S.E. Cupp, Panic Attacks, Breakdowns, and Making New Boundaries

Current events in the world today can be a lot to deal with even as a regular person. You got war in Ukraine, anti-democracy and pro-Putin forces in a major political party, a movement against LGBTQ and trans people, COVID, and environmental worries to name just a few things. And it might be even more intense if you’re one of the people producing the news. S.E. Cupp has to follow the news very closely, it’s part of her job at CNN and as a newspaper columnist. But she says the close proximity to things like the war in Syria and school shootings have taken their toll on her and she hasn’t always had a great strategy for managing that kind of potentially traumatic stress. S.E. was in line in a store last summer, just out running errands, when she checked her Twitter feed and saw a kid on a ventilator. That sight was the final straw and she had a terrifying panic attack that wounded her mind pretty severely. She’s more functional now, though she says she’ll never be the same. And that experience has prompted her to make some big changes in how she approaches something like social media.

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