ABQ Times

Meet Kristina Sowar, a medical doctor and associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at The University of New Mexico. She also serves as the program director for the UNM School of Medicine’s General Psychiatry Residency program and co-director for the School of Medicine’s Office of Professional Wellbeing. Her work has been showcased in journal articles, and she has won three teaching awards since 2019.

1. Why are elections stressful?

“They can be a very emotionally heightened experience, just that time of year for people can be polarizing, I think between opinions and different experiences that come up. I think for elections, one of the more challenging pieces for people is that they may have a lot of investment, a lot of importance personally for what’s happening during the election, but similarly not have a lot of control about the outcome, and so sometimes the mix of those pieces can make it more complex.”

2. Could this election season be more stressful than others?

“There’s a lot of ingredients right now that certainly creates a pretty stressful experience for people both in terms of what’s happening in the individual democratic and republican parties, but also, I think globally where people may have heightened concern about the impact of the election or the outcome of the election and how that might affect the perception or relationship with the United States more globally.”

3. How to deal with family who may have different opinions?

“Those can be hard; how to navigate relationships or family situations with people who may have different perspectives or different beliefs. I think a few pieces can be grounding going into the family connection and trying to maintain an openness of curiosity about why people may feel like they do. But for a lot of people, just being able to keep in touch with when do I feel like I’m getting a little too activated or when does this feel like it’s overwhelming or too much, and in turn carving spaces to pause or step away. Hopefully also being able to set boundaries around let's change the subject, let’s move to something else honoring that it may not be a space that people can come to a very peaceful equilibrium on.”

4. How does one deal with stress when it relates to elections?

“I do think it’s a great opportunity for people to build a practice or maintain mindfulness: okay, how am I doing? Am I feeling stressed? Am I feeling activated? Am I feeling scared? Worried? Whatever might be coming up—and developing or practicing ways that you can take care of yourself in those experiences.”

5. Could a break from social media help?

“Those pieces can be stressful but also activate trauma or other experiences people have had that may not only become temporarily difficult but also bring up things from people's past that can be more challenging. For many people taking a break, taking space, catching themselves if they’re in this repetitive trying to watch more obtain more—how to carve space and do something different.”

6. Where can someone find help with stress locally?

“On UNM’s campus, the Student Health Center (SHAC) has lots of great resources for mental health: more holistic support includes counseling and relatively urgent availability services for people; so SHAC can be a great place to start. There are also some online services there. The north campus on UNM where we have additional mental health and psychiatric services has availability 24/7; certainly other mental health or primary care professionals through community.”

7. How can someone reduce stress at home?

“Breath-work can be really accessible and fairly meaningful way work on that: Different ways are done kind counting routines practices—but taking one three minutes do some deep breathing paced rhythmic breathing help reset our nervous system bit bring down our sympathetic nervous system help balance out some stress hormones get activated under lot stress pressure.”