How to feel your feelings after the election
- Allison Gasca-Backman, LCSW
- Nov 7, 2024
- 5 min read
Is it post-election blues? Is it existential dread? Is it grief? It's all valid. Notes from a trauma therapist on how to sit with painful emotions.
Like many of my loved ones, I woke up on Wednesday morning disappointed, but not surprised, at the results of the election. I had wanted a different candidate to win. As I've been sitting with clients this week and allowing space for their grief while holding space for my own, I've come to understand that the pain of this sweeping victory (for some) is less about a specific candidate, and more about accepting the reality that a majority of our country largely excused misogyny, racism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and corporate greed in favor of a certain political or economic agenda. This is devastating to grapple with.

I know that for myself, and for many of my clients, big and intense emotions can feel overwhelming and can lead us to behave impulsively and outside of our values, simply as a way to make those big, loud feelings quieter. So here is my advice, as a trauma therapist, who has done so much of her own work (and is still doing the work with the help of her own very kind and very patient therapist!) to really stay present in what I am feeling.
First, check in with how you're feeling. Nope, not what you're thinking. Not what you're wanting to do. But what you're feeling.
The first thing that I will advise clients is to actually notice how they are feeling. This can be hard for people who spend their lives intellectualizing, as we don't spend a whole lot of time allowing our emotions to be truly present. So, pause for a moment. What are you feeling? You might notice certain sensations in your body, such as places where tension or heaviness are resting, or places where your body feels fluttery or hyperactive. These body sensations can clue us in to certain emotions that often go hand-in-hand with them. (That's another blog post for another day. But in the mean-time, there are plenty of resources about the feelings-sensations connection!)
If this is a new exercise for you, you might benefit from some assistance at even identifying what emotions feel like! Take a look at the Emotion Wheel graphic below, and choose an emotion that feels like it resonates.
Maybe right now, in this historical moment, you are feeling sad or scared or angry, or even numb. Any of those would make sense.
Next, ask yourself what your emotion wants from you. Notice the way that it pushes you to do something.
All of our emotions come with action urges- these are behaviors that our emotions want us to engage in. Maybe sadness wants us to isolate, numb the pain with substances, food, or sleep, or maybe it wants us to wallow in hopelessness. Fear might want us to doom-scroll on our phones, obsess and catastrophize about worst-case scenarios, or seek out reassurance that things will be okay. And maybe anger wants us to yell, break things, complain about all the wrongs of the world, become argumentative, or turn our anger inwards. Even our numbness has action urges: it might want to do everything in its power to stay numb, or it might seek stimulation and excitement by engaging in risky or impulsive behavior.

And let me be clear. None of these behaviors are inherently bad. The goal of this article is not to tell you that your preferred ways of coping are bad and that this know-it-all therapist over here wants you to change them. In fact, our preferred ways of coping have actually been our biggest allies that have kept us safe up until now. It makes sense that our emotions want us to lean into these behaviors because these behaviors feel safe and familiar.
And! (Have you ever noticed how therapists love to use that word?) And, maybe our emotions need something different, even when they want their familiar coping mechanisms.
So feel with me here. What might sadness need? What might fear need? Anger? Numbness?
Think back to childhood. What did you need then?
When we think about what our emotions truly need, it can help to picture our Little Kid Selves. If Little Kid Allison was feeling sad, what did she need? Maybe she needed a hug, someone to tell her that she was not alone, or that it made sense that she was feeling sad. If Little Kid Allison was feeling scared, and all she wanted more than anything in the world was for someone to reassure her that nothing bad would happen, she may have actually needed a safe grownup to tell her, "I can't promise that nothing bad will happen, but I can promise that we're safe here together in this moment, and your fear makes sense."

Do you see the difference? While our emotions might want us to behave in certain, familiar ways, they might actually need us to behave in ways that validate and allow for the emotion to be present.
So, take a moment to jot down some familiar emotions, and make yourself a little table like the one below.
Emotion | Action Urge (want) | Little Kid Self Need |
Sadness | Stay in bed, isolate, numb with food or drugs or screen-time | A hug, comfort in community, a reminder that we are not alone |
Anger | Argue, yell, complain, lash out, break things | Validation that our anger makes sense and that we are allowed to be upset. |
Fear | Doom-scroll, reassurance-seeking, catastrophizing, intellectualizing | A reminder that we are not alone, that our fear makes sense, and that it is okay to feel this way. |
It's interesting that, in doing this exercise, there are some common parallels in what we need, regardless of what emotion we're feeling. Maybe we could all bear the reminder that it's okay to feel what we're feeling, and that we're not alone with our feelings.
The hard and most rewarding part: now we let the feelings in.
In our fast-paced and results-driven world, it is easy to get impatient and say, "Okay, great, I feel my feelings. Now what do I do with them? How do I move on?" My answer, as a therapist, might be frustrating, but here it is: We feel them. We turn towards them. We allow the feelings to be there, rather than squashing them or pushing them away or distracting ourselves out of them. We feel our grief. We feel our anger. We feel our fear. They make sense right now.
Be with your community. Connect with your cultural, spiritual, and ancestral wisdom. Engage in ritual. Stick to your values. Go outside. Normalize that your feelings have a place here. Practice kindness and compassion with yourself, much like how you might treat a little kiddo in your life whom you cherish. Set boundaries around news consumption, or around communicating with people whose beliefs and values do not align with yours. Listen to Taylor Swift or another musician whose lyrics resonate with your pain. Ask for help. Practice self-care. Notice small moments of joy or gratitude.

Humans are feeling creatures, and (there's that "and" again), many of us have not been trained on how to experience our feelings fully. In this painful historical moment, please lean in to how you're feeling, rather than away. If you would like help identifying or sitting with some of these big emotions, please reach out for a free 15-minute phone consultation to determine if therapy with Brown Dog Therapy and Wellness might be right for you.
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