15/09/2025
Mental Wellness in Times of Political Crisis:
One of the greatest parts of working in high-performance sport is that I get to use, improve, and understand the strongest mental wellness interventions in the highest stress environments in the world. What works in those spaces can work in the everyday world as well.
We are living in a moment of real tension, where politics and society have never felt heavier or more uncertain. Protecting your mental wellness isn’t optional—it’s essential now more than ever. Unfortunately, aggression, anger, and heat will not quiet on their own. WE must choose to stay healthy within unhealthy times. Build practices that help you stay balanced, more understanding, and grounded. This is the true path to peace.
With this unfortunate backdrop, I’ve thought about how I want to take care of myself, my family, and hopefully how you can take care of yourself and those you love as well.
Practice sustainable and healthy “natural brain chemical generators”:
There are certain habits that consistently boost mood and destress us without draining your energy, money, or long-term health.
Here are healthy dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin producing activities that release these natural brain chemicals that regulate mood and anxiety/stress:
• Exercise and getting outside. Movement and nature are two of the fastest, most natural resets for stress.
• Meditation and mindfulness. Apps like Calm, Headspace, or DoSo can help bring you back into the present moment, destress, and lower anxiety.
• Music. Whether you’re playing an instrument or just listening, music is a proven way to regulate mood.
• Playing sports or physical games. Movement plus joy is a powerful combination.
These practices – among others - don’t require much money, they can be done in minutes, and they add energy rather than take it away.
Unsustainable coping strategies:
Other habits may feel easier in the short term but carry costs that quietly, but deeply, erode our mental and emotional wellness:
• Social media scrolling, content binges, and junk food. They’re cheap and effortless, but ultimately leave you more drained.
• Alcohol, drugs, or over-consumerism. Expensive, numbing, and unsustainable—not true solutions.
Tools/Practices That Will Serve You Better:
• For stress management and presence: Calm, Headspace, DoSo
• For balanced news: GroundNews – cuts through the bias; points out if there is a blind spot on a given topic for either party (and there are most certainly blind spots for BOTH parties). It’s important to see that your party is doing IT too!
• For dialogue, Connection, and bridge-building: Builders
• Limit amounts of time on social media and news – if you want to stay informed you can still do it, but limit it to 1 hour or less per day on social media or watching the news. Anything else is overkill.
• Engage in conversations with people that may not share your point of view – Key strategy is that you find the points you both agree with first. Examples – political violence is NEVER ok. Try to figure out ways that you each can help promote that common ground belief.
On political violence:
This is not about parties or partisanship. I want to be absolutely clear: political violence is never the answer. Not from the right. Not from the left. Not from anyone. Period. My hope is that this is a place of common ground agreement for all of us.
History is filled with tragic lessons—when violence becomes normalized, it never solves problems. It only escalates them. Some regions of the world have been locked in cycles of violence for hundreds of years, where revenge becomes the norm and peace becomes nearly impossible. We must reject this.
Or…if you need a more everyday example look no further than Facebook or Twitter (X). What once were great concepts for attempting to unite us from distance, platforms that shared nice family photos, smart articles, and more wholesome content - became more and more polarized and aggressive. They became spaces used more for attacking and dividing than positive sharing of content that made us feel together and connected.
Why? Because once some aggressiveness started, the responses became a bit more aggressive, and the escalation has just continued.
We are still early in our own version of this cycle in the U.S. But once it takes root, it is very difficult to undo. We all still have a chance to stop it—but it must stop now.
If the/a leader of your party cannot - or refuses - to lower the temperature, that is not strength. That is weakness. True strength is creating peace, not stoking division. Refusing to lower the rhetoric and temperature is someone that is unwell themselves.
What I can promise you:
- Your algorithms are NOT your friend.
- Your cable news network is NOT your friend.
- Too often right now our politicians are NOT our friends.
Each of these have a massive incentive to keep you angry, distracted, anxious, fearful, and distrustful of the other side – it’s called money or attention (or BOTH!).
Ultimately, political violence means none of us are free.
Final thought:
Take care of yourself. Take care of your family. Take care of your community. Choose wellness practices that are sustainable and lower your internal temperature. The angrier you are the worse your decisions will be. The calmer you are the wiser you’ll be. This is true in high-performance sport and its true in our everyday functioning!
Please demand leaders who lower, not raise, the temperature. And remember sustainable freedom, like sustainable mental wellness, requires discipline, intention, and the courage to break the cycle.
NOTE: If you found this helpful, please share with anyone and everyone you know. Our wellness as a nation depends on the wellness of each of us on a daily basis.
