Staying Human When the Headlines Are Brutal

How to protect your peace without turning away from what is happening.

So, we had been away in Malta for a week of planned peace and quiet. We heard the news as we were travelling to the airport: the US and Israel had launched strikes on Iran. By the time we landed, we were reading about dozens of little girls killed when a missile hit Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran.

By the time we got home, I found myself doing what so many of us do when the world lurches into fresh horror - watching endless hours of news, scrolling for updates, absorbing more and more devastation as though constant exposure might somehow make me more useful, more informed, more prepared.

But after a while, I could feel the cost.

My chest was tight. My body was buzzing. My mind was racing. And my nervous system was starting to shut down.

And one thing I have learned - in business, in relationships, in life - is that when my body starts whispering enough, it is usually telling the truth long before my mind catches up.

So I made myself stop.

I turned the news off and put my phone down. I took a breath. I let myself come back into the room. And then I did something kind for myself. I ran a bath, made a cup of chamomile tea, and put on my audiobook.

And lying there, something shifted from grief into something sharper. Because I kept thinking: why is this always on us? The absorbing, the processing, the holding of it. The men who make these decisions are not lying in bubble baths trying to regulate their nervous systems. They are not scrolling in horror at what they have set in motion. They have moved on to planning the next humanitarian crisis.

There is a reason war has always been one of the oldest tricks in the book for men addicted to power. Create a disaster. Dominate the headlines. Wrap brutality in the language of necessity. And expect everyone else to live inside the consequences, to carry the fear, the grief, the psychological cost, while they get to feel powerful and dominant.

Now, nobody is talking about Trump being all over the Epstein files anymore. The distractions never stop. Venezuela, before that. And Greenland. Canada. Cuba. NATO.

Because power has always relied on noise, confusion, and overwhelm. Our dysregulation is not incidental. It is part of how control works. And the men who benefit most from our distraction are rarely the ones paying the price.

Which is exactly why coming back to yourself is not a small thing.

Not because we don’t care, or because we’re trying to look away. But because there is a difference between bearing witness and feeding yourself to the fire. And a regulated nervous system in times like these is quietly radical. It is how we stay discerning rather than reactive.

Self-love, then, is not separate from political consciousness. Sometimes it is the most honest expression of it.

It can look like turning off the news. Unclenching your jaw. Putting both feet on the floor. It can look like a bath, a cup of tea, a walk, a cry, or a rant to your best friend. Small acts of return.

The things that make resistance possible.

It can look like saying: this matters, and so do I.

The world may be in chaos. The headlines may be devastating. There may be very real reasons to feel grief, fear, anger, and helplessness.

And still, you are allowed to come back to yourself.

More than that, I would say you need to.

Because the world does not need more people who are burnt out, flooded, and unable to think. It needs people who can stay present without collapsing. People who can care deeply without drowning. People who can tell the truth about what is happening without disappearing from their own bodies in the process.

So if you have been glued to the headlines and feeling your nervous system fray at the edges, let this be your reminder: come back to yourself. Do one kind thing. Rest if you need to.

Because something is very fucking wrong. And you will need your nervous system intact and fully resourced for what comes next.

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Big love,

Mx