If possible at all, of course.
That’s my secret Cap.
I’ve always been insane! 🤪
How do you reconcile staying sane while keeping yourself up-to-date with the news?
Submitted 1 day ago by nikoo@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
Wolf@lemmy.today 17 hours ago
Bahnd@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Sanity is over-rated, now if yall dont mind. Im going to spend the rest of my day swimming in a lake that thinks its a gin+tonic.
OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
This is exactly the problem and how we go into this mess in the first place. When we read terrible things are happening, instead of getting mad and doing something we choose to ignore it and pretend it’s not happening. That allows the terrible people to keep doing whatever they want.
Sure, it’s easier to ignore it now for your mental health, but when things get even worse, you’ll be worse off too. It’s worth some stress and pain now to prevent even more in the future.
If you don’t like what you read in the news, organize and take action. Don’t bury your head in the sand. It won’t get better on its own.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 1 day ago
Nihilism. Everything is terrible and there’s nothing you can do about it. Take care of yourself, enjoy what you can while you still can and don’t have kids.
antihumanitarian@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I find old Stoic philosophy helpful. If I can’t do anything about it, I stay informed but try to be mindful of my limitations. If I can do anything about it, even if not much, if I’m worried about the thing I use that to do what I can.
drmoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Slow news. Literally nothing is “breaking” these days unless you’re juggling stocks and you dont really need to know news as soon as possible.
Check out www.slow-journalism.com
abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
That’s a great idea, but quarterly bews is a bit too slow for my taste. Right now I’m mostly getting by on the sunday summaries.
1D10@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m not sane I take my meds I only pay attention to non sensational news (Reuters,NPR,AP) I spend time with loved ones I have no interest in associating with conservatives.
Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I realised long ago that the human brain is not capable of handling everything that’s happening all around the world, all the time. I’m selective about what media I consume and I make extensive use of blocklists for things that aren’t my fight.
HubertManne@piefed.social 1 day ago
One day at a time and knowing that at some point I will no longer exist.
rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It’s tough. Stick to AP, Reuters if you can afford it. The entire news environment is pretty crazy right now though. I think once the US gets through Trump the rest of the world might calm down some and we can all relax a little bit.
HubertManne@piefed.social 1 day ago
Thing is I look at start of obama to end and how long it takes to get back to where we could be and at this point it takes much longer than how long things were degrading. Biden did a crazy amount of stuff in his term and it still did not get through what trump messed up in his first term. Then take the lighning fast pace of destruction with all the federal agencies. Getting those to where they were is not going to be easy. So muhc lost institutional knowledge. Unless the right loses so much support it becomes completely inconsequential and we have a decade or more of relatively sensible policies I just don't see a relaxation point.
rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Yes, 100%
But we have to get through it or the biggest power left in the world becomes a shithole country. We can’t get him out and just have to endure.
I’ll be here after Trump and I hope you are too.
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 1 day ago
Realise u have no control over 99.999% of it and remember their is no point worrying about shit u can’t control.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 1 day ago
Yes
AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 1 day ago
There's a lot of things that have helped me, so I guess I'll just dump some of that here.
First of all, make sure that you keeping up to date is deliberate, and consensual. News should not unconsensually cram itself into your eyeballs. Try out an RSS reader to keep what would be newsletter subscriptions or social media feed scrolling for the news in one single app that isn't part of your other online activities, or keep relevant news sites bookmarked rather than followed or subscribed to.
When you feel you want to be more informed about what's currently going on, you can then chose to be so without it happening at times you're not ready for it.
Eliminate redundant media. So much of the media we consume isn't truly new to us, whether that's following people you already agree with then just liking all their posts, or reading news articles about something you already know about, just because they drop a very tiny morsel of additional information in there, burying the lead, so you have to constantly come back again and again to be truly up to date.
If you're reading an article, watching a video, or scrolling social media, and you realize that what you're reading is something you already know, that should be a sign to stop and take a break for a while, so the news cycle can progress further, rather than you very closely following its every little step. This is something that can take some mental training before you eventually get it down, so just try to be more aware of what you're consuming when you consume it.
A lot of the news we see can also be something that, while technically interesting or engaging, simply doesn't matter to us or our ability to impact others around us. Like how a TV station might show you a sad story about someone who had something bad happen to them at some time in some random small town you've never heard of. Sure, it's news, but do you really need to know about that? Is that keeping you sane and energized for what comes next?
And speaking of being energized: do shit. If you care about politics and there's a local rally or protest march, go to it. If you have a local rights organization that does outreach work, volunteer. If you can phonebank for a political candidate you like, make a few phone calls in your spare time.
I particularly like this quote from Joan Baez, which is "Action is the antidote to despair." Even if you have a healthy diet of media consumption, are up to date without feeling overwhelmed, and are generally a well-informed individual, you can always still feel that nagging feeling that things aren't changing.
You've done everything you can to know what's going on, and yet what's going on isn't getting any better. There's no point being informed if it doesn't help you, your community, or the world at all, so when you're able to, do literally anything you can to make even the smallest difference using what you know. If someone says something you don't agree with politically, ask them why they believe that and use what you just learned from current events to back up your opinion. Who knows, they might change their mind.
I was ecstatic when Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary in NYC, but I was even happier because after I'd informed myself about the race, his policy positions, and what prior mayors had done so terribly wrong, I had phonebanked for him, and was in a small way, somewhat responsible for that success. And can you guess how much less despair I feel when I see things in the world imploding around all of us now?
Doing anything can make you understand how much of an impact you can have just as an individual, and that makes any bad news infinitely less damaging to your mental health. That said, don't feel bad when you can't, we're all people, and we have our limits and responsibilities.
And even without all that, the best advice I can give you is to just be aware of scale. We live in an age where problems well outside our control are something we're aware of all the time. If something is a problem, sure, be aware of it, but don't beat yourself up over how little you're capable of doing as an individual. It's like when recycling was proposed as a responsibility of individuals rather than corporations, and now people feel bad for throwing out the plastic waste that the corporations made.
Don't doomscroll, reduce pointless media, take action where you can, and don't beat yourself up when things don't change overnight. Just do what you can. You've got this.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Alcoholism.
ramenshaman@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ll cheers to that
moseschrute@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Happy cake day! Celebrate with a drink
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What has helped me is realizing that I could literally be a federal judge right now–hell, maybe even a Supreme Court justice, a Senator, whatever. And even if that were the case, there’s no guarantee I could single-handedly address any of the bullshit happening. It helps me feel better when I feel like I “need” to be trying to fix the entire world.
Nikls94@lemmy.world 1 day ago
50% is recycling old garbage, 30% is things that don’t affect you in any way, 15% is nice to know but it wouldn’t change your life if you didn’t know, 3% is actually newsworthy and affects you, rest is weather.
Burninator05@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Sometimes its ok to skip a day off news. If I’m feeling beat up just from my normal day I might not have the endurance to take in the news too. So I skip it on those days.
Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
My philosophy is: “if everyone behaved like I did, would we have any/this problem?” and if the answer is no, I’m fine.
The thing is that many people see injustice in the world and want to fix it now, which means forcing other people to not be assholes. But the problem with forcing other people to do/think something is that it doesn’t generally work, at least not without causing a massive amount of suffering in the other direction. Everyone generally thinks they’re the good guy of the story, no matter how much evil they do. They think the evil is necessary to stop other, more evil things.
Like for example, Israelis think that Muslims wanna wipe them out, and so it’s only good to wipe these evildoers out first… And exactly the same thoughts happen in the other direction. At this point, it doesn’t matter anymore who started it. Both sides wanna stop the other side from doing more evil, and this attempt to stop is creating more evil.
Doesn’t have to be so severe though. Could just be parents forcing their child to eat their veggies. Eating their veggies is good, and so you might think the parent is doing the right thing of forcing their child to eat it. But, most often, all that happens is that the child will forever hate eating veggies and as soon as it’s away from the parents, never eat veggies again. Until they turn adult and learn for themselves that eating veggies is good, and try to do it, but the trauma of being forced is hard to reverse.
And that example is our constant state of existence with basically everything.
Everyone wants to force everyone else to do/not do something, and even if one side is right, the action of forcefully trying to change someone else usually backfires in some way. Force doesn’t need to be physical force btw, shame (mental pain) is also a kind of force.
I’m not saying you should turn the other cheek to everything. That force should never be stopped with force. I’m just saying that most of the time, you can’t make other people change their ways. But you can always completely change your own ways. And if everyone did that, we’d actually have no problems anymore. But most of the time, people start trying to fix problems in others before they fixed their own, and that is almost a complete waste of energy.
Of course, that philosophy doesn’t stop injustices from happening right now. But it gives a peace of mind in some way. If you are truly convinced that if everyone was like you, the world would be a nice place, then you can be content, at least with yourself.
Honestly, this is only part of the answer, there is more to answering your question fully, but I don’t wanna write more right now. If you want to know more, let me know.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 17 hours ago
You can only decide what you yourself do. Yep that’s one of those truths that you only get once you experience it. The saying I personally use is that… drinking poison one.
But about kids though? Those you have to decide for. It’s hard to explain until you’ve had one. They have autonomy, yes, and it’s absolutely great to let them try and fail half an hour to put on shoes, but at several points throughout the day you absolutely need to decide what they do.
This makes many people slip into educational and fostering roles here and there. Many boomers got drunk with power when it was their turn, but overall they improved on the whole beating kids until they obey or whatever
jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah the more people who deal with their own stuff, the better everything gets. It’s the foundation for everything else.
Great point about trying to make other people do stuff by violence (right) and shame (left). Violence is far worse than shame; both are us trying to make other people do stuff instead of working on our own crap.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 17 hours ago
Well I for sure fuck ain’t
vividspecter@aussie.zone 1 day ago
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Don’t use social media when you wake up, or before bed
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Set time limits (like with leechblock-ng)
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You probably don’t need to read the news every day to be reasonably informed
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Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org 1 day ago
I gloat at the odd Epstein article but I don’t read everything. I don’t need to know all that. If you want to keep your sanity in times like these you gotta live in the moment. Enjoy every little thing like it’s the first time you’re experiencing it. Keep your worries to what you can control. And don’t try to control things you can’t. It’s actually easier to learn this while times are tough.
zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I made filters with uBlock Origin that block out from Lemmy (and some other sites) any post containing one of the words “Trump”, “Elon”, “Musk”, “RFK Jr”, “maga”, or “nazi”.
You still stay mostly up-to-date because that shit has a way of filtering through anyways, but you cut out 90% of the redundant fluff. I originally set the filters up in November when I was feeling very similar to how I imagine you felt when you made this post.
oce@jlai.lu 1 day ago
I used my indignation as fuel to do good around me. The more I read sad need the more I want to contribute to positive projects.
TheBat@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I read that as indigestion at first and thought you were making a fart joke.
MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
VinesNFluff@pawb.social 1 day ago
There’s a lot of it you can just tune out
Not because it doesn’t matter, but because it’s not actually new.
“oh Israel is still doing its genocide. Yeah, they would, no one is bothering to stop them. Don’t give me details. Let me know if something CHANGES”
The “news” cycle has a way of always finding further details on what is actually very old information, and those details serve you, the reader, no purpose other than creating emotional distress.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If you’re staying sane at times like these you don’t care about much.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I don’t consume a lot of content from mainstream news sites, and that helps.
Most of my news exposure is through Lemmy or Mastodon, through which I can automate the curation of my feed and I don’t see things that are going to rile me up as much; and therefore, I only see things that might rile me up when it’s my intention to do so.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 day ago
I just don’t really read the news. Might listen to a bulletin here or there on the radio.
janonymous@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I listen to one weekly news podcast (Lage der Nation), that focuses on the most important topics for where I live, which includes big international events.
Getting an update on the relevant happenings once a week, feels way healthier than reading what’s going horribly wrong somewhere multiple times a day.
I had to unfollow and unsubscribe a bit on mastodon and Lemmy to reduce the amount of news I see there, but now it’s tolerable.
However, I still have to take breaks, when I feel my mental health isn’t up for it.
Pat@feddit.nu 1 day ago
For me, it’s getting my news via memes/Lemmy. It’s like filtering water through sand. Much less dirt and grime.
the_q@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
What good does being in a constant state of fear, anger, shock etc do for the events causing the fear, anger, shock etc? Most of us exist in a torturous state where we have no control over the goings on of the events around us. We scroll and consume and dig ourselves deeper and deeper into despair all the while children are being killed, people are being raped, villains are running the world etc regardless of whether we as individuals keep ourselves informed. As good as we want to be or as active in a solution as we want to be, none of us are making a difference. Maybe suffering in our inaction is some kind of atonement.
Nemo@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
I haven’t really been doing either, honestly.
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
A ridiculous amount of copeing mechanisms and my supportive close family and friends where we keep eachother sane. Growing up in all this bullshit, you get used tovit somewhat.