To feel like we’re living in a state of constant fear lately?

[Silvercandycane]

Does anyone else feel like they’re living in a constant state of fear and panic lately?

We had covid and lockdown,, then the Ukraine war and the thread of nuclear attack and now it’s strep A killing children.

I’m on edge constantly and feel like I haven’t been able to fully relax in the past three years.

The media aren’t helping.

Is anyone else feeling the same?

I've not watched the news for 2 years, don't know too much about anything that's going on to a certain extent and when anyone tries to talk me about the news I just say I'm not interested, pretty happy in my own little bubble without the constant anxiety.

Yes I feel like I am exhausted from living in a constant threat environment and am contemplating completely dropping away from social media and Mumsnet for a while

I am reading a book called The Daily Stoic - Meditations On Wisdo, Perseverance and the Art of Living. In one of the entries the authors point out that one of the most powerful things you can do in a era of 24/7 connectedness is say 'I don't know.' Or even more provocatively, 'I don't care;' and that people take it as a commandment that they must have an opinion on every world event and every TV series and every book or album. How much time, energy and pure brainpower, they ask, would you have if you drastically cut your consumption of media and decided not to have an opinion on everything and excited or outraged or saddened by it?

The UK is the 17th happiest nation in the world (the scandis, Canada, Oz beat us, unsurprisingly). Even with the current hassles there is so much to be grateful for; just look around at other places/times you could be living. Did you see Haiti on the news last night? What a hellhole that is and that is in no way uniquely horrible.

I feel like this but I do think a large amount of it is the speed with which we can all access the news etc. When I was growing up in the 80s you’d read the newspaper in the morning - which was the news from the day before - and then you’d watch the news at 6pm or 10pm and that was it. During the day you’d go about your business filling your life with other stuff. Now you can literally refresh your phone every second and see “new” news. There’s no escaping it.

The media do love to wave their shrouds, I feel.

Grandparents lived through the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, global food shortages, living in London during the Blitz, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the cold war with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation and two world wars.

No. I read the news and am informed about what is going on in the world but I'm just not a panicky type person. I take things day by day and be rational. I've dealt with a lot of crap in my life and if something else happens I'll deal with that too like I always do.

I don’t feel this way, no, as I don’t watch/read news and tend to only follow ‘positive’ accounts on instagram (though I don’t go on it much these days).

Lockdown did have a huge impact on my mental health, but I bounced back from when they re-opened gyms and pubs outdoors (April 2021?) as exercise and socialising are what I fill my cup up with.

It all just feels so long ago, I guess, and life has returned to normal all around me. It sometimes feels like people are needlessly holding on to it - we’ve been out of lockdown/Covid restrictions longer than we were in them (17 months vs 16 months)!

You can’t always avoid the news but I have unfollowed all news pages on social media, don’t listen to the radio in the car and I don’t watch live tv so I can avoid ads because all of it just causes fear and anxiety. Me and my children are much happier not living in a constant state of anxiety.

We are so immensely privileged to be stressing about 10 children having died with strep.
I actually find it infuriating that people feel at liberty to worry about this, but not at all about real problems that most other people every bit as important as us in the UK have to face daily.

Feeling the same way here.

Covid was bad for us. DH was made redundant and didn’t work for months so finances were battered. (I had a mental health crisis while pregnant with DS born in late anutumn and wasn’t able to go back to work. I’m waiting for a mental health referral to a service that isn’t taking them.)

It’s hard to tell whether things are as frightening as they seem or I’m back where I was two years ago. Like pp it feels safer to avoid media but even so it’s what people around are talking about. I can’t sleep, I’ve lost weight because of the anxiety knot in my stomach and I can’t shake this sense that everything is on a precipice and it’s not if but when. But the world looks normal enough.

These may or may not be real problems.

Yep ignore the mainstream media. I also recommend reading the book The Real Anthony Fauci for a glimpse of how fear is misused to promote Big Pharma profits and tighten control over the public.

It's not any worse than it usually is. There's always bad stuff going on in the world. In fact, I'd say things are generally better than they were in the past. There's no point worrying about things you can't control.

They are keeping everyone frightened so no one does anything about being ripped off by the private companies owned by their chums or scrutinise who owns all the property.

Love this.

Everything has been politicised these days.
There’s a campaign for everything.
There’s a victim on every corner.
There’s an excuse for every crime.

There’s always someone being blamed or cancelled.

it’s too much. and didn’t anyone ever think that crying wolf at a society level, would eventually lead to societies that stopped caring.

I know ive pretty much stopped caring about everything i couldn’t control. Indeed the more i hear about an issue, the less interested i am about it. Indeed the more i see in the media, the more cynical i am about it. i haven’t cut myself off, but i do find True journalism is very rare now.

Life is just so much more chilled and even, there’s no anger or frustration in my life over issues which don’t affect me, or i can do nothing about.

I don’t subscribe to it, I was sucked in initially, particularly with Covid, watching BBC Gov conferences etc, but fed up with the misinformation, haven’t watched BBC news in ages and much happier for it.

The media are fuelling it. ‘Sex sells’ has gone out of fashion so they use fear porn now.

I watch the news a lot.... I agree there are lots of things happening in the world which are very negative, but that's because it's what the news concentrates upon. There are many good things too, but that doesn't seem to sell 'news' stories these days.

Am I worried? Am I fearful? No, not at all. I live in the UK, and despite the economy and a government in flux, we are lucky to live in a land where we have so much in comparison to large parts of the rest of the world.

It's the cost of living rise that gives me physical anxiety as that affects us all directly. I've turned off news alerts but I feel I do need to know what's going on politically as I hate feeling ignorant, so can't win really!

Back in the 80s there was a flesh eating bacteria scare and this was before social media. Horrendous stories of this very rare disease 'infected' the press. I remember an Evening Standard headline screaming ANOTHER CASE FOUND. In the end when the scare had run it's course it turned out that there were about 70 cases a year and that was normal. Strep A will fall into the same category I'm sure.Either we grow up as a society and grow a backbone or we are doomed.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrotizing_fasciitis

Just don't read the newspapers and come off SM, these are all fuelling it

I'm in my 50s and I remember shitting myself with; 3 day week, nuclear war, mad cow disease, flesh-eating bug and of course millennium bug (planes were going to fall from the sky). Along with Saddam and WMD, MMR causing autism and the death of all insects.

I often wonder what happened to flesh-eating disease, I assume it's still out there but just no longer news worthy.

I don’t watch the news and I don’t have SM.

I get an email with the new which I read when I’m mentally ready to.
Sometimes I’ll just read the headlines and not the full story.

My anxiety is much lower than most peoples.

I work in a high stress environment where I have to hear about quite dark things involving children and I used to suffer with depression, so I am very careful about my MH.

Sometimes it may feel like turning a blind eye by not keeping fully up to date but sometimes you just have to put yourself first.

Reading the Daily Mail gives you cancer and that's a fact and yes the flesh eating disease is still out there. Don't want to add to the fear or anything .....🤑

abcnews.go.com/US/florida-abnormal-increase-flesh-eating-bacteria-cases-due/story?id=91734454

The media knows exactly what it's doing and they are laughing at us.

Governments do good as well as bad but do they EVER want to report on any of it? No, because the bigger story is a change of Government. Discontent sells.