Regardless of which side of the partisan aisle they're on, most people canagree that the levels of rancor, recrimination, and controversy we encounter each time we flip on the TV or scan our news feeds these days has reached a fever pitch. News-induced stress and anxiety are reaching almost epidemic proportions.

So what can you do about it? Getting involved in activism, whether in your local community or on a national level, is surely one way to work out your angst. But you can also try workingfrom the inside outlooking at how you process the input, and how you relate to your political bogeymen, saysSharon Salzberg, a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. Mindfulness offers a path to help you do that, she says.

Salzberg is an expert in the meditation practice known as lovingkindness, which centers on developing compassion. She is alsothebest-selling authorof many books.(Her latest, Real Love, will be published in June.)In recent months, Salzberg has been touring the country, leading talks and seminars on the topic of working with enemies mindfully.

To learn more, we caught up with Salzberg after a talk she gave on the topic at New York Citys MNDFL meditation studio.

For the most part, organizers of various eventsIve been attending have been asking me to. I think people are clearly feeling very divided and quite anxious and its so pressing an issue. Ive spent my whole adult life championing the notion that love and compassion are sources of power rather than weaknesses. Then times like these happen and I look at myself and I wonder: Do I really believe that? Is that really true? Or are these just ancient aphorisms?!

There are a few reasons, but one big one is because mindfulness is not easy to accomplish. Mindfulness doesnt mean just knowing what youre feeling, or that youre simply just hearing a sound. It means knowing these things without the normal self-judgment that accompanies all our experience. Self-judgment like, Its not good enough, its not right, Ive been in therapy forever, why isnt this problem gone?! And so to actually be mindful means to have a kind of interested, balanced awareness of whats happening instead of being lost in that habitual pattern with our inner critic. For a lot of people doing a practice like lovingkindness can change our default response from one of self-judgment or fear or anger, to a sense of connection and greater spaciousness. (To get started with your own practice, check out ourintro to lovingkindness.)

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An enemy is someone toward whom we have enmity. Theres fear, theres distrust, theres dislike. It can be another person, or even some aspect of ourselves.

An inner enemy involves different mind stateslike anger, fear, greed, jealouslynot just when they arise in us but when they take over, when we get really lost in them and when they guide our actions and our choices. Think back to a time when you were consumed by jealously. Its like youre insane, you could have done anything. And sometimes you did! We're not at all saying its wrong to feel whatever we feel, but when we are overwhelmed by these states, just by their very nature, they tend to give us tunnel vision, and when were walking around consumed by such a state, were going to miss a lot of information that we really need to make better choices and be happier.

We think of an outer enemy as someone whos hurt us, somebody whos hurt somebody we care about, or who were afraid is very likely to do that.

You may not notice a difference in yourself, but rather in your interactions with other people. I have a lot of students say to me, I was going to stop meditating because I thought it wasnt doing anything for me, then my kids came to me and said Please dont stop, youre a lot better, youre not so angry, youre not so reactive, you have more patience, you listen more! These are real-life relationships in which the manifestation happens. And of course, these are the instances where we really want it.

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Its certainly worth at least experimenting with, because to be in a state of constant outrage or continual upset makes us really stressed out. In these cases, were the ones who are going to get sick, not the other person!

Bear in mind that by following this practice, in no way does it mean giving up our sense of principle, or right and wrong. If youre feeling a particular political figure is causing damage and people are hurting, start by seeing if you can help one person. And if you want to work politically, it doesnt have to be partisan. Think about voter registration, or encouraging people to vote you dont have to tell them who to vote for!

And there are ways of sensing if your own ire is turning chronic and if its changing your dynamic with your family or loved ones. The more overcome and ill at ease and despairing we get, the less action we can take.

Yes, I think you can because there is a kind of fearlessness and it comes from the practice. Think about if you spend all your time, like some people doand I have myself, toothinking about someone elses faults. You just go through the list again and again and again, and you realize theyve taken up a lot of your mental real estate, which is very valuable stuff. And now that person has moved into your mind, and theyre not paying rent there and we dont need that.If we feel a political figure has beliefs that differ so greatly from what we believe, than theres work to be done there. But we dont need to get sick and lose heart and lose energy over it.

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Yes, theres this fear that were we to cultivate compassion, it would mean giving in, it would mean taking their side, or losing your own sense of what is important. But it doesnt really mean that. We can take very strong action, but we dont have to do it with hatred. Action with hatred is not onward-leading.

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This Simple Type of Meditation Can Help You Manage News-Induced Stress and Anger - Health.com