There is a great article in the New York Times today, written by Matt Flegenheimer. Its title, The Year the News Accelerated to Trump Speed, does a perfect job of telling the reader exactly what the story is about. If you’ve been watching the news. Even if you haven’t, there must be a sense of a whirlwind of news stories happening around you.

Flegenheimer describes the short-attention-span news cycle, with each outrageous day undoing the focus from the previous day. In this atmosphere, the truly important stories get forgotten in a tidal wave of what seem to be newsworthy stories.

There is a disorder of mental health called Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Marsha Linehan, creator of the gold standard of therapy for BPD, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, describes working with those suffering with BPD as attempting to, “pitch a tent in the middle of a hurricane.” This metaphor also seems appropriate to describe reporting, and reading, the news in 2017. As soon as you get one stake in the ground, the tent starts flying away. As soon as you start looking into one story, another happens, and you’re pulled into a different direction.

There are a few tactics that BPD specialists suggest for coping with such a situation:

• Resist being brought into an argument, or tit-for-tat
• Learn to validate feelings rather than behaviors or ideas
• Focus on yourself and your own needs
• Look at that hurricane as the problem, not blaming the people involved

There could be some really good ways to help journalists and their audience make sense of the world if we are able to work these ideas into our lives.

This might be a lot to ask journalists to learn some therapy techniques, but we seem to be headed into uncharted territory in the United States and news reporting. Perhaps borrowing from psychology could help us all understand the world just a little better.

For further reading:

I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me, by Jerold J. Kreisman, MD, and Hal Straus

Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, by Marsha Linehan

Stop Walking on Eggshells, by Paul T. Mason, MS, and Randi Kreger

Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, by William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick