How much psychological damage has been done to the American people?

[kentuck]

Is it impossible to measure?

How much trauma have people endured over the last three years, with the hope that it would soon be over?

Much like a prisoner that accepts his condition, knowing that he will someday be free.

But, in some ways, the prisoner is in a better situation. The American people do not know that it is going to end. It appears to get worse day by day, and week by week.

I have little doubt that the neglect of our politicians (Republicans) to do anything about it, has done significant psychological damage to much of America. Even those that believe they are immune from the present environment, have also suffered, in ways that cannot be explained.

This may be a subject matter that no one wishes to discuss, but, in my opinion, it is real.

[Dennis Donovan]

1. Health care professionals have told me the stress is real

Perhaps just anecdotal, but I've heard that from several providers in the last few years.

[Nay]

6. Yeah. My doc told me it's rampant. Lots of patients reporting being totally stressed

over Trump.

[smirkymonkey]

15. It's real. I have discussed this with my therapist at MGH and she said that it is off the charts.

People are stressed beyond belief over this and more and more people are coming in because of it. There is a serious epidemic of Trump induced stress disorder.

We discuss it often because it is a major cause of my anxiety and stress. I feel physical illness due to the stress of having to endure this hellish nightmare. Headaches, muscle tension, nausea, BP rise, general pain all over my body, etc. When I see or hear him I can feel the negative changes in my body. He is absolutely toxic. It all started right around when he became president. Before that, I didn't have these problems.

[Turbineguy]

2. We were going out for dinner

and people are driving like they don't want to see tomorrow.

Trump is driving people crazy. He can brag to Putin about his success.

[global1]

7. I've Noticed The Same Thing About People Driving.....

It's gotten crazy out on the roads. Complete disregard for the rules of the road, speed-limits and courtesies. One has to be more aware than ever of the people behind you. The expressways around the Chicago area have become the Indy 500. And it seems like the police just ignore all the infractions.

[C_U_L8R]

3. I don't consider being pissed off at criminals as psychological damage

Justice is coming, one way or another.

Fox News dimwits and goosetepping MAGAts, on the other hand, don't really have brains to damage at all. Their's is a blissful existence mired in a despicable goulash of hate, fear and ignorance. Totally incurable.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

4. It's real and painful...

Just spent the day at the VA hospital in Ann Arbor Michigan. Doctor’s appointments. Nurses and my primary doctor said incidents of stress related complaints has gone way up.

I must mention at the same time some positives came to light that day. With no or minimal prompting or other vets just making small talk it was all anti-trump. It hasn’t been like that before no one really talked politics but he had them enraged.

[mopinko]

5. he's lost the military. completely lost it.

got family high up. all the good ones have had it. they fled w their dignity.

[Backseat Driver]

10. We're suffering from the stress-related, complex type of PTSD

And the hits just keep on coming! Some have suffered for a lot longer than the past three years! The twisted GOP found their "perfect" Master and now kiss his ring (and pampered diapered butt) as they continue the steady push to close down and defund the social safety net programs of our nation that now include the checks and balances of our government. I'm speaking directly of those that side with RW Christian fundamentalists militancy, "though they've sold their souls to the Devil" with the lust of money and power in these days of terror from their sheer pushy absolutism that "captures" us into a seemingly inescapable Jim Jones cult of would-be Kool-Aid drinkers. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" just isn't the way forward rather persist, resist, and continue to fight back with any and all shreds of energy one has left! For now, there seems only one precious thing left - a vote! But it's not: Speak out against "wrong," be kind and/or supportive, practice gratitude, and make good choices - those three will give one the rest necessary to be re-energized should it devolve to civil disobedience and/or literal warfare.

Be careful if you seek treatment from an "expert" in the field of PTSD! Some will desert their private patients and race, just like ambulence chasers, to the next locations of immediate trauma from which they derive trophy service awards while "confessing" to being victimized themselves... So amazing - 9/11, Gitmo, Ft Hood, her own community...I guess that's called commiserating and being vulnerable, except they fail to see their own complicity in sending the desperately stressed over the complex PTSD edge as they beam and take in the applause! Well, IMHO, this is a faux healer dedicated to self-interest - without referral, she abandoned me! First for money, then for a fertile field of fame! Perhaps she's fed up with the cabal of darkness that literally "commands" that service, the the one that demands the obsequious fealty to leaders of destruction of America's total environment of values in each of those admin, cabinet agencies, and media that create so great a need; and, at last, has seen the light: They just don't care!

'This one's got a FB page full of award receiving articles. I won't post that link, but you can search the platform - Look it up

Meanwhile: https://www.stress.org/about/leadership-structure/boards/col-kathy-platoni-psy-d

Yep, complex PTSD is a real thing! The sooner one recognizes the effects in themselves, the sooner recovery is possible.

https://www.outofthestorm.website/cptsd-description/

[I_UndergroundPanther]

12. I have complex pstd

Dissociative disorder and adhd,major depression and anxiety
, PTSD. Complex PTSD is real,and it hurts so bad. My therapist says my case is complex.

It makes getting through the day so hard.


Sometimes when I look at what's going on I trigger and get suicidal thoughts. Trump triggers the living shit out of me. I cannot stand him . I go back and forth between numb fight or flight.I hope we can ruin that abusive POS narcissist and his lapdogs forever.

[Bayard]

8. PTSD

We'll all have it by the time this is over.

[solara]

9. The stress doesn't end with We The People

I believe most of the world and everyone in it is suffering from PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Although in this case it should be called: Post Trump Stress Disorder.

People are fearful so people are angry. We need the boundaries that we used to have with the Rule of Law.

Everything we do and say and even think now is hazardous because we have a lunatic in the WH, who has effectively consumed the Barr & the DOJ. We have all normalized their behavior and their words in one way or another because there seemed to be no other option and the media led the way.

You can read about the symptoms and the treatment of PTSD. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967

The last three years have given us trauma after trauma and now trump's power goes unchecked because with Barr at the helm, the Impotus has his new Cohn.

I could definitely be wrong, but the fact that when we saw him rip children from their parents and incarcerate them in revenge for their parents daring to come to the US in search of a safer, better life. The fact that the insane trump administration punished them all for doing so. The fact that people are dying in the custody of ICE, or whomever is dealing out the punishments. The idea that our government is torturing children and their parents and we have allowed it to stand, speaks volumes about the change in our country and in We The People.

Today this cruel and unusual behavior is sort of "business as usual". And this is only ONE of his so-called executive decisions. We now have Trump concentration camps in the U.S. Some may say these are not the same as the camps we found in WWII and that may be true, but they are certainly similar and they are also the "tip" of the cruel, vengeful, insane, power hungry, ignorant trumpian/GOP iceberg.

No wonder we are depressed. We have got to make trump's permanent removal from power our absolute imperative goal. We have got to stop the in-fighting and remember who the enemy is. This election cycle simply cannot be 'business as usual' because there is no longer any such thing.

I know this is speaking to the choir, but I needed to say it..write it..like I'm speaking out loud.

[Backseat Driver]

11. You deserve some more hearts for this!

[solara]

17. Thank you for your kind words

They felt like a hundred new hearts. I am so grateful for you and for DU.

Happy Valentine's Day!

[MFGsunny]

14. So many more of us feel ya. We just may not know how to say it.

[solara]

21. This is why I am so grateful for DU

We may not know each other well or even a little. But we share this vision of Truth and Honor and Healing and we work, for the most part, with Love.

Thank you

Happy Valentine's Day!

[MFGsunny]

22. + 1000

Right back to you.

Happy Valentine's Day!

[hamsterjill]

24. Your insight is spot on in my thinking.

I think it's important that we continue to point this out (i.e., the systematic normalization of things that simply are NOT normal). That's the antidote. We've got to make sure we support one another and keep one another sane.

In my own mind, I'm not sure that I feel that even if we all vote and outnumber them in November that the election will be fair. I think the 2016 election was hacked, and I don't trust the system any more. That's the part that is the hardest for me. If I really thought we had only ten more months of the jerk, I'd at least see the light at the end of the tunnel. But I fear he'll be "re-elected" and that he will be deemed "king" by his idiot followers.

And his followers ARE idiots. Which is another fear factor, as well. How they will react if and when he leaves office scares me. I live amongst some of them and they are NOT well educated or anyone who I would deem as a "thinker". They are reactive and easily lead.

Also, as negative as my comments are in this post, there is still an element to me that makes me fighting mad. I am old, but if it comes to fighting in the streets to take back my country - a situation that I thought I'd never have to even consider in my lifetime, but now see as a true possibility - I will be out there swinging a baseball bat if necessary. It's that element of anger that I rely on to gain strength. I have no desire to hurt anyone, but if it comes to it and I am forced to fight for my way of life for myself and my child, I will.

[struggle4progress]

13. I've never met anyone who wasn't damaged somehow. We'll muddle through

[solara]

19. Bless you for saying that

Optimism and Hope are SO good for our collective Soul. Seems like I am forever fending off darkness these days.

Happy Valentine's Day!

[Nature Man]

16. Depends on which group of American people you're talking about . . .

The voiceless and poor have always been traumatized, stigmatized, penalized, and terrified.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

18. Oh, I thought you were talking about racism.

[dalton99a]

20. He is causing lasting damage to children:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/local/school-bullying-trump-words/
Trump’s words, bullied kids, scarred schools

For Ashanty Bonilla, the damage began with the response to a single tweet she shared 10 months ago.

“Unpopular opinion,” Ashanty, then 16 and a sophomore at Lewiston High School in rural Idaho, wrote on April 9. “People who support Trump and go to Mexico for vacation really piss me off. Sorry not sorry.”

A schoolmate, who is white, took a screen shot of her tweet and posted it to Snapchat, along with a Confederate flag.

The next morning, as Ashanty arrived at school, half a dozen boys, including the one who had written the message, stood nearby.

“You’re illegal. Go back to Mexico,” she heard one of them say. “F--- Mexicans.”

Ashanty, shaken but silent, walked past as a friend yelled at the boys to shut up.

In a 33,000-person town that is 94 percent white, Ashanty, whose father is half-black and whose mother is Mexican American, had always worked to fit in. She attended every football game and won a school spirit award as a freshman. She straightened her hair and dyed it blond, hoping to look more like her friends.

She had known those boys who’d heckled her since they were little. For her 15th birthday the year before, some had danced at her quinceañera.

A friend drove her off campus for lunch, but when they pulled back into the parking lot, Ashanty spotted people standing around her car. A rope had been tied from the back of the Honda Pilot to a pickup truck.

“Republican Trump 2020,” someone had written in the dust on her back window.

Hands trembling, Ashanty tried to untie the rope but couldn’t. She heard the laughing, sensed the cellphone cameras pointed at her. She began to weep. ...

She seldom attended classes the last month of school. That summer, she started having migraines and panic attacks. In August, amid her spiraling despair, Ashanty swallowed 27 pills from a bottle of antidepressants. A helicopter rushed her to a hospital in Spokane, Wash., 100 miles away.

[Nevilledog]

23. Just heartbreaking.

[Bettie]

25. It is real

it is awful. The only ones who seem to be doing OK are the MAGATs, but they also seem to have no care at all that he is harming them too, they just enjoy the hate.

[maxsolomon]

26. I don't know, my relatives seem happier than ever.

Chuffed with Stigginit, and they can see the end of roe v wade within their grasp.

[virgogal]

27. None,except to people who are very politically aware and they

are in the minority.