Most Therapy Sessions Are Now Just an Excuse to Worry about Donald Trump
It’s next to impossible to navigate social media and the physical world without some reference, be it meme, scathing news article or just general wail of discontent about Donald Trump. Even if you are among those (like me) who decided to clear their feeds of individuals who aligned themselves or tolerated the toxicity of the Republican front-runner’s ideas and agenda if he were, dare we say, elected president, Trump continues to pop up on our personal radar like an unrelenting zit on America’s profile. And while we’ve long since passed the time when Trump served as something like comic relief to the presidential elections, it seems that nothing about the Trump campaign is a laughing matter anymore: the Washington Post reports that the political rise of Trump not only makes 69 percent of Americans anxious but therapists have noticed the appearance of wht they call “Trump anxiety.”
Psychologists Alison Howard and Judith Schweiger Levy told the Post that Trump-references have become a huge part of their patients’ therapy sessions, as patients attempt to rationalize how family members could possibly pledge their support for the candidate.
“[One woman] was so upset and worried that she could have a sister — someone so close to her — who would have zero problem with Trump,” Levy said. “Another patient — also a woman — all she could talk about was Trump and how he’s crazy and frightening.”
Levy said that “Trump anxiety, which he claims affects 7 out of 10 of his clients, stems from Trump’s apparent lack of having no self-doubt of his own.
“Part of the reason he makes people so anxious is that he has no anxiety himself,” she goes on to say. “It’s frightening. I’m starting to feel anxious just talking about him.”
“He has stirred people up,” Howard told the Post. “We’ve been told our whole lives not to say bad things about people, to not be bullies, to not ostracize people based on their skin color. We have these social mores, and he breaks all of them and he’s successful. And people are wondering how he gets away with it.”