Too Much to Hold: Control, Catastrophe, and Cooling Down
The past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on identifying what I can and cannot control. Enter: the Circle of Control exercise.
It’s pretty straightforward. Draw three concentric circles—label them “No Control,” “Some Control,” and “Total Control,” like this:
Then, jot down what belongs where. Go ahead and grab a scrap of paper, try it.
I started by coaching myself through the process, trying to find more in the “some” or “total” circles than the “none” one. That’s a self-classic coaching pitfall: self-editing your way to the “right” answers, rather than letting your mind be honest. I knew lingering too long in the “no control” circle sounded like victim mentality, so I made myself counterbalance each item with something more empowering.
Couldn’t control national politics? Sure. But I could control who I vote for. Couldn’t control whether my partner’s cancer recurs? Absolutely. But I could control how I show up as the kind of partner I want to be.
Eventually, though, I realized I was engineering the exercise instead of experiencing it. I dropped the self-coaching voice and let my pen move freely. The “No Control” circle filled up fast. The other two? Not so much. I resisted padding them for the sake of symmetry.
And that honesty gave me a gift: insight. I saw how much mental energy I was wasting - ruminating, strategizing, looping through "if/then" scenarios - about things I couldn’t influence at all. My brain was trying to protect me, but in doing so, it was draining me.
Then the U.S. bombed Iran.
My “No Control” circle didn’t just grow, it completely erupted. Loudly. Bone-shakingly.
Thoughts flooded in: fear, grief, helplessness. No tidy insight this time, just rip-roaring anxiety. And it made me think about what it means to be a human in 2025, walking around with a supercomputer in my pocket that pushes breaking news into my brain before I’ve even had breakfast.
Just 100 years ago, in the 1920s, most people would have learned of world events with a delay of at least a day or two, and sometimes weeks in rural areas. Radio was new. Newspapers were daily (and only in the large cities). The information firehose was just a trickle.
Now, I can know that three places in Iran - a country I’ve never visited, a region where I don’t even know if I have friends with family there - were bombed with U.S.-made artillery, before the planes had even returned to base. That’s not just access to information. That’s exposure. And if it feels like too much, it’s because it is.
Our brains haven’t evolved fast enough to process this much tragedy, this quickly, this often.
In medicine, we’re trained to metabolize information fast. Lives depend on it. We're brilliant at absorbing vast amounts of data and distilling them into actionable plans. But here’s the thing: in medicine, we usually have at least some control. We can do something.
But when we turn those same skills loose on geopolitical crises or global disasters, things where we have little or no agency, we get nowhere. We stay glued to our phones, spiral with anxiety, and disengage from the lives actually going on around us (which is where the people we love are, by the way).
I’m not suggesting we check out. That’s neither possible nor responsible. I have a “good citizen” identity, too. I believe in being informed and advocating for others. But I also believe in functioning. And our brains weren’t built for this level of global hypervigilance.
So what do we do?
We reclaim the small levers of control we can still exert.
Set boundaries. Use apps to limit your screen time (here’s a list of good ones). Walk away from the firehose. Instead of doomscrolling, soothe your nervous system. Go outside. Call a friend. Watch something slow and sweet.
We started re-binging The Great British Baking Show a couple of weeks ago. It’s been medicine I didn’t know I would need.
There’s a quiet power in choosing where you place your attention. Use it.
The firehose isn’t going anywhere. But you don’t have to try to drink from it.