Managing Election Anxiety
As tomorrow’s highly anticipated 2024 election day approaches, it's crucial for both therapy clients and therapists alike to acknowledge the heightened stress and anxiety that many of us are experiencing.
In recognition of this collective experience, CCP has taken the time to compile the below set of tools and strategies aimed at helping all of us better manage our election anxiety during these uncertain and somehow perpetually unprecedented times.
Tools for Managing Election Anxiety
Identify the anxiety type: Use non-judgmental noticing and curiosity to understand if your (or your client's) anxiety is personal/identity-specific or more general/existential—and/or a mixture of both. This distinction can help guide our therapeutic response.
Personal/specific anxiety: If a person fears direct impacts on themselves, their family, or loved ones, it’s most important that we validate their feelings and help them develop concrete safety plans, as well as guide them towards engagement with supportive communities and activism as is possible and appropriate.
General/existential anxiety: For broader concerns about potential social consequences, affirm their feelings and encourage reframing as well as channeling anxious energy into constructive action to support vulnerable communities.
Tap into somatic awareness and harm reduction skills: Use somatic cues to better identify your embodied experience of anxiety, as well as to identify helpful coping strategies. Being curious about and aware of our somatic cues of safety or danger will also support us in becoming more aware of behaviors that might be anxiety-driven and harmful—like constant news consumption or unproductive debates.
The Calibrated SUD Chart with linked coping tools can be a beneficial tool in supporting curiosity about and awareness of our internal experiences of activation.
Ask your therapist to help support you in expanding your toolbox of self-soothing, grounding, self-regulation, and/or distress tolerance tools and skills in response to activation—we are always happy to help!
Use your therapy session time to actively practice orienting, somatic awareness, and self-soothing exercises: Regardless of whether you’re the therapy client or the therapist, taking occasional breaks from just talking about the anxiety to instead learn and practice these techniques can be a good idea.
The co-regulation is real! This will give both participants’ systems a “time out” from focusing directly on an objectively stressful topic and can help provide relief from anxiety-inducing "what if" scenarios.
Other Election Anxiety Resources
Crisis Text Line:
“In the unpredictable environment of the 2024 presidential election, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed or anxious. The tension is real, but you don’t have to face it alone. Crisis Text Line is here to offer support. Simply text ELECTION to 741741 to reach a live volunteer crisis counselor in English. Para apoyo en español envía la palabra ELECCIONES al 741741.”
Additional Crisis Text Line Resource Guides:
https://www.crisistextline.org/topics/election-anxiety/#how-to-cope-with-election-anxiety-pre-post-1
Stress in America 2024: A nation in political turmoil (recent APA findings):
https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/stress-in-america/2024
Old APA Guidelines on Dealing with Election Stress
(from 2016…but sadly still relevant):
How to Use Activism as Self-Care (article):
https://jedfoundation.org/resource/how-to-use-activism-as-self-care/