Written by: Allyson Inez Ford, MA, LPCC | Founder of Eating Disorder & OCD Therapy
There's a particular kind of despair that fills the air when the world around us feels unusually unstable.
Especially when the collective instability lasts years, feels apocalyptic and has no end in sight.
Political leaders involved in heinous crimes against children, families torn apart by racist policies or war, food insecurity an economy collapsing and a constant stream of bad global news: this is systemic trauma. It leaves many of us feeling paralyzed, hopeless or unsure of what to do with everything we are facing.
It can feel like a heaviness that follows you into every part of your day. Showing up at work feels pointless or relentlessly heavy, depending on your job. In relationships, you might feel disconnected or pitted against each other because of dividing views. Insomnia, difficulty relaxing and feeling constantly like something bad is going to happen is sadly the norm for many people right now.
While none of us can make it stop on our own, there are things we can do to cope in a way that allows us to be more present, connected and committed to protecting each other in the face of such adversity. If this resonates with you, I want to offer some insight around meaning-making and personal agency that's been helping people navigate suffering for over half a century (at least, but likely much longer).
This is not about ignoring the very real suffering we are all witnessing and experiencing. Rather, it’s about finding a way to continue coping, stay connected and continue showing up for the things that matter to you, even while the world feels like it's crumbling so much that surely it’s about to end.
Finding Meaning in Chaos: Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy
This approach rests on a simple but powerful belief: the primary human drive for life isn't pleasure, happiness, power or material gain. It's the search for meaning. Life holds meaning under all circumstances, even the most undesirable ones (this is not to say it is enjoyable or a bid for toxic positivity). The quest for meaning is the key to sustaining devastating circumstances, with personal choice and agency at the center of it.
This idea comes from the work of Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor. He had already developed the foundations of this thinking, what would later become known as logotherapy, before he was forced into concentration camps at age 37. What he endured there became, in a devastating way, a testing ground for his own theory. He observed that the people who held onto some sense of purpose, something meaningful to keep living for, tended to have a better chance of surviving. His own reasons included the hope of reuniting with his wife and finishing his book. He believed that love for other people had real power to sustain a life.
What I love most about this framework, and why I keep coming back to it with clients, is that it doesn't ask anyone to minimize what they're going through. Frankl wasn't suggesting that suffering is good or that pain should be welcomed. Instead he suggests: that even in circumstances we would never choose, we retain some capacity to decide what our suffering means to us and how we respond to it.
Why Meaning Making Matters in Times of Systemic trauma
During periods of political instability, violence and social injustice, existential despair and emotional paralysis are common responses. It’s harder to get out of bed in the morning. More and more people feel numb and detached. This is by design: systems that benefit from your hopelessness count on you feeling too overwhelmed to resist. A clear example of this was when Trump initiated 142 executive orders in his first 100 days in office in his second term. This was a tactic called “flood the zone” - meant to scare and overwhelm us so much that we become numb, powerless and dissociated.
When people feel powerless, they tend to disengage. They stop showing up to protests, stop calling representatives, stop organizing with their neighbors. That disengagement serves the very systems causing the harm.
On the contrary, locating meaning and purpose, can fuel agency and action in the middle of suffering. In turn, this moves us toward connection, purpose and action instead of further into isolation and numbness.
I want to be clear that this is not a quick fix or a mood hack. Meaning-making is slow, hard work. Suffering happens in tandem with meaning making. It often requires sitting with grief, rage and fear before clarity or purpose starts to arise. But that process, as uncomfortable as it can be, tends to leave people more grounded and resilient in the end.
Frankl found that one of the only differences in people who survived the Holocaust’s despicable concentration camps and those who did not, was the degree to which one held on to hope and meaning.
Three Ideas To Explore to Start Meaning Making
The drive toward purpose. Finding purpose is often considered the most fundamental human motivation, one that shapes how we move through hard seasons. When people lose touch with what feels meaningful to them, it tends to show up as restlessness, apathy or a sense that nothing quite matters anymore.
What happens when meaning feels absent. Depression, apathy or nihilism can surface when a sense of purpose is missing. This is sometimes called an existential vacuum, and it's more common than people realize, especially during collective crises when so much feels out of our control.
The freedom that remains. Even when external circumstances can't be changed, we hold onto the inner freedom to choose our response, whether that's our attitude or how we treat the people around us who are also suffering. This reminds us that we still have some say in how we carry what we're facing.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Meaning through creative and moral action. Advocacy, care work and community support can all help re-establish a sense of purpose. For a lot of people, this looks like getting involved in mutual aid, showing up for local organizing, or simply checking in more intentionally on the people in their life who are struggling. Action doesn't have to be large scale to matter. Small, consistent acts of care expand upon each other and create ripple effects of hope, compassion and action. Activist adrienne maree brown says “small is all” and describes this exact philosophy in her book, Emergent Strategy.
Meaning in suffering. Suffering itself isn't inherently meaningful, and when it's politically motivated, it's unfair and unjust. Still, people can assign meaning to their pain as a form of narrative agency. This might look like using a hard experience to fuel advocacy work, or letting grief deepen your commitment to the people and causes you care about. Suffering does not have to be the only story. This is why I go hard on eating disorder advocacy- because of my own experience with one.
Existential reframing. In session, this can look like helping clients identify their personal values, legacy-based goals or larger belief systems that help contextualize what they're going through. Sometimes this means asking questions like: What do I want to be true about how I showed up during this time? What matters enough to me that I'm willing to keep engaging, even when it's hard? These aren't easy questions, and your answers may shift and change over time.
A Few Reflection Questions
If you're looking for a place to start, these are some of the questions I find myself returning to with therapy clients who are navigating this kind of despair:
What has helped me get through hard seasons in the past, and is any of that available to me right now?
Who or what do I feel most connected to when everything else feels uncertain?
If I imagine myself a decade from now looking back at this time, what would I want to have done, even in a small way?
Where do I still have some choice, even if the bigger circumstances feel completely out of my hands?
There's no right answer here. The point is simply to create a little space between the despair and your next move.
An Important Caveat
This work should never be used to minimize oppression or bypass distress. Rage, grief, fear, despair and anxiety all have a place and need to be felt. Honor those feelings just as much as you look towards redefining meaning and purpose. Holding systems accountable requires us to feel.
Logotherapy doesn't ask you to reframe injustice as a gift or find a silver lining in something harmful- rather it’s a way to hold resilience, dignity and direction alongside grief and rage, not instead of them. Those things can and do coexist. In my experience, they usually have to.
As Frankl wrote, those who have a why to live can bear with almost any how. Meaning making helps contain pain and cruelty, Frankls quote is actually something I held onto in eating disorder recovery when I thought I may never recover.
If you're navigating despair, whether it's tied to what's happening in the world or something more personal, you don't have to sit with it alone.
Our San Diego therapy practice does not shy away from processing the political violence and issues we are all impacted by. As eating disorder therapists, we are well aware of how systemic oppression impacts our relationship to food and our bodies. Similarly, as OCD therapists, we notice how themes from the sociocultural context impact and amplify OCD themes.
We offer a free 15-minute consultation call for therapy seekers in California, Washington, Utah, Tennessee, Maryland and Florida. We offer in person therapy in San Diego, and virtual therapy elsewhere.
Reach out today and let's co-create a plan for you to not only cope with these times, but to find meaning and purpose within then.
