RESOURCING IN THE MIDST OF COLLAPSE: How We Stay Rooted When the World Feels Too Much
The year was 1996. I was only nineteen.
Freshly out of university, idealistic, full of heart.
And somehow, I landed what many would consider a dream role—working as a play therapist in one of the most prestigious public hospitals in the Philippines.
The playroom was meant to be a sanctuary filled with soft colors, gentle toys, books, art materials, and a sacred space to express and be. But not long after I started, it was connected to the hospital’s newly built Child Protection Unit, and with that connection came the deep pain.
Children who had experienced unimaginable harm were brought into the space.
Abuse. Neglect. Violence. And I, still a teenager myself in so many ways, sat with them, watching their hands mold clay into monsters, their drawings speak of hurt no child should know.
I wanted to help.
I wanted to be the help.
But I didn’t know how to hold what I was witnessing.
I didn’t know how to hold myself.
There were no courses in university that prepared me for this.
No mentor gently asking how I was doing after a day of absorbing sorrow.
No one told me that being the helper doesn’t mean disappearing in the process.
So, after a year, I left.
It wasn’t because I didn’t care.
It was because I was losing myself, and I didn’t yet have the language or the tools to name what was happening to me: vicarious trauma, nervous system overwhelm, compassion fatigue.
My story is not an isolated story.
It’s the quiet reality for many of us—therapists, educators, activists, parents, caregivers, helpers. We are not untouched by the weight we witness.
Somewhere along the way, we learned that to support others means to sacrifice ourselves.
To be the strong one.
To be the one who doesn’t fall apart.
To be the lighthouse—even when our light is flickering.
But here’s what we are re-membering…
Being the helper does not mean we must crumble.
It means we must learn how to return to our fullness.
Looking back, I know this now: I didn’t fail. I just didn’t yet know how to resource myself.
We Are Not Meant to Carry It All
We are living in a time of immense chaos and fragmentation.
Our systems are unraveling.
Our climate is on the brink of collapse
Left, right, and center, people are suffering.
And through it all, we are asked to perform. To be productive. To function.
Social media, for all its connective power, also brings with it a saturation of trauma—images, headlines, and cries for help. There has never been a time in human history when we have been exposed to this level of pain and suffering at such a rapid and relentless pace.
We scroll and flinch. We read and dissociate. With a swipe, a scroll, a blink—we witness war, displacement, ecological breakdown, systemic violence, and collective grief. We carry the heartbreak of wars we did not start, injustices we cannot fix, and griefs we were never prepared to hold.
It is no longer something we read about in books or papers.
It is on our screens.
It is in our inboxes.
It is in our bodies.
We see, absorb, and internalize far more than our nervous systems are built to handle. And still, we wake up. We still try to help. We continue to show up in rooms—real or virtual—trying to keep others from drowning, while forgetting that we too are treading water.
We are living in a world that is unraveling, and it is touching all of us.
Trauma Is Not Just Personal—It’s Systemic
We exist within systems built on domination, extraction, and disconnection. Systems that normalize rapid progress and urgency, glorify productivity, and devalue rest. We are steeped in systems that punish vulnerability and reward over-functioning. Our systems were never designed with care, wholeness, or relational safety in mind.
These are trauma-based systems and they do not only live outside of us.
They live within our bodies. Our relational patterns. Our inherited reactions. Our unhealed histories. They teach us to bypass our grief and hustle past our heartbreak.
So we numb, scroll, or shrink to keep moving.
And when asked, we say “I’m overwhelmed,”. Not because it is a personal failing, but because of being immersed in a society that is fragmented, unjust, and unsustainable.
The Nervous System as a Mirror of the Times
Our nervous systems were never meant to hold the weight of the entire world.
And yet, with every image of violence, every news headline, every open wound witnessed from afar, we carry more than we are built to bear.
We freeze.
We fawn.
We go into fight or flight.
We flop into collapse.
These are not flaws. These are protective adaptations rooted in biology and shaped by culture and history.
We have stayed in those states without tending to them or recognizing them. We disconnect from our essence and oftentimes mindlessly react or fall into patterns of behavior that have not been challenged. We began to lose touch with ourselves, and in doing so, in the face of collapse, we fail to connect with ourselves, with others, and our environment.
This is why resourcing is not a luxury. It is a necessity.
It is a survival strategy leading to a healing strategy, and that becomes a liberation strategy.
What Lies Beneath the Surface
Virginia Satir’s Personal Iceberg Model is a compassionate lens to help us understand what often lies beneath our behaviors—the feelings, perceptions, expectations, yearnings, and the core of our self. When we react to life, we’re not just reacting to the now. We are responding from the depths of unspoken beliefs, tender longings, and learned survival patterns. And so, in the practice of resourcing, we are not just gathering tools—we are tending to our internal landscape.
We are learning to recognize the times when we are operating from depletion and when we are moving away from fullness.
We begin to ask not just what is wrong with me?, but rather, what do I need right now to feel more whole, more rooted, more resourced?
Virginia Satir had one metaphor for describing our breadth of resources: the Self Mandala.
The Self mandala was Virginia’s way of expanding on the breadth of tools we can access to use all aspects of ourselves. She divided the Mandala into eight different yet interconnected dimensions:
Spiritual
The part of us that seeks connection to something greater—be it purpose, nature, legacy, or meaning. It’s where our values live, where we anchor in what outlives us, and where we ask: What am I here for?
Physical
Our body is a living resource for movement, communication, sensation, and presence. When we tend to it with care, it responds with clarity, vitality, and strength. Our body carries our stories and our truths.
Intellectual
The realm of thoughts, reflection, learning, and making meaning. It's where curiosity lives and where we weave understanding from complexity.
Emotional
Our capacity to feel, to care, and to connect. Emotions are not problems to fix but signals to listen to. When honored, they become pathways to healing, empathy, and insight.
Sensory
Our senses are our gateways to the world. These help us interpret our surroundings, though always through personal filters shaped by our past experiences and present conditions.
Interactional
Our relationships with others—and with ourselves. This includes the way we connect, communicate, co-regulate, and witness one another. Human connection is essential for growth, healing, and congruence.
Nutritional
What we feed our bodies and how we nourish ourselves through food, drink, and other substances. This dimension influences not just physical health, but mood, clarity, and overall balance.
Contextual
The here and now in our environment - colors, sound, light, air, temperature, forms, movement, space, and time. The self exists in context, and the qualities of the context affect us. These conditions shape how safe, connected, or resourced we feel. Being attuned to context helps us stay grounded in the present.
Honoring the Inner Wells and Outer Waters That Sustain Us
Expanding on Virginia Satir’s work, when I speak of “resources,” I am not only referring to things we possess. Resources also refer to the energies, relationships, memories, and practices that hold us, especially when we are navigating life’s uncertainties.
Resources are anchors. They are the people, places, and parts of ourselves that help us feel more whole and more grounded. Resources can be both internal—like resilience, self-compassion, hope, creativity—and external—like community, nature, spiritual practices, or supportive spaces. Both are sacred. Both are needed and valid, especially in a world that often asks us to pour endlessly from our cup.
Here are a few internal resources we can cultivate:
Self-Worth – A core sense of being enough, without needing to earn it.
Hope – The belief in possibility, especially in the face of hardship.
Resilience – The ability to move through and rise from difficulty.
Compassion – The gentle voice within that says, “You’re doing your best.”
Intuition – The quiet nudge that guides your steps.
Creativity – The power to reimagine, express, and make meaning.
Presence – The ability to stay with what is, without fleeing or fixing.
Spirituality or Faith – A sense of deeper meaning, connection, or divine guidance.
Joy – The capacity to experience delight, even in small things.
External resources are the relationships, tools, environments, and practices that exist outside of us, and they pour into our well. These are the lifelines that support our nervous systems, remind us of our value, and offer practical or emotional holding.
Some external resources include:
Supportive People – Loved ones, mentors, therapists, elders, or community members who offer attuned presence.
Healing Spaces – Physical or virtual spaces where we can be ourselves without judgment.
Nature – The grounding presence of earth, sea, trees, and sky.
Spiritual Communities or Ceremonies – Practices that remind us we are part of something larger.
Movement & Embodiment Practices – Walking, dancing, yoga, or any way we come home to our body.
Creative Expression – Art, poetry, singing, crafting—ways we give voice to the unseen.
Tools for Regulation – Objects, routines, or rituals that support emotional balance (e.g., weighted blankets, breathwork, scents).
Cultural Wisdom – Stories, rituals, language, or food that connect us to our roots.
External resources also remind us: we do not heal alone. We are meant to be in circles of care, woven into systems of reciprocity and immersed in “pakikipagkapwa” - our shared humanity.
Resourcing Is an Act of Resistance and Remembrance
To resource ourselves in this time of global fragmentation is to say:
I will not crumble when others fall. I will not numb myself into silence.
I will not dissociate from my aliveness. I will not carry the whole world alone.
Resourcing is the act of remembering our internal wells.
Of reaching for what steadies us and building tiny rituals of return, restoration, and recalibration.
It is not the same as escaping.
It is what allows us to stay present without drowning.
Tuning in to your breath before you tune in to the news
Grounding in movement, nature, or ritual after holding someone else’s story
Surrounding yourself with co-regulators—people who help your body feel safe
Letting your bare feet touch the soil
Weeping when it hurts
Drawing on cultural and ancestral practices that remind you that you are not alone
Creating micro-moments of regulation, grounding, and grace
You Are Not Meant to Crumble Just Because Others Fall
I know now what I didn’t know at nineteen:
Being a helper does not mean breaking with every heartbreak you hold.
Being in service does not mean abandoning yourself.
In a world that numbs, to feel is radical.
In a world that speeds up, to slow down is sacred.
In a world that fragments, to remember our wholeness is a form of resistance.
Let us not forget that amidst all the noise, collapse, and brutality—
There is still beauty. There is still agency. There is still the breath.
There is still you. There is still us. There is still the world around us.
The question isn’t how do we fix everything?
It’s how do we stay rooted in who we are, when everything around us is falling apart?
Yes, we are living through global sufferings and grief.
And yet—
We still get to remember our sacredness.
We still get to pause.
We still get to reclaim the rhythm that honors our nervous system and our humanity.
And from that place…
How do we move with intention rather than reactivity?
How do we act from essence, not just from urgency?
How do we weave connection in ourselves and with others, in a world that is unraveling?
This is what resourcing offers us. Resourcing is the anchor. It is how we remember our fullness. A way to stay rooted when everything is unraveling. A way to soften when the world hardens. A way to keep showing up—not from depletion, but from fullness.
Even now. Especially now.
Dear reader,
How was this exploration of resources and resourcing for you? What is coming up alive in you?
Here are some questions to dive deep into when you are ready:
Naming Inner Resources
What strengths or qualities within me have helped me move through hard seasons?
What part of me needs affirmation, encouragement, or protection right now?
What is one internal resource (e.g., resilience, compassion, clarity) I want to nourish more intentionally?
Reclaiming External Resources
What spaces, practices, or relationships help me exhale more fully?
What relationships or communities make me feel seen and supported?
What simple external resources help me regulate (i.e., rituals, environments, objects, music, nature), and how might I practice them regularly?
Self-sacrification is one of the worst ideas ever put forward. It is a very destructive idea.Some Christians adore it, while it is one of the worsts contributions to thinking about human life. It is cruel and makes no sense.
Thank you Lana. So beautiful, encouraging and timely.