You’re not alone if you’re feeling anxious about the upcoming presidential election. A new survey from the American Psychological Association showed that nearly 70% of respondents are anxious about the election.
WSHU’s Molly Ingram spoke to Dr. Judson Brewer, a mindfulness expert at Brown University, about coping.
WSHU: As someone who covers politics a lot, I can tell you that when I talk to people about the election, many say they’re anxious. What about the election makes people anxious?
BREWER: I would say the biggest one that I see is the uncertainty that comes with the election. So our brains, in general, don’t like uncertainty, and that’s actually how they’re set up. You know, when there’s something uncertain, they’re set up to try to solve it so they can see if it’s dangerous. For example, if you think of our ancient ancestors who heard a rustling in the bushes, that would set them on edge to say, go figure out what that is, so that they could see if it’s their family member or a lion, for example, so they could see if they’re safe or not. So uncertainty is kind of built-in for us to try to solve that uncertainty so that we, you know, out of a safety mechanism, can figure out if we’re safe or not.
WSHU: According to the American Psychological Association, election anxiety has been up significantly since 2016. What do you think has contributed to that?
BREWER: There are a million contributors to that. I think the election cycle has, you know, we’ve seen a sea change in the election cycle with the introduction of Donald Trump. That’s where things really changed in 2016, a lot of norms were upended. And I won’t go into all of those, and I’m not a political scientist, so I’m not really qualified to do that. But in general, the more things are different than we’re used to, the more that brings in more uncertainty, and that upends things.
So it can be anything from somebody willing to say things that typically politicians wouldn’t say, for example, or you bring in uncertainty in many different ways, whether it’s political uncertainty, but then add in things like environmental uncertainty, add in economic uncertainties. So, a lot of those things have always been here. You know, the economy is never certain, but we’re now adding in things like the environment, which is more uncertain than it has been in the past. The political candidates are willing to do things that are different from the norms in the past.
And so all of these things add together and kind of add on each other, the uncertainty. On top of that, we’ve had a lot of misinformation and disinformation. So, if you look at uncertainty, our brain looks to try to solve that. And in our natural environment, you know, you look in the bushes to see if it’s a lion or not. Now, you can’t really look on the internet to see if a news cycle or some news headline is real or not because it’s on the internet.
WSHU: I think the million-dollar question that everyone’s asking is, what can we do to stop this anxiety and this stress that’s election-related?
BREWER: I think of it this way, if we don’t know how our brains work, we can’t learn how to work with our brains. So, just seeing how this can be a cyclical process for ourselves reduces some uncertainty. For example, habit is formed through three elements: a trigger, a behavior and a result. So, if we feel nervous because we’re uncertain about the election, there’s the trigger. The behavior might be that we go check our news feed, right, and then our brain might get a little bit of a hit, of a reward where we read some news article that makes it feel like we’ve learned something.
The problem there is that we can get stuck like a rat pressing a lever for food, where we’re constantly refreshing our news cycle, and every now and then, some big story might hit, and we get this big hit of dopamine that says, ‘Wow, that was really important.’ And so we get stuck in this intermittent reinforcement process, which is actually the most addictive. It’s kind of like a slot machine where we’re just constantly checking out our news, which is actually making us feel more anxious because it’s not actually telling us, for example, who won the election. So, just knowing the process is helpful.
And then ask ourselves this simple question: what do I get from constantly checking my news feed? Is it making me more or less anxious? Typically, people will say it makes them more anxious because it’s not solving their uncertainty, wasting their time and pointing out how much uncertainty there is. So having them ask the question, “What am I getting from this?” can help their brain kind of determine how rewarding it actually is. And if it’s not rewarding, it helps them be able to step back. I think of this as getting disenchanted. In fact, we’ve even done some studies with an app called Unwinding Anxiety, where we could test this. We got a 67% reduction in anxiety and people with generalized anxiety disorder, where we’re teaching the process of like, map out these habit loops, see how rewarding it is, and when it’s not rewarding, learn to step out of that cycle. Part of stepping out is learning to step into something more rewarding, which is bringing curiosity to the feeling of anxiety rather than doing something about it.
So typically, we get stuck in the cycle of worrying or procrastinating or checking the news feed, and that just spins the wheel instead of going, ‘Oh no, I don’t know what’s going to happen, let me check the news.’ We can go, ‘Oh, what does this anxiety feel like in my body?’ And that helps us turn inward, where we can learn to develop curiosity, which is a very helpful skill in general. But that curiosity also helps us not go to our phones or where our news or our computers or wherever to check our news feed, and then we can just check to see what feels better. Do you know if worrying feels better than curiosity? Curiosity feels better. It’s a no-brainer.
WSHU: I think it’s safe to say that 50% of the country probably won’t be happy with the results of this election. How do you make that stress relief long-term?
BREWER: That’s a great question. So, let’s say that we’re on the losing end where we voted for somebody that didn’t win. We can check to see what our brains do. We can think about it and get angry, and then go through the same process. What do I get from getting angry? Can I actually change the result by getting angry? No, right? So we can learn to notice when we’re getting caught in a cycle that’s actually just like spinning our wheels in the sand, where it’s just digging us deeper, where we’re getting stuck in more anger and frustration, versus letting off the gas, stepping out of it and going, okay, that happened. I don’t have any control over that. I did what I could; I voted. And now, can I let that go and move on?
What’s more energetically taxing? To hold on to something, to get frustrated about something about which we have no control, or to put it aside, to put it in the past and let it go? So it’s kind of like the prayer of serenity, you know, let me control the things that I have control over, and let go of the things that I don’t have control over. And that’s been around for a long time because it works, it’s helpful.
WSHU: Do you think that there is a happy medium that exists where people can look at the news and stay engaged in everything, but not to the point where they’re making themselves super anxious about it?
BREWER: Absolutely. I think, you know, staying updated on the news is generally helpful so people can find a cadence that works for them. For me, it’s about once a day because major news headlines, you know, you’re going to learn about it the next morning, and it’s not going to affect your life today if you don’t know about it until tomorrow morning. If something critical is going to happen, somebody will probably call us and say, “Hey, you know, a tornado is coming your way.” Or our phones will have some alert that says, “Hey, danger.”
So we’re not going to really miss anything, but we’re going to gain a whole lot by having been able to have the peace of mind to, like, get on with our day and get on with our lives, and then just have that little chunk where we’re like, “OK, now I’m going to get updated on the news.” People find, and I even do this personally, it’s a lot less stressful to not be constantly reaching for our phone or clicking on a new site when we have an urge to be like, “Oh, what happened?” Probably not much in the last five minutes. So, finding that cadence, whether it’s once a day or twice a day, and then learning to just let go the rest of the day.
This story was originally published by WSHU. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
