There’s no question that Election 2016 was highly stressful. But usually, in the aftermath of contentious elections, stress drops markedly. That hasn’t happened. According to CNN, leftists across the nation have been experiencing Post-Election Stress Disorder. Convinced that Hillary Clinton was going to be the next president, shocked by the victory of Donald Trump, Americans from the left are flocking to mental health specialists to talk about their inability to sleep, sexual dysfunction, anxiety and depression. Here’s CNN’s report:
Requests for therapy appointments to Talkspace, an online therapy portal based in New York City, tripled immediately following the election and have remained high through January, according to the company. In particular, Talkspace has seen a steady increase in requests from minorities, including Muslim-Americans, African-Americans, Jews, gays and lesbians. "In my 28 years in practice, I've never seen anything like this level of stress," said Nancy Molitor, a psychologist in the Chicago suburbs. She says the vast majority of her patients -- from millennials to those in their eighties -- are bringing up politics in their therapy sessions. "What we're seeing now after the inauguration is a huge uptick in anxiety."
My wife, who is a doctor in Los Angeles, has told me that the hospital at which she works has warned its physicians about an uptick in psychological issues springing from the election. This is a real thing.
Why is it happening?
Because of the media. CNN laments the rise of PESD at the same time they report it this way:
In the past, therapists say it's been fairly uncommon for patients to bring up politics on the couch. "It is big money to talk about politics with me -- that is not what we do!" said Maria Lymberis, a psychiatrist in Santa Monica, Calif. But that was before "fake news," "alternative facts," "repeal and replace," contested confirmations, travel bans, protests and suits over travel bans, suspicions about Russian influence and the departures of the acting attorney general and the new national security adviser. Among other things.
You see? It’s all Trump!
Except that it isn’t. Yes, Trump’s governing style is chaotic. Yes, he says ridiculous things routinely. But has anything Trump done thus far truly merited the media’s 24/7 freakout – a freakout that has predictable impact on viewers? It turns out that if your favorite anchor spends night after night washing his hair with gasoline and then lighting a match on-air, it might stress some people out. In the last few weeks alone, we’ve heard that Trump is a dictatorial threat to the press, that he’s going to start a war with Sweden and Australia, that Trump will ban all the Muslims, that hundreds of thousands of troops will descend on states across the country to round up innocent illegal immigrants, that Steve Bannon wants to lead the nation into a clash of civilizations, and that Trump is a Russian spy aided by spymaster Michael Flynn.
None of this is to suggest that Trump doesn’t contribute to stress for many Americans. There’s no question he does. He fibs regularly, says things no president should say, thrives on conflict. But it’s the media’s willingness to chum the waters for the sake of ratings rather than calm them for the sake of reality that’s driving all this stress. After all, nobody would know what Trump’s stress-test-of-the-day would be without the media running around sticking electrodes on viewers.
So, here’s a recommendation: everybody needs to calm down. When Trump does something terrible, then let’s ramp things up. Until then, don’t stress out. Our system of government is durable, its checks and balances are effective, and Trump has shown no signs thus far of running roughshod over that system – and probably wouldn’t have the wherewithal to do so even if he wanted to.
It’s normal to be stressed over a president of an opposing party. Republicans were stressed for eight long years of Obama. But that doesn’t mean you should be so stressed that you have to lie on the therapist’s couch and tell her why you’ve been dreaming about Donald Trump taking you to school naked.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/13688/...gconservative#
