The News is Killing Your Nervous System

Jun 14, 2025

There’s an anthropologist named Robin Dunbar who said humans were only built to emotionally track about 150 people at once. That’s it. That’s your nervous system’s bandwidth. That’s your village—or it’s supposed to be.

And we wonder why everyone’s feeling anxious, fried, and swinging between apathy and outrage. We weren’t built for global grief input 24/7. We were not built for global grief input 24/7. We are not biologically wired for a world where the worst thing happening in every city on Earth is streamed into our palms before we’ve even had our coffee. It’s overwhelming and inhumane. I say this as someone who used to work in the news.

I wanted to be a photojournalist ever since I was about 11 years old. More specifically, I wanted to be an Explorer for National Geographic and share the wonders of nature so people would fall in love with and therefore want to protect our Earth like I did. My parents bought me a camera when I was 12, and I was hooked. I thought it was this noble calling to be able to tell the truth, inform the public, share beauty, and to be a voice for people who didn’t or couldn't have one. To share the stories and places that connect us.

But what I found instead was that being in the news meant we had to pitch stories every day that were newsworthy, which is often just jargon for “shocking enough to get sustained viewership.” Murders. Car wrecks. House fires. Death by cop. Controversy. The death count from hurricanes. Domestic abuse turned homicide. Because that’s what gets airtime. These are the things that spread.

Now, to illustrate my point, I was a news producer at a station in a small designated market area. Like market #150 or so in the nation. The only time (that I remember) a story I worked on made it to a top 10 market was because a toddler was killed in a domestic violence situation. The Sheriff is on record saying it was the most brutal scene he’d come across in all his decades. And he’s on record saying that there was never a public safety threat. Dear reader, there was no reason to share this tragedy at large. But, it’s “huge shocking news,” so of course, we were told to run it big. I was instructed to dig up the man’s criminal record, followed his paper trail out of state, and was the one who wrote the script when the press release came in at 5:15 or so—just in time to break the story in our big 5:30pm show. If I remember right, we took a psychotic break angle. All for views. That night, after finishing the 5:30 and 9:00 shows, I went home and got blackout drunk before passing out in my bathtub because I couldn’t hold it together anymore. But we expected people at home to just keep watching this stuff. Daily. As if it were normal. I couldn’t handle it anymore, so I quit, and I told myself if I ever started writing and documenting again, it would be on my own terms, so here I am.

What some people still don’t realize is that every local news station is doing this in their areas. Every single one, all across the country, is ready to capitalize on a devastating story if it grabs attention. If “we’re lucky” and it’s shocking enough, it gets picked up by a larger market. And if that does well, it gets picked up nationally. So, what you’re seeing on national broadcasts and your doomscroll feeds isn’t some organic reflection of the true state of the world. You’re looking through a distorted mirror designed to make you feel like everything is always falling apart—because that’s what gets views. And views mean money. Ratings mean ad dollars. The people at the very top do not care about the state of your nervous system. They don’t care that they are pushing the boundaries and limits of what humans are meant to carry emotionally. They don’t care about your stress levels. In fact, it’s music to their ears. All that matters is that you’re still watching. (A quick pause to say I know some amazing journalists doing good work despite the mess. Warriors are everywhere. We’re thinking in systems here, friends. Systems.)

We’ve got entire networks and media pipelines whose survival actually depends on your nervous system being in a constant state of alarm. That’s not a sustainable, equitable, just, or necessary system. We were never meant to carry the grief of the whole world on our backs. We were meant to steward our corner of it well. Our families. Our neighborhoods. Our energy. Our land. I’m not saying we should be ignorant or avoid important issues. I’m saying we need to reclaim our capacity and use discernment about what we’re letting into our orbit. How are we spending our precious mental energy, the currency of our attention? Is it fueling us to take action or collapsing us into hopelessness?

And let me just say this too because it needs to be said: There are a lot of people chronically online who say things like, “If you’re not speaking out, I have no tolerance for you,” or “Silence is violence.” To me, these are the words of a broken heart that’s been co-opted by trauma. Our collective trauma moves through some of us saying, “Feel this my way, or you must be part of the problem.” It often demands public displays of grief and exaggerated outrage, or else you’re complicit. Frankly, any and all of us are complicit in these larger systems to varying degrees, so there’s no need to be pointing fingers at anyone. Something something, those of you who are without fault, cast the first stone…

You see, not everyone is meant to speak out the same way. Not everyone can. Some people are processing. Some are praying. Some are tending to children or burying their own dead or literally trying to keep their mental health above water. And some are doing quiet, real work in their actual communities—away from the timeline, the narrative, and the pressure to perform a certain way. That’s all radical care. That’s all very much resistance. To me, this is the actual answer to very real problems we face because when you realize that what you’re seeing everywhere all of the time is curated chaos, you realize that the most radicalized thing you could possibly do is become calm and focused. Become steady for your friends and family. Let that trickle out into your community, where real change happens. Imagine good, good change happening on smaller scales all over the world. We might not be seeing it on the news; it might not get picked up, but it’d be happening. And in a world that needs to see it to believe it, I’d rather hold a beautiful vision and work to create it here and now in Denton.

You don’t have to share a post to prove your heart. You don’t have to bleed publicly to be counted as good. You are allowed to tend to your own field. You’re allowed to protect your peace. You’re allowed to stay grounded and effective while others are spiraling. And you’re allowed to fall apart because we’ll catch you. We know you’ll bounce back. We’re all learning and doing this together. If you’re someone who’s learned how to hold your center—and in this world, that’s rare and powerful—we need you. We need more people who are strong and sure like anchors wherever it is they feel they’re needed because there’s so much wisdom in your passions.

I care deeply. That’s why I’ve had to learn to put things down and focus on what I can actually touch. We never want to become numb to suffering; it matters greatly that we feel, so let no one misunderstand me. That toddler mattered. So much so that, among other reasons, I actually named my son after the town. Every victim all over the world matters, but the REALLY LARGE asterisk here is that we do not honor them better by staying in a state of emotional collapse. Please read that again. I had to get up out of the bathtub, get up out of bed, put the alcohol down, and brush my teeth. Wash a dish. Get myself right. Emotional collapse isn’t reverence, and frankly, it’s counterproductive. It’s dysregulation, and that’s the whole point of the news. To keep you in that deep state of frazzled and “powerless.”

We don’t grieve well collectively anymore because we’ve forgotten how to. We’ve made grief a performance instead of a sacred act and regular part of our lives. We consume tragedy like content candy and then wonder why we feel numb. This isn’t what souls are for.

So, my advice that some of you reading this may hate (and that’s okay), is turn it off. Unplug. Breathe. Go outside. Cry where it’s safe. Cook something. Pray for someone. Help your neighbor. Tend to some land—even a potted plant. Create art. Sit and really play imagination with your kids. Attend a community gathering. Learn a skill. Build something. Make a good change in your city. Find problems that matter to you that you have the power to solve in your area. You’re not bad for needing to tune it out. You’re not broken for being well beyond maxed out. You’re probably just awake in a world that’s trying to keep you in a constant state of burnout. I’ll tell you what a wise man told me, “You’ve been awake long enough, now it’s time to get out of bed.” And if you’re one of the people participating in the outcry, girl, same sometimes. Maybe that’s your rightful place. I’d just ask that you stay open to the idea that maybe, at least to an extent, it’s a fabricated state. Suffering is real, but the pressure you feel isn’t human. It’s not meant for you, and you’re carrying it anyway.

Not everyone is meant to be on the frontlines. Some are here to stabilize others. Some are here to hold the vision of a better world. Some are here to be a soft place for us to land when we need nurturing. Some are here to fight. We need all of it. Healers, builders, lovers, warriors, organizers, artists, and anything in between. Writing this article is what I can do today, so this is what I’m doing. Let people be who they’re actually here to be, and just watch the world change.

There’s a reason your nervous system is screaming. It’s not because you’re just too sensitive. It wasn’t built to live like this! None of this is your fault, but it is your responsibility to get honest about what’s yours to carry and what was never meant to be.

I don’t need you to live in denial. I ask that you kindly refrain from bypassing. I don’t want you to pretend that the suffering of others doesn’t make you want to lie on the floor and cry and then get up and cry for justice. I know it does. I know it does. But discernment says, taking a break from carrying the burden alone isn’t the same as bypassing. Discernment says let’s take all that despair and rage, and channel it into action that comes from the wisdom that lives inside of you, not provoked by the bullshit you see on your screen every day. If we can all do that instead of just raging at this machine, we’ll create the change we’re crying for. Just zoom in. Go inward first. We have a place for you, but we need you whole.

This is how we build a different world—starting with Denton county.