now earlier this year a Reuters poll found that most Americans did not want a want to see a trump Biden rematch this election season on top of that Pew research ran its own poll last summer which showed that 63% of us adults expressed not too much or no confidence at all in the future of our political system so it's clear there is political fatigue I spoke with psychologist Dr Colleen sier about the effects of a constant sense of stress and how to protect your own mental and physical health when
we are feeling stuck helpless hopeless what happens is that our body and brain decide that we're experiencing a threat and they flood our body with stress chemicals with adrenaline with cortisol and that is good and makes sense if we're trying to run away from a bear in the woods or we need to fight an as salent in the dark uh but if that's not happening if there is no specific threat if the threat is ongoing and so the chemicals just stay in there because there is no resolution that is chronic
stress and that is very corrosive to our body and mind and soul it's the root of inflammation and inflammation is the root of all sorts of terrible terrible things so aside from you know meditating or maybe just shutting the TV off or or putting the newspaper away for a minute what what should people do to kind of lower that stress level I think it's easy to feel like little old me what am I supposed to do in the face of all of this but we do have power and we do have agency we do have voice an
d choice and so I think the two questions we can always ask ourselves um and this might sound simple but it's profound really is how am I taking care of myself am I taking care of myself what do I need uh I think we put a lot of stock in other people to take care of us um and some of that is great um but we forget that we too should be taking care of ourselves and the other thing to consider is how am I taking care of others uh how am I taking care of my community how am I being the difference o
r the change that I'd like to see in the world if what we have doesn't work and it's clear that a lot of people think it doesn't work that can be scary and cause us uncertainty but it also opens up this whole big other question about what else might work what is a system that could be different or could be better and what if we spent some time getting excited about that um it leaves a vacuum but we can we can fill it with something better maybe one more piece of advice from Dr sier is to have co
nversations with people who have different views than you she says hearing about other experiences helps us grow but never force yourself to listen to someone who is just being abusive with their words
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