“What Do I Do When News Makes Me Stressed?”

You wake up in the morn­ing to read about news from around the world. It makes you sad and stressed, and yet you can’t seem to stop read­ing. Before you know it, 30 min­utes have passed and you feel awful.

If this sounds like you, you may have a habit of ​“doom­scrolling.”

Stress is a part of life, but when you find that cer­tain habits — like read­ing or watch­ing the news — are mak­ing the stress in your life worse, it might be time for a change. While get­ting dis­tract­ed by bad news is pret­ty easy these days, it’s not impos­si­ble to adopt strate­gies that pro­tect your men­tal health instead.

Set time lim­its for your news exposure. 

Just like you might set a time lim­it on how long a child can watch TV, prac­tice set­ting bound­aries with your­self when it comes to expo­sure of news or social media.

Try lim­it­ing your news con­sump­tion to 30 min­utes a day, or uti­lize the tools on your phone to set a screen lim­it. If you find your­self con­stant­ly going back to social media on your work break, try going for a walk or call­ing a friend instead.

Oth­er strate­gies to help you pre­serve your men­tal health while also stay­ing informed about what’s going on in the world around you include:

• Read­ing more than just the head­lines. Head­lines are designed to get your atten­tion and an emo­tion­al response. Read­ing the full arti­cle can pro­vide con­text, and you may find the news is actu­al­ly much less stress­ful than the head­line suggests.

• Mon­i­tor your news sources. Just like good food helps you main­tain a healthy diet, rep­utable news sources help you main­tain a healthy news diet, too. Watch out for news that can be designed to make you reactive.

• Get involved. It can be stress­ful to see issues in your com­mu­ni­ty, and it’s easy to feel help­less. There are many pos­i­tive ways you can donate your time, tal­ent, or mon­ey to sup­port the caus­es you read and care about.

While it might be tempt­ing to read or watch as much news as you can to stay informed, this can quick­ly lead to burnout and stress or even depres­sion and anxiety. 

Ask for help — even when it’s hard.

If read­ing the news is stress­ing you out, you might think it’s all on you to destress. This thought, and oth­er com­mon myths about men­tal health ther­a­py, keep many peo­ple from ask­ing for help when they need it. 

Duly Health and Care pro­vides a range of men­tal and behav­ioral health sup­port to help you feel your best. If you are feel­ing anx­ious or depressed, get­ting sup­port is as easy as con­tact­ing your pri­ma­ry care provider.

Your Duly provider can:

• Help you talk through your emo­tions, feel­ings, and behav­iors and how they impact your day-to-day life

• Share cop­ing strate­gies for man­ag­ing feel­ings of anx­i­ety, depres­sion, or stress

• Con­nect you with addi­tion­al resources or refer­rals to address your unique needs and goals 

You don’t have to man­age your men­tal health all by your­self. If you want to feel your best and devel­op health strate­gies that make life eas­i­er, reach out to your Duly pri­ma­ry care provider today.

Prac­tice shift­ing into a more pos­i­tive mindset.

While hav­ing cof­fee with a friend, have you found your­self talk­ing about world events? Sud­den­ly, your hap­py hang­out has turned into a spi­ral of gloom.

Cre­at­ing space to talk about chal­leng­ing top­ics is impor­tant, and it can be a good way to feel like you aren’t the only one see­ing them. But it can also lead you and your friend to have an unhealthy rela­tion­ship when focus­ing on neg­a­tive feelings.

While you might not have con­trol over all of the bad things hap­pen­ing in the world, you do have con­trol over a con­ver­sa­tion like this. Some­times, pro­tect­ing your men­tal health — and build­ing pos­i­tive cop­ing skills — is as easy as say­ing, ​“I think we’re focus­ing too much on the bad news. Would it be okay to talk about some­thing more positive?” 

One way to shift into a more mind­ful place is with con­ver­sa­tion starters that focus on the neg­a­tive, pos­i­tive, and the upcom­ing. With this, you ask every­one to come up with one exam­ple for each of these questions:

• What’s one thing that’s been chal­leng­ing you lately?

• What’s some­thing excit­ing or good that’s hap­pened to you recently? 

• What’s one thing that you’re excit­ed about?

This kind of mind­ful reflec­tion can be done on your own, with a friend, or with a group. When you find your­self get­ting too deep into cur­rent events, a shift in mind­set might be just what you need.

Take a step back and look to the future. 

Just by read­ing these strate­gies, you’ve tak­en an impor­tant step toward break­ing the habit of doom­scrolling and mak­ing health­i­er news-read­ing habits. 

These might seem like small changes, but they can have a big impact on your men­tal health. By being more inten­tion­al about how you use social media and how you get your news, you can build a bet­ter out­look and devel­op cop­ing skills you can car­ry through­out your whole life.