Episode 44 - Three Questions When the World Feels Unbearably Heavy

If I had to guess, you probably feel like you have no control over what is happening in the world right now…

In this episode of Three Questions, I walk through three questions I keep coming back to when everything feels overwhelming, emotionally charged, and hard to hold. While this episode isn’t about having the “right” opinions or fixing global problems overnight, it is about learning how to regulate yourself so you can listen, learn, communicate, and act in ways that actually align with who you want to be.

In This Episode You’ll Hear:

• A guided breathing strategy to support regulation and clearer thinking
• Questions to ask yourself when fear, anger, or overwhelm take over
• How small, local actions can matter more than performative big ones

This is an episode about slowing down enough to stay human, even when things feel charged and polarized, and a reminder that you’re not alone.

Links & Resources For This Episode:
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Transcript

Meghann Koppele Duffy: Welcome to Three Questions where critical thinking is king, and my opinions and research are only here to support your learning and deeper understanding. Hey, I'm your host Meghann, and today we're gonna explore three questions for when the world feels unbearably heavy. So, to set the tone for today's episode, I am going to invite you to disagree with everything I say.

I am also gonna invite you to agree with everything I say or disagree with parts of it and agree with other parts. I'd like you to invite you to love me and disagree with me, and I'd also give you permission to dislike me and agree with me.

Anything or all of it is fine with me today, but I think it's an important conversation to have because I don't know if you've noticed. There's a lot of shit going on, so to get right into it, question one. When the world feels heavy, when you're feeling helpless, what is something I can do? You can do? We can do to best regulate ourselves aka nervous systems to be able to listen, to learn, and to communicate.

Right off the bat, I'm gonna ask you to participate with me in this breathing exercise. If you're driving, maybe listen and wait to do it later or do it in a different way. You can change your arm position on the steering wheel. Just hear me out. What I want you to do first is just however you're sitting, and if you're watching me on YouTube, you can sit.

I'm sitting cross-legged with my arms kind of resting on my legs. If you're sitting with your feet on the floor, that's great. Just get comfy and however your arms are, I want you to have both palms facing up to the ceiling, and now I'd like you to just breathe in through your nose and out through your nose.

If you need to breathe a different way, please do that, but be consistent through this drill.

Notice how you're feeling as you're breathing. Are you getting emotional? Are you feeling more disconnected? Does your breath feel stuck? Does your breath feel heavy? Just notice how it's feeling. Notice the length, notice the sound. Notice how hard your muscles are working. Now take one more inhale and exhale and turn both of your palms facing down.

Breathe again when you are ready,

notice if you wanna close your eyes, notice if they need to be open. And when you're ready, turn one palm up and keep the other down.

And when you're ready, switch. So the other palm is up, and the one that was up is now down.

And now just rest for a moment. Notice how you're feeling. Feeling lightheaded. Are you feeling emotional? Are you feeling happy? Are you feeling weird? Now, I want you to notice when we do this next round, I want you to look for ease of breath. What does that mean? Think of like a newborn baby and they're breathing so efficiently.

You have to get real close and be like, is this baby breathing right? Young parents will say, they'll put like a mirror up or they get really close 'cause they're so scared the baby's not breathing 'cause they're so efficient. I want us to be efficient here, so we're looking for long but not forced. You should almost feel like no muscles contracting.

It should be quiet. So let's do both palms up and take one to two breaths at each location. Everybody's gonna be breathing differently. I will try to make my voice not annoying.

When you are ready, turn both palms down. Continue breathing.

When you're ready, turn rum palm up. The other will stay down

and when you're ready, switch the palm up. That's palm. The palm that was down up, the one that was up is down.

And I do such a good job with my voice not being annoying. All right, now, which breath felt the best? And if you didn't have a good breath, take one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly and try to breathe without them changing distance off from up and down. Now what I would like you to do is do that breath again twice.

Mine is my right palm up. My left palm down.

Don't force the breath, let it happen.

And when you are done at any point during today's episode, later on today, during any discussions, any time on social media, when you feel like you are getting into a dysregulated position, I'd invite you to get back into this position and just breathe. Now, why did I pick this breath exercise? There's so many different breathing exercises you can do.

Well, here's the thing. Our shoulder, our glenohumeral joint, one of the four joints of the shoulder is the most mobile joint in the body. With that mobility, there's often some stability issues, and our shoulders sometimes have a lack of what we call reflex of stability. Meaning when our body needs them to stabilize so we can mobilize other things, it doesn't always happen, which can lead the brain to create a danger signal, tense up the neck and the shoulders, which make breathing more taxing. Don't believe me. Take your hand around your neck. Just squeeze gently and try to breathe. Now when we really wanna mobilize the diaphragm. Okay. We really want to make sure that the body is in a place where things can stabilize, so the diaphragm can mobilize and stabilizing, what I call the upper quadrant is a great strategy to create safety at the brain and allow that diaphragm to mobilize in a way where it doesn't aggravate your vagus nerve.

And you might have heard about the vagus nerve. Oh, they're saying humming, doing all these stuff to a, to activate your vagus nerve for your parasympathetic nervous system. Yes. And. Breathing can actually aggravate your vagus nerve, especially if the diaphragm can't mobilize and the brain is in protective mode.

So if any of those breathing patterns made you feel worse, please don't do them. And I want you to ask yourself, what can you do to better regulate yourself? Yell it out. What are some things you do to help regulate yourself? I use my infrared sauna. I'm staring at it right now in my studio because it is not set up.

Why is it not set up? You ask? Um, pure laziness. I think so. I am looking at it and thinking that could be a really great tool for me to help with nervous system regulation. Right now, infrared is great. Sauna component really good for me. I love my infrared sauna 'cause I can lay down in it. I don't like sitting in it.

It aggravates me. I like laying down. Also, I love my infrared sauna because I can listen to a book on Audible. I can meditate, I can just sleep. I can lay there and think. It's a time where I cannot get distracted by, can my computer on my phone, and it is a time for me to just be present with some different variations of nothingness.

Other things I like to do that are cheaper than an infrared song is go for a walk. Now, do you like walking with music or no music, listening to a book or not? I find when I'm feeling dysregulated, stressed, or very anxious, I literally leave my house with nothing. No phone, no dog, just myself, and go for a walk in the quiet.

Now, I love taking my dog for a walk, but he is a beagle. So if he gets a scent, we could spend 30 minutes with him, a ru a ru, doing the beagle bark. And if you know a beagle bark, it could wake the dead. So he's barking. All the neighborhood dogs are barking. It's a scene. So if I'm anxious, that's only gonna make me more anxious.

And if you know anything about me, I don't love a lot of auditory distractions. So think about this. And why is this important, guys? Well, not just when the world's heavy. But say you had a bad day, maybe one of your kids is having an issue at school maybe, and your husband or wife are having an argument.

When we are not our best, when we are not regulated, we tend to react and not respond. I noticed I was doing this a lot. I feel like it was two years ago. It's funny, all like randomly, all my Instagram posts are like showing up on my feed. I don't know why Facebook is. F. Putting all my old posts up. If anybody knows why, tell me.

I'm very confused. 'cause people are like commenting on posts from like three years ago. But anyway, it reminded me I did a post on react of responding and not reacting. See, I got confused there. You know, someone might have cut me off when I was driving and I wanted their whole family to die. It was very reactive of me.

Maybe that person was late, maybe they're sick. Maybe something happened or maybe they're just an ass, I don't know. But it wasn't like they personally sought me out and was like, I'm gonna cut her off today just to piss her off. But I felt like I was really reactive to stuff, and that's not the kind of person I wanna be.

Right? When I hear someone reacting like that, I'm like, Ugh. And then I'm like hearing myself do it. And I was like, Ugh. And something I think about all the time. And I'm gonna give a shout out to Chelsea Handler. Her most recent book and no, I do not know the name of it because I can never remember the names of things and I usually send 'em backwards.

Was really, really good. One of my students, uh, Federica and I were listening to it, um, while I was driving. We had a long road trip to different clients in California. I thought it was gonna be funny. It was funny, it was profound. And something she said, which I freaking loved was, are my actions, is this lining up with the person I wanna be?

And I love that because we all have this person we see ourselves at or wanna be, and most days we are that person. But some days, oh, we just, we don't show up as our best. And that I, I always ask myself, Hey, is that taking me a step closer to the person I wanna be, or a step further away from the person I wanna be?

And I realized that was taking me away. So when things are heavy like this. It's very easy to be reactive. I kind of wanna scream at people and be like, how are you not seeing this? And then I'm like, whoa. Does anybody respond when someone yells at them? Well, and thinking, if I want my message to come across, I need to be able to listen.

I need to be able to learn and I need to be able to communicate like, this is not an easy episode to do. 'cause I guarantee I'm gonna piss someone off. But you know what? Pigs are flying today. I brought my flying pig, and we're gonna let pigs fly today. We're gonna have a hard conversation. We're gonna get through it, or we're gonna at least try.

So I'd love for you guys to share what you do to best regulate yourself. Like what is it? Is it running around? Yelling into the abyss, yelling into a pillow, boxing, dancing, singing. Running. Like, what is it? I am so curious. 'cause I think it's so great to have different options and to know like anything's really great and let me get a little sciencey for a sec before we move to question two.

Well, kind of how do we regulate and change our nervous system? Yeah. We all know the blah blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's, let's get deeper here. So think about our brain. Our brain tends to predict things. So based off previous experience, our brain te tends to create a prediction of movement and different stuff like that.

Now we can totally override that prediction with really good strong sensory feedback. So when our brain is getting good sensory feedback, we tend to move and behave in a good way. But if we're overwhelmed by sensory feedback or it's bad sensory feedback, our brain can actually kind of respond in a negative way.

We can freeze, we can not be the person we wanna be. And so what I want you to think about is why does dancing running around and screaming, why do those help change our nervous system? Well, screaming, not only are we using some of our cranial nerves, right, there's gonna be vibration that can really activate our vagus nerve.

Also, we're getting auditory feedback. Okay. Some of you might like to dance, so dancing around and moving, you're gonna get different proprioceptive feedback combined with vestibular feedback. 'cause you're moving your head around and think about it, when you did your breath, did you open or close your eyes?

This is really important. One of the breath patterns with palms down. I had to close my eyes, like I didn't even think about it. And like at first I was like, I mean I'm, I'm doing a youTube video and a podcast like, shouldn't I keep my eyes open? And my brain was like, no. Eyes closed. It's like in that position, my brain had to remove sensory input so it could really kind of dig into what it needed to do.

So maybe dancing around with your eyes closed, or dancing around and lights off, lights on. All these things matter. Wearing your favorite outfit. Maybe get dressed up in your favorite outfit where you feel the best. Go for a walk. Do something. Remember. Changing our sensory input via touch, pressure, sound, sight, taste.

Go eat something delicious. Go smell something delicious. All these things can matter because at the end of the day, I know everybody listening to wants to be the best version of themselves, and we cannot be the best version of ourselves if we are already ready to attack, waiting for someone to say something.

I call it the pounds. Just chill. Let people finish their thoughts because when we listen, we can actually learn. And what boggles my mind is some people who have such views that are so different from me, when I'm actually able to listen and ask a follow-up question, I can actually learn about their motivation.

Now, what we don't really understand is what motivates people. Everybody thinks money, prestige, all that stuff motivates people. It depends on the situation, but most of the research shows it does not work. People actually often get more stressed out when there's money or prizes involved, they actually perform worse.

Okay. Yet companies, and we still do this because when the research doesn't, um, kind of fit what our biases are, it's really easy to just go, I'm not gonna look at that. I ever remember talking to my nephew about, um, being up at bat. So you'll see guys in baseball where they'll put weights on their bat to swing.

Now because the bat feels heavier, they assume that when they take the weights off the bat, they are going to swing faster or harder 'cause the bat is lighter. This is actually not the case at all. Now, there's always gonna be an exception to the rule, and that doesn't mean that they could still hit well.

But because our brain respond to civic sensory input, when the bat is heavier, we use a different grip. Our body's gonna respond differently to a lighter bat. So if you're training your brain to kind of grip a heavy bat and then grab a light bat, the brain might not be able to respond appropriately and it can actually slow down your swing.

And they've done research on this. They've showed baseball players the research, and a lot of 'em say, I don't care. Whether it's superstition or what they like to do, they still do it, and that's fine. Now, when we also think about that, we could also argue, well hold on. If we look at the heavy light bat situation differently.

Maybe varying weights is gonna train their brain to respond appropriately no matter what the weight is. So they're not anticipating. But if you're a professional athlete, like you kind of have to go by feel, your brain is gonna train the proprioception based off what it feels based off the ball speed.

There's a lot of factors. So, and we wanna think if we're working with athletes or trying to help our nervous system respond. Think varying situations and not dictating how we respond is how we respond best. And if you don't believe me, brace for impact. See what that does. That's how you get injured. Or try to hold in a fart and sneeze at the same time.

Let me know how that goes. I'll wait anyway, going back to our nervous system. So if you learn nothing today, don't hold in a fart when you have to sneeze. A little bit of humor on a heavy day. But more importantly, focus on the things that help you best regulate neuro nervous system. And hopefully now you have a better understanding of different ways we can do that.

And understanding we're all very different. Now, moving on to question two. Right now, I can't even count on two hands, all the mishigas that's going on in the world. Okay? It's a word, a Yiddish word, saying crap, basically. Okay. We've got immigration, we've got women's health issues. We have racism on all different fronts.

We have issues in the Middle East, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Russia, Ukraine, um, Venezuela. I mean, the list goes on. Think about things here. People who can't afford food. Um. We had a major snowstorm. Our roads weren't plowed, we couldn't get outta the house. Luckily, we were able to prepare. Not everybody was.

There are problems across the board. Now, this can be overwhelming because when there's so many things going on, what should we focus on? What is most important? I don't know. What is most important to you? And question two is, what is triggering and scaring you? Right now, what is triggering and what is scaring you right now?

Now, something I don't like is the trauma Olympics of people comparing their traumas. Every group has had trauma, every group has had some really terrible things done, and something that I do not understand is when your group or your tribe has had trauma, inflicting that on other people. I can never get behind that.

However, why is it triggering to you? Ask yourself that right now.

Why is this triggering me? Is it triggering 'cause you're mad or is it triggering you 'cause you're scared? Are you scared because something like this has happened in the past or you're scared something is gonna happen in the future, or you're scared because something is happening right now? It is valid to be scared.

There is a lot of scary stuff going on in the world. But there's a lot of good stuff, a lot of people doing work and trying to change things. I'm gonna, Mr. Rogers, this situation when shit is going bad. I'm pretty sure Mr. Rogers never said shit. When there is a bad event, when something bad happens, don't look at the bad stuff.

Look at all the people helping. Okay? So it is okay to be scared. But I think we all need to ask ourselves what is triggering us? What are we scared of? And should we act? Should we pause? Should we listen? Should we learn or should we concede we were wrong? Man, that's a lot. Guys. Should we act? Should we pause?

Should we listen? Should we learn or should we concede? I mean, I think we can all think of. Multiple situations in our lives where we really maybe acted too soon or acted out of fear or acted when we weren't self-regulated, and then we might've later had a pause, listen, learn, and concede. Other times we acted because we had to, we, we had no choice, and we were right.

We didn't have to concede. I think all these, I don't, I, I can't say I've never lived in your shoes. You never lived in mine. I'm sure if I told you everything I've done in my life, it would be so easy to judge and be like, Ugh, why'd you do that? I don't know. That's what I thought was right at the time.

Okay. I think conceding that we're wrong is really hard and mm. How do I say this? And I'm not pausing because I don't want to upset people. I don't know how I wanna say this. Huh.

There's something that always annoyed me when they're like, women, all women should support women. Yes. And do all men support all men? There are some bad men. There are also some bad women. I've seen it. So it's hard because do I believe everybody deserves the opportunity for kindness, equality, fairness?

Yes. But there are some people in this world, and I think we could all name them out loud, who might not deserve my kindness and my support. Now, it might be different people for you, and you're allowed to have your opinion on that. So it's not like, I think we, I just leading with kindness always. It's like, well, hold on a minute.

I'm gonna pause. I'm gonna listen to why you think they deserve kindness. I'm gonna learn and I will admit that I'm wrong. I really have no. I think one of my, maybe only great qualities, I'm just kidding. I have no problem admitting I'm wrong. I don't get why more people won't admit they're wrong. It's so easy to diffuse a confrontation.

And also I am wrong so often and I'm laughing. Um, so I want any, uh, psychologists listening to this, anybody who knows this, explain to me why people have such a hard time admitting they're wrong. I'm super curious. But sometimes we are wrong or we only saw one piece of it, right? And how can we give people kindness and grace who deserve it when they admit that they were wrong?

This is tricky, guys. Think about it. Oh my God. Some people might say some crazy shit and then they admit they were wrong. It's like telling them, I told you so. I feel like it feels so good in the moment, but it doesn't long term. So. I don't have answers for this. Let's think about in question two, what's triggering us and scaring us?

What are we gonna do about that? Do we act? Do we pause? Do we give kindness? Do we wait to give kindness? Do we concede we're wrong? Do we try to learn? What do we need to do here? And this is something I'm gonna take away with for me today because this is something I wanna do. Act, pause. Listen. Learn.

Concede, act. Pause. Listen. Learn. Concede. Act, pause, listen, learn concede. What do I need to do right now? And it could change in a moment. Um, let me know how that lands and if it was helpful for you. Um, because I think we're all missed together. I am not an expert at dealing with trauma world's problems, nor am I an expert.

I just know I've got an audience, people I care about, and I think we're all missed together. Okay? So I wanna be helpful, and I know I can learn a lot from you guys too. So let's get to question three. Before I run out of time, what can I do? What can you do? Small, medium, and large? What do I mean by it?

Small, medium, and large. What can I do? Small, medium, and large right now? Small could be easy. Small. Yesterday I did a small thing. I shared a video that I thought was very powerful. With somebody who I care about who has different views than me. I said, I'd love to talk about this when you have a moment.

And she said, okay, we haven't talked about it yet, but why I wanted to share that specific video. It was from a perspective that I was surprised, agreed with me, and it was a very good point of. Two things can be true at the same time. Yes, this could use reform. And yes, this needs reform and I thought it could open up a dialogue where I could kind of act, but also listen, that's a small thing.

You could also do a medium thing. Medium things is call your senators House of Representatives. Um, I actually saw on social media, I'm gonna reach out to her and say, tell her she inspired me. A local business owner, she's a nurse practitioner and they changed the law in New Jersey. I'm, I'm super not familiar with the law, but it was that nurse practitioners, it was taking away some of their, uh, things that they could do, which to me seemed insane and it would've made her have to shut her complete business down and I don't know how it went long. It went on. I feel like I'm telling half of a story and I apologize. But what I saw was she reached out to our new, um, governor. She was tagging senators. She asked people to make phone calls and they actually changed it. They didn't write the new law yet, but they put a pause on it for another 60, 90 days to look into it.

Because it was basically a do this, get a doctor on board or close down immediately. It was, it was like one of those things like, holy crap. So I was so inspired because I don't know about you guys. Sometimes it feels like we're so small that nothing we do really matters on a big frame, on a, the big stage.

So I guess maybe we think too big, like, oh, I've gotta reach out to the federal government, or, you know, call the president. No, like, think about your local community. Reach out, help a neighbor. Reach out, ask someone if they need help. Um, figure out different ways where you could support people. Pick people's kids up from school if they need help.

So on that medium scale, it's like things trickle down in a big way. And some of you are gonna do large big things. Things that sometimes are things that I don't always do, and I always feel like it's like, hmm, I gotta act. Let me pick my lane here. And, um, Mariska and I talked about this. If you don't know, we run the Neuro Studio.

And with everything going on, I, I said I feel very weird posting on social media, but our, our clients need us despite what's going on. They need to move, they need strategies, they need to walk, they need to be less disabled. So we need to continue to do our job. So I'm gonna stay focused on helping disabled people move and feel the best they can in their body.

So they can feel best regulated. Now, am I solving problems on a big scale? I don't know. But we've gotta pick small, medium, and large places. And if you don't know where to act or you don't even feel comfortable texting someone that feels differently, then you just ask questions. And I'm gonna end with a great, very short story.

My husband, Brian, I love him. He's a history teacher, a man of few words. He's very chatty. Once he gets to know you. But I asked him, Hey, what are you gonna do tomorrow when you go back to school with all this going on with the kids? He's like, what? What do you mean? I'm like, how are you gonna deal with this?

He's like, what do you mean, deal with it? I'm gonna ask them how they feel. That's it. He's like, yeah, I'm gonna ask them questions. And I was like, I love that. Thank you. And it was right far. I was coming out here. Because everything feels so big and you can feel like you're saying everything wrong or everything right, and if you think you're saying everything right, I would invite you to reflect on that.

But asking questions, asking the kids, how are you feeling about this? What are your thoughts about this? Who have you talked to? We don't always have to give our opinion. Sometimes we can ask questions, open up a dialogue and learn from someone. As I said before, I am not saying that everybody deserves our kindness and grace.

But I talk to a lot of people. I travel around the world to teach. I have clients of all different backgrounds. And what is so interesting to me in my small circle, no matter who they voted for, we agree on 98% of things. And what's interesting, the things we don't agree on, when I understand their motivation.

It can help me give compassion when needed, or draw a line where I can decide if this is not a person that I think is healthy to be in my situation or area. So I know we didn't solve any problems today, but what does solving a problem mean? If you think you've solved a problem, problems are always there.

It's like whack-a-mole. So for us to best deal with problems that are gonna come out with us, what come at us, whether it's in the world, in our bodies, in our minds, in our families, we need to, number one, understand how to best regulate ourselves and our nervous system. So take the time to answer question one, take the time.

And question two is a hard one. Understanding what is triggering you, what you are scared about, and act, pause, listen. Learn or concede. And you might need to do all of those in a row in a different order. And last but not least, don't be someone who just talks, take action, even if it is small, medium, or large.

And you don't have to profess it on social media. Many of the things I do, I don't share on social media because it is nobody's business. What I do is what I think for me and the people around me and the people that I can help, um, will be meaningful to them. I don't always do everything right. I make a lot of mistakes.

I probably made a lot in this episode, but hopefully if you've listened to other ones in my episodes, I want you to know my intention is always good, and my intention of today's episode is to make you feel not alone. And to give you strategies because more tough times are coming. Things are not going to change overnight.

But I think together we can all get through this. So thank you guys for tuning into this episode. I'd love to hear feedback. I'd love to hear what you guys are doing to self-regulate. And please know I'm always here for you if you need to talk.