Litmus Test
Use this approach to sidestep unhealthy news wormholes
Welcome reader! Whether you’re a new subscriber or you’ve been with me for years, I’m happy you’re here. I’m Meredith Arthur. I work as a Chief of Staff for Pinterest’s product incubation studio and am the founder of Beautiful Voyager. For the past nine years, I’ve been writing about how overthinkers, people pleasers, and perfectionists navigate anxiety.
My last series of posts seemed to resonate with a lot of readers, which of course thrilled me.1 It puts pressure on this post to live up, but I refuse to sweat that too much. The beauty of having an extremely clear goal2 and an extremely clear approach to writing3 is that you don’t have to second-guess yourself too much. Set up the right rules for yourself, and your only job is to follow them.
That is actually what I want to talk to you all about. Before my stress relief cheat sheets gained traction last week, the most popular newsletter I’d published was this one about how frothy, swirling news affects our collective mental health:
If you end up reading that post, you’ll hear a lot of trepidation in my (written) voice. You can hear my worry that people will judge me as an ostrich who chooses to bury my head in the sand. That fear is not surprising based on where I live4 and the world in which I work.5 But the fear didn’t play out. Readers resonated with the ideas I was sharing. So I think it’s time to revisit them, but with a cheat-sheet-esque spin layered on top.
The Litmus Test Approach to News Cycles
If you live in the United States, you know it is election season. For the next three months, nearly anyone who spends time online or in conversation with others will probably find themselves landing in conversations about the election whether they want to or not.6 When I was growing up in the ‘90s people approached group conversations about politics gingerly, acknowledging the wide array of feelings and opinions about candidates and policies. That doesn’t seem to be the case these days. But that doesn’t mean that, if you’re like me, you need to be tossed around by everyone else’s approach to politics and the news. Here’s my technique for understanding whether or not to engage with a certain news-related topic.
Start by identifying a signal in your body or mind that lets you know you are being negatively affected by something in the moment, e.g. you get stomachaches when you are worried.
Spend a moment feeling that signal inside of you. When was the last time you got a stomachache? What else was happening then? How does your stomach feel right now?
Next, play a little with your signal. Think of something you know is stressful like the bad grade you got on a test, the performance review that went south, or the headline that causes your blood pressure to spike. See if you can ignite a small, temporary stomachache.
Now release the signal by looking at an image of someone you love or thinking of a funny human moment. I have a folder of videos like this one that works to release the signal in me:
That signal — the stomachache — is your litmus test. It is the “single factor that establishes the true character of something, causing it to be assigned to one category or another.” In other words, it is the sign that shows you whether the thing you just thought about was healthy for your nervous system (no stomachache) or dyregulating for your nervous system (yes stomachache.)
The next time you read a disturbing headline or listen to a tension-soaked news story on TV, tune into your signal. If the thing you are engaging is is unhealthy for your nervous system (yes stomachache), set it aside until you are able to engage with it in a way that doesn’t trigger the signal.
You may be saying to yourself, “Damn, this sounds like a very fancy way of saying not to engage with news that stresses you out.”7 You’re not wrong. If you are lucky enough to be naturally in tune with yourself, you probably don’t need this level of detail to find your unique feedback loop. Sadly, not all of us are tuned into our signal by instinct. That’s my purpose with this post — to get you establishing boundaries around how you encounter and engage with election news for the next three months. My goal is to give you back agency, a sense of your own power in this realm.
My health goal, for a variety of reasons, is to teach my nervous system that I am safe. When I ladder any decisions I need to make up that goal, I feel quite free! Life is simplified. Does having this election discussion at this moment help me solidify a safe space inside of myself? No? OK, in that case I will pass. This approach doesn’t mean you must avoid all topics that could cause you stress. Sadly, that is not how life works anyway. Expanding your window of tolerance8 is the goal. Over time, your window of tolerance may allow you to return to frothy topics without making your system go haywire.9 What matters is that you are learning how and when to disengage for your own health.
Feel free to borrow my health goal, identify your first litmus test, and give yourself permission to disengage10 as needed. Good luck dear readers! Please share your thoughts in the comments — I’d love to know what is working for you in terms of managing election cycle stress.
I write to connect. Connecting makes me feel less alone, which makes me stronger, which makes me better able to connect, and so on.
To teach my nervous system that I am safe.
I cannot, and should not, try to convince anyone to do anything unless I am able to do it myself.
The Bay Area.
Technology, where people are Uber-connected. Pardon the pun lol.
I’m on the not side, probably due to my sensy nervous system which is so attuned to stress.
My very straightforward, smart-not-overthinky husband would agree with you.
Your window of tolerance is, quite simply, your ability to tolerate the challenges of daily life. It’s your body’s ability to move from a hyper-aroused (fight or flight) or hypo-aroused (withdrawn, frozen) back to a more grounded self and place.
You may find yourself limiting others forever, but in an intentional way, and that’s ok too.
Dr Marc Brackett, who I am lucky enough to work with on the How We Feel app, is a big believer in giving yourself permission — his most recent book is Permission to Feel.