The instability many people feel isn’t coming from the news itself, but from how identity relates to uncertainty.
Many people are feeling unsettled today, even if they can’t point to a single reason why.
The news cycle offers plenty of candidates: ongoing conflict, political tension, economic uncertainty, and a constant stream of updates that never quite resolve. But beneath the specifics, there is a more general feeling—an ambient sense that things are unstable, unpredictable, and difficult to hold.
What’s worth noticing is that this feeling often persists even when we step away from the headlines. The nervous system remains activated. The mind continues scanning for threat or resolution. The sense of chaos doesn’t turn off simply because the screen does.
This suggests something important: while the events reported in the news are real, the felt chaos many people experience is not coming from the headlines alone.
How Identity Meets the News
News is not received passively. Information is filtered through assumptions—often unconscious—about how the world should work and what role we are meant to play within it.
When we encounter stories of instability or suffering, the mind quickly begins asking questions that feel practical but are rooted in identity: What does this mean for me? Is this getting worse? Where is this headed? What should happen next?
These questions assume that the world is, or should be, manageable and moving toward coherence. When reality does not conform to that expectation, tension arises. The nervous system reacts not simply to the content of the news, but to the collapse of an imagined sense of control.
From the Dualistic Unity perspective explored in Proof That You’re God, this reaction does not indicate a lack of compassion or awareness. It reveals identification with a role that was never sustainable: the idea that life must make sense, resolve, or stabilize in order for us to feel at ease.
Why Chaos Feels Personal
The world has always been complex, unpredictable, and at times violent. What has changed is not the nature of reality, but the intimacy with which we are exposed to it.
Modern news collapses distance. Events occurring thousands of miles away arrive instantly, without context or closure, and often without any meaningful way to respond. For an identity that believes safety depends on understanding or influencing outcomes, this creates a continuous low-grade emergency.
The feeling of chaos, then, is not evidence that something is wrong with the world. It is the friction created when identity assumes responsibility for what it cannot control.
The Difference Between Awareness and Burden
There is an important distinction between being informed and carrying the weight of the world.
Caring does not require ownership. Awareness does not require emotional self-sacrifice. Yet when identity quietly believes it must hold what it perceives—must resolve it, fix it, or emotionally contain it—the result is exhaustion rather than clarity.
When this is seen, something softens. The news does not disappear, and concern does not vanish, but the sense of personal urgency relaxes. The world is allowed to be as it is, without being filtered through the belief that it must make sense in order for us to be okay.
This shift does not come from disengagement. It comes from recognizing that the chaos we feel is happening in relationship to an assumed self, not in reality itself.
What Changes When Control Is Questioned
When the expectation of control loosens, the nervous system often follows. Information can be received without immediately becoming personal. Compassion can arise without the added weight of responsibility. Action, when appropriate, becomes clearer rather than reactive.
The world may still appear unstable, but it no longer feels like a personal failure or threat. What falls away is not care, but the belief that peace depends on outcomes.
If this resonates…
These themes are explored more deeply in
Proof That You’re God
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DKCMR183/
Not as a way to withdraw from the world, but as an invitation to meet it without the added burden of a false sense of control.
Open Reflection
What if the chaos you feel isn’t evidence that something is wrong, but a signal that identity has quietly taken on more than it was ever meant to carry?
