Election Anxiety: How to Deal with It?
Election Anxiety: How to Deal with It?
Have you heard of or are you experiencing election anxiety? Politically active people may find it overwhelming to follow the 2024 presidential election candidates and ballot measures. Polarization, hate speech, and an “us vs. them” mentality have increased dramatically in the public domain. It is sure to get worse as the campaigns ramp up until the election. So, how can you maintain your enthusiasm and commitment?
Here are some tools to help you manage election and politics-related anxiety and stress.
Overview
Americans’ mental health is suffering as a result of the presidential election. According to psychologists, it’s common for people to experience elevated negative emotions at this time. During election season, people feel anger, stress, sadness, and fear for the future. Those emotions are all valid, and it’s entirely expected and normal to feel them.
It is interesting to note that stress levels tend to increase across the country in the lead-up to an election, regardless of the outcome. Daily discussions and news about the potential impact make it hard not to feel worried about the election. When it spirals out of control, it can even cause symptoms known as election anxiety.
It is ok to get therapy for your mental health if your emotions are overwhelming and long-lasting. Knowing how to manage those symptoms is crucial.
Ways to Deal with Election Anxiety
Like other anxiety, election anxiety can make us withdrawn, reactive, or irritable, thus affecting our physical and emotional health.
When we perceive something is wrong, it sets off our autonomic nervous system, which causes a surge of the “stress hormones” cortisol and adrenaline. Overdosing on adrenaline can raise the risk of stroke and heart attack. Furthermore, a high cortisol level can impair our health in a number of ways, such as raising blood sugar, lowering immunity, and narrowing blood vessels.
Talk to a Therapist
Therapy may help if stress is severe or persistent and symptoms like depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and physical tensions or indicators of stress and anxiety appear. A treatment plan for election anxiety can help you handle these challenges.
Through routine sessions, a therapist can help you develop stress-management strategies that fit your lifestyle. With a customized strategy, it may give you more peace of mind during election season.
A therapist can empower you by giving you the skills you need to break through negative thought patterns and cultivate a more optimistic perspective. They can help you investigate mindfulness techniques like deep breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation.
Meditation
By altering the way we interact with our thoughts, meditation can reduce stress and anxiety. This does not imply that we should discount our ideas; rather, in the instance of election stress, our sentiments and feelings regarding a momentous and transformative occasion are very legitimate. We ought to be interested in these ideas and the feelings they arouse in us. Additionally, we may mitigate the effects on our physical and mental wellbeing by properly regulating them.
These human emotions are something we kind of need in our lives. It only gets problematic when they start to bother us so much that they become an inconvenience. Therefore, the focus should be more on how we might alter our connection with concerns than on how to eliminate them.
Less News
Smartphones and apps bring us a 24-hour news cycle, with Harris and Trump’s fight fueling the fire.
The constant barrage of opinion pieces, poll results, and push alerts can tire even news junkies. Most news events do not even change that much in one day.
An overwhelming amount of information, combined with the impossibility of addressing it all, can be dangerous. Having too much knowledge won’t always provide you with the means to solve the problems you care about. Understanding this and choosing when, where, and how to receive news updates puts control over our worry, which is a terrific place to start. Turn off notifications, banners, and sound alerts.
Limit your Anxiety
Avoid reading any news at least one hour before you go to bed to ensure you can fall asleep quickly.
Try to leave politics in places where it must be – for example, advocacy. However, maybe not the best time at your little cousin’s birthday party to get in a debate while playing yard games.
Heated arguments in front of people who are not consenting to be in that conversation are not helpful to anyone.
However, when you want to talk about politics to someone, who has similar or opposing views, set a time to speak about politics, and have a timer go often after an amount of time that you choose.
The Bottom Line
A little election-related tension is perfectly normal and likely a sign that you care, which is something expected. We don’t want to suppress our feelings since they can serve as useful cues that lead us to take action. However, when emotions become too strong, it can be difficult to do anything and your wellbeing may suffer.
Consider these tips and prioritize self-care when dealing with election anxiety or other feelings of helplessness. It can be your busy lifestyle, hectic work schedule, or anything else. Your mental health should come before all of that, and you’re the only one who needs to make that priority.
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