I started a short course this week on Udemy by Julian Jenkins called MINDFULNESS IN THE MIDST OF CHAOS by Julian Jenkins. First offered in March of 2022, Jenkins committed to donating proceeds from this offering to charities helping those affected by the war in Ukraine.
1.1. Mindfulness Introduction
Jenkins opens with a discussion about “Doom Rolling,” which is a situation where one is online and scrolling through the news and one’s life becomes inundated and bombarded with stories about the conflicts and negative energies that are happening across the globe.
Jenkins notes how these negative energies can create anxiety, fear, grief, media anxiety, panic, and worry. He explains how it’s natural to feel these things, but also very important to know how to cope with and move through these feelings by giving oneself compassion.
Ultimately, this course is all about using mindfulness to help take care of one’s, by safely releasing one’s own anxieties and fears.
Briefly describe your experience with how you perceive the news…
I like to think I’m fairly mindful when it comes to the news I read about online, but this is not always the case. I get a lot of news through my social media feeds on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Often what I read includes stories posted by my friends or feeds that align with my own left leaning worldview. I’m socially liberal, and believe that government exists to help provide a social safety net that helps lift people up. I also believe that these things can be done in a fiscally responsible manner.
I used to have some friends who have a more right leaning worldview, but over the years I either unfriended them or I found out they unfriended me (there was one case where I unfriended them not because of their views, but because when they got into arguments with my other friends over various issues he’d end up personally attacking them. I asked him several times to argue with others respectfully but he didn’t and I ended up deleting him from following me on social media. It sucked, as I knew him from high school where I’d been bullied a lot, and he had been one of the few who didn’t bully me back in the day). I liked having people on my feed who didn’t necessarily share my worldview as I do worry about living in a silo or an echo chamber where my ideas aren’t ever challenged. As such, I admit to visiting right leaning news sources. I listen to CKNW NEWS TALK 980 as they have hosts on both sides of the political spectrum. More lately though, I listen to BREAKING POINTS WITH KRYSTAL & SAAGAR where Krystal Ball looks at issues from a left leaning lens, and Saagar Enjeti examines issues from a right leaning lens. I also follow their social media feeds. I also enjoy watching REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER, THE DAILY SHOW WITH TREVOR NOAH, as well as LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER. All three hosts are very good at examining issues from various sides, both in their own unique ways. They also have guests on from all different walks of life, some I agree with and some I don’t but they believe in the importance of engaging with people from across the spectrum.
I do worry about how hateful things have become overall. While I enjoy Krystal & Saagar, the comment sections of their posts on Instagram and Twitter both have very different followers. Saagar’s has a lot of very right wing followers who I find post comments that are hard for me to understand and in some cases to even support. I find that there can be a lot of hate, and an unwillingness to genuinely listen to what others are saying. Both the right and the left have supporters who view the other side as evil and tyrannical, and they often couch their arguments in rhetoric that plays on usually baseless fears such as “Bernie Sanders wants to turn America into a Commie-Socialist country!” They forget that there are no pure capitalist democracies, and no communist countries either. But we do have mixed market capitalism, and we do have brutal authoritarian dictatorships. But ultimately, I’ve found when people can’t argue facts they turn to a reliance on ad hominem attacks. If I get into a heated debate it’s usually inevitable that someone will visit my page and use something on it to attack me with on a personal level - be it my sexuality, my they / them / their pronouns, or my struggles with depression, etc. Often the attacks have absolutely nothing to do with the original topic of discussion and are used to dismiss me and my views on the issue at hand. And being an HSP that can hurt. Sometimes though I find I do become passive aggressive and I end up not being mindful at all, and I’ll hurl back similar insults and attacks. It’s something I don’t like. It does make me flustered, and anxious. As an argument progresses, I feel the tension rise within me. Eventually it gets to a point where I stop engaging with the feed, even if more and more responses keep being posted.
I worry about local issues too, like crime, inflation (which infuriates me because I do believe a large part of it is the fault of wealthy corporations using it as a cover to keep hiking prices to help pad their bottom lines), homelessness and poverty concern me too. And issues around mental health and wellbeing concern me, especially as I struggle with my own mental illnesses of anxiety and my fearful avoidant attachment style, my major depressive disorder, and possible BPD. These issues have resulted in me developing addictions related to dangerous overspending as well as eating way too much junk that’s resulted in my being overweight, developing type 2 diabetes, as well as high blood pressure. I know my anxiety and depression are probably partly related to everything going wrong in the world, and my monkey mind’s wonderful ability to internalize things, leaving me in a kind of paralysis when mixed in with my depression etc.
Ultimately I hope this course will help me become more grounded so I can focus better, and maybe not get so wound up with the comments sections of news posts.