Is there any way to know?

When listening to others I get the impression that some do not have a lot of faith that our nation can right itself, ever again.

People I know think that the Democrats stand a good chance of losing the general election due to their complete disunity.

I have friends who think Hillary Clinton has gotten a raw deal from the press, that she is a victim of gender bias, sexism, etc.

Occasionally disgruntled people openly say, "We'll never recover. It will be just like the fall of Rome."

With these statements, is it possible to pick out cognitive distortions that keep some in the political process more upset than is necessary? Can perfectly sane members of the body politic of an entire nation be thinking irrationally, have symptoms of emotional instability?

During my professional working life as a therapist I dealt with a number of conditions that pained people to the point of asking for professional help. These are the kinds of things some of the individuals reported or were experiencing when they came into my office.

• Depression is characterized by sadness, loss of hope, and feelings of helplessness.
• Generalized anxiety symptoms include inability to relax, disturbed sleep, irritability, and unremitting on-guard behavior.
  
• More specific anxiety disorders also include panic attacks, phobias, and obsessions.
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is to be suspected when a person is too easily startled, is reliving an event -- intrusive memories or nightmares, becomes numb to life, or experiences anxiety or depression that is otherwise unexplained.
• Psychosis is indicated when someone is out of touch with reality, unable to separate feeling from fact, beset by delusional beliefs or hallucinations.

Some of my clients, however, were not experiencing any of the listed conditions above. They often came in merely to get assistance in adjusting to unmanageable changes in circumstances, or to get to a difficult decision, or work through a painful loss, or other perfectly normal adjustment needs.

The body politic does not need a formal diagnosis, in my opinion. We just need help with our perfectly normal adjustment needs. We might need to have an argument with the following thinking distortions:

Not this -- When listening to others I get the impression that some do not have a lot of faith that our nation can right itself ever again. But this -- There is no logical reason that our nation is not capable of making a normal adjustment.

Not this -- People I know think that the Democrats stand a good chance of losing the general election due to their own disunity. But this -- It is OK to believe both candidates' stated commitments to party unity. They will be able to lead their own followers.

Not this -- Her supporters think Hillary Clinton has gotten a raw deal from the press, that she is a victim of gender bias, sexism, etc. But this -- Obama has also experienced racial bias, class bias, etc. That's politics and normal media bias.

Not this -- Occasionally disgruntled people openly say, "We'll never recover. So much damage has been done that it is like the fall of Rome." But this -- Our nation has a good history of resilience and recovery. History shows it may be the end of a conservative cycle.

View my current slide show about the Bush years -- "Millennium" -- at the bottom of this column.

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.)

My “creativity and dreaming” post today is at Making Good Mondays.

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