When the World Stops Making Sense: Depth Psychotherapy During Political Absurdity

Let’s be honest: this is not just “uncertain times.” That phrase is too clean, too polite for what many people are actually feeling.

We are living through a moment where the President of the United States floats ideas about a so‑called Board of Peace while simultaneously posturing about taking over sovereign nations and territories like Venezuela and Greenland. At the same time, immigration enforcement actions, ongoing shootings, and the everyday threat of state or interpersonal violence touches our ordinary lives. When the language of peace is paired with threats, force, and domination—whether on the global stage or close to home—the psyche struggles to make meaning. Reality itself starts to feel unsteady, or surreal.

Many people coming into my Pasadena therapy office are not asking, “How do I reduce my anxiety?” They are asking:

• Am I supposed to pretend this is normal?

• How do I live ethically inside systems that feel unmoored?

• What do I do with the rage, grief, disbelief, or numbness I feel when I read the news?

Depth psychotherapy does not try to smooth over these questions. It takes them seriously.

When Power Becomes Performative

From a depth psychological perspective, what we are witnessing on the global stage is more than political maneuvering. It is symbolic behavior. Grandiose claims, contradictory messaging, and spectacle masquerading as leadership all point to something deeper than policy.

Carl Jung warned that when power is divorced from reflection, shadow takes over. The shadow is not only personal; it is collective. When a culture rewards domination while calling it peace, the psyche absorbs that contradiction.

People feel it in their bodies. Anxiety spikes. Sleep becomes fragmented. A low‑grade dread hums beneath daily life.

Others feel the opposite: dissociation, exhaustion, a sense that nothing is real anymore.

These are not personal failures. They are sane responses to an incoherent environment.

Gaslighting on a Global Scale

One of the most psychologically destabilizing aspects of this moment is the suggestion that we accept incompatible realities at once:

• Expansion framed as protection

• Aggression reframed as diplomacy

• Authoritarian gestures wrapped in the language of order and peace

This mirrors the dynamics many people recognize from harmful relationships or dysfunctional family systems. When words and actions do not align, the psyche becomes confused. Over time, self‑trust erodes.

Depth psychotherapy names this dynamic instead of asking clients to adapt to it.

Why “Coping Skills” Aren’t Enough

There is a reason so many people feel insulted by advice to “limit news intake” or “practice gratitude” right now. While regulation tools have their place, they can feel like bypassing when the underlying issue is moral and existential.

Depth psychotherapy asks different questions:

• What values are being violated inside you when you read these headlines?

• What old wounds are being activated by watching unchecked power?

• Where are you being asked to shrink, comply, or go numb to survive?

This work is not about calming yourself so you can tolerate the intolerable. It is about understanding what your reactions are protecting.

The Importance of In‑Person Therapy in Times of Collective Breakdown

In moments when reality itself feels unstable, embodied presence matters.

In‑person depth psychotherapy in Pasadena offers something increasingly rare: a shared physical space where language slows down, nervous systems settle, and contradictions can be held without resolution. The body tells the truth long before the mind catches up.

The world outside feels performative and unreal. Sitting with another human can be quietly radical.

Creativity, Resistance, and Refusal

For many creatives, artists, and thinkers, this political moment has created a specific kind of paralysis. How do you make art when the news feels absurd? How do you create meaning when power feels theatrical and cruel?

Depth psychotherapy understands that creativity often stalls not from laziness, but from ethical conflict. The psyche resists producing beauty on command when something essential feels under threat.

Sometimes the most honest act is not productivity, but refusal. Refusing to normalize what feels wrong. Refusing to gaslight yourself. Refusing to look away.

Perhaps from that place, life force enlivens and art creates change.

What Depth Psychotherapy Actually Offers Right Now

Depth psychotherapy does not promise safety, certainty, or optimism. What it offers instead is orientation.

It helps you:

• Reclaim your internal authority in a world that undermines it

• Differentiate your values from the dominant narratives around you

• Mourn what is being lost without collapsing into despair

• Stay psychologically alive rather than compliant or numb

This is not about fixing your feelings so you can move on. It is about letting your feelings inform how you live.

A Different Kind of Stability

We cannot control geopolitical power plays. We can tend to the places where meaning still grows. Depth therapy becomes one of those places. It's not an escape, but rather a grounding.

In‑person depth psychotherapy in Pasadena offers a container for thinking clearly, feeling honestly, and resisting the pressure to pretend that incoherence is normal.

If the world feels upside down, it may not be because something is wrong with you. It may be because you are paying attention.

Beginning Depth Psychotherapy in Pasadena

Are you finding yourself preoccupied by the news? Unsettled by the exercise of power you are witnessing? Questioning what kind of world you are being asked to adapt to? Therapy can be a place to slow this all down.

In-person depth psychotherapy in Pasadena, California offers space to think, feel, and respond without urgency. Together, we can explore how current political and cultural realities are impacting your nervous system. And how your creativity, your relationships, and your sense of meaning is impacted.

At Rezak Therapy, we work with individuals who want a thoughtful, relational, and psychologically deep approach to therapy. We are especially focused on this during times when the outer world feels unstable or surreal.

If you’re curious about beginning in-person therapy in Pasadena, I invite you to reach out for a consultation and see whether we feel like the right fit.

You don’t have to resolve everything. You’re simply invited to show up honestly.