Are You Suffering From Election Anxiety?

• Avoid other people’s negativity. Have you noticed that spending time with certain individuals makes your anxiety worse? This can be your uncle Bob, who exudes anger and resentment, whenever he goes on one of his passionate rants about the state of the nation. Or your jittery friend Mary, who predicts that the sky will surely fall, if her candidate should lose. Scientists found evidence that emotions can spread like a virus amongst individuals. (Behav Brain Res. 2010 Mar 17;208(1):282-5. Together they stand: A life-threatening event reduces individual behavioral variability in groups of voles. Izhar R1, Eilam D. Business Journal October 27, 2015Well-Being Enhances Benefits of Employee Engagement, Dan Witters and Sangeeta Agrawal). One of the explanations on why fear and anxiety can ripple through a group is, that a scared person releases pheromones, which others can subconsciously detect. This olfactory signal induces a protective fear and anxiety response, which can then stimulates the further release of ‘fear chemicals’ on their skins and round and round it goes. (Mujica-Parodi LR, Strey HH, Frederick B, Savoy R, Cox D, Botanov Y, et al. (2009) Chemosensory Cues to Conspecific Emotional Stress Activate Amygdala in Humans). Thus, even though it may appear reassuring to huddle up with those, who are on pins and needles as you are, limiting your interactions with people that are run by their negative emotions, can help you to stay more grounded and centered.