- Joined
- Aug 28, 2023
- Messages
- 421
- Reaction score
- 995
I realized a while ago that I have a very unhealthy obsession with the news. I literally check the news on an hourly basis and spend way too much time thinking about it. I have an app on my phone that pings with breaking news stories, I still get hard copies of news papers delivered to my home, we have a TV at work that stays on CNN all day, whenever I get downtime I scroll my phone for little droplets of news, when I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is check my phone for any news developments that might have broken while I was sleeping, on my days off I spend hours watching political news shows on youtube and reading tweets from pundits on twitter.
I knew this behavior was unhealthy but I didn't do anything about it until recently. I'm now on my 10th day of successfully avoiding the news. It's been hard as hell and I literally feel withdrawal symptoms and restlessness that was bordering on unbearable but has started to get a little better.
One thing i noticed was a reduction In my anxiety and negative thoughts. For example, a few times a day I'll have the thought that the world is heading towards WW3 because of Russia and Israel conflicts, or that America is heading towards civil war because of the border crises and the chaos surrounding Trump. It might seem stupid and trivial to you but these thoughts would literally give me severe anxiety and cause minor panic attacks occasionally. But since I've avoided the news these last few days my anxiety has basically disappeared.
Another epiphany I had is how much of the news is actually bullshit. When you're getting flooded with news it's hard to stop and think critically about everything. But now that I've created some separation i can clearly see that much of what I was consuming was fear mongering bullshit that did little to make me smarter and more informed
Of course I can't avoid the news forever but right now I'm planning on how to reintroduce it into my life In a healthy way. I don't know what that'll look like but it certainly won't be an hourly compulsion like before.
I knew this behavior was unhealthy but I didn't do anything about it until recently. I'm now on my 10th day of successfully avoiding the news. It's been hard as hell and I literally feel withdrawal symptoms and restlessness that was bordering on unbearable but has started to get a little better.
One thing i noticed was a reduction In my anxiety and negative thoughts. For example, a few times a day I'll have the thought that the world is heading towards WW3 because of Russia and Israel conflicts, or that America is heading towards civil war because of the border crises and the chaos surrounding Trump. It might seem stupid and trivial to you but these thoughts would literally give me severe anxiety and cause minor panic attacks occasionally. But since I've avoided the news these last few days my anxiety has basically disappeared.
Another epiphany I had is how much of the news is actually bullshit. When you're getting flooded with news it's hard to stop and think critically about everything. But now that I've created some separation i can clearly see that much of what I was consuming was fear mongering bullshit that did little to make me smarter and more informed
Of course I can't avoid the news forever but right now I'm planning on how to reintroduce it into my life In a healthy way. I don't know what that'll look like but it certainly won't be an hourly compulsion like before.
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