Because of this election, Facebook sucks right now

This election proved stressful for Tim Hickle. So he decided to do something about it: Exit social media for a few months and turn his accounts over to a voter registration bot.

From the end of July until earlier this month, friends and followers to Hickle’s Facebook and Twitter account found themselves greeted with a link to Indiana’s voter registration page along with the exhortation “Register to vote.” Earlier this month, when registration closed, Hickle, 26, changed the bot to encourage early voting.

"It had a huge positive impact on my mental health for the month, month-and-a-half I wasn’t on social media,” the Broad Ripple resident said. "My Facebook had turned into a cesspool of really qualified intelligent people shouting down other people.”

Hickle is far from alone. A recent survey by the American Psychological Association indicated that 52 percent of Americans find this election to be a very or somewhat significant source of stress.

There is even a name for this phenomenon: election stress disorder.

Steven Stosny, a psychotherapist in Darnestown, Md., coined the term after hearing from many of his patients in couples therapy how this election is worse than any other. Usually elections center around issues and voters’ passion for their chosen candidate.

This one, Stosny said, is different.

“It doesn’t matter who you support. In this election, people are not really for anyone. They’re against someone, and what motivates them is anger or resentment,” he said. “This election cycle, the most predominant thing, it is blame and the inability to see other perspectives. Both major candidates are guilty of that.”

Politics are putting us all in bad moods, making us quick to anger, even if the subject has nothing to do with the election, said Stosny, author of “Soar Above: How to Use the Most Profound Part of Your Brain Under Any Kind of Stress.”

Since the primary season, Stosny has seen an uptick in participants in a court-ordered anger management program he designed. People are getting into fights with neighbors and at traffic stops. He even saw a 72-year-old woman who got into a fight at a church bingo game.

“It’s a dangerous world when you get into a fight at a church bingo game,” he said.

With relatives on both extremes, Stosny quit Facebook in April, blocking all notifications and emails, lest he get roped in to political arguments. Now, he's unsure he’ll return after the election.

In her clinical practice with IU Health Physicians, psychologist Natalie Dattilo has seen many adults reporting they feel more stressed, whether or not they attribute it to the election. Even she, who usually can handle such emotions, feels it.

“It just seems that everyone’s baseline level of stress is up,” said Dattilo, also a clinical and health psychologist with the IU School of Medicine.

Many patients have told psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Kellams how disappointed and frustrated this election cycle has left them feeling. They complain the candidates have been too adversarial, the issues often lost in a sea of blame.

Compounding this all is how long the political season lasts in the United States, he added.

“There are some countries where the election process is limited time-wise. Ours is too to some extent but probably not enough,” said Kellams, medical director at Eskenazi Health Midtown Mental Health. “It’s taken a year out of our life, starting last spring.”

Joel Reitz, owner of O’Reilly’s Irish Bar and Restaurant, has worked as a bartender for more than 15 years Downtown and hasn’t seen anything like this election.

"This is my fourth election in Downtown Indianapolis, and it’s the one that’s least talked about by far," he said.

In past years, bargoers would want to watch debates or talk about the issues each candidate brought that election year. He suspects it's because the divide between the two candidates' supporters is so wide, there's little for his patrons to talk about.

In recent months, Plainfield resident Ryan Grimes has changed the way he uses Facebook. Leaving it altogether is not an option. Grimes is president of My IT Indy and uses Facebook to connect with clients. It also links him with family in other parts of the country.

Over time, he has found it harder to avoid negative political talk, even just to check out pictures of his cousins.

"People aren’t verifying anything; they’re just reposting things that agree with what they think,” the 41-year-old said. “It’s really just become a mess. It really changed how I used Facebook. It’s just sad because it’s hard to find the things that were good about it. … Facebook is just a train wreck right now.”

As a final resort — one he has used more than he would like — Grimes does block or unfriend people. Still, he said, he tries to be tolerant rather than just unfriend anyone who doesn’t agree with him.

And it’s getting worse, he said.

“I’ve actually been verbally attacked and was like, nope, I’m done. And these were people I’ve known for a while. I’m not going to get ripped on Facebook when you’re half a country away,” he said, adding, "There are more internet badasses today than there were six months ago. They just say what they want to say.”

Elections are the most risky times for a democracy because they allow the anxieties and negative feelings that people may have to bubble to the surface, wrote the political scientist Harold Lasswell, who died in 1978.

Indiana Voter Guide: Build your election ballot

These feelings do not necessarily have to be about politics per se, said Marjorie Hershey, a professor of political science at Indiana University Bloomington. Instead, politics may provide a handy outlet.

“They’re just hostile,” Hershey said. “Politics generates a kind of spectacle and a place where those feelings can be expressed.”

One way this election cycle differs stems from social media, experts agree. While the political parties have been polarized in the past, today people can pick and choose their news outlets to reflect the views they already have, creating an echo chamber to reinforce their own beliefs.

And social media runs by different rules than those that govern other discourse, Hershey said.

“It’s like the phenomenon that people will do things when they’re driving that they would never do face-to-face with people. The normal social restraints don’t apply on social media,” she said.

But we don’t have to accept such strife as inevitable, experts say.

One simple thing to do is to avoid discussing politics altogether, said Kimble Richardson, a licensed mental health counselor with Community Health Network. Or agree to discuss politics but only for a set period of time and cut off the discussion if it becomes too heated.

“Keep that in mind, these are opinions," Richardson said. "Everyone is entitled to them and they may feel as strongly about theirs as you do about yours, so think about the long-term consequences of what you’re about to say."

People also need to recognize when they have reached their limit and take a break from the news, experts agree. Turn off the radio in the car; the television in the kitchen. Don’t look at the phone or social media.

Instead, literally unplug and take a walk, garden, see a movie, read a book or exercise. Engage in relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, yoga or massage, anything to tamp down their emotional level, said Adam Allman, an outpatient licensed mental health counselor with St. Vincent Health Stress Center.

Tempering one’s emotions will improve one’s ability to think clearly, he said.

“Often times, people are having cognitive distortions in regards to the candidates. A lot of it is black or white thinking: If one candidate gets into office versus the other, the country will go into the tank,” Kellams said. “When your emotion level is high, your ability to think clearly is low. After you lower your emotion level, that can help dispute some of that all or none thinking.”

Call IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter: @srudavsky. Call IndyStar reporter Amy Bartner at (317) 444-6752. Follow her on Twitter: @amybartner.