When the World Feels Unsafe: Finding Ground When Everything Shifts Beneath Us

By Jessica Anne Pressler, LCSW

Yesterday, an ICU nurse for the VA—someone who dedicated his life to healing—was killed by ICE while trying to protect another human being. The news keeps playing it. Over and over. And each time, something inside us flinches, contracts, tries to make sense of senselessness.

I've been a clinical social worker for almost 40 years and a hospice social worker for nearly 20 years. I've sat with people at the end of their lives, held space for grief that has no words, witnessed the full spectrum of human suffering and human grace. And still—still—there are moments when the cruelty we inflict on each other takes my breath away.

The Illusion of Safety and Control

Here's what I've been thinking about, through my tears: How quickly our sense of safety can shatter. How a single act of violence can make the whole world feel tilted, wrong, unrecognizable.

And here's where my work on narcissistic relationships keeps whispering to me—because there's a parallel here that matters.

When we experience collective trauma like this, we often unconsciously reach for the same coping mechanism we learned in childhood, the same one that keeps us trapped in toxic relationships: We look for someone or something outside ourselves to restore our sense of safety.

We think: If only the right leader were in charge. If only we had the right laws. If only people would just... be better.

And I'm not saying those things don't matter—they do. Of course they do.

But what I've learned from decades of grief work and trauma recovery is this: When we believe that only one external force can make us safe, we've already given away our power.We've already accepted helplessness as our baseline.

This is exactly how narcissistic systems work—whether it's a relationship, a family, or yes, even a society. They convince us that our safety, our worth, our very ability to feel okay depends entirely on forces beyond our control.

Sitting with Helplessness Without Drowning in It

Right now, you might feel helpless. I do too.

But helplessness and powerlessness aren't the same thing.

Helplessness is the honest acknowledgment: I cannot control everything. I cannot prevent every tragedy. I cannot single-handedly fix what's broken in this world.

Powerlessness is the lie that follows: Therefore, nothing I do matters. I am insignificant. I might as well give up.

The first is wisdom. The second is despair masquerading as realism.

In hospice work, I've learned that we can hold both truths: Life is fragile and often unfair AND our actions, our choices, our presence still matter profoundly.

The nurse who died yesterday? They chose to step forward when they could have stepped back. They chose protection over self-preservation. That choice mattered. It always will.

What We Can Do When We Can't Do Everything

I'm getting older. I think about the world I'm leaving for my children, and sometimes the weight of it is crushing. How am I supposed to make peace with the fact that my time here is limited, and there's still so much broken?

Here's what I keep coming back to:

We don't make a difference through one grand gesture. We make a difference through a thousand small choices that, accumulated over time, become the shape of our character and the legacy of our lives.

Every time you:

• Speak up when it would be easier to stay silent

• Offer kindness when cruelty is normalized

• Refuse to dehumanize people, even when everyone else is

• Choose connection over isolation

• Do the next right thing, even when it feels futile

...you are actively creating the world you want to live in. You are teaching your children—by your actions, not your anxiety—what it means to be human in hard times.

Reclaiming Safety from the Inside Out

I cannot make the world safe for you. No one can.

But you can cultivate safety within you—not as denial, not as spiritual bypassing, but as a deep knowing that you have survived every difficult thing so far, and you carry resilience and wisdom and love that don't disappear just because the world is frightening.

You can:

• Find your people. Not people who tell you everything's fine when it's not, but people who can sit in the dark with you and still point toward the light.

• Do something. Donate. Volunteer. Write. Organize. Create. Whatever matches your gifts and your grief. Action is the antidote to despair.

• Protect your nervous system. Turn off the news loop. Step outside. Feel your feet on the ground. You cannot heal the world from a dysregulated state.

• Tell the truth. About what hurts. About what matters. About what you hope for, even when hope feels foolish.

The Legacy We Leave

I think about my parents, who passed. I think about what theyleft behind—not in what they said about the world, but in how the moved through it.

That's what our children will remember about us too. Not whether we "fixed" everything, but whether we loved fiercely, acted with integrity, and refused to let fear turn us cruel.

There is real evil in this world. There is real suffering.

And there is also real beauty, real courage, real love.

Both are true.

We don't honor the fallen by becoming small and afraid. We honor them by being brave enough to keep choosing connection, keep choosing compassion, keep choosing to show up—even when, especially when, it would be easier not to.

You are not helpless, even when you cannot control the headlines.

You are powerful every single time you refuse to let trauma—collective or personal—convince you that your choices don't matter.

They do.

You do.

And the world needs you to remember that.