Published on 12, July, 2020
I am really struggling to deal with all the anxiety inducing stuff in the news. Every time I walk past a newsstand I have to turn my head the other way. If I ever see a headline I just meltdown. Yesterday I borrowed my wife's phone and a news update about Covid popped up while I was in the queue in Starbucks. I had a complete meltdown back in the car and nearly smashed my head on the dashboard. I started being scared of news during the endless Brexit debates, where everyone just seemed to hate each other, but Covid has made this explode like a mushroom cloud. I cannot cope with seeing Covid news but I also cant cope with the uncertainty of not knowing it.
What I would really like to know is does anyone on here have any coping techniques for dealing with news and media and stuff like this? Please share anything that works for you as it might be useful for me
( Just to be clear, pleas dont have any debates about Covid, Brexit or anything else, thats not what Im interested in, just needed some coping techniques)Thanks
I am the same! Now I don't watch any news or have any news related apps on my phone. Best thing I ever did. If anything is really important then I hear about it from other people. It will only be difficult for about a week. But if you do it out of habit then you need to replace it with something else. I didn't want to read long things so I replaced my news app with quote of the day and joke of the day apps instead. That way I filled the void. I suggest doing that or you may get tempted again.
A few people have said that it's awful and that I am ignorant, but I just told them that I have enough problems coping with my small world than adding all of this negative stuff. I say do what you are doing, get rid of it all. The news is 99% negative and if you struggle to cope then bin it and focus on positive things :-) I have been doing it for 2 years now. If I want to know about covid stuff which is essential I just look at the Gov website which doesn't scare me with contradicting/misleading/accurate facts and figures. Oh and I don't do much social media but anyone who posts stuff about covid etc get silenced and now nothing comes up in my News Feeds because I don't click on anything news related for it to come up in my algorithms. So I barely see anything now and life is much easier to deal with. People are use to me not watching or reading the news now and don't even comment on it.
I hope that you find a way that works for you.
That all sounds really good. How do you cope with like headlines in papers when your in the supermarket? Thats a big one for me.
I have replaced twitter with instagram because on there I can choose to only follow the pictures of things that help me and calm me down