It’s a stressful time to be a psychiatrist in America. Not a day seems to go by without a panicked patient or friend asking me how to stay grounded in the face of the political chaos that has suddenly taken hold of the nation. One patient, a 38-year-old scientist, worries that his research will soon be defunded, ending his career. A good friend, a professor in her 60s, fears that the United States is sliding into autocracy. How, they want to know, can they make themselves feel better?
They haven’t liked the answer I’ve had to give them. This is a hard thing for a psychiatrist to say, but if you’re alarmed by Donald Trump’s hoarding of executive power and efforts to dismantle the federal government, then maybe you should be.
Plenty of Americans may cheer the disruptive effects of Trump’s flood of executive orders. But being inundated with unpredictable change over such a short period of time undermines people’s sense of security and control. It’s bound to provoke intense anxiety. Even some of Trump’s supporters appear to be reeling from the chaos: Recent polling suggests that more Americans believe that Trump has exceeded his presidential powers than not. (My patients, who are predominantly based in New York City, lean Democratic, but even some of my Republican patients have told me they are having second thoughts.)
Humans have a powerful instinct to protect ourselves from psychic pain by denying or minimizing the potential seriousness of the threats we encounter. Studies have shown, for example, that the brain selectively attends to positive information, and that people tend to discount negative predictions in order to maintain an optimistic bias. The urge is unavoidable. Several weeks after Trump’s inauguration, a close friend told me she was still on “a break” from the news. She hadn’t yet heard about the president’s proposal to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” among other things.
An information blackout might temporarily spare you such discomfort, but denial can be its own source of anxiety. A lack of knowledge about the environment around you increases uncertainty, which psychological studies have shown to be very stressful. For example, in one 2015 study, people who failed the California bar exam were more anxious the day before they received the news than afterward. (However, they felt more negative emotions immediately following the news.) Certainty, by contrast, allows us to activate coping strategies. That’s why we can adjust to good news or even bad news—both are clear and unambiguous—but we cannot reconcile with the unknown.
Many therapists are trained to identify the exaggerated emotional responses and distortions of reality that beset their patients, and to help them understand that things are not as bad as they imagine. But when the situation really is as dire as a patient believes, soothing reassurance that one’s distress is misplaced would be malpractice. No one can say exactly where Trump is taking the country, but those who worry about the breakdown of essential public services, the spilling of national-security secrets, and national paralysis in the face of natural disasters are empirically grounded in their concerns. Think of it this way: If your house is in danger of catching fire, the last thing you should do is disable the alarm.
Optimism relaxes us, robbing us of the drive to take action. But angst, like a smoke detector, is a powerful motivating force—one that can impel people to help bring about the very changes they need to feel better. Worrying about missing an important deadline at work might, for example, rouse you to work faster or cancel other plans that would delay your task. The solution to a constitutional crisis is less clearly defined—unless you’re a lawmaker or member of the executive branch, there’s little you personally can do to stop the erosion of democratic norms—but getting involved in local politics and community organizations can both help to shore up your corner of the world. Speaking up in defense of democratic values is also powerful, especially when many individuals are willing to do so at once.
Research suggests that you’re less likely to take such action if you insist on pretending that things will be fine. For example, in a pioneering study published in 2011, college students who were instructed to imagine that the following week would be terrific felt significantly less motivated and energetic—and were academically less productive—than their peers who were told to visualize all the problems that might take place during the coming week. In difficult times, inappropriate optimism can disarm and relax us—and substitute for actions that could actually bring about that sunny imagined future.
None of this is to suggest that abject despair is the appropriate response to the rise of authoritarianism in America. If you’re feeling anxious or hopeless, try to focus on the basics: Exercise, get enough sleep, eat a healthy diet, and talk about your distress with friends and loved ones. These tried-and-true strategies help us tolerate adversity.
Even better is a technique called mental contrasting, co-developed by the psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, who led the study on college students. The idea is to visualize an attainable goal (such as getting involved in local politics or running a mile), then think about all the obstacles that might get in your way (such as failing to find people who share your political vision, or shin splints). Mental contrasting has been shown to help people improve their relationships and recover from chronic pain, possibly because it undercuts the complacency brought about by unrealistic optimism. Crucially, the technique works only for goals you have a chance of achieving; in other words, mental contrasting may not be what allows you, personally, to defeat the global creep of authoritarianism. But it’s more likely to help you, say, identify five ways you can meaningfully improve your local community, then execute on them, which is likely to make you feel at least a little better.
During this challenging time, maintaining one’s peace of mind—or at least a reasonable sense of hope—is a commendable goal. But first, Americans have to see the world as it is, even if it’s upsetting to many.
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