What to Do About Election Anxiety

tldr: We don’t know what’s going to happen. But we must find courage and wisdom… also, we are getting together the day after the election. You should join us.

We are really attached to our fear.

Of course we are!

It keeps us safe.

So today I speak gingerly. I want to be cautious. I am experiencing a little bit of fear myself. I am afraid of being misunderstood. Afraid that some of you might think I’m not concerned with what could happen after this election. That I am not bothered by what is happening in the world.

Because the truth is that I am deeply concerned. That my heart breaks before what is already unfolding. And my heart trembles before what could happen next.

What I’m looking for is for a better way to contend with reality.

I’m looking for ways to deal with this unrelenting sense of uncertainty.

I want to allow myself to experience the care and the concern. To take action where possible and necessary. And to do so without allowing anxiety to run away with itself. I don’t want anxiety to paralyze us. Harm our bodies. Make us reactive. Susceptible to cultish dogmas and easy answers. Or seduced by the idea that it is only we who are good.

The fact is that humanity has faced devastation after devastation. A lot of it caused by nature. Much of it caused by our own selves. The fact is that we are made to live with uncertainty. And that it does not matter that we don’t like it.

The other fact is that we have made it this far. That we are the children of those who survived.

And that we have ways of wisdom. Ways of courage. Ways of faith. That we have stories, songs and dances that have been drummed through the ages. And they are designed, inspired, revealed precisely to help us remember. To remember who we are. And to remember how we are meant to be. Especially when things get hard. As they inevitably will.

Here, it is helpful to make a distinction between fear and anxiety.

Let’s say that:

Fear is the immediate response to a known threat, often helpful and protective.

Anxiety is the lingering, often uncertain worry about what might happen.

Fear is essential for our survival. Anxiety can become maladaptive if unchecked. It can consume us. It can define our experience of life and the world. It harms our bodies. It makes us tight, contracted and small.

Before I say anything else, please understand:

I am aware that knowing what anxiety is not enough to get rid of it.

I know that anxiety is about a future that does not yet exist. But this doesn’t mean I can “just drop it,” like some of my teachers say. I know this in my own life. And I know this from the deep work I get to do with many of you.

We know that it takes a whole lot of work for us to heal from anxiety. Because anxiety is not only produced by the culture. It is also produced by the most difficult experiences we’ve had in our lives. It is how our bodies hold our trauma.

However, addressing anxiety. Loosening its grip. Is in fact the work in front of us. The fact that it is hard work does not mean we don’t have to do it. 

It is the work of learning to live in these times. And it is the work in front of us right now. When we don’t know what will happen next.

We do know that it will be consequential. We know that even with the better outcome, we are likely to experience turmoil. We know that the tragedy and the madness that consumes the populace is not magically going to end.

So what do we do instead of being anxious?

For one thing, we allow ourselves to remember that we evolved to live in bands of 150 people or so. Our brains are not made for the 24hr newscycle. Our bodies cannot stand the firehose of bad news that is algorithmically designed to hijack our limbic system.

The news is a corporate tool to keep you distracted and entrap your cares.

Nonstop news is not the way to care. Nonstop news is not something any of us can bear.

There are all kinds of real actions you can take. Allowing yourself to be consumed by news is not the best one of them.

But turning off the firehose of news, tweets and opinions is just a way to stop the bleeding. We live in a globalized civilization. And most of us reading this newsletter are citizens of what is still the most powerful nation in the world.

Yes. We are responsible.

What is the best way to bear this responsibility?

Here is where I get more ginger. More concerned about your reaction. Because what I’m going to suggest can feel heretical. I’m saying we need:

Acceptance

Acceptance as the first step. Acceptance as the way to courage and to wisdom.

In The Practice of Groundedness, Brad Stulberg says that:

Worrying about a situation or denying it altogether does not change it, but it does waste a lot of energy. What is happening right now is what is happening right now. You might as well accept it…

Acceptance is about being with your reality, whatever it may be, by doing so you lessen the distress caused by wanting things to be different…. You rid yourself of the gap between your expectations and your experience… only once you've accepted your reality will you find peace, strength and stability, or at least an understanding of the actions you might take to attain these states.

Acceptance is not about doing nothing, rather, it is about reckoning with what is in front of you so you can encounter it in a skillful manner. Acceptance is necessary to experience contentment and happiness in the here and now, and it is the first step toward making progress in the future.

It can be applied to every level of life, whatever it is you are working toward, big or small, micro or macro acceptance is an essential and ongoing practice. If you accept your reality, you'll feel more firmly grounded in it. You'll be where you are, and you'll have a much better chance of getting where you want to go.

Acceptance does not mean doing nothing. A lot of you are doing so much organizing right now. THANK YOU, thank you so very much. We are depending on your commitment, sleeplessness, care and sweat. And I am honored to know you.

If you are worried about the election, there are plenty of opportunities to act instead of fret. Find them. Get together with others. Take action together. Community is the answer.

You can also develop plans for your safety. Tuesday, my wife, lives in Ohio. She sees increasing activity at the gun range, she sees the flags of fascism fly as she drives by. So she and her ex-husband had to make a plan. “How are we going to get our kid out of here if things turn violent? What’s the plan?” This is not just being anxious. This is being smart. Be smart.

And what if we face mass deportation? What is our plan to help migrants then? What is going to be our 21st century underground railroad?

I’m not trying to be alarmist. I am saying that acceptance is better than anxiety. That we are more agile when we are not raging against reality.

Reality does not seem to be fair. It’s a good time to accept that. Face what is true. And move forward from there.

In After the Ecstasy the Laundry, Jack Kornfield teaches that:

Anger, like the grasping of desire or the tyranny of judgment, is a skin that we can loosen… we begin to learn what is underneath the contraction of anger, judgment, and wanting. Usually we discover a new layer of hurt, loneliness, fear, and grief.

This is where offering a tender heart becomes essential. This is the place of courage—the courage to hold in love the hardest pain, our deepest sorrows and greatest fears. It is here that trust and surrender are nurtured. The awakening of this spirit of mercy and kindness is like the visitation of the angels. There comes an energy to forgive, a new softening and receptivity of the heart.

So I speak about acceptance because acceptance is what brings us to courage. And courage is what we need. Courage demands that we feel what is here to be felt. Anxiety is an ongoing desire not to feel what we are feeling.

We find courage in our faith. And I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about this awareness that we have. This knowing that we have. This cellular understanding that we've walked upon this earth for tens of thousands of years. And that somehow, we are still here.

What is that? How is it possible? With ice ages and plagues? With war, and conquest, and drought and genocides and enslavements. How is it that we are still here?

I see faith as a sort of turning ourselves over to that mystery. As accepting the terms and conditions of being born into an animal body. Of finding ourselves baffled here. Made to walk upon this sacred earth.

I find faith when I connect to something higher. When I sense the longer story. This human story of the ages. Frail, dangerous and beautiful. And always the wisdom. Always the fire of the sacred. Always the songs of the elders.

And, just as importantly, I find courage when we turn to one another. When I look into your eyes, I aim to see your goodness.

This is the time for acceptance, because this is the time for courage. And when we come together with courage and with acceptance, that’s when we start to know wisdom.

It’s when we start to live wisdom.

And it will not guarantee our safety. Nothing really can. But it helps us to craft lives that can bear it as it comes. Lives lived with courage and meaning. And this is how humans thrive.