A Therapist's Advice for Election Day

Your exhausted-but-friendly neighborhood therapist has some advice for the next few days. Feel free to take it or leave it!

Every time you’re about to post something about the outcome of the election, ask yourself: is it a feeling, a thought, or a fact?

All three are valid! But there are different ways to respond to each one in a way that treats it as valid without mentally putting it in the wrong category. There are also ways to express each one while minimizing the harm that it might do to someone else who reads it and goes into a panic spiral.

A feeling is anything that can be expressed in a sentence that starts with “I feel—“ without putting the word “like” or “that” after it. For example:

• “I feel tired” = feeling

• “I feel like I can’t keep going” = thought

• “I feel terrified” = feeling

• “I feel that it’s hopeless and Trump is going to win” = thought

A fact is a piece of information about our current reality that has been confirmed by sources you trust. Predictions of what will happen in the future cannot be facts unless they are so likely that the probability they won’t come true is nearly zero. For example:

• “Trump has said he intends to steal the election” = fact

• “Trump will steal the election” = thought

• “COVID will claim thousands more lives” = (basically) fact, because the *current* reality makes it essentially impossible that many more people won’t die.

Verbal content that is neither a feeling nor a fact is probably a thought. We have a lot of words for different types of thoughts—opinions, hopes, concerns, beliefs, predictions, dreams, fantasies, and so on. The ones most relevant here are opinions and predictions.

“Trump will steal the election” is a prediction. “I feel that it’s hopeless and Trump will win” is an opinion, which also contains a prediction. Things get really difficult and painful, psychologically speaking, when we frame our opinions and predictions as facts, and when we frame our thoughts as feelings.

So for the next few days, try this. When you want to share a feeling with someone, try prefacing it with “I’m noticing that I’m feeling—“ or “I’m noticing feelings of—.” When you want to share a thought—this includes opinions and predictions—try prefacing those with “I’m having the thought that—“ or “My mind is telling me that—“. As for facts, no introduction needed.

The point isn’t to invalidate or delegitimize any of our mental content. It’s to put just a little bit more space between ourselves and the mental content we’re noticing and sharing with others. Saying “My mind is telling me that Trump will win” doesn’t mean that your mind is “wrong” or irrational. Rather, what it does is acknowledge that in this moment, it’s your mind, not our external reality, that’s the source of that statement. It has to be! Because nobody has won the election yet.

Your mind might in fact be a very good predictor of election outcomes; that’s besides the point. The point is that when someone sees a statement like “That’s it. He’s winning the election. Get your passports ready because—“ then their mind FREEEEAKS THE FUCK OUT. (And honestly, even typing out that statement is probably doing a number on your own mind.)

Unless there is something notably different that you would be doing right now if Trump wins that you cannot or should not do if he loses, there probably isn’t a good reason to try to figure out right now if he’s going to win or not.

Rather, whatever happens next, it pays to have our wits about us and have our minds as rested as they can be. These verbal tools take some practice to get comfortable with, but they’re among the strongest in the therapy toolkit for situations that are legitimately bad/scary and we can’t positive-thinking our way out of it.