There was a time that I used to be a veritable information processing fiend. I always wanted to know everything about the world around me. Anecdotes, blogs, news articles you name it, I’d want to read it. As depression began to settle in however I found myself getting sad any time I brought up a news site.
For me a lot of my anxiety and depression often takes the form of obsessing over details or things I can’t change. That sort of behavior loops and triggers other worse things in my case like insomnia. There are other side effects though of the constant bombardment with negative news that’s made headlines the last few years.
Huffington Post article on the matter. The aspect that we are naturally negative biased is a frightening one. It makes me concerned as mainstream media plays upon that response in how they present. One of the harsh realities of the US news in particular has been how quickly news about shootings and other gun violence propagates. For me as a gun owner it’s been particularly painful seeing the significant uptick in mass shootings.
It’s a difficult transition but I limit my news intake, I started to filter my sources more. Critically I try to balance whatever I read online that’s negative with things that are uplifting. Be it animals, positive themed messages or stories of people helping the world rather than hurting it. The human mind does have a bias, but you can take steps to insure that your propensity towards it is kept as low as possible.
