Poli-Ticks Me Off: What Political Stress Is and How It Can Affect Us
This blog has been prepared for you by registered psychologist and political meme nerd, Clinton Trueman.
I wouldn’t say I’ve ever felt particularly motivated to understand the mechanics of international trade. And yet, political content has become so pervasive that I now find myself in the unfortunate position of not only knowing about tariffs – but worrying about them.
Whether they’re playing out on an international or local scale, politics often feels inescapable. We turn to the alluring escapism of social media just to doomscroll through posts about wannabe autocrats trumpeting policy so incomprehensible it sounds more like word soup than word salad. We attend family gatherings and grit our teeth as that one uncle fails to grasp that his fervour for Fox News is unmatched by those around him. We visit our local Yum Cha restaurant only to see ideologically incoherent ‘patriots’ eating dim sum while draped in Australian flags. We find ourselves surrounded by politics, regardless of whether we want to be.
Just as politics seeps more and more into our lives, political content feels more emotionally charged than ever. The brazen expression of fringe rhetoric and ‘icky-sticky misinformation’, once reserved for marginal voices and former fish and chip shop owners, has found its way into political leaders’ playbooks, fuelling partisanship and extremism. This is further stoked by political content that is designed to evoke strong emotions and maintain engagement being spread through various forms of media.
In short, politics is stressful. And it’s normal for us to experience political stress as a result, irrespective of whether that looks like fear, sadness, or whatever you call the specific flavour of anger I feel when Joanne Rowling tweets (jokes – she’s blocked).
Let’s talk about what political stress is, how it affects us, and how we can try to manage it (even when politics is so stressful!).
What Political Stress Is and How It Can Affect Us
Political stress describes the unease or distress we experience when faced with uncertainty or fear about political issues or events. It can be sparked by political events that play out in our backyards, like elections and abrupt policy changes that directly affect our day-to-day lives. We can also experience political stress in response to global political issues, like human rights violations and occupations that maintain oppression of marginalised communities. While those in positions of power – and the politically indifferent who help keep them there – might question why we’re not just ‘grateful’ for the privilege of living far from where these events take place (ignoring that this privilege is rooted in colonial violence and reliant on systemic oppression), it’s normal for us to experience strong emotions any time our values are contravened. And in an increasingly globalised world, it’s hard to ignore the possibility of international ripples – like world leaders denying climate change or making comments so inane you question whether reality is just an extended SNL sketch – turning into waves on our shores.
The cumulative nature of these stressors means that we might experience political stress not just as acute spikes of distress but as a discomforting hum lingering in our day-to-day lives. We might feel like we’re constantly on-edge and have less tolerance for relatives who ‘stay informed’ through Facebook. We might struggle to find the balance between being informed and completely overwhelmed as we continue to doomscroll. We might start to question whether we truly feel safe enough to be ourselves in our communities, workplaces, healthcare providers’ offices, and even in our homes.
We might feel like politics is personal – because it is.
Whilst we all carry the weight of political stress, it often sits more heavily on the shoulders of people from marginalised communities whose sense of safety and identity are uniquely impacted by political events and the shifts they create in our systems. When trans people are subjected to public ‘debates’ about their right to exist and denied access to affirming care, or when the insidious legacy of colonisation upholds systemic injustice against First Nations folks, the line between the political and the deeply personal becomes much harder to see.
As these lines blur and political stress starts to feel unmanageable, it’s important to remember that, while we may not always be able to control the political systems around us, we can take care of ourselves and others as we exist within them.
Overthrowing Political Stress When We Can’t Overthrow the System (Yet)
1. Identify What You Can Control (Or Influence, At Least)
While we can often feel powerless in the face of political systems, there are still ways we can influence them – even if we can’t control them. We can influence political systems directly by making informed decisions in elections. We can enact change in our communities by donating to or volunteering for causes and organisations we care about and boycotting those that enable oppressive political systems. We can counter misinformation by sharing reputable sources on social media and having information conversations with important people in our lives (at least the ones who can discuss politics without unintelligibly ranting about pronouns and Antifa).
These forms of intentional action are most meaningful when directed by our values – the guiding principles that act as a compass for every decision we make. For example, if we hold justice and equality closely as values, we can support organisations or political parties with similar values. On the other hand, if we value assertiveness and collaboration, we can participate in protests, marches, and pop off in local politicians’ Insta comments.
2. Accept What You Can’t
Just as the Trumpet of Patriots proved to resist seats in Parliament last election, we can be inclined to resist difficult emotions underpinned by political stress. Do I want to experience a sinking feeling of fear in my gut when I scroll past Hillbilly Elegy on Netflix? Of course not! But we can only hold these emotions down for so long before they resurface. And in trying to control or change – rather than accept – them, they can become even more overwhelming for us.
Importantly, acceptance doesn’t involve becoming well-adjusted to dysfunctional political systems and accepting that they’re okay. In fact, it means the opposite: it means that we accept that our emotional experience is a valid response to things happening around us that are not okay. Shifting our relationship with these feelings won’t necessarily remove political stress, but it can help to reduce the internal struggle that exacerbates this stress. More than that, creating space for these emotional responses, like anger, can drive us to continue undertaking values-led action and striving for a better world, instead of falling into a state of complacency that upholds the status quo.
3. Find Community
As we absorb political news and traverse an online landscape of insightful political commentators with social media handles like @fascistkitten67, it’s easy to feel like we’re all alone in this. Despite this, people with similar values – who might fangirl with us over edits of Zohran spelling his name to the tune of Hollaback Girl or share in our sadness over events taking place in the world that defy us to retain hope – are out there, whether they be in online social groups, community events, or people we know in our day-to-day lives. Research shows that connecting with community members with parallel values can help to buffer us from the negative health outcomes associated with existing within politically polarised communities.1 Amidst political systems that promote partisanship and individualism to undermine the power of collective action, uniting with community offers us hope that there are people who also care and will take action alongside us for a more equitable world.
4. Set Boundaries Around Political Content
Staying informed and actively challenging harmful political systems is important. But it’s also exhausting. And just like one of Pauline Hanson’s 25 cent grocery bags, we can only take so much before the handles come off. Setting boundaries around our engagement with political content allows us to create the space that we need to rest and sustainably continue engaging in meaningful action. While this can look like taking breaks from political content and cutting it out of our lives for specific periods of time, it might also involve being mindful about how we engage with the political landscape. We might choose to read – rather than watch – news stories about politics to give us greater control over what we’re exposed to and when we’ve seen enough. We might remove ourselves from conversations with that coworker who likes to explain why cisgender is a slur. We might block untrustworthy and inflammatory social media accounts and manipulate our algorithms by deliberately seeking out content that interest us or make us feel happy (which is why my feed is filled with crochet, food, and the cast of Boots).
By setting boundaries, we can give ourselves the rest that we need while existing in a world that demands constant re-orientation to the evocative. And particularly for folks from marginalised communities, for whom this relentless vigilance has always been a necessary tool for survival, this rest isn’t just restorative. It’s resistance.
1Panagopoulos, C., Fraser, T., Aldrich, D. P., Kim, D., & Hummel, D. (2021). Bridging the divide: Does social capital moderate the impact of polarization on health?, Political Research Quarterly, 75(3), 875 – 891. https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211034561
