After the Election Resources

This is a working list of resources for your to reference as you proceed through the days after the election. We will update as we receive more resources. 

Prioritize Self Care

• Student Health and Counseling Services
  
  • • SHCS will have counselors available for 30-minute appointments with students.
    • Students must call (760) 750-4915 to schedule an appointment (same day appointments will be available).
• Quick Tips to Keep Your Peace
  • Take a mental health day
    • Find ways to focus on *your* needs for an uninterrupted period of time
  • Sign off of social media
    • Stop scrolling through Instagram and your social feeds without intention.
  • Start self-care activities
    • Sit and draw or color in an adult coloring book, meditate, read, journal or virtual happy hour with friends.
  • Get active
    • Go for a run. Get your body moving. Sit in child’s pose. Whatever gets your endorphins moving.
  • Go to a safe space
    • Take a break from debating issues that don’t align with your morals.
  • Cry it out
    • In order to process your emotions, you need to let yourself feel the emotions.

Tips courtesy of GirlBoss.com 10 Self-Care Ideas to Help You Get Through These Rough Political Times.

Using "Oops. Ouch. Whoa." Method for Hard Conversations

In the article, "Three Words You Need for Your Next Hard Conversation: Oops. Ouch. Whoa." Annalise Griffen, outlines a new tool on how to manage values in conversations that are likely to be tense, but can only be informative if we all have the same values from the beginning. Read the article to learn how to use "Oops. Ouch. Whoa" in your next discussion.  

From National to Local Civic Engagement

To promote civic engagement, The Brookings Institution developed a bucket list for engaged citizenship with "76 Things You Can Do to Boost Civic Engagement". The bucket list provides specific and practical actions that we all can take to be an involved citizen. The list is broken into five actions that are essential components for engagement:

• Stay Informed
  • Read and subscribe to trusted news outlets, fact check news information, visit a library or museum virtually, learn about the constitution.
• Build Community
  • Identify an issue of concern in your community and volunteer at local non-profit to address it, start a book club with your neighbors, or mentor youth.
• Participate
  • Attend city council meetings and join a committee, communicate with regional elected officials on community concerns, serve as a juror.
• Get Social
  • Watch a documentary on a topic affecting your community and discuss with peers, support companies whose values match yours.
• Assist Voters Vote
  • Find out when mid-term elections occur and make a vote plan, plan to cast ballot on issues that matter to you, volunteer at a polling site, register voters, offer to drive elderly or disabled to the polls.

Learn more about the “76 Ways You Can Boost Your Civic Engagement” by reading the full article from the Brookings Institute.

Practicing Empathy

“Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection.” Brené Brown

• Stay out of judgment
  • We practice non-judgment…just hear it.
• Take the other’s perspective
  • What does that mean for you? What is that experience like for you?
• Understand the emotion you are hearing
  • How can I touch within myself something that feels like what the other person might be feeling?  Ask questions.
• Communicate your understanding about the emotion
  • Clarify what you heard and repeat it back to them and affirm their emotions.
• Practice mindfulness
  • This is not pushing away emotion because it’s uncomfortable, but feeling it and moving through it. This matters – if I think empathy is to jump into your dark hole with you, then I can’t help you because now I’m stuck in the hole too. I must know the boundaries about where you end and I begin. I can’t be empathic if I am taking on another’s story.

Attributes of empathy were adapted from the Rumbling with Vulnerability: Empathy  lesson plan.