Election Anxiety Goes Deep: by Kayla Hartman, LSW
People are objectively more anxious than we used to be.
If you’re feeling more anxious than usual and it feels like our political landscape has something to do with it, you’re not alone.
The results of the 2024 American Psychiatric Association’s annual mental health poll demonstrate that U.S. adults collectively feel increasingly anxious. In 2024, 43% of adults report that they feel more anxious than they did the previous year, up from 37% in 2023 and 32% in 2022. This year, 70% of American adults were particularly anxious about current events, with 77% reporting anxiety about the economy, 73% reporting anxiety about the 2024 U.S. election, 69% reporting anxiety about gun violence, and 57% noting anxiety about climate change.
If you look up “election anxiety” (like I did), you’ll be met with many lists of quick tips and coping skills for managing the acutely felt distress generated by this anxiety. This blog post is not one of those lists. Not that they’re not helpful- I would never deny the importance of sleep, breathing exercises, mindfulness, and boundaries with technology. I encourage you to find some of those articles if that sounds helpful for you. But I couldn’t shake the sense that we’re missing something. I wanted to dive into this topic because it seems like we’re not getting to the heart of it. Typically, when folks tell me that they’re experiencing anxiety related to the election, they’re not just worried about “the election”.
I get the sense that the election provides constant reminders of life’s bigger questions we prefer not to think about as we move through our “normal” lives. As a therapist, I am curious about the internal conflicts and existential themes that lie underneath. On one level I hear someone’s genuine, valid concerns about how they will cope with this uncertainty and possible negative outcomes, and on another I hear existential anxiety and grief echoing through the room. Do we take responsibility or do we have responsibility? What does it mean to be a good person? Is there inherent meaning to our lives? I don’t think you’ll find many lists about election anxiety answering these questions.
I’d like to borrow the imagery of the iceberg, with the words we use to describe the election on top, and the quandaries of existence beneath the surface. I’m thinking about this through the lens of Existential Psychotherapy, a non-deterministic therapy oriented around exploring the human condition and confronting the four “ultimate concerns of life” of death, freedom, meaning, and isolation. Existential psychotherapy aims to help clients face these themes and create meaning in order to come to terms with their existence. From a therapy perspective, this approach decenters symptoms and diagnoses because they do not apply.
The fear is justified. Allow yourself to adapt.
What disorder does someone get diagnosed with when the misery is justified? When the threat is not imaginary? Dr. Samah Jabr, the chair of the mental health unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health is an expert in holding these questions. In 2019, she said regarding sky high rates of PTSD and depression diagnoses in Palestine, that those numbers and the definitions of these disorders “do not apply to the experiences of Palestinians”. She explains “There is no ‘post’ because the trauma is repetitive and ongoing and continuous.” We carry our political anxiety in a completely different (but not separate) context than Dr. Jabr’s and her patients, but we can learn so much from her experience. We need to develop our own measures of good mental health specific to our contexts. “It’s important to develop your own mental health standards”, she says. “It’s not just the definition of the World Health Organization.” Under continual trauma and chronic stress, she focuses on helping her patients maintain a capacity for empathy and critical thought.
While those of us in America live in a much, much less difficult context, we must acknowledge our own justified fear and stress. Our lives have changed over the past several years. Economic hardship has touched many of our lives. We hold existential anxiety and grief, and it’s not helpful to act as though we are untouched by it. Take a page out of Dr. Jabr’s book, and ask yourself, if your fears are not imaginary, if your suffering makes sense, if society is unwell, why would you feel perfectly healthy? What do you need to prioritize for your mental health and what can you safely lower your expectations around? For example, under times of heightened stress, I prioritize being a good community member and I let go of things like waking up early and keeping dirty clothes off my floor.
Balance an acceptance of the bad possibilities with a refusal to catastrophize
At the same time, as you hold anxiety about the election, be on the lookout for catastrophizing. When you catch yourself getting overwhelmed, slow down, and notice what your mind is getting caught in. Ask yourself if there are unhelpful thinking styles at play, such as jumping to conclusions or discounting some positive information that might contradict your spiral. Does getting caught up in those thoughts help you live in a way that aligns you with your values? When you get hooked on these thoughts, do you lose sight of doing what matters? Are you helping the situation? Notice this process, and then keep moving forward and commit to doing what matters.
It’s a dialectic. When we’re dealing with existential issues that are not easily solvable, allow yourself grace as you confront these issues while refusing to collapse into catastrophizing.
Remember that being brave isn’t about getting rid of fear, it’s committing to doing it scared.
By Kayla Hartman, LSW
https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/annual-poll-adults-express-increasing-anxiousness
https://awspntest.apa.org/record/2013-04278-000
https://qz.com/1521806/palestines-head-of-mental-health-services-says-ptsd-is-a-western-concept
https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/existential-psychotherapy
https://behavioralpsychstudio.com/what-the-heck-is-a-dialectic/
