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When the News Becomes a Trauma Trigger
How compulsive news consumption can activate hypervigilance, reinforce threat perception and exacerbate trauma symptoms
When my husband and I were living in Montreal, he was deeply immersed in the news. A self-taught historian and political analyst, he followed global events with remarkable intensity and could spend hours researching wars, political developments, historical conflicts and the forces shaping the world around us. Under ordinary circumstances, his curiosity and intellectual engagement were simply part of who he was, but during one particularly difficult period, something changed.
At the same time that he was immersed in global tragedies, several close friends were experiencing serious personal health crises. The convergence of these events catapulted him into a state of sustained emotional and physiological activation. What appeared on the surface to be an understandable response to everything happening around him was also activating something much older.
His nervous system was responding not only to the present. It was responding to the past. The accumulation of external threats, personal losses, uncertainty, and helplessness began triggering traumatic injuries incurred in childhood. These were injuries that had long existed beneath…
