I still think this and I try to keep it in mind even while 80% of my feed is people expressing outrage and vitriol at anyone who isn’t wholeheartedly promoting some specific opinion about the best path forward for the world
Everyone is angry about the world and scared about the future and defensive on account of being pretty sure (correctly or not) that someone else is blaming them for something terrible and I don’t know if any of that will help but it’s probably useful to acknowledge what’s happening and breathe a bit
I don’t really want to armchair-psychoanalyze people but I swear I haven’t seen folks so constantly and universally marinating in their own stress hormones since like April 2020
I was just talking to my wife the other day about how lately the news has been triggering the same trauma responses I felt almost continuously during that time.
I've been thinking about this around climate change. Today is a beautiful day. The outdoors feels like it's a place to just stretch out and relax and be comfy in. The mountains look great. And I'm wondering if it's too nice.
My therapist earned his pay trying to talk me down this week. And purely anecdotal but I feel like people are even *more* scared of this election's results than in 2020.
Can confirm...if only from my own pure anecdotes. By this point 4 years ago we were in the middle of a plague. The "worst" most could imagine had already happened in March/April/May. Now our "worst" filters are all recalibrated from that, plus four years of downward spiraling.
It's really bad. Rationally I still feel like most factors are in Biden's favor - even not calculating in Trump's other legal hurdles and the fact he'll probably be sentenced in September even with the Supreme Court's shenanigans - but my brain keeps "doompilling" me.
Personally, I feel like there's no more rational an action then preparing for the worst. But again, depressive with only anecdotes to draw upon talking here. Not in much of a position to offer succor.
Trust me, it was awful. We had to share our hot takes on imminent doom on 3x5 index cards duct-taped to lampposts. Discourse could take weeks instead of hours, and whole threads could be lost if it rained. If you wanted to block someone, you had to take a Sharpie to their index cards.
I don't know how old you are, but: no. Not like this.
There has always been a measure of trust, that even if things go bad, governments would try to do the best for their people.
That trust is gone; all over the world people are now aware, they are just fodder for rich and powerful people.
Dude I love Stormy. What I really love is she is a person who has worked as a porn star who clearly owned a former President in the Twitter flame war. She's obviously a sharp stick and really knows how to put Trump in his place.
win or lose, tens of millions of Americans are going to vote for Trump in November and nobody has found a more coherent motivation than @adamserwer.bsky.social 's The Cruelty is the Point
I wonder how much of this is also about feeling powerless? I try to remember what Joe Rotblat said, that you can start small and before you know it, you've changed the world.
Accepting situations over which we have no control is the first step in focusing on those small things we can do, but it's immensely difficult because it feels like surrender and we're mostly trained from childhood not to do it.
That’s the issue, we were taught that we cannot change the situation. People who say that usually think that it is easier to see the world collapse than changing the current way things are happening.
Honestly not a bad idea. One of the good things I got from therapy is to just take ten seconds if I have that tightness in my chest before doing something. Simple, but effective, and if it doesn't work, that means I probably need to admit I need a break.
I feel like you are talking from a privileged point of view. A lot of us are not worried about the future, but mostly struggling to be alive. What people from US worry about is what we from other places are already living. Not blaming you, just pointing out
A thing I read once that comes in handy:
An ancient human skull was found that was missing most of its teeth. They figured out it was from age; dude was old when they died.
And yet this was pre civilization. Which means the younger people around this person were sacrificing of themselves...
... to keep this old man alive past when his body was even capable of securing food.
That's altruism. Before people could write, maybe before they had language, we were good. We wanted to care for our oldest and the sick. We have grandmothers because it's ADVANTAGEOUS. And we've forgotten.
I've learned from @rahaeli.bsky.social that those of us who post anything at all are already outliers among the set of people even on this site, let alone a larger slice of people.
As much as the Right wants everyone to think that everyone is a monster that doesn't care about anyone else, it's not true.
It's a bell curve. The modern Right is about 30% of Americans. Most of us just want to be left alone, and leave other people alone.
I don’t think it needs saying but being surrounded by constant negativity - especially anger about the state of the world - is terrible for anyone’s mental health.
It’s okay to mute words or not follow certain feeds or people. You have no obligation to engage in something if you don’t want to.
+if it's not helpful! I know lots of folks who feel like it's important somehow to witness this stuff, and it can be. But if it reaches a point where all it's doing is stopping you from being able to show up for your community by making you miserable, it's OK - imperative, even - to take a breather.
