How to stop turning in a circle and start taking control of that boat you’re in
You have agency. You have oars. You’re allowed to steer.
This reflection is an attempt to offer a way to pause, re-calibrate, and reclaim agency. It’s not about ignoring reality. It’s about learning to steer.
Recognizing the pattern
Today I feel like my life has trained me for this moment. Every day we wake up and have no idea what kind of a mood someone will be in and how it will affect us. Luckily, I don’t live under the same roof now, but the pattern feels eerily similar.
As a child I had nowhere to go. No way to switch things off. No way of even understanding what was happening.
As adults we do. While we can’t stop the current state of the world from influencing us, we can decide how much of it we want to expose ourselves to. Remember that every experience is stored in your body, in your nervous system, in your mind.
Doomscrolling and the nervous system
What do you think happens when we’re doomscrolling all day long? There are a few questions to ask yourself that might be helpful.
Will the negative story become better when I keep watching it?
Will continue to watch it make me feel better?
Usually not. And if it makes you feel better then that’s cause for concern for different reasons.
Collective Trauma and Political Narcissism
It’s difficult for me to see people struggling who are not used to any mental health issues at all. We all have a limit. There comes a point where it just gets too much. We might be able to keep it at bay for a bit – especially when we are not yet directly affected, but ... it’s gonna get us one way or the other.
“It” being the crazy fascist narcissism that reigns in the White House. Nobody is safe from that, and nobody is immune. Some of us just have a lot of experience as to how to deal with narcissism.
Normally the answer is to get out of that situation, but we really can’t do that as it’s gone global.
Children Know
What’s the next best thing? Well, first we acknowledge that what’s currently happening in the US is traumatizing entire generations. Whether those affected realize it or not.
Even if kids are too young to understand what’s going on, they will see and feel how stressed everybody around them is. They will pick up on the negativity of news stories. They realize that something is up.
Don’t think because they are young, they don’t know. Their bodies know. Their nervous system imprints those experiences and stores them safely – whether that’s helpful or not. It’s part of our body’s process.
What You Can Do
After we acknowledge how traumatizing this situation is we can try and find a way we can make the situation easier on us. We might not be able to do anything to change the situation directly, but we can find something – anything to make it easier on us.
And that something can be outward action involving other people such as protests or community work. It can be helping people in need; connecting with people or simply (I know it’s not that easy) asking for help if we’re the one in need.
What it could also look like is deciding not to doomscroll. Pick one or two news sources and only check those. The news won’t get better if you listen to the same story 10 times from different sources. And trust me you don’t need to see more than one picture of that missing East Wing. One is more than enough.
Reclaiming Joy
A lot of people just say “practice mindfulness” – I am very mindful of the current situation and that’s not helping at all. That recommendation needs to be a bit more nuanced, or it achieves that opposite.
You could set yourself a couple of other challenges. Here’s some I’ve set for myself. Find one news story a day that makes you smile, laugh out loud and/or restores your faith in humanity. If you do that on social media, it automatically trains the algorithms, so they show you more positive stories. Then you move on to animal videos. Mine are currently pandas, cats and dogs. Then there are goats and penguins too. And otters of course. Mustn’t forget them. And soon your entire social media feed is a fun place to be.
All you have to do then is mute people who only post doom and gloom, because you have your one news source that you chose for that.
Emotional Hygiene
Once hooked our brains have a tough time letting negative news go. And to counterbalance that we need a lot of positive news. People say the ratio is about 10:1. I don’t think there is scientific proof of that exact ratio, but the negativity bias is real.
And remember that by focusing on some more positive news stories or watching animal video you’re not ignoring what’s going on. You still have your one news source. Listening to the news once will trigger all the feelings you’re going to have on a topic. You don’t need to relive them over and over and over again.
Validate your feelings, thoughts and reactions. Don’t push them away. Acknowledge how it makes you feel. Share it. That’s an act of kindness – it shows others they are not alone. The dwelling on it and repeating it all over again is where it starts being unhelpful.
Closing the Circle
I realize that this is getting more and more difficult. I’m in the same boat. I’ve learned to use my oars more effectively and not always go with the flow and not to turn around in a circle. That doesn’t get me anywhere.
You have agency. You have oars. You’re allowed to steer.
Good guidance 🌻