Hello to all and a good season’s greetings. I hope you are all doing well out there. I plan on really having this blog take off in the near future (around 1/20/17) full of advocacy, opinion and general fun. This time it is mostly going silent but I thought that for once I would address a topic that I am fully knowledgeable on, Mental Health. With the election coming there are a multitude of feelings from despair to elation. I wanted to put this out sooner but was myself a victim of this despair and hopelessness. I am here to help with the despair portion but will address the republicans in my audience first thing.
I know a lot of you who voted for Trump or are staunch “Conservatives” are quite happy and hopeful at this time and cannot wait to shout this to the heavens as much as possible. You may think that the opposition are just a bunch of whiny babies or that they just need to suck it up, I mean you made it through President Obama, now they need to get through Trump. I want you to dust off your empathy skills for a moment and remember the time when president Obama took office. I want you to remember the utter despair and panic you felt when he was elected and then again in January when he took office. This is exactly what everyone is going through now. Just like then saying “I had to put up with 8 years of your crap now you have to put up with 8 years of mine” didn’t feel good. This sort of thing didn’t feel good for you then and it doesn’t feel good to us now. If you are a cold hearted vengeance seeker then go right ahead but if you are truly trying to heal rifts the election has cased in your family please try and understand that this just isn’t going to work. Give them space and time to grieve their loss especially during the holiday season being smug and over joyous around family is just not something that goes over well.
The other thing that is causing rifts I have seen in that expectation for everyone to just get on the Trump wagon and support his efforts to “Make America Great Again”. Perhaps you are thinking that you are being benevolent and kind extending the olive branch and saying “let’s let bygones be bygones”. Of course when you are in turned slapped in the face, cursed out or just outright ignored it just plain hurts. You can’t see why anyone would hate this wonderful change that is going to come to America and don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to be a part of it. Normally you may just write people off as just stupid or evil but these people are different. You work with them, eat dinner with them you are close normally in all other ways. You can’t just put on blinders and say that they are the enemy that needs to be put in their place. Again Empathy is required. Over the last 8 years many of your viewed President Obama as a devil, called him the antichrist a foreigner and many other things. You fought tooth and nail against him knowing in your heart of heart that he was destroying America. Now let’s look at your Democratic friends and relatives and see that they pretty much have the same opinion. They know in their heart of hearts that his goals are related to the destruction of all that they hold dear and plan to fight tooth and nail against it. Simply expecting them to jump on board the “Trump Train” is in simple condescending and will easily provoke anger. The best thing to do is to let the person vent their anger, validate that their feelings are real and be willing to silently listen if need be. Note that this election was to divisive for there to be any short term healing. If things turn out the way you hope for America then they will come around.
Empathy is a hard skill to learn but is very much a part of life we must learn in order to keep up with relatives and friends that have different political opinions. Remember what brings you together, for friends its hobbies and like interests for relatives it is possibly just respect and family. These are things to dwell on during this season of togetherness and cheer.
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