How to Think When the World Feels Like It's Breaking

I used to believe that pillow fights were lethal.

When I was eight years old, I had a couple of friends over for a playdate. We were rowdy boys, and as rowdy boys do, we started up a pillow fight, wrestling with each other and swinging like mad.

It wasn't long before my mom burst into the room and broke us up. She sat us down and told us how she'd recently read in the news about a young child who was in the middle of a pillow fight and ended up getting his neck broken and dying.

Keep in mind, this is the same woman who also said we needed full supervision when playing on a Slip 'N Slide because she'd read you can drown in a tablespoon of water.

My mom wasn't crazy. She was scared and overwhelmed. In her mind, many of the alarming stories she heard were probable threats to her kids. The rare was routine. The exceptional expected.

Here's what my 8-year-old brain didn't understand then: my mom had fallen victim to the availability heuristic. She was judging how likely something was based on how easily she could remember it happening. One vivid news story about a pillow fight death made pillow fights feel dangerous, even though the actual odds were astronomically low.

When dramatic stories are fresh in our memory, our brains treat them as more probable than they actually are. The more shocking the headline, the more likely it feels. And when you're already anxious about keeping your kids safe, every worst-case scenario starts feeling inevitable.

So this week, let's talk about thinking clearly when scary stories dominate the news cycle, why your brain confuses memorable with likely, how to judge actual risk instead of just vivid examples, and how you can stay informed without staying terrified.

Why Your Brain Treats Headlines Like Statistics

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut where we judge how likely something is by how easily we can remember examples of it happening. If we can quickly think of instances of plane crashes, we assume plane crashes are common. If shark attacks come to mind easily, we overestimate our chances of becoming shark bait.

Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman first identified the concept in the 1970s (somehow surviving the great pillow fight death scare of the decade). They saw that people consistently misjudged probabilities based on what was most memorable instead of what was most frequent. The research would eventually earn Kahneman a Nobel Prize and fundamentally change how we understand human decision-making (just saying).

This mental shortcut has actually served us well for most of human history. The most memorable dangers were often the most immediate ones.

Buuuuut now we live in a world where the most vivid stories aren't necessarily the most relevant to our actual lives. A child dying in a pillow fight in the 1970s makes the same impression on our brains as if it happened right next door. A terrorist attack in Paris feels as threatening as if it occurred in our hometown. Our stone-age brains are trying to assess modern risks with outdated software.

We overestimate dramatic risks like plane crashes, shark attacks, and kidnappings while underestimating mundane ones like heart disease, car accidents, and slipping in the shower. Who else grew up thinking that quick sand was gonna get ya eventually? We fear the memorable, not the mathematical.

This is why my mom banned pillow fights but let me ride my bike without a helmet. Bike accidents are statistically far more common and dangerous than pillow fight fatalities, but mom hadn't seen a story about a kid getting a concussion from falling off a bike. That felt normal. Pillow fight deaths felt exceptional, which made them feel threatening. Just try to imagine older Derek cautioning friends about the dangers of pillows…I was laughed at a lot in college.

It's human nature. Our brains are doing exactly what they evolved to do, using the information most readily available to make quick decisions.

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Recalibrating Your Risk Radar

The first step to thinking clearly about risk is learning to ask the right question. Instead of "could this happen to me?" go with "how often does this actually happen?"

It's a simple shift, but it helps. Could you die in a pillow fight? Yeah sure, technically yes. How often do people actually die in pillow fights? You are more likely to be struck by lightning while being attacked by a shark.

This is the difference between possibility and probability. Anything is possible. Not a lot of disaster related things are probable. But our brains have a tough time with this distinction because we're not naturally wired to think statistically. Math is hard.

But, and stay with me, understanding base rates can be good for your mental health. A base rate is just how often something happens in the general population. It's the boring background reality that wild stories tend to overshadow.

For example, a news story about a teenager dying from energy drink consumption makes Red Bull feel deadly. But the base rate tells a different story: roughly 1 in 250 million energy drinks result in a reported death. Your sandwich is statistically more dangerous, but no one writes headlines about deadly lunch meat.

You have to learn to train yourself to reflexively reach for context when a scary story hits your radar. Here are some simple mental tools:

• The "Compared to What?" Test: When you hear about a risk, immediately ask what you're comparing it to. Is this more or less likely than things you already do without thinking? Driving to work? Taking aspirin? Walking down stairs?

• The Sample Size Check: One story is an anecdote. Ten stories might be a pattern. A hundred stories could be a trend. But you need to know the denominator. If there are 10 reported cases out of 10 million people, that's very different from 10 cases out of 100 people.

• The Time Frame Reality Check: Media loves to report cumulative statistics that sound scary but lack context. "Since 2010, energy drinks have been linked to 34 deaths" sounds alarming until you realize that's about 3 deaths per year in a country of 330 million people.

The goal isn't to become emotionally numb or recklessly optimistic about genuine risks. It's to configure your worry to match actual probability. Some things really are dangerous and deserve your caution. Others just feel dangerous because they're memorable.

My mom wasn't wrong to care about our safety. But she was letting dramatic anecdotes override statistical reality. She was worried about the wrong things for the wrong reasons. By learning to think in base rates instead of headlines, you can focus your finite anxiety on risks that actually deserve it.

So What Do You Do With All This?

You don't need to stop caring. You just need to start calibrating.

Your brain is actually doing its job. It's spotting threats, scanning for danger, trying to keep you alive and all. But in a world where the scariest stories are also the stickiest, it helps to stop and ask: Is this scary because it's likely... or just because it's recent and vivid?

I wanna believe that you can stay informed without being constantly on edge. You can care about real risks without jumping at every headline. So let's start with a few small habits:

1. Wait before you react. Give your brain time to cool off before you decide what something means.

2. Look for the numbers. Trade drama for data. If it feels like it's everywhere, ask: "How often does this actually happen?" I am gonna say that again, trade drama for data. That needs to sink in folks.

3. Protect your inputs. Seek out information, not stimulation. The goal isn't ignorance. It's clarity.

The truth is, the more stressed we are, the more we default to instinct over common sense. But with some practice, we can re-train ourselves to respond with clarity, not panic. So the next time a headline grabs your attention, give it a quick pillow test: Is this actually dangerous? Or just dangerously memorable?

Here's What I Know For Sure

The world has always had pillow fight deaths, Slip 'N Slide accidents, and freak disasters. What's changed isn't the danger, it's how quickly these rare events reach us and how vividly they stick in our minds.

Mom wasn't wrong to care about safety. But she was letting the most memorable stories drive her risk assessment instead of the most accurate ones.

The next time a scary headline makes you want to bubble-wrap your life, ask yourself: am I responding to how likely this is, or just how recently I heard about it? Sometimes the most radical thing you can do when the world feels like it's breaking is remember that it's always felt that way to someone, somewhere…but that doesn't make it true.

As always, thanks for reading,
— Derek
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