I limit my media intake for that very reason. For me, it doesn't even need to be the country I live in. Trauma in Afghanistan can impact me just as hard.

Unfortunately, my suffering over media coverage doesn't seem to make the world a better place. Avoiding the media frenzies does, at least for my little slice of life...

Like Arfie, I too limit my media intake so I don't get unnecessarily sucked into the world's worst negativity. We need to protect our own emotional state of mind above all else.

The more vulnerable I am feeling, the more I become detached from current events. Better for me to think about birds, and the sky and how fresh air feels on my face.

I get very affected by all the "news" around the world, everywhere..

I do watch cause i feel like not watching will not make it go away.

In an odd twisted way and i'm sure is not healthy it confirms that the world is like Andrew Vachss says a "yunk yard"..........and i go "i knew it"....

When something significant happens I usually look at many news sources and follow it closely for awhile. I get disgusted by how various sorces and the media spins things,, for example,, first they said the older brother was shot and had some sign of explosive on his stomach,, then they said he was shot and the younger brother ran him over in trying to escape, and then they said he was shot and the younger brother dragged the older brother with his car,, and then they omitted that the older brother was shot and just aid the younger brother dragged the older brother 30 feet with his car. At that point the media lost credibility cuz if he was dragged that far he would have had other scrape wounds on his body.
First they said the younger brother in the boat was first exchanging gunfire with the police and after that they stopped shooting and asked him to surrender, etc. and now today they admit that as the photo shows, the Dshokhan was unarmed at that point.

Now I really want to know the truth, and if I limit my reading I'm more liely to just see some biased press release and not know what really happened, in which case it's better to not watch any news at all and be totally ignorant than to me misled by some screwed up half fairy tale.

My research background taught me to look at 5 different sources, see what they agree on and wht they disagree on. That way I get the basic truth. It's worth it to me.

oooops.. to the question of the Original Post. I think that I do the research like that helps me with the PTSD, since treatment of PTSD involves workijng through the cause of it. So if the cause of the adrenalin surge is a bombing in Boston, rather than running away from a big general threat,, I look at it and work through it and that helps me to handle it.