#32: Election Season Survival Skills
This is a special episode geared towards our listeners in the United States. We have a big election approaching and if you struggle with your emotions, you may be more impacted by the uncertainty, polarization, and chaos in our country.
Compounding the political uncertainty are environmental threats like wildfires and hurricanes. On top of all this, we are still in a pandemic! No wonder Wise Mind may be harder to find. Marielle and Ed discuss DBT skills to help you stay as grounded and effective in your life as possible this election season.
Show Highlights
- What helps you be in your Wise Mind?
- Using the mindfulness skill of Observe to help you check in your body.
- Emotional overwhelm during election season makes sense. How can you care for yourself?
- Recognizing our own power AND our limitations in the political process.
- Being mindful of news and social media use.
- Radical acceptance that is is the reality we are living in.
- Watching out for getting stuck in hopeless and black and white thinking.
- Change is a constant part of life.
- Walking the middle path – not getting stuck in either extreme.
- Loving-Kindness mindfulness meditation and how to use it.
- Remembering that we are interconnected.
- Reducing judgments helps lessen heightened painful emotional states.
- Check the Facts as an emotion regulation skill is harder because facts are often distorted in the political arena.
- Pleasure and cultivating good feelings is also important!
- Actively seeking out and cultivating pleasure and joy.
- Being mindful while doing pleasant events.
Links & Resources
DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition
Episode #20: How Do You Talk To Yourself?
Ask us a Question
We’d love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.
Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.
#32: Election Season Survival Skills Transcript
Marielle Berg
Hello and welcome to The Skillful Podcast where we explore DBT and RODBT skills to help you reduce emotional suffering, improve your relationships, and become more present in your life. I’m your host, Marielle Berg, a psychotherapist at the Bay Area DBT and couples counseling center. Welcome Eddie.
Ed Fowler
It is good to be back in the podcasting booth, which is each of our own regular space.
Marielle Berg
Which is our apartments. Which feel like they’re–mine is growing smaller and smaller by the day, I don’t know about yours.
Ed Fowler
I–actually mine is too, it’s interesting.
Marielle Berg
So we wanted to record an episode about how to survive this very tumultuous election season that is upon us. We’re recording this on October 5. So by the time it comes out, of course, there can be new developments that are under foot. But I think we–Ed and I–we’re just kind of holding the folks we work with in mind. And I think people who are sensitive and struggling with anxiety and depression and who are more emotionally impacted by things in their environment, I think we were holding those folks, because those are our people. The folks that we really resonate with and we want to serve, holding them in mind and thinking what what will help people through this really challenging period of time?
Ed Fowler
I think as we’ve talked about things as we approach the election in November, during a pandemic, with so much going on, really in the United States. Like we we have a lot going on here where other countries may not have the same level of, to use a very judgmental term, chaos. We’re are aware that in my conversations with all sorts of people, people are feeling a lot of uncertainty about the election, and what’s going to happen, and what’s it going to mean. And you know, what’s going to happen leading up to it and during and after, and recognizing that for me, I’m really drawing on my DBT skills to help me stay balanced, and stay effective. And we wanted to talk about okay, what are some things to think about if you’re struggling with the fact that we have a big election coming up, and it’s going to be on a lot of people’s minds?
Marielle Berg
Yeah, and Ed and I were talking before we started recording about how to approach this. And we recognize that we have our own lenses that we bring as therapist as, as humans are our own kind of personal experiences that influence how, how we see things and we are aware that that may not resonate with everyone. And that’s okay. But just to kind of name that off the bat. Right.
Ed Fowler
So yeah, we we have our own political beliefs, and we have our own political priorities, our own ways that current events are impacting us. And so we’re we talked about not trying to like, soften that or hide it, but just to be–Marielle and I are going to be ourselves. And be open about the way we approach things. Recognizing that some people may approach things differently. And as always, what we’re doing is we’re trying to share how DBT skills help us help the people that we’re working with and could help those who are listening to manage difficulties.
Marielle Berg
Yes, and if you don’t agree with what we have to say or view, please don’t send us hate mail. We don’t like it. Which I think it’s also like, we don’t get a lot of that. Thankfully, mostly, we receive lovely, lovely emails, which inspires both of us
Ed Fowler
Which we love, we like that.
Marielle Berg
We like that, right. I mean, this is a labor of love. No one pays us to do that. We have to, we have to pay to do this. And it’s our time and energy and money. And we offer it as a service so people can get to know DBT skills more closely and get to know us as therapists. And we recognize because there’s such a wide reach, which I don’t think we realized when we began this, that it’s not our views and our life experiences, which informs us as therapists does not doesn’t resonate with everyone.
Ed Fowler
Right. Yeah. Right, so and so dialectically, like, we are who we are, we have our perspectives. Other people are who they are. They have their perspectives, those who are listening to this podcast, there’s probably a lot of overlap there. And if there isn’t overlap, then you know, like, do what you need to do for you.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, yes. So one of the skills that I keep coming back to over and over and I feel like throughout this all pandemic, since, really since March, and I also just want to name because we are recording this in Northern California, we’ve had an added pretty horrific stressor of day after day of I mean, were at an IR we’re not, there aren’t fires sort of, in our neighborhoods, thankfully, but the air quality has been really terrible. So the day after day where the doors have to be shut, windows closed, you can’t go outside, it’s warmer than usual. And that is an added kind of stressor to to everything else that we are dealing with. And we know that, you know, Oregon was terribly impacted. And I think a lot of the West Coast in general, but just to sort of put that out there too. So one of the skills I keep coming back to is wise mind. And asking myself over and over again, is this wise mind, am I in wise mind? And I thought it would be useful to have a start talking about wise minds, how both of us know when we’re in wise mind,so things that help you get to wise mind, because of the polarization that’s happening in our country. And emotions feel so tense, and things feel really chaotic. And like the stakes are incredibly high, I think it’s very easy to get pulled out of wise mind into a motion mind.
Ed Fowler
And I think that we want to be conscientious about that back and forth. Because as human beings, we’re, our emotions are built into us, to help us be prepared for danger, to understand what’s happening without thinking necessarily about it. But when there’s a lot of really powerful uncertainty, and threats around us, we are naturally going to be pulled into what we call a motion mind where our emotions are really running the show. And as we’ve talked about before, wise mind is that balance between emotion, mind and reasonable mind, being able to to soften the intensity of emotional response we might have, with more facts and logic, just the facts of what’s going on so that we can be in this wise mind balance, where we’re not ignoring facts. We’re not ignoring emotions. But we’re going back and forth seeking this sense of kind of balanced centeredness within us, which is where we want to make our decisions from.
Marielle Berg
Yes, and I know I’ve had some kind of big decisions weighing on me and I keep coming back to as I think about pros and cons of different choices. I keep coming back to checking in with myself, like, is this wise mind? How much is my kind of emotion mind taking over? And some things that are helpful for me and maybe helpful for listeners? Or to think about how’s my breathing doing? Because if I’m breathing more shallowly, or I’m holding my breath in any way, that’s a sign for me that it may be more emotion, mind speaking. Another helpful thing is to check in with my body. And so you know, is there a tension in my stomach, am I clenching my teeth, these are areas where I habitually hold tension. And for people listening, it might be other places, maybe it’s your shoulders, or your neck or somewhere else. So checking in with your physical being to give you guidance on whether you are your most kind of centered self, which is another way of thinking about wise mind.
Ed Fowler
And using our mindfulness skills like observing to just non judgmentally notice what’s happening. So for me noticing that my heart rate is increasing. I’m my thoughts are kind of getting kind of racy, and I’m feeling a lot of fear or anxiety or anger or something when I’m reading news stuff, and being able to notice, okay, I’m getting into more of that emotion mind place. And rather than letting myself spin out in that place, which I have done, and I talk to people and we spin each other out, talking about current events, being able to notice that and notice the physical sensations and the emotional reactions that go with that and saying, okay, rather than just going with this and getting deep into emotional reactivity, let me pull myself back and find that place of balance. What are the things that I can do to get back into my wise mind?
Marielle Berg
And the reason why we’re emphasizing this isn’t because emotions aren’t important, and it isn’t because the stakes aren’t really high during this election season, it’s because if we are not in our wise mind, it’s so much harder to take effective action. And for folks who are listening who most likely identify as being more sensitive, or struggling with their emotions in one way or another, you’re going to be more taxed, the you’re going to be, right sometimes I think about a rubber band. I feel like that rubber band of our capacity for what we can manage is getting stretched and stretched. And so this is an added stressor to stretch it. And so wise mind is so helpful to kind of bring us back to release some of that pressure on that rubber band that’s getting overstretched to help settle us to begin to think about, okay, what’s what’s most effective in my life? How can I get through the day to day without getting so wrapped up in my emotions that it negatively impacts me?
Ed Fowler
And again, as Marielle, you said, our emotions give us information. So in DBT, we’re very clear that emotions aren’t good or bad, they just are, and emotions give us information. So for those of us in the United States, at this critical moment, where we have an election coming up, where we have a say, in what’s going to happen moving forward, and what priorities our governments will be focusing on. There does tend to be a lot of emotion for most people of, what I passionately want, and what I think is right and wrong, and my own personal judgments, right? Where we struggle is if those emotions overwhelm our ability to be effective. So for instance, if I’m having a lot of anger about what’s happening right now, and saying, this is wrong, and it shouldn’t be this way, and then I’m feeling paralyzed, and I’m feeling overwhelmed. And then I start to feel like nothing will ever get better. And the election doesn’t matter, nothing’s gonna happen. Am I really able to be effective in pursuing my own goals? For instance, making sure I’m able to vote, and have my say heard, making sure I’m able to support the causes and the people who I would like to be in leadership. And that’s where we want to be focused on: noticing the emotional responses, not judging them, just being aware of them, observing them using that mindfulness approach? And then noticing, what are my goals? And how do I keep those emotions in balance, so that I’m in a wise mind place to pursue my goals effectively, I’m not emotionally overwhelmed or overloaded or shut down, I’m able to, like strike a balance and and looking at what are my goals, and what’s the effective way to get there that pulls in that reasonable mind side, it’s more kind of thoughtful, and factual. And that can balance out, for instance, strong passion about what I want to see in the world. And in that balance, I can find my most effective way to participate in the political process in a way that works for me and my goals.
Marielle Berg
So there’s a dialectic here, because as you’re talking about, like being involved, and being effective, and working towards goals that are important, and taking action that’s aligned with your values. There’s this dialectic where we’re limited in some ways to as individual citizens with limited resources. There’s only so much we can do and how I don’t have an answer for this. But how to be with that to be with both of those things. Like yes, there are some actions I can take. And there isn’t a whole bunch, I can do on my own to change things in the direction I want them to go.
Ed Fowler
And I think that, that that dialectic of who we are as individuals limited and how much we can affect the political process. And as individuals, we do have power, we do have options. There are things multiple things we can do. When emotions are really strong, it’s easy to say there’s nothing I can do. Right? I’m just one person, and there’s nothing I can do to change this. But the reality is there’s lots of ways to be involved in the political process, at its most simple way to vote, to just a vote. And put your your vote in there. And what I find in my own thoughts, and in conversations with people, is this trying to strike this balance of like, No, I can’t change it all by myself. And if I do nothing, nothing will change. So how do I find what I can do? And stay in that wise mind balance so that I can do it? Versus just getting shut down, which will not achieve my goals if I want things to change?
Marielle Berg
Yes, and this, what you’re talking about, I think requires a fair amount of which is where we started mindfulness. And accessing our wise mind kind of over and over and bringing us back to the present moment versus the emotion mind, which will often lead us to a place of overwhelm, and ineffective action. And also, as we’re talking, I’m thinking about consumption of news. And the different ways we can consume news and social media, and how that can feel like we’re being active or, or being effective and trying to pursue our goals. And I think many times actually isn’t we’re talking in sort of echo chambers, or getting more information and more information and refreshing that, you know, news page often isn’t effective, although I think that we can trick ourselves into thinking that we’re doing something if we’re doing that.
Ed Fowler
So again, it’s like what, we’re here in the United States, we’ve got time before the election. And we know that this election is kind of chaotic. So it’s probably not going to be over on November 3, right. But there’s stuff that will linger. And so being able to radically accept, this is the reality that we’re living in. Most of us would prefer for a more orderly political process. But that’s not the reality we have right now. So how do we stay aware, stay engaged, stay focused on what’s important to us, and not wear ourselves out with strong emotions, and get to a place of complete shutdown where I can’t participate in any way? Because that’s not really realistic, we got to deal with this one way or another. And so that mindful awareness of where am I right now? Trying to find that wise mind balance between reason and emotion, and then choosing what can I do? Maybe it’s stop reading the news, take a break, maybe it’s talked to someone who can help me, you know, stay balanced, in one way or another. Maybe it’s getting involved in the political process in some way. And, and really keeping for me, this has been so helpful, to not just get stuck in hopelessness, everything’s terrible, and it’s never going to get better. Quite frankly, that’s not factual. Right? There’s a lot that is terrible. Some things are not. If I say everything’s terrible, I’m not noticing that right? Nothing will ever get better. Everything’s going to change. Change is a constant part of life. So if the reality is, I don’t like the way things are, and things will be changing in one way or another, then I go back to okay, how do I want to participate in creating that change in the direction I want? I need to be in a wise mind place to do that. I can’t be overwhelmed by by emotions.
Marielle Berg
Yes. And it really love that emphasis on change, which of course, is is a constant. And how do we not demonize people who don’t agree with us? Doesn’t mean we have to approve of or even like people who have very different views from us or invite them over for dinner. But how, how can I not be in a holding hostility in my heart for people who disagree. And the reason I’m talking about this is because that hostility, which while understandable, and the anger absolutely may fit the facts, is usually corrosive to our own well being puts us in emotion mind. And it’s not useful. Or it can be useful maybe to start, you know, anger can be motivating, in some ways to start making some changes or start taking some action. But over time, it it can get very draining. So what else propels us to, to kind of soldier on. And as I’m talking and as I was listening to you, and I was thinking about stamina, that word kept coming to mind over the next month until Election Day, and possibly beyond and stamina really, during this time period, anyway, with this pandemic, like how, how can I sustain myself and the people I care about during a time that is unprecedented, frankly?
Ed Fowler
And I think being able to notice that, for instance, if I find myself just focusing on anger at people who are, you know, have different political perspectives than me, while acknowledging like, I have a sense of what I think is right and wrong. I also need to acknowledge that that’s, that’s my sense, and other people can have just as strong conviction about what they think. And it can be the opposite. Focusing on that conflict can be draining. Sometimes it’s necessary to motivate change. But if I’m finding I’m too far in the direction of for instance, anger and frustration, what are things that I can do to pull back so that I’m more in the middle? You know, in DBT, we talk about walking the middle path of not getting stuck in either extreme, but finding something in the middle and can often be much more helpful in order to be effective.
Marielle Berg
You know, we’re all connected. And keeping that in mind, I think can be really helpful. And with that thinking about treating others the way you would want to be treated, even if that kind of behavior is not what’s reflected at the highest levels of government, even if maybe the opposite is being reflected, right?
Ed Fowler
And that’s, again, where we determine what’s important to us, what are our values, and focus on what’s going to keep me in line with my own values? And what can I do in that direction.
Marielle Berg
So one skill that’s worth revisiting, is the loving kindness skill, or metta as it’s known in Buddhism, but we’re talking about a secular version. And so this is one of the mindfulness skills in DBT, we actually teach it in our interpersonal effectiveness module, because we, we wanted a skill that helps people kind of focus on their relationship with themselves. And so we’ll link to it in the show notes, we have at least one episode, perhaps more on loving kindness, if you want to do a deeper dive and really understand more about this. But the basic premise is, when we are using loving kindness, we are sending good wishes, or warm wishes to ourselves, to people we care about, and to people that we struggle with, and maybe people that are very, very challenging in our lives.
Ed Fowler
And so this skill can be a valuable skill for walking the middle path and finding balance. If we’re finding ourselves overwhelmed with strong emotions towards a person or people certainly there are people in our lives, who we may be having really strong political disagreements with. Or people that are suffering that we’re really concerned about and worried about, and feel powerless to help in the current political environment. And really kind of opening ourselves up to send, you know, use this meditation to send well wishes and and send a sense of loving kindness to anyone who we want, including ourselves, can bring us into more balance. And so for instance, if we see things in the news about people who are really suffering under current political processes, we might send loving kindness as a way to feel like I am holding myself open to those people and caring about them, and sending kindness even if I don’t have direct impact on them. On the other end, we could send loving kindness to people that we’re angry at to people that we think are creating harm, and send loving kindness as a way to stay open. I really want to qualify this by saying that this skill is a skill that we use when it’s effective, this is not a requirement. And sometimes I think it is effective to say, I’m actually not going to open myself up to people who I think are creating enormous harm, I’m not going to seek to send loving kindness to those people. I think that’s also a reasonable approach, we have to notice what’s effective for us. If you’re feeling really overwhelmed with anger towards a group of people, for instance, loving kindness might be something that could temper that anger, create a bit more openness and understanding, while recognizing that it also might make you feel worse. So be very conscientious about when to employ this, if at all.
Marielle Berg
That’s a great point. So we are these are suggestions, not commands, if you if anything we’re saying doesn’t resonate with you or for feels like loving kindness, especially for people you strongly disagree with, or people that you think politically are, are dangerous in one way or another. And that that feels too challenging or not the right thing, then, then you don’t have to do it. But if you feel called to try it, some of the benefits are that it can really reduce judgmentalness. And when we talk about reducing judgments on this one, again, not saying that that we’re approving of what someone else or a group of people or leaders might be doing, we want to think about reducing judgmentalness within ourselves, because often when we are very judgmental, it will lead to more emotion, mind higher distress kind of internal states. So that it’s really it’s a practice for you to have more access to wise mind to have more groundedness so it reduces just mental illness. It will and hostile feelings towards others and yourself. So it’s a softening kind of practice, which in a heart opening practice, which is so opposite from what you know, is happening in the political landscape these days.
Ed Fowler
Which is why it can be really helpful and might actually be ineffective for you to pursue this. So, you know, consider it without any sense of obligation.
Marielle Berg
So the basic script that suggested are a series of four statements, may I be happy? May I be at peace? May I be healthy? May I be safe? And if you’re sending it to someone else, may you be happy, may you be at peace, may you be healthy, may you be safe. And just just sending those statements or that the loving kindness to ourselves and seeing what comes up, and sometimes it’s hardest to send that to ourselves and to others and seeing what what arises. And if it feels challenging, because it can be challenging to subject yourself, and it can also be very challenging to send it to people that you struggle with, you can start with someone you love, where it might feel really good to send them loving kindness, you can even start with a pet.
Ed Fowler
So, thinking about emotion regulation, skills that can help during this time of like high intensity and high uncertainty. One of the really core emotion regulation skills is check the facts. Again, because if emotions are strong, we want to balance it with our reasonable mind. So we want to notice, okay, this is what I’m feeling and being able to name I’m feeling angry, I’m feeling sad, I’m feeling scared, whatever it might be, and then checking to see what aspects of what I’m feeling are based in the facts of the situation? And what are based on my own assumptions, my judgments, my interpretations. And so being able if we notice strong emotion around what’s going on politically, to be able to then say, okay, what are the facts of the situation. And as Marielle, and I have talked about this, I think that there’s a lot of difficulty with this in the political environment. Because very purposefully, some people are trying to distort the facts and give us this distorted information, which makes it hard to get into the facts. So again, we have to do this as effectively as we can see, if noticing facts and trying to ground ourselves in facts can help balance out emotion, being able to name our own assumptions and judgments and interpretations oftentimes can help, right? They’re always lying, they never are never going to change, nothing’s ever going to help. Those are not facts. So we may not in terms of like governmental actions. We may not always know what the facts are. But we know that always, never everyone, no one–that those aren’t facts, and that’s going to inflame our emotions. And so being able to at least acknowledge that can help get us to a little bit more balance.
Marielle Berg
Yes. And, you know, as Ed said, we have both been struggling with this skill, in particular it’s skill I love and I think is incredibly, incredibly powerful. And I don’t find it useful to use check the facts for political events, because we don’t, we don’t know a lot of the times and the facts often feel like they’re being intentionally manipulated. But I still think the skill is incredibly useful for things happening in our personal lives. So we can check the facts about perhaps a family member that we love, who has very different political views about us. And that means checking all the facts. So the facts could be like, yes, they believe something that I find threatening, or is wildly, you know, different than what I hold as a value. And they love me and I love them. So all those facts are true. So we don’t get stuck in this kind of black and white thinking. They’re a terrible person, etc.
Ed Fowler
And so, you know, checking the facts, again, is an effort to seek balance and grounding and we use it the best we can. If we find that our emotions are not really based in facts, or just our emotions aren’t effective. We have opposite action as a response. Where we’re able if we notice, even just for a little bit like I am feeling so angry and I’m finding it hard to get out of this. I am going to do the opposite act the opposite and and as a way to bring that emotion down. So I am going to act like I’m fine, everything’s gonna be okay. The way we use opposite action is we don’t just like kind of say, I’m fine, everything’s gonna be okay. But it’s like, you know what things are going to be okay? We really try to embody it as a way to truly shift the emotion. So you can listen to our episode on opposite action if you want to understand a little bit more about how to utilize that. But that can be a way that we can shift emotions if we’re feeling stuck in it, checking the facts, seeking otherwise my balance aren’t working opposite action might.
Marielle Berg
Yeah. And before we move on, just reiterating what you alluded to a moment ago, when we do opposite action, we want to think about, yes, not just gritting your teeth, and sort of pretending that you want to think about doing it all the way throwing your body, your mind into it. So fully acting opposite to what your emotion is telling you to do. And this can be very helpful in really changing unwanted, uncomfortable emotions. And let’s for our last skill let’s let’s talk some about pleasure, and pleasantness and cultivating good feelings. Because during this period, this is, is so needed. And so we have a skill, accumulating positive emotions in the short term, which essentially means doing regular nice things for yourself. And this is not going to change the world, it’s not going to change anything in our political landscape. What it will do or can do, or has the potential to do is to help you feel supported and cared for and more resilient during these times.
Ed Fowler
And that is the point of this skill, is that in order to have emotional flexibility, and to be able to deal with sometimes intense things that are happening around us, we do want to have a strong sense of emotional resilience, and doing kind things for ourselves on a daily basis on a regular basis, doing things that are pleasurable, and really making an effort to have things we enjoy as part of our life increases our emotional resilience reduces our emotional vulnerability, so that we’re not quite as vulnerable to getting thrown off when big things happen in the news that are scary. And so for me, I’m thinking a lot about making sure that I’m doing those things on a regular basis that bring me joy, in order to balance out all the other uncertainties and difficulties that we’re facing.
Marielle Berg
Yes, and when we’re doing those things that bring us joy, or feel good. Think about the mindfulness in this as well, because we can potentially do that pleasurable thing. And our mind can be elsewhere. So I can go on a walk or, you know, air quality permitting these days, or by the beach or things that you know, strolls on the beach, things that I normally love, but I can be listening to a political podcast, bad idea, I’m not present. So being as mindful as possible, focusing your full attention on the positive moments when they’re happening to get the full benefit. And when your mind wanders as it will, and it might wander more than usual, if you’re feeling more anxious or less kind of grounded, refocusing your attention on the positive events, okay, right now, I’m just, you know, eating this delicious plum, because we’re still having plums here in Northern California. But that’s what I’m doing right now. And I’m not thinking I’m not going to refresh my phone to look at the news again. So participating and fully engaging in the pleasant experience to get the full benefit the full good feelings.
Ed Fowler
And we need that. And so this episode was very much geared towards our listeners in the United States in particular, I know that there are other countries that are also dealing with political stuff right now. And so hopefully, this is helpful to you. And for for other listeners, we always have things that are beyond our control that we have to deal with in the world. And so, you know, I hope this episode has given everyone some ideas of things that could help if you’re feeling overwhelmed if you’re feeling like you’re struggling to find a focus, and at minimum, it really doesn’t hurt to focus on mindfully doing things that bring us joy, in order to keep our emotional resilience going.
Marielle Berg
All right. Take care, everyone until next time, yes. Thanks for listening to today’s episode to learn more, or if you’re in the Bay Area and want to get started with therapy. You can find us online at bay area dbt cc dot com. That’s bayareadbtcc.com