On Collective Grief: Caring for Our Emotions in the Wake of the U.S. Election

As a therapist and as a friend, I’ve heard from many folks in the past days who are in a lot of pain. Emotions are running the gamut from numbness, sadness, anger, fear, disillusionment, hopelessness, helplessness, disappointment, despair, and apathy – just to name a few. If you are satisfied with the election results, you don’t really need extra support right now, so at the moment I am turning towards those who do need the support - those who feel angry, wounded, weary, hopeless, and heartbroken.

In the broad spectrum of painful emotions many are feeling in the wake of the 2024 election, I believe a uniting theme is collective grief. First, what is grief? By one definition, grief is the anguish experienced after significant loss. We can grieve the loss of a person, a relationship, a community, a job, or an identity, whether than be a personal or a shared identity. Grief is a natural response to all kinds of loss - changing relationships, losing a job, moving to a new city, experiencing decreased physical or mental functioning, confronting our own mortality, or becoming disillusioned about the state of the world. We can also grieve the loss of a vision or expectation for the future.

Collective grief can impact neighborhoods, communities, and nations.

Photo credit: p.m. graham

What is Collective Grief?

Collective grief is a term used to describe the reaction of a group of people who undergo a significant loss or extreme change together. This can include experiencing any tragedy that affects a community or nation. We can feel this type of grief following a natural disaster, an act of mass violence, a hate crime, a pandemic, an act of war, or any event that threatens the safety and stability of our community. If you’re paying attention to world events, you know that long before this election, there were groups of people in this country and around the world already living in collective grief.

I want to acknowledge that in our shared grief, there are communities such as LGBTQ+ folx, people of color, immigrants, and women who are disproportionately suffering.  It helps me to remember that “we are all in the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat.” There is privilege that will allow many to continue living in relative ease despite election results. We can all grieve, and yet there are individuals who are living in greater fear for their physical and emotional safety in these times.

I also want to acknowledge that there is room for a whole host of emotions in our shared experience, and you are entitled to your own emotions and the way you choose to label them. Having said that, I believe that in our collective suffering we often forget to name grief. Part of processing our collective grief is naming and acknowledging it.

We are all in the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat.

Photo credit: p.m. graham

Naming and Acknowledging Emotions

Those who research emotions are teaching us the importance of noticing and accurately naming our emotions in order to allow for more effective emotional processing. First, we can’t process what we don’t notice, so the act of noticing is vital. Second, when we notice and name our emotions, it activates the pre-frontal cortex or “thinking brain,” where emotions can be better processed and begin to feel less overwhelming. Here are some steps you can take to notice your emotions and move them to a place of easier cognitive processing.

1.      Ground yourself. Grounding refers to the practice of connecting yourself with the earth, centering yourself in time and space. Feel your feet on the floor or your body against the surface where it is resting. Look around the space where you are, naming objects as you see them. This is a helpful exercise to bring yourself back into the present when emotions feel overwhelming.

2.      Use a Feelings Wheel to help name your emotions. Start from the center of the wheel with the emotion that seems most like what you are feeling, and move outward, trying to grow more specific in naming your emotion. When you find the label that best describes your specific feeling, you might begin to feel a shift, which can feel like relief or like an intensifying of the emotion. If you feel greater intensity, try to allow the emotion to move through you – allow yourself to feel it. If you’re in a safe place to cry, scream, run – do it. This is the step of emotional processing, and usually if you let yourself stay with the emotion it will begin to subside within a few minutes. If this exercise begins to feel too overwhelming or unsafe, return to the grounding exercise above or enlist someone you trust to help support you.

3.      Locate the sensation of the emotion in your body. If this exercise feels safe for you, take a moment to notice where the sensation of your emotion rests in your physical body. This could feel like a lump in your throat, a heaviness in your chest, a tightness in your shoulders, a sickness in your stomach… Wherever you feel the emotion, there is no need to try to change it. Just noticing the physical sensation can help to activate your “thinking brain” so that you can better process what you are feeling and begin to reduce its intensity. If this exercise begins to feel too overwhelming or unsafe, return to the grounding exercise above or enlist someone you trust to help support you.

The Dual Process Model of Coping with Grief

I have heard many folks struggling in the past week with the sense that they want to “do something” and yet can’t find the energy or the focus to do so. Many feel numb and hopeless and wonder if they will reach a point of ability to take action. Others feel angry, activated, and motivated. They are coping not with sadness but with rage. Let me be clear: there is no “normal” way to grieve. We can all be grieving and yet feel impacted in very different ways.

The Dual Process Model of Coping, developed by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, gives us one way of conceptualizing the varied ways we might cope with grief. This model suggests that as we experience grief, it is “normal” to move between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented activities. We might move among intrusive sadness, denial and distraction, and new forms of action and activism – and back again. All of this is “normal” grieving, and you are likely to find yourself in different places on this spectrum as time moves on.

Care for Self and Others

Here is a hard truth about grief: it cannot be solved or fixed, only incorporated into a new reality. In grief work, we often reference this quote attributed to Robert Frost – “The best way out is always through.” The emotions of grief often feel uncomfortable, so we can feel tempted to skip over them and try to move to the next phase. But emotions are tricky buggers. If we try to skip over them, they often stick with us for much longer than they would if we stopped to acknowledge and process them. And because many emotions - especially those like grief, anxiety and stress - impact us physiologically as well as emotionally, it is important to care for our minds and bodies in ways that calm our nervous systems, which are on high alert when we feel threatened and stressed.

As we collectively cope with the emotions of grief, I encourage us to be gentle with ourselves and others, recognizing that we are sharing a period of adjustment to a painful reality. In the words of grief expert and author Megan Devine, “We companion each other inside what hurts. We bear witness to each other. In telling the truth, and in hearing the truth, we make things better, even when we can't make them right.”

Here is a hard truth about grief: it cannot be solved or fixed, only incorporated into a new reality.

Photo credit: p.m. graham

Here are some steps you can take to care for yourself and to remind others of when they need care. Many of them are aimed at calming the nervous system so that we feel less overwhelmed by strong emotions. You have undoubtedly heard many of these before, but that doesn’t make them any less true.

Breathe

Hydrate and nourish your body.

Spend time outside as you can.

Move your body as you are able.

Connect with trusted community.

Journal - even if this just means writing out streams of words or naming emotions.

Get creative, whether that be immersing yourself in music, art, poetry, dance, or any other creative endeavor.

Take a cold shower or run cold water over your wrists. This can activate your parasympathetic nervous system and reduce feelings of anxiety and stress.

Beware of scrolling media. This is a numbing activity, and while okay in small doses, in large amounts it can hinder emotional processing.

“Microdose hope” – in the words of Brené Brown. It is freaking hard to have hope in the midst of grief, and yet this is part of moving between loss and restoration as we adjust to our “new normal.” There is no need to rush your grief, but as you feel able, do even small things to care for others. As you regain energy, participate in even small acts of community service and activism. Action is a powerful antidote for feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.

“Microdose hope” through care and action as you are able. This is a powerful antidote to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.

Photo credit: p.m. graham

Also see these posts for more information about coping with grief, managing stress, and anchoring yourself when you feel unmoored. If you’re feeling stuck or are worried you might be dealing with a deeper mental health issue, please reach out to a trusted friend, family member, therapist, or healthcare professional. You don’t have to do this alone.