Coping with Inauguration Dread: Facing Emotional Avoidance with Compassion

I’m normally a bit of a political news junkie. It’s hard to avoid it when you grow up in DC, and even harder as an adult when the lives of so many of the people I care about intersect with the world of politics and government every day. But since the election, I’ve been doing a fair amount of ostriching. Now that it’s January and the inauguration is mere weeks away, it’s getting harder and harder to avoid.

And as much as I want to pretend it all away, I know that by avoiding thinking about the administration change, I’m engaging in emotional avoidance which can have a negative impact on mental health. As a therapist specializing in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Trauma Therapy, I know a few things about just how corrosive emotional avoidance can be. In encouraging you to face your inauguration dread and tackle emotional avoidance, it’s important to remember the goal is not to feel “good” or “better” about what’s coming. It’s to help you cope more effectively.

To that end, you’ve got to feel your feelings… even the hard ones.  When we engage in emotional avoidance, we attempt to deny, suppress, or distract ourselves from our emotions. The reality is, that trying not to feel a feeling or think a thought doesn’t work. Don’t believe me? Do your best right now to not think about pink elephants, whatever you do… don’t think about the elephants. Did it work? Connecting with the feelings of fear, grief, anger, and outrage that you have been avoiding is challenging but getting in touch with your actual emotional experience is necessary to cope effectively.

Does this mean you need to re-engage with the news cycle or tune in to the inauguration? Heck no! What it means is to connect with your feelings with compassion and curiosity so you can make informed, proactive choices about how to best take care of your emotional needs. For example, when you feel into a feeling of despair and meet it with openness and compassion, do you find yourself needing community, are you driven towards action, do you need quiet and solitude? We are facing a long road ahead so practicing this regularly will be important.

As I engage in my own practice of tuning in, and feeling the dread and despair that has felt so untouchable, I’m feeling clearer about a need to be braver, to find and create daily humor and joy, to be present, and to stay engaged in the parts of my life I have control over. The despair is there and it's heavy but being able to see it and care of it feels a lot more manageable than pretending it’s not there. I’ll probably continue to limit my news consumption and stick to reading fiction and watching comedies but with more intention and clarity around why. We can’t pretend away what is coming but we can meet it with clarity and bravery around our needs. Or in the words of Jon Kabat Zinn, “We can't stop the waves but we can learn to surf.”