Over the next few weeks, try these tips to stay sane
Election Day is around the corner, and if you are politically engaged, the chance that you will become emotionally unhinged during this period is very high.
As the clock ticks down toward November 5, everyone needs to take extra care of themselves and remain aware they (we) may be in a more reactive state than is typical for us.
There is a lot on the line, so we need to take steps to tamp down our anxiety levels.
There are two key ways to do this:
- Minimize the amount of news you consume during this period, and
- Use that extra time to do something productive that might actually affect the outcome of the election.
First, let’s talk about your news intake.
I know, I know.
You think you are being informed by mainlining the news, but in reality, you are just dysregulating your nervous system for an extra tidbit of information that doesn’t materially change your understanding of the world. Consuming news through social media makes it even more toxic because it’s even more carefully designed to trigger your outrage and fear.
Humans were not designed to be bombarded with negative and often terrifying information nonstop. Our nervous systems simply can’t metabolize so much activating information in such a short time period. The natural response when your nervous system is overwhelmed is that you become reactive, anxious, and/or scared. This can make life very hard and also cause us to behave in ways that we may come to regret.
We need to stop thinking it’s a moral imperative to consume so much information, because it simply is not.
You don’t need to follow the news minute by minute to be informed. In October, I spent a month in Italy completely disconnected from US news, and I still know that Donald Trump should not be president and that JD Vance is a deeply disturbed person with very frightening ideas about women.
I still know that Project 2025 is terrifying and that legal abortion in the US is facing an existential threat. In fact, if I had not consumed one piece of news since I left the news business in 2023, I would not be any less informed about what another Donald Trump presidency would look like, nor would I be lacking in information to cast my vote this election.
Perhaps the least helpful and most meaningless information you are consuming right now is horserace commentary that parses useless polls. This kind of “news” (which used to be a big part of my job) can cause anxiety or irrational exuberance. The polls have not been reliable for quite some time, and because most are within the margin of error, they are even more useless. A battleground state poll that shows Kamala Harris up 2 or 3 points is a poll that says maybe Kamala will win or maybe Donald Trump will win.
How is that informative?
The net effect is that this kind of information is either scaring you that your candidate might not win or it’s convincing you that your candidate will definitely win, and if that doesn’t happen, you are going to have an even harder time coming to terms with this than you would if you hadn’t bought into polls that told the story you wanted to hear.
The fact is, we don’t know who is going to win on Election Day and anybody who claims they know is delusional. Certainly, people can make claims, and they have a 50 percent chance of guessing correctly.
But that is very differing than “knowing.”
Because so many people get their news from social media these days, it’s worth considering dialing back your use or even taking a break until after the election.
makes the case for ‘pausing before scrolling’ during election season. Take a minute to check out her post.
Second, what could you be doing instead of doom-scrolling and catastrophizing about the future?
Here are some ideas:
- Make phone calls to voters in battleground states for Kamala or make calls for local candidates you support
- Knock on doors for your candidates to encourage people to vote or inform them about your candidate (Kamala’s campaign, for one, has buses going to swing states and it’s not too late to get on one of these)
- Make donations if you can afford it
- Offer to drive people who don’t have transportation to the polls or to ballot drop boxes
- Post locations of drop boxes and voting places on your social media
If you want to do any of these, all the information is online. There’s plenty to keep you busy, and you can do phone banking right from your home.
There are also all sorts of other ways to be informed about important topics that don’t make the news, which is focused almost exclusively on tragedy and politics as sport. To fulfill your desire to be informed, there are always wonderful books coming out on issues that face our country, podcasts that do deep dives into issues, and long-form journalism that does the same. There are also obviously lots of wonderful writers to follow here on Substack who aren’t in the business of jacking up your nervous system.
Trust me: there are plenty of things you can do to participate in democracy that won’t disrupt your nervous system, cause you needless anxiety, or create rifts in your relationships that might not be able to be healed.
Just as importantly, there is still time to actually make a difference in the direction this unbelievabley important election goes.
