From ‘nauseously optimistic’ to ‘headline stress disorder,’ how to deal with your election anxiety

November 5, 2024 ndowd

After a long, embattled, and stressful campaign cycle, Election Day is about to finally arrive—but not without spreading waves of anxiety, including a sense of being “nauseously optimistic,” a state of being that’s been getting lots of play in the media and on TikTok in this final stretch of the race.

“It’s very overwhelming,” says psychologist Thea Gallagher, a clinical associate professor at NYU Langone Health and cohost of the Mind in View podcast. “We are all getting completely inundated. I’m getting multiple texts a day about the campaign. It’s really hard to block it out and stay focused.”

Political anxiety is at a fever pitch right now, according to a new poll from the American Psychological Association. It finds that 77% of Americans are stressed about the future of the country and 69% are specifically anxious about the election. Further, the poll found that 72% of Americans are worried that election results could lead to violence, and 56% say they believe the election could be the end of democracy in the U.S.

It shows there’s a lot more involved than “just” an election, and mental health experts say it’s understandable to feel like you’re struggling to be locked in at work right now—even if others around you seem to be going about their lives as usual. Here’s what’s behind your election distraction, plus how to get a handle on it over the coming days.

Why is it so hard to stay focused right now?

At baseline, this is a big election. “People feel very strongly about their beliefs, what they want for this country, and how they want issues to be handled,” Gallagher says. “Depending on who wins the election, it seems like issues are going to be handled very differently—that’s a lot to process.”

But the overarching stressor with all of this is the uncertainty linked to this election, says Steven Stosny, a psychologist and founder of Compassion/Power who coined the phrase “election stress disorder” during the 2016 election, later naming it “headline stress disorder” for the continued 24/7 news-cycle anxiety. “When we’re focused on things we can’t control or influence, we feel powerless and anxious,” he says. “Anxiety is a general central nervous system response, not specific to what triggers it. It makes us perceive threats everywhere.”

Negative emotions—which are everywhere in the lead-up to an election—are also “highly contagious,” Stosny notes. “We’re likely to absorb them from coworkers, family, and the media,” he says. “Slurs and catchwords used by the candidates and their surrogates are also contagious. Whether we use them or just hear them repeatedly, they put us in a devalued state, making it likely that we’ll recall only events that evoked negative feelings.”

Political campaigns also tend to capitalize on “catastrophic fears about the election that your current way of life is being threatened, your rights could be threatened, there are bad or evil people around, that the stakes are high,” says Dr. Gail Saltz, associate professor of psychiatry at the NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital Weill-Cornell School of Medicine. Then there are the fears circulating of violence that may come with the election results, making some people feel that their safety is being threatened, Gallagher says.

With all of that swirling around, lack of focus is inevitable, Saltz says. “Anxious thoughts tend to be intrusive, meaning you think of them whether you want to or not, and they also tend to be obsessive, meaning they go around and around over and over again even if you don’t want them to,” she says. “When anxious thoughts about what will happen in the election and what will happen after the election as a result take root in your mind, it can push out other thoughts such as what you’re working on.”

How to stay better focused

Saltz says that simply trying to block election stress from your mind is unhelpful. “The more you struggle to push out the disturbing thoughts—which is typically what people do—the more entrenched they tend to become,” she says.

But Gallagher says it’s crucial to try to find a balance between the information you’re consuming and allowing your thoughts around it to become obsessive. That may mean carving out time for yourself to read news from trusted sources at a certain time after work or on weekends, she says. After you’ve read up on the latest, she recommends moving on.

While it can be hard, don’t read the news when you’re at work. “To stay as present and engaged during work hours, I recommend turning off app notifications and checking for updates at intentional times,” says Beth Brown, MSW, director of health and well-being at ComPsych.

Brown stresses the importance of setting boundaries in work relationships too. “Whether you share viewpoints with colleagues or differ completely, it’s acceptable to tell others that you’d prefer not to discuss politics at all within the workplace,” she says. “Taking the topic off the table can go a long way toward reducing tension and helping you stay focused on work.”

If anxious election thoughts pop up at the office, Saltz recommends acknowledging them and noting to yourself that they’re just thoughts and not predictors of the election’s outcome. “Let the thought drift by, like a cloud,” she says. “Don’t engage with it, don’t fight with it, just let it be.”

How to lower election stress levels outside of work too

It’s also important to do what you can to lower your levels of stress outside of the office, Saltz says.

“The more that one can do to relax the body, the more it helps relax the mind,” she says. “So, paced deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, aerobic exercise, a warm bath, relaxing music, a walk in nature…the point is using any coping tools that help you relax to do so on a daily basis. The more you decrease your anxiety, the easier it will be to turn your attention to work and to focus on it.” Staying busy with life outside the election can be helpful, too, Gallagher says. But if you’re feeling helpless, she suggests volunteering to assist with a campaign you feel passionate about.

If you think it would help, Stosny suggests thinking of what you would do if the worst happens. “Write down in longhand what worries you and how you will cope with it, should it occur,” he says. “We almost always cope better than we think we will. Remind yourself of how you coped with unfortunate events in the past.”

He adds that while your feelings on the upcoming election are valid, you may want to focus on what’s more immediate in your life, noting: “You may regret letting anxiety inhibit your compassion and kindness toward loved ones.”