A Democratic campaign shake-up. Political violence. War. Shootings. Supreme Court decisions. Election campaigning. High-profile deaths.
If the constant barrage of news is leaving you feeling anxious, stunned, deflated, or paralyzed—particularly when it comes to getting through the regular tasks of your day, from work to childcare—you are definitely not alone.
“Anytime we're faced with a moment of uncertainty, our brain is going to go into that 'fight or flight' mode—which is really just our body's way of installing a pause point to figure out how best to navigate through a crisis,” explains therapist Arianna Galligher, director of the Gabbe Well-Being Office and the Stress, Trauma and Resilience (STAR) Program at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “I think what makes it so challenging to function as typical—particularly when the threat is more of an existential nature, and there's nothing concrete to do—there really isn't any place for that adrenaline and cortisol to go.”
“Fight or flight,” Galligher explains, is the shorthand way of referring to the release of chemicals that occurs in the brain when it perceives some sort of a threat. “It can manifest in different kinds of behavioral reactions,” she says. On one end is the “fight” trauma response, “where you’re going to try to stand up against whatever that threat may be,” she tells Fortune.
On the other end is “flight,” meaning your instinct will be to run away from or avoid the situation. Then there’s “freeze,” which is “where a lot of people sort of feel paralyzed, because it’s really hard to find any action to take,” Galligher explains. And then there’s “fawn,” where we “just sort of give up, surrender, and or try to placate the situation.”
How an individual responds depends on many things—the situation, one’s previous life experiences, and simply how you’re wired. “But whatever your reaction is, it's really meant to help you survive through that crisis,” she says.
Particularly in the aftermath of an event such as the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, she adds, “We're all sort of collectively trying to make sense of what happened. What does it mean? How do we move forward? What's going to happen next? I think there's a little bit of dread that is really common to accompany events like this, where it's like, where does it end?”
Another common response is anger
What if you’re not feeling particularly frozen, but instead find yourself snapping at your spouse? That could be another response to bad-news overload, explains Maryland-based therapist Steven Stosny, who coined the phrase “headline stress disorder” during the 2016 election cycle, referring to stress and anxiety triggered by news headlines—and fueled by 24-hour news cycles, social media, ongoing wars, and increasing vitriol—that spills into work, social, and family life.
“Anxiety is a general central nervous system response,” Stosny, the author of Soar Above: How to Use the Most Profound Part of Your Brain Under Any Kind of Stress, tells Fortune. “In other words, it's not specific to what triggered it. It's your brain's way of processing your entire environment—and anger is always an attribution of blame. And the law of blame is that eventually it goes to the closest person.”
That, he says, is “classic Freudian displacement of anger.” In his practice, where he specializes in people dealing with chronic resentment, anger, and emotional abuse, he started asking clients what had happened immediately before an argument back in 2016. “Over 80% of the time it was that they had been getting news alerts on their smartphone … So your threshold of anger is greatly lowered, and it doesn't take as much to trigger it,” he says.
How do we keep going? Be intentional—and stop doomscrolling.
“The world keeps turning,” says Galligher. And to do that ourselves, she says, “we do have to be a little bit intentional.”
If you feel overwhelmed or stuck or unable to concentrate, start by taking a few deep breaths while taking stock of where you are right now. “It makes sense that your mind might go to a little bit of a catastrophic place,” she says, but ask yourself, “What's right here in front of you right now? … What is it that you actually have some control over in terms of what you're going to focus on next?” Maybe what you can control is stepping away from whatever you’re doing for a few minutes and taking a break.
“Maybe what you can control is setting limits with how much you engage with certain forms of media right now,” she suggests (for example: stop doomscrolling). “Can you adjust your dose of the news to be a little bit more in line with what's going to help you function throughout the day?” Give yourself permission to check news updates maybe once in the morning and once in the afternoon, but never close to bedtime, knowing that “ if there really is some kind of dire breaking news … they will come across multiple avenues, so we're not going to miss it.”
Stosny recommends disabling all news alerts—as well as spending more time being active and in nature, and making time to really connect with friends and family.
Focus on what you can control
“You're always going to be anxious or angry when you focus on things you can't control—that's why people get angry about politics and religion, things that can't really influence,” Stosny says. “So if you focus on what you can influence, which is your own behavior, the well-being of your family, things that are really important,” he says, that will be calming.
Also vital, notes Stosny, is to remember and appreciate your ability to cope with difficult things. “The less you know about [a stressful bit of news], the more anxious you're going to be about it. And the wild card is your perceived ability to cope,” he says, explaining that, in other words, you’re worried that something bad is going to happen—the candidate you hate wins, for example—and you're not going to be able to handle it. “You don't think you can cope with it,” he says, “but of course, you will. Other candidates have won before, and you coped with it.”
You can then take it a step further, Stosny recommends: First, slow down your thoughts. “The anxious thoughts go by very fast, much faster than conscious attention, and you need to slow them down … as each thought is stimulating a little bit of cortisol, and some of them are stimulating adrenaline for that fight or flight response.” Next, assign each worry a probability, and then make a concrete list of what you could do if your worst fear comes true.
Have boundaries—and give yourself permission for distractions
Everybody needs a support system and some space for processing their anxieties with those people, Galligher says—with a caveat: “I think engaging with your support system can be really therapeutic, as long as you put a frame around it so that you're not feeding off of each other's catastrophic thought process.” It’s all about being intentional about accessing mutual support in your discussions—and knowing how to walk it back when it starts to “get too far into a realm of Armageddon.”
It’s also important to have boundaries when engaging with people who have different perspectives. “If the conversation starts to get too contentious or too emotional, you know, what? We can say, ‘Okay, that's enough for now. I want to preserve this relationship, and we don't agree on this. So what can we talk about instead?’”
Finally, don’t forget about time-limited, healthy distractions—whether that means watching a funny movie, silly cat videos or the latest TikTok dance. “Everybody needs a break,” Galligher says.
Bottom line, she says, is to try and find balance. “It makes sense to adopt sort of an oscillation strategy where you're going to intentionally engage with what's going on in the world for a time, and then [move] toward … What do I need now to be able to take care of myself? Setting up a frame for yourself where you're moving back and forth between those two I think tends to be a much healthier cadence for people.”
