Ask and Answer
Q: The past few months have been incredibly challenging for my mental health. I feel a moral obligation to stay up on the political news and coronavirus updates and also am experiencing increased symptoms of depression, which I struggle with during the best of times. I also have been surprised by new bursts of anger that have not previously been a common part of my experience. Are these feelings normal? Is this a mental health issue or something else? — Fellow Human
There are many studies in research psychology that demonstrate what has been coined “emotional contagion.” One much-replicated study demonstrates that babies only a few days old will cry when they hear other babies crying (and will not cry at other loud noises, showing emotional discernment). In 2014, a large-scale study using over twenty years of social-media data found that moods, including happiness and depression, are influenced by others’ expressed moods on Facebook timelines. Furthermore, this study added to a growing body of research that demonstrates in-person and non-verbal cues are not necessary to trigger emotional contagion — simply being exposed to writing about others’ feelings will trigger a parallel emotional response in most people.
I prefer to think of “emotional contagion” as one way we experience empathy, or the ability to share the emotional experience of another person. As humans, we don’t simply “catch” a feeling in proximity. Rather, we are born with the ability to feel what other humans (and in some cases animals) are feeling as a way of connecting and being in community with our fellow creatures. This ability to “feel into” another’s experience allows us to be compassionate, take another point of view, and, when confronted with negative emotional experience, to feel uncomfortable and upset as well. All people are born with the capacity for empathy, and some people are particularly sensitive — and tend to take on or carry others’ emotions more intensely.
News, social media, and much of the data we consume tends to present information that naturally leads to worry, fear, and indignation. (Some statistics suggest that up to ninety percent of news stories have a “negative bent.”) Between news reports and commentary, we swim in multiple layers of emotional expression simply by checking our news sources. Our healthy, empathetic responses engage us emotionally multiple times a day, and this directly impacts our moods.
Distracted and Distressed, I might wager that you fall on the more empathic end of the emotional continuum and are highly tuned into the social and emotional temperature around you. And to answer your question directly, your response is both normal — meaning your ability to empathize is intact — and also uncomfortable, as you are experiencing increased distress. I do not want to discourage you from staying abreast of news and media, but would suggest that you consider ways to be kind to your empathic-Self in order to mitigate or balance some of the activation that comes up around negative news. Setting specific times to check the news rather than being inundated all day is good starting point, as is removing news notifications from any applications so that you are not receiving pop-up alerts on your phone or computer. (As a person who exists on the empathetic end of the emotional continuum, taking news alerts off my phone was a lifesaver for my nervous system. Only checking the news a few times a day was tough at first, but became easier after the first week.) Choosing to read the news at times and in spaces where you can be physically comfortable may help — playing music that you love, or sitting in your favorite chair with a blanket, are ways to encourage a sense of safety that may balance anxiety responses. And after reading the news, do something truly comforting: drink a cup of tea, take a walk around the block, or read a good book for fifteen minutes. You want to start supporting your emotional and physical body in ritual ways that acknowledge the work that you are doing by processing this information.
A few months ago, the Nobel Prize in literature was announced and I forgot all about my phone for several hours as I read the winner’s poetry in a comfy chair in a sunny patch of my home. What a notable change in the moodedness of that day as compared to most lately: I felt elevated, hopeful, struck by beauty. I offer you an invitation to make space for the things that raise those responses in you, and to feed them to yourself daily and purposefully. Your empathy is a marvelous trait. Nourishing that part of yourself with what you find beautiful and peaceful, as an antidote to anxiety and fear, is truly an act of radical self-care.
Every month, I’ll be answering more of your questions in this Ask and Answer format! Send all questions about emotional wellbeing and the psychological intersection of Self and World using the forms below.
