What if your overwhelm isn’t weakness… but your nervous system trying to protect you?

In a world that feels loud, fast, and often unsettling, it’s easy to assume something is “wrong” with us when we feel numb, reactive, exhausted, or on edge.

In this episode of Healing Is My Hobby, Jessica Colarco, LCSW, invites you to consider a gentler truth: many of your reactions to current world events aren’t character flaws — they’re trauma responses.

With over 19 years as a therapist specializing in anxiety and trauma, Jessica breaks down what nervous system overload actually looks like in real life. From doom-scrolling and hyperfixation to irritability, guilt, and hopelessness, she helps you understand why your body and brain may be responding the way they are.

This conversation is not about fixing yourself. It’s about understanding yourself.

Jessica reframes common stress reactions through a trauma-informed lens and offers simple, practical regulation tools you can use immediately — grounding practices, body-based resets, and compassionate mindset shifts that help bring your rational brain back online.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, emotionally flooded, disconnected, or just not like yourself lately, this episode will help you feel seen — and steadied.

💛 Ready for support?

Click here to get your free Collective Calm Toolkit — a gentle resource designed to help you regulate, ground, and reconnect when the world feels dysregulating.

Key Takeaways

1. Many reactions to world events are trauma responses — not personal flaws.
2. Numbness, hyperfixation, anger, guilt, and hopelessness are protective nervous system states.
3. Understanding your trauma responses builds self-compassion and reduces shame.
4. Regulation practices don’t have to be complicated to be effective.
5. Grounding and body-based exercises help bring your rational brain back online.

Chapters

00:00 Understanding Trauma Responses

02:52 Reframing Common Reactions

05:43 Regulation and Grounding Practices

08:52 Closing Thoughts and Future Directions

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trauma responses, nervous system, emotional regulation, compassion, mental health, grounding practices, healing tools

Welcome back to Healing Is My Hobby and welcome to our This Might Be a Trauma Response segment where we talk about those, why am I like this moments? We name common patterns, normalize emotional responses and create space for compassion instead of shame. Today's episode is the final one in our Staying Regulated in a Dysregulated World Series. Over the past few weeks, we've talked about collective stress, nervous system overload, doom scrolling,

boundaries, grounding, and what it looks like to care deeply without burning out. To close this series, I want to name something I've been seeing a lot, both in the therapy room and in real life. Many of the ways people

to the world right now aren't signs that something is wrong with them. They might be trauma responses. And when we understand that, we can meet ourselves with compassion instead of judgment.

So let's talk about a few common reactions and gently reframe them. First, feeling numb or detached from the news. If you've noticed yourself feeling emotionally flat, disconnected, or shut down when you hear about what's happening in the world, this might be a trauma response. Numbness is often the nervous system's way of saying, this is too much to feel all at once. It's a protective response.

not a moral failure or lack of empathy. Numb doesn't mean you don't care. It means your system is trying to conserve energy. Second, hyper fixating and feeling compelled to watch every update. If you feel glued to the news, constantly refreshing, checking updates or feeling like you can't look away, this might be a trauma response. When the world feels unsafe or unpredictable,

The nervous system searches for information as a way to regain control. Watching every update can feel like staying prepared, even though it often leaves us more dysregulated. This isn't about willpower, it's about your nervous system seeking certainty. Third, arguing online and feeling rage or despair. If you found yourself arguing online with others, feeling intense anger, or swinging between rage and hopelessness,

This might be a trauma response. When values are violated or when people feel unheard or powerless, emotions can come out sideways. Anger in these moments often signals grief, fear, or moral injury underneath. Your intensity makes sense, but it doesn't always mean you need to stay in the fight.

Fourth, feeling guilt for not doing enough. know this one is big for me. If you carry guilt for resting, disconnecting, or not being more involved, this might be a trauma response rooted in hyper-responsibility. Many people feel an unspoken pressure to witness everything, respond to everything, and fix everything. But guilt doesn't always come from values. It often comes from a nervous system stuck in urgency. Caring.

deeply does not require constant depletion.

Finally, feeling hopeless about the future. If the future feels bleak, uncertain, or hard to imagine, this too can be a trauma response. When the nervous system stays in survival mode, it struggles with hope, creativity, and long-term thinking. Hopelessness isn't a prediction. It's a state of nervous system overwhelm. Hope returns when safety returns, even in small moments.

actually helps when this is a trauma response? Well, once we understand that these reactions are adaptations, not flaws, the question shifts. Instead of asking, how do I make this stop? We get to ask, what does my nervous system need right now? And most of the time, the answer is not more information or more effort. It's safety, containment, and support.

That's why regulation matters so much in moments like this. Regulation helps signal your body that while the world may feel uncertain,

is manageable. It helps create small pockets of safety so your nervous system doesn't have to stay in survival mode all the time. This is where grounding practices, boundaries with the news, and values-based choices

become really important, not as rules but as care. And you

go through the first three episodes that we had this month with this theme to review all of the practices that we talked about to help regulate and calm our nervous system. And again, that's why I created the Collective Calm Toolkit. It's not meant to fix you or make everything feel better overnight.

It's meant to support your nervous system in the moments when things feel heavy or overwhelming. Inside the toolkit, you'll find simple grounding practices to help your body come back to the present, a media boundary plan to help you stay informed without flooding your system, a what's in my control reflection to help reduce helplessness,

prompts to process what you're carrying, and reminders that carrying deeply

doesn't require constant depletion. You don't have to use all of it. You don't have to do it perfectly. Even choosing one small practice is enough to start shifting your nervous system out of survival mode. Because healing isn't about eliminating stress. It's about building capacity to meet it with more steadiness.

You can grab that February download and receive this free resource by joining my newsletter. You can sign up at healingismyhobby.com or on my clinical website, jessicacolarko.lcsw.com.

Before we close today, I want to guide you through a short body-based exercise.

If it feels okay, you can do this wherever you are. If not, come back to this later. Let's start by noticing your breath. No need to change it. Just notice it moving in and out.

Now bring your attention to your hands. Gently clench your fists, just enough to feel tension. Hold for a count of three.

and slowly release.

Notice the difference between tension and relaxation.

Next, bring your attention to your shoulders and gently lift them toward your ears. Let's hold for three, two, one, and let them drop. Now your jaw. Gently press your teeth together or tighten your jaw just a little. Let's hold.

release, letting your mouth soften. And finally your legs. Press your feet into the floor or gently tighten your thighs and hold.

and release. Take one slow breath in.

and a longer breath out.

As your body settles, silently remind yourself, I don't have to hold everything in my body. And when you're ready, gently bring your attention back. That was a mini progressive muscle relaxation exercise. And progressive muscle relaxation helps the nervous system recognize the difference between tension and safety.

making it easier to let go of survival mode. This is one small way to support your nervous system when the world feels heavy. As we close this series, I want to leave you with this. You are not meant to carry the weight of the world in your nervous system. You are allowed to pause. You are allowed to regulate. You are allowed to care in sustainable ways. Staying regulated in a dysregulated world isn't about

disengaging. It's about staying human. Thank you for being here, for listening, and for doing this gentle work alongside me.

I want to give you a little preview of where we're heading next month. In March, we're going to be talking about trauma. Not in a dramatic way, not in a something must be terribly wrong with you way, not in a labeling way, but in an educational, empowering, clarity building way. Because trauma is one of the most misunderstood words in mental health. Many people hear the word trauma and immediately think that doesn't apply to me.

or my experience wasn't bad enough, and others hear it and think, that explains everything. So next month, we're going to slow that down. We'll explore what trauma actually is and what it isn't, how it lives in the body, how high functioning coping can sometimes be a trauma response, why anxiety, perfectionism, people pleasing or emotional numbing might make more sense than you realize.

We'll also have a healing lab experiment around triggers and regulation. And this might be a trauma response episode that might connect some dots for you in a really compassionate way. The goal isn't to pathologize you. The goal is to give you language, because when we understand our patterns, we can stop shaming ourselves for them. If you've ever thought, why am I like this? Or why does this still affect me?

March is going to be a powerful month. I'll see you there.

If you want to try any of these practices yourself, the Collective Calm Toolkit is available through the newsletter like we talked before. If you want to stay connected with me on social media,

can follow along on Instagram and YouTube at Healing is My Hobby. You can visit Healing is My Hobby for resources and blog posts. Thank you for being here and experimenting alongside me.