I’m sure I’m not the only one who has found it very, very hard to concentrate or get anything done in the past week. I keep going to my work, starting a few things, and then… staring off into space, picking my phone back up, scrolling, reading story after story.
Everything in my feed is a horror. I feel overwhelmed and helpless when I think about all the suffering. So, why is it so hard to look away? What exactly is it that my brain is searching for when it taps the next story and the next?
One of the tools I’ve found incredibly useful in my coaching journey is the motivational triad, which is a theory that describes the way our brains have evolved with three instincts that help keep us alive.
If you, like me, have found yourself compulsively scrolling and tapping and updating and “refreshing” and staying up way too late reading news and swiping pictures on your phone this week, I invite you to consider how the motivational triad might explain a bit of this behavior, and how we can use this self-awareness to consider a different approach.
Our brains want to avoid pain.
One would think this would mean we’d want to avoid reading more and more painful news. However, the brain’s main job is to keep us safe, and it thinks, in some part, that the images we’re seeing from miles away are an immediate threat to ourselves. When I read about rockets being fired thousands of miles away, I can feel my own pulse quicken and my own brain yelling, DANGER! when the reality outside my own front door at the moment is closer to same-old, same-old—suburban dog-walkers, the hum of leaf blowers, random ads and coupons I’ll never use piling up in the mailbox.1
My brain also seems to think I should keep reading in order to “figure out” the situation, so I can feel “safe.” Hot question here for my brain: If decades of very smart people who have devoted their lives to understanding this quagmire have not been able to resolve this conflict, will I, a person who is only beginning to scratch the surface of understanding this war, really be 10% safer after reading one more op-ed?
Our brains seek pleasure.
Endlessly consuming stories of trauma is not pleasurable. But, it turns out we probably do get a squirt of dopamine when we see a headline or read some social media post that vindicates our own viewpoints or reinforces some negative feelings we have. We could be doomscrolling to essentially “pack up” with our “tribe” and get that validation we crave from feeling right.
Maybe I’m tapping and swiping and liking to feel in solidarity with other humans around the globe. Which can be a beautiful thing. But, taken too far, it can easily devolve into distorted, us-vs.-them thinking, which can then degenerate into villifying, scapegoating, and a bunch of other crappy human impulses I’m not interested in pursuing.
Our brains crave ease.
Brains want to conserve energy and keep us from working too hard. Sitting on my couch doomscrolling can become its own weird reinforcement. My brain convinces itself I’m doing something “important” by educating myself with just one more swipe. But the insidious truth is, the longer I sit here swiping, the less real “work” I’ll do. Work that could include bringing much needed peace, love, hope, and healing into this world.
I am absolutely NOT going to tell you to stop watching the news or informing yourself about the suffering of fellow humans. In fact, it is exactly this capacity for imagination and deep feeling for others’ suffering that is necessary fuel for the empathy that humanity needs right now.
But I, personally, needed a wake-up call to remind myself that reading about suffering isn’t the same as doing anything about it. If anything, it seems to have become a way for me to avoid and resist the always messy agony of grief.
After some reflection on all this, I realize I want to commit to two things. The first is that I will spend some time processing my grief on a daily basis. Not by tapping and scrolling and liking, but by acknowledging it, sitting with it, and feeling it.
Secondly, I’m committed to acting—to putting down the phone and doing the work I can do to bring more light and support to the humans around me, as well as to the humans beyond my immediate sphere.
It’s the only way my brain (and my heart) can get through this.
This contrast between the same-old, same-old of my own environment and the absolute shattering of any sense of normality for my fellow humans in Israel and Gaza is the genesis of so much grief, thought it doesn’t change the reality that as for now, I am essentially safe.
Thank you for this post, it really hit home for me, particularly the point about spending the time to process the grief rather than seek to evade it. This trauma like response is understandable .We have all been exhausted and disheartened by the events of the past few years. We cannot allow ourselves to sink into passivity and indifference to protect ourselves from the heart break and anxiety.
Oh Clare, thank you for your words. They brought tears to my eyes. Grief and love are ever-intertwined! Let’s stretch our capacity to hold sadness to bring more light into the world... ❤️