Over the years, I’ve achieved a state of effortful ease about curating what I allow to come into my headspace and impact the quantity and quality of my energy, my lifeblood. I take care about the songs I listen to, the films I watch, the people I spend time with, the places I go, the work I do, the things I read, the conversations I have, the things I eat and drink and even my home and physical surroundings.

I even have brilliantly colored art on my walls, in part, because it creates a big boost to the state of my energy every time I walk through the living room, or simply glance up.

But there’s one wall that has the power to deactivate my normally well-curated, high energy state: my Facebook wall.

I realized this way before the Election. Over a year ago, I became acutely aware that 30 minutes on Facebook was an incredible emotional rollercoaster. From the highs of my friends’ incredibly, almost unnaturally adorable babies and dogs and videos of hyperactive baby goats in pajamas to the lows of ISIS and the (bizarrely named) Tea Party. The fever pitch of the pre-Election media cycle only intensified both the highs (oh, Michelle) and the lows (let’s just leave them nameless, kinda like we do Voldemort).

So, as the tenor and tension increased, I redoubled my efforts to manage what entered my consciousness. I told my friends I’d opted out of Election Anxiety—not the Election itself, I would and did vote. Just the anxiety around the Election. And trust me when I say that this took mighty and mightier efforts, as things played out. I didn’t watch a single debate. I didn’t read the books my friends were reading. I didn’t click on those links. I even went to Europe for a few weeks near the end of things.

I told people I wasn’t voting to give the reins of my country to Mr. Trump, and I wouldn’t be giving him or my well-meaning, distraught and afraid friends the reins to my peace, calm or sanity, either. I saw it as my responsibility to guard my heart and manage my energy so I can do the work and be the person I was put here to do and to be. That meant a lot of days away from Facebook, and still does.

And yes, I was caught off guard by the results of the Election. But we all were, not just those of us who chose to follow it only as closely as it took to stay responsibly informed. My aim was to be informed, but not conformed, not upset and not overwhelmed. I know a lot about content strategy, marketing and a lot about media, and I know that many businesses profit from the emotional upheaval of the masses. There are whole industries built around how to build website and media that people can’t stop clicking on. Because this is my job, I know enough to guard against getting hooked.

Some people flat-out disagreed that my way was the right way, but the truth is that none of my Election-fixated friends were any less surprised at the outcome than I was.

Since this “upset”, there’s been a ton of talk about how Facebook might have played a role in the surprising nature of the election outcome to so many of us, all around the world. The Wall Street Journal reported: “scholars worry that the social network can create “echo chambers,” where users see posts only from like-minded friends and media sources.”

Here’s my two cents: yes, the algorithms create echo chambers. And no, most of us aren’t doing the work it takes to seek out dissenting opinions. But Facebook is not the problem. We create these echo-chambers in real life, anyway, left to our own devices.

• Exhibit A: Many, many people I know have mentioned having to unfollow or unfriend people on the other side of this election from them, a move that definitely creates a more one-sided view.
• Exhibit B: I live in the Bay Area, where people were crying in the streets the day after the election.
• Exhibit C: My parents in Bakersfield had the opposite reality – the whole election, they thought I was bonkers to expect a HIllary win because all their neighbors were vocally pro-Trump.

In real life, many people don’t have the privilege I realize I have, of having been able to move to a place where the zeitgeist aligns to my personal beliefs, so they probably are exposed to differing opinions in real life more than they are online, which is not my personal experience.

But even then, Facebook isn’t the problem. That people are emotionally wounded is the problem. Deep-seated, heart-level pain and that feeling of being utterly unloved that festers into anger, hatred and violence. Human disconnection. These are the problems that need solving, not the Facebook algorithm.

Here’s the other problem: we have to be the bosses of our technology and use it for our purposes, versus letting it use us. We need to use it to study and learn and heal divides, but also to bring our souls fully up on deck and mend what’s within our reach. Technology, even Facebook, is very, very well-designed for this use. Here’s how I know.

Last year, I was on Facebook, right during one of those times where there was so much upheaval: church shootings, police shootings, and ISIS were inescapable. One of my Facebook Friends posted this video:

The video was shot at the Paris Marathon. As the mostly white, muscled, male runners swooped past, an anomalous participant came into view: a stout, Black woman, wearing traditional African garb, bearing a plastic container I’d soon learn is called a jerry can atop her head. She wore a sandwich board sign that read “En afrique les femmes parcourent chaque jour cette distance pour l’eau potable.”

Translation: “In Africa women walk this distance each day for drinking water.”

A marathon’s distance is 26.2 miles. Let that sink in. As we sit in front of Facebook, stressing out about subjects both worthy and unworthy of our attention, there are hundreds of thousands of school-aged girls who can’t even go to school because they have to walk 10 miles each day to get often dirty water for their families.

Part of what’s so worrisome about what we read on Facebook is the helplessness factor. We care about these things, but can’t do anything about them. When I watched that video, I had this epiphany that there actually are problems we can fix or contribute to the fixes for. There are things we can help do something about, with our time and money and care.

So I looked to learn who was working on real, long-term fixes for the water problem, and found charity: water.

I looked to learn who was helping refugees and disaster victims and found Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, Doctors without Borders and one of my favorite organizations of all time, New Story.

Someone is out there working really, really hard to fix the things that upset you the most. Black Lives Matter. The ACLU. Planned Parenthood. Your local food justice organization (that’s a plug for City Slicker Farms, btw). Your church.

Curate your newsfeed aggressively, but just make sure you curate in the work that so many are doing to heal and fix and fight the good fight. And don’t just learn about it, support it. Engage in it. The cure to anxiety is not always, or often, action. But when it comes to Facebook Anxiety, that might be just what the doctor ordered.

P.S.: I’ve just pledged my birthday to raise the money for 166 people around the world to have access to clean water. Can you help?

P.P.S.: I issued a 30 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders a few weeks back, and over 150 brilliant souls signed up! I decided to take the Challenge right along with them, and it’s been a profound journey for many of us. Most people are journaling or free-writing every day, privately. I wrote this post on Day 11 of the Challenge. I’ll be doing another writing Challenge in January; click here to get on the list for the January Challenge.