Episode 152 - How to Stay Informed Without Losing Yourself
The overwhelming amount of information, emotion, and terror we are experiencing in the world right now can make it hard to know what to do with ourselves. Last week’s episode came from my own experience of feeling like I was going to break and realizing my nervous system was completely overloaded. In this episode, I build on that and talk about what to do—because it’s not enough to say you will “just get off social media” or “stop doom scrolling.” If it were that simple, I would have stopped, and maybe you would have too. We’ll look at why this is so hard to put down and what it takes to step back in a way that allows you to stay informed without losing yourself in the crush of information. Here’s what I cover:
Why doom scrolling is not activism and can hinder you from taking thoughtful action
The good girl rules that make disengaging feel like a moral failing
Why learning to regulate your nervous system can be a powerful form of resistance
What happens when your reptile brain takes over and you’re stuck in looping thoughts
Practical ways to regulate so you can stay informed and respond in ways that actually help
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Transcript
00:59
Today's episode is kind of a part two to last week's episode. And so if you haven't listened to that one, it might be a good idea to go back and listen. This can also stand alone, and it's really kind of prescient for the time that we are in.
01:14
It is February 17th. I'm located in the United States, and there's a lot of geopolitical and world events that are happening as well, and a lot going on politically in the United States. And that matters, but what we're going to talk about is applicable to any time there is an overwhelming, crushing amount of information and emotion and terror and trauma that we have to deal with.
01:43
Because that can happen on a global scale or on a countrywide scale, I guess, but it can also happen personally. It can also happen personally. And so if you didn't listen to last week's episode, it's probably a good idea to start with that first.
02:00
But if you didn't, it's also going to be fine. So last week's episode was really in response to my own experience where I just felt like I was going to break. And I didn't, this is so fascinating to me, you know, this work of, you know, coaching and mental health.
02:20
There's always blind spots. There's always things that we can't see about ourselves. I have a coach, right? I have a therapist. And those people help me to see these things. And I couldn't, I honestly did not know what was going on with me last week, as I describe.
02:38
And then I found the post by the Mama Attorney, which I read in last week's episode. Great. Please go check that out. And it really helped give me words for what was happening to me when I didn't realize that my nervous system was just completely overloaded.
02:59
And then in today's episode, I want to build on that a little bit. I want to talk about what to do instead, because it's not enough to say, okay, just get off social media. Don't doom scroll. Just, you know, shut it off.
03:12
And if it were that simple, I would have stopped, right? And maybe you would have stopped already. But there's a couple of pieces that I want to name that are going on here that are part of why some of us feel like we're really hooked into what's going on.
03:29
And we feel like there's a really primitive part of our brain that starts to run the show. And what to do instead? I hope that by the end of this episode, you better understand maybe why this is so hard to put down and when you're ready to put it down, what to do instead so that you can stay informed without feeling like, you know, you're losing yourself in this crush of information.
03:54
So let's go back to where we often go first, which are what are the good girl rules that might be driving some of your activity here? If you feel guilty when you disengage from social media during a crisis, that guilt just doesn't come out of nowhere.
04:13
Here are just a few of some of the rules that I have been keeping track of as I have worked with clients and investigated kind of how I was feeling. And a client put it into words this way. She said, you know, I don't matter as much as other people who are experiencing terrible things matter.
04:36
I thought that was so fascinating because I think it's true. A lot of us are taught that if bad things are happening to other people, whatever you're experiencing, that's nothing. You should be grateful.
04:48
It's easy for you, right? You have privilege or you, if you look away, it's because you're selfish. And so just check and see if that is a belief that might be driving some of your behavior that if bad things are happening in the rest of the world, I don't matter.
05:06
Another way this shows up is I can't feel okay if others are hurting or if I feel okay while others are hurting. Something is wrong with me. I shouldn't do that. If there are bad things happening, then I should feel bad.
05:24
Check that one. Some other rules. If I don't stay informed 24-7 about what's going on, then I'm irresponsible or I'm a bad person or I'm a bad ally. I'm complicit if I don't engage with this and keep myself abreast of every little thing that's happening.
05:48
They matter more than I do. Those are some of the things that I've heard from clients this week. And I think for me personally, it's like a good person doesn't look away. And if I look away in any way, if I take a break, if I don't watch this, if I don't post about it, if I don't reshare it, then it's some kind of like moral failing on my part.
06:12
And so I name those just because those subconscious rules play out in real life, right? Last week, I'm having dinner with my family and one of my sons was joking about something and I was laughing and feeling pretty lighthearted.
06:29
And then a voice in my head literally was like, there are so many bad things happening in the world right now. How can you be laughing right now? That's a part of me that is really programmed to feeling empathy with other people means that I don't feel happy when they're sad, that I'm not okay when they're suffering.
06:52
And again, when I say this out loud, I know it doesn't logically make sense. I know that that's not how I'm actually supposed to live. But that's what is so interesting about our parts is that they don't always, they don't make logical sense, but they were programmed to believe things in very subtle subconscious ways over lots of years.
07:17
And so if you notice some of that coming up for you, it's not going to be logical. But that's why you find yourself checking your phone, right? And thinking that I need to be up on every little thing that happens.
07:36
You are in your social media feed and you can tell that it's a graphic video of something violent or something scary happening and you want to scroll past, but you don't because you think, oh, if I don't watch this, I'm irresponsible or I'm complicit or I need to witness this.
07:56
So you watch it, then you feel sick and hopeless and flooded. And then we sometimes we associate that with, okay, now I'm being a good person. These are how the good girl rules work. They equate our goodness with our willingness to suffer, our willingness to endure, our willingness to self-sacrifice.
08:24
And so if that is how it's showing up for you, you're in really good company because it's showing up that way for a lot of my clients. It's so hard to turn off the social media and the engaging in content because if we do, we're bad.
08:44
But here's the truth. And this is what I loved so much about what the mama attorney posted is that watching graphic trauma videos that have no context and no way to understand them is not the same thing as helping.
09:03
It's not how we actually support survivors. It actually doesn't do anything other than feed the algorithm and profit, you know, social media because it's not actually doing anything. It just feeds that trauma cycle and it is your body that is paying the price.
09:28
So just notice how those subconscious good girl rules might be showing up and driving some of your action. Let's talk about your reptile brain. I thought it was brilliant that the mama attorney brought that up because it's a part of our brain that we don't always realize is activated, but there are real serious consequences.
09:52
It's the survival center of our brain. When this part of your brain is activated, you are not making thoughtful decisions. You are not making decisions with the part of your brain that is best equipped for long-term thinking, for taking care of yourself, for anticipating consequences.
10:13
That's your prefrontal cortex. The survival, the amygdala part of your brain is all about just making it, just surviving. And here's what it looks like when you are in that reptile part of your brain.
10:31
Things feel like they're looping the same thoughts, the same images, the same memories, right? And you lose yourself in that loop. You hyper-focus on trying to have something make sense to you. And you'd think, this is so much of what she was describing in those slides, like, I just need a little, I just need to understand the next piece.
10:56
But that hyper focus is your brain trying to find a point of reference that makes sense. And with that, there's some urgency. There's the feeling that something terrible is going to happen, either if I look away, if I don't understand this, if I can't make this make sense, something bad is going to happen.
11:18
There's a lot of irritation and frustration with anything that interrupts you. I was sitting on the table watching some videos about ICE activity, and my son came up and told me it was time to take him to play practice.
11:34
And I was irritated with him that he was interrupting my attempts to make sense of what I was watching because that's what I was doing. I was re-watching the same video over and over again, just trying to make it make sense.
11:48
You might notice in your body that your jaw is tight, your breath is shallow, there's pressure and tightness or heaviness. You can't sleep. I started having nightmares. I started having a reoccurring nightmare that I was grabbed from my car.
12:05
I have dark hair. I have brown skin. I'm Latina. I fit the profile, right, for these, for this ICE activity that I'm talking about right now. And so that survival mechanism, I started making plans for what I would do if that did happen.
12:22
And all of that, that's not bad or wrong. It's a part of my brain that is trying to make sense of information that doesn't make sense, that doesn't follow the rules, the rule of law, the way things have always happened.
12:39
And so when it's important to recognize when you are in that survival reptile center of your brain, because you do not make good decisions there, you lose access to long-term thinking and to the tools to regulate your nervous system.
12:59
And here's something important to notice. When you're in your reptile brain or lizard brain, right, that just means that your brainstem and amygdala have taken control because there are perceived threats, right?
13:14
There are threats to your survival and you are going to experience some things like rapid heartbeat or physical sensations, sweating, shallow breathing. You might have some fight behaviors, arguing, shouting, criticizing, defending, trying to prove you're right.
13:33
You might have some flight behaviors, right? Avoiding eye contact, procrastination, changing the subject, scrolling social media, that doom scrolling that we all just kind of, you know, fall into from time to time.
13:46
That could be considered a flight behavior. You might notice some freezing behaviors where you just feel frozen and not able to make decisions, not able to do things that you know are good for you, like stop scrolling.
14:02
So it's important to notice when you are in that state, because noticing is what allows your thinking brain, that prefrontal cortex, to come back online. Oftentimes, it's not the only thing that we need to do, though.
14:22
We need to regulate. We need to give our nervous system a chance to experience peace and calm. So here are some things you can do. Go hug someone. You don't even have to tell them why you need the hug.
14:42
We mammals have a beautiful gift of co-regulation. What that means is if I'm activated solidly in my lizard brain, I think something terrible is going to happen. I can use the nervous system of someone who is calm to help calm myself.
15:01
Think about what happens when someone wraps their arms around you and takes a big, deep breath with you. Notice how even the tone in my voice changing to calm feels good to you. That is because we can co-regulate.
15:24
Hugging is a great way to co-regulate. Just standing next to someone or having a normal, calm conversation. Sitting down on the floor, feeling the floor underneath your butt if you're sitting on the floor or your feet if you're standing.
15:42
Having someone hug you while you feel your feet firmly planted on the ground is a great way to co-regulate. You can also breathe slower than you think you might need to. Slowing the breath down is a way to signal to your brainstem, we're okay.
16:01
We're okay. We're not being chased. We have time to breathe. One of my favorites, go outside. How many times do we catch ourselves in that hunched over position, scrolling? Go outside, move your body, touch grass, literally, touch something solid.
16:22
Put a piece of food in your mouth and feel yourself chew it. Experience the slowness of the taste being picked up by your taste buds as your mouth moves it around. Slowing things down is an incredibly effective way to regulate.
16:44
So talking slowly, eating slowly, walking slowly, if that's helpful, or sometimes you can sense that your body needs fast movement, shaking, stomping, bouncing, swaying, swinging, right? All of that signals to the body, we're okay.
17:04
And you have to really feel what just feels good for you. There's one of the things that the mama attorney said that really stuck with me. I think she said it like, you need to rule your own realm, which essentially just means what is actually in your control.
17:23
One of the beauties of social media is it allows us to connect to a lot of people around the world. And the double-edged sword of that is that it gives us access to more information than one nervous system is equipped to hold.
17:40
You are one nervous system, right? You are not equipped to hold global trauma, right? There are some things you do have control over or jurisdiction over, right? Your home, your children, your partner, your friends, your dog, your pet, your sister, your parents, right?
18:02
So when you are trying to decide how to feel better, the question like, what do I actually control? What actually is in my power? What actually is my responsibility can really help narrow things down to what is doable for you, to what is actually in your zone of influence under your control, your home, your children, your pet, right?
18:29
Your vote, your donations, your phone settings. We're going to get into that in a second. You can rule that realm way more effectively from your prefrontal cortex when you're able to make those really thoughtful decisions about how to take care of yourself.
18:48
So regulating is really, really important. Choose one or two of the things that I just mentioned, experiment with them, try them on. You might find that one works really well and other not so well. Great.
19:00
We're each individuals. Choose what works for you. Now I just want to get really practical. It might be time to purge your social media feed. It might be time to mute or unfollow accounts that are sharing these really traumatic fragments of information.
19:23
In one of the Mama Attorney's follow-up videos, I didn't know you could do this. You can turn off suggested posts, right? All the posts that social media is suggesting that you follow based on your viewing activity.
19:37
You have to do that every 30 days, but you can turn it off. You can also turn off autoplay on videos. I had to completely delete the app for a reset. That might not be what you need, but some of these other really concrete ideas, purging, muting, unfollowing, turning off suggested post, turning off autoplay, maybe even deleting the app.
20:05
Those are concrete steps you can take to give yourself a break. Because when you are dysregulated, it doesn't help anyone. You watching those videos doesn't actually help the victims and you do not have to absorb the horror.
20:25
Your goodness as a person is not predicated on watching endless reels of the same videos, of the same horror. Those videos are for people who don't believe that bad things are happening. You already believe it.
20:40
You've seen it once. You know it's true. You know it's happening. You don't have to keep re-traumatizing yourself in the name of your goodness. If you want to actually help victims in the Epstein files, victims of ICE raids and their terror, if you want to help victims in global worldwide, in Gaza, in Iran, in these places that are engulfed in violence and oppression and the types of things that we want to help with,
21:17
there are actual routes that help them. If you're in the United States or if you're in countries where you have access to calling your representatives, call them. Encourage them to pass laws that protect the vulnerable, that expose the predators.
21:36
Find organizations to donate to that are doing the actual work of helping these people. Volunteer locally, vote, build strong community. Talk about this with your children in a way that helps them contextualize and understand what's going on.
21:55
You can support journalists who are doing careful recording and reporting so that the people who are involved in the perpetration of these horrific acts will be brought to justice. It's really hard, but I think we need to hear it.
22:12
Scrolling is not activism. Scrolling does not actually help the victims. If you are one of the people who have already been convinced that this is bad and going on and should be remedied, scrolling is not going to help.
22:29
It leads so often to that collapse that I experienced when I was no use to anybody. And these systems that thrive on chaos, they benefit when we are too overwhelmed to take thoughtful action. So the best, the most powerful form of resistance and response is to be regulated.
22:56
It's not possible all the time, right? Let me just say this. I don't know anyone who is trustworthy who would ever say that we are always going to be regulated. I don't think that's the human experience.
23:10
When we learn how to regulate ourselves so that we can take thoughtful action that helps to create the world we want to live in, that is when we really win. So if you feel restless when you take a step back from social media, that's normal.
23:29
It's your system looking for calm when there's been a lot of chaos. If you feel guilty, then that's one of those good girl rules doing the talking. You do not have to self-destruct in order to prove your goodness to anyone.
23:47
You can care deeply about what is going on in the world without sacrificing your nervous system. You can demand accountability and that action be taken to protect vulnerable people without absorbing like every video that is out there.
24:06
And the more we choose to self-regulate and to hug and to touch grass and to feel the earth beneath our feet and that regulates us, the more we are able to take the kind of thoughtful action that is going to help not only create the world we want to live in, but get actual justice and compensation and resources and help for the people who need it.
24:34
Thank you for listening. Thank you for being in this with me. Your messages and DMs are really, I'm so grateful for the time that you take to reach out and to share about your experience. I'm right in it with you.
24:49
I'll talk to you next week.
