Getting Political

Unless you have been blissfully living under a rock, you know that there is a national election coming up (this week!) in the U.S. Personally, I have had a stomach ache for about 72 hours straight just thinking about it, and that's just the Presidential election. There's also the matter of Congress, and there is no collective body in the United States for which I currently have more disdain than Congress. But the Presidential election clearly steals the show in the absurdity department. I feel like where we are today as Americans is kind of like the experience of waking up one morning, taking a look at your life, and thinking, "How did I get here?" If you do a careful and, honestly, not-so-difficult analysis, you can easily see how you did get to where you are. But it still seems so impossible. That is the United States right now. This situation was an impossible joke until we realized we made it happen, and now here we are.

As a teacher, I often worry about how I will explain disturbing current events to my young students. Thankfully, most of the time my kids exist in a state of age-appropriate unawareness. Every year, 9/11 comes and goes without more than a peep of recognition. After the Sandy Hook massacre, only one student seemed to know what had happened. The Boston Marathon bombing also seemed to pass in and out of my students' consciousness with minimal disturbance. So I was hoping, perhaps irrationally, that maybe my kids would also be unaware of the complete mess that is this Presidential race. But then two weeks ago we were on a school bus, coming home from a field trip, and I heard one of my boys in the back of the bus yell, clear as day, "TRUMP TOUCHED UP HER SKIRT!" And then I knew, there was going to be no avoiding it.

I told this story to my best friend in Israel last week, and I asked her, "G-d forbid he gets elected--how am I going to explain to my third graders that the man who brags about basically committing sexual assault is now our President?!" She paused, and then replied, "Yeah...I wish I could say that was my biggest problem with him."

I think that about sums it up.

And so, I have been a puddle of anxiety for the past few days. Right before Shabbat I had to take a Xanax, because OH MY G-D. Then I thought, how am I actually going to survive Tuesday? Or Wednesday, for that matter? I can't just keep taking Xanax. I mean, I can, but I'm going to need an actual strategy. So (and here's the Jewish connection I know you've been waiting for), I decided to see what Jewish tradition has to say about managing acute anxiety. Here's what I found.

There is a verse in Proverbs (12:25) which says:

דאגה בלב איש ישחנה ודבר טוב ישמחנה

Anxiety in the heart of man bows it down, but a good word makes it glad.

As is so often the case in Hebrew, the word for, "bows it down," ישחנה, can have other meanings, depending on how one reads the word in context: 1)  to suppress; 2) to ignore; 3) to articulate. These meanings also correspond to three strategies (or stages) for managing anxiety.

STAGE ONE: Suppress/Minimize

In this stage, we can make our anxiety bearable by making it smaller, often by telling ourselves that the problem isn't really as big as it seems. Regarding this election, I definitely did this for quite a while when I told myself, "Americans would never let Trump get elected." Since the possibility seemed too awful to even begin to deal with, I just told myself it wouldn't happen. But that only worked for so long. Which brings me to...

STAGE TWO: Ignore

This is when we separate ourselves from the source of our anxiety. Personally, I have spent a lot of time in this stage lately. I stopped watching the news, I didn't read any articles on politics, and pretty much just stuck my head in the sand without apology. I figured this was the only viable option because whenever I came across any non-comedic election coverage, I felt my anxiety shoot up almost instantly. I'll be the first to say, avoidance is one of my favorite strategies. But now the election is two days away and I'm finding myself checking in with Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight several times a day, so it's time to move on to the next phase of the plan:

STAGE THREE: Articulate

This stage, my lovelies, is where we talk about it. 

I did this at shul yesterday with a friend of mine during Kiddush--we spent the entire time processing the current political situation, and every ten minutes or so we would say, "I can't even talk about this anymore"--at which point we would continue to talk about it. While it didn't solve anything, it was so helpful to just talk about it with someone who could commiserate. And while this was shared anxiety that we both were feeling, I think this strategy works even when the anxiety is all yours--talking about it takes some of the power away. 

I don't know about you, but I am going to need all of these stages over the next few days. I suspect 

that, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, you are going to need them, as well. So use them as often as necessary to combat the stress of the current situation and its aftermath. And if it all works out well, I, for one, will be bentching gomel. Feel free to join me!