I Have Become UN-comfortably numb

Increasing, I feel numb about the news.

Senator Lindsay Graham introduced a bill to ban abortion nationwide, so women in the red states won’t have the option to travel to a blue state instead.  When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I was outraged: roiling innards and breathing fire.  This? After everything that’s been revealed about tRump’s evil doings, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, mass shootings and the ongoing covid spread, I just shrugged when I read about Graham.  What else would anyone expect from Rethuglicans anyway?  Just one more thing.

I have news exhaustion. 

I was boiling during the four miserable years tRump was POTUS.  When President Joe Biden won the election and took office in January 2021, I hoped for relief of the agita I’d been experiencing since tRump took office.  I felt hope in spite of the fact that tRump and his cronies were spreading The Big Lie.  Blissfully unaware of the plotting going on, TB and I were celebrating his birthday.  After lunch we sat down to watch a program, which was quickly interrupted by coverage of the coup attempt.  I felt shock and anger.  TB and I agreed we never would have imagined such a traumatic thing.  Still, President Biden would bring hope of reconciliation and progress.

It didn’t happen that way.  Suddenly, crisis after crisis began piling on.  Putin invaded Ukraine and suddenly the oil industry prices rose and rose.  The excuse was the war.  The reality, I believe, is that Big Oil could bring in enormous prices during the crisis by jacking up the prices.  Food prices skyrocketed.  President Biden was making great strides in trying to get Democrats and Rethuglicans together to pass critical bills.

Voters only seemed to care that they were cash strapped and insecure about how they would afford gas, medicine and food.

To my surprise, major media began negative bashing of President Biden.  He’d gotten some bipartisan support to be able to pass an infrastructure bill desperately needed.  The mass media focused on any negative little thing.  President Biden’s approval rating tanked.

It was depressing and discouraging.

What else?

We withdrew rather abruptly from Afghanistan.  Thousands of Afghanis had to be evacuated to save their lives.  They found refuge in the US and other countries.  Age old racism reared its ugly head: while white Ukrainian refugees were approved of, many were very vocal about their anti-Afghani feelings. 

Covid continued to be an issue.  Most Americans were just plain sick of it.  These days, I rarely see anyone else wearing a mask.  I still do because I’m immunocompromised.  I just had a third booster along with a flu shot.  The fact that covid still lingers and I could get it from anyone anywhere is distressing.  I put it into a shelf in my brain’s dresser drawer but every now and then, that draw just opens itself on its own.

And what’s going on with Mother Earth?  We’ve been abusing her and now she’s majorly pissed off.  There have been stories of flash floods in Louisiana, Missouri and Kentucky.  The western states all seem to be on fire.  Around the world, there have also been major disasters because of climate change.  Yes, Congress finally managed to get a major piece of legislation passed to start addressing climate change and trying to reverse the near irreversible.  The credit should go to President Biden, who’s been all about trying to work with Repubs on the most recent bills.  He has been successful at that.  Mass media has pretty much ignored his achievements.

That is so frustrating.  Does mass media want a dictatorship or theocracy?  They sure seem to want it, even though it means muzzling.  In Florida, Gov. Death Santis wants copies of everything journalists take down in notes from whatever it is he’s doing.  All the notes and recordings have to be “reviewed”.  Chilling.

Queen Elizabeth died.  I did feel something at the news.  I’d liked and respected her from afar so I felt sad she was no longer in the world, but I told myself how much she’d accomplished in her life.  Besides, now she was reunited with her beloved husband, Prince Phillip.

Every day, there is another awful update having to do with TFG and his evil doings.  The FBI search of his house, more investigations into his fund-raising shenanigans, more details of a very major coup plot amongst 45, legislators in Congress, violent white supremacy groups, and the wife of a Supreme Court justice.  The House Special Committee on 1/6/21 is about to reconvene.  Some of the hearings revealed some pretty horrifying information. 

And the questions floating around all the time is this:  will TFG ever face justice for any of this?  If yes, WHEN?  If no, what are the consequences of these treasonous people getting off scott-free?

Urban Dictionary defines news fatigue this way:

“Becoming tired of the constant negativity or political propaganda in the news. …”  Oh yeah to the hell! “People with news fatigue might decide to stop all news consumption for the purpose of being more at peace and improving their mental health and mood and may then find themselves happier and with more energy to do the things they enjoy.” 

I used to read and keep up with more news sources than I do now.  I used to read “Daily Sound and Fury” religiously.  It became too overwhelming, especially the shouting.  I mean, portions of an article would be in all caps with ginormous fonts.  It gave me a headache.  I began to just skim the titles of the articles and now find I don’t click on any for more information.  I’m at the point I don’t want to open the newsletter email at all.  The same is true with CNN and NBC bulletins.

I’d been following Huff-Post and Crooked Media but am beginning to feel very fatigued looking at those stories too. 

This isn’t like me.  Was I burning out?

I happened on this article from the New York Times.  Yep, I have a couple of the symptoms of news fatigue/worry burn-out: I’m avoiding most of the news and when I do read one of the newsletters I still look at, I feel numb at the headlines.  I think to myself: welp, here we go again.  Nothing’s going to change.  My thoughts are leading me down the road to another symptom: feeling powerless.

Another: some stories provoke an angrier reaction than I normally would feel.  That anger is rooted in fear.  I am powerless; no one is going to do anything about the issue.  It’s all supposed to become the “new normal” and that really pisses me off.  Retreating into numbness helps still the boiling internal waters but it’s also dysfunctional.  I learned from 12 step meetings that numbing myself or dissociating would keep me in a state of powerlessness.  It served me well enough growing up in a dysfunctional household but was totally unhelpful when I became an adult.

So what to do?

At this point, the best thing I could do for myself is unplug for a while.  It would be so hard to do that.  I stay in touch with friends and family online, usually on Facebook.  If I could avoid bringing the news there and blocking news sources from reaching me there, I could have a much more positive interaction there.  It would mean stopping Twitter too.  Can I do that?  I don’t know.

Another thing I need to do is stop checking the news before I go to bed.  I read before I go to sleep and I would get a lot more of that done if I turned my phone and laptop off in the evening.

I should find other happier activities: go for a walk, color, do more reading, watch classic TV shows.  Phone banking has been a very positive activity for me.  I don’t feel powerless when I phone bank.  I’m doing my part to help save democracy.

Here is one more I’ve already put into practice: subscribe to good news only media.  It is so true that reading about small town heroes, animal antics, and bits of trivia are uplifting and can make me smile or laugh.

I’m going to give these suggestions a try because I don’t want to burn out completely, especially not before a crucial election.

Giving Pink Floyd a shout out because my title comes from their song, “Comfortably Numb.”