Kevin
Well, welcome back everyone to another episode of "Coping". As you can tell, we are dropping this episode a little bit early this month, and there's a reason for that.
Kathy
Yeah, today we are diving into a new and fascinating topic just in time for the election.
Kevin
That's right, we have a major general election coming up this Tuesday. We thought we'd take some time to talk about coping with election anxiety. It's a real thing, isn't it, Kathy?
Kathy
Yes, for certain, I feel that the temperature is very high everywhere. No matter what side of the color that you'll be voting this election season, there's a lot of tension just that's been mounting, a lot of upheaval in our country and overall anxiousness everywhere.
Kevin
Well, let's get started.
Kathy
So in today's episode, we want to explore the four types of anticipatory coping strategies that can help us manage the stress that comes with forecasting out events, specifically our election. And I wondered, is that something that, in your family of origin, you all discussed prior to events happening?
Kevin
We really didn't growing up. We didn't spend time talking about world events. Parents didn't really watch the news or read the newspaper. I'm sure they knew what was going on, but just wasn't a topic that we spent time dialoguing about or talking about our values and what we believed and how politics played a role in that. And so it really wasn't until my adult life that I became fascinated with and engaged with politics and election cycles and candidates that were running and what bills and laws were being voted on. But I know that your dad was a poly-sci professor. I'm sure you all talked about elections. What was that like growing up?
Kathy
I think our family was a complete opposite of yours in terms of engagement. Every single night we would all sit around watching the news, talking about politics. I don't recall there being a lot of anxiety the way that we are dealing with things today. I think one of the ways our parents offset that or taught us to offset any fear about the future was by getting involved and taking action and being engaged and in that way, I'm sure that is an anticipatory coping strategy, is to actually be engaged. It's not one of the ones we're talking about today, but I don't recall a lot of fear. It was more about this notion to just go out and do something.
Kevin
Yeah, you're so right that our families are completely different. And I would even credit you with some of the political engagement that I've enjoyed in my adult life. A lot of it is stemming from our partnership, our relationship and understanding the importance of elections.
Kevin
And so this research article is called "Combating Election Stress, Anticipatory Coping, and Daily Self -Reported Physical Health". The authors on this article are Brittany Johnson and Siobhan Newpert.
Kathy
Yeah, we found this research study to be very interesting because it was conducted during the 2018 midterm elections, which we know was just prior to COVID happening. So there was a lot going on in the country at the time. And again, tensions were high. And so they set out to do this study with 140 respondents. And what they wanted to measure in the study was to see if anticipatory coping strategies had any effect on their level of anxiety. So what's the first type of anticipatory coping?
Kevin
So the first type of anticipatory coping that the authors describe is problem analysis. So the authors say that problem analysis is the active contemplation of the antecedents and meaning of future stressful situations. So basically it's about focusing on and trying to understand the scope of the problem, the source of the problem, the reason behind the problem. But what's really great about problem analysis, it's not trying to solve the problem.
Kevin
The reason why that's important with elections is because our one vote is consequential, but we can often feel powerless when our vote is being tallied with millions and millions of other people's votes who may not vote the same way that we do.
Kathy
So I think that this anticipatory coping strategy is excellent. I have utilized this not only for elections for myself, but I think that I probably do this most often in coaching students, is not problem solving with them in their lives, but instead helping them, walking them through the sources, the scope, and the issues surrounding where there can be anxiety.
Kathy
And a good example of this is last weekend at the library for the election, I spent over two hours researching all of the propositions here in California. It's very long, I even texted someone that I know in local politics here and asked her opinion about candidates and issues. It was all really helpful and it made me feel a lot better, again, back to what happened in my family of origin, to feel like I was engaged and I could take back some of the feelings of helplessness by being involved.
Kevin
Engagement makes such a difference in our sense of empowerment and sense of control over things that are really beyond us. And that leads us well into our second type of anticipatory coping and this is called plan rehearsal.
Kevin
So this strategy involves envisioning the steps or strategies that you could use to achieve a desired outcome. So basically this is like practicing your plans or having an actual practical step by step plan for a stressful upcoming event. So if you're feeling stressed about the election, having a plan of how you're going to vote is really crucial. So are you planning to vote early? Are you doing a mail-in ballot? Are you going in person?
Kevin
Depending on what your plan is for voting, you can create a step-by-step agenda of how you're going to achieve that. Where is your voting place if you're going in person? Do you have your mail-in ballot already? Do you know how to sign it properly? Do you, as you said, have you researched the propositions and the other issues down the ballot that are part of this election? A lot of that planning that you do anticipatory helps reduce any sense of stress that you have on that day.
Kevin
So you've already described a little bit of plan rehearsal with your students. How do you do this for yourself? What kind of plan rehearsal do you have in place for stressful events that may be upcoming?
Kathy
Yeah, I think that a lot of anxiety in general comes from there not being a plan. I would just say that outright. Much of it is a lot of buzz in our hearts and our minds about "oh my gosh I have to do this" and "oh my goodness there's that" and there's -- but if we actually sit down and take the time to write out what we need, what the events -- how the we would like to take back control again of the events that are coming in front of us. For example, if we think about like a big day, like a wedding or a huge milestone celebration, who wants to go into one of those events like, oh just making it up? I think a lot of people are in the mindset of that these days and I think it's contributing to our anxiety. So the plan rehearsal -- of course this is my personality to have a plan rehearsal but I really have seen the value of helping others create plans and, for example, we have sons in another state; we spent four weeks planning how they were gonna vote.
Kathy
People may be like, you're crazy, how did you spend that time? Meanwhile, there's all these people rushing around now, oh my gosh, we don't know what's happening, it's Tuesday, oh no, and we put that all the effort in and it has reduced anxiety all the way around. So plan rehearsal, a huge fan of it.
Kevin
Yeah, you're so right about having a plan. I, being an ENFP on the Myers-Briggs personality scale, I very much like to go with the flow. I am not a type of person that naturally enjoys creating plans or thinking about plans. I'd like to kind of just see how things unfold, but in times where I'm feeling a heightened sense of stress or there's a lot more at stake, it has been so crucial for me to think ahead, to plan ahead, and when I have the plan, it actually, for somebody like me and my personality type, gives me the freedom to let things unfold and to be able to improv when things don't go the way that I like or the way that I've planned.
Kevin
And so that leads us well into our third type of coping. What is our third one, Kathy?
Kathy
Yeah, so in this study, interestingly, they now turn to two negative anticipatory coping strategies, so some of us may already be engaged in some of this negative coping pre-election, so let's discuss them.
Kathy
This third one is called stagnant deliberation, and this involves dwelling repetitively on a stressful problem without making progress toward a solution. It's the tendency to get stuck in a loop of unproductive thoughts. Does anyone relate to that out there?
Kevin
Yes, I guess the other word that comes to mind in this description is rumination, where you're just thinking about the stress and not really getting to the problem analysis -- the scope or understanding what the problem is and why we're feeling stressed by it -- and we're not really getting to that plan making a part either of coping we're just ruminating and thinking about the stress itself and the word that's important about this is the stagnant deliberation where you're stuck in that cycle of thoughts and do you ever find yourself stuck in this and how do you break out of it?
Kathy
The idea of rumination reminds me of this game we used to play with the kids on Wii. I don't know if it's called Dizzy Bat; it's like a two-player playoff game. Basically what happens is that when you get hit with the bat you're so dizzy that you can't even move your character around. There's just this feeling of being stuck and you're trying to get out of it. And I think that's exactly what the rumination, what happens to us, it actually paralyzes us. So your question was, does that happen to me? There's been times and spaces, I'm such an action-oriented person that if I find myself dwelling on something, I immediately go to problem analysis and try to figure out a plan and get myself unstuck.
Kathy
It's very odd or rare that I am in rumination. I think things through and I take a lot of time to do that. But rumination is this negative feeling of being stuck and hopeless in a situation. So I would also say if I am ruminating, I reach out to help for someone with advice, someone wiser than me, and I ask their wisdom and input into it. I would say within a matter of days, I would ask someone about it so that I'm not there stuck in the rumination.
Kevin
Yeah, you do a really good job of going quickly to the problem analysis and coming up with a plan. I've seen you do that really well with our family especially. And so our final coping is the second poor coping strategy and this one is called outcome fantasy.
Kevin
So outcome fantasy is basically daydreaming or fantasizing about a desired outcome while ignoring the details of problem solving and plan making. So basically the outcome fantasy has to do with dreaming that what you want to happen is going to happen and you're ignoring all of the reality that maybe it may not happen that way and you kind of get stuck in this heightened sense of false hope that because you believe it it's going to happen and, although it does in the short term make you feel better and gives you a sense of control, if the outcome doesn't happen, if the desired outcome doesn't happen then it could have serious effects on your mental health and your well-being because of this state of fantasy that you found yourself in that then doesn't come to fruition.
Kathy
Yeah I feel like there's a couple of students that struggle with this. I don't know if it's a gender-based issue, but my experience has been that it's more women than men that are struggling in these fantasy worlds. Maybe it's just the way that our society has been set up for women that we have to escape to these worlds because of so much pressure and what is often the case that I see is that they set themselves up for not only what you said, but like huge amounts of disappointment and loss and grief when their expectations are not met about this fantasy world that they've created for their workplaces, for their relationships, you name it. And so it's very detrimental. And the way that we have to combat this number one is just to A) name it and be aware of it that you might have a tendency to live in a fantasy world. There's nothing wrong with dreaming and vision-making.
Kathy
This is where again, you find yourself stuck in that world and you're not able to allow reality or truth to penetrate it.
Kevin
That's right. So as we wrap up our episode today, and we find ourselves getting nearer and nearer to the election on Tuesday, we have these four types of anticipatory coping that may be able to help us manage our election anxiety. And so based on what we've talked about today, we wanna take time to engage in problem analysis, to take some time to rehearse our plans and avoid stagnant deliberation and be realistic about what kind of outcomes may come about.
Kevin
And so with realistic planning, with analysis of our problems, we can better prepare ourselves for the stressors that may come with this election.
Kathy
Yeah, this has been such a helpful episode and we hope that this will help you prepare best for election day. And we encourage everyone to absolutely be involved, engaged and be sure to know that your vote matters. And to close our episode, we have a blessing for you by one of our favorite faith leaders, Kate Bowler.
Kathy
Blessing for Election Day by Kate Bowler:
Kathy
Oh God, we are anxious as we stand at the edge of so much opportunity, so much danger. God, calm our fears, protect us, and all that is true and just and good. God, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Spirit, have mercy.
God, you still the roaring of the seas, the pounding of the waves, and the tumult of the nations. Psalm 65:7. God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy. Blessed are we who to turn to you and pray.
Oh God bless our lands and through this whole election. Inspire honesty in every intention, decency in every action, integrity in every decision, and the healing of every division. Grant us grace to respect others and listen patiently in a way that restores the possibility of change and creative compromise.
Blessed are we who ask that you establish stability and peace through leaders who will work for the good of us all, who will seek reconciliation and unite our country in a way forward together to shelter those who are vulnerable, hurting, and afraid.
Blessed are we who trust you to stand by us, strengthen us, and guide us by the light of your wisdom and love. God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy. Pray once then find someone to laugh with you.
There is time. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing so that with the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Romans 15:13. Amen.
