Slate Plus

How to Cope With the 2016 Election

Some advice from the Slate staff.

A delegate holds up a copy of the constitution at the Republican National Convention at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio on July 20, 2016.
A delegate holds up a copy of the Constitution at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 20.

Robyn Beck/Getty Images

Earlier this summer, in the aftermath of the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Slate published a story about the importance of self-care during emotionally disturbing news events. As we enter the home stretch of a presidential election loaded with shocking stories and degrading comments about gender, race, and religion, that sentiment feels worth revisiting. Though we can’t just turn off the news and pretend this isn’t happening, we can find ways to cope. This is how Slate staffers have managed.

This has been by far the hardest election of my life. For a year we’ve been trying as parents to make this make sense to our kids, amid the anxiety they feel about classmates who were not American-born and anxiety dreams they have about racism and deportations. Every debate since the primaries is a battle about letting them watch. Trying to teach them to be fair and empathetic to views on the other side became futile. Then the explosion of sexism and degradation of minorities and women became almost unbearable. Talks with the 13-year-old about how we talk to and about women, talks to the 11-year-old about stepping in if you see bullying. My husband and I stopped sleeping for a while in there. Last week my Facebook page was teeming with posts from women sharing the first time they were assaulted. Most had never told their parents. Often the posts started, “I was 8.” I asked my doctor for medicinal marijuana. She said no.

What helped? Registering voters. Being totally open with my partner about what we could tolerate after November. Cooking. Debate watch parties so you weren’t in your head. Long walks with the kids to explain. Texting girlfriends. The paradox of this election is that I have never been more horrified about this country in my lifetime but never reached out and found goodness like this either. Everywhere I look people are doing good stuff, maybe with redoubled energy. That helps. Another thing that helped? I had Khizr Khan sign a pocket Constitution for my kids two weeks ago. We keep it on the mantel.
—Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor

Trump is making me dumber. I don’t mean that in some flippant, jokey way. I can feel my vocabulary … what even is the word here? Becoming smaller? This is what I mean! I know fewer words. I cannot read a book. I am eating more. Today I went to the grocery store and bought hard pretzels and cheese dip and just ate that all afternoon. It’s a chronic dull sensation awakened by pangs of fear about what Donald Trump is going to do next or what he’s going to urge his supporters to do next. I remember the end of the 2012 election feeling maddening, too, but I can’t remember why. The best way to combat this chronic, dull, election-induced sensation is to go running, which I don’t do because I spend all day blogging about Donald Trump and reading about Donald Trump and eating pretzels, tra la la. Twenty-four more days.
—Jim Newell, politics writer

There are some days—like today—as a staffer on the women-and-gender beat when all I do is write about horrible things Donald Trump has said and done. More than once, I’ve sat deflated with my head in my hands and a knot in my stomach before starting to write. I take a minute to remind myself that there are thousands of people out there doing good work to fight cruelty like his, and my role is to help as many people as possible grasp the phenomenon of Trump and put his attacks on women in context. Usually, that propels me past any impulses toward despondency. On those nights, I might ask my partner and friends if we can talk about anything but Trump. The fact that I happened to start watching Parks & Recreation—a pudding cup of feel-good local-government love—right as Trump started his campaign has convinced me that the fates can occasionally be kind.

But sometimes I shudder under the full weight of Trump’s misogyny and the voters and political leaders who support it. I teared up at my desk when I saw Trump’s tweet about Alicia Machado’s “sex tape” and I knew I’d have to funnel my frustration and anger into a coherent blog post. I was en route to California last Friday when the Washington Post published the Access Hollywood recording that’s still dominating the news a week later; one very small, very sheepish part of me was glad that I didn’t have to kick my Trump anger-o-meter up yet another notch. On Saturday morning, hours before a friend’s wedding celebration, I decided to write something anyway. I care about Slate and doing my job well, but writing about the response to Trump’s boasts of sexual assault was as important to my mental health as it was to our online magazine. It allowed me to process the recording and make sense of the rage and deep sadness it provoked in me. The process of writing the piece, and the knowledge that someone might read it and better understand the misogyny of this election cycle, was cathartic. I felt the same way after the shooting at an Orlando gay club: Writing helped me process my grief and stave off feelings of helplessness.
—Christina Cauterucci, staff writer

My Trump coping strategy is twofold. The first fold is wine. The second fold is crossword puzzles. As I discovered while getting completely, glumly inebriated during the second debate, alcohol alone is not sufficient to dispel the stygian apprehensions that Trump sets loose in my soul. Nor is absorption in a crossword puzzle. However, wine followed by a crossword puzzle tends to do the trick. I can convince myself that words have no meaning because I am drunk, not because the Republican candidate for president regularly commits crimes against language, meaning, truth, and beauty. (Bonus: In the morning, I can look at my bizarre puzzle answers and feel like an Oulipo poet.)
—Katy Waldman, words correspondent

I have literally stopped reading political news outside of work. It all feels like work now. I didn’t watch Sunday’s debate because it was my weekend and that’s me time, not work time. This cycle is really affecting my work-life balance, because the things I read about at work could very seriously bleed into my nonwork life depending on what happens Nov. 8.
—Dawnthea Price, copy editor

I am not on the Trump beat. Over the past several months, a thought has periodically occurred to me: Am I out of my mind, to not be 100 percent focused on this historic disaster that’s unfolding around me? More than once I’ve fantasized about how the Rick Perlstein of 2050 will describe this period in history, and it wakes me up a little. And as soon as my mind has gone there, my next thought has been: I should be covering this.

I see my colleagues who have had Trump running through their veins as something akin to the storm-chasers in Twister—people whose job it is to be extraordinarily sensitive to this extremely hostile slab of chaos. So much of the revelatory writing about this election has been produced by people who are capable of being more sensitive than the rest of us can be, people who can continuously feel the full weight and absurdity of what’s going on and not let themselves zone out or stop paying attention. They are both up close and at a preternatural distance—they see all of Trump.

There was an amazing quote I heard once: “9/11 didn’t feel real to me until I saw United 93.” I don’t know what it’s from or whether it was originally said as a joke. But to my great shame I earnestly identify with it right now: This election doesn’t feel real to me until I picture it rendered as rollicking nonfiction. And when I tell myself I should be writing about this election, what I’m really saying is “Bro, this is all really happening.” It’s messed up how easily I’ve been able to put that out of my mind.
—Leon Neyfakh, crime reporter

I had a dream that I was Hillary Clinton’s assistant and had a miscarriage on her behalf. The miscarriage was throwing up toys and blood and part of a plastic face. This election, man.
—Andrew Kahn, assistant interactives editor

One thing I’ve done to keep myself from going completely off the deep end is to actively avoid listening to any of the candidates speak. I’ve managed to evade Trump’s voice for approximately 90 percent of the campaign. (I skipped every debate except this last one and got through about a minute of his convention speech before getting sick to my stomach and shutting it off.) Sure, I read about what they say and watch SNL actors repeat, almost word-for-word, what they’ve said (because laughter and crying are really one in the same, right?), but something about getting it all second-hand hurts my head and heart just a little bit less than if I got it straight from the source. And when it comes to long thinkpieces on the election, I check in with myself before I decide to dive in—“Do you really want to read more about our terrible, corrupt political system right now? Nah? OK, then”—and then go from there. Also, alcohol works wonders.
—Aisha Harris, culture writer

I’ve just been walking around with an intensifying knot of dread and anxiety in the pit of my stomach for the past month, as Election Day looms ever closer. Trump is a madman, and his groping comments certainly remind me of the time I got groped on the sidewalk in New York City, but that’s not the main source of my anxiety. (Other women are being retraumatized by Trump’s comments in much worse ways.) For me, it’s a combination of the existential terror of a Trump presidency, the depression of knowing that so very many of my fellow countrymen are prepared to vote for a hateful demagogue, and the can’t-look-away schadenfreude of reading about his floundering campaign. Last weekend, I was home visiting my parents, which was supposed to be a break from work, but I couldn’t stop reading Twitter and Slack for updates about the fallout from the Access Hollywood tape. It felt like a compulsion that I had no control over. To an extent it’s my job to stay informed about the latest happenings of the campaign, but I try to take breaks. I try not to read Slack or Twitter when I’m home at night or over the weekend (last weekend notwithstanding). Oh, and yoga and meditation help. Last night I went to a yoga class right after writing a post about how Trump hit on 14-year-olds, and writing that post simply made me feel polluted—I don’t even know any other way to put it—but breathing deeply and focusing on the sensations of my body helped.
—L.V. Anderson, associate editor

I’ve been fine, because I expect Trump to lose. So it all feels like a death spiral to me.
—Will Saletan, national correspondent

Presidential campaigns are always exhausting. The 2008 cycle felt chaotic, tense, and bizarre, especially once Sarah Palin entered stage right. The 2012 race featured a milquetoast, moderate Mormon who pretended to be an immigration hardliner to win the primary, and I still remember the profound sense of relief when it finally wrapped up. But nothing compares with this year. After all, Romney’s campaign didn’t bring 1920s-style anti-Semitism back into vogue on the internet or inspire his fans to start punching protesters. There have been a lot of nights where I’ve just sat around stewing with dread about the direction of the country; after Trump’s speech at the convention, I just felt fearful and sad. You know that scene in A Clockwork Orange where the main character is strapped down and forced to watch grotesquely violent images with his eyelids pried open? That’s what covering the rise of Trump has felt like. And it’s been doubly frustrating as someone who covers policy for a living, realizing how utterly irrelevant most substantive issues have been to the course of the general (the primary was a bit of a different story, though that was sobering for us center-left wonks in its own way).

How have I dealt with it? By taking a vacation occasionally. Unlike other reporters, I’ve had that luxury, because I’m not on the campaign trail. I also made a $100 bet with a friend that Trump would win so that, if it happened, I’d at least get a decent bottle of liquor out of it to nurse the shock. Thankfully, as of now it looks like I’ll be the one paying up.
—Jordan Weissmann, senior business and economics correspondent

I am lucky in that I do not have to cover Trump all the time. But last week after the video dropped, I could not contain myself. I couldn’t stop poring over Twitter, exclaiming over the madness. I felt like I was in an alternate universe—perhaps that was the only way my mind could grasp the reality.

What helped? Calling my mother. I listened to her marvel over how heartening it was to see people stand up against him. If Trump’s comments represent a shocking step backward, the condemnation of them at least reaffirms that the work we have been doing for years—online, on social media, in person—to create a more decent society matters. I did not think my generation of women would have to face the prospect of such a president, but there is light to be found in how we have stood up to proclaim that no, this is not OK.

The other thing that helps is watching Michelle Obama’s speech. Multiple times.
—Susan Matthews, science editor