Watch (carefully) what you see

A client recently told me that she gets devastated when she reads about bad things happening to children. Unfortunately, it’s hard to watch the news or read headlines without coming across a local or international story involving a child tragedy. My client has a 13-month old son and she is especially sensitive to the pain surrounding these events. She walks around the house crying for hours after such exposure.

I told her to use a “child filter” on her news consumption. In other words, when she sees an alarming headline or starts to hear a particularly sad story about a child, she needs to stop. Don’t be “tempted” to read the whole article, or listen to the whole radio segment.

We all know that staying informed is important, especially to our health (covid and influenza), politics (which politicians most closely represent our values and votes, climate, weather, world events, even entertainment can be a wonderful distraction from everyday life.

But everything we put into our bodies and minds has an effect on us. Think of news as mental “nutrition,” — what do we want to feed ourselves to feel our healthiest? I think we need a balanced diet. Not all news is good, to be sure, but we can say a little prayer or silent acknowledgment honoring a victim without making a meal of their story, especially one that ends up making us sick.