Navigating Your Emotions Regarding Natural Disasters
If you've been following news coverage of the recent floods and found yourself feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, or stuck in grief, you're not alone.
If you've been following news coverage of the recent floods and found yourself feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, or stuck in grief, you're not alone. Many people across the country are experiencing a deep emotional response—even if they weren't directly affected. This article offers suggestions for navigating the emotional impact of natural disasters for those observing from a distance. Please note: individuals directly impacted by these events require more specialized trauma-informed support.
Emotions Are Data, Not Danger
Emotions aren’t good or bad - they’re just information. Think of them like the dashboard lights in your car. When a warning light appears, it tells you to check under the hood. Similarly, when a strong emotion arises, it's your inner system telling you to pay attention to what your emotions are revealing. Emotions are not the enemy. In fact, God created us with the capacity to feel deeply. Emotions tell us something deeper is going on—and that we have needs that may be unmet. If we pay attention to them, emotions are actually an invitation to healing deeper pain and trauma.
Ask yourself:
What is this emotion trying to tell me?
What need is surfacing underneath the emotion?
Can I approach this emotion with curiosity rather than judgment?
Emotions as Messengers
When watching distressing news, like the coverage of recent floods, consider what primary emotion surfaces for you. Is it fear? Powerlessness? Sadness? Often, these emotions are not just about the current crisis—they’re tied to earlier experiences where we felt the same way. The disaster may be awakening old pain that’s long been buried.
For example, I noticed myself feeling a deep sense of powerlessness as I watched the news about the floods. As I gave myself space to process, I realized that this wasn’t just about the floods—it was tapping into a deeper, ongoing feeling of powerlessness in a key area of my life, as well as echoes of powerlessness from my past. The natural disaster didn’t create this pain; it simply brought it to the surface.
Someone else told me she felt especially vulnerable, and she recognized that the floods triggered a recent season in her life where everything felt unstable. It made her feel like the ground could fall out from beneath her at any time—not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. For her, it touched a place of hope deferred—the weariness of waiting for things to feel secure again.
What we each realized is this: the disaster didn’t create new pain. It illuminated pain that was already there. These moments often bring old wounds into the light—not to overwhelm us, but to invite healing.
Responding Differently: Rewriting Your Story
Major life events tend to activate old emotional patterns and coping mechanisms—often rooted in childhood. But here's the powerful truth: you now have the ability to respond differently. When you choose a new, nurturing response to an old emotion, you begin to rewrite your emotional story and retrain your nervous system.
Where you may have once felt silenced or unseen in your pain as a kid, you now get to be seen and give yourself a voice about your pain. Where you may have once been met with judgement of your emotions, you can now offer yourself compassion. Where you may have once ignored your needs, you now get to meet them tenderly. This is part of what it means to reparent the inner child within you, with God’s help, to create safety, love, and acceptance for yourself.
Ask yourself:
How can I respond to myself now in ways that my caregivers couldn’t when I was younger?
Allow yourself to fully experience your emotions and offer yourself the safety, compassion, and acceptance you may not have received in the past.
Recognizing and Releasing Coping Mechanisms
Becoming aware of your protective coping mechanisms—those you relied on long before the disaster—is a crucial step in healing. These might include emotional numbing, avoidance, over-functioning, or self-isolation. Notice when you’re in those patterns and remind yourself: I have a choice. Healing often begins with that conscious decision to shift out of automatic responses and into intentional self-care.
Pain, metaphorically speaking, is like a cup. When strong emotions arise, it simply means the cup is being tipped—giving us the opportunity to empty it. This is a healthy process. Emotional health doesn’t mean we don’t feel pain—it means we become skilled at feeling and processing it. It takes far more strength to feel deeply than to compartmentalize.
Experiencing big emotions is not a sign of weakness — it’s a sign that your inner self is finally being given the space it was once denied. You don’t need to “get over it” quickly. Healing isn’t a race. Give yourself the time you need. The more consistently you offer yourself love and compassion, the more emotionally regulated and resilient you’ll become. When we allow painful experiences to shape us rather than shatter us, we’re choosing growth over victimhood — and that is a powerful, courageous choice.
Understanding your Nervous System
I once heard that our generation—thanks to social media and the 24/7 news cycle—is exposed to more suffering and bad news in a single year than our grandparents encountered in their entire lifetimes. Take a moment to let that sink in. Can you imagine the weight that places on our minds, bodies, and hearts?
The human nervous system wasn’t designed to absorb a constant stream of trauma. God created us to live in relationship with one another, to bear witness to suffering within our local communities—not to carry the grief of the entire world every day. Yet today, we’re bombarded with images of heartbreak from every corner of the globe.
Here is what we often don’t realize- even if you feel numb to it, your nervous system is responding. Every time you hear devastating news, your body interprets it as a threat. And here’s the key: your nervous system doesn’t distinguish well between a real, immediate danger and a perceived or observed one. So when you’re watching floods on the news, or scrolling through tragic stories online, your body may react as if it’s happening to you. This can trigger a stress response—commonly known as fight, flight, or freeze—even if you’re safe in your own home.
This leads to what’s called nervous system dysregulation—a state where your body feels constantly on edge, overwhelmed, or emotionally shut down. Over time, this chronic stress can leave you exhausted, disconnected, and spiritually depleted.
The Good News: You Can Regulate Your Nervous System
While you may not be able to stop the flow of hard news, you can learn to care for your body and spirit in the midst of it. God, in His wisdom, designed our nervous systems to be regulatable—we can move from anxiety back into peace.
One powerful way to do this is through grounding and regulation practices—simple, evidence-based tools that help bring your body back into the present moment. These practices remind your nervous system: I am safe right now.
If you're not sure where to start, I've curated a YouTube playlist of grounding and regulation exercises for you to explore. Try practicing one before and after watching the news or anytime you feel overwhelmed or emotionally flooded.
Signs You're Stuck in a Trigger
Often a strong emotional reaction isn’t just about what's happening now—it's a "trigger" pulling up pain from the past. This can be a sign that you’re stuck in a trauma response—often rooted in childhood experiences where you felt powerless or unseen. Here are some signs you may be stuck in trigger (a younger, more vulnerable emotional state):
Feeling unsafe, small, overwhelmed or powerless
Believing you’ll never be okay
Feeling stuck or trapped
Emotional responses that feel bigger than the situation warrants
Thoughts that sound like: “I can’t handle this, It will always be this hard, I'll never be safe.”
These are indicators that your inner child has taken over the driver's seat. But this is also an invitation for healing. Triggers offer access points to past pain—and with that access comes the possibility of healing.
So How do I Process my Emotions?
Many of us think about our emotions rather than truly feeling them. But emotions are meant to be experienced, not analyzed away. The only way out of emotions is through them- by feeling them. When we allow them to move through us—like a wave—they rise, peak, and naturally pass. When we resist or suppress them, they can become stuck in the body, often manifesting as anxiety, depression, or physical illness. We can either be dams where emotions get stuck and accumulate, or rivers where they flow through us freely.
Regulate: The first step is to ground yourself. Grounding helps calm your nervous system and shifts you out of survival mode so you can access your “adult brain”—the part of you that can reflect, reason, and respond clearly.
Name the Emotion: Put words to the emotion. Naming an emotion helps organize your internal experience and gives you clarity. Be specific—are you angry, disappointed, anxious, or ashamed? Use an emotion wheel if needed.
Feel it in the Body: Tune into where the emotion is showing up physically. It might feel like a knot in your stomach, tension in your chest, or a lump in your throat. Turn toward the sensation with curiosity. Breathe deeply and stay present. Your goal isn’t to change or fix it—just to notice it, as you would sit quietly with a friend who needs support. Emotions are like waves of energy moving through the body. When we allow them space, rather than resist them, they begin to move and release.
The more you relate to bodily sensations as signals—messages indicating that an internal need is surfacing—the more your nervous system begins to feel safe feeling emotions. Over time, this builds trust and softens the internal alarm that often accompanies strong emotions.Validate: Respond to yourself with tenderness, compassion and curiosity. How would you speak to a friend or a child who was experiencing the same emotion? Now turn that kindness and validation inward and spend a few moments speaking to yourself that same way. If you're a person of faith, this can be a moment to invite God into your experience—not to remove the pain, but to be present with you in it, offering comfort and peace. If you’re unsure how to validate, the Compassion Statements on my website can help.
Re-Regulate and Move On: Do another short grounding practice. This helps you shift back into a regulated state and signals to your body that it’s safe again. Then, gently return to your day.
Our Need for Control and the Illusion of Safety
As human beings, we crave control because it helps us feel safe. Natural disasters, however, starkly remind us of how little control we truly have, which can leave us feeling frightened and vulnerable. When we feel unsafe, our instinct is to seek external stability. But when our sense of safety is tied to external circumstances, life can feel chaotic and uncertain.
The empowering news is that safety doesn’t have to be external. We can cultivate an internal sense of safety by learning to respond to ourselves with compassion, love, and validation. The more we create a safe inner space—where we feel supported regardless of external events—the more resilient we become. You don’t have to wait for life to calm down to meet your deepest emotional needs. You have access to love, safety, and compassion right now, both internally and from the Lord.
A Call to Stewardship: Protect Your Peace
In the same way we guard our hearts from harmful influences, we must also guard our nervous systems from constant overstimulation. This is not avoidance—it’s stewardship.
If you’re finding yourself constantly anxious, numb, or fatigued, it may be time to reevaluate how much news and social media you're consuming. Set boundaries. Take breaks. Protect your peace, not because you don't care, but because you do—and you want to care well, from a grounded, compassionate place.
Remember: God doesn’t expect you to carry the weight of the world. That’s His job. Your role is to stay connected to Him, listen for His voice, and respond in love from a place of rest and security.
If you’d like to learn more about self-compassion, I recommend the book Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff. If you’d like to learn more about all things emotional health, I highly recommend The Connected Life podcast by Abi & Justin Stumvoll. If you’ve experienced a natural disaster and want support navigating it, click on the button below to start a conversation.