In an election year like few others, the race for the White House is down to a thinly stretched wire — not unlike the nerves of anxious voters unclear on how a divided country will respond to the winner.
Add the backdrop of lingering inflation and two international wars to the current political tension and experts say it would be surprising if anyone was feeling good about their coping skills.
“We are in a generally heightened state of stress caused by events around the world,” said neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson, founder and director of the nonprofit Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where research on Tibetan Buddhist practitioners found that meditation literally changed their brains.
Davidson also founded Healthy Minds Innovations, a nonprofit wellness organization that provides meditation and wellness guides on a free app. For the first time, wellness experts from Healthy Minds will be available live on election eve, November 4, to provide meditation and stress busting tips, Davidson said in an email.
As the countdown to a new presidency unfolds, here are some expert-approved methods on how to handle anxiety and stress.
Get moving
Few things work as well as exercise for reducing stress, experts say. Physical activity promotes endorphins that boost mood while tired muscles lose their tension.
An April 2024 study also found exercise is associated with a reduction in stress signals in the brain. At the same time, the study found that signals to the prefrontal cortex were rising. That’s the part of the brain responsible for the thinking and reasoning processes that help control reactions to stress.
“It turns out human beings were designed to move and move a lot, and when we do — particularly when we are outside and amongst trees — there’s been data to suggest these all have very significant stress-relieving effects,” said Dr. Andrew Freeman, director of cardiovascular prevention and wellness at National Jewish Health in Denver, in a prior interview.
In fact, exercise can be as powerful as psychotherapy when it comes to treating clinical depression, according to a February 2024 study. It didn’t matter which type — walking, jogging, yoga, tai chi, aerobic exercises or strength training — all showed benefits, the study found.
“Figure out a way to get a physical activity in that you truly enjoy,” Freeman said.
Take control of your environment
First, recognize and then list what is truly in your control, what you can only influence and what is completely out of your control, suggested stress management expert Dr. Cynthia Ackrill, a former editor for Contentment magazine, produced by the American Institute of Stress.
“I’ve told my Debbie-downer friend that I just can’t have that type of conversation right now,” Ackrill said in an email while adding her apologies to everyone named Debbie.
“I also limit how I get the news,” she added. “I feel a lot more in control reading it versus seeing it on TV.”
You also can control your activity on social media, which all too often triggers anger and despair, experts say. Instead take a walk, read a favorite poem, prayer or song, or pick up the phone and talk with a good friend with whom you feel safe, Ackrill advised. “Every little bit adds up.”
One way to pick out websites that may play havoc with your mental health is to look for “false urgency,” said mindfulness practitioner Jay Vidyarthi, a program guide for Healthy Minds.
“Not everything is breaking news,” Vidyarthi said in an email. “Groom your feeds to make sure you only follow sources who use language at an appropriate level of urgency for what’s being communicated. When you notice a channel treating every little thing like a catastrophe, crisis, or culture war, it’s time to unsubscribe.”
If you must engage with people who do not share your values, try to flip your perspective and see things from their view, said psychologist Tania Israel, professor of counseling psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in an email.
“Perspective taking can help us shift from indignation to insight,” said Israel, who authored the book “Facing the Fracture: How to Navigate the Challenges of Living in a Divided Nation.”
“We don’t need to change our minds, but it can be helpful to broaden our view. It’s empowering to understand a perspective other than our own — it helps us maintain relationships and advocate for our issues,” Israel said.
Practice positives
To keep us safe, our brain is more wired for the negative, “so you have to really practice the positive,” Ackrill said. That means frequent doses of uplifting thoughts are needed to strengthen those positive neural connections.
Here’s the good news: Studies of twins find only about 25% of our optimism is programmed by our genes. The rest is up to us and how we respond to life’s lemons (including election uncertainty).
Davidson found it took 30 minutes a day of meditation practice over the course of two weeks to produce a measurable change in the brain. “When these kinds of mental exercises are taught to people, it actually changes the function and the structure of their brain in ways that we think support these kinds of positive qualities,” he said.
Ways to grow your optimism include keeping a journal of positives and taking a few minutes each day to write down what makes you thankful. Studies have shown that practicing gratefulness improves positive coping skills by breaking the typical negative-thinking style and substituting optimism.
Don’t forget quality sleep
While you sleep, your brain is busy. It’s preparing for the next day, sorting your experiences and making new pathways for learning.
To capture newly acquired information, absorb fresh skills and form key memories — as well as to retrieve them later — you need plenty of sleep to let your brain do its work. Adults need at least seven restful hours of sleep each night to stay healthy, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Getting inadequate sleep for more than a night or two can impact your ability to pay attention, learn new things, be creative, solve problems and make decisions, said sleep specialist Dr. Raj Dasgupta, an associate professor of clinical and sleep medicine and pulmonary critical care at Huntington Health in California.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for sleep to affect our emotional stability, Dasgupta said: “Just one night of sleep loss impairs the ability to regulate emotions and the expression of them.”
Sleep issues can be overcome by training your brain to get more restful sleep. You can get easy to follow expert tips by signing up for our Sleep, But Better newsletter.
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