July 2022 Newsletter | Staying Informed without Staying Overwhelmed
Posted June 24, 2022
How many of us find ourselves overwhelmed by the news? Many people value staying informed about current events both locally and across the world, but our relationship to media outlets and the news may impact our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Let’s be honest: watching the news can be scary. Sometimes this fear can lead us to several ways to cope, one of which may be initiating a deep dive into Google which ultimately leads us to feel more anxious, overwhelmed and sometimes helpless.
According to the American Psychological Association (APA)’s Stress in America 2020 report, as of 2020, most adults say healthcare (66%), mass shootings (62%) or climate change/global warming (55%) is a significant source of stress. Uncertainty is often anxiety’s playground but there’s only one thing we can be certain of: experiencing uncertainty is inevitable. While we cannot control the external world just by watching the news, we can make value-based choices despite the uncertainty we feel to help stay. There are a few techniques we can practice in order to find a middle ground between staying informed and being overwhelmed.
Set limits for yourself
There is a difference between reading articles to have a deeper understanding of a topic or event and binging on the news, which often perpetuates the anxiety one feels. This might look like allowing yourself to watch the evening news or read an article and when that’s over, turning it off, instead of spending the next few hours reading article after article If you notice that you often find yourself scrolling and reading the news before bed, you might want to consider disengaging from the news around bedtime and scheduling a “worry time” earlier in the day. To set a “worry time”, try to build it into your routine and set a consistent time and place and develop a reasonable time limit to take in your daily news content. Once that time is up, you might experience a desire to keep researching or reading more, but we encourage you to work on sitting with that urge and practice attention re-training.
Practice attention re-training
Attention re-training is used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help us engage with our unhelpful thoughts in a way that creates distance from them and shifts the focus of our attention to the present moment. Here are some ways that you can practice and use the five senses to shift your attention from your internal world to the physical one.
Practice active listening and awareness with music, podcasts and even conversations with others. It’s easy to listen passively or “in one ear and out the other” but listening with purpose as opposed to noise in the background can help bring our attention to the present moment. You can practice this by putting on a song or a podcast and focus on taking in the words, lyrics and sounds you hear. If your mind starts to wander, practice intentionally shifting your focus back to what you’re hearing.
Cook dinner with your partner or loved ones. Notice what you smell while cooking, what you taste while eating, and engage in conversation with those around you. Ask about their day and actively listen for their response.
How many of us drive or go for a walk and forget where we are? Go for a walk and notice how it feels to move your body and take in your surroundings. Acknowledge the people around you and identify what you see and touch.
Use reputable news sources
As we know, the way in which media portrays certain issues can contribute to our anxiety. Have you ever found yourself reading about a topic and then shifting to a social media outlet like Facebook and seeing ad after ad prompting you to read more? Accessing news is just a click away, but it’s important to choose your sources wisely. Damon Brown from Ted-Ed has a brief video discussing a way to help choose your sources and watch the news in a way that helps minimize inconsistency.
Accept the feelings we have about the state of the world and take value-based action
It’s important to allow yourself a sense of grace over feeling sad, anxious, angry, etc. when watching the news. Times are tough. Often when we experience emotions that we have deemed “negative” there’s a desire to shut them off, push them away, or avoid them out of the fear that they will become too overwhelming. Acknowledging our feelings allows them to have space to shift and move and provides an opportunity for us to respond and tend to them intentionally. This is important because trying to keep our feelings at bay or bottled up can lead to negative consequences like experiencing panic, outbursts, or avoidance. One misconception about acceptance is that in order to accept something you must be happy or okay with it. Radical Acceptance, a component of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), tells us that one of the most profound things we can do is accept the feelings we have about a situation even if those feelings are ones we have deemed negative. After accepting those feelings and recognizing there are things out of our control, we can start to focus on our values and take actions that are within our control. For example, if a certain topic is particularly distressing to you, like global warming, acknowledging the feelings you have about it is important. Once you do that, you can begin to focus on what you can do to help rather than being consumed by the negative feeling and sitting in a state of anxious inaction.
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As always, we at CCP are here to discuss these topics further. You can talk to a CCP therapist about your own experiences and develop a personalized and collaborative plan to help you stay informed without being overwhelmed.