Much of my media malaise on display in this series of blogs may just be media overload. Information is not emotionally neutral, especially hot-button information when accompanied by memorable visual images. Crises, natural or electoral, with their inevitable cauldron of television talking heads, ideological hacks and clueless "experts," fake "breaking news" and alarmist headlines have produced actual PTSD in some viewers, stress and transient depression in many others. Anecdotal reports and self-report surveys rather consistently conclude that watching terrible images of death and destruction over and over, can produce numerous stress-related clinical symptoms including agitation or depression. Repeated exposure of such horrifying or distressing events has been labeled "retraumatizing" (Spicer-Brooks, 2001).
In our age of terrorism, political polarization, and human-aggravated natural disasters, news cycles reek of rumors or fleeting facts until displaced by other rumors and fleeting facts. Many viewers stay electronically tethered, often in hopes of staving off an engulfing sense of impotent outrage over Mother Nature or man's nature. That's precisely why political appeals to fear upset viewers and lead them to embrace the fear-arouser who offers him- or herself as the überpatriot, the salvation, or "the soccer mom who spoke truth to power."
Social support in this regard is a double-edged sword. Either sitting alone with one's thoughts and fears, or reading kindred skeptics and outraged pessimists (selective attention), the end result can be the same-panic, fear and worst case scenarios! When one is going over the top with fears and frets, turning to others can often help in bringing the hysteria down and the reality testing up. But sitting in with a group of like-minded apocalyptics (selective congregation) or listening, day after day, to like-minded shock jocks, can make matters worse, can polarize attitudes and send anger, violent thoughts, exaggeration, and apprehension soaring.
So, what can I remember to do when media-fixated? What can you do? In the end, we must use media, or actually anything we physically or mentally ingest, as we use medicine. We can use or we can abuse, we can sample or we can mainline. When in a natural or political crisis we need to monitor our bodies and minds sensitize ourselves to changes in diet, sleep, recurring thoughts, catastrophizing, hyperventilating, or radicalization of thoughts and actions. We must take breaks from the media to still the messages, and venture into places of comfort or serenity. We must test reality, check out rumors and not just accept them because we'd like them to be true. We have to push ourselves to confer with people whose opinions we respect people who are liable to either agree or disagree with our renditions of reality. In a word, we must avoid "supersizing" the media.
Finally, research shows that taking some sort of constructive action to allay one's upset is one of the best medicines for media indigestion. If that means working for a candidate, writing a check, marching at a rally, sending out emails to friends to encourage their voting, or canvassing the opposition to persuade them to your side, they are all valuable ways to keep reality in check and temper exaggerations and alarmism. Doing something constructive with one's angst is always better than just taking in more distressing information which can lead to depression, emotional paralysis, or rash and regrettable action. There's enough of that already. Why add to it?
And for those who read the previous blog, well, the mysterious stranger lurking in the shadows was-my wife! You remember, the critic of my Jewish angst. She came with some chicken soup for angst-easing...No, I'm joking. She brought me fresh cup of coffee and told me it was very generous of me to share my anxieties with my blog readers. "Spread it around," she quipped. She quips.
