I began practicing psychotherapy during the Reagan administration. Thirty years went by before distress about politics became a clinical issue for any of my clients.
I remember the moment it first happened: There was a long voicemail from a distraught woman requesting therapy for anxiety and depression in reaction to the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump. I listened twice to make sure I hadn’t missed something. I hadn’t. There were no other issues. This woman wanted therapy for political distress.
That was a new one for me and every therapist I knew. But now I see no sign of this clinical challenge abating.
Political polarization in the U.S. is at the highest level ever measured. Growing majorities of both Republicans and Democrats say they consider members of the other party to be unintelligent, dishonest and immoral.
What I’m calling political distress is a bipartisan mental health problem. It is based on a belief that, because the country is in the hands of bad leaders, awful things might happen. Many people experience intense fear about what the other side might do. Both Republicans and Democrats have experienced this anguish, but it peaks at different times for the two parties, depending on who won the last election.
We psychotherapists like to base our interventions on research-based strategies that have been vetted in clinical trials or, if not that, at least strategies grounded in the clinical expertise of master therapists who wrote classic books. There’s none of that for how to deal with political distress.
But therapists cannot tell a client in distress that future research is needed before we can help. Instead, we pull from what is known about how best to handle related issues. Here’s the advice I’m sharing with my clients who are upset about the way the world is going.
Taking a longer view
Information about American history is relevant to political distress because, psychologically, people evaluate their situations by comparing them with anchors or norms. You compare current dangers and threats with what you’ve faced and survived in the past.
A Democrat comparing today’s United States with the country a decade ago may feel gloomy. But broader comparisons can produce a more grounded, calming perspective.
The Great Depression in the 1930s came with massive unemployment; here, thousands of people in New York line up in hopes of a job.
UPI/Bettmann Archive via Getty Images
The U.S. has faced major trials and tribulations over the course of its history. The country has proven itself to be a resilient democracy. Basic information about the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II yields a sense that the present political moment is not the only perilous time our republic has ever faced.
Wisdom of the Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the…
