Avoidance

My wife, an experienced mental health practitioner, thinks that my decision to stop reading the news (see:  A Year Without News?) is a bad idea because it constitutes “avoidance,” and in the world of professional psychology that’s always unhealthy.

I’m sure she’s right about avoidance in the emotional context. Suppressing a feeling is usually a mistake because the source of the conflict will come back and you’re better off doing something about it now rather than later when it will probably be worse.

News about current events is different, though. First, reading every day about the Republicans’ Rape of America won’t do me any good because I can’t in fact do anything about it.* The sense of impotence will augment my anger and frustration.

I suppose the idea is that I should train myself to deal with it, in the same way that a victim of a terrorist attack learns to cope with PTSD. Still, a terror attack or a time in combat is a one-time or short-term event, while the horror of Dumb Donald and the Fools on the Hill is ongoing.

Maybe I could learn to cope, but it would be very difficult and very painful and take a long time. So the question is why? I’m 72. Why at this age should I take on a mighty struggle with misery when I have the vastly more pleasant option of just skipping it?

As far as reading about it in the future, which I may or may not do, that will be quite different than absorbing the information in real time. Instead, years from now all that’s happening at the moment will be history. I’ve a lot of experience reading about bad things that happened in the past, and even with all the  history I’ve studied I still encounter stories of tragedy. Reading about these events from the past upsets me, but not in the same way that following current events does.

I still think my best choice is to give it a pass. While the modern day Know Nothings in Washington pursue their path of incompetent destruction, I’ll be just across the river, placidly ignorant.

* I am doing something about it longer term. Watch this page for the beginning of the StrikeBack18 effort.