Current events are more accessible than ever, breaking news breaks within minutes of its occurrence and a lot of the news these days is bad news. It’s tough for sane people to keep their sanity in this swirling environment of negativity; if you find yourself overly affected by bad news, here’s a convenient list to remind you that you need to take a step back and stop turning your bedroom wall into a pegboard covered in pictures and strings in an attempt to prove that it’s all connected.

1. You Expect The News To Be Bad. Always.

What does the world have in store for you today? War? Kidnapping? Massacres? Human rights violations? Virulent racism, homophobia and misogyny? Sad elephants? Bring it on, world — you don’t even have any optimism to be crushed anymore.

2. You’ve Become An Expert On Ebola

If anyone needs a history of the disease and previous outbreaks, not to mention the current state of Africa, Texas and Spain, you’ve got it covered. You also have emergency plans to barricade yourself inside your house or apartment if necessary.

3. You Recently Started Buying Hand Sanitizer At Costco

Just 2 liters of hand sanitizer in a convenient pump bottle; no big deal. People can look as skeptical as they want, but you’ll be the one laughing when they spend five times as much for smaller bottles and realize that their purchasing strategy is woefully inadequate and not at all cost effective.

4. You’ve Made A List Of The Most Dangerous Cities To Live In

You know… just in case.

5. You’re Pretty Sure You Know How You’re Going To Die

You’ve statistically calculated the odds on the following: beheading, contracting an incurable disease, being shot, being trampled by armed riot squads of police and getting cancer from household cleaning products and/or plastic water bottles.

6. Previously Normal Occupations Are Just Too Much

You yearn for the simpler days when being a teacher involved teaching kids instead of jumping through endless hoops; you also remember when police officers weren’t equipped with as much gear as the military.

7. You’ve Flirted With The Idea Of Becoming A Hoarder

You always scoffed at hoarders until that flavor of granola bar you loved was discontinued and you found yourself wishing you’d stocked up. Because if you don’t stock up, who knows what could happen? Eggo shortages? Peanut butter shortages? The list of horrors is unending!!

8. Doomsday Preppers Don’t Seem So Crazy

You loudly proclaim how crazy doomsday preppers are while secretly making a list of their most useful tips, especially the ones regarding toilet paper.

9. You Set Aside 15 Minutes of Each Day To Look At Pictures Of Puppies

Some small part of you realizes that you should probably just get off the Internet and isolate yourself from newspapers, magazines, radio and TV altogether. This is your substitute for doing that.

10. You Start Looking For Real-Life Parallels To ‘The Stand’

Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic novel doesn’t just examine the fallout of germ warfare; it also explores how such an event could completely destroy the earth and modern society as we know it. When you start making tenuous connections between the book and real life, such as, “There’s a deadly illness in the U.S.! That happened in ‘The Stand’!” or “The economy sucks! That happened in ‘The Stand’!” or “There are cornfields in Nebraska! There are cornfields in Nebraska in ‘The Stand’!” then it’s probably time to take a nice long walk and stop reading post-apocalyptic novels for a while.

11. You Start To Think Walter White Had The Right Idea

The world’s going to end anyway, right? Might as well make some money and wear a cool hat before it all burns down. Not that you’d ever do anything illegal, of course.

12. You’ve Contemplated Going To Mars

Even though this will never actually happen, you fantasize about the pure, unspoiled surface of Mars and the benevolent utopian society that will surely emerge once it’s colonized by the participants of a Dutch reality TV show.

13. You Try Fad Diets…

Eliminate all grains. Eliminate dairy. Cut out sugar. Reduce salt. No salt at all. Eliminate fat. No, just saturated fat. Wait, not all saturated fat. Bring back dairy. Cut out meat. Bring back some meat, but not red meat. Everything is going to kill you.

14. … Followed By Junk Food Binges

Because you’re going to live your life the way you want to live it!

15. Every Minor Twinge Is The Sign Of A Grave Illness

You start to think that every mole means cancer and every sneeze means you’ve been infected by a zombie and will most likely become a zombie within the next five to seven days, heralding in a new era of flesh-eating walking dead.

16. You Make A Bucket List And Immediately Rip It Up

Nothing matters anymore.

17. You Can’t Stop Writing Outraged Opinion Letters In Your Head

Every article you read or piece of news that wafts its way into your ears provokes a shocked and indignant reaction. You immediately begin composing the sharp, snappy replies that you’ll send to major news outlets to express your outrage. Only you can bring a little sanity into this crazy world.

18. Your Netflix Binges Have Increased To Unhealthy Proportions

It’s a cruel world out there, and the only cure is eight consecutive hours of “Sleepy Hollow.”

19. You Delete Your Cookies So The NSA Can’t Track You

You never know who might be watching or how much they’re judging you for stalking people you went to high school with.

20. You Have A List Of Titles You Want To Use When The World Finally Collapses

Obviously, you’ll survive the apocalypse and become ruler of your city, town or county. The only question is what your title will be, although you’ve been thinking that “baron” has a nice ring to it.