Written by : Dr. Tracy Thomas

4 Ways to Stay Emotionally Healthy Amid a Stressful Election

Being less reactionary and more intentional can build inner strengths to help deal with chaos.

Stress and headache behind laptop on job. Overwork, distress, negative emotions concept

Being less reactionary and more intentional can build inner strengths to help deal with chaos.

In order to stay emotionally healthy during the final stage of the election cycle, it’s essential to remain emotionally elevated above the chaos. Recognize that an election cycle that has been this long, this negative and this intense, is bound to have an emotional impact because this event has created a frenzied frequency that people are feeling stuck in.

In reality, this election has made the emotional environment that we all inhabit together the most reactive environment in American history. This is especially difficult for those who are more emotionally sensitive and are constantly absorbing the chaos in the environment and becoming more distressed with each day.

With years of reactivity from the top-down infiltrating our society, this last stage of the election cycle is like a fever pitch of activity. It’s no wonder so many people feel more reactive and more emotionally exhausted than ever. For this reason, it’s critical that we shift all the emotional reactivity that has trickled down and spread rapidly across social media into intentionality that allows us to stay connected to ourselves and an empowered vision for our future. For the most emotionally sensitive people, this election driven reactivity can create a complete shutdown from overstimulation and isn’t sustainable.

At times like this, it’s never been more important to turn our emotional reactivity into epic emotional strength. We can do this by shifting our reactivity to the election into a state of connectedness to the intentions we have for ourselves and our country. Turning emotional reactivity into epic emotional strength comes from following a set of strength training techniques called The Method.

The Method works like this:

1. Stay connected to your Self to know if you are in a reaction or in an intention. Check in with yourself as often as you check your phone, so you keep building a connection to your Self instead of continually disconnecting from your Self due to stress.

2. Be intentional with your communications with your Self and others so you're communicating with intention instead of communicating to your Self or anyone else in reaction to something. It’s easy to be in a reactive state and have all of your internal and external communication come from a reactive place rather than an intentional one, so make sure you're communicating intentionally.

3. If you find that you’re in a reactionary state, make a shift by choosing an intention and harnessing all your emotions into an outcome that you want to create. Focus on your outcomes over your reactions. Shift what would otherwise be a chain of reactions you might get stuck in, into a chain of intentions you’ll feel great about, and you’ll feel immediately more elevated and above all of the reactive ruckus around the election.

4. Say and do only what will create your outcomes in order to be productive instead of reactive. No matter how tempting it may be to speak and behave out of reaction, take action that is intentional and designed to create a desired outcome. This will shift all of the distress into success and in doing so you can rise above the reactivity of the election and declare yourself victorious.
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