I want to follow the news but I feel like my anxiety is getting worse everyday. What should I do?
(Peter Lawrence / Unsplash)
I might suggest you limit your news viewing. Perhaps identify for yourself what basic information you feel like you need to know each day and then limit your viewing to that. Then do something that feels more nourishing. Read, write or draw. Play a game. Meditate. Move your body. Make contact with someone. Get some fresh air. Be with your feelings.
Sometimes behaviors can become compulsions – as a way to manage feelings we don’t know how to be with. Tuning into your body and your feelings and then taking care of them in different — less anxiety producing ways — is perhaps the task here. So for example, maybe watching the news feeds the need to feel some semblance of control by knowing exactly what is going on. The task here may be to help yourself tolerate loss of control.
Find ways to be with the truth that the only thing you may have control over is your own internal experience. Turn the focus away from the TV and inward towards your own feelings. Build that muscle of tolerating not having to know — and always having control.
You may actually find some freedom in that!
Aimee Falchuk
Related Questions
