Anxiety About The News (expanded)

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Hi, I've touched upon this in the past, but I'll expand on this topic a bit more. I'm sure I'm not alone on this front. Please read:

First, this is a serious Q, so please post serious answers on this. Nothing demeaning or biased, thank you. Surely, I'm not the only one who has anxiety about this, so hear me out, and please keep the discussion civil: Why do I always have to worry about things I hear in the news that are largely beyond my control? Is it a natural thing, because of my anxiety (which I think I may have)? It always seems like all you hear in the news is negative events. There's plenty of good, as I stated, but how the media is like in North America isn't helping things.

There wasn't always a 24-hour news cycle, and the current presidential administration is giving me worries about its unpredictabilities (especially in recent weeks with what is going on). Also, there are now so many news sources these days, it is hard to tell what is really news and what is fake news, and what is merely opinion. There are just so many outlets that it's a case of information overload (especially in regards to climate change, the world, et al; I've noticed so many projections about what will happen to the Earth and whatnot, it's hard to determine who's right and who's wrong; please note that I'm NOT skeptic on climate change, but the varying array of projections is just a bit dizzying for me).

Especially with that is going on today, that doesn't help my anxiety one bit. I hope you can have some nice things to say. Thanks.

I also find the news anxiety producing. There were months when I just had to turn off the radio (I don't watch TV or read newspapers.) Those of us who are old enough to remember the Cuban Missle Crisis and filing out into the hall at school to sit on the floor with our heads down - as if that would protect us from a nuclear strike - or the Vietnam War, have a more realistic understanding of current events.

I believe there are good reasons to be afraid. Deep breathing and meditation keep me from crippling anxiety which could destroy my life before the bombs hit. Cherish each day we live, in relative health and safety.

Yes like Blazingstar I have a lifetime of anxiety-producing news. The Cuban Missile Crisis - I was about 10yo and I fully expected the Russians at our door. The 2 Minute Warning DEW Line (where my father worked) - I don't remember any ideas of saving ourselves except 'hold still and shut up.' Viet Nam - I guess I was ~20yo - I couldn't take it any more and shut everything off. What I finally learned was that war is inevitable and eternal. As common as rain. Then I turned off 'caring' - oh, another war, yeah, I know.

Winston Churchill said that there is nothing easier than leading a nation into war. I've seen each one protested by the people, who somehow get persuaded to hate the enemy, and consent to war. And they're astonished if somebody gets hurt. Or if the politicians are lying about why.

Now it's just repeat, repeat, repeat. It's not that I don't care about the suffering. It's just that I can't do anything about it, so I might as well try to save my own sanity.

The news doesn’t bother me quite as much as it used to, but I still need to avoid it. It used to be so bad I’d get panic attacks. Sometimes when I hear a particularly gut wrenching thing on the news, it’ll haunt me, and I’ll have trouble sleeping for a couple of weeks or more because of it. I feel bad for the people in the tragedy to the point that you’d think I was related to them.

It’s hard to explain to people how extreme this can be for me and how much I’ve been bothered by it over the course of my life. I guess I’m just really sensitive.

At least it doesn’t seem as bad as it used to be, but I still try to avoid listening to the news too much. Instead I’ll just try to hear the main headlines and avoid hyperfocusing on stories that will upset me.

You know what I just remembered about the 2-Minute Warning (Russians are coming)?

The teacher told us that the Russians were only coming to get the Churches, so we children were safe in our Catholic school. But they did really suggest 'hold still and shut up.'

There have always been things to worry about. I think the media plays a huge role in it scaremongering when it does not like the current administration. I'm not saying the fears aren't valid, I'm suggesting that it tends to project peace when there isn't any to be had, ever.

Iran has always been a wild card. It's just had it's sights on Israel and the US, by proxy (Israel has always been a friend to the US). Now, it's primarily the US because we stopped the nuclear deal that would have ultimately harmed Israel.

China has been edging it's way over into the Caribbean for the past 20 years.

The US is a war machine, no matter who is in office. If you think that one politician is responsible for more war than another, I'd say it's because you want to see it that way.

As far as the climate goes, you have but to look at the bottom of the ocean. They are still discovering civilizations that were swallowed up whole by water. I'm not saying it's a bad idea to be green, I think it's heartbreaking to see the poor sea animals harmed by our carelessness. What I am saying it that we will not stop climate change. Deserts were once oceans... the earth is in a constant state of flux and flow. It just so happens that it's subtle. No one generation gets to witness it all at once, unless it's catastrophic, like Pompeii.

When I had my DNA run, I found out that the migration route my maternal haplogroup took was through the Doggerlands. A lot of that area is largely underwater.

Homosapiens survive, they migrate away from water and onto dry land. They go up and down, away from and towards water. Will they all survive? Nope... Will enough survive to sustain the species? That's up to forces beyond my control. We are just smart animals, nothing says we don't have our own extinction date.

The longer I live, the more I realize I have no control. Or at least very little...

News anxiety is something that I struggle with a lot. My biggest fear is getting desensitized to it all. Already, I can barely be bothered to get upset whenever I hear about yet another shooting. I shouldn't be this ambivalent to all of the horrors of the world, but at the same time, if I ever truly stop to take all of it in, I might go insane. There's so much that's going on in the world that's completely out of my hands, I can't help but feel like I'm helpless to do anything as the world slowly burns.