Caitlin: 0:27

Well, now you can hear. Hi, everyone. My dog is barking in the background. Ariel is here today. Hi. We're so glad you're here. Welcome to How to Be a Grown Up. This is the how-to show from mom so feel torn between wanting to be informed and needing a break from media exhaustion and world exhaustion, right? Um, so you heard her already. With me today is Ariela Monti. She's the author of Roots and Inc. and the new novel bound by Inc., and she's queen of the disclaimers and practical advice. She's the one who reminds me that we need the disclaimer in here all the time. Every time she keeps me compliant.

Ariella: 1:14

I am the parentheses in our relationship.

Caitlin: 1:18

Bless the ADHD need for the parentheticals and M dashes while speaking.

Ariella: 1:25

Yes.

Caitlin: 1:25

So I'm just gonna say it. Being a politically engaged mom right now is a marathon. It's not a sprint, right? We we're seeing that right now in real time. So today we're talking about boundaries around your media consumption in addition to small and repeatable practices that will help you. I don't want to say prevent burnout, because that's really not what we're at. It's really just like try to keep going through all of this, right? And be able to normalize stepping back when you need to. Um, before we do that, though, I'm gonna remind you again, I need you to subscribe. I just I need you to do that for me. That that helps me a lot. It helps numbers, it helps ratings, it helps all the things. So please do that. Thanks. Um I want to start by validating all of this. So um, reminder that I'm not a doctor. I'm not a mental health professional Ariel isn't either. We know a lot about therapy. We know a lot about pharmaceuticals, but that doesn't mean that we are diagnosticians. No.

Ariella: 2:31

Because we go to therapy and take lots of pharmaceuticals, but that does not make us medically qualified.

Caitlin: 2:38

No, I did. I did major in psychology in college, so you know, 20 years of outdated psychology information is also still not qualifying me as a diagnostician.

Ariella: 2:49

But anyway, I'm a yoga teacher, so uh

Caitlin: 2:54

very smart cookie, though. So it works out really well. Right. Um, let me just tell you I have a whole list of massive sources here, like American Psychological Association, information about Doom scrolling and doom surfing. Um, let's see, Boston University. I'm gonna list all of these in the blog post as additional resources because you know you have so much time to look through all of them. But I did do that on your behalf. So that's the whole point of this. Again, they'll all be in the blog post for this episode, so go check that out. But I need to say, after all the disclaimers and all the sources, whatever exhaustion you're feeling right now, whatever um apathy slash lack of motivation slash devastation, all of that is completely normal right now. Like, yes. Yeah, you and I just had a a conversation with one of our friends who is a very upbeat friend, and she is not handling any of this around us well. And neither are, frankly, you and I are either. The therapists are not okay, from what I'm seeing. So all of us are a mess. So, with that in mind, I'm really coming at this from that perspective of like everything you're feeling is normal, everything you're feeling is okay. Please seek out professional help when these things are not working for you, but it's relatable. So if you've ever found yourself doom scrolling in the grocery store parking lot and you're sort of half reading about the collapse of democracy while also cheering on people who are like, I'm 462 days sober, like, yes, or I went on a great date last night, yes, or this meme that is just absolutely hysterical. Yes, all of that's happening at the same time and your groceries are melting in the back. This episode is for you. Um, yeah. We're being told to stay informed and be engaged. And frankly, if you're like me and like Ariella, it feels irresponsible to be anything but informed and anything but engaged. But also when you're the default parent, you are the orthodontist appointment scheduler, you are the one picking up for someone's orthodontist appointment, you are the family social coordinator, you are the grocery shopper, you are doing all the things while simultaneously managing your own emotions around all the things you're seeing while doom scrolling. So this is not about pretending everything is fine or opting out of things forever. It's about building a sustainable habit so that you can care about the world without also hoping to set yourself on fire.

Ariella: 5:55

Yes.

Caitlin: 5:55

Yeah. So I am going to say this with all the love in my heart. I'm gonna hold your hand while I say this. You are a human, you are not a 24-hour news desk. And that goes for my my friends who are creators, you know, all of my friends who are like big time creators, like I have so many. Um, but the people who are creators who's made who've made their job about or their their creative process about the news. You can't be a 24-hour news desk. You are a human and your nervous system is not designed for an endless breaking news ticker plus elementary school drop-off. Right. Plus managing your middle schooler's big emotions. You can't do it. So I'm holding your hand. Now I'm gonna let go because you're gonna need it back here in a second. You know, to slap me or something. So today I'm helping you prepare for this marathon. We're gonna draw some boundaries. I'm gonna remind you how to take care of yourself. So let's do a quick nervous system check-in, Ariella. Okay. We've talked about self-care on this show more times than I can count. Um, self-care is not crystals as pretty as they are. I got some new ones. They're, I'm sure they're beautiful. Uh, I like to hold those in my hand. You taught me this while I'm trying to meditate because it gives me something to fidget with. But that's not self-care. Okay. Um, it's not a bath bomb unless you want it to be a bath bomb and a crystal. Right. Okay. It's the boring stuff that keeps your brain from overheating. Okay. We've I've given you my definition several times. I'm gonna repeat it again. The things that you do for yourself that help you feel like yourself. Its purpose is to help you be able to give your best to the tasks that you need to give them to, right? To the tasks and to the other people that need your best from you. Um, so like if you have a big work project or your kid is upsick all night, because we've all been there recently, probably. That's the point. Okay. So here's the check-in. I'm gonna ask you three questions, and I'd like you, Ariella, you and our listeners to really think about their responses. So over the last week, have you one scrolled the news or social media instead of sleeping? Yes. The cackle makes me guess what's coming.

Ariella: 8:24

Okay. I mean, I will say that I tend to be fairly good about this because I read before bed. So at least I don't go from doom scrolling to sleep. I go from doom scrolling to reading to sleep. Okay. But I but the doom scrolling might push me starting reading later than it should be.

Caitlin: 8:54

You're already on top of it. That we're gonna skip to the next question. Yeah. Two. Question two. Have I felt a pit in my stomach or a tight chest while reading headlines?

Ariella: 9:07

I feel like that's just my baseline existence. So I'm gonna go with yes.

Caitlin: 9:15

I have. This is me. There's actually um I that space like underneath, it's like between your spine and your like shoulder blade. And it it's one of those ones you can feel if you take a deep breath. And mine's really tight right now, and it actually hurts to take a deep breath, but it's it's tension related and it's all yeah, all picked up over the past 72 hours. Um, okay. Three have I snapped at my kids and or a partner or both, and then realized I really was actually mad about something else that I saw online.

Ariella: 9:50

Probably. Maybe not within the last week, but definitely it's happened in the past. I'm sure.

Caitlin: 9:59

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna say this if you're nodding along to any of them, that's not like a moral failing. Like you didn't do anything wrong. It's your nervous system just waving a little red flag saying, like, hey, maybe we could not carry the entire world on our shoulders right now. That'd be great. So you and I have talked about these before, but we've got some micro grounding tools here. We've done this, it's the 54321 sense check. It sounds cheesy, and people have used it in memes, but it does actually help, and that's why it's recommended by my therapist and others. It's the 54321 sense check. It's the name five things you can see, four things you can touch, three you can hear, one you can smell, or sorry, two you can smell, one you can taste. Okay, so something like that would be helpful to do whenever you feel that tightness in your chest. Box breathing. I like this one. I do this one at red lights, which is a weird place to, but it actually is a really good use of my time, I feel like. While sitting at a red light or school pickup line or whatever, in for four, breathe in for four, hold it for four, out for four, hold for four. So you're intentionally slowing down your breath and holding it, which can be hard when your test when your chest is tight, but it does make a difference. Okay. Remember, I'm not here to fix the world for you and I can't do it. If I could, I would have already done it a long time ago. Um, these are not fix-the-world tools, they are get you back into your body tools so that you can make a decision for what comes next. Okay. So the next thing we're gonna do, aside from micro-grounding ourselves with these little tools, is build a news container. This sounds weird. I'm not, you're not actually gonna physically build a news container. So here's what I mean. Instead of letting the news kind of crash your brain whenever an alert pops up, which happens a lot these days, we're just gonna put all this news in a little box, a container, so that it stops running your whole household and everything you do. So you're setting boundaries around the news. Specifically, I mean three practical boundaries around your news consumption. Okay. We're gonna start with a time boundary. You are not in charge of catching every breaking story in real time. There are people whose actual job it is to do that. You, dear sweet, normal human mom, you are not in charge of that.

Ariella: 12:40

And I will put my journalist hat on for a second and say that unless it is an actual emergency, breaking news is not helpful anyway. Because breaking news comes out before a lot of details have been released. So unless you're we're talking about like natural disasters or like active shooter situations or anything like that, it's fine to check in with it later after more details have been reported and confirmed.

Caitlin: 13:22

Thank you so much for saying that because you're right. Like, how many times have I checked breaking news and been like, but what else? Like, give me more information. And it's because they just honestly don't know it, right? So that's such a good point. Because you end up frustrated and scared.

Ariella: 13:38

Right. And a lot of times, especially now, there's incorrect information that gets thrown out, and people tend to react to the incorrect information. And it is better unless you are, you know, personally impacted, obviously. If you see this kind of news, it's just, you know, make a mental note of it to check in with it later. But I guarantee you, if you check in with it like 12 hours later, you will have more information and more verified and confirmed information.

Caitlin: 14:19

That's a really excellent point. So, along with that, what that means, what I mean by this is pick one to two short windows a day for news. 10 minutes after the kids are in bed or the first half of your lunch break. I am telling myself, like shower before screens. Like that's my big rule right now, and water before coffee. Like those are the two things I'm trying to live by right now. So I will allow myself to have 10 minutes. It's so hard on threads if you go on threads and you don't spend time and you actually do limit yourself to 10 minutes. Good job, because I can't do it. But I will allow myself those 10 minutes, like while I'm drinking my water before my coffee, after I've showered, to kind of get a sense of what's happening. The other way that I'll do it though, too, is without a screen, I'll listen to CNN's five things podcast. Like that gives me what I need because I'm doing that while I'm on my walk. So there's a way to do this in that window without going hard all day long, right? And what that looks like for you is maybe you tell yourself, I check headlines at 12:30 in the afternoon and 8.30 at night. If something truly urgent happens outside those times, I'll hear about it. Somebody will say something to you, right? Or your phone will go nuts. Either way. Okay, so that's the one. First, time boundary. Second one, space boundary. Here's what I mean by that. Make some zones in your life news free. Your bedroom, no longer a place for news for you. Maybe, who knows? The dinner table, maybe it's not a news place anymore. Maybe the car if the kids are in it. Choose a couple of places where you will consume news, and then the if you're not in that place and in that time window at the same time, you can't look at news. If that means if that also means that like you're a threads person and threads is becoming where you get your news, kind of like how Twitter was in its heyday, you might need to say, okay, I can't look at threads here in this part of my house, right? That also might mean you draw that boundary for other people in the house. So in our house, we're trying this experiment, no news in bed. That's just not where my brain needs to find out about the latest crisis. The third boundary you're gonna put up is a source boundary. So what I mean here is right, this is a big one. I've got blocks. Choose one to three trusted sources, like a newsletter, podcast, or site, and let them filter for you. Now, I understand this is already a problem because there are some news organizations that are filtering news right now. We've seen it, we know it's happening. Okay. I'm not saying those. I'm saying one to three trusted sources and maybe make them different, right? You can't just do CNN for the podcast, CNN for the website, and like you can't. You gotta change it up. Um, you know, and figure out what those are and let them do the filtering for you so that you're not over consuming from all these different sources, especially ones that you haven't really paid much attention to. So for me, it's like a local news source and then like two or three other organizations that I typically get my news from. So this way, it what it looks like for me is instead instead of tapping every single scary push alert that I get on my screen, I let a couple of trusted sources or people who do this for a living tell me what actually matters. And I don't know if you know this, people, listeners, but if you are an Apple news person, you can choose who to follow in Apple News and only get push alerts from those sources, right? So I listen to CNN in the morning for their podcast, but I don't get CNN additional alerts. I get a local news source alert, and then I get Reuters and I get the Guardian. And those are my news sources. I also get sometimes NPR too, but I have that filtered for which types of stories I care about. So you can do this a couple ways. Filter those settings so that you only get stuff that you care about from sources you trust. This also goes for your friends. Uh, if you have one of those friends who's super attached and they're the ones who constantly tell you what's going on, I think that might be me and our friend group. I mean, I don't need to be careful about that. Sometimes it's me.

Ariella: 19:00

Well, I think we're all equally culpable. Yeah. Okay. No, that makes me feel better. I think there's a decent balance and that makes me feel better.

Speaker 1: 19:11

But you are allowed to mute that one friend who posts 57 urgent hot takes a day, right? You can love her and still say, baby, I I love you, but my nervous system can't handle you during the day. So I I can't be find another audience or understand that I'm putting you on mute until this time of day, and then I can absorb all of your information at once.

Ariella: 19:34

Right.

Caitlin: 19:34

Okay. You have thoughts about sources. What are your thoughts about what I just said? I know you have them.

Ariella: 19:40

I think I know I think that that is very good advice. It is essentially what I do. I get mo I will say I would get most of my news from NPR, but different sources within like the public radio network. Yeah. So I will get my local because because podcasts and listening to the radio are the easiest way for me to consume news right now. So I will listen to up first in the morning. It's like 15 minutes. It gives you like the three big stories, and I get that for like my my national news and a little bit of international news. And then I listen to WUNC's Do South podcast and show, and they do like a news roundup at the end. This is a North Carolina news roundup at the end of the week. Okay. So I listen, I'll listen to that at the end of the week. So I can kind of just get, you know, a little bit of everything. It can be really hard to find sources that you trust. But as you once you find the ones that you listen to or that you read from, you do start to get a sense of their reporting style and the kind of stuff that they're pushing out. I've been listening to NPR and my local station, WNC, for so long that I know, like I like I could hear when there was a switch when they were trying to like do a new thing. Keep yeah, like they were when they were trying to trying to keep everything like nice and buttoned up and professional. And then there was a switch where now they just give no F's. Like you're like, no, now we're gonna Yeah. No, it's been great. It's been great.

Caitlin: 21:52

Yeah, I think I think that makes a lot of sense. And also I you brought up a good point of like how you consume it. Like if you're listening to it and that way, that way feels the most palatable for you, great. If you're somebody who needs to read it, that's fine too. Just find the way that it's most palatable and remember that you're not gonna get every single push alert about every single bit of information. If you're an international news person, great. Make that be your focus. Uh, I would highly encourage you to pay attention to inner like your the innards of our country. So, like, let's do some national uh right now. But also like just filter down what you actually care about. Okay. So the next after we've drawn these boundaries, our time boundary, our space boundary, and our source boundary, we're going to work on some everyday micro self-care information for news weary moms. I like that word, newsweary. Newsweary. That's a good way to put it, right?

Ariella: 22:53

Um, I feel like I've been newsweary for decades.

Caitlin: 22:56

It helps that you're a reporter, like I know. I've been newsweary because it was my career. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Ariella: 23:04

I know.

Caitlin: 23:06

So remember that self-care isn't is maintenance, it's not a reward. So that means you need to replace any of these vague self-care things that you hear with like concrete, tiny little actions. That's why you've heard me use the word micro in this twice, right? Like micro check-in, micro self-care. We were doing it for a reason because it has to be tiny in order for you to actually take it on, especially right now. And it has to fit into a mom schedule. So there's that. So we're gonna start with some body care. Uh, real easy one. Stand outside, feel sunlight on your face. Sunlight is good for you, especially first thing in the morning. And if you have ADHD and you want to get like gonna feel better, go stand outside for five or ten minutes in the sun. It will do wonders for you. Put your sunscreen on first. Another one, stretch your shoulders, unclench your jaw. Just a thought, right? Take your arm, pull it in front of you, and hold your the space above or below your elbow. Just pull your arm across your body, stretch out that funky spot behind your shoulder blade like me. Okay? If you have time to scroll, you have time to take a breath and unclench your jaw. Right? Or five five deep breaths. Do that. Yeah. Five box breaths. Let's try it. Okay. Brain care. Swap one doom scroll session for something neutral or pleasant. A silly podcast. Like this one. It's not always silly, but still. A novel. A recipe that you have been wanting to try. A crocheted creature, like I did this morning. Instead of it's so cute. It's so cute. I'm not saying what it is on the air because our my friend might listen. I made something for Jenny. Let's just say I made something for Jenny. She does I don't know if she's even gonna hear this, but I made something for her and it made my heart so happy. It's so precious. I'll tell you guys all about it later. Okay. That's one thing you're gonna do. The other thing is you're gonna do you're gonna leave your phone away from you, somewhere else, preferably where you don't sleep, and read one page of anything. Okay? Leave your phone in the kitchen at night and read one page of anything, even if you fall asleep right away. That's fine. One paragraph counts. It's fine. A page counts. A chapter counts. If you're reading Ariela's book, you'll probably need more than one chapter at once. That's what happens to me. Yes, please. Yes.

Ariella: 25:39

Okay. I know reading at night is like the one, it's like the one time that I can really set aside to read. And I don't even read for that long. Like it's usually before I start like getting tired. It's like 15 15 minutes to a half hour. And like if I read beyond that, it's it's because I like need to know what's gonna happen. But otherwise, I'm pretty good about listening to my body and and and going to sleep. And then I found that if I don't read before bed, regardless of how late it is, it's harder for me to go to sleep.

Caitlin: 26:20

It's because you're out of your routine. You've made it a routine for yourself to go to sleep. So if you don't, or like to go to sleep with readings, if you don't, then yeah, it messes it up. That makes sense. It's a good one. Just saying, like if your attention span is wrecked right now, like mine's mine's always been wrecked, right? Like when someone says, watch this video all the way through, and I see that it's three minutes and 42 seconds, I'm like, oh my God, get to the point, get there faster. And I I blame, I blame TikTok for that. But still, like I think it's still always been a struggle. So it's worse right now, and I've noticed that it's worse right now, and I think it's just because I'm like, I need to know what's happening. So I get really anxious about what's happening. Okay. Yeah. Uh you got body care, you got brain care. Last one is connection care. Text a friend. And this is my this is one of my favorite lines that I use. No need to respond. You can say that to people. No need to respond. I just needed to tell someone that I'm overwhelmed. Or I just needed to tell you that I've been thinking about you. Or I just no need to respond right now. It's my favorite thing. Because you're immediately taking the pressure off of someone, but they know you've been thinking about them, or they know that they need to check in on you later. Right. Whatever. Okay. Schedule a low effort hang. This is not a hang where you have to clean the whole house. This is a, can we if it's too cold, can you come over here while I sort through the mail and your kids can play with my kids? I'll put out the Legos. Right? Like, or like, I'll make coffee. Like, please just come sit with me and talk. Or, you know, can I come over there because my house is making me crazy? Like, I'll watch, I'll sit and do Legos with the kids. It doesn't matter. Like, it just does something to make a connection with a friend. You don't also need this friend to have like this perfectly curated circle of activist actions in their tool belt, right? Like this is more about like not having to perform for someone. So whoever these people are, they need to be people that you can fall apart in front of if that's what you're feeling like you need to do.

Ariella: 28:36

Yeah.

Caitlin: 28:36

And they can't care about like all the crap all over your house.

Ariella: 28:40

Just saying. Right. Oh, definitely. Yeah.

Caitlin: 28:44

Um, I want to remind you also of what self-care is not. Self-care is not taking on more emotional labor for other people. So if you're one of those people who is an empath, join us. It is rough out here. Like I am struggling right now because I want to help everyone. And what that ends up meaning is that I take on not just more of their emotion, but also more tasks because I feel like by taking on their tasks, I am helping them, giving them time to cope with whatever it is they need to do. That's not helpful. That's not good for me or anyone else, right? Um, the other thing is reading 12 like thought leadership or think pieces about why you're burned out isn't actually self-care if you never put the phone down. No. Like you can become an expert on burnout and self-care and then do absolutely nothing about it. And then you're gonna burn out. So just put the phone down for a second. Do a puzzle. Oh my gosh. Okay. The next thing you're gonna do is you're gonna align your action with your actual capacity. And we're gonna talk more about this in a later episode. Hopefully next week. That's that's my plan. But um, one of the hardest things I've found about all of this is that all of these issues that we're dealing with right now are massive, but I have very limited time, very limited energy, and very limited dollars to deal with all of this, right? Um, so we've talked about this before, and you've actually, Ariela, I mentioned this quite a bit, but there are seasons in your life where you have time to do things and you have capacity to do things, and there are seasons where you don't. And right now, those seasons might be very long or very short, and you might be in a very difficult season of your life right now. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna ask ourselves a few questions. How much time do I actually have this week? Honestly, really, how much time do I actually have? How much emotional energy do I have on a scale of one to 10? And what is one good enough action that fits both my time and my emotional energy? So if you're in a low capacity week, maybe that means you're gonna skim one newsletter and send five dollars to an organization that you trust. Done. You've done something, you've participated, but it's at your level of what you can handle. On a medium capacity week, maybe you make one phone call or send one, or I didn't say both, or send one email to a representative. Uh I do know of a person at Hun Threads who said that they were calling their representatives, all of them, like the the national and the local, and reading portions of the recent file draw.

Ariella: 31:47

That's amazing.

Caitlin: 31:49

Uh I don't really have the stomach to do that, but no, I commend the effort. Just saying. On a high capacity week, maybe you read maybe you do that. I don't know. But maybe also high capacity means you attend a meeting, a protest, or a volunteer shift, right? Or you write out postcards encouraging people to get out and vote. All of those things would count, right? You are not failing or complicit in Jim Crow fascism because you did not attend a rally that started at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday when you were covered in mac and cheese and dealing with a screaming child about homework. You're not complicit, right? Okay. Doing what you can when you can with what you have is not laziness, it's sustainable engagement because this is a marathon, not a sprint. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so the other day I went and looked at because we've got part of our savings account or bank account, is we tuck a little bit aside for donations. And I took that little uh like little bit of money and I split it into three and donated to two, two organizations in Minneap Minneapolis and one in North Carolina, and they are small donations, like tiny, tiny donations. But people who fundraise can make that money go real far.

Ariella: 33:27

Right.

Caitlin: 33:27

And and that is that is what I had. That's that's that's what you had than you. That's fine. And yeah, what I'm trying to do is like I might do recurring donations monthly, but they might be like five bucks a piece. Right. Like it's nothing, yeah, it's nothing that I I'll miss terribly, right? It's coffee, yeah, maybe, right? It's not so much that I, you know, that I'm feeling like, oh my god, I really, yeah, I really actually think it's a burden. Right, exactly. Yeah. I really actually need to buy dog food, but I'm gonna, you know, I'm not doing that. So there you go. Right, right. So a couple of things I'm gonna say here. For you, your homework, dear listener, you're gonna pick one of these things that I offer. Okay. You're gonna turn off just one notification, or maybe you're gonna choose one time of day that's gonna be your news check-in time, or you're gonna text one friend and say, I'm trying to care about the world without without also wrecking my entire self. Are you in? Do you want to join me? And then maybe you send them this episode and say, here's a few things that we could try. I'll choose one, you choose one, and in a week we talk about how it's going, how we feel. Um, if the news right now feels like it's too much, that doesn't mean you don't care. It just means you're a human being because this is so hard right now. Um, you're allowed to be a person who has limits in a world that already pretends we don't have any uh without this extra layer of anxiety that's testing our nervous systems daily, right? Your worth as a mom and as a citizen is not measured in the amount of push alerts you consume or share or likes on threads. Okay. It's what you can handle, what you can do, what you can model for your kids. That's all you have to worry about right now. Okay. Next time, my hope is that I've got an actual tiny, realistic activism plan that will fit into your life, not imaginary free time. So maybe expanding on that low capacity, medium capacity, high capacity uh idea. Um so subscribe now so you don't miss it. Uh, I'm gonna wrap the episode now so that we have so y'all can keep this within your manageable listening time. So thank you so much for joining us. Please like, subscribe, do the things, and uh, I'll see you next time. Thanks for joining me. Love you mean it. Bye. Bye.