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In recent years, it seems like every presidential election leaves about half the country anxious about the next four years. If you find yourself in that half after the recent election, know that there are many things you can do to manage anxiety in a healthy way.
Behavioral strategies
First of all, here are some tips involving your actions:
- Make conscious decisions about how much time you spend listening to, watching or reading news about politics.
- Limit fatal displacement
- Spend time doing things that are important to you, that you enjoy, and that are not related to politics. For example, exercising, spending time with friends and loved ones, and connecting with your spiritual or religious tradition are healthy ways to participate in life that are likely to improve your mental health.
Making changes like these is not about ignoring reality: it is about taking good care of your emotional health.
Mental strategies
Second, some strategies involve your mind:
One of the best mental approaches that can help with post-election anxiety comes fromconsciousness. Post-election anxiety is driven by thoughts about what the future holds. Specifically, you may have thoughts about what will happen to you and your family and to the United States after the election. Perhaps most people agree that their thoughts are valid concerns; maybe not. But here’s the thing: if your goal is to reduce your anxiety, it doesn’t matter whether the thoughts are right or wrong. What matters is how you react when the thoughts arise.
Automatic versus deliberate thoughts
There are two types of thoughts relevant to anxiety and I think it’s important to summarize them before going into detail about mindfulness for post-election stress.
The first type is automatic thoughts. They happen without any effort on our part. For example,my boss is going to kill meeitherThis is the best day ever!eithershe thinks I’m an idiotThey are all automatic thoughts. We cannot control them. But we have some control over how we respond to them once we notice them.
The second type is deliberate thoughts. They happen due to our own efforts. Deliberate thoughts can be elaborations of automatic thoughts, refutations of them, or ways of solving a problem. For example, if an automatic thought isshe thinks I’m an idiotThe deliberate thoughts that follow could be:now we will never be friendseitherShe probably doesn’t care about me in any wayeitherI need to explain what I meant, then she will change her mind..
You can reduce your anxiety by a) noticing when your thoughts have changed from automatic to deliberate, or b) noticing when the topic of your thoughts has become something that worries you (for example, politics and government). Then, once you have made either of these two realizations, you can refocus on what is happening here and now, anchoring yourself in the present, rather than the future.
Anxiety is usually caused by negative thoughts about the future. From the perspective of mindfulness,thoughts are not reality– they are just thoughts. In some ways, thoughts are less real than what is happening around you right now; What you see, hear, smell, feel and taste has a reality that your thoughts do not have. Therefore, focusing your attention on your sensory experience can be an effective way to disconnect from your thoughts when you feel overwhelmed and feel like the thoughts have taken over.
Consider the feeling of being lost in a dream for a few minutes and then hearing your friend say your name. At that moment, you return to the present and realize that your daydream was not “real” in the same way that your friend was talking to you about. Similarly, you can practice noticing when worrying post-election thoughts have hijacked your attention. When that happens, bring your attention back to the present and come to your senses (literally). Keep your attention there for a few seconds. Notice any temptation to recommit to your recent line of thinking. Then try to resist getting caught up again. The more you practice this, the less likely you will become to unintentionally get caught up in election anxiety again.
Possible questions about using mindfulness for anxiety
You may be wondering if this is just a fancy way of denying harsh realities. It’s not: Using mindfulness to manage anxiety doesn’t stop you from worrying or educating yourself about relevant issues. However, it will help you better control your anxiety.
You may be wondering, “Isn’t that just a recommendation not to think about it?” It is a recommendation to combat the bad habit of thinking about it much more often than necessary. It’s also encouraging to realize that although it may seem like a worrying topic is simply taking up all your attention, it actually has “off ramps” that you can take at any time.
Summing up
There are several actions you can take and mindfulness-based mental strategies you can use that will help reduce your post-election anxiety. They are likely to improve your anxiety levels and improve your overall mental health.
