Why Everyone Feels Tense And How To Keep Your Peace

We talk about why everyday life feels so tense right now and how constant noise turns small moments into big anger. We share what helps us stay grounded, protect our nervous systems, and choose connection over conflict. 
• a condo driveway moment that shows how fast situations escalate 
• overload from nonstop news, notifications, and online outrage 
• how burnout, money stress, and exhaustion shorten our fuse 
• why customer service and travel feel more hostile lately 
• loneliness as a hidden driver of anger and bitterness 
• the power of daily community and small human connections 
• a personal boundary around not arguing with strangers online 
• practical tools for peace: less doomscrolling, more quiet, more humor, fewer notifications 
I want you to find silence and I want you to find connection. Connect. If there’s a person you haven’t asked out for coffee, ask them out for coffee. 

Transcript

Welcome And The Anger Question

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, and welcome to Inside Marcy's Mind. My name is Marcy Backis and I am your host. I want to welcome you back here to Inside Marcy's Mind, and today we need to talk about something that is happening everywhere. Why the hell is everybody so angry? Seriously, you can't leave your house anymore without someone acting like they're in the final round of a survival show. People are screaming in parking lots, people are losing their minds at Costco. Customer service feels like an emotional hostage situation. And don't even look at someone too long in traffics because suddenly everybody turns into Vin Diesel from Fast and Furious. I swear. This is. I swear, people honk now before the light even changes. And social media, oh my God, everybody is furious about everything. Politics, parking, air fryers, Taylor Swift, paper straw. Somebody somewhere is currently writing a 14-paragraph Facebook post because Olive Garden changed the breadsticks. Don't panic. I don't know if they did. I just said that. Okay. And honestly, I don't even think people are just angry anymore. I think people are overloaded. And today we're going to talk about it. Why does everybody feel so tense? Why small things now turn into giant fights? Why customer service feels like the hunger games? Why road rage scares me now? And I've got to be really careful because I am not great when I'm driving by myself in the car. I do a lot of yelling. And most importantly, how we protect our own peace in the world that feels loud all the time. So yesterday I pulled up to my condo. And a delivery person had parked their car in front of our garage door. I park in a high rise, I park in a parking structure, and we have like these garage doors that go up and down, and there's a dang car sitting there. Now I'm impeding traffic because I can't turn in. Long story short, I'm honking because I think it's a guy that's standing and talking. And then the girl comes running out. She's obviously delivered food and she calls me a bitch. I'm like, seriously? You blocked my garage. You caused traffic problems, and I'm the bitch. And I think it's just the fact that I honked my car just because that's what you're supposed to do to let somebody know you need the car moved. And I'm just doing my daily thing, and I've now been called the bitch. I don't know. People are so angry. But I do believe people are overloaded. I do get it. She's out there hustling her ass off to deliver food to make a few bucks. It's not easy in the city. There is no place to park. People double park. I get it. But the first place people go is anger and names. So today we're going to talk about why everyone feels so tense, why small things turn into giant fights, why customer service feels like the hunger games, why road rage scares me. And importantly, how to protect our own peace in a world that feels loud all of the time. And of course, we'll have this week's I'm not doing this anymore. And trust me, this one is personal. So this week I am just a quick update on me. All things are good. Health is good. Got a good um bill of health from my radiology oncologist. And um I'm living life. I'm living life really well. Much better than I was last spring. Last spring at this time I was on chemotherapy. And uh who needs that? Well, people who have cancer. I needed that, but I don't need it now. So yay, yay, yay. Um, I am leaving tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. Uh flight out of Chicago O'Hare to LAX. Gonna spend Mother's Day with Kyle, my oldest child. And we are going to the LA County Fair and we're doing some fun things. And then I'm meeting my bestie at Disneyland and I'm going out to dinner with a few of my friends. And Craig came in and messed up my thing. So I'm back. Anyways, I'm very excited about my trip. And um, I'm using my Sudoku packing method. So if you wonder what that is, go to marcybackia.com. There is, I put a couple of links, one to a photo of what Sudoku packing looks like, and one how to do it, a how-to sheet. You can download those, keep them on your computer, or print them out, whatever you need to do. But they are there, and I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna let you know how it works. The other thing I wanted to talk about really quick is I can't believe there are a bunch of movies in the theaters I want to see right now. I still haven't seen Hail Mary, and I want to see that. Devil Wears Prada, Michael. And the sheep detective. Oh my God, if you don't know about the sheep detective, look it up. I want to see the sheep detective so bad. So those are the things that are happening in my world. My world is going well. I hope your world is going well. I um I'm just really excited about my trip for Mother's Day. I can't wait. So, all right, let's get into it. All right, let's get into this um crazy world and how it feels. You know what I think part of the problem is about this crazy world and why everything's so loud and why everybody's so angry. We never get a break anymore. We really don't, never. There used to be a natural quiet in life. Our grandparents got one evening news broadcast. They got a newspaper. That was it. Newspapers are quiet. They watch Walter Cronkite tell them what happened in the world for 30 minutes and they went to bed. Now we wake up immediately, check our phones like emotionally unstable raccoons. Before our feet even hit the floor, we already know somebody got canceled. The economy is collapsing, a celebrity is divorcing, there's another virus out on a cruise ship roaming around in the ocean. There's a hurricane somewhere, eggs cost$700 a dozen. And apparently, some influencer is fighting with another influencer I've never heard of. And my feet have not even hit the floor. Now that's on me for picking up my phone, but it's what we do. It's constant. Notifications, emails, texts, political ads, breaking news, opinion videos, angry comment sections. Our nervous systems were not built for this much information. And I honestly think people are walking around emotionally overstimulated all the time. You ever notice how somebody seems one inconvenience away from a complete meltdown? The printer jam, and suddenly Gary from accounting is having a spiritual crisis. And that's so true. It could be you too. I mean, honestly, I get it. We're all tired. We all have financial stress, health stress, family stress, aging parents, or we are the aging parents, adult kids. Talk about stress, work pressure, trying to survive modern life while remembering 17 freaking passwords, and that's even a low count. By the side time somebody cuts us off in traffic, we're already hanging on by dental floss emotionally. It's the truth. Customer services become a battle royale. Can we please talk to someone? I just want to talk to a person. I don't want to push a button. And I feel bad, and I always say that. By the time I get to the customer service agent and I can tell I'm up in my feelings, I say to them, I'm sorry, I know this isn't you. I'm gonna try to calm down and get this information out. Press one, press four, press the word, our call volume, all these things. And I finally sometimes I forget why I'm calling. They put you on hold music. That's horrible. It's like that from a haunted elevator. And every 30 seconds, your call is very important to us. No, it's not. No, it's not, Bertha. It's not. If it was important, you'd answer the phone. And by the time a real human does finally answer, like I said, we're all exhausted. They're exhausted, I'm exhausted. The customers frustrated, the employees overwhelmed, everybody's underpaid, everybody's understaffed. And now we've somehow turned ordering internet service into emotional combat. It's really hard, everyone, and we're all in it. And whether you think you are or you're not, you're in it. People are screaming, I I dread getting on a flight. I try to be polite and kind. I put my big old fat headphones on. I don't wear any of those invisible headphones. I put big old headphones on so you know, leave me the heck alone. When Craig and I flew to Colorado, I put my jacket over my head. I don't want to interact with anyone. You know, I don't. Road rage is different now. Road rage used to mean somebody rolled their eyes at you. Now it's honestly, it's it's scary. It's tailgating, it's screaming, it's flying around you, it's brakes being slammed on, and parking lots. Oh my God, nobody knows how to drive in a parking lot anymore. And that is the truth. Costco parking lots specifically, excuse me, feel like a live action documentary about human survival. I guess I'm telling you things you already know. Political stuff is everywhere. Whether you agree with the administration or you hate the administration, and there's ballrooms being built where rose gardens used to be, and there's wars that aren't called wars because you can't call them wars when you don't ask Congress for permission. And I don't know. There's a lot going on. So I want to just kind of talk about what I think about that. I've already made myself frustrated. I hope I didn't make you too frustrated talking about it. Underneath all this anger, I honestly think a lot of people are lonely. I want you to think about what I just said. I honestly think a lot of people are lonely. We're more connected digitally than ever before, but we're less connected emotionally. We text instead of talk, we scroll instead of gather. We comment instead of connect. So I'm gonna tell you a few things in my life that I do. I do go to the gym and work out almost every day, five days a week. Afterwards, we have what's called coffee. You can have iced tea, you can have whatever you want, but it's a coffee place at 900 Michigan in the center of the mall where we go, we sit. This is where us ladies connect. We talk, we chat. Sometimes it's about politics, sometimes it's not. Not everybody enjoys that. Some of us need to get it out. We talk about everything. We don't dwell on our aches and pains, we don't talk about our latest medications, but we do talk about stuff. It's where we connect. Because loneliness changes people. So does stress and so does fear. And if you connect with people, you don't have those things. And I think sometimes anger is just sadness wearing combat boots. Yes, I said that. I think sometimes anger is sadness wearing combat boots. People miss community, people miss feeling seen, people miss slowing down. And honestly, I think a lot of us are grieving a simpler version of life. So, as funny as it may seem to you, I live in the big city of Chicago. I live right downtown. You might be able to hear a siren right now because I live across the street from Northwestern Medical Center. But living in a city has given me the most connection with people I've ever had. I have a doorman. Every day I talk to them. I talk to people in my elevators, I know people along the street. I have my homeless friends. I ran into Georgiana yesterday. She had some new cool silver shoes on. We chatted on the corner of Pearson and Michigan Avenue for about 10, 15 minutes, and I helped her walk her stuff into Fourth Press Church where she was gonna get a meal. Georgiana's my friend. And I make sure that I'm gonna get teary-eyed. Georgiana is homeless. There's a long story there. But every time I see Georgiana, she makes me smile. I have another friend called Meta. Meta is another homeless woman, and she yells, hey California! She never remembers my name, but she remembers I'm from California. I have Andrew, who is my friend, who seeks me out in the city and we see each other. Andrew, I know from church. He has dinner with me every Wednesday night. He shares some learning with me, and he lives his life here in the city the way he chooses to live his life. Caleb is a young man. Sometimes I see him on Wednesdays, sometimes I don't, but I see him out and about in the city all the time. I always make sure to connect with Caleb so that he knows someone has their eye on him. I see friends in the grocery store. I see friends when I'm walking on the street. When I lived in the suburbs and I drove to work and I drove home, maybe I'd see a neighbor in the backyard say, Hey, I never had as much human connection as I do now. And I think it makes a really big difference. I know that my life may not always be here in Chicago. I hope it is. I love it here. Do I love the cold? No. I hope Craig and I can always afford to travel and get out of the cold. I hope we can stay here. Because I have the connection that I think so many people are missing. In a way, it's a simpler version of life. Alright. I'm not doing this anymore. I am officially no longer arguing with strangers online. I don't do it a lot, but I have done it, and I'm not doing it anymore. I don't care enough. I don't know why I care if someone writes something that I disagree with. You know, I don't write big long things. I'm not fighting with a man named Truck Nuts Z47 on Facebook about air fryers or politics or Taylor Swift or whatever it may be. I'm not doing it anymore. I don't do it a lot, but Alex said to me one thing, and I think I've shared it on here before. I can't change what's happening out in the world, but I can change me. And that's what I'm doing. I'm changing me. How am I gonna protect my peace? So how do we survive this angry era without becoming angry ourselves? Here's what I'm learning. Everything does not deserve my reaction. Let me say that again. Everything does not deserve my reaction. Now, what I'm gonna tell you, am I perfect at it? Hell no. But am I working at it? Yes. This changed my life. Not every comment deserves my reaction. Not every rude person deserves my reaction. Not every Facebook post or anything online deserves my reaction. And not every political argument deserves my reaction. Sometimes peace is simply deciding, not today. Not today, Satan, not today. Doom scrolling is not self-care. I had to learn this one. Consuming bad news for four straight hours where you're laying in bed watching TV does not make me informed. It makes me anxious, angry, and sad. So I stick to funny things when I do look at scrolling. If anything negative comes, I get rid of it. Doesn't mean I don't still scroll, because I do like to scroll, but I don't do doom scrolling. Quiet matters, walks, music, reading, water aerobics, sitting outside, turning off notifications. I have turned off all notifications on my phone except for texts. Our brain needs silence. Find silence for yours. Funny people are essential. I am convinced laughter is survival now. I send memes, I watch funny shows, and I call people who make me laugh. Because honestly, the world is heavy enough. I don't need heavy people in my life. Protect your nervous system. This is my new philosophy. The world may be loud, but my nervous system doesn't have to join the group project. Oh no, it doesn't. And honestly, that may be the healthiest thing I've learned lately. All right, friends. I've got to go pack for my trip using my Sudoku method. Craig has left the building and it needs to come home. So I'm gonna leave it there. I think in all of this, and and we all know what's happening out in the world and we all know the loudness. I want you to find silence and I want you to find connection. That is what I'm asking you to do. Connect. If there's a person you haven't asked out for coffee, ask them out for coffee. If there's someone you want to connect with, make the first move. I did that with my friends Debbie and Mary, and I will be having dinner with them in California on Monday night. But both of those friendships were cultivated by me. I asked them out to lunch the first time because they were women I wanted to get to know. And we've been friends for two decades. All right, friends, thank you for hanging out with me today on Inside Marcy's Mind. And if you find you've noticed that the world feels a little tense lately, don't add to it. You are definitely not imagining it, but we can still choose kindness, we can choose humor, and we can choose peace. It is our choice on what we interact with. And maybe and just maybe, the best rebellion right now is to simply staying soft in a hard world. All right, friends, take care of yourself this week and don't fight with strangers on Facebook or Instagram. I'll see you next time. Tell you all about my trip to LA.