Politics and Mental Health: Your 2025 Guide On Staying Emotionally Strong in a Nation Divided
- Terri Kern
- Jun 7
- 7 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
How to Manage Political Stress and Protect Your Mental Health: Better By Choice!
This ain’t our grandparents’ America.
The political climate today is a pressure cooker of outrage, misinformation, and emotional burnout. It’s no wonder that so many people feel overwhelmed, anxious, and unsure of how to move forward. If you’re tired of the constant stress and division but don’t want to give up completely, you’re not alone.
As of this writing is it overwhelmingly the most unsettling topic for the hundreds of clients I have seen over the last twelve months.
I turned sixty in December 2024, and I never imagined I’d be fighting to hold this country together. Becoming an Ohio soldier in Civil War 2.0 definitely wasn’t on my 4th quarter Bingo card—but here we are. American patriotism runs deep in my family.
I come from a long line of veterans—Union Officers, WWII soldiers, and U.S. Navy Reserves—who served this country, not for any political party, but for the principles of democracy and unity.
GIVING UP ON DEMOCRACY BY STANDING BY SILENT IS NOT AN OPTION
BEST GRANDPARENTS EVER! My maternal grandparents, Marion and Bill Nichols. Bill was drafted during World War II and served as Private First Class in the United States Army. He was shot twice in Germany and taken to France. My mother was home when that telegram was delivered and had a very vivid memory of it.
Back in 1978, I studied American Government at Jefferson Junior High School in Toledo, Ohio. Mrs. Perkins and Mr. Folger assigned us to manage a presidential campaign for our class project.
I got Andrew Jackson—and what a monster he was. I can still picture it: sitting at the circular study table in my brother’s bedroom, surrounded by The World Book Encyclopedias, stacks of National Geographics, and shelves full of history books.
My beloved and amazing parents, Ernie and Bunny, made sure we were well-read, well-informed, and never afraid to challenge authority.
That’s why I’m saying this now: our elected officials on both sides have failed us.
They’ve intentionally divided us, keeping us angry and distracted while they profit off our division. Most Americans are stuck in the loop of “This shouldn’t be happening!” waiting for someone to save us. But the hard truth is that no one is coming to save us. We are completely on our own.
If we want to reclaim our democracy, we have to face reality—we are living through a very threatening time. Bot farms keep us arguing with one another and giving the impression that we all hate each other. It's a psychological worm that's very effective in keeping us angry.
SO, WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT POLITICS AND MENTAL HEALTH?
We all have more control than we think! We can calm down, regulate our emotions, think clearly, and take meaningful, impactful action that actually makes a difference.
The HOW ARE YOU? Self Assessment will guide you through a series of questions that will help you take a pause and clarify where you feel strong and point to what doesn't feel right.
Why This Politics and Mental Health Guide Matters in 2025
I first learned how government worked in 1978, during a civics project at Jefferson Junior High School in Toledo, Ohio.
I was assigned to run Andrew Jackson’s presidential campaign—what a crash course in complexity, contradiction, and moral clarity. My parents, Ernie and Bunny, raised us to be well-informed, to respectfully challenge authority, and to never blindly follow the crowd. They filled our home with World Book Encyclopedias, National Geographics, and shelves of history books. Back then, political education was about understanding systems.
Today, it’s about emotional survival.
That’s why this guide exists. Because now, politics is no longer just about policy—it's personal. It’s emotional. And for many, it’s a constant source of stress, anxiety, and burnout.
Mainstream media and social media are not good for our mental health
In 2025, political stress has become a mental health issue. Both parties have contributed to a toxic climate of division and distrust. Our elected officials have turned outrage into a business model, and Americans are paying the price with their emotional well-being.
Bot farms flood our feeds with divisive content, leaving us feeling like we hate each other—even when we don’t. It’s psychological warfare, and it’s working.
What are bot farms: A bot farm is a coordinated network of automated online accounts—often controlled by a single entity—that is designed to manipulate public discourse by spreading misinformation, amplifying propaganda, or simulating fake engagement.
📚 Key Peer-Reviewed Studies on Bot Farms and Their Threat to Our Mental Health +
The spread of low-credibility content by social bots
Shao C, Ciampaglia GL, Varol O, Yang KC, Flammini A, Menczer F. The spread of low-credibility content by social bots. Nat Commun. 2018 Nov 20;9(1):4787. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-06930-7. PMID: 30459415; PMCID: PMC6246561.
The researchers found that social bots played a disproportionate role in amplifying low-credibility content, particularly in the early stages of dissemination, thereby manipulating public opinion.
Influence on political discourse and polarization
Ricciardone, S.M. Botaganda: examining how bots shape political discourse on twitter through the lens of interaction alignment. Int J Digit Humanities 6, 263–290 (2024).
The study happened after the SNC-Lavalin affair, a major Canadian political scandal involving then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and found bots influenced emotionally charged language and reinforced political polarization online.
Sleeper Social Bots: a new generation of AI disinformation bots are already a political threat
A recent preprint on arXiv discusses the advent of "sleeper social bots," a new generation of AI-powered bots that can mimic human behavior more convincingly.
These bots pose significant challenges for detection and are expected to play a substantial role in spreading disinformation during upcoming elections.
Computational Propaganda and Coordinated Campaigns
The Oxford Internet Institute, part of the University of Oxford, researches how online behavior shapes our social, economic, and political lives.
Since 2012, a team of social and information scientists has been studying the impact of political bots on social media, particularly during international crises, where these bots are used to manipulate conversations and support governments in trouble.
Measuring the Interference Effect of Bots in Disseminating Opposing Viewpoints Related to COVID-19 on Twitter Using Epidemiological Modeling
This study looked at how bots on Twitter (now called X) helped spread both real and false information about COVID-19—especially on political topics like the “Trump vaccine” or “Biden virus.”
Researchers treated the spread of information like the spread of a virus (using models similar to how we track disease outbreaks). They found that bots don't just share content—they influence the way real people talk online.
The bots made it more likely that emotional, divisive language would be used by humans. This shapes how we think, what we believe, and even how we feel about each other.
These studies collectively highlight the multifaceted ways in which bot farms are eroding democratic institutions by spreading misinformation, amplifying divisive content, and manipulating public discourse.
🚨 Why Politics and Mental Health is Important
7 out of 10 conversations I have with clients include a report of "doomscrolling," or the act of spending a ridiculous amount of time online.
The conversations describe doom scrolling as:
A compulsive behavior of continuously scrolling through negative news or social media
A habit that negatively impacts mental health and sleep
Something people do when procrastinating or avoiding tasks
An activity that can increase anxiety, especially around political content
A behavior that people are actively trying to reduce or stop
Bots make it feel like everyone is arguing when they’re not.
They trick us into believing something is popular or true when it isn’t.
This kind of bot activity can increase anxiety, spread misinformation, and drive political division—which is harmful to democracy and mental health.
And because bots look like real people, it's hard to spot them without special tools.
If you’re exhausted, emotionally drained, or feeling helpless about the future of the country, you are not alone.
And no one is coming to save us. That’s the hard truth.
But there is something we can do.
You have the power to help yourself. We can all strive to be BETTER BY CHOICE!
💡 This guide offers a step-by-step plan to:
✅ Understand how political stress hijacks your nervous system: Learn how chronic outrage, helplessness, and fear keep you locked in survival mode — and what it’s doing to your mental clarity, relationships, and emotional bandwidth.
✅ Break the doomscrolling cycle: You’ll learn practical strategies to set boundaries with your digital environment so you stop feeding the stress machine and start reclaiming your attention.
✅ Regulate before you react: Before you post, spiral, or shut down, you’ll have tools to ground yourself emotionally — because calm is not complacency. It’s power.
✅ Reconnect with your values: When the world feels chaotic, your values are your compass. We’ll help you name them, align with them, and use them to take intentional action — not reactive panic.
✅ Take meaningful, sustainable action: You don’t have to organize a protest (unless you want to). Sometimes the most radical move is taking care of your own mind so you can show up for your family, community, and causes from a place of strength.
🧭 You Are Not Helpless — But You May Be Hijacked
When stress is high, the survival brain kicks in. It gets loud. It makes us feel like all we can do is freeze, scroll, panic, or rage. That’s not your fault — it’s your biology. But there are tools to help you override that loop.
You can choose to respond instead of react. You can build emotional resilience — even in the middle of uncertainty. You can stay informed without being consumed.
And you can absolutely protect your mental health without checking out of your civic responsibility.
🔑 Better By Choice Means Just That
You don’t have to “be okay” with what’s happening politically.But you can choose to be regulated, grounded, and intentional in how you show up.
This guide is here to remind you of your agency — and give you the tools to take it back.
Political scholars say calm is the enemy of action. You can make calm the fuel for it.
Before we can change how we respond, we need to understand what’s happening inside us when the chaos hits.
✅ Coming Up:
You’ll learn how chronic political stress activates survival-mode thinking — hijacking your nervous system and leaving you stuck in anxiety, reactivity, or emotional shutdown.
We’ll walk through:
What happens in your brain and body during political stress
Why outrage feels addictive (but burns you out)
The key to emotional regulation — and why it’s your superpower
This isn’t just about calming down — it’s about taking your power back.
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