"A bulletin on the war in Ukraine, with footage of shattered lives. An update on the grinding conflict in Gaza. Shootings of citizens in Minnesota. Before I can process one tragedy, an ASPCA commercial shows the pleading eyes of a starving dog, triggering another wave of helpless sorrow. I stand at the counter, feeling my breath shorten. It's not just sadness. It's a physiological siege, a constant assault on my nervous system."
"The kitchen TV delivers a fundamentally different kind of threat: chronic, global, and unresolvable. It activates the same ancient alarm system-the amygdala, the cortisol rush-but offers no tangible predator to confront and no safe place to flee. Neuroendocrinologist Bruce McEwen described the result as allostatic load: the cumulative wear and tear on the body when the stress response is repeatedly activated without resolution."
Continuous news and media exposure transmits multiple simultaneous crises into immediate personal experience, producing persistent feelings of guilt, helplessness, and physiological distress. The brain's ancient threat circuitry—centered on the amygdala—responds to chronic, distant suffering the same way it responds to immediate danger, releasing stress hormones without resolution. Repeated activation of this system produces allostatic load, the cumulative wear and tear on the body. Media exposure can produce acute stress comparable to direct exposure. Overlapping global stressors create a polycrisis that compounds stressors, leaving individuals neurologically unequipped to process ongoing, unresolved harm.
Read at Psychology Today
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