If you had asked me before the election how I would feel if Donald Trump won, I would have said any number of negative things, including fear, anger, and upset. And there is no doubt that many people are feeling this way right now. But when I tried to answer that question Wednesday morning, what came up was…empty. This is not unusual for me, as I make a living translating emotions and concepts into words. Still, it was there. A feeling of mental numbness, a deep and complete numbness, was mirrored to me by friends and colleagues in the hours since: “I don’t even know how to feel right now.”
It turns out that while this kind of shutdown may seem like a lack of emotion, it’s actually more likely a reaction to a variety of emotions happening at the same time. Numbness is a defense mechanism against emotional overwhelm; Dr. Gail Saltza board-certified psychiatrist and clinical associate professor of psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, told SELF. Rather than jumping into fight or flight, we enter a third, less-discussed stress response called freeze, where our bodies and minds cease their typical functions in full survival mode. It can be caused by a variety of negative feelings, from anxiety and fear to sadness, loss, and fear, but the common thread is that there’s simply too much of it all. Your brain chooses to feel instead of feeling everything none At least in the best way possible.
Dr. Saltz points out that this is an especially common experience in response to shock. Even if you have been expecting a bad outcome for a while, your mind and body can prepare for it. She likens this to getting over an accident in slow motion. But if it happens suddenly, it’s likely to hit you so hard that you’ll dissociate to protect yourself. That doesn’t mean everyone was surprised by the election results. Like me, you may have known deep down that logically this was a possibility (it’s very possible). But even if you haven’t actually worked on it, you’ll still be able to feel stunned That shuts it down to a certain extent.
The post-election numbness may have several causes.
distrust and denial
There’s a reason why denial is the first stage of grief. Just like numbing yourself, mentally pushing back against bad news is a defense mechanism and completely normal. Helen McKibben, PhD in Psychologya licensed psychologist and author of the following books: Drop: Make great decisionstell SELF. And a variety of factors, including bomb threats at polling places and how quickly the race was called, may make the brain more susceptible to distrust. As a result, you may miss closures. Gina Moffa, LCSWA trauma-informed psychotherapist in New York tells SELF: “You may feel like you’re in emotional suspension and don’t know what to grieve yet.”
The challenge is that if you try to stop that feeling of denial for too long, you can become overwhelmed by the emotions that surface and end up numbing yourself again, Dr. Saltz says. process of slowly In a way, she explains, it’s a process of grieving a great loss, gradually coming to terms with the upset until it no longer feels like too much.
powerless
Not feeling anything serves not only as an immediate defense mechanism, but also as a symptom of a deeper sense of hopelessness, that you’ve done all you can and it’s not enough, or that things are only going to get worse from here. It may be. And for many people, Dr. Saltz acknowledges, that’s very likely the reality. When you start thinking about all the things you could lose in the future, there’s a kind of unforeseen sadness that comes along, especially when the stakes are high, such as basic human rights and the continued functioning of society, Mofa said. explain. Our democracy is on the table.
The cost of repeated trauma
When you experience loss, something perplexing happens in your brain. “Every time you’ve felt a similar loss in the past, you can jump to it, and that can bring back past emotions as well as past emotions,” says Dr. McKibben. Masu. Here and now. ”
