Tag: Anxiety

Bookmarked The National are meant to be in Australia — here’s what they’re doing instead (Double J)

“Making a song, or even making a drawing or anything out of some of this anxiety is the only thing that’s ever helped me really. Watching the news, talking about it, speculating and debating with friends, it never really makes me feel any better. It just gets me more riled up.

If you don’t write, Berninger reckons engaging with prose, music and art is a nourishing way to spend these anxious times.

“I have found art, listening to music, or just flipping through a book of paintings or photographs or reading an old book really changes your chemistry and is enlightening in a mental and a spiritual way,” he says.

Matt Berninger talks about art as an antidote for anxious times.📑
Bookmarked Coronavirus Is Serious, But Panic Is Optional – That Seems Important (That Seems Important)

The worst possible thing to do for your immune system is to live in a constant state of stress. And if this global pandemic requires a healthy strong immune system in order to fight it, then the most responsible thing you can do if you’re feeling afraid is to stop watching the news.

The story you’re telling yourself is you can’t disconnect because you won’t be “informed.” I’m telling you: You’re not informed as it is. The only thing you have to gain by strategically disconnecting is your sanity.

Margo Aaron breaks down the way in which the media drives panic and fear around coronavirus. Much of this is driven around the use of headlines:

Media headlines are like the drunk girl at a party. They don’t care why everyone is staring at you while you puke into the cheese plate, they’re just glad they have your attention and they’re going to keep it by any means necessary. Even if it means sleeping with Tim. I know, gross.

And in this case, Tim is a metaphor for scaring the shit out of you. Repeatedly. For money.

Media companies care about attention and the easiest way to garner that is the feed our fears:

Fear is what makes people mean to each other, divides us, fuels racism, xenophobia, and homophobia. It makes us petty, defensive, conspiratorial, and individualistic. It also makes us susceptible to a LOT of cognitive and logical biases, such as:

Ad hominem, moral equivalence, straw man arguments, the false dilemma, circular arguments, the bandwagon, appeal to authority, the domino theory, hasty generalizations, anecdotal evidence, the correlation/causation fallacy, and many, many more (this is my favorite roundup of Logical Fallacies, if you’d like to geek out, courtesy of PBS).

Point is: You can’t think straight when you’re afraid.

Aaron suggests that if the media were serious about their civic duty then the focus would be on settling everyone’s nerves and emotions as this impacts our immune system and therefore our ability to fight the virus.

Like Cal Newport, Aaron suggests that during this time we need to turn away from the media as we are never as informed as we think we are.

Liked Anxiety doesn’t care about the hills or valleys (ABC Weekend Reads)

From the vantage point of those happily jogging along, there’s less understanding as to why someone else might be at a standstill despite having just given birth to a healthy baby, started a great new job or embarked on an exciting new relationship or project. Or, for no obvious reason at all.

Anxiety is like that. It doesn’t care about hills, or valleys. It doesn’t care about age or race or gender. It just is. And it’s tough going.

Bookmarked My name is Wil Wheaton. I Live With Chronic Depression and Generalized Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed. by Wil Wheaton (Medium)

So another step in our self care is to be gentle with ourselves. Depression is beating up on us already, and we don’t need to help it out. Give yourself permission to acknowledge that you’re feeling terrible (or bad, or whatever it is you are feeling), and then do a little thing, just one single thing, that you probably don’t feel like doing, and I PROMISE you it will help. Some of those things are:

  • Take a shower.
  • Eat a nutritious meal.
  • Take a walk outside (even if it’s literally to the corner and back).
  • Do something — throw a ball, play tug of war, give belly rubs — with a dog. Just about any activity with my dogs, even if it’s just a snuggle on the couch for a few minutes, helps me.
  • Do five minutes of yoga stretching.
  • Listen to a guided meditation and follow along as best as you can.

Finally, please trust me and know that this shitty, awful, overwhelming, terrible way you feel IS NOT FOREVER. It will get better. It always gets better. You are not alone in this fight, and you are OK.

In this address to the American National Alliance on Mental Illness, Wil Wheaton reflects on his experience with chronic depression. This includes accounts of living through years of anxiety until he admitted it in his thirties and did something about it. There has been a bit written about depression lately, especially with the suicide of Anthony Bourdain. Kin Lane credits Bourdain with providing him the confidence to be open about his own struggles with drugs and mental illness. I was also reminded of the suicide a few years ago of Aaron Swartz. A recent report suggested that depression is on the rise across all age groups in America. Responding to Wheaton’s post, Doug Belshaw suggests that in 2018, we need to open up about these things.