We’re all getting a pretty significant dose of bad news these days but if you’re starting your morning, and ending your day, searching out the latest horrors on your newsfeed, you might just have a “doomscrolling” problem. It’s a major no-no as far as mental health goes so here’s some tips for breaking your habit.
- Replace doomscrolling with something else. Get your hands off your phone and keep them occupied by flipping the pages of a book or a puzzle. Some people say you’ve got to replace one addiction with a healthier one. So just imagine the abs you’d have if instead of flicking through CNN you did crunches instead.
- Set online boundaries for yourself. You’ve got to set some figurative parental locks on your devices and be your own daddy. One good boundary to put in place for yourself according to clinical psychologist Dr. Carla Marie Manly is to avoid news after dinner “as it increases evening stress and interferes with all-important sleep.” Dr. Manly says however you decide to limit your intake, just remember to listen to your body because if you’re “feeling agitated, anxious, or stressed, you know your body is signaling you to stop what you’re doing.”
- Be mindful of your triggers. By now you probably know the words, phrases, or people that send you spiraling when you see them come through your newsfeed. Since it’s impossible to filter them all out, Dr. Manly says to try not to beat yourself up and instead “simply realize that you need a bit of extra TLC around these issues.” But then again, if there’s one source that’s always triggering you, why don’t you go ahead and smash that block button for your own good.
Source:LifeHacker