A Chat About Anxiety, The News Media And Pairing Socks

* Helen Hastings acknowledges fear and embraces powerlessness in this dark and humourous artricle…she says its probably the most powerful thing you’ll ever do

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a friend who lent a particular piece of advice that has stayed with me ever since. 

It was March 2020; the lockdown was looming like a dark unfamiliar shadow and at times it felt like I was struggling to breathe. I was working in a care home at the time and the projections for those working in the care industry looked terrifying as the pandemic spread writes Helen Hastings.

I struggled to imagine how I was going to keep myself, my loved ones and the people in my care safe. On one particular working day I locked myself in a bathroom and pressed my back against the wall.  I was desperate for at least one thing to feel solid as everything else in my reality felt like it was melting.

Every spare second was spent scrolling through my phone, desperate for the golden ticket to normality, something to give me the warm fuzzy glow of certainty and peace but there was nothing. Social media had become a warzone invaded by misinformation with other people’s opinions being the fatal weapon of choice.

I swallowed every bit of information I received, mentally downloading everything as gospel while at the same time waiting for good news to magically appear out of the media machine. 

For me personally the world just got darker and darker by the hour until I had an anxiety meltdown. My heart was racing and my breath felt alien as I called one of my friends.  ‘I can’t stand this!’  I wailed down the phone.  ‘I feel like I’m dying with the worry of it all’ I ranted for ages to her about every single thing that had been haunting my every waking hour (and my dreams) for the last week.

I could hear my friend pausing and steeling herself, taking a deep sighing breath before addressing me… “Helen, stand back. You’re powerless in the face of this, so why keep indulging in every single news story? You can’t change everything that’s going on out there so just stop trying so desperately to find resolutions in the media, give yourself a break!”.

Her words rang true. What was I doing? 

I was just plugging myself into toxic maelstrom of information that was going to make everything worse whether it was the truth or not ‘Be a lion not a sheep’ she instructed me before the call ended. Her words prompted me there and then to do something radical, something brave, something I hadn’t done in days.

I switched my phone off and took the dog for a walk. 

Recognising and embracing my powerlessness in the face of a global pandemic ironically became my own personal superpower. It reminded me to switch off completely or at the very least reduce the time I spent scrolling on the media.  

Flash forward 2026 and we are in another pandemic but this time the virus is fear. 

We are plugged into the fear factory everyday weather it’s the ever-present threat of war, the climate crisis or a more personal scenario like the upsurge of violence against women in their own homes – and let’s face it ladies that one’s personal.

Sometimes I feel afraid of taking the all-important step back in case I miss something, in case my own lack of information becomes my downfall. 

But the fact is if something catastrophic does happen, there will always be a family member, friend, colleague or a neighbour who will only be delighted to tell me that a giant meteor is coming to wipe us all out. 

My mother frequently perches stylishly at her breakfast bar and rattles out all the disasters of the day so I don’t actually have to look at any news at all!

Acknowledging our fear is important.  When we can recognise and name something it can make it less of an obstacle.  Fear loses its mystery and its power once we identify what it is and where it’s coming from and that’s why it’s important to learn to step away as soon as we feel uneasy. 

Every second we spend doom scrolling and binge watching the news, we invest our energy and our peace of mind.

Often after I have taken in more news and social media than is healthy, I feel like I have given part of myself away.  I have given away the peaceful, tranquil part of me and most tragically I have given away the happy part, so why invest at all? 

Please understand, I am not entertaining the great cliché of ‘burying my head in the sand’ I agree that keeping up to date with current world events is something that we all must do to a certain degree but polluting our hearts and minds with an unnecessary amount of information is not how we keep ‘up to date’.  

If we can learn to regularly disengage with the media fear factory by limiting our daily intake, we are doing our nervous systems a massive favour. 

The other day I distracted myself by pairing my socks.  

Yes, it was boring, I can think of lots of other ways I would rather be distracted (some of which cannot be written here) but it was a practical task, it was safe and normalising and most importantly it didn’t involve terrifying news stories like war, the climate crisis or Boyzone announcing a comeback.   

Now please let me explain the beauty of pairing socks. 

We do not pair socks to make us feel excitement. Nobody ever lived their best life by pairing socks.  Pairing socks is not cool, it’s certainly not sexy (unless you choose to do it in your best underwear while dancing to a Barry White song)

We pair socks simply because it’s a normal and boring task that needs done.  If we all stopped pairing our socks, odd socks would take over the world and form an army that we would NEVER defeat. 

It’s precisely this kind of boring. mundane, house-hold job and others like it, that can be a surprisingly firm anchor to our mental health. 

t steadies us and normalises us even just for a few minutes and it can be enough to break the cycle of fear-based over thinking.

So, my final and main bit of advice here is this: listen to your heart and if screen-time feels like a mean-time, then grab yourself some socks!

P.S I have never paired socks in my underwear while listening to Barry White, it was just a suggestion (but I might give it a try sometime).