The anxiety from protests playing out daily — both locally and across the country — can take a real toll on a person’s stress level, a Mobile mental-health professional says.
Kari Whatley, with the Equine Therapy Group, said the unrest is affecting people sharply because negative emotions tend to spread faster than positive ones. Seeing troubling images repeatedly can bring back a person’s own memories of feeling fearful, helpless or angry, she said.
Those feelings can linger through the day. To cope, Whatley recommends stepping away from the news for a while. “It’s a good thing to be informed but not over informed,” she said, encouraging people to limit how much social media and news they take in.