How to Reclaim Agency When the World Feels Overwhelming

GRL pep talksLeadership & Belonging Mental Health & Mindset The GRL Initiative Originals

Nov 10

Part of the Reclaiming Your Agency Series

It’s not your imagination — the world really does feel heavier than it used to.

Every morning, our phones wake us up with a push notification that feels like a gut punch. War, political division, climate disasters, economic instability, another law that chips away at rights. Even if you wanted to disengage, the chaos finds its way into your feed, your group chats, your body.

We are living through what psychologists call “ambient stress” — the persistent background hum of anxiety that comes from a world in constant crisis. A 2024 American Psychological Association (APA) Stress in America Report found that over 80% of adults feel that national issues such as the political climate, violence, and inflation are significant sources of stress, and two-thirds report feeling “overwhelmed by the number of crises facing the world right now.”
That’s not just bad news — it’s biology.

Our brains were not designed to process global suffering in real time.
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett describes how our nervous systems treat digital news like physical danger: the same cortisol surge, the same alert system. We are living in fight-or-flight mode, except now it’s from headlines, not lions.

And when everything feels like a threat, our sense of agency — the belief that our actions make a difference — begins to erode.
In psychology, this is known as learned helplessness (Seligman, 1975): when repeated exposure to uncontrollable events leads people to stop trying to change their circumstances. In other words, when the world keeps shouting at us, “You can’t,” we eventually whisper back, “Maybe I can’t.”

That’s the danger of this moment — not just burnout, but disconnection from our own power.

The Cost of Constant Crisis

Millennials and Gen Z are the most digitally connected generations in history, and yet the least hopeful about the future.

A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that only 17% of Americans under 40 believe their generation will be better off than their parents.
The Edelman Trust Barometer reports a historic decline in trust across all major institutions — government, media, business, and NGOs — with more than 60% of people believing that societal leaders are purposefully misleading the public.

That combination — information overload plus institutional distrust — is a perfect recipe for helplessness. When people don’t trust that systems can change, they stop believing that they can either.

But Feeling Powerless Isn’t the Same as Being Powerless

This is where agency begins — not by pretending the world is fine, but by remembering that you still have choice.

Agency doesn’t mean control. It means influence.
It’s deciding where to place your attention, what stories to give energy to, and what actions align with your values. Psychologist Albert Bandura called this self-efficacy — the belief in your own ability to organize and execute actions required to manage situations.
The research is clear: people with higher self-efficacy experience lower stress, better coping, and higher overall well-being, even in unstable conditions (Bandura, 1997).

So when the world feels like too much, the answer isn’t to ignore it — it’s to right-size it.
You can’t fix global politics today, but you can choose how much of it you allow into your morning. You can’t control the algorithm, but you can curate your inputs. You can’t rewrite policy overnight, but you can use your voice, your platform, your circle — and that still counts.

Agency starts small: one decision, one boundary, one breath.