Been seeing a lot of content on Lemmy and google that has me feeling sad, y’all have any tips for distracting yourself when this happens?
Been seeing a lot of content on Lemmy and google that has me feeling sad, y’all have any tips for distracting yourself when this happens?
How do you cope with the feeling that by ignoring the bad stuff you’re being complicit in their oppression of the lgbt community?
Asking for… a friend
The answer is balance. Firstly, you aren’t obliged to fight every form of oppression people experience. You have to select the areas that you put yourself into.
Secondly, you can’t give all of yourself all of the time. The most effective way to combat oppression is to not burn yourself out, so that you can keep the fight going, and not burning out means being able to walk away when you need to.
tl;dr You need to take care of yourself so that you can fight for others
If I am being honest, at the moment I don’t have the stomach to try and act in really any form. Just looking at everything going on is overwhelming. I guess I just need to build more of a tolerance to this over time, kinda like how with working out you have to take it slow at first. Thanks Ada.
I’m going to assume a few things here.
You’re queer.
You care about the well-being of queer people.
Being constantly immersed in horrible news of the oppression of queer people has a negative effect on your mental well-being.
If all these are true, taking a step back, or a break from the 24h news cycle, or otherwise distracting yourself is a positive for you, a queer person. All of this, all the fighting we do for our rights, isn’t really worth it if we can’t take the time to fucking enjoy life as well. That’s not to say being well-informed and actively fighting oppression aren’t important, but you can’t carry that burden on your shoulders all the time. Self-care as a queer person is honestly a pretty radical act.
I ask myself if there’s anything I can do right now to make things better. A lot of the time, I find that there’s no action that I can take. Sometimes, I find that there is. Either way, it helps me plan, prioritize and not just agonize.