This video helped me A LOT: https://youtu.be/yxAd8Owl-7A
Reduce the amount of news and media you consume. It isn’t healthy. Check in with your own mental health on a regular basis and use that as a barometer. When you start feeling overly stressed and frustrated, it’s time to take a break.
It’s ok to be angry or upset but if you can’t do anything about it, it’s not worth it. You should remain informed and also know that if you’re feeling frozen or at a loss, the plan is working. It’s meant to keep you down, drown you, and cause you to desensitize or lose hope. Don’t fall for it. Rise up in ways that you can.
So far, I’ve stayed in the know on every god damned thing, even going deep enough in some cases to explore the damage caused. It’s stressful, but somebody has to do it and I’m someone less impacted than the targets of this insanity (although I’ve dated a transfem for years and am trained in education policy, so obviously the news gets to me on a personal level).
One lesson about stress: you’ve got three ways to cope: (1) you address the source of the stress (or at least feel like you’re doing something, like protesting). (2) You ignore it with distractions, which is perfectly fine if it’s out of your control, (3) you reframe it, such as “this will pass” or “there’s still good in the world”, etc… All three will reduce stress.
We all do all three, and whichever one you find yourself doing is fine. For example, I feel good by trying to share my knowledge and convince my students to give a shit; I still play video games to relax; and I have told myself plenty of times that, while it’s bad (very, very bad), that as long as we survive we can build back our institutions (and believe me, the DoE is both important and deeply flawed-- as someone who survived a failed k-12 education and got a PhD in spite of it, education reform has always been my dream).
You didn’t mention compartmentalization. 🤔
Well, those three things are what a psych teacher told me in community college like, way before I sought out my degree. Not that that should be a ding against her, she taught at pretty competitive 4 years, too.
That said, yours could just be a different framework (e.g. PTSD literature). I personally don’t think that works very well, as it represses the emotion (much like ignoring it would do). You could also argue physical exercise and deep breaths work, too, but again, that’s another framework and one that’s generally taught along with aggression literature.
Damn. You know your stuff well enough that I’m not going to waste your time doing a bit. It was probably funnier in my head anyway.
Heh, probably just needed a more extreme example, like healing crystals. But man, even that ends up tested by researches if for no other reason but to debunk it, lol.
Here’s the thing I’ve discovered over the past two months. You can block every keyword you can think of involving politics and you will still be subject to them in memes that don’t happen to mention the keywords, comments where the blocking isn’t effective, and friends and spouses mentioning them, if not more. Politics pop up in every context. Video game YouTube, programming subjects on hacker news, pretty much every single subject at this point in time is inundated with politics.
For a long time I was the most informed person in my social circle. I can’t deal with it anymore. I blocked every mention I could think of and yet I still think I’m just as informed as everyone else in my circle, at least to a certain extent.
You can’t avoid it. So block everything and you’ll still be informed.
I stick to few sources that generally cover major without the doom and gloom. Generally YouTube channels are pretty good imo.
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TLDR News (UK, EU and Global) is a great series of channels for that.
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Caspian report on YouTube for some geopolitics/strategic outlook.
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Real life lore for couple of deep dives on non-current issues.
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Money and Macro for macro economic news.
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Just have a think for climate science and energy transition news.
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“Good news” is just nice feelgood news.
Traditional media for closely following elections when they come out such as exit polls.
For the Gaza issue I did break the cycle and check on Al Jazeera which is the best for middle East news.
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I actually had this issue months ago, I kept seeing everything on Instagram regarding a particular major problem. Seeing the deaths of innocents and the governments cheering it on just made me angry, moody, anxious and an immense hate towards humanity in general.
I was also jobless in these months (glad got work now) and that made it worse.
Eventually I heavily restricted myself;
- Only 30 mins of scroll in Instagram, checking the news and such.
- No talks about politics for at least a month.
- Read more books to dive in.
- Play fun games (Mario Wonder, Captain Toad Tracker, Mario kart and Catherine Full Body).
Got a job now but I still keep most of the things I restricted myself. Despite everything, I’m in a much better mindset than before.
Read news
Get involved
Have a really good revolution
Stop ignoring your whole body telling you to resist
To do something about it
Getting news via RSS feeds helps. I also cut out what is obvious just bad and getting worse for instance Gaza and Westbank via EI news. I know its getting worse but I cannot take hearing about every death.
Also, I think realizing most doesn’t affect you individually is helpful.
Why is news via RSS better than news via Reddit? Or news via TikTok?
I’m asking why this technology solution is better for maintaining a healthy mental state.
And can you give more specific examples on how to achieve it?
Because you don’t keep doomscrolling. You subscribe to your most important sources and ignore all of the noise of short form posts. If something is truly important enough that I really must read it today, then at least one of them will have written about it. The filtering out of what you don’t care about has already been done. That means I have a reading list where everything is a 100% must read for me and I keep it manageable
A good reader will let you filter your feeds further if needed too
The algorithm is designed to enrage you
I find it better because I can choose exactly which feeds, websites, and creators I see all in one feed. Therefore there is little chance of seeing something I have deemed undesirable. I also like it because I can follow people I like on youtube without having to sign in! :) Prior to making my own lemmy instance I would follow specific coms and reddit subs too. Now I don’t do that because I just ban rude people or coms.
Also, I rarely go to new sites. Accessing them via RSS allows me to only read content without ads or trash articles not related to the feed I want.
Finally, it brings all content together. Humans are lazy. It’s hard to go to a ton of different sites to form an opinion. It’s much easier to put it all in one place! :)
I think Inoreader is a good standalone app if you don’t want to host anything
I wish there was a way to stay informed without the rage-bait delivery methods
Unfortunately we are in clown-world and the actual fucking news is rage-inducing, even with impeccable journalism.
I don’t feel rage when I watch the news, even when I see stories I don’t like.
I’d be happy with a few less legitimately rage-inducing events too.
More than few of these rage-inducing events are people saying they or someone else is going to do something that never ends up happening and tens of millions of people got angry literally over nothing. A quite significant portion of today’s “news” are pure speculation.
Have an AI summarize it for you?
I vaccilate between “Eh, world and my life were always a mess, we could do with a do-over” and “holy shit holy shit holy shit is that a nuke in the distance?”. Multiple times daily. Shit’s exhausting.
There is no line for me.
I’m incredibly fragile and seeing people
I care aboutbe hurt by all this hurts me incredibly much.I’m now avoiding the news and doing my best to instead be a positive influence, help where I am able, offer support, donate what I can, etc.
I refuse to let evil fucking idiots steal my joy.
You’re a good person. Please take care of yourself today I want you around later when it’s not crazy outside, okay?
Godspeed in your efforts! I am of the mindset that there is no benefit, whatsoever, to seeing an incredibly great majority of news. It’s just so depressing most of the time.
Been talking to folks more and making more friends, which has been great. Seems like many people are of a similar mindset.
I’m glad you keep your joy but if we lose your activity it’s a huge detriment to everyone.
I’m from Germany. I subscribe to a decent weekly newspaper (“die Zeit”) and follow German news sites. I try to stay away from news on social media, but that’s hardly possible.
On Lemmy, I’ve mainly blocked keywords and names relating to US politics because the ridiculous bullshit from the White House is unbearable. Despite this, my feed is still full of the stupid drivel from Trump & Co. This is not news, but at best political soap opera entertainment far removed from reality.
Because this stupid stuff potentially affects me too, of course, I have subscribed to a decent monthly newspaper with an international focus (“Le Monde diplomatique”). I can’t stand US politics in particular any other way.
at best political soap opera entertainment far removed from reality.
Unfortunately for those of us living through the bullshit, it’s all too real.
Not a good proportion of the things Trump claims - most of them are either misrepresented or outright lies. But yes, of course, his disastrous decisions and policies still affect citizens and thus become reality.
We here in Germany also have such a MAGA-style Nazi bullshit party. Fortunately, they didn’t do as well as many feared in the last election. But unfortunately they still got a frightening 20% of the vote. If these people somehow manage to seize power, we’ll be in exactly the same situation.
Really close to the stress. Checking out is giving up and it’s a super weak move. Oh no you feel bad? People are losing their livelihoods. Their citizenships, their jobs. Buck up yo. We got shit to do.
Alcohol
I log out when I start feeling helpless and high anxiety and then I go find things that I can control to feel less helpless/anxious.
