How to Evade Insanity's Grasp During the Last Day of This Hellish Election

Last month, a survey from the American Psychological Association revealed that more than half of Americans reported feeling election-related stress. "Uncertainty is stressful," William Eaton, a professor of mental health at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Bloomberg. "There will be a large proportion of the population that will be relieved that it's over."

The question remains: How do we get through these next few excruciating hours?

Emi Miller is a nurse who practices integrative and holistic medicine in North Carolina. She says people usually know when they're stressed out, but there are some physiological signs to look for. "Stress can interrupt their sleep at night," she tells Broadly. "It can also hurt their digestive abilities, causing loose stools, diarrhea, nausea, and it can affect their ability to cope with ordinary stresses in their lives."

"Mostly," she continues, "they're going to be overly concerned, thinking about the problem that's making them stressed frequently during the day."

Miller reports that all of her patients have expressed feeling some anxiety over this election, no matter whom they're planning to vote for. Her suggestion to them has been to cut off the TV and radio and abstain from social media for the next few days. "The media is hyped up on both sides," she says. "We're so close to the election, it doesn't make any sense for us to continue to be stressed about this. People already know who they're going to be voting for."

Instead, she says, turn on some quiet music or play with your kids or dogs. "When your mind is busy doing things that are fun," she explains, "and you're focused on things that give you joy, you're not thinking about the things that stress you out."

Shanti Douglas, a mindfulness and stress management coach based in New Hampshire, says the election is "a really challenging time" partly because of the divisiveness and subsequent feeling of loss of control it's caused. "People feel helpless and hopeless," she says.

One way to deal with election-related stress, Douglas says, is take time throughout the day to pause, reflect and reconnect with yourself. "Even if it's just 30 seconds, close your eyes and forget about the world and connect with your breath, connect with your body, getting to that feeling sense of what's going on," she says. "When we can shut the world off and go inward, it gives us so much information about how we are, then we can be more skillful in how to deal with world outside of us."

She offers the analogy of being on a train going 1000 miles an hour: Try to jump off a train going that fast, and you're going to get hurt. "Connecting with the breath, your heart center, your belly and what's right here, right now, it helps to slow the train down," she says. "Then, when you want to get off, you can just walk off."

Echoing Miller, Douglas also suggests shutting off the news and going for a walk. "I call the news death and destruction hour," she says. "It's one monster feeding another monster."