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Actually 11 years 😒

poor you and your mental health??? smh you’re part of the problem. bet you didn’t even vote

During the Biden Administration all I focused on was clean energy policy, and that was great, very inspiring.

I get it. Been alternating between seething anger/exhausted depression. I'm old. on BP meds. I take my BP at home every morning. Doc recently upped the dosage & that worked for a bit. Then Trump bombed Caracas & it spiked. It spiked again yesterday after the woman was murdered by ICE thugs.

My happy break is gardening. But it's January, so I'm sowing Foxglove seeds in trays & rooting cuttings from houseplants. It helps.

I agree

I had to move to a whole other state once based on the continuous cortisol dump that was causing me to grind my teeth every morning the minute I woke up. Americans will have PTSD from this era, at the very least. Escaping to cat videos and happy hobbies between protest marches is necessary.

#balance

I alternate following the news (not all of it is bad - there are occasional points of light and fight) with looking at pictures of cats, dogs, rabbits, capybyras, and other soothing creatures.

The bad news started in 2016. There was a respite from 2021 to 2024, and then it started again.

My personal thoughts: both of those outlooks are true. It's important to collectively continue to do our best to fight back against bad actors taking over conversations and spaces. However, that intrinsically means running to fight another day. You won't be very good at the former without breaks.

That may work for you, and I'm not faulting you for it. But I can say that for ME that only makes it worse. The only antidote for me is to do all I can to oppose this fascist regime. Every chance I get, I protest, sometimes traveling an hour or more. For my mental health.

More and more I'm wondering if social media isn't a net detriment to society. I don't want to cede the forum but man has life gotten worse since everyone got online. I miss when the internet was only us weirdos.

All true. And I’d argue we’ve been in this trauma mode since the escalator in 2015. His first term was no picnic after all. A decade of this nonsense, and it’s worse than I would have guessed. If we stick together we’ll stay strong. We have to remember we actually have the power to change things.

If you turn off the bad news, it doesn't happen. Oh no wait that's bullshit and making excuses for inaction.

1/3 I totally get it, you got burned out from all the horrendous news. I often find myself in the same place. I saw a YouTube which was made prior to yesterday's cold blooded ICE murder in MN. Toward the end Heather Cox Richardson points out several positive facts from the Biden admin which may be

You’re on to something, there. Seriously, it’s cold comfort to know that there are so many others out there that are feeling the same rotten despair, and are taking solace in some of the same things!

Oh hell yes you have to have escaped to somewhere or something positive the past 5 years or you would be insane by now. What gets me is the constant lying and word manipulation by mostly all of the news media. It's insulting and infuriating. I can't watch.

Agree with this 100%

People who never give themselves space become bitter. Bitter people develop negative charisma. Negative charisma people undermine the causes they try to support. Embittering dissidents with bad news is a strategy. The stuff that makes you happy is necessary to maintaining positive charisma.

Hobbies and things that bring us joy are essential right now. It's ok to take a break and engage in self-care for a while. Sometimes, we have to talk each other down from the ledge. Hugs.

It’s what I had to do. Sometimes you drown so much in the noise and static that you don’t really realize how loud things were until it gets quiet. You spend a couple day’s disconnected you realize that the only thing making your life hell is the stuff that certain people feed you.

I’ve taken to saying “not my Jurassic Park, not my velociraptors” these days.