How do you cope with the turmoil in the world?

I don’t obsessively subject myself to the daily media and bad news, period. One can be aware but not allow the state of affairs to dictate your mood and ramp up your angst & anxiety.
Being over attached to world turmoil is a form of co-dependency. Let go and accept you have little to no control, MYOB, address what you are able to change and dump the rest.

Drugs mostly.

I don’t cope. I watch YouTube and turn off the TV. I canceled my news package

This is a General Section question.

Balance. Finding the balance between limiting engagement and being engaged is important to me. I love to dance – dance class and rehearsal is part of my limiting engagement side. Performing at fundraisers for causes I believe in falls on the being engaged side. Right now that is working for me.

Well, I’m already medicated. When I get really bad I smoke dope and listen to DMB and try to remember the reasons I don’t want to kill myself.

@tinyfaery What’s DMB?

@Hawaii_Jake

I think @tinyfaery is listening to Dave Matthews Band.

^^Yep.

Thanks.

@Hawaii_Jake “This is a General Section question.”

Yes indeed, it is.

I watch good news. Like the 7 new planets discovered in a solar system 39 light years away that 3 of them might support life.

I try to think smaller, or bigger, and that helps me keep perspective.

Smaller would just be my family and friends. The news may affect me and some of them, but doing what I can there has a much bigger impact than worrying or even voicing my opinion on a larger stage. My daughter worries most about how sharp her colored pencils are and how she’s going to earn her next sticker. It seems silly to adults, but how many of our worries are just as transient? It helps me keep things in perspective.

Larger would be that I’m incredibly lucky to be born and living where I am, at this point in history. If we were reborn at some random place on the Earth today, more often than not, we’d probably switch back happily to have the surroundings and opportunities we have. I’m not saying the entire world is worse, just that we take a lot for granted that most people do not have. Even more so for looking at any time in history. It helps me remember that life is pretty good most of the time, even if the news is grim.

And then I try to get back to doing what I can.

The more time I spend buried in books and interesting work, the less time I have for the kind of existential self-examination that thinking about the turmoil in the world tends to lead to.

With the tragedies in Sweden, Atlanta, and of course the Bowling Green massacre, it’s hard to keep grounded in reality, especially with all the fake news (ABC, NBC, CBS, MSMBC, CNN, and the failing New York Times).
Thank goodness we have the bestest, greatest president ever. Big league.
That said, I don’t think things are as bad as you think. There are always refugees from somewhere, and there is always inhumanity in the world. I’m just not used to so much… ooh look! Kellyanne has a new dress!

@filmfann Never think that you should tell me things in my life are good or not as bad as I think. Do you have to look around to see if the coast is clear before you hold hands with your boyfriend? Do you have to check who might be watching when you want to give your boyfriend a peck on the cheek? Fuck off.

No one gets to tell me my experience is not valid. I determine that without regard to others’ ideas.

Escapism. I’m good at it.

I try to keep myself aware of what is happening in the world. So when I see an event that bothers me, I try and look into it as much as possible.
Sounds weird because all I am doing is making myself think about it more. But then I know all the information about it and I don’t have to ask questions or wonder about it, then I can move on to thinking about other things.

I took filmfann’s entire post to be satire… as noted by the obvious references to recent news at the beginning and end…

@Hawaii_Jake You may have misunderstood the subtlety of my post.

I always remember that for each piece of bad news, I could substitute a dozen reports of good news. Also, none of it seems to apply to me, personally, as far as my life is concerned.

I could lament about my poor family member who was out of work for many months, or the one who is on Permanent Disability, but I’d rather concentrate on the fact that I am lucky enough to be able to help them out, and they are both eligible for the public benefits that my taxes pay for.

If I insist on feeling bad, I could spend my days crying about the 30,000 people that starve to death every single day, but instead, I try to spend time each day playing games on rice.com which donates food to the poor, and promoting participation in thehungersite.com

I make a choice to be happy every single day of my life.

To be totally honest, lately I have been playing a lot of video games. They absorb me so fully that I can’t think about anything except what is immediately happening on the screen in front of me. They are not the most constructive use of my time, but hey, it’s better than spending that time sitting around being anxious.

I don’t have a negative of a view of “avoidance” as a coping mechanism like many people do. It’s not productive to think about the things that upset us all the time, and if there’s an external tool (e.g. video games) that can help us get our minds off the upsetting things, I see nothing wrong with using that tool, as long as it’s not at the expense of our life’s commitments. That tool in 2011 for me was jewelry-making; in those months while I healed from my surgeries, all of my female relatives received a steady stream of gifts from me. That was a more productive hobby than video games because at least it was creative, but I’m not as into it these days.

I am balancing avoidance with spending a reasonable amount of time each day reading the news, because I do believe have at least some responsibility to stay informed, and taking reasonable actions to resist that which I disagree with.

I am trying to figure this out. I am in a very balanced, contented place in my personal life right now and am trying to guard that place carefully. Yet I feel a responsibility to be aware of what is going on and to participate to some extent in the Resistance. I do look at Facebook and the newspaper more judiciously but I do want to find meaningful avenues for engagement as well.

I’m taking great pleasure in nesting at home with books, cooking and music.

@filmfann I am sorry I misread you.

Carry on.

Avoidance is a normal coping mechanism. When it’s practiced mindfully, I see no harm in it. Done to extreme can become a problem.

I exercise every day…seems to keep the stress level down. I also have greatly curtailed my cable news watching and watch cooking channels, car channels and there are now 4 reality style cable shows that are my customers and those are very fun to watch.

I regularly call my elected representatives and voice my concerns about issues. I prefer to call the local offices of the national representatives.

DO THAT!

Write or call your representative and Senators on every issue you care about. It’s free!

They keep tallies. “X number of people called saying no and Y number of people called saying yes”.

How to Contact Your Elected Officials

I like to keep informed and I also like to escape the news. I like going out into the countryside on my bicycle and I like reading stories and poems. I also like listening to music, and I am grateful I have the means and the peace to enjoy these things.

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

W B Yeats.

Sometimes – more and more rarely these days – I feel the weight of the world as you do, but that’s when I know that I’m getting outside of my own spheres of influence and ability to manage or do anything about them. I don’t consciously ignore news of any kind, good or bad, but I don’t often go seeking news about things just for the titillation or alarm factor, either. Sometimes I look at bad news from around the world (including “bad history”) to see what lessons can be learned, and then I often have to remind myself to maintain a strict detachment (to the extent that that is even possible sometimes!) and to remind myself that “I’m not in that life; I can’t touch that or do anything about that.”

Sometime I can do something, and then I do.

Like you, I have found a cause and an organization – one that attempts to redress injustice within this country on a nonpartisan basis – worth contributing to on a monthly basis, and I can afford to do that. It helps me to read their newsletter from month to month and to realize that however small my part, I helped them to achieve some of their successes, and even on the losses, I pitched in and will continue to do so.

Sometimes my assistance is much more direct and personal. I do what I can without becoming a martyr to any cause.

Mostly, I try to consciously emulate Joe, from Great Expectations: ”...but ever did his duty in his way of life, with a strong hand, a quiet tongue, and a gentle heart.” It’s an epitaph that I delivered for my father, who had earned it, so I have had another role model to be “not unlike as much as possible.”

I’m also, always, looking for the joke in nearly everything. Not so much satire any more; that’s just not so funny, but parody sure is.

Whiskey in a jar-o.

Today I went snorkling for stone crab. I came home with ten huge stone crab claws for dinner. This would have cost me anywhere from $150 to $200 retail in Florida. I have a great dinner, got some sun and fresh air, met an ancient fisherman, and I feel I once again stuck it the man. LOL.

Key to a better American life:
1) Turn off television entirely and internet news feeds four days per week.
2) Go outside
3) Use brain
4) Have some fun.
5) If you see something on the net that really galls you; that you might be able to change the conversation in a more positive or truthful direction with your unique input, then suit up and respond. Then forget it.
6) Read the source documentation that the headlines are coming from. You will be surprised at how often the media gets it all wrong.
7) Read a lot of history for comparison and detail. You’ll find we’ve been through something similar before and gotten through it. History is comforting. And you end up knowing more about things than the people who are way overpaid to deliver you the news.

Works for me.

@Espiritus_Corvus

Yep, I just spent the last 20 minutes standing outside in a glorious,thunder snow flurry.
Sun and peachy clouds intertwined with the black thunderheads and blue sky while the snow came down in sheets of glistening glory. Getting outside, out of your head and into nature is always a tonic for the stressors of our modern bullshit world. haha

I spend very little time on the internet and focus my energy on my family and community. The only turmoil in my life has nothing to do with the fear that’s spread via technology.

Most of the time I am able to just let it slide naturally. Ok, with the occasional drink or seven but for the most part I understand that this too shall pass.

One thing I am having trouble with though. I was more afraid of armed insurrection during the Obama years than I am now, what with the right wing gun nuts wailing and gnashing their teeth. I don’t think it will happen with under the Trump administration, liberals being much more laid back and having a much more reasonable testosterone level .

However, under Trump I am more concerned about martial law, particularly given the number of generals he has appointed to office and his willingness to using the National Guard for policing and border duties.

I used to think things would be ok no matter what because if the Federal Government declared martial law, the Texas National Guard would stand with Texas against the feds but now I am not so sure. Now I think the majority would side with the generals and Trump.

Ah well, Mexico is only five hours away and I can swim.

I cope by bearing in mind there are more good people out there than evil cruel fools. That helps me breathe.