Election Stress

We need a plan to cope with the election. It's going to be stressful, probably no matter what happens.

Questions for you to reflect on in the days leading up to and on election day:

On the news:

-how does reading/watching the news impact your thoughts, emotions and body?

-which news consumption platforms create the most and least stress? (TV news, newspapers, websites)

-which news outlets create the most and least stress? (CNN, NBC, Fox, NYTimes, local news outlets, etc.)

-how much time is too much time interacting with the news? how do you know when you've hit your limit? (body reaction, intense emotion, etc)

-how might you interact with the news for the next week in a way that keeps you informed but doesn't suck you into a doom spiral? It's going to be stressful as a baseline, so how you can interact in a way that cares for yourself within that stress?

On polls:

-if you read poll data, how does that impact your thoughts, emotions and body?

-what stories do you tell yourself after looking at polls?

-is that helping? hurting? how does looking at this data serve you?

On social media:

-what is your relationship with social media relating to politics?

-leading up to the election, how might you use social media to encourage people to turn out and vote?

-how do you know when you've been on social media too much? When this happens, how can you disengage and what else can you spend time doing?

On election day:

-how do you want to spend election day/night?

-Do you want to watch the vote counts come in live on TV? Or maybe do something else and check in with results periodically?

-We may not know the official results on election night. What time will you go to bed? What will help you get to sleep?

-Who can you be with, virtually or in person, for support the day of and days after?