Another Whine About the US Election, Sorry
I meant to write a post about therapy, because I met with a new therapist today. They changed the laws in my state so that my old therapist is no longer allowed to practice here, so I had to get a new one. The process was thankfully quite easy and surprisingly quick, since I'm staying at the same practice and one of the other therapists had an opening.
But I don't really feel like writing about therapy, because my therapy sessions have mostly been very boring lately and because of the other thing. You know, the big thing that happened yesterday. The election.
I didn't expect myself to be as upset as I am about the results. I don't really know how to process it. Ironically, it's something I should have talked about in therapy, if there wasn't the whole meeting process to do today. I really was expecting a much different result.
I think it's a biproduct of some mental shortcuts. I see the people around me and think, "Everyone is like this." I live in a state that went blue, so the people around me tend toward a certain political bent - or if they don't, they still didn't want Trump. I extrapolated this out to the rest of the country, when it seems that despite living in many different states before I seem to know nothing about it. My ridiculous optimism was even hoping for a Texas flip - I should have known that was beyond reality.
I have some mental illnesses I can blame - which I also need to bring up in therapy - for my ridiculous beliefs about reality. But to be honest I was just foolish. Lots of people knew exactly what was going to happen, and I didn't want to listen to them. I wanted to hold onto my sense of sureness and optimism.
I feel like this is going to make a lot of people into worse people, and I'm afraid I might be one of them.