🌍 The Collective is Clenching: A Message for the Overwhelmed

Written by Shelly Moore ©️ 2025

I don’t even know what I want most days.

Just to exist without the undercurrent overwhelm would be nice for starters.

Because let’s be honest: the world is a lot right now.

There’s a static hum beneath everything—panic, pressure, overstimulation—and it’s not just yours. It’s everyone’s.

What we’re experiencing right now isn’t just collective anxiety.

It’s amplified anxiety.

And the amplifier?

📱 That sleek little black mirror in your palm.

The algorithm that rewards outrage.

The endless scroll of suffering, performative healing, doom stats, and hot takes—peppered with just enough dog videos and gentle affirmations to keep you coming back for another dopamine drip.

It’s not that people aren’t in pain—they are.

📺 But the broadcasting of pain, the incentivizing of it, the viralization of fear…

That’s a new layer.

One our nervous systems were never meant to handle at scale.

But here’s the part we forget:

When you put the phone down, step outside, breathe actual air, look a grocery store cashier in the eye, or sit in silence with your dog on your lap… What do you find?

Humanity.

Messy, kind, awkward, soft human beings—including yourself.

Beings who just want to feel okay.

It’s not that the chaos isn’t real—it is. Unfortunately.

It’s that it’s disproportionately centered in the mind because of how it’s packaged, how often we consume it, and how rarely we step back.

Digital space is a distortion field.

A warped echo chamber where fear and spectacle mutate faster than compassion can keep up.

But actual life—soil-under-nails life—is slower.

More forgiving.

People still hold doors.

Grieve silently on park benches.

Slip $10 bills into strangers’ palms without filming it for clout.

No hashtags.

No monetization.

Just… being.

🔌 When we unplug from the performance of panic, we find that most people don’t want power or enlightenment or a cosmic checklist of awakening milestones.

They just want to not be clenched.

And the kicker?

That—that—is the most revolutionary act available to us right now.

😱 Now. Let’s talk about fear.

That sticky, shape-shifting, soul-gluing frequency we’ve marinated in for so long, we’ve stopped noticing the taste.

You know what fear does?

It creates tethers.

Anchors energy.

Holds timelines in place with industrial-grade guilt and psychic duct tape.

🔁🌎 It’s like Earth is caught in a loop:

Fear breeds more fear. Chaos begets more chaos.

We scroll, spiral, survive, repeat.

Even those who can see the bigger picture still get slammed by the undertow.

You float up. You glimpse clarity.

Then boom—another wave of chunky trauma chowder with a side of unpaid bills and political dread.

Most don’t even get the luxury of that breath between gulps. They’re not witnessing the system—they’re drowning in it.

And when someone chirps, “You’re more powerful than this,” it feels like a slap in the face.

“Bitch, I just maxed out a credit card buying groceries. Enlighten that.”

So yeah. The energetic resonance of fear?

It’s not just a vibe—it’s a structure.

Because fear doesn’t just move through us—it clings.

It replicates.

It settles in bones and policy and architecture and generational trauma.

And when enough people broadcast it long enough?

It becomes the weather.

But here’s the sacred, quietly rebellious truth:

It’s not the actual world.

It’s how we’ve anchored the world.

Which means—we can unhook it.

One laugh.

One reframe.

One quiet barefoot walk through the madness, whispering,

“I see you. You’re heavy. But you’re not God.”

So straddle the paradox.

Be the one who watches the cosmic sitcom play out from the balcony, and also the character getting pancaked in the slapstick chaos below.

Both are real.

Both are human.

Both need you present.

Just… maybe pause the scroll for a bit.

🌱 Put your feet in the dirt.

Feel what’s still true underneath all the noise.

We’re not lost.

We’re just… glitching.

And glitches, my friend, are how we find the weak spots in the system.

Now breathe.

And maybe—don’t check the news again for a little while. 😘

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