Election Anxiety: How to Deal

In a week or so, Election Day, 2024-edition, will have come and gone. The political ads that have filled commercial breaks, the random Robo texts that interrupt your dinner date, the knocks on the door from the nice person in the party-branded baseball cap: all will fall silent. We’ll go to bed and wonder when the final counts will be announced and we’ll wake up the next day and see an immediate rise or fall on Wall Street. 

What won’t go away so quickly is the tension in our body, the question of “is this a safe topic to bring up?” or the relational repair begging to be made with a family member on the opposite side of the fence. Take a few seconds to check in with yourself right now; have you experienced any of this in the past few months? 

Election years have a way of dividing communities like no other periods of time. Even if you do not consider yourself “political,” even if you truly fall on a side of a party line, even if you never engage in a platform topic debate with a friend – anxiety can, and often is, still present during an election year. 

There’s nothing that says “potential instability in the world” more than watching every-day people talk about what they’ll do to enact change upon precedent set decades ago; especially in regards to emotionally charged issues like education, abortion, criminal policies, immigration, climate change, race, gender identity, autonomous health care, I could go on and on with this list, as could you. Even as I was typing those words I felt my heart beat pick up just a bit and the muscles in my legs started tensing. How about you? 

At the end of the day, the Election is a lot more than an ad, a donation, a platform, a topic, a debate, a billboard, or a political party. It brings up what is at the core of each of us: do I feel safe in the world? Who can I count on? Am I alone? Do I matter? Will I be taken care of? No wonder we have anxiety in these times! 

If you notice yourself more anxious this season, or you work with folks who exhibit increased anxiety, here are a few prompts to consider: 

• Have I always felt anxious during political seasons or while discussing politics? When was the first time I noticed this? Who was around me?
• If my anxiety seems higher this time around, I wonder why? Do I have unanswered questions and concerns inside of me or am I more affected by external factors? 
• When I think about what might happen in the world in a few weeks, what do I do next? Do I seek out someone to talk to, do I listen to a podcast, do I drink two glasses of wine at dinner rather than one, do I start working on a house project? Do I take a nap? 
• What is my biggest fear that considering or talking about the Election brings up in me? What just happened as I asked myself that question? 

Just taking a few moments to think about the questions above can bring some clarity to our internal system that distracting or ignoring often works against. We may never be able to fully answer the questions – for good reason – that decades-long precedent thing again. And because an Election year is hardly logical, yet incredibly emotional and complex. 

Paying attention to and giving space for your anxiety to wander around a bit actually can re-center us. Even better, finding a person that can also hold space for you to do this alongside creates a safety that we all crave, especially during unknown and out-of-control seasons of life (like Election years). 

If you don’t have a person, feel free to reach out and we’ll help you find someone. In the meantime, if you want to be reminded of the gentleness and hope that humanity does still hold, go see one of the latest new releases in theaters, Wild Robot.