On Systems, Overwhelm, & Resisting Resignation
Every day brings a new global crisis: climate change, political unrest, economic strain, and production outpacing basic needs. For many, this is exhausting, leaving us stuck in a loop of “What’s the point?” or “None of this matters.”
Over time, overwhelm can begin to turn into disconnection, or rather a form of quiet defeat, where people find themselves settling into the belief that they have no choice or influence over what happens in their communities, their country, or the world around them. It is worth considering whether this is simply a matter of individual preference and capacity. Or could this also be part of a larger systemic phenomenon? Many of us are experiencing an intense collective crisis, and people are strained by daily life and the effects it has on our mental well-being. It’s understandable that most of us are seeking relief.
Nervous System Under Chronic Exposure
We are saturated with news and information. Even when turning off the TV, we absorb everything, often increasing awareness faster than our ability to respond. For some, exposure motivates action and organizing. For many, already stressed, constant overload leads to numbness and shutdown. Staying aware comes at a psychological and physiological cost.
Many oscillate between anxiety and activation, anger and action, or feel emotionally flat, disconnected, or like retreating under the covers for the day. What does ongoing awareness do to us over time? Can we stay connected without collapsing into shutdown, escapism, or nihilism?
Constrained Possibility
People can recognize problems, but often feel nothing can fundamentally change. “This is just how it is” becomes internalized and solidified as lived reality. This stems not from ignorance or lack of insight, but from a systemically restricted imagination or sense of possibility. Awareness and knowledge alone are insufficient when people are psychologically exhausted, disconnected, overwhelmed, materially constrained, or lack pathways to meaningful collective action.
It may be tempting and understandable to throw our hands up in the air and try to move on with our day, business as usual, putting the latest disaster on the shelf, but is that actually what we need? What are we to do when we see people suffering all over the world, and still need to log in to the work video call to discuss company deliverables?
In Capitalist Realism (2009), Fisher argues that systems aren’t just shaping what happens to us, but they also shape what feels possible. So what happens when we feel helpless and psychologically trapped within the realities we are trying to survive? Chronic exposure and awareness, paired with a sense of no control or direction, can often activate us or cause us to detach. These responses are not inherently pathological or dysfunctional but rather adaptive responses to the overwhelm.
When Overwhelm Becomes Disconnection
Many issues and stressors are systemic, contrary to popular belief and to particularly popular Western psychological inferences. When we are in a state of overwhelm, it is often not for a lack of caring but more a lack of where to direct that energy. If you find yourself feeling stuck, resigned, or emotionally drained, it is important to recognize that you are not alone and that this is a human response to living within complex, overwhelming systems. When we offer care and see no impact, when we have awareness but no outlet, the repeated experience of disappointment on top of an already strained nervous system sends us into resignation. Sometimes, care can start to feel emotionally destabilizing, pushing us closer to disconnect.
Awareness Without Outlet
You want to stay informed; you do care about people and the planet, and what is happening around you, but eventually the nervous system begins to struggle to hold the constant weight of urgency without meaningful pathways for response. If you are opening your social media to doomscroll first thing upon waking (I highly discourage this start to the day), and are disturbed by the information and images, yet still need to get up, get the kids to school, and get to the office. In that moment, it may be unclear what impact or change you can create in the world. Perhaps there is no total resolution in that moment, and perhaps it does not solely weigh on any one individual to solve. This type of weight we hold will require collective community action and care, and it may start with very small micro-ripples to give us breathing room and a sense of agency back into our lives.
Resignation as Protection
A caution when care turns into resignation, the stress is not totally alleviated; rather, how we show up is reorganized. The relief may be short-lived, but eventually urgency shifts into heaviness, engagement moves toward disconnection, and movement becomes stagnant. Resignation can compound the stuckness and make everything feel harder to hold while continuing to narrow our sense of possibility.
The feeling of losing agency and choice that happens during the surrender can deepen the very overwhelm it was attempting to protect us from. When someone is emotionally flooded by political information, they may opt to disengage with news and current events altogether. Initially, this disengagement reduces their anxiety, and they feel a sense of relief, but over time, this may also increase the feeling of helplessness and cynicism, and lead to the conclusion that “it’s all fucked, anyway.”
More information may not necessarily increase our sense of agency, and we are seeing problems faster than we can meaningfully engage with them, which exacerbates overwhelm, helplessness, and desensitization. Just as it may be an adaptation to shut down, these adaptations into despair and nihilism are normalized and capitalized by the very systems that preserve the conditions harming us, leading to a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
The Pressure of “Being Realistic”
Living in the tension of understanding a problem while still having to function and survive within it increases our exhaustion. This can lead to internal conflicts and forces us to compartmentalize our lives. Then we are hit with society’s favorite notion of being… realistic. Being realistic now becomes a boundary, resignation becomes normalized, and we see self-censorship of possibility and a dismissal of alternatives from the start, without effort to explore viability. Systems narrow what we consider feasible or worth attempting. An example of this is when someone recognizes something is bad but shrugs it off because “it’s not practical to think everyone could have housing.”
Holding the Contradiction
Another common aspect of this process is how we hold the contradiction without it swallowing us whole. We have to work to make money to maintain a certain amount in our online bank account, which can feel silly and arbitrary while it holds significant material reality by affording our livelihood. So we can feel the absurdity of made-up money or antiquated systems, yet they are unavoidable and have real-life consequences. We are now shifting into a dual awareness. Just because we understand that much of our suffering is constructed, we are still not relieved of its hold on us. We are continually forced to participate in the very systems we feel trapped in.
Deep Care With Nowhere to Go
Political and social awareness strains our nervous systems and is reinforced by structures and messaging, leading to resignation, avoidance, and nihilism, or sometimes a form of deep care with nowhere to go. If awareness doesn’t lead to agency, and understanding alone won’t bring change, what do we do?
Instead of offering an answer (I’m not sure one correct answer exists), I hope you may find support among more questions to consider for reflection:
Questions for Reflection
- How can we stay connected? Connected to our humanity? Connected to our bodies? To the Earth?
- How can we expand our capacity for overwhelm? How can we allow rest without avoidance?
- Where can we channel our care and energy in a way that feels sustaining?
- Who is your community? How do we engage in collective action?
- How do we cultivate hope without forcing ourselves into toxic positivity?
- What helps us from sinking into despair and surrender?
- What can we learn from the people before us who endured?
- Where can you grieve collectively, tend to the loss, and metabolize the disillusionment?
- How can we loosen the constraints on what we imagine to be possible?
- Where are we able to sit with the tension of existence?
- What could the world look like? ( suggestion to allow yourself to be unrealistic )
Perhaps resisting the urge to give up or choosing to actively engage with the world isn’t resolved with one grand solution, but with many small gestures, in community with others, together, again and again and again.
“If ignorance is bliss, then knock the smile off my face.”
— Rage Against the Machine
Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative? Zero Books.