Managing Election Anxiety | Jason Nicholsen of Within Reach Therapy

The reality, I think, is that the present moment isn't very different than in some ways, of our past moments. There are some key differences in terms of how we operate, in terms of communication, our ability to reach larger audiences. Again, that consistent 24 hour. I have clients that have it on the background all day, every day. So you're marinating in both this news cycle, but also the emotional response to that new cycle. There's certainly some key differences in terms of how we interact and connect and talk about politics now than we used to. But I think that, again, that differing value perspective has always been a component of us choosing party leaders and representatives and being a part of our democracy. It feels more visceral now because we are all responding to this news, to this amount of information in a new way.

Welcome to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. We are here to inspire creative ideas and connections for entrepreneurs and advocates working to address our mental health crisis. As you listen, I hope you will experience new ideas and motivation to innovate in your business, your community, and in your life. Welcome back everyone to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Harrison, and with me today is Jason Nicholson, who has a practice in Washington D.C. and he's been publishing and talking about election anxiety. Welcome, Jason.

Thanks so much for having me.

I am so excited to dive into this topic. I think it's very relevant. I think clinicians are dealing with it, but maybe people are not necessarily spelling it out as election anxiety. But first, I want to kind of go back a little bit and get to know a little about you. How did you get into this work in mental health and developing your own practice and all of those great things?

Sure. I graduated from NYU in their social work program and relocated to bc, so immediately sort of felt and identified, you know, working with folks in Washington D.C. in particular. It's a complicated kind of connection to the government. A lot of people are working directly for the federal government or other agencies and even nonprofits and other organizations adjunct and work with those governmental agencies themselves. So even the idea of former government shutdowns, it became really apparent that there is a political component in managing not only just general anxiety, but also work related anxiety. And now, as we're starting to see some of these cycles from 2016 till now is this cycle of political anxiety certainly felt really connected to kind of addressing and kind of acknowledging what I myself have been feeling personally as well. And I think a lot of listeners are also feeling some version of that kind of unknown and uncertainty.

Yeah, I think sometimes the hardest part of any difficult situation is the unknown not knowing.

Absolutely. I specialize in managing political anxiety and sort of fears, but also financial anxiety. So really those centers of avoidance and uncertainty and fear, there's a lot of commonality around all of these very specific types of anxiety.

Yeah. And then you moved to D.C. so this all just fits in nicely for you there, I imagine too.

Yeah, I, I will say my partner and I have relocated. Unfortunately we're back in Connecticut. But I miss DC every second of every day. It is a wonderful, wonderful place.

Gotcha. But you still work with clients in DC, correct?

Yeah, I, I do, I maintain my license and I'm just so connected to D.C. that I wanted to make sure that I held that connection with them.

Right, that makes sense. So talking about this, you can't avoid in our political climate right now. Like there's polarization, there's people on both sides that have big feelings. Even the debates coming person to person and the attacks going back and forth. I'm curious, from just sort of that psychological perspective, how are you defining all of this, describing all of this? What is this coming from, from your perspective?

So really the framework that I'm sort of operating from is this idea of there's very specific stressors and fears around both political movements, overall trajectory of our government, different relationships with politics itself. So certainly a very changing landscape of folks that are identifying as active voters or are paying attention to politics in general. I think it gets super complicated now because we have ingrained over the past 20 years the 24 hour news cycle and sort of this very repetitive sort of perspective on what's going on. And then we have social media with mixed bag here. Right. Certainly some amazing kind of pieces of being connected and communicating with others, but it certainly in some ways amplifies that division, creates that bubble echo chamber in which we find ourselves. And I think there's some real concern about continued use of misinformation and being able to fact check and kind of understand where we're getting our information from. I think those are all super complicated and it coalesces in this idea of I don't know what's going to happen. And in some ways we don't know what's going to happen in November. But that decision becomes a focal point for some of us in it's going to create some consequences. No matter what that election plays out to be. There are people that have really strong feelings on either side of the political spectrum. I think it's important because politics, if we boil it down, is essentially a reflection of our values, what we find important, how we build our lives, how we connect to each other, how we support one another. Essentially, that's the framework of politics here, what we stand for, how we operate in our world. And there's a very strong divisiveness that creates that conflict between these ideas. Here's my scope of values and here's how I'm operating. And your. The other side of this kind of spectrum is the opposite. And seemingly there isn't a lot of crossover and a lot of middle ground, even though I think in reality there's plenty of it. How we consume media, how we manage some of these things, sort of tells us a story, a narrative that everyone is framed in a certain way, which doesn't help create communication, doesn't help create that sense of mindfulness and kind of awareness of maybe our feelings in this.

I love that piece that you shared about politics being a reflection of our values, because for me, that takes it down a notch. Like, of course we can accept that other people have different values than we do. We encounter that every day. That feels a little more workable, maybe, than some of the fighting and back and forth that occurs.

Yeah. And I think that really does speak to the consumption of media and the narratives that are often created by what we hear, how we interpret that into our own lives and sort of what it means to us and our families. I think that's the core piece here, is there are consequences for some families no matter what the outcome of this election. And I think as we as clinicians and coaches and providers need to at least acknowledge that that piece is there for a lot of folks. And that's a scary, uncomfortable sort of feeling to be able to tolerate.

Yeah. I want to also go back to this idea of fact checking that you mentioned. Do you have recommendations for that? Like, when I think about fact checking right now, it seems challenging, Right. Anyone can post on Twitter or X or Instagram, Facebook, if they're older. Maybe there's all these places and then there's also news. But even the news seems to be like, this channel seems more geared this way. Do you have any recommendations for fact checking?

So that's a really challenging sort of problem to navigate because I think if we're talking about Macro view, I would always encourage, hey, if you're exploring a specific event or some information that you are not sure of, doing a quicker, deeper dive in terms of what other information populates in Google and sort of getting a flavor for maybe what the base facts of what we're talking about. Are. But in the real world, we're not going to do that. We're busy clinicians. That's not always a thing that we can stop and pause and be able to do. There are a few organizations I don't have any specific sort of relationships with any of them directly, but that are able to coalesce news information and put it into a spectrum from more liberal perspectives to more conservative perspectives. So there are ones that combine all of those information. So as you're going through and reading the news on a daily basis, it highlights for you where in that space that's coming from. Again, I think one of the things that is really hard to do is to get a flavor for what the perspective is versus the idea of, you know, Fox News perspective might be very different than a CNN perspective. That's really hard to figure out what the actual piece is that is going to be related to both what's happening in the world or our country and within our lives specifically. So just being aware of even the idea, as I'm reading, having that critical questioning perspective of who's writing this, where is it coming from? What are the goals of this communication? And just being aware starts to shift, at least making some space for some potentially different perspectives.

Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Let's talk a little bit about people who might be having election anxiety. Maybe we're all having election anxiety. How do you explain to people who might be calling you to talk about this, whether this is something that they need to come into therapy for or not?

You know, I really use this frame of reference as manageability, workability. So if we're talking about anxiety responses, avoidance, real physical stress in terms of muscle tension, headaches, jaw clenching, some of these more physical behaviors, certainly I think they're having a dedicated space to address thoughts, feelings, and then creating an action plan of where the action is from to take towards my goals and values, I think are always really important to be able to provide that space for folks. Again, acknowledging what the reality is. The reality is, is that we are in a very tight race here. No matter what perspective that you're coming from is, this is going to be a challenging few. I'd like to say that will be a little bit more space after the election, but we still don't know that either. And that creates this fear of what if? And I think acknowledging when a client is operating from that what if perspective, I think is really important to name it, acknowledge it, hopefully not judge it, but then figure out how do I want to respond to this feeling in A way that feels right to me as the individual. I think that's a key component.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, even thinking of these next few months, we don't know what's going to happen or what will transpire, any of it. But we can control our responses with some work, maybe.

It's really difficult to do sometimes. And again, I think there's not enough folks talking about it from a political perspective. There are still some really strong feelings about the 2016 election here, about the 2020 election, even combining it with this visceral experience that we all had during pandemic.

Yeah.

I think we're still starting to acknowledge that there's some national trauma that we have gone through. And I think that's. That's really important. We can't address trauma if we're not acknowledging it's there.

Yeah. And thinking through that, for me, I always think about how if we are in a trauma state, state of some kind, we're operating from our limbic brain, our much more emotional brain. Right. And I do think that we see a lot more emotional responses right now politically. And that was one of my questions too, for you. And you may not have an answer to this, but I was just reflecting on this myself. It feels to me, living in this time, that these elections have been so much more intense. But have they? Is it always this way? Have we changed? Have the elections changed? I don't know. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that.

So I'm sure a journalist or political science perspective might be very different. The reality, I think, is that the present moment isn't very different than in some ways of our past moments. There are some key differences in terms of how we operate, in terms of communication, our ability to reach larger audiences. Again, that consistent 24 hour. I have clients that have it on the background all day, every day. So you're marinating in both this news cycle, but also the emotional response to that news cycle.

Right.

That's why we have pundits who are very clearly communicating their feelings and opinions in a way that feels like news and fact, but is not. And I think that's. That's hard for us to decipher the two. There's certainly some key differences in terms of how we interact and connect and talk about politics now than we used to. But I think that, again, that differing value perspective has always been a component of us choosing party leaders and representatives and being a part of our democracy. It feels more visceral now because we are all responding to this news, to this amount of information in a new

way that makes sense. You kind of referenced this earlier about social media has its pluses and minuses, but as far as treatment goes, if you're working with an individual, do you ever recommend decreasing either time on screen or time watching the news? Is that ever part of what you do?

I think it's really important in a way integrate checking in on social media consumption in the same way that we check in with substance usage, alcohol usage, tobacco and caffeine usage. I think this is a key component to be able to make sure is sort of embedded in the therapy experience across the board. The goals of changing your relationship to media and media consumption I think really needs to be based on the individual. So certainly I've worked with a ton of folks in D.C. being on top of and aware of kind of what's going on is sort of an important component for their career perspectives. So we talked about intentionality in this. Right Again, the mindless, zoom scrolling sort of thing on Twitter or X, whatever it is, Instagram, TikTok. Now there's a passivity in that that I think is really important to kind of pay attention to. Part of this is creating spaces for being mindful and intentional. So I sort of reverse engineer. So I talk to folks about how do you want to feel after you read the news? If we're talking about consistent pervasive anxiety, that is the pit in your stomach, the avoidance, the I'm going to call out of work, I'm going to not talk to my family because we, we have maybe different values or different political perspectives that sounds no longer workable. So we need to come up with a different game plan. Mindful intentionality, I think is the key component of all of this. It's hard, I want to spend less time on my phone as well, but I find myself scrolling CNN or msnbc and it takes a lot of work to be in a space to pay attention to that in the moment.

Yeah, it really does. And I know there are so many studies out there that correlate even just watching the news. How much you watch the news with your level of anxiety is correlated. Right? So we have data that shows us that this makes us anxious when there's just this world of information at our fingertips.

And I think that goes to the core of what I would encourage clinicians and clients to focus on is where the sense of control might be. I as an individual have no control over the outcome of this election. I never did. I, as an individual and citizen of the country, I'm going to show up and vote and cast my perspective and take that initiative, but also realizing there are some other things that I can do if it feels appropriate. There are ways to volunteer, either with a political perspective or an issue perspective if there's something that really resonates in your life or with your family. I think there are a ton of ways to get involved, even focusing more on local than these larger national perspectives and identifying where we can have impact in our local communities. And I want to be really kind here. There are going to be some folks that just have the gas in the gas tank to be able to tolerate this. So meaning it is okay to take a step back for a bit. Maybe I'm going to decide I'm going to vote. But everything else, I'm going to focus on other parts of my life. That sounds really kind in a way and balancing that workability and feasibility with what really resonates with you as an individual and your values.

I like that. There's a lot in there to think about for sure. Anything else that you would recommend to people in order to stay healthy or at our best during this time?

Certainly. I think self care means so many things to so many people. I talk with my clients about being a cell phone. Like I would never in a million years let my cell phone get down to 5% battery, but I'd let myself get down to 1%. You know, it can be any version of this taking care of yourself, but really being intentional about what recharges your battery. If you don't have bandwidth to be able to tolerate some of the things that are going on. That sounds like an indicator of we need to prioritize making sure that you have energy to be able to respond to things in a way that feels really right to you. You need energy for that and I think that's a key component. The other piece is just really hopefully normalizing, reaching out to a therapist or to a provider. Some people are afraid to voice specific fears or concerns. And also there's a dilution like we're all on edge in a way. So there's a lot of answering for other people of no one has the space or availability to really listen.

Yeah.

But that also holds kind of that space that you need need to be able to figure out what my feelings are, what my thoughts about these things. What do I want to do about it.

Well, Jason, I have learned a lot from chatting with you today, so thank you so much for sharing all this with us. We are out of time, but if you want to find out more about Jason and his practice. All the links will be in the show notes as well as his article on election anxiety. So thank you again for being here.

Thank you so much. This has been great.