The World is an Airport
I often use the airport as a metaphor with my deeply feeling clients. Because if you want a crash course in humanity, stand in a TSA line for ten minutes. Airports gather everyone: the wealthy and the broke, the very young and very tired, people heading to weddings, funerals, work trips, and existential crises disguised as vacations. Everyone is dragging luggage, and no one knows what’s actually inside it.
And that’s the point.
Airports aren’t just full of bags. They’re full of emotional carry-ons. Grief, anxiety, hope, resentment, exhaustion—some neatly packed, some bursting at the zipper. We sit next to strangers while quietly managing entire inner worlds. No matter where we’re headed, our nervous systems come with us. TSA has yet to confiscate emotional baggage.
Right now, the world is an airport.
It’s loud. It’s overstimulating. There’s a constant hum of emotional energy, and the announcements are unclear at best. And despite what the internet suggests, this is not a “go touch grass” situation. A grounding exercise isn’t going to magically calm a nervous system that’s responding to real, ongoing stress. We are not broken. We are responding to the environment.
The work right now isn’t to pathologize our anger, grief, or rage. It’s to hold them without letting them hijack the entire terminal. That means staying informed without doom-spiraling, noticing what’s within our control, and being honest about our capacity—day by day, hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute.
Some days, capacity looks like rest. Cancelling plans. Staring at a wall and calling it regulation. Other days, it looks like action—speaking up, organizing, doing the thing. Neither is morally superior. Regulation isn’t about productivity; it’s about appropriateness.
Think of it this way: you’re allowed to be in the airport without carrying everyone else’s bags. You can observe the chaos without absorbing it. You can stay in your own protective bubble, mind your nervous system, and move toward your gate at your own pace.
You don’t need to manage the whole airport.
Just your suitcase.
