A common occurrence in these turbulent times is for our anxiety to be exacerbated by the
phenomenon known as “doom scrolling”.

This term might not be familiar to everyone. When I first heard it, I guessed it might be
something from a J.R.R. Tolkien book.
However, the experience may be all too familiar.
It starts with a quick glance at the phone, computer or television. Perhaps you wanted to
check the forecast for the weekend, or catch up on team news for an upcoming match, but
fifteen minutes later you’ve learned about three conflicts, knife crime, international trade
wars and two natural disasters. Not ideal information to help us maintain a calm equilibrium,
and yet such information is oddly addictive, why?
The main culprit is the right amygdala, a tiny area of grey matter buried deep within the right
hemisphere of the human brain (there is also a left amygdala, but we don’t need to talk about
that today). The right amygdala has a job that it takes very seriously, keeping you alive by
identifying sources of potential danger and focusing your attention upon them. This was
extremely useful to early humans, such as during the Late Pleistocene era (more familiarly
known as the Ice Age), when our ancestors were encountering such dangers as sabre-toothed
tigers or angry mammoths. On an unconscious level, the reactive little right amygdala helped
out by shouting such helpful things as “Oi! Stop painting stick men on the cave wall and look
at that sabre-toothed tiger that just walked in!” or “watch out, that mammoth is getting a lot
closer!”
Fortunately for us, it would be extremely improbable to encounter either a sabre-toothed tiger
or an angry mammoth on Patrick Street. Unfortunately for the right amygdala, it hasn’t
developed much since human prehistory. And it interprets negative pieces of information
through its highly outdated perspective. A news report about something terrible like an
avalanche in the Himalayas can cause it to trigger the same anxious response as a sabre-
toothed tiger wandering into our ancient ancestor’s dwelling (even if it was just seeking to
admire their latest cave paintings).
The amygdala doesn’t do nuance, and that is where it can cause us a lot of problems. It
focuses on these perceived threats. Cortisol, a hormone produced in response to stress,
surges, adrenaline floods in to help us meet the threat, and then, presented with nothing to
fight or flee from, but our attention focused, we start to read more. Dopamine floods into the
brain, rewarding us for scrolling through all the doom and misery in front of us. We can
become hooked on this process, like a grim fruit machine in a dystopian casino.
If we keep rolling through all this negativity, our right amygdala gets twitchier than a
gunslinger in a Clint Eastwood film, convinced that we are one burned slice of toast away
from Lee Van Cleef jumping out at us with his Remington revolver. Suddenly, minor
inconveniences, like the aforementioned toaster mishap, or the WiFi going offline for 5
minutes, are disproportionately affecting our moods.
Fortunately, if you find yourself feeling like this, therapy can help. For starters, a therapist
can help you to understand why your brain has turned every headline into a personal

emergency. They may employ humour, such as in this article, to draw some of the boredom
out of the neuroscience. They might teach methods to calm the amygdala, such as breathing
exercises, mindfulness, and ways to spot the panic impulses forming so that like John Wayne,
you can head them off at the pass.
Thankfully, our brains are very keen to learn and to form new neural pathways. Practical
methods, such as setting a time boundary around news consumption and balancing negativity
with positive stimuli, can help to retrain your brain.
This is not an encouragement to ignore the news completely, or to turn our backs on events in
other parts of the world. Instead, for our own health, we must learn to ration our
consumption. Introduce content that recalls our sense of perspective and reminds us that life
can also be fun and light hearted. And sometimes we just have to put the phone down, close
the laptop or switch off the television, and venture outside for some fresh air, smile at a
passing puppy, or wave at a kitten watching us from a window.
Yes, the world is complicated, it can be scary, frustrating, and frankly also rather ridiculous.
But your right amygdala doesn’t need to think that the apocalypse is imminent.

One of Fionn Reilly’s (A psychotherapist at the Natural Clinic) approach’s emphasises the search for meaning as the primary motivation in human life, positing that even in the face of suffering, individuals can discover meaning and purpose, fostering resilience and healing. For example, using Logotherapy, we might explore sources of meaning in your life, even amidst challenging circumstances, and identify ways to cultivate those sources further. I specialise in helping individuals struggling with anxiety, depression, and significant life transitions, such as career changes or relationship decisions. I offer a supportive and collaborative approach, empowering clients to explore the underlying causes of their struggles, identify their strengths, and develop strategies for creating a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

You can learn more or contact Fionn here. https://thenaturalclinic.ie/fionn-reilly-psychotherapy-counselling/

 

References
Baas, D., Aleman, A., & Kahn, R. S. (2004). Lateralization of amygdala activation: a
systematic review of functional neuroimaging studies. Brain Research Reviews, 45(2),
96–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainresrev.2004.02.004
Janak, P. H., & Tye, K. M. (2015). From circuits to behaviour in the
amygdala. Nature, 517(7534), 284–292. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14188
Xie, T., Rooij, van, Inman, C. S., Wang, S., Brunner, P., & Willie, J. T. (2025). The case for
hemispheric lateralization of the human amygdala in fear processing. Molecular
Psychiatry, 30. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-025-02940-2