“If you’re watching it, it’s for you.” — The Last Psychiatrist
The news can be bad for you. Especially if you get hooked by stories that provoke strong negative reactions. Which most of them are German-engineered to do. That’s why there are so many provocative, crazy-making stories. So much waste, rage, and violence. So many villains and people to hate. It’s a lot. It’s exhausting.
If you want, you can quit the news, at least for a while. A little ignorance won’t kill you. We all have gaps in our awareness. Knowing every main character in the discourse isn’t a requirement for civic participation.
However, there is a way to make your news habit work in your favor.
This exercise comes from a modality called Fractal Psychology, developed by Mau Isshiki and shown to me by my friend Saemi Nakamura. Their method goes further in-depth. It involves intense inner-child work. It’s much more powerful. If this simple exercise speaks to you, go to the source.
The practice runs on a few assumptions:
- We’re only capable of experiencing what exists within our own consciousness
- Our reactions to external people and events are directly informed by aspects of ourselves that we’ve alienated from our conscious awareness because they threaten our sense of identity
- When we get mad at people, we’re getting mad at versions of ourselves
This is basic psychological projection. And it’s why you get so frustrated with the news.
The further away these events and people are perceived to be, the more dramatic and exaggerated the projections. Thus, news stories, from politics and war to celebrity gossip, provide some of our best resources for exploring our own psyches.
Here’s the exercise. You’ll need some paper or a Google Doc. Try it. You may get some interesting results.
How to start
1. Choose your news. Pick a story to which you have a strong emotional reaction, with characters who anger or provoke you.
Deconstruct your news story
2. Who is the villain in the story? What does that person represent? What is it about this person that makes you angry or annoyed?
Have your say
3. What would you like to say to your villain? Don’t be afraid to get angry.
- “How could you have done this?”
- “You must do this immediately!”
- “You embody these loathsome traits!”
Let it loose.
Switch chairs
5. Imagine how your villain might respond. What is their point of view? Would they get defensive? Make excuses? Offer an explanation or apology? What do you think it would sound like?
- “I did this because…”
- “What you don’t understand is…”
- “What I really meant was…”
This may be more challenging. You’ll need to get inside the experience of someone you hate. Remember, it’s really a forbidden zone in your own mind.
Back to you
6. Now, how would you respond to those excuses?
- “That’s BS because…”
- “You don’t understand what you’ve done and why it matters, and here’s what you don’t get…”
- “You’re an evil, lazy coward, and here’s why…”
7. Now, look at the situation from the perch of your highest intelligence. Imagine yourself as a sage or a guru. What would you say to your villain now?
Reflect on your own life — and be honest
8. Think about the people you’re close to, whether partners, coworkers, family members, friends, frenemies, or anyone else who’s part of your “real life.”
Is there anyone in your “real life” to whom you’d like to say approximately what you said to your villain?
9. Is there anyone in your life — a parent, partner, teacher, friend, or someone else — who has said, or might say, something like that to you?
10. Can you recall using similar excuses to the ones your villain used?
11. What would your guru say to you? How can you work this into your thoughts and behavior?
We tend to resist anything that conflicts with our dominant story about ourselves. We want to believe we are good, and thus we deny our own darker thoughts and traits because they suggest we might be more complex than we realize.
Complexity is scary. It involves embarrassment, risk, and change. Complexity is sexy, too. It’s our best route toward becoming more considerate, interesting, and self-aware.
The challenge here and now is to take ownership of these alienated shadow characteristics you would normally project outward. Because they’re so cartoonish, it’s easy to start with celebrities, politicians, and other noxious figures in the news.
After that, seriously, it’s probably a good idea to consume less news. It’s not nutritious, it makes you feel worse, and most of it won’t matter in five days, much less five years. You can always get mad at the weather.
This piece is adapted from “How to Use the News,” an episode of my radio show Emerson Dameron’s Medicated Minutes.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Filip Mishevski on Unsplash