When my ex was diagnosed with cancer, I fell apart. I thought I was functioning OK, but looking back now, I was having a mental breakdown (well you would wouldn’t you), but I was functioning to some degree. The entirety of my thoughts were trying to solve things that I couldn’t - her health and the future.
I was grieving in advance of the event happening. It’s called anticipatory grief. I remember reading a book by a partner of a woman going through breast cancer. It was called something like “Getting Used to Feeling Helpless”. Around the same time I saw a counsellor and after unloading on her, she quickly drilled down to the point of anticipatory grief and recommended that I switched round my thoughts. Every day I could naturally find 10 or 15 minutes not to think about what was happening because my head was tired of thinking about it and diverted me. She asked me to use that 10 or 15 minutes to really think about my fears, and the rest of the day to think about ‘normal things’. or get stuck into work.
I couldn’t do that, but I learnt to reduce the amount of time I thought about my fears. The point I’m clumsily wanting to make is that maybe you should dedicate a period of the day to social media, and use other parts of the day to focus on other things.
You don’t win any prizes for reading the latest news at that very moment, or posting a social media response either. Add all those snippets up to a chunk of the day and free yourself from the shackles.
I’d highly recommend Frazzled by Ruby Wax. If you send me your email address I have it in .pdf format…