How is your mental health, since Trump?
 

This article, Why therapists are having such a hard time talking about Trump, suggests the new President is the single-most talked about issue in therapy since 9/11. That's right, folks, Trump is as bad, from a mental health perspective, as literally a TERRORIST ATTACK that kills thousands of people.

It's not political. It is NOT POLITICAL.

We're talking about an unstable INDIVIDUAL that we're all forced to deal with. It's mentally and emotionally taxing.

What is the damage? Consider this:

THESE ARE NOT POLITICAL ISSUES. These are human, mental health and stability issues.



It is true, all politicians lie, all politicians are narcissistic.

This is different. All politicians are not like Trump.

Remember how he campaigned on not being a politician, doing everything differently, and shaking things up? He is not like other politicians, BY DEFINITION. This is different. This is not normal. If you don't see it, you're ignoring it.

How is your mental health, since Trump? ( POLL )
 

Moderators, could you please add this poll to the thread by the same name?

Thank you in advance, if you get a chance to do this for me.

The boogieman under the bed was easier to dispel when all your friends and neighbors didn't feel the same. Instead of one on one, group therapy is in order, or mass hypnosis.

My mental health, at the moment is at a very low point but for reasons that have little to do directly with trump, although possibly indirectly.

However, it is hard to assign to trump's election either correlation or causation the my decline in mental health considering all the other factors that have been eroding it for the past few years. I can say with certainty that his election definitely hasn't improved my mental health, and I'm willing to bet his policies and other crazy ass behavior will, in the long run, further diminish it.

It is also likely that it has negatively affected it in ways that I don't overtly notice. The tricky thing with mental health, specifically depression, is that it can come on so slowly that you don't really notice it until it is already too late. Analogous to 'bonking' or 'hitting the wall'; by the time you are too hungry or too thirsty it is already too late.

So the depression creeps up and the new reality is that everything is bleak and hopeless, always has been and always will be. There is no future nor joy. There is an emotional blackout.

Now throw trump into the mix and intellectually, you know he isn't ameliorating any of the despair, but it's just one more straw on the pile. For me, at least.

If I was a happy go lucky Muslim immigrant with an overstayed visa then it would be more like dropping an entire hayrick on my back.

It doesn't appear to be possible to move a poll to a different thread. we can close the earlier thread and move xoB's response to this one. I think

Oh wait. Merge. There ya go

Cool, thank you.

I feel a little worse because I'm concerned, not for me as I don't think he'll affect me much, but for people I know and the nation.

I'm tickled pink that we see more of Ivanka and nothing of Chelsea.

Let's keep our priorities straight.

Tapatalk doesn't like polls, so I'll answer by short essay.

I find that I worry about stuff in the middle of the night more than I used to. My sleep is suffering. Trump coincides with a new COO at work who is tinkering with staffing and I am left feeling less secure than I used to. Both dudes are scorching my groove and I have no control over what they do.

So far, things are OK for me, but the future is not clear.

Yesss. I voted for Trump. Now I wonder.....does he have dementia? He says the craziest shit on tv. Everytime he has a conference someone goes behind him and explains what he supposedly said. Ever see his youngest son? The one with the genius IQ? He stands just behind his father on the right. He has a look on his face like this guy.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...208722cb68.jpg Little rat baby probably be our president in a few years.

tarheel

I work with the pre-existing condition crowd. If the GOP mishandles ACA and medicaid, they lose their healthcare and services. So yeah put me down for a negative 3. If my job goes away, I can always do something else but my clients are pretty tied to their situations.

griff it's not political

I try to separate the show from the outcome. I know twitter boy hits some folks pretty hard but it is a show. The actual policies concern me. I have an office-mate who can't handle the show so I do get it and get pulled into her despair sometimes but I'm about the mantra, "It's a show."

i feel like you have missed the original post

probably. My defense is to not have a relationship with Trump, so maybe...

The Question posed was "How is your mental health, since Trump?"
The outcomes of his policies and actions are certainly going to affect people's mental health as much or more than his blustering, tweeting, image as Potus.
If he were still a real estate dude, nobody would care except those dealing with him, so it is political despite what Flint and you claim.

I don't understand these responses to Griffs posts.

I think UT is quite convinced it is political; and is in fact nothing but political, so he is facetiously declaring "but it isn't political!" since Flint insisted it wasn't in the original post.

What isn't political? I thought we were talking about our mental health? What is this "it" which isn't political?

Hatred of Trump.

Detractors say (or at least strongly imply) that they'd hate him for his outrageous and unprecedented moves even if he were a liberal. UT says (or at least strongly implies) that they only hate him because he's not a liberal, and they would be showing the exact same level of outrage if Ted Cruz had been elected.

Personally, I think the number of Republicans speaking out against him proves that to be untrue. No prominent liberals ever condemned Obama as unfit. About the only thing you could claim is that it's still political, it's just "politicians vs. outsiders" this time instead of "left vs. right."

I don't really know, I can only guess. I'm just going by the few people that I know who are losing their shit. If it was a Democratic outsider (President Oprah!) the righty people would certainly be losing their shit.

In the context of the OP, "it" is Trump's outlandish behavior. While it's psychological effect may have been benign in the entertainment industry and just epidemic in business, it's being put forward as an etiology for a psychiatric pandemic distinct from that caused by his political fallout. It's a slippery slope as there will be much overlap.

One sees that kind of overlap in trying to distinguish leadership from management. Many don't recognize the difference and use the terms interchangeably even though leadership has been recognized as having characteristics distinct from management since Genghis Khan wrote on the subject during his campaigns of the 13th century.

Much as the military community will more readily recognize the difference between leadership and management, so too will the mental health community recognize the difference between the affects of Trump's personality and those of his actions.

Oversimplified, management is about the bottom line, leadership is about how you get there. One can loosely associate Trump's personality with his leadership and his actions with his management. His actions will have the greater impact, that's the bottom line (see what I did there). That doesn't mean his personality can't have its own, distinct impact and that it's magnitude can't come close in some situations.

Donald Trump makes reruns of "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" even more entertaining. Take that President Spiro Agnew.

Thanks. I'm with ya now.

The reason my mental health has suffered severely over the last few months since the election isn't Trump himself. It's the lasting effects his actions could have on government functions very important to the quality and survivability of my own life. I saw ACA and either Medicaid or Medicare mentioned in an earlier post, and a lot of my own concerns spring from the area of the future of health care for the unemployable.

The GOP's treatment of the Affordable Care Act has already rendered 70,000 people in my home state uninsured...many of them small children...in a state with a population of barely a million. Last time I checked on planned changes for Medicaid (not Medicare; I'm not on Medicare for anything) in 2007, a freakin' medical journal was warning its subscribers that the "Plan A" at the time was:

Turn Medicare into a voucher program, where the client is given a voucher for whatever cash value is deemed appropriate to their medical care, and the patient must find a doctor or health plan that will accept it.

Turn Medicaid into a coupon program, where the client is given a non-cash-redeemable coupon and must find an insurance carrier that will accept it and issue a policy. Medicaid isn't a fully federal program; they match each state's contribution or something like that. Plan A includes basing the federal contribution on the state's tax base (so with our measly 1 million, we're pretty screwed as a state on that one) and adding fixed caps to how much will be matched for each state. The plan also included billing patients not just for copays for every visit and prescription but requiring Medicaid participants to pay premiums on their health care AND prescription policies. It also included time limitations on Medicaid eligibility that would be dependent on the insured's ability to churn out job applications not just until they got a job but until they got a job that would lead to employer-paid insurance!

I did that job-mill crap for Food Stamps back when they still came as books of paper coupons. 10 apps and 2 interviews a week were required. I kept having to re-apply for Food Stamps several times a year; any job would do so I'd end up telemarketing again--but I have proven unable to sell anyone anything over the phone and never met my quotas so I'd get fired and the whole mess started over.

After I read that and described my responses and concerns to my therapist...









...She forbade me to read up on politics and put me on a diet of Valium and chocolate for a couple of weeks until I could get my brain settled down. Now, any time I start fussing about the future of my medical insurance, I wash down a Valium with something chocolate and have a better day. I do not have a good head for politics, which is one reason I'm grateful I never tried to get a long-term office job.

Also, I find the timing VERY suspicious on a recent occurrence. After 9 years on "permanent" disability, about 2 weeks ago I suddenly get a letter from Social Security demanding that I prove I'm still disabled. I'm not the only one, either--people all over the area I live in are suddenly getting these. I spoke last week with a fellow whose wife had just gotten the same letter, in her case requiring her to prove that after 14 years she is, in fact, still blind. Lucky for me, I already had the necessary appointments in place and the timing will just barely squeak by if I Priority mail the letter back. My therapist has already signed off with a very professionally-worded "Aaaaahahahahahaa NO." I see my MD in 2 days and my Valium prescriber the very day I have to send the letter & proof back, and there is little doubt both will concur with the therapist.

I'm still therapeutically banned from following politics, tho.

#1- Don't speculate on the future, if something good happens you'll be pleasantly surprised, if something bad happens you'll just be suffering in advance as well as after.
#2- Of course if you think something bad might happen and you can do something to be prepared, like car insurance, fine.
#3- But if you can't prepare and have to roll with the punches, see #1

You can't please all the people all the time.

That's why I say "Fuck 'em and feed 'em fishheads.".

Mi vida loca!
 

We have indeed been handed a plate of fish heads. However, if one is starving, a plate of fish heads presents any number of delicious culinary opportunities. I look into my boiling kettle of fish heads, toil, and trouble and I see – The Game of Thrones!

Prince Joffrey now runs the country and while winter is NOT coming, global warming has arrived and biologists inform us that the planet is undergoing its 6th Great Extinction Event ever recorded in the fossil history of life on this planet. Many species will become about as common as Daenery’s dragons – of which I believe there were three in the entire world. A Great Wall is to be built on our southern borders, but there will be no commander with the integrity of Jon Snow to take control of it. Besides, Jon Snow was killed by his traitorous friends. So much for that thought. Joffrey has turned potential allies in Latin America and the Middle East into enemies. Those who were already our enemies have used the waves of hatred now emanating from our nation as a warning to become even more implacably set against us. They sell their opium poppies and collect ever more money from their sympathizers to increase there arsenals of weaponry and become bloated with blood lust. The Taliban is not exactly snoozing in the high mountain passes of Afghanistan as Joffrey raids the royal treasury to increase the size and might of our military in order to destroy our enemies – the illegal aliens, the refugees from famine and war, those who do not belong to a faith with the first letter “C.”

Thus, Joffrey hones his military skills and tactics (such as they are) here at home before making yet one more attempt to assault Afghanistan’s bitter mountains. We are a nation of refugees and illegal’s. Our ancestors were labeled as criminals by their countries of birth in the Old World. Perhaps they were forced out because of their religious beliefs. Perhaps they were caught in a round-up of outlaws in Ireland or Scotland for daring to strike back at the iron rule of the British Crown. As Pogo so famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Already, in today’s news, we see that hate crimes against members of the Jewish faith have escalated. Their cemeteries are desecrated, bomb threats are sent to their community centers and schools. And of course there’s the infamous and unconstitutional travel ban against the people of the seven nations of evil (Muslims). Let’s not forget either about the “Dreamers” who now face deportation or else go underground. The Statue of Liberty is a lying bitch who should be deported herself. Let the Frogs have her back. She’s no longer wanted here.

Melisandre holds the leaders of the Kingdom under her spell. Science has been turned up-side down and made a matter of faith, rather than fact. We do not “believe” in global warming. The 97% of all reputable scientists and scientific organizations that continue to sound the alarm about climate change are dismissed as paid off liars and scoundrels who have formed an evil conspiracy against the big petroleum corporations. My heart bleeds for Exxon and all the rest. Truly, it does. Scientists now communicate with one another in secret – no different than Galileo under the heel of the Inquisition. Yes, Prince Joffrey, the sun does indeed orbit around the earth. Ah, let us behead those heretics, anyhow. They were so boring. No more EPA, no more National Parks – those will be parceled out and given to Joffrey’s henchmen in the West.

And to the East – to the East we have King Putin who is busily rebuilding his Soviet Kingdom with the help of Joffrey behind the scenes. The stage has been set for the apocalypse as the rabble applauds and the curtain begins to rise for the next exciting act. Me, I have dibs on the role of Aerya. I’ll walk thru the riots with my wheelbarrow of fish heads and throw them at the Pussy Grabber.

Meh ... everyone worried about things that haven't and probably won't happen.
Live your life and remember - He was a Democrat for the vast majority of his life.

He was never a democrat, he registered Democrat, and contributed to Democrats, because the Democrats ran NYC. He was buying influence and favor. He's never been particularly political beyond helping his business.
But I agree, don't get all in a lather over what he might do, just keep an eye on him and bitch when he does something that rattles your cage.

Let's find out, shall we? :D Welcome to politics Oprah!! Is she or isn't she?? (apparently she was all hinty at the Golden Globes yesterday)

Let's assume we can find some articles demonstrating the reaction you predicted is happening --but what was is exactly you predicted and what did it mean?

I never untangled all the hypothetical meta-references you and Clodfobble were bantering back and forth.

If who says what about Oprah it means what, or proves what?* **

*about Trump (?)
**about Lefties / Righties (?)

Wull,