Take a step back and turn if off. Take a walk in nature.

The news media reports what makes people ... and not always truthfully, either.

yup, hate is exhausting. hating is like drinking poison and waiting for the object of your hatred to die.

i've been working to channel my rage through the covidic madness and i think it is paying off. the return to indecently exposed smiles is proving to be much easier than choosing a side in the masked divide.

alas, i seem to be the only one who took the psychological impact seriously. i don't follow mainstream news, but the real time news in the unmasked faces i encounter are speaking of a great deal of suppressed raged. i'm still pretty clueless if the remaining maskites are even human. i still can't look a mask in the eye.

Thanks Arfie and Mid. Wise advice as always :) I try to keep my distance and keep media to a minimum, although I enjoy listening to C-Span to hear what fellow Americans are thinking

After COVID everything and everyone has taken a turn for the worse. There are a few nice kind people out there that are trying to reverse that hated and bitterness. Yes just take a deep breath and try to move away from that mentality. Try to spread the niceness and kindness, I know of a few people who are trying despite all the problems

spreading hope and niceness is much easier across the virtual distances of the internet.

for me, decreasing the social distances is MUCH harder in real time. is that a hypodermic needle you have alongside that mask in your pocket? are you going to start browbeating me with mandates again?

but? ? ? i am trying. . . plying therapy tools. . .
can i have some reassurance that ^it^ really is over?

To be honest, I don't think life will ever be the same post-lockdowns. I'm searching for work-from-home jobs. Hopefully, the US public streets and parks will remain open in the future and America remains LAND OF THE FREE???

In late January 2020 (b4 I had heard of COVID-19), I had a dream about government policing people's travel. In my dream, people couldn't drive anywhere without providing proof they had a legit reason to be on the road. In my dream I had to provide proof to a police who was on the corner of my residential street.

THEN REALITY: my office bldg closed in late March 2020. McDonald's lobbies in my hometown closed in early April. I lost my longtime job in late April 2020. Started a new job .....but had to keep a letter with me to prove I was essential to travel, in case I was stopped during the lockdown.

Not sure what to feel about the future. Living minute by minute these days.

i'm with you on the belief that social changes of the global lockdown have changed our world forever. in some ways i feel like i have a certain advantage because i already knew what it was like to live with social anxiety and was already skilled with some of the psychotherapy tools to identify and cope with ^it^.

i had inherited 3 young orphans in september, 2019 and was embroiled in family court disputes over the future of these orphans. i imagine it as something like the immaculate conception of triplets at age 65. WTF is a playdate? are playdates even legal for children? i already felt like a stranger in a strange land.

and along came corona. . .

which planet am i on? am i still a senior citizen? i didn't even get to do a proper isolation like the rest of my old friends. the social distances between my age peers and my second parenting career are beyond definition. i can't remember the last time i socialized with someone my own age.

Everyone has been dealing with loads of stress since march 2020. They've been confined--lives changed...and people are not as flexible as we believe. now that people are moving around more its like they've forgotten how to live with other people. some people developed mental health conditions or had a harder time dealing with existing issues. People don't like change. Some people can't handle it and they get angry. Fear makes people angry. and of course we have socially irresponsible media making the situation 50 x worse. I don't really watch news or even read it on my stream. I can't process all that. I stay in and around my house. I reach out to my friends and try to not spend too much time in public. we've got to protect ourselves from the fallout! surround yourself with joyful people and places...soothe your soul.

I never watched the news or read papers. Always depressing. Now even more i can't watch it, even social media has turned news and political. It is control and power from the government and media outlets. They just care about their votes and ratings.

This world has been over exaggerated in everything, people are becoming more sensitive, everything is about money. Its turning into an awful place in my opinion. Compassion and empathy is blown out the window alot.

I felt fortunate to have a house during the lock-in, and talk to my neighbors across the fence. And have a yard. When I saw people complaining all over FB about people not staying home I reminded them this...."you have a house and a yard. People live in apartments with no outdoor space. You can go outside and grill, garden, order a pool on Amazon. Do you know how much it sucks to be confind indoors like that in apartments and want to go outside?" that usually shut them up.

I think that hatred is self destructive. I know a lot of people deal with it (most of us, myself included) but it's important to come to terms with the root of it and then try to make peace with it.

The News isn't the News anymore. It's hype and opinion shaping to such an extent that it's almost impossible to find real unbiased news at all. If you stopped watching you would not be the only one. Also I have known people who have done that and none of them seem to regret doing so