If you’ve been feeling stressed as an election approaches, you’re not alone. Election season in the United States can bring anxiety, and for many people it arrives on top of everything else going on in the world. People feel insecure, uncertain about the future, and sometimes fearful about what a close or contested result might bring. In moments of great stress, mindfulness and meditation can help.
About Election Stress:
Election Stress Disorder is a non-medical term that came into use around the 2016 US election. It describes something many people recognize: stress that builds around a national election. A 2019 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association found that 56% of American adults identified the presidential election as a ‘significant stressor.’
The problem with stress is that it’s often an unproductive way to handle our insecurity, fear or discomfort. When we’re stressed, we may make poorer decisions, become defensive and react in ways which make problems worse. Stress can also affect our health. It has been associated with headaches, nausea, stomach and digestion issues, and lowered immunity. Long-term stress that goes unresolved is also associated with depression and anxiety disorders.
If election stress is overwhelming you, mindfulness and meditation can help. By acting mindfully and meditating regularly, many people find they can ease stress and stay steadier through an election season and beyond.
Mindfulness Ways to Minimize Election-Related Stress
Practice Awareness
Mindfulness begins with awareness of the present moment. Often, we don’t even notice we’re stressed until something goes wrong, or until our body tells us through illness. Our relationships can also show the stress in our lives. When we’re stressed, we tend to become irritable and moody, impatient and angry with others. Stress can also affect memory and concentration, and can lead to compulsive behavior.
When we practice mindfulness, we get better at recognizing how stress manifests in our lives and when. To mindfully address stress, we must understand what stress feels like for us, and what our triggers are. With this information, we can take wise action to practice self care.
A Mindfulness Exercise to Deepen Awareness:
To get in touch with sensation in your body and mind, you might try the following body scan exercise:
- Sitting tall or lying down, you might close your eyes
- Turning your attention inward to your breath
- Noticing the quality of your breaths
- Is it deep or shallow? Short or long? Are the inhales and exhales even?
- What do you think the breath is trying to tell you?
- With a longer, slower breath, scanning through the body
- Starting at the head, or the feet, and working your way in the opposite direction
- Visiting each body part and noticing what’s present
- Is there tension? Pain? Grasping?
- Do you feel at ease? Supported? Relaxed?
- Remaining free from judgement, with an open and curious sense of awareness
Deepen Awareness 6 Different Ways with these Mindfulness Body Scans
Limit Your News Intake
The news is among the most common triggers of stress. Whether we get it from television, newspapers, or social media, it can be triggering. Part of developing awareness is understanding that the news, like all forms of media, is under pressure to earn money through clicks, shares, and likes. People are far more likely to share news that’s inflammatory, whether because they agree, or because it makes them angry.
Sometimes just understanding this can help us view the news with a little more distance, a tool we learn in meditation practice by watching our thoughts. Better yet, we can create physical distance by disconnecting and turning off the source. Mindful consumption of media can help reduce our stress.
A Mindfulness Exercise for Media Awareness:
The next time you’re watching the news or scrolling through your media feed, you might try the following:
- Noticing your breath, and whether you are breathing
- Many of us hold our breath as we scroll online, which can be a sign of stress or tension
- What does the quality of your breath tell you about your state of mind?
- Noticing your posture: is it open, or closed?
- Noticing if there’s a particular sensation in your body that’s speaking to you
- Remaining free from judgement, but open and curious
- Noticing if any emotions are present, and if so, what they are
- Asking yourself, what is my purpose in watching this right now?
- How does it benefit me, and how does it benefit others?
- Will this information I’m gathering lead to action?
- If not, why is it important to me to have this information?
- Or am I simply entertaining myself by scrolling through the suffering of others?
Go Deeper with this Free Downloadable Meditation Script on Awareness of Social Media
Set Boundaries on Political Discourse
If you can have a civil conversation with others regarding political issues, that’s great. For many of us, discussing politics only stirs up rage and increases stress. This can happen in discussion even with those who agree with us, and can escalate when speaking with someone who has a counter viewpoint. When conversation devolves into argument, it benefits no one, and can do great harm.
We often tie our identity to our thoughts and ideas, and when someone challenges these beliefs, it can feel like they are challenging us. In meditation practice, we learn that we are not our thoughts, and that our thoughts might change at any time. Creating this space between the belief and the person is one way to remain calm and cordial during conversation. Sometimes, however, it’s best to not have the talk.
A Mindfulness Exercise for Setting Boundaries:
The next time you’re in conversation with someone about politics, you might notice the following:
- Do you feel as though you are respected and being respectful?
- What type of language are you using? And is it respectful and kind?
- Is your goal in this discussion to connect, or to further identify yourself as separate?
- Are you discussing the topics, or discussing people whom you don’t know?
- Are you certain that each statement you’re making is factual and without exaggeration?
- How do you feel when someone disagrees with you?
- What emotions are present when you’re the one who disagrees?
- Are both parties willing to avoid certain subjects if one party wants to?
- Are both parties willing to end the conversation if one party wants to?
- Can you separate the person from the belief?
- Can you conjure genuine compassion for the other person, not pity?
- When needed, you could practice saying, “That’s interesting, and I’m glad you’re so passionate, but I just don’t have the capacity to discuss this right now”
- Being willing to walk away from someone who is unwilling to end the discussion
Set Healthy Boundaries with this Free Downloadable Meditation Script on Visualizing Your Inner Landscape
Practice Self Care
Stress often eases when we set aside time to take care of the basics, such as eating well, sleeping well, and exercising. The body is resilient, but we only have the capacity to handle so much. When we skip meals or stop sleeping well due to stress, it can make stress worse. When we do get stressed, it can help to discharge it by moving. You might try a yoga class, or take a walk.
True self care is not about spending money on spa days or expensive personal gifts, although those can certainly be involved. Self care is about living life daily within parameters that allow us to feel well rested, healthy and happy, so we can be present and beneficial to others.
A Mindfulness Exercise for Self Care:
Each day, you might consider the following:
- Waking up early enough to have some time to yourself
- Using this space to exercise, meditate, or just relax and do nothing
- Giving yourself time to eat a healthy breakfast
- Taking cell-phone-free breaks during your day
- Spending some time outdoors if possible
- Drinking plenty of water throughout the day
- If you spend your day seated, standing up and stretching at the top of every hour
- If possible, eating your lunch and dinner without multitasking
- Disconnecting from technology at least one hour before bedtime
- Sleeping in a quiet, dark room
- Remembering you’re not meant to do everything on the list every day; you might choose three
- Remembering that self-care looks different for everyone
- Asking yourself what feels good and healthy in your body
Go Deeper with this Mindfulness Worksheet on Caring for Yourself in an Integrated Way
Meditate Daily
Meditation may help with rumination and catastrophic thinking, ease our reactivity, and calm our emotions. When we’re less reactive, we tend to get less angry and defensive, and we’re less likely to hit share on a negative post.
Meditation can help us become more compassionate. We may become better able to empathize with the viewpoints of others, and less reactive to those who are expressing their own stress. Election stress depends in part on the belief that we’re separate. Through meditation, we can see that we’re each alike in more ways than we’re not.
A Mindfulness Exercise for Daily Meditation:
Each day, you might give yourself 5 minutes or more of meditation. If you’re new to the practice, you could try the following:
- Sitting up tall in a quiet place, away from distractions
- Closing your eyes, or gazing softly at the floor ahead of you
- Breathing gently and evenly in and out through your nose
- Setting the intention to remain present with breath awareness
- Turning your attention inward toward your breath and simply noticing
- Noticing the quality of your breath
- Noticing the sensation of breath in the body
- Noticing the sound of breath
- Noticing, too, when the mind has wandered from breath awareness
- When this happens, remaining free from judgement
- Bringing the mind back to the breath without pausing to self-criticize or wonder what happened
- Returning to the breath and beginning the process again
- Continuing for 5 minutes or longer
Browse Hundreds of Mindfulness Exercises for Beginners to Find the Daily Practice You Like Best
Take Action
We often feel stressed because we feel helpless. We feel as though the world is heading in a certain direction, and there’s nothing we can do. Yet if one person can cause us stress, or another can give us hope, we too can make a difference. Change begins with taking action, no matter how small.
Continuing with our mindfulness and meditation practice is one important action we can take. When we work on ourselves and our own minds we may become better equipped to help others, and we may do less harm. In this way, we contribute to the kind of world we’d like to live in.
Through mindfulness and meditation we can build resilience, confidence and compassion to take out into the world. Taking action can be as simple as making a commitment to vote. Action may include advocating for issues that are important to us, donating money, or volunteering.
A Mindfulness Exercise for Taking Action:
- Naming up to 3 issues that matter most to you in the upcoming election
- Identifying up to 2 organizations that are working on each of these issues
- Finding out how these organizations would like you to help their cause
- Being mindful of what it means to “increase awareness,” and sharing on social media only if it is effective and intentional
- Becoming involved on a deeper level, such as donating money, goods or services
Go Deeper with Intentional Action by Learning About Reactions versus Responses
Remember You’re Not Alone
While Election Stress Disorder is a catchy name, it’s important to remember that it’s not a clinical diagnosis. If you’re feeling election-related stress, you’re not alone. No matter what side of the political spectrum you land on, you’re not the only one feeling stress. Through mindfulness and meditation, we learn our emotions are not ours alone to carry, but human emotions that are felt by many.
A small amount of stress can be useful. It can drive us to take action in our lives, including voting. If your stress has become unmanageable, return to your mindfulness practice. You’ll find hundreds of free meditation scripts, worksheets and videos at MindfulnessExercises.com. Mindfulness complements, and does not replace, professional care: if mindfulness alone isn’t helping, if your stress feels unmanageable, or if meditation increases your stress, reach out to a mental health professional. There’s no reason to go through stress on your own.
