Strategies for Reading and Watching the News

[David Baxter PhD]

5 Strategies for Reading and Watching the News When You Are Depressed
by Therese Borchard
February 5, 2015

The Ebola crisis.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

ISIS.

It doesn?t take much these days to arrive at a panicked state. Not if you stay abreast of news headlines.

Nine years ago, when I had my first mental health breakdown, I realized that my psyche was way too fragile to absorb detailed updates about the turmoil in Gaza or the whereabouts of bin Laden. I didn?t want to be completely ignorant of what was going on around the world, but I needed to find a way to inform myself of the big picture stuff without losing my heart in minutiae.

I needed a strategy, because as a highly-sensitive person (as diagnosed by Elaine Aron?s book, The Highly Sensitive Person) and a person prone to panic and depression, processing all the negativity could certainly bring me down, not just for an hour or two, but for months or even years. I dare say the news has the potential to land me in the hospital again.

So I?m careful and strategic.

1. Love Thyself and Let Thee Be Ignorant
If I?m fighting loud death thoughts, which I have been doing off and on for six years, I don?t watch or read the news. I can?t. I am trying too hard as it is to soften and change the neural passageways in my brain that take me to despair. I can?t deepen those grooves with more heartbreak.

Yes, I feel like an ignorant American who knows more about Princess Kate?s firm postpartum tummy than I do about why we are in a silent kind of war that no one talks about. But I am trying to get better at the golden rule, which is to love your neighbor as yourself. Read those last two words again. If I am already burning with a fever of 102, the kind thing to do for myself is not put me in front of a warm fire.

2. Know Your Triggers
I?m getting better at recognizing which stories, specifically, are going to take me down fast, but this has taken some practice: anything involving euthanasia, abortion, rape, or suicide. For example, I avoided all conversations about Brittany Maynard, the beautiful 29-year-old with terminal brain cancer who moved to Oregon with her husband so that she could end her own life by taking a medication prescribed to her from her doctor. Her story triggers too many thoughts about how I should have the right to die, too, because I have a debilitating chronic illness that I will fight the rest of my life. I can?t go there, because it takes me to a place of bitterness and desolation, not hope.

3. Design a ?Safe? News Place and Time
The other day I sat inside an Amtrak train station watching a video on what to do if a terrorist is on the train. The radical was hiding in the caf? car with a suspicious backpack. I started looking around the room to see who had a mustache like his and a backpack. I could feel my heart begin to race and my palms sweat, so I got up and waited outside.

An airport terminal or Amtrak waiting room is NOT a good place to digest the news. Neither is any of the five days prior to my period or an hour before bed. I usually have to wait for a slow, quiet Sunday when I am not too stressed about work or the kids to carefully start paging through headlines. I will stack the newspapers or magazines on my desk and wait for such a moment. If the pile gets too high, and its mere presence stresses me out, I toss the batch into the recycled trash, and repeat step one.

4. Plan for News Bombs
Of course, you can?t always avoid headlines if you interact with human beings during your day. Although you can walk away from the water-cooler discussion about Russia, the seed has been planted, and by the time you make it back to your cubicle, you could have already made a list of canned goods that you need to stock up on in order to survive the impending nuclear war.

I have a few visualization techniques ready to use whenever my ?net? (brain) accidentally catches something. One of them is to envision these crises like bubbles floating through the air right past me. As long as I don?t reach out to touch one, it won?t pop. It will continue floating by. Another visualization is to imagine myself as a water wall. The surge of panic is the water that falls over me, but that does not touch or affect who I am. The third is to imagine I am in a room full of padding, like a gymnastic studio. I can bounce into the walls, but I am protected by all sorts of padding.

5. Create a Desensitization Process
The visualizations are helpful for emergency headlines, when I?m hit by some story unexpectedly and react in panic. However, it?s also helpful to have a desensitization process in place for those Sunday afternoons you?ve just spent two hours reading up on the mess in Syria and start hyperventilating.

I start with some deep breathing exercises. The practice of deep breathing stimulates our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), responsible for activities that occur when our body is at rest. It functions in opposite to the sympathetic nervous system, which stimulates activities associated with the flight-or-fight response. I like to the think of the PNS as the calm sister and the sympathetic nervous system as the non-sympathetic crazy sister on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Then I repeat some mantras: ?I am okay,? ?All is good,? ?May I be at peace.? I may say some prayers for the victims of certain tragedies, or offer them loving kindness: ?May they be safe. May they be happy. May they be at peace.? Finally, I will close my eyes and listen to ocean waves (downloaded to my phone), imagining me at the shore, walking among seashells of all different shapes and sizes. I will try to tune out everything but the sound of crashing waves. No Syria, Russia, or Gaza. Just water, wind, and gravity.

 

[Retired]

I start with some deep breathing exercises.

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[PrincessX]

I must admit that yesterday's US news were horrific and I couldn't fall asleep for some time. I will need to revisit this article for the next 2 yrs or so.

 

[GDPR]

OMG,the news,there's no escaping it. And it just seems to be worse every day.I try not to listen or read it,but it's hard to avoid it.

There's so many horrible,horrible stories all the time,I'm not sure if the world has always been this way and we just didn't know about it or if things just keep getting worse.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I don't think it's getting worse. We just hear about everything now.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[GDPR]

We just hear about everything now.

And we hear about it 24/7.I don't mind hearing what's going on in the world,but I can't handle hearing all the gruesome details.

And I think the worst thing to hear or see is 'terror alert'...every time I see or hear those words it causes instant panic.

 

[handybendy]

Hello,

It's interesting hearing about people's reactions to the way media presents us with an unending barrage of "bad" news. I can see why it's easy for the constant escalation of this stream of what the media thinks is important to us becoming overwhelming. I'm afraid I can't offer any ideas for making things easier here, but I can give you some idea of what it's like to not be so worried about the apparent terrible state of the world today.

When I was growing up in the southern UK, we used to visit London as a family, for special occasions and school trips etc. It was during the 1970s that things changed, and I remember having to make a swift exit from the Natural History Museum in London because of a "bomb scare". That was the term used back then when the IRA (remember NORAID?) telephoned a threat in to the UK authorities. At the start, there were no warnings and bombs went off unexpectedly. Later on the IRA started to use an agreed code to tell the authorities when there was a real threat. Quite a civilised way of carrying out terrorist attacks if one can use that term for such events.

At one point I lived in another country that also had its own terrorist organisation that would often attack foreign interests (I was just such an expatriate) resulting in a number of deaths. Again, we found that it was just part of the way of life and again learned that this world was a dangerous place, wherever you lived.

As I grew older and started to work in London, I never thought twice about the fact that I had to keep away from the windows of the office I worked in every time a threat was issued (the office was next to a large railway station and was affected by such threats at least three times a week). Evacuations of buildings and areas were commonplace and it just became part of life's background. We learned to accept that the world was a dangerous place and developed an instinct for what looked right and what seemed out of place. When it was out of place, you told the nearest police and got as far from the place as you could.

Having an automatic weapon pointed at you in a country where guns are basically illegal, is a sobering experience, even when the person holding the gun is in uniform at a "flying" road block (the temporary road blocks that were set up in central London during the IRA attacks of the 1990s). Yes, the IRA were still operating in London as recently as that.

When I also look at the disease and war that ravages our civilisations across the world, I realise that humanity is perpetually in turmoil as parts of the population demonstrate their differences from another part of the population using violence. Realisation that the advances in medicine in some parts of the world are just not made available to populations in other parts due to politics and finance still upsets me. Here in North America, we have the health care facilities, the civil protection and the educated tolerance to allow a relatively peaceful life. That's not the case everywhere else and we must remember that we're the lucky ones and allow ourselves to at least feel some sorrow for the those that are suffering the turmoil.

So I've grown up with it and witnessed it. So why don't I panic when I see what the world is doing to itself? I'm not immune to it and it still upsets me, it's not that I don't care, but I think I can't use all my energy caring for everyone else, I have to spend some of it on myself and my family and friends. I think I've learned to accept that the world isn't the bubble that I call my life, but a vast and unending chaotic mess of beauty and terror all mixed in together. I choose to revel in the things that I love and accept that the underlying danger is what makes the good stuff all the more beautiful. The flower in the wind storm, so to speak.

Don't panic, it's always been that way and we've been protected from it for a long time. Now the media is force feeding it to us for reasons I don't understand (or at least I can't make sense of), but it's not changed and isn't any worse or better than it's always been. Perhaps the fear is that it will invade our peaceful lives that we take for granted? Please believe me that there aren't going to be hordes of angry terrorists swarming through our streets, or droves of people succumbing to disease and dying in front of our eyes. I've lived there, with the terrorism, avian flu, "foot and mouth" outbreaks and friends dying in foreign wars that I didn't support. The world didn't end and we got on with our lives, it just became more media generated background noise and we learned to live with it. In the end, the media wants to shock and amaze. Let them try, but don't fall into their trap and believe it's all as bad as it's painted.

You can always turn off the TV and read a book about it by someone who's an expert rather than a media sensation. Learning as much as possible about both sides of the argument helps take away the panic and fear.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS A PERSONAL VIEW AND NOT INTENDED TO BE RIGHT OR WRONG. Everyone has their own experiences and opinions, we still need to allow them space to express them, but encourage them not to harm others while doing so.

Thanks,

H

 

[PrincessX]

Wake up! There are no two sides of an argument, when the argument is about terrorism. And recent events prove we aren't protected against everything, this is lame after Ottawa, VIA, Montreal and so on. And, no I am not consoled by the thought that we will just get used to it. I read the experts. All of them are deeply concerned.

---------- Post Merged at 09:21 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:56 PM ----------

I am sorry about this post, but I am worried by the news, not without a reason.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Agreed. Just because you can get used to terrorist acts occurring where you live doesn't alter the fact that cowardly acts of terrorism are occurring.

By the same token, no one needs to see these incidents rolled out on the news or YouTube ad nauseum. It's bad enough that these monstrous punks are beheading innocent and bound men and women. I don't need to watch them do it and giving these animals the free publicity is just wrong.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[PrincessX]

Thank you David Baxter for this post. They started just showing a sickening video on the news a few days ago. My kids we there. We panicked and hardly found the off button on the remote. Yes, there was a quick warning, but not even enough time to turn off the TV.

 

[handybendy]

Point taken, I don't write things with an intention of starting arguments or upsetting people (sorry if I have). I just remember thinking to myself when I was younger: why is Britain in Northern Ireland shooting people with rubber bullets? Surely that's not fair on the Irish Republicans living there? I'd be angry too if a foreign power had taken over my country (yes, I know it's not the same as the conflicts raging today).

Responding with terrorism isn't the right way, you are right. I think I've just become worn down from hearing about it all my life. I too find the recent events horrific. Maybe it's because I don't watch TV that I don't find I get panicked by all the news.

As for avoiding the media sensationalism, is not watching TV a viable option? I'm not sure. I don't read any national or local newspapers either and really only use some news web sites to keep myself up to date (Reuters, Associated Press etc). They're not quite as sensationalist though.

I think I'm trying to say that we shouldn't hide from the news, but somehow find other ways of getting the information that isn't sensationalist.

Incidentally, I've always found that planting my feet on the ground and steady breathing has helped me when I have panic attacks. A counsellor once said to me that "you can't panic when you're breathing out", somehow that works for me ...

H