HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Discuss mental health issues, including suicidal thoughts, here.
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planewalker
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HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by planewalker »

I don't need to tell anyone how dangerous these times seem. I don't need to tell about stress, fear to the point of paralysis of thought and action or of hopelessness to the point of depression. Well if you didn't need to WHY DID YOU? I felt bad enough before! GHHEEEEEZZZZZZ !!! NOW I REALLY FEEL BAD! Welcome to the socio-psychological terrorism of the Talking Heads/24 Hour a Day news cycle. This is the first in a series of coping threads. I hope to get lots of input, so when your done pondering my words of wisdom (or disagreeing with my load of crap) please leave your thoughts. {see swear-ogees in rants} If your really fired up drop me a PM. You don't need to censor yourself in those.
The 24hrad news cycle is probably the worst thing the human race has come up with since the tax system. I'm an old fa...whatever. I remember the days of THE SIX O'CLOCK NEWS ! It was a luxury you had to be there for to truly understand.
The TV had a screen that showed the picture in Black and White [and lots of shades of gray] for a starting point. That was the first disconnect. Life happened in color. The most important disconnect can be seen in the name. What a blessing. All the bad stuff got packaged up and was given to you in one hour. With local weather, sports both local, and from around the world, and commercials you only got smacked between the eyes with suffering and destruction for about 20 minutes real time. Now as cold as it may sound, you can get that amount of bad news and get on with your life. You then go on to what REALLY feels like bad news. WARNING: HUMAN NATURE ALERT There may have been a death or major illness in the family or close friends. There may have been a fire in the neighborhood and even if you don't know the people that well and nobody got hurt, that burnt out building is in your face. Those are the ones that seemed the most real. You could still get by even when you added them together. You could still read the newspaper and not go into news overload. It is not the problems in the world that are robbing you of the sense that you can't do anything. Tragedy has not forced the human race into this cowed and cowering subservience to a flickering phosphor screen. It is the unleashing of what seems like unrelenting constant horror. I can not even curse the Talking Heads for they are casualties too. The human need to know mixed with the seduction of passive presence at the scene of tragedy is what is really at fault. It's a trap that came about when, like Pandora's Box, the ability to send news from anywhere flying across continents literally at the speed of light was opened up. It then gets shown relentlessly over and over again.
They never get to show the hope. It stays trapped in the box. There are people who, though they only saw the towers come down on news broadcasts in the safety of their own homes, have PTSD reactions if they see something about the towers. Why would that be. They had a worse reaction than the vast majority of people who lived within a mile of Ground Zero. They never saw the hope. The people close up only saw them come down once, not 108 times. They only saw that bl00dy broken body once as they stumbled by, not 17 times in techno-color. But most important they never got to calm someone down. They never got to bring fresh water down, out of their apartment, to comfort the coughing people stumbling out of a cloud, looking like ghosts. They never got to see that no matter how shattering the experience, people would rise up and try to overcome the circumstance. They never got to see the hands held out to help. They only saw, again and again, the horror that human beings can perpetrate on each other. Well that's a big part of why people are feeling hopeless now. I've got to tell you people - SNAP OUT OF IT. Break away from the destructive input your forcing on your self. Turn off the news for one day. Try this as an experiment. There will of course be some contact with the news while in public, but just for a 24 hour period. Go without the news , try to distract your self from even thinking about the world farther than your eyes reach - without any electronic enhancement. It really won't hurt you at all. You might find that dealing pro-actively in the space your in and saying that that is the part of the world that you can make better may be the best thing that's happened in a long while.
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moonraingirl
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by moonraingirl »

These are very interesting thoughts. I definitely agree that there's negative news overload. I too suffer from it. One shouldn't watch them 24/7 and less you watch the better you feel.

However I have a question. How long do you recommend staying out of it. 24hrs is sure absolutely OK. But what after that? How much should we be exposed to news on a daily basis? I get it would be the best for one's wellbeing to not watch it at all.

But if we stay uninformed and ignorant, how can we make responsible citizen and consumer choices?
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SpiritTalker
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by SpiritTalker »

We can still use the Internet & consciously modify our intake.
planewalker
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by planewalker »

I believe in responsible viewing. The 24 hr period is to prove to yourself that the world will still turn without our having to watch it every minute. Each individual needs to find their best response. It may vary from day to day for a given individual. If your spending 8 hours a day in the hospital visiting a sick relative you may want to forget about the world. It is a balancing act. I think it is something to be aware of. We have all been there when a tragedy is being played out on TV.
Do the responsible thing. If it's not actively going to put you in danger, you might want to check the story every 4 to 6 hours. That's the usual time for information turn over. That way, even if it's still in the back of your mind, you are still going to be doing things that will give you some peace from it.
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by egregorewitch »

planewalker wrote:I believe in responsible viewing. The 24 hr period is to prove to yourself that the world will still turn without our having to watch it every minute.
This is very insightful. I try to stay out of news as much as I can, but I get the news through word-of-mouth and also from the internet. I find that when something very important happens, it will find its way to my ears.
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moonraingirl
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by moonraingirl »

I watch TV news about once a week, sometimes not even that. I watched now because of French elections. I get 90% of news from FB. I usually don't read the whole thing, just the title and that's enough for me.
Sometimes I get into political mood if something that I consider important happens. Then I will try to find out as much as possible. That happens once a month or so. I tried reading all news every day and it got really depressing, that's why I stopped doing that.
Nowadays I have a mix of serious and funny pages on FB. I read just the title of news followed by an entire article about something funny. It works fine for me :)
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SpiritTalker
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by SpiritTalker »

There are info sights like snoopwall.com that state a five meg flashlight AP on smartphones may be malware-that's a lot of storage to turn on a light- and being used to steal personal info. It's legal because they admit it in the 20 page garbage agreement you will probably scroll through & accept to install the AP.

I broke the TV habit & am still able to vote informed & with clarity. When I want news I can find it.
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Firebird
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by Firebird »

We're going to need a more descriptive title. ..
Anyone?
“There are things known and things unknown and in between are the Doors.”
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Shannon
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by Shannon »

I enjoyed reading this and agree with much of what you're saying :) ..Fortunately I'm too financially irresponsible to maintain cable so I haven't even bothered to have it in about 4.5 years.
Depending on mg mood I can be quite the news junkie, though. It gets frustrating though because of course many of us are taught about news content and biases..but I took journalism at my community college and journalism and broadcasting; surveying the mass media, and some PR introductory courses at Central Michigan University and I'm more cynical than I've ever been in my life and endlessly question whether or not I'm getting fed accurate "news"...It then is just frustrating on top of that sense of hopelessness. So yes, the news channels are huge downers for me. However, I do believe everyone should have a general idea of whats going on in the world at all times.
I love that you brought up 9/11..I was only 11 years old and in the fifth grade when that happened and for whatever reason, the teacher seem to think it was a good idea to have us all watch it on television..To be completely honest, I specifically remember the lack of empathy I had felt and it still makes me sick..I had no idea how significant that day was and I 100% back up the idea of desensitization.
Anyhow, despite the inability to have the appropriate emotional response, I have a slight phobia of anything loud flying overhead. I remember about 7 years ago I'd been in Detroit and these jets flew overhead and I literally dropped to the ground and did this odd scream..That was the moment that I realized something wasn't right about my fears lol..I'm always worried an airplane is going to came crashing down or that something else bad may happen. I think it has to do with the day I saw this on TV and then hearing more and more about it every day for the following two years.
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by planewalker »

I'm all for staying informed. I'm all against overload. My point was to find your personal threshold. Even know that it may change from day to day. Mine is pretty high. I was a cold war kid. "Duck and Cover drills" or as we called them - "Bend way over and kiss your @$$ goodbye" drills. I remember helping my family get our basement stocked up and helping shovel dirt against the basement windows one October. I still find days when if I watched the news I would be a sobbing wreck in a fetal position. As with anything, maintain personal responsibility and know your limits.
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Firebird
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by Firebird »

I still remember the air raid warnings every Friday at 10 AM, (or was it the last Friday of the month) It was a terrifyingly long and loud horn sort of sound that lasted for 5 minutes. The "drop drills" became almost a game by the time I was in jr. High. Yea, like covering the back of our neck was really going to prevent serious injury. We even had a paddy cake rhyme that included the Iron Curtain. :?
It was bad enough rushing through dinner so dad could watch the "evening news" (in black and white) It was so depressing I couldn't understand the need or desire to focus on that. I grew up hating the news. I wanted nothing to do with issues I largely hand no control over. I also saw how it upset the adults so, particularly when it was about politics. Then it was in living bloody color, I revolted and was rarely around the house. The boys were coming home from Nam, peace and flowers abound. I was pretty blissfully unaware of curent events save for the few natural disasters we experienced directly, until I was in my early twenties.
Then every thing changed. Husband was a news junkie like dad, it was less easy to get away in a tiny apt. and fighting about it was moot. I would not win this fight. Time and saturation sucked me in.
I have so many thoughts about this I can scarcely make up my mind about about where to go with my words.
Thing that really pisses me off these days (excuse my french) is the quanity of news. It no longer is just the 6 PM news or the 11 PM of my fathers news. Now there is CNN and every major network as well as cable networks that have a broadcast at just about any hour of the day. AND....irresponsible news, blocking out regular programming so we can watch a potential disaster unfold. Talk about PTSD... I believe these broadcasted tragedies are partially to blame, you could be suffering and not even realize it may have been caused by this sort of stimulation and saturation. There shoud be a law against it. Ya, ya free press, I appreciate that yet feel free to get your dose of horror, and this is what sucks you in. It is similar to drugs. Our brain is wired to deal with survival. We must force ourselves to rewire peace.
At one time I had the idea to have the "All good news" network, everyone I talked to about it said they didn't think anyone would watch and the sad thing is it's probably true. Still, if such a show could provide uplifting and inspirational hope to your life wouldn't you tune in?
I'm for the coping tools. Some of us do not have the luxury of just turning it off, due to the people they live with or the places they vist or places they work.
Bb, ff
“There are things known and things unknown and in between are the Doors.”
― Jim Morrison
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
― RWEmerson
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Firebird
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Re: HELP - I NEED YOUR INPUT

Post by Firebird »

For anyone that is interested here is that lovely film (said sarcastically) they used to show us kids, it includes the horrible air raid warning.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=120wGLgCTkg
“There are things known and things unknown and in between are the Doors.”
― Jim Morrison
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
― RWEmerson
:mrgreen:
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