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Those of us who feel great anxiety regarding anything politics, how do you deal with the oversaturated political content on _every_ website?
The concept sounds a bit lazy or unintelligent, but for me personally, I struggle with so much anxiety and other mental health problems that I have to filter out political posts, on here, reddit, and elsewhere, or else the weight affects me so badly that I'm put in a bad mood/mindset very easily. If anyone else feels the same way, I ask you this: Does anyone else feel similarly, and if so, how do you defend against the tidal wave of awful things happening seemingly daily?
YMMV, but i find that usually the best way to do this is to just take a sabbatical every now and then from most websites and do pretty much anything else. it can--and for me--usually doubles as an opportunity to do things that i'm either way behind on (for example i have entirely too many books to read) or which i've wanted to do but don't usually find the time for, for one reason or another. fact of the matter is, you really do not miss that much if you just don't pay attention to things for awhile, and you'll notice pretty quickly. even in this sort of political and social climate where everything and everyone feels like it's on double speed and so much seems to happen, if you really need to know something you'll probably hear about it and if you don't, it's probably not that big of a deal.
A break does seem to be in order. I have a spooky novel and a music theory book I should be catching up on. It's hard to detach from the internet when it's 80% of my leisure time haha
If the Internet is 80% of your leisure time, and if, as you've mentioned below, you're dealing with GAD/depression, let me suggest that while the content you read can trigger symptoms, there are other lifestyle measures you can take to feel better.
I've found that if I encounter overwhelming content, it's a sign that I need to take a long walk outside, or talk with friends. Basically, anything that doesn't keep reinforcing a dark, fearful worldview and can remind me that it's not all loneliness and terror.
I would highly recommend shifting your media diet to more agnostic news sources. The Associated Press makes its money for putting out bare bones stories with little to no editorializing, which other news sources can then take and editorialize either towards the left or towards the right.
This makes the AP an excellent source of facts without opinions laid on top of them. I highly recommend reading the raw AP articles for this reason.
The unfortunate thing is that I don't have a media diet. It's just so prevalent that it pervades almost every aspect of what I do on the internet. But disconnecting for a bit seems like a good idea. I'll definitely keep that site in mind though
You say you don't have a media diet, and yet you simultaneously are overwhelmed by political opines.
If that is the case, then I would recommend that you take a serious step back until you come to realize that you obviously have an unhealthy media diet. Step back from comment sections, they are always toxic. Step back from replying to articles... step back from any sort of engagement.
From there... carefully craft a diet. Be careful here because it's possible to fall into an echo chamber. I shun any medium which tries to give me an opinion. I prefer facts and trust myself to come to an opinion. If you find yourself having an opinion, expose yourself to counter opinions. The only valid opinions are the ones you can defend.
Never become invested in an opinion. Opinions are a judgement based on fact. As you gain more facts it's very natural that your opinion should evolve.
Yeah, I understand how my comment made it sound like I'm just shifting the blame. But yeah, I see all the political posts on r/all and go into the comments and then wonder why I'm stressing. I totally get what you're saying
Reddit Enhancement Suite's filteReddit, uBlock filters and Tildes' topic tag filters are your friend.
Whenever I start to feel overwhelmed by politics/news and need a sanity break I either take a sabbatical from social media entirely (which is advisable occasionally anyways), or if I still want to dip my toes in social media to stay connected but don't want the depressing shit pervading my every waking thought, I just enable/tweak my filters to hide the majority of it. It's easy to blame social media for all our head-space problems, and there is some truth to that, but ultimately what we choose to consume on social media is really up to us and there are plenty of tools out there to help remove the unhealthy elements if you are willing to put the work in to do so.
I actually use both of those extensions! I should look into that. And I have been using TIldes' filter option but it seems like people are using new terms I can't possibly have thought of every day lol. Thank you for the recs!
NP... and yeah, even with filtering stuff will get through occasionally, especially since politics is ever changing and bad news often comes out of left field. But when I really need a break from the depressing/anxiety-inducing shit, simply blocking every news site but ones that are incredibly objective/dry/agnostic (e.g. AP, Reuters, CBC, BBC, etc) still helps a great deal. It won't be instant relief, but with time and a bit of effort you can build up a pretty comprehensive filter wall that you can enable/disable when you need a break. Good luck. :)
Oh man, I used “geopolitics” instead of “politics” the other day and was wondering if that would bug anyone with filters... sorry! :)
I used to feel a lot like you do--I have problems with depression and anxiety, and scrolling through the Horrors of the Day would leave me feeling as helpless as a duckling without its mother in the middle of a six-lane interstate-highway. To combat this feeling of impotency, I got involved with a local political organization so that I could feel as if I'm exerting some influence in regard to the political trajectory of the world around me. You should not have a passive relationship with politics--just letting the rest of society flow over you like so much water--you must contribute your voice and have a say in the matters which concern you and your community, for that is what being an empowered citizen is.
Or you could just stay off the Internet, cause it sucks.
I have far too much anxiety atm to do anything quite so bold as to go out and join a group. I don't think I could stomach it as I am now. However, staying off the internet seems like a stellar idea lol
If your anxiety is bad enough that opinions being shared on the internet are overwhelming, you need to be talking to a qualified therapist about proven management strategies that can be clinically assessed in your personal situation rather than just asking randoms on the internet. That is getting to a critical point where it is impacting what should be simple everyday tasks.
You should be able to read political opinions and be able to handle this. It is not normal and you should not accept that in yourself as an inability without doing whatever can be done to mitigate it.
I firmly believe politics isn't so important that I need to hear about it always. If I could never hear another thing about politics, I'd be all too happy. The very nature of it is instigative and conflictive, and breeds far more hate than anything else. Whatever politics used to be, it isn't anymore, and it's just people reaffirming their own beliefs in criticism proof echo chambers, and people being needlessly hateful. That won't change, and neither will the people. It would be very difficult at present for me to get help for this issue, which is why I posted this and not "How do I overcome suspected GAD/Depression". I'm just looking for ways to mitigate something I can't fix right now
You think wrong. Politics is what determines your ability to post that right now instead of being locked in a cell, or being told to break rocks else you get shot. It controls the funding for medical treatment, it says this person can come into the country but that person can't, it is what provides the structure to support all the things you need to live, from roads to international trade to police.
You have an obligation to perform your civic duty by voting, in exchange for the fact that you're allowed to live your life as freely as you are. That voting should be based on an understanding of who you're voting for and why.
Don't get me wrong, I have voted, and done research prior. However, the way this system (U.S.A) is built, seems to highly minimize the amount of impact every citizen has (The Electoral College needs to be abolished or revised heavily). It's hard to remain optimistic about a lot of things in the political spectrum when, from where I'm from, there are a bunch of old white rich men regurgitating money into themselves to keep the 1% where they are, suffering of the many be damned. I research the propositions for my state when the state voting comes around, and I've been trying to do what unbiased research I can about potential candidates.
It's all just so god damn discouraging, you know? I feel like I'm in some shitty young adult fiction dystopian novel. Nothing I do will truly matter. Optimism and hope is great, yeah, but I think we have to wait a good generation until we finally start seeing something close to the abolishment of the bipartisan system, and for politics to stop being sunday night football/shoot the other guy in the foot. A lot of people are just left in a worrisome, depressive limbo because of all this damn waiting. It's enough to drive me mad.
My knowledge of politics have nearly zero effect on what happens in politics. I try to have a general sense of what is happening, but my ignorance of the minutia is entirely harmless. So I mostly avoid those websites. It’s not hard.
I follow news via RSS, and there is one podcast I listen to from time to time. Ideally I'd rather not, but things happen that I need to know about (legislation regarding relevant stuff, etc.), so I do still follow. But I use scoring (search for "scoring", I'd link the line but Gitlab thinks the file's too big to display) to make sure I only skim attentively through relevant stuff.
Apart from that, I don't follow politics on Tildes or Reddit, and I don't participate in discussion around it. It is not productive, and altho I don't have any serious mental health issues, it somehow messes with me and pulls me in, feeding the biggest vice of me: procrastination.