To find watching the news to be too upsetting?

[baileybrit]

I really don't like watching the news. I just find it to be too upsetting. For example, today I was in the kitchen - DH was in the next room, watching Al Jazeera. The volume was pretty high so I could hear what was going on. When the presenter announced the headlines, each and every headline was about people dying. There were like 5 headlines and that's all they consisted of - people being killed. Seeing stuff like that really brings me down. DH loves to keep a news channel on the whole day and it doesn't affect him at all. I don't know how he does it.

Are there any other folks out there who feel the same way?

The news is despresing and we live in a worrying time. But I think it's important to keep abreast of current affairs and have an informed opinion

Im the same
My husband also likes having a news channel on all day. I find everyone seems to be desensitized to it all. People also seem to be outraged at all the wrong things too.

Studies have been done to show that watching the news increases anxiety far more than listening to it on the radio or reading a newspaper. My Mum watches the news at least twice a day and reads the awful DM and has become more and more paranoid and suspicious. I read the i paper a few times a week and listen to the radio, I never watch the news.

Yes, I agree it's important to keep up to date with current affairs. I much prefer using the internet to keep up with current affairs than watching TV. On the net I have much more control over what I see.

I keep very much up to date with the news. I feel it is important to know what is happening in the wider world otherwise your mind shrinks and your world view becomes parochial.

However, I find a lot of the news very disturbing, such as reports of IS atrocities, FGM, torture and drug wars, particularly personal accounts. I cannot bear to read and but feel guilty because this is someone's true story that I am deliberately choosing not to know so that it will not play on my mind and I cannot do much about it. I feel bad about this.

Radio or newspapers is the way to go. Don't feel bad about avoiding the TV.

I feel exactly the same. I'm prone to depression and when I'm in a vulnerable state I impose a news blackout! It might leave me a bit ignorant but better that than unable to get out of bed in the morning!

I agree that it can feel like you are blocking out some innocent persons story when you avoid the news, but the thing is we are bombarded by hundreds of these stories and it's all sad, awful stuff. It can't be good for mental health and there isn't anything we can do to help anyway. Saying all that I can't stop myself checking my news apps several times a day.. It does make me very cynical of the world.

This is definitely me. I used to have a news app on my phone and read it a few times throughout the day and found it really got me down. My dh loves reading the news and only tells me the weird and unusual things now.

I don't watch the news nor really keep up with it. We live in sad times and there is very little I can personally do about it. I give to charity as much as I can, pray and just get on with life

I find once daily radio news a lot better. TV news is increasingly overblown and IMO choice of stories is so heavily influenced by what pictures they have that too often I would find myself saying 'but that's not even news'.

I can't watch the news, my anxiety won't let me.

I'm the same, I avoid, it's too bloody depressing. I read the headlines, not the details.

DH tells me lots of science and political stuff which I wouldn't bother myself to read.