Are the Polls Giving You Election Anxiety? Read This.

On a recent morning at 9 a.m. sharp, my phone chirped with a new text from the group chat: “Guys I’m so anxious about the election, I feel unwell.” “Same lol,” I replied. “I just can’t think about it,” wrote someone else. My friends and I are far from alone: As of August, 69 percent of adults across party lines said the presidential election was their top stressor, according to the American Psychological Association’s annual Stress in America survey. And the closer we get to November 5, with polls showing Vice-President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in a dead heat, the worse we all feel. So how can we cope with the election’s negative impact on our mental health? I asked Amy Audet, a California-based clinical therapist; Dr. Joshua Aronson, director of the Mindful Education Lab at New York University; and Dr. David Dunning, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan, about how to get a handle on election anxiety and stress. Here’s their advice.

Internalize that politicians want you to feel anxious right now.

There are various reasons why this election cycle is stressful for many people, including a sense of uncertainty about the future of the country, the intensity and frequency of the news cycle, and partisan rhetoric, according to Aronson. “We tend to marinate in the things that scare us the most,” he says. “Part of the answer to what to do about these feelings is to realize that the messaging is designed not to make you feel good. It’s to make you feel angry and anxious so that you’ll go out and vote.”

If you must doomscroll, build in breaks.

Anyone who is constantly drinking from the firehose of social media or feels unable to turn off the news should create a schedule for staying informed, Dunning says. Check the news once in the morning for 30 minutes, or whatever else works for you, but do not continue diving in and out throughout the day. “If you find yourself chronically refreshing the page on early voting statistics — I may be coming up with a personal example — that means it is time to step away,” he says.

Go to that pottery class you love, or call your mom.

In times of stress, finding connection and joy can be grounding. Aronson says people should carve out time for people and hobbies that make them happy, and truly disconnect whenever possible. “Stopping to smell the roses is a cliché for a reason,” he adds. (Or, as the kids say, go touch some grass.) “Those are the things that make life bearable and wonderful.”

Disengage when your uncle starts insisting that immigrants really are “eating the dogs.”

One of the issues Audet’s clients are facing right now is a sense of disconnection from family, friends, and acquaintances who don’t share their political beliefs. She says it’s important for people to verbalize that they are uncomfortable when a conversation turns too heated or when a topic triggers negative emotions. “Once we are out of our window of tolerance, we’re not really talking anymore. We’re not connecting and we’re not doing anything productive,” Audet says. “I recommend saying, ‘Hey, it just feels really intense for me. Let’s take a break and maybe we’ll return to this.’”

Unsubscribe, delete, and unplug from as much as you can.

Real election-news addicts will want to quit their information streams cold-turkey. “If people are having a hard time managing with strategies that are suggested or having a hard time implementing them, I’ll invite them to engage in what I call a ‘retreat,’” Audet says. “The nature of this stuff is that it can snowball, right? We are anxious, so we read more, then we become more anxious. We really need to interrupt that cycle.” That means deleting social media and news apps from your phone, turning off TV news, unsubscribing from campaign or other political emails and texts, and whatever else you need to do to take a real break.

Remember that this moment is temporary.

Audet likes to redirect her clients from focusing on the most anxiety-inducing parts of the election season to zooming out to look at the big picture. “We have been through divisive elections before. We may have not really been happy with the outcome, but things continue on, right?” she says. “Even though these periods are really stressful and the outcome does really impact folks, the big picture is life still happens.” Accepting this can be useful in bringing down your anxiety.

Find a concrete way to get involved.

This final stretch before Election Day is incredibly important for campaigns. If the sense of dread feels paralyzing to you, Dunning recommends redirecting that energy into taking action. “You can actually be active in the election process and take back a little bit of control,” he says. You can donate money to electoral efforts, phone-bank, door-knock, or offer to drive people to the polls.