How politics affects your mental health (and what to do about it)
By Lindsay Ryan, Registered Psychotherapist
Recently, you may have seen articles or radio/television segments about mental health in the wake of U.S. politics and the quick pace at which executive orders have been passed and the resulting political anxiety. While they may contain some helpful information, these articles can lack the nuance needed for such an important topic. Part of this is because it’s impossible to distill proper mental health support into easily read and quippy articles or news segments. When we do that, we end up with pop-psychology and the misunderstandings of mental health terms that I so often must re-educate my clients about in clinical sessions. During these uncertain times, we do need ideas for coping, but we also need to identify our uncomfortable feelings and possibly even allow those feelings to inform how we move forward. If that sounds a little daunting, it’s because it is a huge responsibility both to ourselves and to the world around us.
The stress of seeing political challenges unfold on the news can bring up a lot of feelings.
— Stock photo
Some ways to cope
Limit your news consumption. You will often see this advice bandied about in mental health segments. The reality is, the news we face now is more than headlines or quick clips before we cut away to commercials. Silver et. al (2013) examined the psychological impact of televised coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the aftermath and found that people showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress for 2-3 years after frequent media exposure and that 4 hours or more exposure a day could lead to acute stress. That was before smart phones and social media apps like TikTok, which effectively work as a direct line of communication from folks on the front lines of suffering. Without the intermediary or moderating factor of broadcasting or media agencies, we have direct access to these stories all day.
Does that mean we should limit our exposure to trusted sources and for only half an hour a day? My answer is yes and no. It is best practice to limit your exposure, but only you know how much exposure is right for you. What is your threshold for staying informed enough for your mental health? How do you know if what you are watching or reading should be trusted?
Unfortunately, this is not a new question. Some readers of Gulliver’s Travels in 1726 mistook it for an actual travel narrative and misunderstood the satire for fact. Rather than the advice to look to trusted news sources, my suggestion is to build inner trust and build your media literacy — meaning learn how to distinguish fact from fiction so that no matter where you read something, you can trust your own critical thought.
Make room for your emotions
Let your feelings exist. Having emotional responses, such as anger, fear, hopelessness, apathy, among others is a completely normal human response to the news we are seeing and the reality many of us are living in (Pitt et. al, 2024). Making room for our feelings and honouring them is probably one of the most difficult ways to cope because it means confronting and tolerating our own discomfort, which is incredibly hard to do!
Imagine you are in a car and your emotions are like the passengers. The driver doesn’t need to necessarily manage the passengers, and in fact the driver can even let the passengers say where they want to go (consider long trips in the car and every time someone wants to stop for a bathroom or food break). The trick is that the driver wants to still be in control of the car, you don’t want the passengers to suddenly grab the wheel and head into oncoming traffic. So, you can let your emotions exist and you can even let them guide you, but you always want to be in control of your behaviour. Can you hear your emotion and then honour what it is asking for?
If you have trouble with this concept of feeling your feelings or letting them exist, this is where different modalities of psychotherapy can help, especially approaches that help us to connect with our experiences again. Sometimes we can also use tools, like externalizing feelings to help us rebuild a conversation with our emotional experiences.
Your circle of influence
Focus on what you can control. The idea of Circle of Control was developed by Stephen Covey and explains ways that we can identify areas in our lives where we have control/responsibility with the innermost circle being things completely within our control and the outside ring being things completely outside of our control (Covey, 2013). The concept is that this can help you to determine where to put your effort/energy and has since been co-opted by therapists.
However, the underrepresented ring is the circle of influence, those areas of your life where you don’t have direct control, but you do have impact. During these critical times it is important to look to your circle of influence. That may mean evaluating where you volunteer, where you spend your money, how you make donations, how you build community, how you vote and more. A donation doesn’t have to mean that you tithe at a church, it can mean going through your closet and finding warm clothes to give to shelters. Consider community efforts like riding associations that help uphold our democratic system and are completely organized and run by volunteers. Sometimes we don’t have a lot more to give with all the pressures we already face, so make sure you give yourself credit for what you are already doing!
You’re not alone
Seek Community. Finding and building community is an important coping tool – but maybe not the way you imagine. While socialization is an important part of being able to connect over shared experiences, community is also about collective action. Pitt et al. (2024) explain that you can’t have individualized solutions for collective problems and that you can’t pathologize a normal emotional response. Much of the mental health advice I see parroted in articles and social media, talks about regulating emotions and focusing on self-care. Images of yoga asanas, green food, and journals tend to accompany this advice. But is this fair? Susanna Barkataki in her Instagram reels talks about the yogic principle of Ahisma and how collective social action is part of yoga practice. When we say to find your community, it is because there is power in assembly and shared experiences. Finding ways to ‘cope’ on an individual level really asks us to centre our own experiences in a time when decentering is important. Yes – it will also help us cope, but coping isn’t always the point.
So, with all the nuance needed in mental health support, why do media articles and segments keep popping up with promises and how-to guides that ask us to centre ourselves and “cope” out of our feelings? Sociologists can chime in on the socio-political implications of a system that pathologizes and treats this as an individualistic maladaptive problem to be solved rather than a collective one requiring systemic change.
The therapist in me likes to look empathetically at the producers of media as citizens who are themselves stressed and fearful and angry who likely also want a way to understand and make sense of their emotional experiences. Something I like to remember is a quote by Michael Moore where he says that political activism is tiring, and you do need to take breaks from time to time. The trick is that not everyone takes a break at the same time. He used the image of a choir and said that in a choir everyone learns to take a breath at a different time so that the audience can’t tell there is a break in the song. Activism can be the same. If you are exhausted, it’s okay to rest– someone else will take the shift. But it’s also our duty and responsibility to get back up when we are ready. I encourage you to think about where you are? Do you need to rest right now? Or are you ready to get back up?
Looking for some support?
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the current political uncertainty, talking to a therapist in a compassionate and safe space can ease your burden and help you process your thoughts and emotions.
When you’re ready, we can help.
Book a free 30 minute consultation and let’s talk about it.