On being highly sensitive: why I no longer watch the news

I’m going to confess something that no respectable journalist should ever own up to. Here goes... I don’t watch the news.

Nope, never.

I don’t watch news broadcasts on TV, I don’t read the newspapers and I don’t visit news sites (which, to be fair, are dominated by celebrity updates anyway).

It’s because, as a sensitive person, the news makes me feel deeply despondent about the world and about the future. And given the horrors we’ve already witnessed this year – Orlando, Istanbul airport and Brussels, to name a few – my head-in-the-sand stance is more and more important.

As a qualified journalist, avoiding current affairs is somewhat reckless. It’s been drummed into me from my training how important a role the news media play in society – keeping politicians honest, setting the political agenda and keeping the public informed. In short, the media are powerful agents of change. With that in mind, I should absolutely be keeping up with the play about what’s happening in the world (and especially since newspaper circulations are falling – I should be supporting my fellow journos). Except...

I can’t.  

Because watching, for example, reports of shootings, terror attacks, racist diatribes from Trump and any accounts of crime deeply upset me. I’m not talking about just feeling sad or sorry for someone who is suffering, I’m talking about a core emotional response.

That’s kinda the deal when you’re sensitive. You pick up on the energies of others around you, and it’s difficult not to take that on. It’s the same with the media. I feel a smidgen of the victims’ distress and I crumble. I feel distraught and fearful. I feel distrustful of my fellow man/woman. I have a crushing sense of hopelessness. Which is no good to anyone. So I simply don’t watch it. 

I know this means I am uninformed, and I’m fine with it. But I really don’t think there’s any value in me knowing the details of the Orlando gunman’s MO or the Paris terror attack locations, for example.

I’m sure media commentators would condemn me for sticking my head in the sand, and I’m fine with that too. 

Because for me, the toll of reading, watching or discussing these events is too great. 

Sure, it’s important to know that these tragedies have happened, and I get that knowledge from social media and interactions with my peeps. But I don’t delve into those stories, and I’m not afraid to walk away from conversations that linger on them.

Here’s the thing – I do not need to bear witness to people’s suffering to know that these actions are deplorable. I do not honour the victims in any way by raking over the nuances of their pain. I do not value my own life, or my family’s lives, any more fiercely simply by knowing the extent that others have been subjected to unimaginable pain. So I don’t imagine it, at all.

Here’s how I honour people who’ve lost their lives or suffered emotional or physical pain as a result of a big-news tragedy. It’s the same way I make sure that the world is not –  in spite of how news coverage tends to make me feel – hopeless or bleak, and the human race is not intrinsically evil. 

I keep giving love. I keep volunteering my time. I keep sending out messages of positivity and hope on social media. I keep smiling at and acknowledging the people who are overlooked (lonely elderly people on park benches, miserable bus drivers, exhausted cashiers, etc). I keep showing up for my loved ones who need me. (I am not saying I nail this stuff every time, BTW.) Most importantly, I keep focusing on the beauty, the joy and the magic in every day.  

Liz Gilbert says that when confronted with horrifying news stories, instead of upsetting herself by reflecting on the nefarious forces that led to such a tragedy, she looks for the helpers. The people who respond from the most basic level of humanity – that compulsion to love and support each other, which we are all hardwired to do – by assisting those who are affected by a devastating event. The people who queued all day in the Florida heat to donate blood after Orlando. The people who offered to ride public transport with Muslims after the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney. The people who took around glasses of orange juice after the Boston Marathon bombing. My heart swells just thinking about them. 

I am not suggesting everyone should avoid the news, and I’m certainly not advocating ignoring horrific events completely. It’s true that these tragedies are an opportunity for us to make change in the world – lobbying for gun reform, for example, or rethinking our social attitudes to alcohol. So, yes, there is value in learning more about these tragedies and in starting conversations that may inspire change at a community and even a global level. 

But often, in my experience, what actually happens is we stand around muttering comments like ‘it’s so sad’ and ‘it breaks my heart’ then we go back to talking about Pokemon Go. That’s not a criticism, by the way – if gathering to discuss tragedies, even for a short time, makes you feel better and gives you an emotional outlet, that’s great. For me, it doesn’t – it simply leaves me with a sense of futility and powerlessness. So instead I’ll allow community leaders, reporters and those who feel called to agitate for change to delve into negative news and use that as their fuel for action. I’ll support them where I can, but only from a distance.   

There is nothing I can do to stop these sorts of tragedies from occurring. What I can do, however, is make sure they do not define the human experience for me and for those around me. I don’t need to listen to the news to do that – I just need to listen to my heart. 

RELATED POST: One for the sensitive types - how your weakness can be your strength

How to let go of pain: pick up a pen and paper

I’ve long been an advocate for writing as a means of healing. Putting pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard, has been the best weapon in my arsenal for plumbing the depths of my emotions and moving past hurts – particularly when an issue involves another person.

The other day I came across some academic endorsement of the catharsis I have experienced via the written word (yay science!).

In her book Rising Strong, vulnerability expert Brene Brown references research from James Pennebaker at the University of Texas. James says: “Emotional upheavals touch every part of our lives. You don’t just lose a job, you don’t just get divorced. These things affect all aspects of who we are – our financial situation, our relationships with others, our views of ourselves, our issues of life and death. Writing helps us focus and organise the experience.”

Pennebaker’s study, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, found that participants who wrote about traumatic experiences for four consecutive days reported greater happiness three months later, visited the doctor less than usual during the following six weeks and seemed to have a healthier immune system compared with the control group who wrote about superficial topics.

Essentially, he says, translating painful and confusing experiences into words helps us get to grips with what happened, which helps us navigate our way through. We become active creators in our own life stories rather than passive bystanders.

I’ve never tried the four-day exercise that Pennebaker advocates, but I did use writing as therapy recently when a friend did something really shitty to me that left me reeling. My first instinct was to contact him and force him to explain his actions, but my wounded pride would not let me. I’m glad I hesitated, because communicating with him before I had got my thoughts in order would mean I would have likely launched some personal attacks that I would regret forevermore (and looked like a dick in the process).

What I did instead was write him a letter (using pen and paper, so I’m less likely to edit it as I go) being very specific about why I was upset. I wrote two pages, and when I read it back, I could see a very clear pattern. My tone had changed from being angry and accusatory to being self-reflective. Which is a helpful progression. I’d expressed my pain without having to confront him, and had managed to make sense of it to the point where I recognised how I had contributed to the situation by having unrealistic expectations of his behaviour. I was still unhappy about the event but I was no longer furious at him. Anger, after all, is a secondary emotion, masking a deeper fear – if we want to move past what happened, we need to find out the issue underlying the anger. I did not send the letter; I did not need to.

When you feel overwhelmed by emotions sometimes you just don’t want to do the things you know will help. You feel justified being angry, so you don’t *want* to move past it. But I know from experience that if I can funnel my emotions onto a piece of paper, I will process the experience in a much more helpful way. And when the lesson has been learned, the Universe won’t send me that situation again.

This entire blog is testament to the power of the written word to ease the pain of the human heart, and build a bridge to peace. Almost every post I have written has reshaped my emotional landscape and empowered me to be proactive in working through the challenges I face.

If there’s something you’re struggling with right now, I’d recommend you try writing about it. Don’t worry about being clever or lyrical or creative, just be honest about how you feel. It might not resolve your pain but I bet it will give you some clarity to move forward. 

RELATED POSTS: In praise of writing. How to make every moment count.

I'll sit with you when you're hurting. And I won't try to fix you

A couple of months ago there was a story bouncing around the internet about a woman who’d created a series of greeting cards to send to someone going through cancer. What was unique about Emily McDowell's cards was their raw honesty. Instead of the trite, and frankly unhelpful, standard card messages, they said what someone suffering a life-altering illness really needed to hear. Stuff like: “Please let me be the first person to punch the next person who tells you everything happens for a reason” and “I wish I could take away your pain. Or at least, take away the people who compare it to the time their hampster died.” But my personal favourite was this one: “I'm sorry I haven't been in touch. I didn't know what to say.” I like this because it beautifully captures the helplessness you feel when someone close to you is suffering, and you know there is nothing you can say or do to ease their pain.

I was reminded of this recently when I was spending time with a friend who is healing from a broken heart. Over the course of our conversation she ran the gamut of emotions from rage to disappointment to shame to grief. I wanted so badly to offer some advice or some truism that would help her find peace, even if temporarily, but I had nothing. But that’s not what she needed from me, anyway. It’s not up to me to fix the situation, my job is to be there and listen. Empathy is not a verb, it’s a heart space.

Liz Gilbert wrote a beautiful and moving post a few months ago about the despair she felt after another mass

One of Emily McDowell's beautiful cards.

shooting in the US, and how she attempted to turn that sadness into hope on a micro scale: “When the world starts to feel overwhelming in its sorrows, I always ask myself to look around me – to narrow down my focus – and to notice somebody who is nearby me, who is suffering. I can’t help the millions, but maybe I can help one. Life is hard; there is always someone going through great pain. I tell myself: Go sit with that person today for a while. Don’t try to solve their life, or answer for God [as to why it has happened], or offer dismissive ‘reasons’, or try fix the whole world. Just say, ‘I don’t know. But I will sit with you through this.’ Turn your overflow of sorrow into love.”

When you don’t know what to say or do, it’s tempting to either rush in with solutions or platitudes, or to just back away completely. Don’t do that. Lean in. Sit beside them and listen. That’s how you show love. That’s how you say ‘I hate that you’re suffering and I can’t change that but I will bear witness to your pain and hold your hand when you need me.’ What people need when their world is broken is the warmth of human connection. That is the one thing you CAN do.

Take heart. How to feel, give and receive more love

The heart chakra, located in the centre of the chest, is the energy centre that’s all about how we give and receive love – to all people, not just our partners, and to ourselves. 

People who have blockages in their heart chakra can be judgmental or they could be prone to jealousy. They might be unable to forgive someone or they might be grappling with grief.

As the fourth of the seven chakras, this is the meeting point of the energy centres that are associated with the physical world (the base, sacral and solar plexus chakras) and the three chakras representing the spiritual world (more on each of those in future posts). To get a bit airy-fairy, it’s where heaven and earth meet. 

When the heart chakra is balanced, we’re compassionate, empathetic, peaceful, loving and able to help others without depleting our own resources (i.e. we don’t overcommit). We’re also able to honour our feelings, crying when we need to, but also administer self-care when we need it – that’s everything from drawing ourselves a bubble bath to simply speaking kindly to ourselves. We’re also able to receive love easily – we don’t say ‘no’ to people when they offer to help and we don’t put up barriers when people who we like get close to us.

What I think is so significant about the heart chakra is that while the solar plexus was all about shame, this chakra’s enemy is grief. If you think about it, it is loss of any sort (not just bereavement) that makes the heart hurt. Because self-love is so strongly emphasised in this chakra, this loss might be to do with your attachment to ideas about what your life should look like or who you thought you should have become.

Repressed emotions really come to the fore in this chakra – particularly for people who suffered deep hurts in childhood such as a death in the family, bullying or abandonment by a parent.

People with deficiencies in the heart chakra might be:

* anti-social

* lonely

* fearful of intimacy

* narcissistic

* judgmental (including racist, sexist, homophobic etc)

* lacking empathy

* unable to let go

* unable to forgive

* struggling to accept help from people

People with excessive energy in the heart chakra might be:

* co-dependent

* jealous

* demanding of their loved ones

* needing to be needed

* fearful of betrayal

Any issues with the arms can be related, too – and when I’m clearing this chakra in a reiki session people often report tingling in their hands. That’s because this chakra is all about touch – and that’s a key way we show love to people, right?  

To clear blockages in the heart chakra, one suggestion I’ve heard is to try and go a week without criticising anyone, which will really help you examine how accepting you are.

· Remember that love is about giving AND receiving, so look at how you can increase the amount of love you’re giving out – that’s anything from smiling at people regularly to giving compliments and donating to people in need.

· If you’re into yoga, back bends, bridges and the wheel pose are great for targeting this chakra – and yoga also helps you to sit in the present moment, which is beneficial for your energy field as a whole.

If you’d like to work with me to heal any of the issues in this article, you can book energy healing sessions here. More information about how I work is available here.