How Therapy Can Help You Manage Media-Induced Panic
Your phone buzzes. Another breaking news alert. Before you can stop yourself, you've opened it, then the next story, and the next. Twenty minutes disappear as you scroll through crisis after crisis, each headline more alarming than the last. Your chest tightens. Your breathing shallows. The world feels like it's falling apart, and it's all happening in real-time in the palm of your hand.
If this feels familiar, you're not alone. You might be experiencing a constant state of high alert, unable to put your phone down even though the news makes you feel worse. Perhaps you recognize the pattern of doomscrolling, that compulsive need to stay informed that leaves you feeling helpless and panicked. Your body might be holding this tension: tight shoulders, clenched jaw, a knot in your stomach that won't release. The panic feels both deeply personal and impossibly global.
This is a normal reaction to an abnormal amount of stimulus. Your nervous system wasn't designed to process global crises in real-time, multiple times a day, every single day.
Here's what you need to know: while you can't control the news cycle, you can build resilience and reclaim control over your internal world. Therapy offers a proactive space to do just that—not to bury your head in the sand, but to process what you're witnessing and develop tools that help you engage with the world without being consumed by it.
This article explores how modern therapy approaches, including Talk Therapy, EMDR, IFS, and Mindfulness, are uniquely equipped to help you heal from media-induced panic and build lasting emotional resilience.
The Science of Media-Induced Panic
Your body's response to disturbing news isn't weakness or overreaction, it's biology. When you see graphic images or read alarming headlines, your amygdala (the brain's alarm system) can't distinguish between a threat on your screen and a threat in your immediate environment. It activates your fight-flight-freeze response as if the danger were happening to you, right now.
Your heart races. Stress hormones flood your system. Your body prepares for action, except there's no action to take. You're sitting on your couch, but your nervous system is primed for survival.
This becomes even more complicated with "vicarious trauma,” the emotional and psychological impact of repeatedly witnessing others' suffering through the media. First responders and therapists experience this from direct exposure to trauma. But in our hyper-connected world, anyone with a smartphone can accumulate vicarious trauma simply by being informed.
How do you know when healthy concern has crossed into debilitating anxiety or panic? Consider these signs:
● You check the news compulsively, even when it makes you feel worse
● Disturbing images or stories replay in your mind involuntarily
● You experience physical symptoms: racing heart, difficulty breathing, muscle tension, or sleep disruption
● You feel a persistent sense of dread or impending doom
● You're withdrawing from activities or relationships because the world feels too unsafe
● You feel emotionally numb or detached as a way to cope with the overwhelm
If these experiences resonate, professional support can help you process what you're carrying and develop healthier ways to stay informed without sacrificing your mental health.
The Role of Talk Therapy
At the foundation of healing from media-induced panic is the therapeutic relationship itself. Talk therapy provides a dedicated space to unpack the overwhelm without judgment. In this place, you can speak the unspeakable and feel what you're actually feeling without worrying about burdening others or being told to "just stop watching the news."
A psychodynamic-relational approach is particularly valuable because it recognizes that your reaction to current events isn't happening in a vacuum. It's filtered through your personal history, your attachment patterns, and your core beliefs about safety, control, and your place in the world.
In this therapeutic space, you can explore why certain stories trigger you more deeply than others. News about children in danger connects to your own childhood experiences or your fears as a parent. Stories of injustice resonate with you because they tap into times when you felt powerless or unseen. Understanding these connections helps you differentiate between the threat on the screen and the unhealed wounds it's touching.
Talk therapy also provides crucial space to process the complex emotions that media exposure brings: grief for a world that feels increasingly unsafe, anger at systems and people who seem indifferent to suffering, helplessness in the face of problems too large for any individual to solve. These feelings need witnessing and validation, not dismissal.
Through the supportive therapeutic relationship, you begin to develop a more coherent narrative about your experience. Instead of feeling like you're drowning in chaos, you gain clarity about what you're feeling and why. This narrative-building is itself healing—it creates order from disorder, meaning from meaninglessness.
Rewiring the Brain's Response to Trauma Through EMDR Therapy
Some news images and events don't just disturb you—they haunt you. A specific video replays in your mind. A particular story triggers panic attacks. You can't shake what you saw, even though you weren't physically present.
This is where Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy becomes a powerful tool. EMDR is specifically designed to help your brain process disturbing memories and images that have become "stuck" in your nervous system.
Here's what happens: traumatic or highly distressing information can overwhelm your brain's natural processing abilities. Instead of being filed away as a completed memory, the experience remains active, triggering the same intense emotional and physical reactions each time you think about it. Your brain essentially keeps sounding the alarm because it hasn't fully processed that the threat has passed.
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation—guided eye movements, tapping, or sounds that alternate from left to right—to help your brain digest this stuck information. During EMDR processing, you briefly focus on the disturbing memory while engaging in bilateral stimulation. This activates your brain's natural healing mechanisms, similar to what happens during REM sleep when your eyes move rapidly.
For example, if a specific news video causes recurring panic—perhaps footage of violence, natural disaster, or human suffering—EMDR can help process that memory so it no longer triggers the same intense physical reaction. You don't forget what you saw, but the emotional charge associated with it decreases significantly. The image becomes what it actually is: something distressing that happened elsewhere, not an immediate threat to your safety at this moment.
EMDR is particularly effective for media-induced panic because it works directly with how trauma is stored in your body and nervous system. As you process disturbing media content through EMDR, you may notice:
● The images lose their emotional intensity
● Your physical symptoms (racing heart, tight chest, panic) decrease when you think about the events
● You can engage with news more intentionally without being flooded
Your overall sense of safety in the present moment improves
Making Peace with Your Inner Parts with IFS Therapy
When you're caught in media-induced panic, it often feels like you're at war with yourself. Part of you knows you should stop scrolling, but another part can't look away. Part of you wants to stay informed and engaged, while another part wants to shut down completely and feel nothing at all.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy offers a framework for understanding these competing impulses. IFS recognizes that we all have different "parts" of ourselves—each with its own perspective, emotions, and strategies for keeping us safe. When the news triggers panic, multiple parts of the brain get activated, often working against each other.
Common Parts That Get Activated by Media
The Anxious Part attempts to maintain control through hypervigilance. It believes that if you know everything that's happening—if you check the news constantly, scroll through every update—you can somehow prepare for or prevent disaster. This is the part that drives doomscrolling. It's not trying to hurt you; it's trying to protect you by maintaining the illusion of control.
The Numb Part protects you from feeling too much. When the suffering feels overwhelming, this part shuts down your emotional responses. You might feel detached, cynical, or emotionally flat. This part carries the burden of all the pain you can't process, creating a protective barrier that allows you to function.
The Angry Part feels outraged and powerless. It rails against injustice, corruption, and cruelty. Sometimes this anger feels energizing and righteous. At other times, it can turn into bitterness or rage that damages your relationships and peace of mind.
The goal of IFS therapy isn't to eliminate these parts or judge them as bad. It's to access your core Self—the calm, compassionate, wise center of your being—so you can lead and soothe these reactive parts.
In IFS therapy, you learn to:
● Recognize when a part has taken over (noticing "I'm in my anxious part right now")
● Get curious about what each part is trying to protect you from
● Thank these parts for their efforts while gently guiding them toward less extreme strategies
● Help burdened parts release the pain and beliefs they're carrying
● Allow yourself to create internal harmony even when the external world is chaotic
When your parts feel heard and understood, they don't need to work so hard. The anxious part can relax its hypervigilance. The numb part can allow you to feel without being overwhelmed. The angry part can productively channel its energy. You remain engaged with the world, but from a grounded and centered place.
Mindfulness As An Antidote to Panic in the Present Moment
Media-induced panic pulls you out of the present moment and into catastrophic futures. Your mind races through "what if" scenarios. You imagine worst-case outcomes. Your body responds to these mental projections as if they're happening right now.
Mindfulness offers a direct antidote: the practice of paying attention to the present moment without judgment. Not because the present is always pleasant, but because the present is usually more bearable than the catastrophic stories your mind creates.
Right now, in this actual moment, you are likely physically safe. You're reading these words. You're breathing. The crisis on your phone is real, but it's not in your immediate environment. Mindfulness helps you make a crucial distinction between what's happening on your screen and what's happening in your present moment.
This doesn't mean ignoring serious problems or pretending everything is fine. It means grounding yourself in reality, which includes both the difficult truths in the world and the safety and resources available to you right now.
Practical Mindfulness Techniques for Media-Induced Panic
The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Exercise is particularly powerful when panic is rising. When you feel overwhelmed by news, pause and notice:
● 5 things you can see in your environment
● 4 things you can physically touch
● 3 things you can hear right now
● 2 things you can smell
● 1 thing you can taste
This exercise interrupts the panic spiral and returns your attention to your immediate sensory experience, which is usually much calmer than your thoughts.
Conscious Breathing directly regulates your nervous system. When panic activates your fight-or-flight response, your breathing becomes rapid and shallow. Deliberately slowing your breath signals to your body that you're safe. Try breathing in for a count of four, holding for four, and exhaling for six seconds. The longer exhale specifically activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which calms you down.
Noting Thoughts as "Just Thoughts" creates distance from catastrophic thinking. When your mind spirals into "The world is ending" or "Everything is falling apart," practice noting: "I'm having the thought that the world is ending." This small shift reminds you that thoughts are mental events, not absolute truths. You can observe them without being consumed by them.
Setting Intentional Boundaries with media consumption becomes a mindful practice. Before opening a news app, pause and ask: "Am I choosing to engage with this information right now, or am I compulsively avoiding discomfort?" Create technology-free times and spaces. Notice the physical sensations that tell you when you've reached your capacity for difficult information.
You Don't Have to Go Through This Alone
Media-induced panic is a real and treatable issue. You're not weak for struggling with it, and you don't have to white-knuckle your way through it alone. The constant barrage of crises, graphic images, and alarming headlines would challenge anyone's nervous system.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution because your experience is unique. Your triggers are personal. Your nervous system has its own history. Your parts have their own stories. But a tailored therapeutic approach using modalities like talk therapy, EMDR, IFS, and mindfulness can help you process the trauma, calm your internal system, and build genuine resilience.
Resilience doesn't mean becoming numb or indifferent. It means developing the capacity to engage with difficult realities without being destroyed by them. It means staying informed without staying panicked. It means honoring both your need to care about the world and your need to care for yourself.
Seeking help is not checking out—it's the opposite. It's a courageous and empowering step toward taking your life back from the headlines. It's choosing to process rather than just consume. It's reclaiming your agency in a world that often feels chaotic and overwhelming.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by the current media and political climate, know that support is available to help you. Through compassionate anxiety therapy, we can work together to develop a personalized toolkit to reduce your panic and help you feel grounded again. You cancontact us to schedule a consultation and begin your journey toward peace.
