my body, not what I’m thinking.
- Delete an app for a day. Or a week. Or a year.
- Let silence be the medicine instead of the punishment.
When the world gets loud again—and it always does—I try to return to this small ritual:
I light a candle.
I place one hand on my heart, one on my belly.
And I say:
“Only what is mine to carry may stay. The rest can return to the Earth.”
It’s not dramatic. It’s not fancy.
It’s a boundary. A blessing. A way back to myself.
A gentle reminder:
Your peace is not a luxury.
It’s not something to earn.
It’s something sacred.
And in a world that profits from your panic, protecting it is a radical act of self-love.
Journaling Prompt
Where have I been giving my peace away?
What would it look like to take it back—gently, honestly, without guilt?
No need to overthink it. Let your body answer.
Bonus for You
I have created a simple pdf for you called “The Panic-Proof Pocket Guide: 7 Tools for Daily Peace.”
Something you can return to when the world starts to spin too fast.
If you’ve felt far from yourself lately, I just want to say:
It’s okay. You’re not alone. And you’re not behind.
You get to come home, again and again, in whatever way makes sense for you.
Love today,
Heather 🌸