I hear you, brother. The Clockwork Orange is squatting over all our lives, shocking us with plot twists almost hourly. You wake up in the morning just wondering what has happened overnight. At least I do. Then again, I woke up on Monday desperate to know who was going to be the next prime minister of Canada, so perhaps it is just me.
Except, of course, I know it isn’t, because Trump trauma is everywhere. It is so pervasive that it almost demands one of those long German words — Trumpzeidestrauma or Putinhinternkussen. The US president is occupying too many of our waking thoughts. We wake screaming from a dream where we have been hired by Elon Musk to add Trump’s face to Mount Rushmore and the work has to be done by next Wednesday. You don’t? OK, perhaps that’s just me too.
People are enervated and alarmed by a sense of powerlessness. Worse still, you find yourself thinking unimaginable thoughts like “Germany must re-arm”. Even worse, you hanker for the days of those amiable chats about Brexit. Once I shuddered at the thought of being invited to see a friend’s redecorated kitchen. Now it sounds like an all-inclusive holiday. We strolled barefoot next to Steve and Alice’s new granite worktop. So good to decompress.
And it is not just Trump’s opponents who are suffering. Every day we see examples of once-sane Republicans being driven demented by the need to parrot the latest line from the White House. All these free-trade-loving military hawks who thought Zelenskyy was a hero are suddenly trying to explain the exciting news about tariffs and why surrendering Ukraine to the Russians is actually a terribly good idea. Poor souls. They went to bed thinking they were at war with Eurasia and woke to find they had always been at war with Eastasia.
Obviously, getting Trump out of your head will not be easy for some. Americans, Ukrainians, Canadians, Danes, Israelis, Palestinians, Panamanians, Mexicans. Anyone in western Europe. Anyone in eastern Europe. But the rest of us can probably try.
So what can you do?
We all need a way to detox from Donald. The first trick is to treat Trump like mobile phone addiction. We need to force ourselves to use him less. Ban him in schools. Maybe put an age restriction on sites with dangerous material like the BBC or Reuters. Our young people already face an anxiety epidemic. There’s no reason to make it worse.
Next, all adults need to try to set some kind of limit on the amount of time we spend on Trump every day. Stay off Twitter/X to avoid being gaslit by the president. Set an achievable goal and then slowly reduce your minutes from there. Maybe go for a 5:2 diet to start with. You need to ration your thoughts about Trump much as you might limit the number of units of alcohol you grant yourself in a week.
Try not to check the news as soon as you rise. Build other activities into your morning routine. Take a shower, have a coffee, invade Greenland. Sorry, a brief lapse there. And look, if you are going to pay attention to him, don’t make the mistake of allowing yourself to be reassured when he says something soothing. He probably doesn’t mean it, or if he does, he might not mean it tomorrow.
Better still is to organise activities that limit your chance to doomscroll through social media or news sites. You do not need to be immediately apprised of issues you can do nothing about. Pub evenings are good, girls’ nights out, football five-a-side matches, with clear guidelines that there is a ban on he who must not be named. Enforce this with strict rules. Anyone who mentions Trump at the pub is made to buy a round, so by the end of the night you’ll either have enjoyed a trauma-free evening or be suffering from alcohol poisoning.
Take to watching streaming shows that lift your mood like Six Feet Under, Black Mirror or Broadchurch. I recommend that far-fetched comedy movie Air Force One in which the president is captured by Russians. That was satire, wasn’t it? As if the Russians would go to all that trouble.
Maybe play golf. Buy crypto. Play board games — Risk is good. Ask to see a friend’s holiday photos. If you are lucky, they may have redecorated too. Be strong. You can get through this.
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