How to stay grounded when the world feels upside down.

Groundedness is cultivated through intention, not circumstance.

There are seasons when the world feels disorienting. News cycles accelerate. Opinions intensify. Social media compresses complex realities into emotionally charged fragments. Conversations feel heightened. Tension becomes ambient. Even when nothing catastrophic is occurring in our immediate environment, the nervous system can remain subtly activated — scanning, bracing, anticipating.

For a long time, I lived in that state without fully naming it. I was functioning. I was productive. I was present for my clients and responsibilities. But beneath the surface was a steady undercurrent of low-level anxiety. Not sharp enough to disrupt my day, yet persistent enough to prevent true calm. It felt like background noise I had adapted to.

Eventually, I began to ask myself a different question — not What is wrong with me? But: What am I continually surrounding myself with?

That question changed everything.

Regulating Through Selective Exposure

Many of us live in environments saturated with stimulation. Scroll, scroll, scroll!! TikTok, the Instas, LinkedIn, dating apps, news apps, Pinterest, Poshmark, Facebook, and more! We’re living in a space where getting another dopamine hit is right around the corner.

The body does not distinguish well between direct threat and repeated emotional intensity. Exposure to outrage, comparison, urgency, and polarized narratives can maintain a low-level state of vigilance. Over time, this becomes normalized. We adapt to the activation and call it productivity, awareness, or engagement.

Instead of asking myself, How do I cope better? I began asking a different question:
What can I lose to find myself again?

Deleting Instagram for the entirety of 2026 has created measurable shifts. Within a month and a half, I have had less exposure to emotional volatility and constant comparison, and my baseline anxiety lowered. My attention improved. My responses became more intentional. I felt less compelled to react and more able to discern.

Selective exposure is not avoidance. It’s regulation.

Grounding often requires thoughtful limits — a conscious decision about what we engage with and what we step back from. When stimulation decreases, the nervous system has space to recalibrate. And in that recalibration, clarity becomes possible.

Choosing Calm in My Inner Circle

The next shift was relational. I became increasingly intentional about who I allowed into my private life. Not based on status, shared interests, or even history — but based on nervous system impact.

I began prioritizing calm.

Calm does not mean the absence of emotion. It means the ability to experience emotion without escalation. It means disagreement without hostility. It means distress without chaos.

As a therapist, I am trained to hold intensity. But I realized I did not need to live inside of it personally. I started asking myself: Does this relationship regulate me, or does it dysregulate me?

That question created new boundaries. I began welcoming in people who embody steadiness — people who can tolerate discomfort without dramatizing it, who can hold strong opinions without hostility, who do not thrive on emotional turbulence.

The nervous system co-regulates. When we consistently spend time around steadiness, we internalize steadiness.

Over time, that calm became less borrowed and more embodied.

Presence as an Antidote to Anxiety

The most transformative shift, however, came through presence.

Anxiety often lives in anticipation — in imagined futures, in narratives about what might happen, in constant mental preparation. Groundedness lives in the present moment.

I began practicing small but consistent acts of presence: leaving my phone in another room, allowing myself to relax and not multitask, listening fully instead of formulating my response, and noticing physical sensations during conversations. These were not dramatic changes. They were deliberate interruptions to reactivity and anxiety.

Presence revealed something important: in most moments, I am safe.

The urgency I had been carrying was often informational rather than experiential. My nervous system was responding to exposure, not immediate threat.

As I strengthened my ability to stay present, the background anxiety softened. In its place came something steadier — clarity, discernment, choice.

Releasing the Need to Fix

Perhaps the most meaningful shift was learning to let others feel their own feelings.

When you are empathetic — and especially when you are trained to help — it is easy to assume emotional responsibility. Someone is upset, and you soothe. Someone is anxious, and you fix. Someone is dysregulated, and you intervene.

But chronic emotional management is exhausting.

Groundedness allowed me to sit beside discomfort without absorbing it. To care without carrying. To internally say, “This is theirs,” not as dismissal, but as differentiation.

Allowing other adults to experience and process their own emotions reduced my anxiety more than any coping strategy ever had. I no longer felt responsible for stabilizing every emotional climate I entered.

That shift created space — space for healthier boundaries, for clearer thinking, for more authentic connection.

Groundedness in an Unsteady World

The world may remain loud. Cultural intensity may not decrease. External circumstances will continue to shift. Groundedness, therefore, cannot depend on external calm. It must be cultivated internally through intentional choices.

For me, those choices looked like deleting Instagram for a year, narrowing my inner circle to people who embody steadiness, practicing embodied presence, and releasing the reflex to fix.

The result was not detachment. It was discernment.

I still care. I still engage. I still feel deeply.

But I no longer feel upside down when the world accelerates.

I feel rooted.

And rootedness — especially in uncertain times — is a quiet form of freedom.