Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Maintaining Relationships Through the Election Cycle With Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 487 of Live Happy Now. We’re in the midst of a tumultuous election cycle, and that can take a toll on our sleep, our mental health, and our relationships. But the good news is it doesn’t have to be that way.
I’m your host, Paula Felps. This week, I’m talking with psychology instructor and resiliency expert, Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, author of Stress Wisely: How to be Well in an Unwell World. Dr. Robyne is here to talk about how we can navigate potentially volatile conversations, ease our stress about the future, and create new self-soothing habits that can last a lifetime. Let’s have a listen.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:00:43] PF: Dr. Robyne, welcome back to Live Happy Now.
[00:00:46] RHD: I’m so excited to spend time with you today. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:50] PF: Oh, I am excited to have you back on the show. You really ride in that lane of managing stress, and these are stressful times. It was stressful before we started getting into all the election stress. Obviously, that’s something Live Happy Now is really addressing over the next couple of months. I wanted to talk to you about how the stress from the election environment is affecting us. Let’s go from it. Yes, the mind, body, spirit. We’ve got multiple ways it’s affecting us.
[00:01:19] RHD: Yes, absolutely. Again, I’m just so appreciative to be able to have these conversations because I think so often the experience of stress can become super isolating, right? Our body naturally will start to shut down. It’s naturally going to pull away. It’s naturally going to want to hide. What I love that we’re doing is we’re shining a big spotlight on it because we know as soon as we put it in the open, all of a sudden it loses its power to grip every aspect of our life. I just absolutely just love and hold space that we’re having this conversation because we need to bring it to the forefront.
You’re absolutely right. It’s impacting us psychologically, right? There’s this deep fear that’s starting to set in of the unknown or the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Physiologically, it’s impacting us because that stress creates it. It’s difficult for us, for example, to get good sleep and good rest and actually have a full night sleep without waking up with those cortisol spikes, which seem to like to pop up around 1am and 3am, where we start to worry about the state of the world.
Also, I’m seeing it impacting society from a relationship perspective. That people are feeling these really polarizing opinions that is taking us away from even our loved ones or our sense of community and really creating that sense of divide, which doesn’t leave us feeling very well-resourced to manage the uncertainty that lies ahead.
[00:02:43] PF: It’s getting us on all these different levels. Part of, I think, what drives it is we’re projecting into if this happens, then this. I’ve had some conversations in the last week with people. It’s like, “Yes. But if that happens, then this is what our world’s going to look like,” and I see them getting very worked up about that. How can we control that sort of projection?
[00:03:07] RHD: Yes. Well, I think what’s really important first is to recognize that that idea of projecting or anticipating is completely normal, right? People often talk about our stress being like triggers. But really stress is very predictive in the sense that it knows bad stuff happens, and so what it’s trying to do is mitigate as many of the variables as possible. That way, we can essentially try to cope ahead of time.
It’s a little bit of this mind game that stress plays with us because, again, it’s not that we’re being triggered as much in this scenario as it’s being like, again, predictive of that unknowing and the danger that is within uncertainty and, again, the notion of when humans are dysregulated and things don’t work out the way they want to. We know that doesn’t bring out the best in people, let alone in groups.
Again, this is really normal to feel anxiety. It’s normal to feel those feelings. I think the biggest thing that we can do to start us up for success is to acknowledge that’s part of the lived experience. It is normal that we have this impulse. It’s normal that we want to try to control it. Instead of judging ourselves for having it or doing it, ask ourselves, okay, like what is the need that I need to be met right now or I wish that’s being met right now. Try to meet it almost like in an intellectual way to help ourselves soothe ourselves, so we don’t get into these unknowns and these mind games that we’re playing right now.
[00:04:33] PF: What about that cortisol spike at 1 or 3am? What do you do in that situation? Because we know when that happens and your mind is just going 100 miles an hour and getting that to calm back down, so you can get the rest you need. What are some ways to self-soothe when that happens?
[00:04:49] RHD: I’ll tell you anecdotally the most beautiful practice that I have ever seen. I use it myself. I’ve shared it with people before, and the feedback has just been so remarkable is simply to do this. When you wake up and you realize that you’re having that cortisol spike, right? You wake up and you feel worried all of a sudden. You’re anxious. Your mind starts racing as you describe so beautifully. What I want you to do is literally just take your hand, and I want you to put it on your heart. I want you to just take a good deep breath in and a slow exhale. Then I want you to start counting your blessings. I want you to start thinking about all the things in your life in the past, in the present, in the future. Things that are good. Things that are encouraging. Things that are soft.
The reason we do that is we can’t have an anxious heart and a grateful heart at the same time or an anxious mindset and a grateful mindset at the same time. They’re opposites. Again, that practice of just putting your hand on your heart, counting your blessings, thinking about things that go well, things that have worked out, things that bring you joy, right? Your pets, your great first experience on your first family vacation, whatever it is, what that’s going to do is it’s going to release oxytocin. That is that love, that soothing hormone that is going to help us drift back into sleep versus tossing and turning the night away.
[00:06:06] PF: That’s a great practice then to do before you go to sleep. As you’re laying down and want to get into that sleep state initially, that’d be a great way to get there.
[00:06:14] RHD: Yes. Paula, on that note, I can share with you. I remember recently working with a group, and I was asking them, “Okay. So what are your task-switching activities? How do you literally sign off at the end of your day before you prepare for rest?” I was a wee bit startled because the number one response I was hearing were things like, “Oh, I love to curl up and listen to a serial killer documentary.” Or, “I love to watch a true crime show, Dateline this or whatever.” They were telling me all about this really, really sensational content that they watch right before they go to bed.
What’s so interesting is I’ve always thought about that precious time before we fall asleep as like almost pretty sacred because what you’re doing is you’re essentially planting the seeds for your nighttime. If we’re putting all that really, really high, that really sensational content top of mind right before we go to sleep, it’s not going to be a restful night sleep. Again, there’s no judgment on folks who watch that type of programming. I get it. We love it in a lot of cases because it brings closure, right? A lot of those true crimes, a lot of – we see that Law & Order episode finish. All of a sudden, they put a bow on it. It’s solved. There’s closure. Dick Wolf’s name usually pops up, and we feel better about the world, right? The behavior totally makes sense.
Just think about if you were like planting seeds into your subconscious right before you go to sleep. You want to be really careful about what you’re putting in, and one of the simple approaches is, sure, you can watch your program, absolutely. But then I want you to do something physiological to shift like have a hot shower or go into a sauna or maybe go for a little walk if it’s safe. Do something that stirs everything back up. Then I want you to think about a gratitude practice. Again, counting your blessings, what’s going right, not worrying about what you have to do tomorrow. Just putting your head down on that pillow, trusting that you’re well-resourced, you did the best you could today, and tomorrow gets to be a new bright day to try again.
[00:08:13] PF: That’s terrific. Another thing to avoid is watching the news right before you go to bed because that’s going to just really get your mind racing.
[00:08:23] RHD: Yes. What’s so interesting, even news cycles because, again, it has, like we’ve talked about it before, that kind of clickbait. It’s saying things in really sensational ways to get your attention to break through all of that noise. It’s trying to break through all of the other things that we could be doing, so it’s purposely feeding on that anxiety. That’s how we get people to click, get people to watch is that we leave those cliffhangers or those sensational statements that, gosh, we got to know about that because we don’t want to be left behind. Again, that sparks that fear of the fact that all of this is happening in front of us, and we have to try to somehow control it.
[00:09:01] PF: That gets really overwhelming because we are trying to keep up with all the aspects of what’s going on. How do we do that? How do we feel informed enough to make our choices but not overwhelmed by the amount of information that’s just being dumped on us? Because as you said, it’s just constant clickbait, and we’re being inundated. Then sometimes you click on it, and you’re like, “That’s not even the story I needed to read.” How do we maintain that balance?
[00:09:30] RHD: Yes. Again, you’re asking such a great question because, yes, we want to be informed. For some people, getting all of the knowledge is a way that they actually can soothe themselves, right? If I can know everything that’s out there that I need to know, then I’m going to be making an informed decision. But the reality is the repetition of it is what’s really doing damage because each piece of information, even if it’s the same information that’s just being repeated, is activating that cortisol. It’s giving us a dose of stress. What we want to do is just be really strategic on how we engage in it. We don’t want to engage in it in a really passive way. We want to engage in it with a critical lens.
The other little tip as well is to – the first five minutes of a newscast on the top of the hour at the bottom of the hour, you’re going to get the most important pieces of information. Using those guard rails to say, “You know what? I’m going to listen to the first five minutes.” Then the reality is often the next 25 minutes until the next cycle is it just repeating itself. You don’t need to do that. Once is enough, right? It’s this kind of idea. It’s like how many times you have to touch that hot stove. Once is enough. We don’t have to keep touching it and touching it and touching it because, again, it’s just going to fester.
The other invitation I have is to have some type of practice, ritual, or routine to just let some of this stuff go. Right now, we’re just holding on to all of these emotions, and they don’t really have a place to land. They don’t have a place to find a way to be processed, so we want to give ourselves breaks where we can actually let things be processed. A question I often get asked is, “Okay, Robyne. What does that look like?” Going for a walk, getting outside, listening to music, doing something with your hands, tidying up, puttering. All of those things let our brains do its job without getting more information or more content coming in. Simplifying some little routines or rituals at the end of those cycles will really help people feel better afterwards. They’ll be informed but not overwhelmed.
[00:11:25] PF: Right. It’s important to note that maybe leave your phone behind when you go outside and take that walk and be in nature.
[00:11:32] RHD: Yes. Nature is such a beautiful way of soothing our nervous system on like the deepest level, right? It’s like literally our evolution is meant to be outdoors. That’s where we feel the most settled and rested. Again, it’s just so beautiful to see what our brain on nature does.
[00:11:49] PF: Exactly.
[00:11:50] RHD: The brain on nature is pretty amazing. There’s one ecologist who talks about it’s like vitamin N. It’s like, “What do kids need now?” Vitamin N. Literally get them outside. It’s a way to transform how we’re feeling.
[00:12:03] PF: It’s like the antidote to politics right now.
[00:12:05] RHD: Yes, yes. Outdoors, yes. Exactly, yes.
[00:12:09] PF: What are some signs that we are getting overwhelmed by the amount of information we’re taking in? Because a lot of times, we don’t realize that we’re drowning in it. It takes somebody else a lot of times to be like, “Hey, you’ve been really irritable after you’re watching the news,” or whatever the statement is. What are some warning signs we can self-check?
[00:12:28] RHD: Yes. Again, I love your questions. I think what’s really helpful is just to do those little awareness pauses because as you’ve identified, we’ll go on autopilot, and we might not even realize that we’re autopilot. Just doing those little awareness checks where it’s like how am I tending to the other parts of my life? How am I tending to other topics that I enjoy, that I really like sharing with my loved ones, talking with my colleagues about? If you notice, it’s like you’re a one-trick pony that all you can do right now is talk about politics. Chances are you’re missing out the opportunity to be talking about other things.
What’s so interesting, when we start talking about other things, especially in community, is that we’re going to notice that we feel more energized than depleted, right? We don’t feel as positional versus being as open-minded and, again, just realizing the value of not putting all of our thoughts and all of our emotions just in one lane. Part of the beautiful thing about the lived experience is there’s lots of things that can occupy our attention. We just want to be intentional about how we share and spread things around.
The other part, too, you might notice is that you’ll – again, as we talked about at the top of this show is you’ll notice the tendency when we’re under a lot of overwhelm is that we want to hide, right? We want to – we start to shut down. We aren’t really putting ourselves out there. We’re not holding positive thoughts. We’re not holding things like hope or optimism about the future. It’s getting just really that scarcity mindset versus that sufficiency mindset that’s like, “Hey, there’s enough topics. There’s enough learning. There’s enough ideas to go around that we don’t need to have this so all-consuming all the time.”
[00:14:12] PF: That’s fantastic advice. We know that this is a challenge at home, at school, and at work. How do we handle in each of these spaces the presence of political discussions, and how do we keep it from interfering with relationships, whether it’s at school, whether it’s at work, whether it’s at home?
[00:14:34] RHD: I love this question. Again, what’s so interesting is that if we let it, it’s going to be omnipresent, right? If we don’t put any type of guardrail around it, of course, it’s going to spread because that’s what’s on the collective top of mind, right? That’s what we see everywhere. We go. We turn something on social media. We pick up our phone. It’s just everywhere.
Now, what’s kind of interesting, though, what’s amazing about the human condition is that we get excited by others people’s enthusiasm. Let me explain. Let’s say we’re having a conversation, you and I, and we’re talking about politics. But I’ve already, let’s say, for example, thought to myself, “You know what? I want to tell Paula about this really cool book that I read that has nothing to do with politics.” Hold a little bit of space for that conversation because that’s part of what we do in relationships. We hold space. We engage in dialogue. Then to say, “Oh, you know what? Can I tell you about this amazing book that I just read?”
What’s interesting, the human brain will say, “I want to learn about this. What is she so excited about?” We actually can take control of the conversation. To be able to have those little breaks or what we call interruptions, Paula, we actually have to do things other than watch the news, right? We want to read books. We want to find that new album. I can give you an example. Just yesterday, I was in a conversation, and it was getting very politically driven. I paused and I said, “Speaking about division, have you heard Post Malone’s new album? He’s wrote a country album.”
[00:15:59] PF: I love that.
[00:16:00] RHD: Literally, I started talking about, “Wow, it’s wild that he has this audience group, and then Post Malone is now doing this number with Dolly Parton.” They’re like, “Oh, my gosh. I didn’t know about it.” I’m like, “Hey, let’s look,” and literally pulled up the album on my phone. I’m like, “Look, he did a duet with Tim McGraw.” I literally went on this tangent about Post Malone, and it was interesting because afterwards, one of my colleagues said to me, “Wow, Robyne. I never knew you were such a Post Malone fan.” I’m like, “Well, I am but I’m a bigger fan of not talking about politics for a full hour, right?”
Again, just get excited about other things. We’ll see, also, we get a moment of reprieve from it, right? We just get a little bit of a break of the onslaught. Again, the other piece, too, is I try to challenge myself each and every day to learn a new piece of information that I can share with people that, sure, it makes me really good at trivia. But, also, just so that way we can drop these little thought gems into conversations. That way, we can steer where some of these conversations are going.
[00:16:59] PF: That takes a little bit of thoughtfulness and, as you are noting, a little advanced preparation because you have to go in intentionally knowing that, okay, these conversations might happen, and here’s what I have to divert it to something apolitical.
[00:17:14] RHD: Yes. What’s interesting is it takes a little bit of effort, 100%. But it also takes a lot of effort to re-regulate ourselves after a very difficult conversation or a very upsetting conversation or something that’s we have to do a lot of damage repair afterwards. You’re going to have to do work, right? The question is what kind of work do you want to do? Do you want to contribute to being able to have interesting conversations outside of the politics? Then if it’s yes, then, okay, then let’s be a little bit proactive about that.
A place in our day where we can build that in is first thing in the morning, right? First thing in the morning before we get into that pattern of just focusing on the media and the news, challenge yourself to maybe find a book that talks about interesting facts or listen to music or perhaps a podcast that isn’t politically driven. Just so that way we can be activating that desire to acquire information and knowledge that isn’t so polarizing.
[00:18:14] PF: Then what about those situations where you’re with somebody, whether it’s work, home, school, and we’ve all known these people where they’re not going to let it go? They want to have that debate. They want to have that conversation. You don’t agree with them, you don’t want to engage, and they’re pretty relentless. There’s two things going on. One, you’re getting stressed out because you’re repressing what you want to say, and it’s getting combative a lot of times. How do you handle situations like that where the other party just doesn’t want to let it go?
[00:18:46] RHD: Again, this is an important conversation because this doesn’t just happen for people that they know what to do. It’s a skill, right? It’s a skill to be able to identify where is your line and how are you able to protect yourself. How can you protect your peace and make sure that you can navigate those situations? I just want to hold space to let folks know. That’s not a character trait. It’s a skill you actually have to practice. It’s not just people can naturally do it one day. It’s like, oh, you turn 30, and all of a sudden now you have the gift of being able to do this. It’s a skill.
My first invitation for you to think about that is if you’re going to go into a conflict situation that you know it’s likely, maybe it’s a family gathering and you know it’s going to be a couple hours and it’s very likely that this is going to come up, is, A, to see if you can get out ahead of it. How we can do that is, for example, to say things like, “Hey, you know what? I’m happy to talk with you for 10 minutes. I’ll talk about this for 10 minutes. But after that, we’re going to be talking about football,” right? Or, “You know what? Ten minutes we’re going to talk about gardens.” Or just let people know that you have a boundary that like, “I’m not going to spend all of Thanksgiving in this discord. I will have some limits.”
Then the question happens. What’s so interesting, especially with what you’ve described there about somebody who is quite problematic, is you put a line in the sand, and then they just walk over it, right? What we have to do is our own accountability that after we’ve set a boundary, if somebody’s going to walk over it, we have to remove ourselves from the situation, right? That’s when you’re like, “You know what? I’m going to go play with the kids,” or, “I’m going to go walk the dog,” or, “I’m doing dishes,” right? Literally remove yourself from those situations because nothing good comes from them because they’re just looking for a fight. That’s their emotional home actually is that they just want to feel all of that adrenaline and all of that kind of feeling that happens when we start getting really positional. They love what that feels like, and that might not feel good for you. You want to make sure that you have a boundary, and you have a hard stop.
The other kind of invitation, especially if you’re in situations where you can’t walk away, this is the magic of us all carrying around AirPods, right? I have literally been on a flight where somebody’s getting very political and very difficult, and I’m like – I said, “I think we’re good. I think we’ve kind of hit my threshold of me wanting to talk about [inaudible 00:21:06] when we’re on a six-hour flight, Sir,” right? Like, “We’ve hit my threshold.” Then he kept going, and then I just put my headphones on, right?
It’s just, again, people might perceive it as being rude. It’s like, well, him not respecting my boundary was rude. I have no problem saying no to that because, ultimately, I’m the only person who can protect my peace. I’m the only person who’s able to do that, and I want to make sure that I have something left over for the other people that I need to work with and be of service for.
[00:21:33] PF: Yes. I have a couple of friends who both have parents. One has – it’s her dad. One, it’s her mother. Their parents are older, and both of them have been inspirational to me because they have very different views than their respective parents. But they both have the mindset of this is the only parent I have left, and I don’t know how much time. Having already lost the other parent, they’re like, “I don’t know how much time I have with them, and I’m not going to spend it arguing over someone who doesn’t know my name.” It’s like if her mom has a certain idea and she hears it out, sometimes she’ll be like, “Oh, you know what? That’s – I heard it a little differently,” and then diverts the conversation.
I think that is something that I’ve really learned from because it doesn’t have to be an aging parent who’s staring down death. We can use that same approach with any person in our life that we care about.
[00:22:31] RHD: Yes. You’re absolutely right, and that’s a beautiful example. It’s interesting. A friend of mine, she and her husband had been married. They’re happily married. It’s a beautiful couple, it’s a great dynamic, and they literally are on opposite sides. I love how, despite their political differences, the respect that they have for one another supersedes that, right? The fact that they respect the other person as a free thinker, as a critical thinker, that based on your lived experience and your upbringing and what you see in the world, they just hold space and regard for one another. The respect is actually triumphing over the different political views, and I just think that that’s possible, right? It is possible that we’re seeing the person beyond the political view.
Even, for example, when we’re talking about illnesses or even disabilities, we often say it’s like a person with autism. It’s a person with something, right? Every time, when we really want to stay human-centered in any type of conversation, in any extreme, we want to see the person first who happens to hold these political views or the person who happens to have ADHD or the person who happens to be working remotely. Whatever the thing is, it’s after the person.
The other last little piece on that, too, is I think right now, there’s this interesting disconnect between, for example, feedback and disagreements, where we take it really personal, right? We think it’s like if I hold this political view and you don’t agree with it, the real messages is you don’t think I’m very smart. Or you don’t think I’m very educated or very informed. We’re personalizing feedback right now where feedback is its own thing. Our sense of person should be separated as well. I think that helps people navigate those pretty icy waters.
[00:24:24] PF: I’m so glad you brought that up because that was going to be my next question is how do we keep from taking things personally because we do. First of all, why? Why do we take – if someone says, “I like this book,” and you’re like, “I don’t,” we don’t take that personally. But in politics, if they say, “This is how I feel. This is what I think. This is what I believe,” then suddenly we take that as a personal affront and something that we have to defend our thinking. Why is that? Why is it different with politics?
[00:24:53] RHD: Yes. I love this again. I think what happens in this case is there’s a lot of ego that is built into that feeling of rejection, right? If somebody’s rejecting our idea, it feels very ego-impacted, right? The same as I could say to my husband like, “Hey, I feel like pizza tonight for dinner,” and he’s like, “No, I think we should go with Mexican.” I’m like I don’t take that as a personal, “Oh, my goodness. You don’t think I have a culinary pallet. How dare you think I’m this uncultured person.” It’s just like, “Nah.” It’s just conversational. It’s transactional, whereas I think what happens as you’re describing is when people are talking about politics, it’s become so enmeshed because it’s become this ego but also this moral issue, right? That our morality is tied into this, and anytime we start to braid and tangle up morality with our thoughts and our opinions, it’s going to be really polarizing.
It’s the same as I was working with the person recently, and we were talking about nutrition. She said, “Oh, Robyne. I was so bad last night with my nutrition.” When she said, “I was so bad last night,” I was like, “Oh, did you like punch a cat in the face? What did you do? Morally, what did you do that was so bad?” She’s like, “I ate cookies after 8eight o’clock.” I’m like, “Sister, that is not a moral offense, right? You’re human.”
[00:26:12] PF: We can work with that.
[00:26:13] RHD: Yes. We can work with that. You’re not a bad person because you ate a cookie after 8pm. I would love to get my hands on whoever said that the calories after 8pm are different than the calories before 8pm because I don’t – calories are the same whatever time we eat them. But, again, it’s just the fact that we’ve interwoven even nutrition as a moral issue. Again, we want to try to pull some of those threads apart because they’re tangled, but they don’t need to be when we just slow down enough – actually really be aware of what we’re compacting and what we’re connecting that doesn’t need to be connected.
[00:26:51] PF: That’s terrific. As we move through this season, the best thing that we can do is lead by example. How do we do that? What are some things that – practices that we can put in place, so as we go out in the world and we give people space to disagree with us or hold their own opinion, how do we set ourselves up to do that and not stress ourselves out?
[00:27:12] RHD: My gentle invitation to each and every one of us is it starts first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning, we really want to set the intention that we want to be regulated, that we want to operate in a place of calm. We want to be able to know what that feels like. That’s why, for example, waking up and grabbing some water and going for a walk and just really set the tone for how you want to be during the day.
If we wake up and the first thing we do is grab the phone, or we wake up and the first thing we’re doing is feeling that scarcity, that shortage like, “I didn’t get enough sleep, and I don’t have enough time to do this,” and we’re putting ourselves on our back foot. We’re going to have a harder time to be able to set that example and live in that way when we’re not there ourselves. The easiest place where we have the most control of our day is really first thing in the morning, right? Doing the things that make you feel well-resourced, make you feel grounded. Take the time in the morning to get yourself straight. Get your head on straight, your heart aligned. Then you go out into the world and do the best that you can. Again, not taking everything as personal, recognizing that there’s a lot of dysregulated people.
The other gentle invitation, too, is to recognize sometimes when you’re having conversations perhaps with people that aren’t skilled to have the conversation, right? You might be skilled to hold two point of views. You might be skilled to be able to show empathy and compassion or even just respectful dialogue, right? Maybe you have those skills. But just be aware not everybody has those skills, right? Setting ourselves up with reasonable expectations that some people aren’t skilled to have the conversations how we would love to have them with them.
Again, we wouldn’t necessarily say that to a person, right? I would never say to my sibling, “Unfortunately, you’re unskilled to be able to have a conversation with me.” But just you yourself knowing that they perhaps from their own lived experience don’t have the skills to be able to really engage in what’s called and what we talk about in the research. This is executive functioning. This is the ability to plan, to understand consequences, to organize our thoughts, to stay regulated. Executive functioning is an area that a lot of folks in our society struggle with. Again, it’s not judgment. It’s an explanation, not an excuse.
[00:29:25] PF: I love this. Dr. Robyne, as always, you have so much to teach us. You’ve given us some fantastic insights. We’re going to tell people how they can learn more about you, how they can find your book, Stress Wisely, because I think we all need to stress wiser during this stressful time. But thank you so much for sitting down and sharing this time with us.
[00:29:43] RHD: Thank you. It was such a joy to speak with you today.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:29:50] PF: That was Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, talking about maintaining our mental health throughout and beyond the election cycle. If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Robyne, check out her books and her podcast, or follow her on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode.
We truly hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Live Happy Now. If you aren’t already receiving us every week, we invite you to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. While you’re there, feel free to drop us a review and let us know what you think.
That’s all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.
