10/30/2024
Thanks for your gratitude about my previous post where I shared my thoughts about the Waiting and Worrying phase of this election cycle using the lens of my transition work. Here's my second observation.
Looking back at our own experiences during the last few election cycles, we can see ways we are still feeling the impacts of previous elections.
Regardless of political leanings, each of us has been on both the winning and losing sides of recent elections. We each have our own collection of memories associated with previous elections — spanning from moments of joy to experiences of trauma.
Although the election itself was just one day, there was the campaigning, the run up to each election, our personal voting experiences, hearing the results, and then processing post-election events. For many, the polarized nature of these events led to a ripple effect that impacted friendships, family relationships, partnerships, and communities.
It is likely that you and your clients have been impacted by this dynamic in some way – a lost or changed friendship, difficult family dynamics at social gatherings, an underlying sense fear that's difficult to shake, and the list goes on.
Whether you, your clients, or your friends talk about it or not, everyone has experiences – possibly traumatic ones – from this period of time that were, and still are, difficult to make sense of, uncomfortable to process, and hard to let go of.
The emotional intensity of the current election may be amped up due to these prior experiences (more about that in my next post). Listen and watch for clues that these dynamics may be still be influencing you and your clients’ experiences this fall.
