How are you doing?
For Americans facing the COVID-19 lockdown and economic instability through the spring and summer, that became a difficult question to ask—and to answer. Things were already pretty bad. And then the presidential election began in earnest.
A new survey from the American Psychological Association finds that this election is a significant source of stress for more than two-thirds of American adults—up from half during the 2016 presidential election. According to a new report based on three surveys by the nonpartisan organization More in Common, “About 7 in 10 Americans are worried about the risk of widespread violence breaking out across the country after election results are announced.”
A lot of us are feeling scared and helpless. And there’s good reason to believe we might look back on the election as a traumatic event.
What can we do to stay resilient in the face of this election? One way is to check in with ourselves daily to make sure we’re doing the things that sustain our health and well-being, while remaining empowered to make a positive impact on the election itself. To come up with reflective questions to ask yourself, we looked back on our articles about surviving stressful times, and we consulted psychologists affiliated with the Greater Good Science Center.
We hope these questions will help you make it through the election…and beyond.
1. What’s happening in my body and mind today?
Sometimes, our feelings sneak up on us, and our body can experience emotions before our conscious mind is aware of them. That’s no surprise: The body is a big place, with a lot going on inside of it. So, you might break your inquiry down into even more specific questions, as suggested by UC Berkeley’s Dacher Keltner and Colorado State’s Michael Steger:
- Is the election disrupting my sleep?
- Is it interfering with my ability to concentrate?
- Do I feel breathless, or feel any pressure in my chest?
You can also look to your mind for information:
- Is the election bringing back bad memories—for example, of abusive men in your life?
- Do thoughts of the election intrude or arise when you wish they wouldn’t?
- Do you find yourself thinking of the election even when you would rather be thinking about other things?
Answering these questions for yourself—or perhaps with another person, like your spouse or a good friend—will help you to understand what you’re feeling, particularly if those feelings were happening below conscious awareness. This allows you to name emotions like anger, grief, or anxiety—and naming them is the first step toward feeling more in control of your life.
2. If I’m feeling distress, what can I do to soothe myself?
When you have named your negative emotions, it’s important to not feel bad about having them. When UC Berkeley researchers studied more than 1,300 adults in a 2017 study, they found “that people who commonly resist acknowledging their darkest emotions, or judge them harshly, can end up feeling more psychologically stressed.”
In other words, please try to avoid feeling bad about feeling bad about the election. Instead of pushing down any negative feelings, ask what you can do to soothe yourself. Therapist Linda Graham suggests these techniques for calming yourself down when everything feels like too much:
- Breathing. Deep belly breathing activates the parasympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system and slows down your reactivity. Breathing slowly, deeply, can de-escalate a full-blown panic attack in a matter of minutes. Remembering to breathe throughout the day de-stresses you, and helps you install calm as your real baseline, not stress as the new normal.
- Hand on the heart. Neural cells around the heart activate during stress. Your warm hand on your heart calms those neurons down again, often in less than a minute. Hand on the heart works especially well when you breathe positive thoughts, feelings, images of safety and trust, ease, and goodness into your heart at the same time.
- Meditation. Sylvia Boorstein’s book Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There, speaks to our instinctive and socialized tendencies to do, to act (fight-flight). Following her instructions on compassionate mindfulness meditation is a gentle way to calm the mind and body and let things simply be, over time generating a steady inner calm that sustains you over the long haul.
You can also do things like just asking for a hug from someone in your pandemic pod. “We are hardwired to be soothed by touch,” writes Graham. “Warm, safe touch is a stress reducer because it primes the brain to release oxytocin, the hormone of safety and trust, of calm a