If you’re a Highly Sensitive Person like me, then national tragedies don’t just make the news — they move in, rearrange the furniture, and sleep on your chest.

Bondi

Black Saturday

Tsunami’s

Pandemics

For some people, these events are awful-but-distant. For me, and maybe for you, they are deeply personal, even when we’ve never set foot near the place or people involved. I feel it in my body, my sleep, my nervous systems, in my sudden urge to cry in the supermarket because someone dropped a jar of pasta sauce. Sound familiar?

And then — just to spice things up —I feel guilty for feeling it so deeply – what the fuck??

Did you know there was an unofficial job description for people like us??

Role: Emotional sponge
Pay: None
Benefits: Existential dread and empathy fatigue

We have an unspoken moral contract with the world:

If suffering exists, we must acknowledge it. Hold it. Honour it. Witness it thoroughly. Own it.

Ignoring tragedy feels immoral. Scrolling past feels disrespectful. “Switching off” feels like a character flaw.

So what do ‘we’ do !?!

We stay tuned in.
We read every article.
We imagine every family.

We cry collective tears.
We absorb the grief of strangers like it’s our civic duty.

Congratulations — you’re a grief magnet –  grief that is not yours, not singular, and not processed.

AND THEN it cumulates, not just recently but from the day you were born

What happens when sadness and sorrow doesn’t get the chance to leave before the next one arrives.

It stacks.
It layers.
It embodies.

By the time the next national tragedy hits, you’re not just reacting to this event — you’re reacting to:

• every previous disaster
• every loss you never fully processed
• every moment you told yourself, “Others have it worse.”

So yes, Bondi hurts emphatically

But it also pokes Black Saturday

And the tsunami’s

And the pandemic

And that one news story you still think about at 2am.

Your nervous system is basically screaming:

PLEASE STOP ADDING TABS TO MY BRAIN.

Are these familiar sentiments?

• “Don’t take it so personally.”
• “You can’t carry the whole world.”
• “Maybe take a break from the news.”

Which is adorable advice – NOT

Like telling a whale to stop noticing water.

Here’s the thing:
I don’t choose to care this much – Do you?
Our brains are wired for depth, nuance, pattern, meaning.

I don’t skim pain — I bathe in it – sound familiar?

And while that capacity is truly beautiful…
It is relentlessly exhausting.
And sometimes unbearable.
And occasionally makes you want to scream,

FUCK EMPATHY !!!!!

But would you change it……. I bet not.

So what do we do about it? How do we cope?

Well, I love a bit of black humour!

Let’s be clear — if you don’t laugh, you will dissolve.

Black humour isn’t disrespect – It’s just a pressure valve.

It’s saying:

• “Ah yes, another horrific event, right on schedule.”
• “My nervous system is once again stage front auditioning for a medical drama.”
• “I have now reached my daily grief allowance and it is only 9:03am.”

Humour doesn’t mean you don’t care. – It means you care so much you have to metabolise it somehow.

Honestly if I didn’t have this, I think I’d be in a padded cell by now – how about you?

Here’s what actually helps me — not perfectly, but realistically:

1. Managed Empathy – it’s a skill

You can care without consuming every detail.
Witnessing does not require self-destruction.

2. Name it

Say it out loud:

“This grief is cumulative.”
That alone reduces the ‘shame rabbit hole”.

3. Create a Ritual

Light a candle. Write a paragraph. Walk in nature. Take a deliberate pause
Timeframe it — don’t let it leak everywhere.

4. Selective Ignorance – another skill

You are allowed to not read everything.
This is not apathy — it’s triage.

5. Gasbag with those that get it – like High Sensitivity Australia (love the plug!)

People who won’t say “you’re too sensitive”
but will say,

“Yeah. Same. It wrecked me too.”

And Fuck It – We Deserve Better

We deserve:

• systems that don’t rely on the most sensitive of us to emotionally buffer the nations trauma
• media that doesn’t endlessly retraumatise
• permission to rest without guilt

Being highly sensitive in a world that keeps catching fire is not a personal failing.
It’s a mismatch.

So if you feel overwhelmed, hollow, angry, tender, or just tired of caring so much — join the club
you’re not broken.

You’re just carrying too much, for too long, with too little support.

And fuck it.
That’s not weakness.
That’s humanity — turned up loud

BUT  its also the unique  beauty that makes us us.

 – Hannah Marks is a highly sentitive person and writes for High Sensitivitiy Australia. The swear jar on her desk pays for our Christmas lunch.