Particularly - America.
I personally have found that, I live in the past to cope. Nostalgia is my drug. It sometimes doesn’t help because all it does is that it makes me yearn and beg for things to be back to where things were. Because it warps my mind into opening time capsules whenever I watch an old show or listen to an episode of some niche radio show that long stopped producing new material.
However, it helps because, it at least reminds me that there are some things that I can revisit. If I couldn’t revisit anything, play the games I played, read the books I read, watched the movies/shows I used to, then I’d be up shit’s creek because I’d have to face the fucked up things people consider what are the ‘best that’s offered’.
Turn off your phone and enjoy real actual life as in the situation right in front of you. Make it happy. Fuck the noise.
There is always something going on. The world is always falling apart. The locations just vary.
In other words, this too shall pass. Do what you can to make the world a better place, survive, and let go of what you cannot control. Can’t carry the world on you shoulders all the time. Sometimes it has to save isself or deal with the consequences.
I help out at the local food bank and spend a lot of time on Imgur looking at not politics
One thing I’ve been doing is doing random online classes instead of doom scrolling. There’s a ton of free ones that you can do at your own pace and spend an hour or two each day learning new stuff. Just generally being more mindful and curating my media inputs and replacing algorithmic rage inducement with better stuff. Here’s a few examples, but there’s tons all over the web:
Oh look. I’m not the only one. Additionally I started reading (I would say “again” but that would be a lie) and engage in smaller social circles instead of the global rambling. It’s actually been a nice experience so far. Sadly the reality around me still exists though but nothing I can do
Organize in your community. Doing something/anything will help alleviate the anxiety and stress you are feeling.
Avoid news. Turn off internet. Literally, stop looking for like two weeks. The difference is palatable. I’ve used this technique a handful of times over the years.
The old “ignorance is bliss” strategy. Tried and true.
Look on the bright side, when’s the last time you ever heard of the word famine?
That’s a valid and useful thought.
Try and see the optimistic side of things. Like, maybe if Trump and his ilk are successful, they truly will try and make things better for the world. I know it’s a long shot, but what the fuck else can I do?
Poorly, to be perfectly honest.
I don’t.
Stoicism.
It does not make sense to worry about things outside my ability to change. Humanity has survived significantly worse. All I can do is prepare, run, lift weights, and whatever else can be useful.
I think most people yearn for the past, and always have. People who grew up in communist East Germany (the country) even long for the glory days of the German “Democratic” Republic too. The term Ostalgia (East-algia) was coined for that. I think everyone long for a past that never truly existed and was only rose-colored by the innocence of childhood and early youth. Fewer people die in violent conflicts each year (at least up until the invasion of Ukraine), childhood deaths decline, yet the world seems extremely violent and polarized. I think the world was always violent and polarized, but we didn’t have social media and the internet to broadcast and amplify the violence and our differences.
I recently started learning to play guitar and am addicted to it. Really keeps you in the moment and makes your forget the current state of the world while playing, at least for a bit.
I also live in the past probably to an unhealthy level. I have a pretty massive data hoard of old 90’s/early 2000’s everything, tv shows, movies, old commercials, radio songs, magazines, and a huge collection of old games. I collect as many pictures as I can find of old things I remember, old home videos from the time period of people just like walking around in malls and stores that no longer exist, etc. I draw on that past period of happiness, because I haven’t felt genuinely happy in over 10 years at this point.
I try to fully immerse myself I guess as a form of dissociation/escapism. When I’m dragged back to reality or unable to preoccupy myself my mind goes to dark places. I cope with weed and alcohol. I take naps when I can when my mind is breaking. Sometimes it builds up till I have psychotic breaks, or self harm. I guess that’s an ‘outlet’ but it’s really not good. Therapy can help sometimes, but only insofar as helping me to cope with the outside world, but there’s only so much that can be helped there when the problem is external and almost entirely unavoidable. There’s only so much I can tell myself “this is fine” while the house is burning around me.
I’m a wreck. I do not cope well.
Spread awareness about it and change my actions to mitigate the impact of it if I am able to do so. For example by protesting or boycotting.
Only reading about things and taking no action tends to pile up the emotions.
