The day after the 2016 election, I woke up scared and alone in a hospital bed in a strange city.
I grabbed my iPad from the tray table, saw the news, and started frantically Googling what could happen to healthcare for people with pre-existing conditions (I’m basically a walking, talking pre-existing condition) under the new administration if they got their way about it.
Until that point, I’d been so focused on just getting through that election, that I hadn’t started figuring out what I would do after.
And I was fucking terrified.
That election was a wake-up call for a lot of us about a lot of things.
And for me, it was the beginning of a months-long reckoning around my health, chronic illness, and self-care.
I was already spending an unsustainable amount of time, energy, and money trying to figure out what was going on with my stomach, why it was so much worse than it’d ever been.
It was so all-consuming that I didn’t have the energy for a lot of other important health stuff, particularly around my mental illness and neurodivergence.
But the idea that there might be even more, new obstacles to trying to get a diagnosis and traditional treatment, I finally started accepting that I could be taking way better care of myself. And that even if “lifestyle changes” wouldn’t cure my chronic illnesses, they could make them less painful and severe.
Basically, I started seeing the importance of self-care and being proactive about both my physical and mental health.
Over the next few years, I learned how to balance taking care of myself with everything else in my life, and shared my story on Work Brighter along the way.
By the time the 2020 election came around, I’d made enough progress to know that I would need to heavily prioritize self-care and managing my health that week.
I even brought it up with my therapist ahead of time, so we could brainstorm stress management and self-care ideas I could do throughout the week.
Today I want to share some of those ideas with you, in case you need some ideas for dealing with your own election stress disorder.
Which yes, is a real thing.
But first, the question I know at least one person is thinking…
Why you need to prioritize self-care right now
Society’s collective understanding of self-care has progressed a lot in the past few years, so I hope most people realize that the more stressful the world is, the more you need to manage your self-care in order to deal with it.
But I feel like there’s at least one person reading who’s still wondering…
- “Why take the time to make a plan for my own self-care right now?”
- “What makes me so important to be a priority, when the world is what it is?”
- “Why do I deserve to rest when I could be working or mobilizing or activating? Regardless of how the election turns out, the work’s not over.”
So we’re still going to address this.
As much as I hate self-care cliches like, “you can’t pour from an empty cup” and “you need to put your own oxygen mask on first,” I feel like the reason they became so common as to be cliche is because they’re just plain true.
If you want to have the energy and capacity to make a difference beyond yourself, you have to take care of yourself well enough to have extra energy to spend on things like activism or volunteering.
10 Ways to Manage Your Election-Related Stress
Lean into boring self-care
Like I said, the bare minimum bar to clear for yourself is getting yourself through the election in one piece.
This is a time to really focus on boring self-care work, like meeting your body’s basic needs.
Focus on doing what you can to minimize how much the stress or decreased mental health has an impact on your physical health or everyday functioning.
Think about basics like eating and drinking well, sleeping as much as you can, remembering to take your meds, and moving your body how you’re able to.
For example, stress tends to have an impact on my gastrointestinal symptoms, which are a lot worse when I’m not drinking enough water. So I’m making sure to prioritize drinking water even more than I usually do this week.
Set tech boundaries for yourself
It’s never a bad idea to revisit your relationship with online content consumption, but during big news events, it’s even more crucial.
Here’s a handful of tactics to consider for consuming content and keeping up with the news while prioritizing your mental health:
- Pick a few sources to follow and mostly ignore the rest. It can feel like it’s our civic duty to consume information on and be well-informed on everything, but that’s literally impossible.
- Distinguish between actual news, and commentary or “discourse” about the news. Prioritize the former, finding out what actually happened, over other people’s thoughts and opinions on what happened. They’re valuable, but again, you don’t have the time or brain space for it all.
- Set a news time limit instead of a screen time limit. Update the screen time limits for news-related apps and focus on those instead of general “screen time.” You’re going to need to distract yourself here and there, and non-news screen time can be a great way to do that.
- Decide what you’ll consume instead. It’s easier to stay away from one kind of content if you have a more enjoyable kind at the ready instead. For example, picking out what book, video game, TV show, etc. you’ll spend time on instead of watching the news or scrolling social media.
Set communication boundaries for other people
Over the next few days and weeks, you might have to interact with people who either just want to talk about politics more than you can handle right now, or who have very different feelings about the election than you and want to argue about it.
You’re allowed to set boundaries around that.
When this topic comes up, sometimes people point out that it’s privileged to opt out of talking politics. But that doesn’t mean you have to engage in every potential political or social justice conversation that comes your way.
You’re allowed to protect your mental health and opt-out of public conversations about certain topics, involving certain people, or in certain settings.
That’s not the same as opting out of politics or social justice completely.
Not wasting energy on conversations you know won’t go well also conserves your energy for political actions that can make a more meaningful difference than fighting with a politically misaligned coworker or family member about the same topic for the hundredth time.
Lighten your workload where possible
I recognize that this is going to be the most difficult for most of us to do. But it still needs talking about.
Showing up to a Zoom call or trying to write an essay while you’re absolutely, completely preoccupied sucks. It’s the worst.
So whatever events and projects you do have control over, try to make them as flexible and easy as possible, under the assumption that both you and anyone you work with to be performing as less mental capacity than usual.
If you can take some days off work, take them.
If you can’t, see if you can reschedule any of your meetings.
If you have any tasks that will require a lot of mental energy, see if you can swap them with something easier. This could be a great week for updating spreadsheets or digitally decluttering your hard drive.
Stock up on supplies
I’m not talking about prepping for the apocalypse, although I get that 2020 sort of created a new kind of prepper.
Nope. I want you to make sure you have the basic supplies in your house in case you can’t or don’t feel safe running errands for a bit.
If you’re say, too depressed to get out of bed, I want to make sure you still have a way to get whatever essentials your life requires.
If you live alone, make sure to stock up on things like groceries, toilet paper, and personal hygiene supplies. Or figure out how you can get them without leaving the house.
I’ve learned this from experience, you want these on hand BEFORE you get too depressed or overwhelmed to move.
Spend time with your warm fuzzy file
This is what I call my bookmarks folders, Notion databases, and literal computer folders of funny memes, videos, and more. Wherever you make your warm fuzzy file, it’s a great place to store mindless entertainment for when you need a distraction and a smile.
You can put basically anything that makes you feel “warm fuzzies” or that puts you in a good mood inside it. I’m talking:
- Links to your favorite TV episodes on Netflix
- YouTube videos of baby animals that make you happy cry
- Random memes from random subreddits that never fail to make you laugh
- Your favorite old BuzzFeed listicles and Tumblr roundups
I want you to start building a collection like this of links that make you smile or laugh when you really need to do so.
Light distractions for when you deserve to be distracted from the world.
Make room for moments of joy
Make sure to allow for duality of both good and bad things happening at the same time. Even if this is a bad week for your political life, recognize where else things are going well…or at least, better.
Celebrate any progress or small win possible, and chase joy when you can find it.
Schedule therapy appointments
If you go to therapy, now is probably a pretty busy time for your therapist, between the election and the upcoming holiday season.
Try to book ahead your appointments through the end of the year, if you can.
That way, it’s out of the way, and the appointments are on your calendar before you start adding any political or holiday events to it for the next month or so.
Find a way to make a difference
Next up, think beyond yourself.
Helping others can be a fantastic form of self-care WHEN you have the energy for it.
Regardless of which way the election goes, progressive and leftist causes will have a lot of work to do.
Find ways to help or get involved that fit your time, strengths, and energetic capacity right now.
I’m purposely leaving it vague because that will look so different for everyone.
Lower your expectations for yourself
Take everything I have ever said about gentle productivity and double it this week.
There’s a quote from Darcy Lockman that I absolutely love: “Lower the bar. Now, look at that bar, and lower it again.”
It’s NOT easy, but adjusting your expectations of yourself is a skill worth learning.
Lower your expectations around your work productivity. Your sleep. Your emotional regulation. All of it.
To keep some semblance of a routine, choose one or two keystone habits to prioritize. Mine are going to be journaling and eating a breakfast.
As for the rest of your regular habits, either be okay with being more sporadic with them, or come up with “scaled back” versions of them for days when you don’t have energy for the full thing.
Don’t just push through
I’ve ranted before about the dangers of the “just push through it” mindset. If the past few years hadn’t already taught you that it’s okay not to push through it, let now be your trial period with going easier on yourself.