Mental Health and Living with Anxiety During Presidential Transitions

By Shelby Crosier

Americans are experiencing a mix of emotions as Trump prepares to start his second term as president of the United States. For some, a second Trump administration is stirring up fear and anxiety. From plans to conduct mass deportations to promises to limit access to gender-affirming care, many marginalized groups are concerned that they will be targeted by policy changes that Trump has stated he will pursue.

Rachel Waford, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and assistant professor of global health at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health. In this interview, she discusses how political anxiety can affect our mental health, the long-term effects, and how we can move forward together.

What are the health effects when someone lives under a state of constant stress or anxiety for a long period of time?

We have a lot of evidence about what it can be like to live under chronic stress, whether that’s fear of a perceived threat, or fear of the unknown, or whether it is living in persistent uncertainty or unpredictability. If we are living in that state perpetually, then it can have enormous impacts.

It can have impacts on our emotional health. It can have impacts on our ability to pay attention, to stay focused. It can impact our ability to experience joy in the everyday things that we're doing. It can impact our ability to regulate our emotions and to maintain our relationships in a healthy way. When someone is feeling stuck in these states because they’re not sure what to do next, or where to turn, or how to take care of themselves, then it can feel really overwhelming. This can affect our mind and bodies long-term.

How can the anxiety of a presidential election and transition to a new administration affect people’s mental health?

Something to keep in mind, which I think has escalated over the last several years, is that after elections some people will feel really exhilarated and vindicated, and others will feel somewhere on the spectrum of frustrated, to angry, to scared.

There are some historically oppressed groups who have constantly been living under fear of threat for decades. Some of those people may be feeling very acutely scared or worried right now about some of the potential policy changes with the upcoming administration.

One thing to remember is how resilient people can be in the face of these things. It only happens every four years, but we've been going through this in some way since we were having our first elections. People feel the implications are bigger, and I don't think that that's untrue. But there are things that people can do to make it through these kinds of situations, to keep going, and to stay focused on the things and the people in our lives and our communities that matter. We have a lot of practice.

For the people who are feeling hopeless or scared, how can those people move forward and protect their mental health?

One thing to be careful about is to be sure that we aren’t focusing on how to get rid of the feelings that we have about what's going to happen or what we worry is going to happen. Those are normal feelings, and I'm not going to ask you to let go of that or expect you to somehow get rid of that. Those are important and meaningful reactions. What we can do is help people manage those feelings of worry, fear, or anger by engaging in other areas of their life meaningfully.

Something that we tend to do as human beings, when things are uncertain, we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about what's going to happen or how it's going to go. That is a protective response that our mind does. But what that can actually do is promote more anxiety, and our mind is not always the healthiest place for us to be, especially if the content of our thoughts is pretty negative, pretty scary.

I would encourage anybody who is in that state right now to think about the ways that you can plug into your life tangibly. Plug into your community, social supports, and the things that bring a sense of security, safety, and control. This is not going to get rid of our anxiety or fear—and that's not a thing we should expect anybody to have to let go of—but it can help us feel a bit more engaged in the areas that we can control, which is going to be healthier. Our emotional experiences aren’t “either/or” —I’m fine or I’m not. Being human is complicated.

Some tangible things that people can do are:

• Getting a lot of good sleep and being cognizant of what you're putting into your body and how you are caring for yourself, physically.
• Taking care of your relationships.
• Engaging in the places where you can feel a bit more powerful and you can feel like you can get some productivity and accomplishment, whether that is at your job, your home, or in your community.
• Doing activities that bring you joy.

Would it be helpful for people feeling scared in this post-election transition period to disconnect a bit, maybe from the news or social media?

I talked about doing things to help people feel in control when they are feeling anxious. One of the areas of control might be to pull back. Maybe someone is feeling so inundated with information or so overwhelmed that not watching the news, unsubscribing from their news listservs, or not going on social media could be a really healthy thing. It’s just another little way to be more powerful and take back some control amid a larger situation where someone feels really powerless, hopeless, or scared.

How can we as a whole community, with a variety of differing feelings and opinions about the incoming administration, move forward together in a way that is supportive of our mental health and of each other?

My hope is that we can find a place of, at the very least, curiosity. Curiosity about why someone might feel differently than we do, might want different things than we do, and might vote for things differently than we do.

And curiosity doesn't mean that you have to agree. It doesn't mean that you have to like it, but people are allowed to have other thoughts and feelings, and we can't just make someone feel the way that we want them to. We can either come at that with some combativeness, with some anger, or we can come at it with some curiosity and openness.

I think that's something we've gotten away from, and now it feels hard to have conversations about different ideas and land in a place of disagreement, but respect. So, I think we could all probably benefit from a healthy dose of considering, “I don't understand why you believe what you believe or vote the way that you vote, but it must be really important to you, even if I never understand that.”

But I also acknowledge that many people feel really scared about what other people have voted for, and it can feel safe to stay within your own group. But in the long term, it actually keeps things scary, I think, because the further we get apart from each other, the scarier we feel to each other. Maybe that sounds naive or sugarcoated, but at the end of the day, we are all walking around sharing space with each other, trying to live on this planet in the most meaningful way that we can.