Carolyn Hax: Husband criticizes wife’s retreat from barrage of bad news

Q: Since the beginning of the new presidential term, the reported news has been unrelenting, depressing and upsetting to me. As an avid newsreader, I have found my personal habits have changed.

Instead of digging in, I try to lightly read the various major newspapers. I no longer watch news on TV. My goal is to keep my morale above water and not drown in all the depressing news. I also tend to try to see the best in people and their decisions.

My new behavior has me feeling like an ostrich with her head in the sand.

Recently, I acknowledged my ostrich behavior to my husband, saying how nowadays I can’t even talk about all the bad news with others anymore. When I do, I feel paralyzed with depression.

He accused me of not wanting to acknowledge the truth in the world and not wanting to recognize that some people are truly evil. Essentially, he thought I should get more real and drop my Pollyannaish view of life.

Later, I thought about what he said and wondered if he was right. It hurts, because wanting to believe the best in people is a hallmark of who I am.

— Ostrich

A: Pollyanna never struck me as a big consumer of news.

I mean, how does she feel about serial killers, granny scammers and corporate polluters? They’re perennial news fare, yet she makes no mention of a morale hit before now.

You find recent news disorienting, I understand, and you’re hardly alone. But I think you’re looking for greater meaning in your upset than necessary.

Wanting to skim headlines and hide (for a while) doesn’t mean your entire worldview belongs in a dumpster, or that you’re too fragile a bird to handle the new information. It’s possible, sure. But your impulse to withdraw could just mean you’re getting so much unwelcome change at such a relentless clip that you need to give your processing functions more time. The person who brought speed-nihilism to your current events feed is out there bragging about it, so I’m not weaving gossamer abstractions here.

Needing time is not the same thing as denying reality. It doesn’t mean you were blissfully unaware humans could, say, cheer on a billionaire cutting safety nets out from under the poor — or you needed to pretend they wouldn’t, just to choke down your morning coffee.

If you and I have been reading the same news in our lifetimes, then you’ve read about enough slaughter of enough innocents to put any optimism you have about humanity to as grim a reality test as any your husband could conjure. What “avid newsreader” hasn’t known the darker side of humanity for quite some time — and doesn’t need a good sand dive sometimes.

I hope, by the way, you weren’t really “accused” by your husband of anything, and instead your reading of him is also a bit out of scale? Not to minimize your feelings or impugn your judgment, just to offer the possibility that it’s part of the overwhelm package. Maybe he and I are coming at the same-ish thought from different directions.

Ideally, any notion of “who I am” won’t be reactive to things as external as national news, no matter how immediately felt — so if your lost feeling persists, then that’s worth exploring in depth. Meanwhile, though, yours is a rational response: Step back from the thing that keeps hitting you in the face, to give any swelling a chance to go down.

• Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, or chat with her online at 11 a.m. Central time each Friday at washingtonpost.com.

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