3 THINGS FOR WHEN THE NEWS IS OVERWHELMING

November 2023

When big things happen both in our life and in the world around us, we might struggle to make sense of them and wrestle with how to respond. If you spend any time online (ahem, who doesn’t these days?), you are seeing the events of the world filtered through the opinions and responses of friends, members of your community, and of course whoever and whatever the algorithm feeds you.

It’s a strange world we find ourselves living in.  

If you are (like me) over 45, you have spent more of your life analogue than digital, so you remember a world that moved a little slower. More and more, we are all living in this digital age, where life and information moves at the pace of a swipe. We are informed of heartbreaking occurrences on the other side of the globe within moments of them happening, and there is so much misinformation that it’s difficult to truly assess what is true and what is a constructed reality designed to influence us. Many of us feel pressure to have an opinion and respond right away, when the truth is, we may be overwhelmed with so many things coming at us at once.  

The question is: how do we stay informed of the world around us, not shut out or numb out, respond with wisdom and compassion, all while keeping our sanity?  

As some of these thoughts were swirling in my mind this last week, I came across a beautiful interview on the Ten Percent Happier Podcast with Kaira Jewel Lingo, a former Buddhist nun from Plum Village, the Zen community in France established by Thich Nhat Hanh.  

Within this podcast, she offers 3 Buddhist Strategies on how to meet the moment when the news is overwhelming. Here is a brief overview of the wisdom she shares: 

1. Mindful consumption of media: When you are listening, reading, or watching the news, check in with yourself. Paying attention to what is happening in the world is a compassionate action – it awakens our heart and our sense of being with the suffering of others. Our heart breaks with the family on the other side of the world living through war, or injustices happening right in our town. We are a global community and all connected. But is it useful to keep watching incessantly, to keep scrolling the media that is never ending? We might ask ourselves – is this helpful? Is continuing to take in more and more information helping alleviate suffering – my own suffering and that of others? Would my energy be better spent somewhere else than in overwhelming “doomscrolling”? 

1. Caring for self: Self-care is not just about treating ourselves. Caring for self naturally leads to caring for the world around us. We care for our bodies with nourishing food, water, movement, and rest. We care for our minds with awareness, with finding moments to pause, to let there be a sense of spaciousness and breath within us. We care for ourselves by taking time to play, to be in community, to experience joy and presence. And we care for ourselves by paying attention to our feelings, to allow ourselves the space and time for feeling challenging things. If we are able to give ourselves time to process difficult emotions, we free up energy. We then have the energy to take constructive action from a place of stability, groundedness, and wisdom.    

3. Wise Engagement: If we have been mindful about our consumption and offered ourselves space and time to care deeply for ourselves, we then have the energy available to engage wisely with the world around us. With sufficient energy, we can take compassionate action that may make a difference. We can’t solve every problem. But we can take actions that make a difference in our corner of the world. We may feel called to take the action of showing up in person where it’s needed, of donating money to organizations that are on the ground making a positive impact, or to amplifying marginalized voices. But those actions just get jumbled and are not effective over the long term if we are not taking care of our body, mind, and heart.  

If some of Kaira Jewel Lingo’s wisdom resonates for you, consider joining me for my upcoming online series, Wintering: Coming Home to Ourselves this Season. This series will be a 4-week book club/mindfulness series. We will read and explore practices from her book “We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption.” 

In this series, we will practice anchoring ourselves – coming home to the home within ourselves – for the upcoming winter and holiday season. This 4-week online series will include gentle movement practices, guided meditations, book discussion, journaling prompts, and community engagement to support our way toward holding a steady and grounded sense of ourselves as we move toward winter and engage with the world around us.

I hope you are navigating this time with care for self. 

Erin Joosse | she/her  

Source Yoga | studio director 

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