By Emma Stein, MS, NCE
You are feeling stuck post-election, you are full of emotions and unsure where to turn. You find your thoughts are racing and there is no stop. You have a lump in your throat that won’t go away. The tightness in your chest has been there for weeks. Your stomach is in knots. Where is this coming from and when will it stop?
Black and White Thinking
Black and white thinking, an all or nothing mindset, could be playing a huge role in your post-election processing. Black and white thinking is a cognitive pattern that puts your worldview into a binary, things exist as good or bad. What does black and white thinking sound like? Using phrases such as always, never, impossible, ruined, perfect, and so many more. The instant idealizing or catastrophizing of any situation. Our brains form polarized traps into a thinking pattern that doesn’t allow our thoughts and emotions to exist outside of one context and our bodies react to it. Our minds can take one experience, one message, and throw it all the way to one end of the binary. For example, you make a mistake, black and white thinking turns that into “I always make mistakes and I will never be good at this task.” Is this the truth? Or is the truth that we are human and we make mistakes? Will you make the same mistake again? Will you be good at this task next week? Likely the answer is that you do not always make mistakes, and you will be good at that task over time, that is the box that black and white thinking puts us in. This then leads to negative thinking spirals that make us feel stuck, make our thoughts race, make our bodies react, and so much more.
Post Election Anxiety
What does this look like in the post-election era? We are often shocked, scared, and confused when we are forced to see that other people do not think the same way as us. We are often thinking of all the worst case scenarios and hurting for the people it impacts. We are hurt by the people who allowed this to happen. We are angry that the world could be such a negative place. All of those things are okay, it is when they become consuming and no other thoughts can hold space that we begin to polarize our minds. We begin to catastrophize, we begin to only see the world as bad. We latch onto the pain and it takes over. The doom sets in. You can be angry, hurt, disappointed, distraught, but allowing those emotions to create a sense of hopelessness can completely take over both our thoughts and our bodies. Our brain can only see the dread and our body holds on to it. So we can be scared and confused, we can be angry at the results, without allowing our brains to fall into the trap of this will never change and things will never improve.
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Two Things Can Be True: DBT Skills
Try settling into using the word and. Multiple things can be true at one time, and teaching our brain to allow this is crucial in creating a mental space of safety. Healing from the emotional dysregulation from the election looks like allowing your feelings to exist and grounding yourself in the present moment. Healing looks like being angry and upset while also finding ways to practice self-care and bring you little glimmers each day. Figuring out the things that still bring you joy and continuing to create space for them. Healing looks like allowing multiple things to be true at the same time so your brain does not get stuck into a polarized thinking trap and you do not lose yourself in your black and white thinking. For the election, can we be angry, disappointed, and upset AND recognize there are still things we can do to take a stand and help support ourselves and those around us.
When your friends or loved ones voted in a way that feels unsafe
Think about the people who voted for the other party, black and white thinking looks like belittling and vilifying them. Healing looks like understanding a sense of common humanity, no matter how misguided and unjustified you find their vote; creating an enemy out of them allows the anger to continue to build and the polarized thinking patterns to continue to spiral. Now by no means am I suggesting going to make them your best friend, but walking away from the thinking patterns of bad and good. It may sound like “I do not agree with who you voted for and the principles they ran on AND I do not need to hold on the hostility that I am holding towards you, you are not worth my time and energy.”
Post Election Doom Spirals
In this post-election era it is easy to fall into the doom spiral, it is easy to see all the ways this election is negatively impacting others and it is much harder to pull ourselves out of it. Black and white thinking puts us in a box, think about opening the box and trying to see things from multiple perspectives. Where can I find the and? What can I do to create space for the emotion and the healing? Look at the image below, which word do you see?
Post Election Good and Evil
Can you see the good AND the evil? In many senses this is true of the world, there can be both good and evil at the same time. The key is allowing both of them to exist in the context of each other without allowing one or the other to become too overbearing. Now maybe you cannot find anything good about the election, this is where we circle back to where you can look to create your own sense of joy, your own glimmer of hope. Find moments where you can do something that allows that lump in your throat to go away for a little while, let the tightness in your chest relax, let your stomach relax. You do not need to forget, you do not need to let it go, you need to be able to put it down when it becomes too much.
Black and White Thinking is a Trauma Response
There is no way to predict the future, black and white thinking is based in the reality of creating a concrete future before there is one. Try and stay in the moment, ground yourself in the present and look for all the places you can find the and.
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About The Author
Emma Stein is a Villanova Graduate with a Master of Science in Counseling. She specializes in sports related anxiety, body image, borderline personality disorder, PTSD, LGBTQ populations, Inner Child work and Women with ADHD. Her approach is grounded in feminist theory and she loves helping her clients to challenge societal exceptions and embrace their full identities.