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 Those are some of the tips offered by columnists and others to
people dealing with what one psychologist has dubbed Election Stress
Disorder, which he said has spiked since Donald Trump won the
presidential election on Tuesday.
While many Americans celebrated the election victory of Republican
Trump, who received 59.5 million votes, some supporters of Hillary
Clinton, who got 59.7 million votes, took to social media to express
anger and disappointment.
Psychology Today magazine posted "5 Tips for Coping with
Post-Election Shock and Panic," starting with the advice to "do
something productive."
"Do something that gives you a temporary sense of having some
control, even if it's cleaning out your freezer," columnist Alice
Boyes said.
Several other sites imparted similar suggestions. Cosmopolitan
magazine offered "14 Effective Ways to Deal With Post-Election
Anxiety."
One way is to stay off social media. Another is to "take care of
yourself," and it quotes New Jersey-based family physician Jennifer
Caudle as suggesting, "If you need a mani-pedi, the day after the
election is the best day to get it."
Alison Howard, a Washington-based psychologist, said some of her
patients have been talking about the election for months but that
since the results came out have been expressing more grief, sadness
and fear in a town where 93 percent of the voters preferred Clinton.
"I've never seen anything like this before," said Howard, who
stressed that such feelings were natural and not a mental health
pathology.
Stephen Strosny, a psychologist in a Washington suburb who voted for
Clinton, said he started noticing a spike in election-related stress
in April, when he coined the term Election Stress Disorder, whose
symptoms include anxiety, trouble concentrating and nervousness with
resentment. He estimated that nearly half his patients were Trump
supporters.
He said cases had surged since Labor Day, when the general election
season intensifies, and he has taken four emergency appointments
since Tuesday's election for patients who urgently needed a session.
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"I would bet anything that alcohol consumption has gone up in the
past week, and aggressive driving violations," said Strosny, who
sees supporters for both Clinton and Trump.
The Trump-Clinton matchup was particularly stressful because both
candidates were seen unfavorably by voters in opinion polls, and
both campaigns contributed to stress, he said.
Both members of a couple who came to Strosny for an emergency
session on Thursday were against Trump, and their anger led to them
to blame each other, he said. The central nervous system is
incapable of distinguishing the cause of stress, so people tend to
lash out at those closest to them, Strosny said.
Some Trump supporters, many of whom might not have expected their
candidate to win given opinion polls showed Clinton in the lead,
appeared to be on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum.
Some soaked in their victory by staying glued to election news
coverage into the early morning on Wednesday, organizing victory
parties at bars and flooding social media with photos of Trump with
the caption "Our next president."
In Trump-dominated Pottsville, Pennsylvania, one Trump voter said he
did not feel anxious before the election and was dismissive of the
stress felt by some Clinton supporters.
"I'm happy about the election, and I believe that some of these
people, the millennials, they need to suck it up a little bit," said
George Logothetides, owner of Beer-N-Burger in Pottsville. "This is
not something to be going to see a psychologist over."
(Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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