How a Media Cleanse Supports Nervous System Healing

In the months of being in early recovery, I quickly realized I needed to stop looking at news media. At that time, I was sourcing my news from looking at certain trusted Instagram accounts and sometimes dropping into the New York Times. I wasn’t watching network news or anything like that, but still, I found myself getting more and more triggered and sucked in by the news of the world. And I know this is a theme that’s out there, in the collective, but I still see people feeling obligated and/or are habituated to read or watch the news despite how it makes them feel. 

What I found is that the more I sought out greater levels of self awareness and healing, tuning in with my body and my nervous system, the less and less I could tolerate news content. As I was beginning to unmask and to hold space for my emotions, things that didn’t used to trigger me, started to be really dysregulating. 

What is a Media Cleanse?

Embarking on a media cleanse is pretty straightforward, however it’s the discoveries along the way that I was unsure about. How would it feel to create distance from the daily posts that many of my friends share? Would I feel out of touch when people would refer to current events and I don’t have the same context? I was willing to see what might happen. And so I turned off any inputs from news media channels or accounts. Subsequently I also gave up Instagram and weaned myself off of the 2-3x/day doom scrolling sessions that had been part of my routine. These choices were made in service of making space for my emotions, and making space for healing. Clearing out more of the mental clutter that had been preventing me from being able to sit with myself, and ultimately to really know myself.

Benefits of Unplugging from the News

A media cleanse and befriending my nervous system, learning how to self regulate –– helped me make gains in many areas of my life:

Peace. The intrusive thoughts and images of horror that I had been picking up from the news slowly started to fade from my mind’s eye. 

Perspective. When talking to friends and family, I started noticing this common answer to the conversational question “how’s it goin”. There would always be a response like “well, as good as anyone can be with all that’s going on right now”. Which helped me reflect upon how deeply entrenched we all are, feeling powerless and without agency in a world where really bad things happen that we have no control over. 

Discernment. Being able to step back from the binary thinking that leads us to stand so firm in the “I am right” and “they are wrong” spaces. This doesn’t mean that what’s happening in the world isn’t important, and that I don’t feel deep compassion for victims of violence. It is. And I do. It means that as I stopped judging everything as right and wrong, I started to develop a deeper knowing about what’s going on for me in my world, and how I relate to the world at large – a knowing-based on intuition, that isn’t about being caught in a constant doom-media-loop.

Making it Safe for Your Inner Light

I recently heard an interview of Matt Kahn, an intuitive healer and spiritual teacher. He was asked a question like “what advice can you give to people to get through these difficult times we’re living in”. A question that contains hints of how on edge, nervous and even fearful people are about the future. His response really hit it for me:

“If we can learn very quickly to stop being so perplexed or so amazed at how dark darkness can be. If we can stop being so amazed at ‘can you believe they did this’ and ‘I can’t believe this is happening’. When we stop tracking the behavior of darkness and start asking ourselves what are the choices I can make to be the change that I want to see, what do I wish people would do differently, how can I be that right now, how can I bring that to the world – we bring the light.”

So, this constant “tracking the behavior of darkness” distracts us, stuns and numbs us (and is the exact intended outcome that the darkness seeks). It prevents us from being the change, and from bringing our light. And what if, what I thought was increasing sensitivity to triggers, was really my inner light learning how to feel safe enough to express choice, to express change and to bring that into the world.