News Flash

I’ve been having a hard time recently, mostly to do with the state of the world. I was almost able to feel better after a couple of days in the mountains, mostly because there was no network up in the hut. No news. No constant beating myself over the head with the latest depressing information.

I’ve cut back, but I was always a news junkie. I’ve always read a daily paper. Sometimes it was a local, and for years I got the New York Times as a digital subscription. There was just so much in it, even if I wanted to take a break from the news. I could read about fashion, astronomy, sports, odd stories of love, long interviews with interesting people. However, I always cycled through the front page, and after this last US election, I just couldn’t take it.

I decided to support the Guardian in place of NYT, and I’ve been going through the BBC news app, and my local news app. Apparently, even that is too much for my mental health. I’ve been severely unhappy, to a point that I’m full of self-hatred for all the hurt the US is doing to the world. It’s as if I’m personally responsible. And I can intellectualize as much as I want, and try to talk myself out of it, but that’s the thing with depression; whatever the cause, you just can’t be reasonable about it. I compare it to having the flu. There’s something going on in my brain that won’t let me like myself, and just like you can’t tell your body not to have the flu, I can’t tell my brain to get over itself.

I should go see someone. I’ve done therapy on and off for years, and it helps in a crisis. I’m normally not such a verbal person, and while talk therapy is good when I’m at a point like where I am right now, if it were at all acceptable, I’d probably to better with a therapist who worked with, say, gardening, or horses, or something natural that would help me feel connected to the world. There is a bias towards variants of therapy where the therapist sits behind you on a couch making “um-hmm” noises and you wander through your issues.

So, I’m going to see how long I can keep off the news sites, and see if that makes me feel any better. So my news flash is that I don’t want anymore news!

Foro agrees. He was up with me this morning, enjoying the sunrise, listening to the birds, all things that are much healthier and more beautiful.