Читать книгу Notes on a Nervous Planet - Matt Haig - Страница 24

Where does anxiety end and news begin?

ALL THAT CATASTROPHISING is irrational, but it has an emotional power. And it isn’t just folk with anxiety who know this.

Advertisers know it.

Insurance sales people know it.

Politicians know it.

News editors know it.

Political agitators know it.

Terrorists know it.

Sex isn’t really what sells. What sells is fear.

And now we don’t just have to imagine the worst catastrophes. We can see them. Literally. The camera phone has made us all telejournalists. When something truly awful happens – a terrorist incident, a forest fire, a tsunami – people are always there to film it.

We have more food for our nightmares. We don’t get our information, as people used to, from one carefully considered newspaper or TV news report. We get it from news sites and social media and email alerts. And besides, TV news itself isn’t what it used to be. Breaking news is continuous. And the more terrifying the news, the higher the ratings.

That doesn’t mean all news people want bad news. Some do, judging from the divisive way they present it. But even the best news channels want high ratings, and over the years they work out what works and what doesn’t, and compete ever harder for attention, which is why watching news can feel like watching a continuous metaphor for generalised anxiety disorder. The various split screens and talking heads and rolling banners of incessant information are a visual representation of how anxiety feels. All that conflicting chatter and noise and sensationalist drama. We can feel stressed watching the news, even on a slow news day. Because, really, there is no longer such a thing as a slow news day.

And when something truly terrible has happened the endless stream of eyewitness accounts and speculation and phone footage does not help anything. It is all sensation and no information. If you find the news severely exacerbates your state of mind, the thing to do is SWITCH IT OFF. Don’t let the terror into your mind. No good is done by being paralysed and powerless in front of non-stop rolling news.

The news unconsciously mimics the way fear operates – focusing on the worst things, catastrophising, listening to an endless, repetitive stream of information on the same worrying topic. So, it can be hard to tell these days where your anxiety disorder ends and where actual news begins.

So we have to remember:

There is no shame in not watching news.

There is no shame in not going on Twitter.

There is no shame in disconnecting.