Hi MyProfile. ❤️ A big hug, it's a lot, I know.
I'm assuming this is current/recent news? I'm not aware of it, and would look it up in order to understand properly, but I am very protective of what news I'm exposed to as well. I know this feeling you're talking about, (or at least my experience of it), of being so overwhelmed and grieved about what happens in the world and how awful it is and how helpless one individual can feel to it.
I see that your post was 1 hour ago but will just say anyway that if the feeling in your chest is physical and seems serious make sure you take yourself to emergency! If it's physically manageable and not a threat to your safety and emotion based, I so understand! (Though sometimes it can be hard to know the difference because stress affects your physical health and vice versa and sometimes just because something is emotion based doesn't mean it doesn't have a physical consequence.)
I think you're doing the right thing to avoid this issue on the news, unless having the information directly affects you in some way. I have a day once a week that I dedicate to doing a specific intentional search on covid updates, so that I can have the information that I need that affects me, and I can try to prepare myself for what news may come. If there is breaking news about it that affects me directly I do an assessment of how I'm feeling and how urgent it is that I know what's happening and take it from there.
It sounds like at the moment this news is too upsetting for you to delve into?
The information that you have can add to your bank of positive and negative mental "diet" components which affect your general state of being and mental health. Whilst it can be important to understand the truth of the world around you, there's no shame in avoiding something you can't directly and immediately do anything about, if that's going to help you find a state of mind where you can function emotionally.
Is there something you can do right now in the opposite vein of thinking that you can use to try to calm yourself and bring you some peace? Some positive meditation, a soothing activity, or a friend you can spend time with?
Sometimes the thing that helps is to focus on the unpleasant thing so that you can cathartically feel all your feelings about it, but I get the impression from the fact that you said you were avoiding it that this is not the case this time? If it were I would suggest talking about it, which maybe you were trying to do here?
