Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast

Your Nervous System and the News: Staying Informed Without Staying Dysregulated

• Amanda Armstrong • Season 1 • Episode 117

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Living in the world right now can feel overwhelming, especially when every news alert seems like another crisis demanding your attention– the news can feel like both a moral obligation and a fast track to burnout. If you find yourself caught between wanting to stay informed and feeling completely dysregulated by constant alarming updates, this episode is for you.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why the news is designed to activate your stress response
  • The difference between staying informed and perpetuating dysregulation
  • The framework: only consume information proportionate to your ability to take action
  • Small, meaningful actions that support both nervous system health and social change

3 Takeaways:

  1. News media is designed to dysregulate you. 
  2. Match information consumption to your capacity for action. 
  3. Caring about the world and protecting your nervous system aren't mutually exclusive. 

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Websites to find local ways to serve:

  1. JustServe (justserve.org)
    • What it is: A community service platform that connects volunteers with projects from non-profits, faith-based groups, and community organizations. It's very project-oriented, making it easy to find one-time events or short-term needs.
  2. VolunteerMatch (volunteermatch.org)
    • What it is: One of the largest and most popular volunteer search engines. You can filter opportunities by location, cause (e.g., Animals, Arts & Culture, Seniors), and skills you want to use. They also list virtual and remote opportunities.
  3. Idealist (idealist.org)
    • What it is: While also a major hub for nonprofit jobs and internships, Idealist also has a powerful search function for volunteer opportunities. It's excellent for finding roles that might involve more specific skills or leadership, like serving on a board.
  4. Points of Light (pointsoflight.org/volunteer)
    • What it is: A global organization that promotes volunteering. Their website has a search function that aggregates opportunities from various partners, allowing you to find projects in your local area.
  5. Meetup (meetup.com)
    • What it is: While not exclusively for volunteering, Meetup is an excellent tool for community involvement. You can find groups dedicated to local clean-ups, community gardening, social advocacy, or simply connecting with neighbors who share your interests.

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Looking for more personalized support?

*Want me to talk about something specific on the podcast? Let me know HERE.

Website: https://www.riseaswe.com/podcast

Email: amanda@riseaswe.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandaontherise/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amandaontherise

Amanda Armstrong  0:00  
Amanda, welcome to regulate and rewire an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. 

Amanda Armstrong  0:25  
Hey friends, today's episode feels like it's coming at the perfect time. It's also an episode that I have been sitting on the idea of for a while, and because of conversations that I've seen coming through social media that are happening inside my membership. It just feels really important to have this conversation with you all now. It is a conversation that can feel tender. It's a conversation that can be charged, and it feels incredibly important because I don't know about you, but living in the world right now, especially here in the United States can feel absolutely overwhelming every time you open your phone or you turn on the TV. There's another crisis, catastrophe, another reason to feel like the world is absolutely falling apart. And if you are somebody who's already working with anxiety or depression, consuming the news can be like pouring gasoline on that fire that you already feel like exists in you. 

Amanda Armstrong  1:24  
And what I'm hearing from so many people is that they're finding themselves stuck between feeling like you should stay informed, but also feeling completely overwhelmed by this constant stream of alarming information that while they're scrolling on social media or turning on their TV, their chest gets tight, their thoughts start to race. They are left with feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness, while also having this little voice in their head that says, I need to stay informed, like I can't just bury my head in the sand. What kind of person would I be if I didn't know what was happening in the world? If I didn't care, if I didn't you know, any number of these thoughts that exist within all of us in this chaotic world right now. So if any of this sounds familiar, then today's episode is for you, because we are living through complex, polarized and at times, deeply distressing realities, and yet we are expected to keep functioning, parenting, working and healing. 

Amanda Armstrong  2:25  
So today, I want to talk about this intersection of all of this with your nervous system and mental health, how news and media affect our physiology and our psychology, and offer some practical ways to stay informed without constantly being activated, and how to make choices that are aligned with your capacity and your values. So let's start with one of the most important points that I think I can make, which is that the news is not neutral. It is designed to capture and hold your attention, and the most effective way to do that is by triggering your survival system. And this isn't some conspiracy. This is plain and simple behavioral psychology. Most media outlets, regardless of their political leaning, use catastrophizing headlines, repetitive crisis coverage, polarizing language, sensationalization over nuance in each circumstance or situation, because when your brain perceives threat, it pays attention, and the parts of your brain that are meant to help you discern Think critically hold complexity those parts of your brain start to go offline when you are activated, angry, feeling helpless or hopeless. What stays online are the parts of you that ask, Am I safe? Am I in danger? Do I need to fight, flee, freeze, fawn. Those are the parts of your brain that get hooked and pay attention and need more and more and more and more information and detail to answer these questions, or so it thinks traditional journalism. 

Amanda Armstrong  4:07  
So I want to share with you the difference of what this used to look like compared to what it looks like now. Traditional journalism used to follow what we call the inverted pyramid, so the most important information was delivered first followed by supporting details. The goal was to inform people about events that affected their lives and communities, and news was much more localized. It was delivering you information at a much more local, frequency based level, but modern news, what we exposed to today operates in a very different economy, something we call the attention economy. So news outlets don't make money from subscriptions like they used to. They make money from clicks, from views, from time spent on their platforms, ads, all of these different things. So. What keeps people there, what keeps people watching, people scrolling, and that is content that provokes a strong emotional response. And so understanding this doesn't mean that you should never consume news or this information. What it means is that you can consume it more consciously recognizing how it's designed to affect you, and this allows you to make more intentional choices about how much and what kind of news serves your well, being, your values, your capacity to take action in the things that matter most to you. 

Amanda Armstrong  5:37  
Now, to give you even more context to do that, let's talk about what actually happens in your body when you consume a lot of alarming news content, when you read headlines about crises, disasters, conflicts, your sympathetic nervous system activates. Your body releases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, your heart rate increases, your breathing becomes more shallow, your muscles tense up, all preparing you to respond to threat. Your nervous system does not know the difference between a tiger in your closet and what you're watching on TV. But here's the crucial difference, when there is a real, immediate threat in your environment, this activation serves a purpose, so that you can fight, flee or take some kind of protective action, and then when the threat passes, your nervous system naturally returns to regulation with news consumption, though you are getting activated about events that are often happening far away that you have little or no direct control over, and that do not require immediate action from you. So you get all of this physiological activation without the ability to discharge it through effective action. And what this creates is something that researchers call, quote, learned helplessness. You feel constantly threatened, but powerless to do anything about the threat, and over time, what this can do is shift your nervous system from activation into a freeze or even a shutdown response. So people who consume a lot of alarming news often report symptoms that look exactly like Generalized Anxiety Disorder, racing thoughts, trouble, sleeping, feeling on edge, constantly scanning for problems, the sense that something is bad is always going to happen. There's also something called vicarious trauma, or something that we call secondary trauma, when you are repeatedly exposed to traumatic content, even if you're not directly experiencing it, your nervous system can develop trauma responses, and this, again, is especially common for people who follow News about violence, natural disaster, human suffering. News consumption can also create what some psychologists call the mean world syndrome. So this is the belief that the world is more dangerous than it actually is. When most of our information about the world comes from news sources that focus on negative events, our perception of reality becomes skewed towards threat and danger. 

Amanda Armstrong  8:22  
And this is actually something that came up for me in therapy recently where, like most of you know, I have two young children, and I was talking about just like, general safety in the world today, and I like to let my, especially my five year old, like, have a lot of freedom, you know, around the neighborhood. And what's the balance between this and I have a wonderful therapist who regularly points out to me that actually the data, actually the statistics, the research shows that the world is much safer today than it was 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, and that there is much more good in the world than not. And I am so grateful for the way that she pushes back even on my perception of kind of mean world syndrome in the ways that it applies to my young family right now. 

Amanda Armstrong  9:06  
So all of this is to say that if you have ever felt wired after scrolling, hopeless, after reading headlines, numb or detached after just too much coverage, or like the world is burning and you're doing nothing about it. I want you to understand that that is actually your nervous system doing its job. It is responding to perceived threat, sometimes real, sometimes compounded by constant exposure with activation or collapse. So when you feel wired after scrolling, hopeless, numb, detached, burnt out, that's actually your nervous system doing its job. And the danger here isn't just with the news itself.

Amanda Armstrong  9:50  
It is the ongoing, unrelenting exposure to distressing inputs without sufficient repair. Repair action or connection, and that is what's keeping you stuck in survival mode. So I want to repeat that the danger here isn't just the news itself. It is the ongoing, unrelenting exposure to distressing inputs without sufficient repair action or connection that's keeping you stuck in chronic survival mode. Dysregulation happens. Survival mode becomes chronic and long lasting when we have consistent exposure to more cues of danger than safety. And in many ways, you can control some of that balance or imbalance with where you choose to put your time, attention and efforts. And this doesn't mean that real problems don't exist. They absolutely do, but the truth is that there is also a lot of good and beauty and kindness that exists in the world and within our communities that we can often miss when we are spinning in these non stop disastrous headlines and a natural next question becomes, now what right? 

Amanda Armstrong  11:05  
How do I stay informed without it, keeping me stuck in an unhelpful level of survival mode? If you're still listening to this particular episode, I want you to know that you can still care deeply, you can still stay informed. You can still want to help without living in a constant state of dysregulation, but it is going to take intentionality. Staying informed is important, but staying chronically dysregulated does not make you a better advocate, Ally, parent or human. In fact, it oftentimes makes us more reactive and less grounded, more likely to spiral or shut down, less able to discern what actions might actually help. 

Amanda Armstrong  11:49  
And something that I don't think gets talked about enough is that news induced dysregulation often makes people less effective advocates for the causes that they care about when you are chronically activated again, you're more likely to be impulsive, to get into unproductive arguments, to burn out completely. And so the real question becomes, how do I consume information in a way that supports action and awareness rather than fueling helplessness and harm. So here's the framework that I want to offer, only consume the amount of news that's proportionate to your capacity or ability to take meaningful action. And I'm going to repeat that too. Only consume the amount of news that's proportionate to your capacity or ability to take meaningful action. So for example, let's say that there is a natural disaster happening in another country. If you are not in a position to donate, volunteer, take any meaningful action to help consuming constant updates about the disaster might activate your nervous system without serving you or the people who are affected by this natural disaster. And this doesn't mean that you don't care or that you should be ignorant about world events. It means being intentional about how much detail you consume based on what you can actually do with that information. If you have zero bandwidth to do anything about a particular issue right now, no time, no money, no nervous system space, then consider that maybe Doom scrolling for two hours is an actually responsible awareness, and instead it is just trauma reenactment. And what I have been hearing a lot of lately is a sense of collective helplessness. 

Amanda Armstrong  13:42  
So with that, I want to just offer some general ideas as to what meaningful action could look like for a particular cause that feels both meaningful and accessible for you to participate in. So this could be direct action. This could look like volunteering, donating, participating in community organizing, contacting representatives, joining advocacy groups. This could look like informed civic participation, learning about local or national issues to help you vote thoughtfully, understanding ballot measures or researching candidates positions on different things. Action could look like lifestyle choices, making personal choices that align with your values, how you spend your money, what you buy, how you use your resources. It could look like skill building, developing skills that allow you to contribute to solutions, learning about sustainable living, conflict resolution, community organizing, whatever aligns with your interest and abilities. 

Amanda Armstrong  14:48  
I'm going to talk in a little bit about one of the things my sister in law does, and her skill is baking cakes in a way that she uses that to contribute back to our community. You. Other meaningful action could be community building in any way, shape or form, participating in your kids school, all the way to organizing a rally for something that's important to you, just being in your community, to offer mutual support and to be a voice in in spaces, in places, in different conversations that matter also meaningful action includes your personal regulation, taking care of your own mental health and your nervous system so that you can show up as your best self for the people and causes that you care about, with a special emphasis on that last one, personal regulation is a form of action. Taking care of your nervous system is not selfish or apathetic. It is a prerequisite for effective engagement with your community and the world's problems. 

Amanda Armstrong  15:52  
And a practical way to apply this framework, before consuming news about any particular issue, I invite you to ask yourself, what action could I realistically take based on this information? And if you have a clear answer, consume enough information to take that action effectively, and then stop and get into the planning of the action taking if you don't have a clear answer, consider whether consuming this information serves any purpose other than making you feel more activated or informed in like an abstract way. This does not mean ignoring everything that doesn't directly affect you. It does mean being intentional about how much detail you consume and why and something you might want to consider as well is to put a little bit more emphasis on consuming news about local issues that directly affect your community. That's a place you might want more detailed information, because you oftentimes have more opportunities for meaningful action in a local space, whereas for global issues that you can't directly influence you may choose to stay more broadly informed without consuming every single detail. Again, the goal is not to become apathetic or disconnected. The goal is to match your information consumption to your capacity for an effective response, because your nervous system was never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever meant to know about the things going on on the other side of the world, let alone everything going on in every part of the world. We were meant to have the information that we could take immediate action on. And the world's changed, and in order to keep ourselves well in a rapidly changing world, we need to understand its impacts on our physiology and our psychology. 

Amanda Armstrong  17:46  
And another point parallel to this conversation that I want to make is that research consistently shows us that contributing to your local community has a direct and positive impact on your mental health. So what are some things you can do? I told you I'd share this example. My sister in law loves baking, and she found an organization that asks members of the community to bake birthday cakes for foster kids or other underserved youth who otherwise might not get one. This is something she could choose to do once a week, once a month, a couple times a year, depending on her capacity. That is a way that she is taking a skill, a talent, an interest, a hobby of hers, and putting it to good use in her community in a way that gives a positive feedback loop to herself as well. And while I do not have baking skills enough to competently participate in that with my sister in law, I am lucky enough that one of my sisters, who's local to me, works for a nonprofit in the immigrant and refugee resettlement space that my family and even my young sons can participate in regularly, whether it is to help organize the donation center to deliver meals to families. And so that's the way that we put our hands in to a cause and into a community that feels meaningful and is accessible for us. 

Amanda Armstrong  19:04  
And then I have my other sister. She's gay and has four dogs, and some of her big causes are LGBTQ rights and safety women's rights, and she is a huge, huge advocate for animals and animal rights. And it would be really, really easy for each of these people if they wanted to. And we see this all over everywhere, to turn against each other, to say, oh, what? You're just baking cakes. You don't care about human trafficking in other parts of the world, like you're just, you're just baking cakes, or you're focusing on your local animal shelter, but like, what about these people who are victims of war crimes, who are coming into our country and need support and resettlement? Here's the thing, we have to stop doing that. We have to stop looking at the efforts that other people are. Can and are making and diminishing them because they are not equivalent to the efforts or the causes that feel most meaningful to us. It is a beautiful thing that we live in a world with very different humans and where very different causes pluck at their unique heartstrings. We live in a world where each and every one of us in different seasons of our lives have different levels of capacity and ability to participate in things, be it again, time, money, accessibility, mental health, capacity and so what I'm offering here is a moment for you to maybe pause and say, Okay, if sending my attention to all of the causes, all of the time consuming this information makes me feel like I'm drowning, if I take a breath, if I take a beat, if I take a step back, and I ask myself, what feels meaningful that is also accessible for me to participate in. What might that be? Is it a particular global issue, and the role that you take in that is helping to spread awareness and information, to call for donations and advocacy? Is it at a more local level? Is there a woman's shelter or an animal shelter near you. Maybe it's even more local to you. Do you have an elderly neighbor who could use some company or support in some way? Are you part of a local church, congregation or organization that makes outreach and service opportunities accessible? Do you have the bandwidth to read in your elementary aged kids classroom, or maybe it is something as simple and tangible that the next time you go on a walk, take a trash bag, take a small grocery bag, pick up trash along the way. That is a way for you to contribute positively to your community, to advocate for something that matters to you, whether it is clean streets, women's rights, global issues. 

Amanda Armstrong  22:04  
And again, if you are not in a place where you have the capacity to participate, be it for whatever reason, maybe you want to pause for a moment and ask yourself, what do I need to offer myself or even to ask from my community so that I can get into a place where I can give back. I think I've shared this on the podcast before, but I will never forget a conversation I had with a dear friend of mine. I finally opened up to her that I was just not in a good place. And she responded a little spicy with me, and she said, why did it take you so long to tell me? And then she followed up with, do you remember when I shared X, Y or Z with you and you got to support me when I was going through that really hard thing? Did you feel good about that? Did you feel good that you were able to support me in that? And I was like, Oh yeah, of course I did. And with tears in her eyes, she looked at me and she said, Then, why would you rob me of the same opportunity? Why would you rob me of the opportunity to be able to feel good about helping my friend basically, like, Don't you dare keep your struggles from me again, because we need each other, and that's what I'm here to share with you, is that we do, we do? We need each other. And so if you are not in a place to give, is it maybe a season to ask? And can you give yourself permission to ask so that you can get to a place where you're supported enough to turn back around and give back and for those of you who are looking for maybe a tangible set of resources, I am going to drop into the show notes a few different websites that I have used or found where you can look up local to you, ways of serving in your community in a way that matches your interest and your capacity. I think some of these might just be local to the US, but I do know that at least one, if not a number of them also have international service opportunities, because I am telling you that just watching hours of news is not the best use of your advocacy in your time these small, imperfect actions ground your nervous system because it tells your body, I'm not powerless. Look, here's something I did today. I was able to pick up a few pieces of trash. I was able to have a conversation with my neighbor, to anchor back into humanity and tangible advocacy and action. 

Amanda Armstrong  24:20  
So bringing this back to this greater conversation, I want to offer you some filtering questions that you might want to consider before consuming more news. So before you click to open another headline or app, try pausing and asking yourself, number one, what's my current nervous system state? Am I grounded or am I already dysregulated? Number two, why am I seeking information right now? Is it connection? Is it control curiosity, panic? Why am I seeking this information right now? Number three, what do I hope to do with this information? What do I hope to do with what I learned from this article? From this headline, from these 30 minutes watching the news, and number four, do I have the capacity right now, or do I need to come back to this later? From a more resourced state, you are allowed to be intentional with what you consume. You are allowed to take breaks. You are allowed to protect your peace without turning your back on the world. Please, please, please, also keep your eyes and attention closer to home. Sit on your porch, smile at your neighbor, notice the breeze or a pretty bird, touch soft things. Wear earrings that make you feel pretty. Have conversations with friends, not just about processing the news, but also to laugh, to joke, to share, to anchor back into the humanity that is not captured in headlines. 

Amanda Armstrong  25:48  
Some other things you might consider doing, to stay appropriately informed while protecting your nervous system, are to have time boundaries. Stop scrolling the news right before bed and decide what frequency serves you. Is it checking the news once a day once a week. Also choose your news sources. Intentionally look for outlets that focus on solutions and constructive reporting, not just problems. Unfollow or mute social media accounts that consistently share alarming content without offering constructive context or action steps follow more accounts that share the goodness of humanity. It's about balancing this exposure of disaster and delight in the world around us. Consider focusing local like we've already talked about, prioritizing news about your immediate community or region where you might have more potential for direct action or influence. 

Amanda Armstrong  26:43  
The goal is not to become apathetic or disconnected from the world's problems. The goal is to find a sustainable way to stay engaged that does not deplete your nervous system or undermine your capacity to contribute positively to the world. I know that it sounds cliche, but you cannot pour from an empty cup. You cannot take aligned action from a dysregulated or burnt out space, taking care of your own regulation and well being. It's not selfish. It is actually a prerequisite for showing up effectively for the people and causes that you care about, all right, friends, I told you that this conversation could get charged, maybe a little tender, but I did feel like it was incredibly important to address. And I know I took this tangentially a handful of places, but I wanted to give you some context, some permission, and some tangible suggestions on ways that you can balance out awareness with action that also considers your biology, your physiology, that our nervous system was never meant to take all of this on so that you can navigate the news with agency. So here are your three takeaways from today. 

Amanda Armstrong  27:58  
Number one, news media is designed to dysregulate you, and understanding that modern news operates in this attention economy that profits from your activation can help you consume it more consciously in a way that can protect your nervous system and your mental health. 

Amanda Armstrong  28:17  
Number two is to match information consumption to action capacity. With this, consider only consuming as much news as you can meaningfully act on. If you cannot take action based on the information or your nervous system does not have the capacity to take on that information without becoming dysregulated. Consuming more details is probably doing more harm than good. 

Amanda Armstrong  28:42  
And number three, caring about the world and protecting your nervous system are not mutually exclusive. Taking care of your own regulation is actually one of the most important things that you can do to show up effectively for the causes and the people that you care about. 

Amanda Armstrong  29:00  
And as always, friends, thank you for being here, thank you for listening, thank you for caring enough about yourself, about the world, about others, about your healing, to show up and hit play and be here for these conversations. This is new territory for all of us, and I think that we are all figuring it out as we go. And there's not some universal right or wrong way to do this. This is a heavy but important conversation. We live in a heavy world right now, but we also live in a really beautiful world. We live in a world where there are more people that care about each other than are trying to harm each other. We live in a world with so much beauty and we have to allow ourselves the space and the capacity to see that as well, and my hope was that something in today's conversation gave you permission to find the balance that works best for you. And until next week, I am sending so much hope and healing your way. 

Amanda Armstrong  29:57  
Thanks for listening to another. Other episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside rise my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space, or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program, restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes, again, thanks so much for being here, and I'll see you next time you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai