Post-election stress syndrome: Author shares steps to overcome divisive election cycle

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The noise leading up to Election Day and the back and forth since then is a stress magnifier, especially if you tend to get pulled in to reports on the news and online.

“There’s a way that we can rein all this in,” said Dr. Lynda Ulrich. “It’s more simple than most of us would imagine.”

Ulrich is a dentist, the author of Amazon bestseller “Happiness is an Option: Thriving and Surviving in the Era of the Internet" and creator of good-news webpage Ever Widening Circles.

Her advice about breaking the grip of post-election stress syndrome deals with focusing on some positives.

She said that happens after you acknowledge those political ads are like the rest of marketing.

“And if we look at that thing that used to get our attention because it triggers that anger, fear or scarcity, and we go, ‘Do we need more of this?’ Our answer will be ‘no’ about 80% of the time," Ulrich said.

Ulrich said our click is a vote.

“We are truly creating our own reality. The internet is designed that way now. So we can bend the arc of the internet in the direction of positivity, like, starting immediately once you know this game is being played with your emotions,” she said. “And then it doesn’t really matter which side of the political equation you’re on. None of us want to have our worldview ruined by this overwhelming impact coming in from our lives online.”

Ulrich told News4Jax that both sides of the election outcome are struggling with fear -- some feared the outcome if their candidate lost, now others fear what will happen because their candidate won.

“It’s just fear all the way around. We need to exit,” she said.

Ulrich explained her four shifts needed to end the election stress for you:

1. “The first shift we’ve got to do is remember to pause -- pause before we click on anything because someone is counting every click we make.”
2. “[The second shift is] ignore more. Turns out, we can ignore the chaos building and noise right into obscurity.”
3. “The third shift is seek signs of goodness and progress. So, for now, the internet won’t bring it to us. It won’t bring us our way because it’s not built that way. But if we do the first two shifts, the pause and ignore more, the algorithms will bring us goodness and progress. They just have to allow that to rise to the top.”
4. "And the fourth shift is to share signs of goodness and progress.”