I just had a double-whammy this week. I attended a community play of George Orwell’s 1984 (where an authority tries to convince a captive that the four fingers he’s holding out represent five fingers), and watched the movie The Pianist directed by Roman Polanski (where Oscar-winner Adrian Brody frantically escapes one Nazi after another in WWII Warsaw during the Holocaust). To balance it out a little, I watched some episodes of Portlandia, but basically this stuff was on top of the overall specter that has been haunting our days and our nights ever since January 20: the absolutely insane goings-on of President Trump and his demonic sidekick Elon Musk (see my blog post on some of the evil things he’s done in only a few weeks in office).
There’s been a disorder given for this kind of stress: Trump Derangement Syndrome, but I don’t like it because Trump seems to think it’s kind of a neat thing (sort of like ”Hey, they named a disorder after me!”). I prefer to call it something else, namely, the normal reaction of human beings to the vicious and untrammeled craziness coming out of the executive office of the U.S. government that is seeking to turn this country into a nation of zombies, cretins, and soulless idiots. Anxiety, depression, and stress in this respect are simply normal human reactions to awful things happening in the U.S. It reminds me of what the Jungian analyst James Hillman once said about this dynamic:
”Sometimes I think there’s an underlying depression in our culture. . . .It makes me think that if you’re not depressed, you’re abnormal [emphasis added] because the soul knows about the trees that are destroyed, the buildings that are destroyed, the ugliness that is spreading, the chaos of the culture in many ways . . . and somehow if you’re not in mourning for what’s going on in the world, you’re cut off from the soul of the world. So in that sense I would think an underlying depression is a kind of adaptation to the reality of the world.”
Given that this is the case, the pragmatic thing to do is to not let it get your goat, not let it drag you down, and not let it besmear your journey through life. A number of media outlets have reported on the higher levels of stress resulting from both the 2016 and 2024 elections, along with tips for coping with Trumpism in general. Along those lines, I’ve got a book coming out July 29th, 2025 that’s an expanded edition of my The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Neurodivergent Brain, where I talk about the importance of enhancing one’s mental and physical health through a process I call ”positive niche construction.” This is what birds and bees do. They build nests and hives to ensure their survival. We need to do the same. There are a number of tools for building a positive nest for ourselves including (and I’ve given a few suggestions for coping with Trumpism in parentheses):
- Assistive Technologies (e.g. using the Headspace, Calm, or Insight Timer apps to teach mindfulness meditation);
- Environmental Modifications (e.g. watching/reading less political news);
- Human Resource Networks (affiliating with politically active groups like Indivisible, The Lincoln Project (for Republicans against Trump), and the 50501 Movement);
- Strength-Based Strategies (doing things that give you pleasure in life; for me that means music, movies, and literature, but for you it might mean crossword puzzles, pickleball, and clubbing);
- Inner Resources (visualizing positive scenarios like a tropical vacation, a terrific party, or a Democratic administration in 2029).
Actually, the truth is that a lot of us have it pretty easy compared to people out there who are really suffering from what is going on. I mean: undocumented immigrant families who may be visited by an ICE official in the middle of the night and deported, government employees who have lost or will soon lose their jobs, gender diverse kids who will be denied access to gender affirming care, kids who will die of communicable illnesses because of vaccine hesitancy, nations who will not receive aid for malnutrition, AIDS, and other life-threatening conditions, families in environmentally toxic areas who will get cancer and die because of the weakening of EPA policies, people in the Ukraine who will see their country overrun by Russian troops because of Trump’s alliance with Putin. I could go on. And it’s going to get ugly out there. But we’ve got to take care of ourselves and our own, because without our health, we have nothing. So do something nice today for yourself, for your family, for your friends. Don’t let Trump rule your life. Living well is the best revenge.
