Election season can be stressful on even the most experienced of voters. Tensions are high and political disagreements can drive a wedge in our personal relationships. Dayna Smith-Slade is here with us to share her strategies on how to ease election anxiety and have healthier communication with family and friends who share different views.
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Listen to “Episode 44: Election Anxiety with Dayna Smith-Slade” on Spreaker.
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00;00;07;21 – 00;01;04;25
Rick Hoaglund
In 2022, the American Psychological Association’s Stress in America Poll revealed that 57% of respondents found the presidential election to be a major source of stress. Additionally, a staggering 76% of Americans felt anxious about the future of our nation and 66% reported feeling stressed by the current political climate. Now, as we approach the election, these stress levels seem to have intensified with recent events like assassination attempts, shifts in presidential candidates, debates, legal battles and misinformation. It’s no wonder many of us are feeling overwhelmed. Join us as we explore these pressing issues and their impact on our mental well-being. You’re listening to On Topic by Empathia. I’m Rick Hoaglund, and today our guest is Dayna Smith-Slade. Dayna, welcome to the podcast.
00;01;04;27 – 00;01;08;14
Dayna Smith-Slade
Thank you, Rick! I’m so excited to be here with you today.
00;01;08;17 – 00;01;23;22
Rick Hoaglund
And it’s an important topic because I’ve got to be honest with you, I have this a little bit. And the good thing is it doesn’t affect my life too much. But let’s just start with the most obvious question. Is election anxiety real? Do people suffer from this?
00;01;23;24 – 00;03;05;01
Dayna Smith-Slade
Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, I’ll say that election anxiety and election stress disorder is real, although it’s not found in the DSM-5. In fact, let’s go back just a little bit so that people kind of know my background, because a lot of the things I’m going to share are related to my specific background. So just really briefly, I’ve had a wonderful and fulfilling career in the behavioral health field for 32 years. I’ve been a mental health counselor, I’ve been an employee assistance professional, a trainer, a facilitator, and an adjunct faculty. Okay. I have a bachelor’s in psychology, a master’s in counseling. Another master’s in industrial organizational psychology. And got halfway through my dissertation for a PhD in industrial organizational psychology. So when we talk about things like anxiety and election stress disorder, then I go back to what do they say in the field of mental health about this stuff? So it is not in the DSM-5, which is the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. It’s where we go to look at disorders and look at criteria to figure out what might be going on with a person. We can’t find it there, but we know it’s real. To get back to your point, that people are experiencing symptoms, physical symptoms, mental symptoms, emotional symptoms related to elections.
00;03;05;03 – 00;03;12;01
Rick Hoaglund
So what might be some of those symptoms? How would I know if I might be exhibiting this.
00;03;12;03 – 00;04;42;20
Dayna Smith-Slade
Well okay. So we look at anxiety and we look at stress. And we know that, again, there’s physical mental and emotional symptoms. So if we just take a look at physical first, a person might experience symptoms of like acid reflux, bowel syndrome, headaches, GI upset, shortness of breath, muscle tension. That list is kind of short. But you know, we do have to understand that there’s a physical manifestation of this anxiety. Then we have a mental component. That mental component can be worry, preoccupation, hyper vigilance, FOMO, fear of missing out in the form of doomscrolling and obsessive watching of the news. And then we have things like emotional, where people feel worry, sadness, stress, irritability, impatience, intolerance, despair and hopelessness all the way to things like frustration, annoyance, outrage, anger. Like it’s a whole spectrum of feelings. So we know that in general, politics do have a negative impact on a broad range of health outcomes. And that’s the kind of thing that we’re seeing.
00;04;42;22 – 00;04;50;02
Rick Hoaglund
Are there certain people that are more prone to this, or is it just kind of all across everybody?
00;04;50;05 – 00;06;43;18
Dayna Smith-Slade
Well, that’s a very interesting question. And I did some preparation for our podcast today, Rick. And I will say that election anxiety can affect anyone, regardless of their level of political engagement or political affiliation. I’ve read some literature about people who live in a state that has become more politically polarized or dissimilar from their views, having more increased anxiety and depression, as well as some of the decreased physical health symptoms that I was talking about. I’ve come across, an interesting study that found that there’s higher cortisol levels in people at voting polls compared to those that voted at home. Now, this was the 2012 election, presidential election. But, you know, cortisol is one of those stress hormones that are elevated when we experience stress. So to know that they could identify increased levels of cortisol in somebody’s system when they were at the polls, I found very interesting. But I will say that there’s continual research. In fact, there’s a man out of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, by the name of Doctor Kevin Smith, who’s doing continual research on individual level differences in political attitudes and behaviors. So we are certainly seeing some results. And those results are informing more areas of research to kind of break down. Are there particular groups, are there particular people or demographics that are affected by election anxiety?
00;06;43;21 – 00;07;00;21
Rick Hoaglund
So what are some ways that people can manage this? I mean, we’ve talked about the fact there can be a physical component to this. There’s definitely a mental component. Can you, can you help yourself or does everyone need to go to therapy? I mean, what what is the answer?
00;07;00;23 – 00;10;17;03
Dayna Smith-Slade
There. There’s many ways. Just as much as there’s individual people. There’s varying ways in which we can have coping strategies. I will say some people’s coping strategies are unhealthy, like they’re doing coping strategies in the name of managing stress and anxiety, not realizing that they are creating more stress and anxiety for themselves. So when I say that I’m thinking about things like drinking to help them sleep, or over eating comfort food to help them feel better. These are the kinds of things that aren’t going to be very helpful with anxiety or stress. But then we have some other things that we can think about. You hear about just from a stress and anxiety perspective, the ways that a person would manage those things, like relaxation and breathing techniques and mindfulness and physical activity like at least 20 minutes of physical activity a day, maybe grounding techniques. One of the grounding techniques that I like to use and encourage people to use is called 54321, where you use your senses and you name like five things you can see, and then four things that you can hear, you know, three things that you can smell and two things that you can taste and so forth. So these are things that when you find yourself really wrapped around the axle or getting completely overwhelmed to kind of bring yourself back into the present moment. So the list of strategies related to coping and really could go on for a long time, and I am more than happy to share more. You know, being out in nature again, utilizing your senses. And when I say physical activity, I like to go for walks, but I can’t go for walks and then be thinking about the grocery list or go for a walk and think about what I just saw on the news. I have to do a more mindful walk where I’m like, hey, look at that cloud formation and listen to the birds chirping and look at the different colors of what’s happening with the trees and smell some freshly cut grass, you know, utilizing our senses, we take in all this information and I’m sure we can talk about this as we move along, but we take in all this information by our sight, our ability to hear. And so just as much as we do that, we have to make sure that we with attention, put things in our system that’s going to send a message of relaxation, you’re safe, you’re secure. So saying that, I can say, you know, listening to certain music elevate your mood or relaxes your mood. Having aromatherapy like lavender. These are things that just in general help with managing stress and anxiety.
00;10;17;06 – 00;10;35;26
Rick Hoaglund
What about the news? Because especially, I mean, I am not in a battleground state, but there are battleground states out there where it’s continually news, commercials, social media, all of it. Should a person cut themselves off from that or ween themselves back from that? Does that contribute to this at all?
00;10;35;28 – 00;14;49;11
Dayna Smith-Slade
Okay, Yes. Yes it does. And so you say you’re not in a battleground state. I am in Northern Virginia, which is 15 minutes south of Washington, D.C. and so for me, it’s not just the news where you click on the TV. It is everywhere. The signage is everywhere. Whether it’s something as big as a billboard or a poster in a storefront. People have signage in their yards. They have bumper stickers. There’s a lot of political conversation all the time, wherever you go, not just in Northern Virginia, but like working in D.C. as you can imagine, it is constant. It really is constant. So it’s not just a matter of not looking at the news and not looking at your phone and stuff like that. You could be living in a place where no matter what you do, it’s all around you. Now I will say there is an onslaught of the campaign commercials that induce fear. And then we have, like you mentioned, the constant news coverage. Some channels have the 24 hour cycle, and we have things like Netflix and YouTube and Instagram influencers. Everybody’s sharing information and everybody is sharing opinions. And then we have things like deep fake AI images and videos and, and so it gets to a point where it’s like playing the telephone game where the message changes by the fifth person and it just gets diluted and it becomes very confusing, extremely difficult to determine what is true. What are the facts? Who to trust. Right. We get this misinformation, disinformation and all this kind of stuff. So I will say that for some people, yes, limiting the amount of time they spend on social media, watching the news can be beneficial. How much time they spend on Facebook like they even have like apps now that tell you how much your screen time is and all of that, you know, really with intention slowing down, how much of that information you’re taking in because it can be so overwhelming the overload, the overload, can be so overwhelming and cause stress. Now I will say there’s a flip side to that too. And the flip side is that as this research is coming out, they’re finding that not just limiting how much time you spend watching the news and on social media is beneficial to manage the stress and anxiety. So just as much as negative emotions can affect your motivation, your energy, your focus and your concentration, if you are channeling that time to positive stories, positive coverage. Spending it with people who are able to have civil discourse, so maybe not the same views, but at least be able to have some conversation where you feel heard and the other person feels heard, that those kinds of things actually can help to mitigate some of the stress and anxiety. So news in it of itself is not a bad thing. Social media in it of itself is not a bad thing, but it’s what we’re choosing and how long we’re choosing to look at certain things that can be problematic as it relates to stress and anxiety.
00;14;49;13 – 00;15;47;16
Rick Hoaglund
So you brought this up. I’m going to go a little bit step further. What do you do if you have long time friends, family members and all that have a definite different opinion – we’ll just put it that way, political opinion, we’re talking about elections here – than you do. How can you approach it? I mean, ideally you wouldn’t want to cut them off. Like that’s not what you want to do in that situation. So how do you handle yourself? I’m going to go out and tell you I’m going to ask you as a follow up question is, what if, what if the person is sort of pushing you, they push your buttons because they know that it’s a hot topic with you, and that can be a friend. That could be a, I guess it could be your enemy, if you have enemies, it could be your family members that are doing it for who knows what reason. Sometimes it’s just to hear your opinion and sometimes it’s maybe something different. What do you do? Like how does that conversation go?
00;15;47;18 – 00;15;50;00
Dayna Smith-Slade
Oof, that is a loaded question.
00;15;50;02 – 00;15;52;21
Rick Hoaglund
I know, I know, I’m sorry.
00;15;52;23 – 00;21;45;09
Dayna Smith-Slade
But I mean, it’s a question that needs to be asked and it needs to be explored. But it is, it is a loaded question. But I would start with knowing that this is certainly more than just our opinions, this is related to our belief systems and our values. So if we can take an opportunity to really figure out what is important. That’s what our values are like, our internal GPS system. So if we can take an opportunity to figure out what value is associated with this particular conversation, why is this person passionate about their view or their position about this particular topic? If we can do that for each other, it kind of separate it from the person and we’re just looking at that particular value. It might help us to get a little further down the road, right? Then we can also do things like active listening. A lot of times, especially in a debate or an argument, people want to get their point across so fast, right? They really want to be heard and understood quickly. I think it’s Stephen Covey that says “seek first to understand that to be understood”. So you want to try to understand where that person is coming from first, and that might give you a little more mileage to then explain where you’re coming from. And then to use active listening skills, not just listening, but active listening like there’s a difference between hearing and active listening. Hearing is very passive in nature. We do that when we’re not even trying. We could hear several things at one time, but active listening is really seeking to understand and focusing and concentrating on that person, what their message is. And then the way we could do that is to summarize and paraphrase what you’ve heard and make sure that you’re hearing things right, like, let me get this right, or what I hear you saying is, and you just kind of summarize and and paraphrase. So a lot of arguments, a person not feeling heard, especially circular arguments. Like this, those arguments that are going nowhere and they just go around in circles is because the person doesn’t feel heard. So if you can paraphrase and summarize, at least that other person knows that you’re hearing them. Those are some of the first things I would say. Then it really depends on who the person is. Like. Like you said, this could be a loved one. This could be a friend, somebody that you care about. You might need to be able to say, we’re going to have a political conversation. Let’s set some ground rules here. You know, let’s set some ground rules for this political discussion. We want to focus on the facts. We want to avoid any personal attacks. Like, you might think it goes without saying, but with something that it can be so emotionally charged. And some people have such high stakes and connection to their affiliations, setting some ground rules in advance, like proactively, like not waiting for there to be some things that are very hurtful, or not waiting until the relationship is in jeopardy. Like do these things in advance. If things are getting heated, then it’s okay to be like, you know what? Things are getting heated. Neither one of us are being heard. Maybe we should take a little time and space to cool down, and then maybe before you go back to the conversation, have some type of, bonding activity, or maybe focus on some common interests outside of politics, like let’s go do X, Y, and Z, like, you know, put this on the back burner for now and let’s revisit it later. You could always say, you know what? This dinner is going to be a politically free dinner or this family gathering, we’re not going to discuss politics. So that might be the rule for whatever the situation may be. It may be like we’re at the family cookout, and let’s make this a politically free space right now so that we can enjoy each other. Using humor can help, but you gotta be tasteful and time everything. Timing is everything, and you must be tasteful with when you choose to use it. But you know, I think it’s important to acknowledge the diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to honor the fact that some people have done some of their research. Maybe they’ve researched a topic that you might not be as well versed on. So your, your position is it’s more emotionally based where their position is based on something that they found out that, I’m doing air quotes here, is factual because it’s just very difficult to find things out right now, but to, to have patience and understanding and a willingness to say, I’m not well-versed enough, I don’t know enough about that. So it’s bringing up these feelings in me. I need to, I’d like to look at this myself a little bit further and we revisit this. So there’s a, there’s a couple of things that you can do. There’s a couple of things that you can do. And I know unfortunately, there are some friends and families that have stopped talking with each other because of their political differences.
00;21;45;12 – 00;22;16;26
Rick Hoaglund
What do you do in that case? So you have a friendship or you have a relationship or a family relationship or something. Your political differences are, I’m going to call them extreme because you’ve stopped communicating. Now it’s time maybe to, to try to reestablish those relationships. Do you have a way that, this is probably, is it different when we’re talking about politics than it is about anything else? Like if you were to go to couples counseling, would they be giving the same advice as you would say in this type of environment?
00;22;16;29 – 00;26;30;15
Dayna Smith-Slade
Oh, I need to pause and think about that. Right. Okay. So in couples counseling I would be looking at what is the goal of what brought them into couples counseling and also what what is important to the people individually and also in their relationship together. And then looking at their ability to communicate, ability to be heard. Do they have the kind of strategies that I talked about to, I’m going to use the word fight fair, but I don’t like to use the word fight, but I just did. But anyway, so, you know, do they have some things in your toolbox to navigate some of the difficult conversations. Because with couples, these things come up repetitively and they tend to not have these strategies to get through it. And they find themselves in like a dead end situation. So to that respect, I would think that some of that could be seen also in relationships, social, social relationships, or family relationships where the family dynamics are such that they’ve always communicated with each other in one way, they don’t know how to communicate any other way, they don’t know how to do any type of conflict resolution successfully. And if there’s a willingness, and that’s a lot of times what we need also in couples counseling, there’s a willingness to learn if the relationship is important enough that there’s a willingness to learn a way to work through the differences, and to know that that doesn’t mean that we’ll come to the same understanding in terms of, okay, now you’re on my side, now I’m on your side. But just, you know, an honoring of that person’s position without it affecting if there’s really love there, Like I did come across something that said, once the elections are over, that things begin to go to a level of equilibrium. I won’t say that happens for everybody, kinda just depends on the outcome. But we’re resilient as a nation. We’re resilient, most of us, resilient as human beings. So we come back to this place after having this fever pitched type of emotionally intense relations and communication to being a little bit more level headed. And in that space, being able to find where we can maybe not have some common ground, but again, just honored our differences, honor our diversity, if that relationship is important enough. There’s been some things that happen online that are just egregious, but that relationship, sometimes they’re faceless keyboard warrior people. But when it’s, you know, somebody that you love, if that relationship is important enough, then sometimes it’s important to extend an olive branch and to say, how can we work through this? How can we get through this, like with compassion and empathy and again, separating those values. Now I said a mouthful and I’m going back to you using the word extreme. And so I do want to say that sometimes you do have to go your separate ways. And it’s okay. That’s a way to honor yourself, knowing thyself, being true to yourself. If those extreme positions don’t align with something that even is in your sphere relationship, then it’s okay to let that go and to say goodbye, and to let it go with love and make peace with it. Just make peace with the fact that you decided that I cannot be in relationship with this person any longer, and then you would go through possibly a grieving process to that.
00;26;30;17 – 00;26;34;22
Rick Hoaglund
Is there anything you’d like to add that I haven’t asked you today?
00;26;34;25 – 00;28;43;19
Dayna Smith-Slade
So some people will say in terms of MythBusters and misconceptions, they’ll kind of minimize it and they’ll say, it’s just a political disagreement. And that’s a misunderstanding. When people think that election anxiety is simply about political disagreements, like I said, election anxiety often involves deep seated fears about the impact of the election outcomes on personal and societal issues. So, for example, they could have significant concerns regarding their basic rights. Sometimes their basic survival needs. Can they afford food? Will they be able to afford where they live? Then there’s additional needs for survival, like healthcare medications or disability and Social Security benefits. So this is more than just a political disagreement for a lot of people, right? Then some people think that when somebody has election anxiety or election stress disorder, that it’s a sign of weakness and an inability to handle stress, when in reality, election anxiety is a normal response to what is very unpredictable, very uncertain times, regardless of their resilience. Like our bodies, our brains are hardwired to fear, unpredictability and uncertainty, and they automatically creates a stress response in us. Just as human beings. So this isn’t about weakness. This is about more than just our thoughts and opinions. This is an actual physical reaction that is not about willpower or anything like that. So I think that’s important for people to understand as well.
00;28;43;21 – 00;28;48;22
Rick Hoaglund
Are only people that are super engaged. Are they the only ones that suffer from this?
00;28;48;24 – 00;29;49;07
Dayna Smith-Slade
Oh no, oh no, you don’t you don’t have to be engaged. You don’t have to have an affiliation. You could be trying to mind your own business and still find yourself affected by election anxiety or election stress, I’ll call election stress disorder. Stress itself happens because there’s a perceived threat. So when we talk about perception, so it doesn’t even need to be a factual threat. If that person feels that what is happening is a threat, be it a threat or not, their body is going to react on a physical level. It could just be something they heard or something they saw, or something that they read and then here they are having some symptoms. Sometimes they don’t even affiliate the these symptoms could be a result of election anxiety, they’ll be like, I haven’t been able to sleep lately. I don’t know what’s going on, you know, or something like that.
00;29;49;11 – 00;29;59;18
Rick Hoaglund
So it’s serious. It’s serious. Like there’s a lot of people out there that say, everybody feels this way. You’ll get over it, blah, blah, blah. But it is, it can be a serious thing for people.
00;29;59;21 – 00;30;38;23
Dayna Smith-Slade
Very serious because of all the different varying outcomes that could happen and affecting people in so many different ways. That’s the thing about politics is that it is so multifaceted. It affects us on an individual level, and it affects us on a collective level. It’s far, far reaching. So this is whether you’re engaged or not, affiliated or not, active or not, trying to have your head in the sand, that kind of thing. You can still find yourself affected by this, right?
00;30;38;26 – 00;30;46;29
Rick Hoaglund
Exactly. How about the fact that people might say, oh, this is overblown. It’s overblown.
00;30;47;01 – 00;32;31;10
Dayna Smith-Slade
Like it’s not that serious. Some people believe that election anxiety doesn’t have any serious implications. But again, I’ve come across some research that talks about some of the long term effects. Just like acute stress, a situation happens to us and it causes us to have a stress reaction. And then once that situation is over, then our body goes back into a state of homeostasis. But what we have found is that election anxiety can result in chronic stress, meaning a more longer term stress that is, once we talk about chronic stress, you know they say that stress is the silent killer. When you talk about chronic stress and the physical implications of chronic stress, you go from hypertension to high blood pressure, possibly stroke. You go from the sleeplessness to insomnia, you go to upset stomach, to the IBS and ulcers like those are chronic conditions. So those chronic conditions are indeed very serious, very serious. So we can’t just say that this is something that isn’t serious and that we’re blowing it out of proportion because it can become a chronic condition and really create some significant mental health issues that affect and impair people’s daily life, whether it’s having difficulty working, difficulty taking care of themselves in their homes, just, just overall well-being.
00;32;31;12 – 00;32;45;10
Rick Hoaglund
How about the fact that people think one size fits all with treatment? You know, it worked for me. I go out and I jog every day. Therefore I do not have this. So that’s what you should do. Is that true? Is it a one size fits all?
00;32;45;12 – 00;36;26;06
Dayna Smith-Slade
It’s not one size fits all. And just like I was saying earlier, that it affects people differently. The intensity in which it affects people is different. So we do need to have kind of customized ways of dealing with it, really taking a look at that person’s individual experience because it is unique. So their strategies are going to be based on what works for them, what’s effective for them. Now, one of the things I do want to touch on really quickly is the difference between election anxiety and general anxiety. That comes up a lot. Might equate election anxiety with general anxiety disorders. General anxiety disorders are actually in the DSM that I was mentioning earlier. It is a recognized disorder and generalized anxiety sounds, well it is just like it sounds, like it is a general sense of worry and anxiousness, there’s no identifying precipitating factor. Whereas election anxiety is due to the elections, is due to the political process. And we can have stress and anxiety related to politics, period. But when we come to the season of elections, it really becomes overwhelming and, and emotions percolate to the surface. So maybe somebody who has never experienced anxiety in their life now is beginning to experience symptoms of anxiety or symptoms related to stress that they did not even know. Sometimes I find, especially in my field, that people will go attempt to have some type of physical treatment first and not take a look at what’s going on underneath what that symptom is. That physical symptom is alerting them to the fact that something is out of order. Something’s not right. Something is a threat to your system. So they take Excedrin for the migraine, or the headache which becomes a migraine over time, and it’s not, they don’t realize, oh, could it be all of this constant news coverage that I subject myself to? Could it possibly be? Like. So I would recommend taking an inventory of like, what am I doing and how is it making me feel? How am I spending my time throughout the day and maybe being able to pinpoint if there’s some things that are in my control. That is actually one of the ways to manage election anxiety at election stress is to figure out what is in my control and what is not in my control. So some people find it really helpful. And I’m going, kind of detouring into another topic here, but they find it very helpful to do some volunteer at the polls and things like that, or, you know, with their candidate that they want to support when they do that and they’re around like minded people and they’re actually channeling that energy into a way that they feel like they’re making a difference, that actually does decrease the symptoms of stress and anxiety.
00;36;26;08 – 00;36;34;09
Rick Hoaglund
If it’s enough, where it’s affecting your ability to have a daily life, therapy’s an option?
00;36;34;11 – 00;38;35;25
Dayna Smith-Slade
I’m so glad you asked that, Rick, because, you know, I really encourage people to. I always say, when in doubt, reach out. That’s one of the things I like to say. Like, when in doubt, reach out. It doesn’t hurt to have a conversation with a mental health provider if they’re noticing that there’s some impairment going on with their daily life. I encourage people to try some healthy coping strategies so that when they do meet with the health provider, they can say, I’ve tried X, Y, and Z. I’ve still having these issues and I’m finding it difficult to do whatever it is. And so therefore I feel like I need some professional help because this is going to start with, what have you tried to help navigate or mitigate these symptoms? You know, have you ever had any treatment before, you know, what are you doing? And if you haven’t been doing anything, well, that’s where it will start. And then so you can tell them what you’ve been trying and then they can say, okay, well let’s, let’s take a look at this and then maybe these things will help. Or let’s process some of this stuff. Remember I said it’s this election. Anxiety and stress is connected to your belief system and your values system. So there could be some exploration about those things and how those things are connected to some fears. And there’s definitely things that therapy can help with. But I really I really encourage people not to suffer in silence when there’s so much support, help and resources available, whether it’s in the community, whether it’s online, like nowadays, you don’t even have to go into a therapist’s office to meet with them if that’s not your thing. Like if you want to see a therapist face to face, you can do that. But if you don’t want to do that, that is available to you. And it is a widely accepted format for counseling and therapy in our field at this point.
00;38;35;27 – 00;38;44;20
Rick Hoaglund
That is great. Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Important information, and I hope you’ll come back someday when we have a topic for you.
00;38;44;23 – 00;39;02;08
Dayna Smith-Slade
I would love to come back Rick, and I really enjoy being able to have the opportunity to share some information about a really important topic that is affecting so many of us, especially with the time frame that we’re looking at.
00;39;02;11 – 00;39;33;24
Rick Hoaglund
Thanks very much. Thank you for joining us today as we navigated the complexities of election anxiety. We hope this conversation has shed light on how political events impact our mental health and our well-being. Remember, it’s okay to feel overwhelmed and you’re not alone in this. To hear other episodes of On Topic with Empathia, visit our website Empathia.com. Follow us on social media @empathia and subscribe to On Topic with Empathia to hear new episodes as soon as they go live.