Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?
I see the news and see things are getting worse. I have developed anxiety. Also I have WFH mandatory. I don't seem to be handling it very well. Do u have any tips and methods that help you.
120 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadOther than that, if you're stuck at home don't use every minute of your WFH breaks to check the news, exponential growth doesn't imply that your situation changes every minute. Make sure to take that breaks in the first place. Maybe reach out to other people in the same situation and have a relaxed chat, just like you would in a non-pandemic cafe setting. Try to find normalcy, hyperfocus on bad news is seldom productive for one's mental stability.
This has two main benefits IMO:
1. you short circuit the mainstream media's agenda: provoke fear to generate clicks and keep your eyeballs stuck on the screen which means more revenue for them.
2. When you put yourself in situations of severe stress, you release that stress hormone (whose name I'm unable to recall) which can and will have a negative effect on your body putting you at even more risk of becoming ill. (this has happened to me earlier last year)
Last piece of advice: in your downtime, try to call your friends, family members if you're on your own, play video games with them online, have fun, watch comedy movies / shows etc ... Don't let this get to your head, that's how you beat the virus.
I say all this because in my area, the vibe and energy is so off and negative it feels like everytime I go out I'm about to meet to group of zombies ready to eat me alive (a la walking dead).
Just wash your hands, and the rest will fall into place. At this point there's not much one can do, people die everyday from countless numbers of illnesses and diseases, the world will move on eventually.
I don't know if it's a western thing or what, but it feels like people in this part of the world are craving for a catastrophic scenario like that to unfold so they can feel part of something greater than themselves, it's quite unsettling.
Oh, and also, use this time to re-evaluate your goals and aspirations in this life, because you've only got one. Apologize to the people you hurt and forgive those who've hurt you, make peace with yourself and smile to people when you see them, lift the atmosphere up a bit, because the media sure isn't going to do that.
Finally, as one meme I've found on the www yesterday so brilliantly put it: WW3 never happened and the Australia fires eventually stopped.
Sorry I went on a bit of rant, but I had to get this off my chest.
Cheers mate
Protect yourself, your family, and simply do good for others as much as you can.
Cortisol? :D
I agree with all your points. I uh after checking twitter (I never checked twitter before as much especially local news), I am panicking more about the fact that we have so many people who actually believes in some seriously messed up stuff.
Even if twitter is not representative of total population, seeing only that on my screen made me anxious and I realised why we are becoming a surveillance state worse than China for quite some time.
This reminds me of a recent piece in the NYT about despair[1]. I thought that a discussion of meaning was conspicuously absent. I think that religion and civic life has so utterly failed to provide any substantive meaning of life for most people in a manifestly secular world, that is isn't the least bit surprising to me that a growing number of people are experiencing existential despair.
A genuine catastrophic scenario can easily be seen as a source of richness, excitement, and meaning that many deeply crave, even if they don't realize it consciously. We humans are starved for such meaning.
[1] http://archive.ph/Qhjyn
You simply said "[family is] all we have". I think it's fair to interpret that as applicable to any point in one's life, or broadly all of one's life (barring emergencies), not just on one's deathbed.
Life is pretty long. It's great to have family, and I love mine. But I can't admire them all day.
As Camus wrote:
> There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
To me, art, mathematics, fiction, music, etc. are not what comes to mind when I answer that question.
So I don't think Camus would necessarily accept family as universally what makes life worth living, if that is what you meant.
To me, the rejection of art, mathematics, fiction, music makes life that much less worth living. Family is one of my essential values, but so are many other things. It is not a competition in any sense.
Like, I agree with you in principle - but as a human being, I think your opinion in extremely priviledged and something you can only say sitting behind a computer screen shielded from real life.
Tough luck that you can't get fly home but that doesn't affect my main point. International air travel is unsustainable and is KILLING OUR PLANET!
We as a species have two choices; either we let our global economy collapse or we let our global ecosystem collapse. I know what my choice is.
So by your own logic of greater good trumps all the economy trumps helping people.
There are many ways to improve the economy so that it better serves the needs of the majority rather than just a small wealthy elite. That is a fact and does not imply neither pixie dust nor dictatorship.
The one good thing that comes out will be improvements in home office and home education culture. Better tools, more online materials, wider acceptance.
3 months ago, in many rich countries, a lot of young talented people were doing "bullshit" jobs that had 0.000001% impact on the results of their company. I don't even mention the fact that many were working on completely useless stuff. This will be a quick adjustement for every company - keep only people you really need. Sure - short term economic choc and governements absolutely need to step in and help people adjust. But long term - this is a great news. It's a brand new world right there - you have a good, idea (not a bullshit app nobody cares about) - go out, there will be plenty of opportunities once the dust settles and governements will help and fund this.
I actually think, this is the perfect time for European Union (and most countries for that matter) to launch huge scale projects - high speed rail in whole Europe, this kind of things. We will have quite a lot of competent workers available, interest rates are 0% for any foreseable future and the benefits for the future would be huge.
Concerning climate - this is the best, by a huge margin, news we've ever heard. I'm eager to see what big cities will look like with 0 traffic.
We already start to see the best in people - young offering help for elders (that they barely noticed until 2 weeks ago). No doubt we will see some of the worst too, but I believe it will be hugely outweighted by the good.
So yeah, this situation is very hard, but as most hard things in live, it definitely can end up as a huge net postive. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
I mean, may as well have a small nuclear war and kill 30% of humanity as well if the goal is slowing climate change at all costs.
edit: Btw, your proposal is exactly the sort of thinking that got us in this climate mess in the first place. You're putting your desire (climate change in this case) higher than the overall well being of people. Republicans put their desire (money and business) higher than the overall well being of people (including future people impacted by climate change). Lack of empathy is not something to admire and generally results in everyone being worse off.
For me, it's making sure I have followed the recommendations of health organisations in my country, making sure I get my work done and do what I do well every day, making sure I take care of my health, reaching out to my colleagues / friends if I need help or they need help.
But most of all, it's focus. I am training better focus via Headspace app and it's really helping.
- Learned to bake my first loaf of bread from scratch. Wife and I celebrate by eating some of the bread together.
- Germinating my seeds in seed trays for the first time. Food stuffs like corn and bell pepper plants, in addition to flowers. Taking pictures every day as the corn and red cabbage sprouts.
- Playing with our dog extra, since he is depressed I'm home and ignore him for most of the morning and afternoon to WFH.
Which might be true, but going crazy won't fix it.
I have decided that now is a good time to go through all those pre-pandemic tabs. This limits my exposure to covid news and allows me to stay sane.
A lot of my friends also have free time. So a lot of doing stuff together remotely. Some of doing stuff together physically in small groups. And mostly, just a lot more contact with people on WhatsApp.
I read some advice that said, only check the news on e.g. 2 set moments in the day. I am trying to follow that. As for anxiety about how this is going to play out, I have accepted that things will be touch for a while. But I have faith that, here in the Netherlands at least, society will survive. And I have enough buffers (financial and supply wise) that I believe I am setup well enough that I can last longer than most. Hence, I think drastic measures will be taken to protect most people before I really start feeling the pinch.
My advice to you: stay in contact with people. Be open about your anxiety to them. Don't be an alarmist to your friends if you can help it.
As for work, I just sent them an e-mail saying "I ain't doing very well" with an implicit 'deal with it' in there.
This is really healthy advice. My approach has been to establish some routine for checking news. At first it was whenever possible, to figure out what to do in a country that was being misguided by its own government (US). Then, when our family made its decisions about how to respond (isolate), we read news off and on throughout the day, and spent much of our time contacting people we have decent relationships with, trying to help them understand to take things seriously. Now that we're mostly in our own house and just waiting it out, we're starting to just check things a couple times a day. I've found it's healthy for me to not check news just before bed. Check in the evening, then have time to digest what's happening and let go of it enough to get a good night's sleep and try to stay healthy.
Reminder for everyone in an area where peak caseload is still in front of you, we want to stay healthy and uninjured not just to avoid coronavirus, but also because an overwhelmed health care system won't respond well to any other injuries or illnesses either. So now, 9yo son, you can't build a tower to the ceiling and climb up on it because there's a small chance you'll fall and break your arm and we don't want you trying to mend a broken arm in an entirely stressed health care situation. I am normally a much bigger fan of natural consequences than I am right now.
Stay safe everyone, and give yourself space to let go when you can.
To solve this, I smoked a lot of weed. I’m out of weed now. Guess I should try to get some work done.
Here's my word of unsocilited advice. EVERY PERSON'S BODY IS DIFFERENT. When dealing with mental health medication, it's trial and error. What seems to work for one person doesn't work for another. I am under the care of a physician, and the cannabis I consume is prescribed by that doctor, grown in a fully licensed facility, lab tested, and used as part of an overall treatment regimen that got me off of addicted benzos and productive at levels I never saw before.
Keep your advice to yourself.
1. I don’t trust news by default, when I saw something that might affects me, just then I started digging the facts across multiple sources.
2. I don’t share news, even if that could help others, unless I am 100% sure its a factual news.
3. Focus on what I can control, e.g government trying to hide something? Its not like I have the power to uncover the facts and I am not sure either if they’re trying to hide something.
4. Think positively, judge what is in front of you, stay safe by default. Government saying no one is infected with corona yet? Think positively and believe them, and stay safe by self social distancing. Unless you have the knowledge and resources to do research, its gonna waste a lot of your time while you can use it to prepare for your safety and those around you.
5. As for WFH, changes are always hard. Make sure to keep communicating and clarifying things that aren’t clear. Keep notes of anything important. Get enough sunlight, exercise, stay clean, drink enough water.
6. Whatever happens, happens. Remove all negative thoughts, for every hardship, there’s ease and comfort at the end ~ like how its always been (think about a hard problem from the past, and how it can be solved and there we are, still here and strong and learned something).
Best wishes! TLDR; Ignore news by default, stay positive!
Regarding news, I try not to watch too much news on the TV. I also think I'm relatively informed regarding this new virus, and as I'm not in (too much) risk, I try now to worry too much..
In last few days, all of the sudden, my girlfriend decided to get in shape, so I'm helping her out.
Also using screen time to block Safari on my phone and removed social media apps.
Also using /etc/hosts to block news websites.
Only news I get now is through the radio when I'm chilling out listening to Chris Country. That's more manageable than a wall of bad news and horror stories.
- trying to be helpful to others - this single mental attitude can improve overall mood, make one feel more connected, and has a positive effect on the world
- have hobbies and activities that are engaging and that you look forward to. For me this is boardgaming, which has been a bit of a challenge given the social distancing, but fortunately there are online options that are helpful
- reminding myself that this is temporary. Although I haven't quite been through anything exactly the same, I have been through difficult experiences in the past and have grown due to them.
2. We're all gonna die. But for most, not today, and not from this.
During the current crisis HN felt like a text-only Facebook.