A framework for reading what follows
Before we get into anything specific, I want to name the lens I’m using here.
This is not a post about outrage.
It’s not a call to react faster or louder.
It’s not an attempt to persuade, shame, or recruit.
This is a post about care—and the part we often leave out:
Sometimes, real care requires discomfort.
Not cruelty. Not righteousness. Not punishment.
Discomfort. Specifically, yours.
Because if we can’t tolerate discomfort, we often reach for shortcuts that look like care but aren’t: performance, certainty, escalation, control.
What we are witnessing culturally—especially on social media—is not just disagreement or polarization. It’s widespread nervous-system dysregulation playing out in public, amplified by platforms that reward shock, certainty, and spectacle.
This post is written from a specific posture:
- Loving, but not soothing
- Accountable, but not punishing
- Truthful, without requiring anyone’s comfort
If that feels unfamiliar, that’s part of the point.
Let’s take a collective deep breath before we continue.
What’s being revealed right now
Recently, Margaret Cho was threatened during a live show.
She later spoke about it publicly, and at the end of the video she said:
“Let’s take a collective deep breath, America.”
That line stayed with me—not because it minimized what happened, but because it refused to escalate it.
We’re living in a moment where public figures, artists, and ordinary people are increasingly targeted, threatened, and pulled into cycles of reaction that don’t actually make anyone safer or more whole. At the same time, we’re inundated with intentionally provocative content—especially online—designed to inflame, humiliate, or dominate attention rather than inform or repair.
The point here isn’t to litigate any single incident.
The point is to notice the pattern.
Shock is being normalized.
Dehumanization is being gamified.
And many of us are being pulled into participating without realizing the cost to our capacity to think, feel, and act wisely.
This is what collective shadow looks like when it doesn’t have a container.
And learning to care in this climate means learning to stay present through discomfort—without defaulting to spectacle.
My own reckoning with this
I can speak about this with care because I’ve had to do this work in myself—very specifically around and through social media.
With the trauma background I have, it was easy to use platforms in ways that felt like connection but were often about regulation. It was easy to reach for attention, urgency, and certainty. It was easy to speak on things I didn’t yet know enough about to speak on. And it was easy to confuse visibility with impact.
One place this showed up for me was during activist work.
At the time, I shared a lot of videos about police brutality. I genuinely cared. I was trying to help. I believed it was my responsibility to show people “the truth.” And I also need to be honest about what was happening underneath that belief: I was getting a feeling of doing the work without actually doing the work.
I didn’t know how to hold what I was seeing.
So I exported it.
To the feed.
To other people’s nervous systems.
To a space optimized for reaction, not integration.
As I reflected, I began to realize I couldn’t save people. I began to see that telling the truth the way I was telling it wasn’t creating support—it was often creating distance. Not because the truth didn’t matter.
The way I was sharing wasn’t building capacity.
It wasn’t helping people metabolize reality.
It was activating, polarizing, and sometimes more about my own discharge than my desire to repair.
That wasn’t my goal.
So I shifted.
I didn’t stop telling the truth.
I started telling it differently.
And that shift required discomfort.
It required sitting with the feeling of not being seen as “one of the good ones.”
It required releasing the rush of being affirmed.
It required admitting that some of what I’d shared wasn’t helpful—even when my intentions were sincere.
That is one of the quiet prices of real care: letting ourselves be uncomfortable long enough to become more accurate, more responsible, more resourced.
Truth needs containment
There’s a difference between truth as a weapon and truth as a lantern.
A difference between broadcasting pain and building pathways.
A difference between “Look at this” and “Here is what we can hold—together.”
Social media tends to reward the first kind.
Platforms reward:
- speed over discernment
- performance over presence
- certainty over curiosity
So what we’re seeing isn’t just opinions. We’re seeing nervous systems. We’re seeing belonging strategies. We’re seeing fear looking for somewhere to land.
Shadow doesn’t disappear when it’s shamed.
It integrates when it’s seen, named, and held well.
And right now, we are deeply under-contained.
Which means “care” can easily become a cover for reactivity.
If we can’t tolerate discomfort, we will keep choosing comfort-shaped substitutes:
- calling it “awareness” when it’s actually escalation
- calling it “truth” when it’s actually discharge
- calling it “solidarity” when it’s actually performance
Real care asks more of us than that.
What I’m practicing (and inviting)
I don’t think the answer is sharper takes or better call-outs. I think we’ve tried that. What feels missing is something quieter—and harder to practice:
A collective deep breath.
Not a bypass.
Not politeness.
Not comfort-seeking.
Just enough regulation to choose care without losing truth.
This is what I’m practicing this week:
- Is this building capacity, or exporting activation?
- Am I resourced enough to hold what I’m amplifying?
- If I’m naming harm, am I also offering a path—context, action, repair, or support?
- Am I willing to be uncomfortable in service of being responsible?
I’m not trying to make friends or enemies.
I want people to feel the care—and I don’t require their comfort.
Because truth matters.
And so does how we carry it.
Closing
When Margaret Cho said “let’s take a collective deep breath,” she wasn’t avoiding reality.
She was modeling containment.
Containment is what allows truth to be metabolized instead of weaponized.
It’s what allows resistance without collapse.
It’s what allows us to stay human in moments that reward dehumanization.
So I’ll echo her.
Let’s take a collective deep breath.
And let’s practice the kind of care that can hold discomfort—so we don’t keep outsourcing it to each other.