How do you cope with living in this depressing era

[Prendetew]

Posting here for traffic.

I know the news is always negative and every decade has its bad moments but the 2020s seem particularly shit. I'm in my 30s and I can't remember ever living in such a depressing time like this.

Epstein files, rise of the far right globally, ICE, student debt, rising house prices, billionaire oligarchs controlling media and governments, climate change, the list goes on...

This is the world we have to live in right now. How do you deal with it and not despair? I guess limiting news consumption is an idea but isn't that just burying your head in the sand?

It feels like we're all in some kind of pressure cooker of hatred, divisikn and angst and its not healthy. A friend suffered a racist attack last week. It was caught on video and yhe perpetrator had 0 shame, he was like a man possessed. It's really shook me how emboldened ignorant racists have become thanks to the likes of Trump/ Reform etc

I focus on the things I can control and make my little corner of the world as nice as I can.
And honestly I don't think it's that depressing. Women have more freedom than any other historic era. We've not had a war on our soil in the uk since ww2. We have access to a huge variety of places and I can eat food from across the world in my local city. Plus I don't have to wash my sheets by hand or beat my rugs. It's a bloody lovely time compared to most others.

News channels need click baity style headlines for audiences there is no mileage in nuance or middle of road opinions, you never get interviews with people saying well this side is about 60% right but these 3 arguments for the other side are actually well thought out and valid
it's like when discussing abortion it always the extreme postions of it is always murder and the limit should be 0 weeks with the only caveat being if the mother will actually die without it ( roughly 0.002%) and those prosposing no limits whatsoever, you rarely hear those you think well maybe on demand upto 12 maybe 16 weeks but only medically criteria after that or some variant of that, polarising views are what they want so every item is turned into a large scale drama

That was my Mum too @landlordhell, she could remember nights in air raid shelters listening to the bombing and walking home to discover that their street was flattened. Like you, that does put anything that I have to deal with into perspective,

The early 1960s trump today, we went to school not knowing if we would ever go home, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the 1980s when we were living in a military environment we would check under the car every morning and start it up before the children got in. The Epstein events are an enlarged version of the Profumo Affair of 1963.

Today I planted a peach tree in a huge pot. Tidied up my garden, listened to the birds singing. Saw snowdrops and hellebores and a roe buck. It feels like spring is close and the things that matter are basically OK.

I haven't watched or read the news today. Too annoying. I've just put a duck in the oven, and prepped a pile of veg. DS and I will eat together, chat, play chess or scrabble.

You have to find optimism and humour wherever you can.

🙄

You havent mentioned any wars or famine. Just Epstien.

I mean my granny was one of 6 kids living on rations during a world war.

Your kids are living in the easiest life humans have ever had.

Kids are still living in medieval conditions in some countries.

@JudgeJ It’s interesting how time can erase certain issues-my IL’s look back fondly at the 1960’s because they were young and the economy was strong. They completely forget the Cold War!

If you listen to old radio shows, as I do, you’ll find that every era was depressing in its own way. I listened to an old episode of Moral Maze from the late 1990s recently, and some of panellists and guests were bemoaning the Labour budget and how big the welfare budget had got. Basically identical to discussions that commentators are having in 2026.

I live in Cornwall so I'm used to high unemployment, anti social behaviour, poverty, hum drum, dreary groundhog days, racism and all the things.

I do my best to keep my home nice and my garden nice. We had some sun today and so we deep cleaned the house and scrubbed the mildew and mould off the garden walls and patio. A really tough job but things look brighter and whiter now.

We travel (budget but still nice), we walk a lot and we love nature. We love views. We cook meals that reflect what we'd eat on holiday.

We make sure we have things booked in for the whole year which makes a huge difference.

I have turned off notifications on Insta, deleted Facebook (which made a HUGE positive difference to me!)

I no longer check the news. it's only Royal this, Royal that, Church scandal, war, war, war, Trump. Rinse and repeat. It's all so interconnected and weird! Makes me feel strange.

Oh and LOTS of music and YouTube Live World Webcams. I love seeing all the new places!

YANBU - it's pretty awful.

I think I try not to waste energy worrying about things that haven't happened yet that I have no power over - there's a great phrase that's something like 'Don't borrow worries from tomorrow'

Maybe pick one area you can give money or time to support - a food bank, counterprotesting fascist events, projects to support and welcome immigrants and so on.

This makes no sense. If you don't think the OP is real, why are you commenting at all about their issues?

The only way is to shut it out a bit. Regularly turn off your phone, the news, the radio. Go for walks in nature, travel. Anything that grounds you and reminds you of how insignificant we are and how fleeting all our lives are. Gives a great bit of perspective.

Get a grip. If you were alive 100 years ago you’d be down a mine or something equally hard work and living in a depression.

Also animals. Being around animals makes everything seem better.

I think this post is the nearest to how I deal with things.

Perspective is a great thing[not as easy when you are "only" in your 30s].

I look at some photos or pictures of how even houses looked on the inside in the 1800s or whatever, and shudder.
And the death rate in the past has been horrendous.
Dental care - yikes.
Childbirth.. I could go on.

Once we start being thankful for this that and the other, we see how a whole lot worse things could really be in our own lives.

So true. The medical advances are incredible - from anaesthetics to vaccines to antibiotics. Then there's clean drinking water and central heating. I feel so lucky to be born in the uk at this time in history

By stepping away from 24 hour news bombardment.

I'm not suggesting that people should be ignorant, but it's constant and overwhelming now.

I have just stopped paying attention. Some of it filters down to me but I never look for news anymore and don’t participate in conversations. I used to think people who had no idea what was going on were ignorant and in their own little bubble. But now I feel it’s a choice they make to stay positive/well and it’s better to be a bit ignorant and in a happy bubble, than to know everything and be miserable/stressed/depressed about it. Me knowing things doesn’t affect the outcome at all, but it does affect me.

It has made me care more about my community, where I can make some kind of difference (like giving to food banks, litter picking etc.) so I can care about causes and do real things without being hugely weighed down by the bigger picture (poverty/COL, the planet dying etc.)

I’m still trying to navigate this in my relationship because my boyfriend is very into current affairs, but it’s just all so negative. I’ve suffered with MH problems in the past, had a lot of therapy and need some peace for my future

Oh my god, i really feel this. Im early 30s too. I know no decade/era is perfect and we have made great strides in relation to acceptance and equality, tech, holding abusers accountable and victim support etc but there is something about this decade that feels very distant, detatched, materialistic and soulless? I cant quite put my finger on it but so much has had the life sucked out of it

I keep a vague eye on the news but also I have a rule for myself. If its something I NEED to know about, eg interest rates, flood warnings, then I take notice. Anything that I find upsetting and cannot do anything about, I avoid if I can't cope with it. I am not sure why you need it banned for everybody for you to remove yourself from it?

This absolutely

This too. If watching upsetting stuff would have ANY effect to help the people who are suffering then I would sit down and watch it. But it doesn't.

At around 30, you realise you're now a grown-up. You understand things affect you directly, rather than being filtered through your parents. You see that your actions affect your future, and it takes you aback. When you have children, all this is multiplied - yet you are now their filter, so you need to think about how to soften it all for them as well.

Now is not worse than ever. In most of the ways that matter, it's miles better than it's ever been for people in the 'industrially developed' world. Pick out a couple of issues you're willing to fight for, and take it easy on yourself.

I just get on with it.

The world has never been perfect and never will be.

When I think back to the 90s, everything seemed so much better. However, I’m not daft enough to realise that’s not because of a heavy dose of nostalgia / rose tinted specs.

If you’re waiting for the utopia to land, you’ll be waiting a very long time.