Believe it or not, “Trump Anxiety Disorder” isn’t just a joke. Apparently it’s A Thing. That’s according to a psychologist in a 2017 essay written for a publication, co-edited by psychiatrists from Harvard and Yale medical schools. In addition, the American Psychological Association also reports a five percent rise in “politically induced stress levels.”

Now you’re not going to find “Trump Anxiety Disorder” in the DSM-V, since it’s not an official diagnosis. However, psychologist Jennifer Panning says it differs from generalized anxiety disorder — which is a real diagnosis — because its “symptoms were specific to the election of Trump and the resultant unpredictable sociopolitical climate.”

So how do you know if you’ve got the dreaded TAD? The symptoms include feelings of helplessness, loss of control, and worry about the future. Oh, and here’s one more thing — it tends to occur among people who spend too much time on social media. Gee, ya think?

Here’s how this horror has impacted the victims of Trump Anxiety Disorder:

• They question if “Trump is gonna blow us all up,”and are afraid of the world ending.
• Gay clients of psychologists are “significantly concerned about the legitimacy of their marriage in the future.”
• Women are worried that they won’t be able to abort their unwanted babies because of Trump-nominated justices.
• They experience insomnia, like this woman in San Diego: “When Robert Mueller’s indictments news dropped, I wound up staying up in the middle of the night when I should have been sleeping, just thinking about it, just worried for our country.”

But don’t laugh too hard, Trump supporters, because some of your political kin may be suffering from Trump Anxiety Disorder, too. Except here it seems to be a byproduct of having to deal with people who went off the deep end after Trump’s election. It’s especially bad when those people are your family members.

Like one official with the Trump administration who faced not only anxiety from working in a high pressure environment, but had to come home to a liberal wife and daughter. His therapist said:

“His daughter was starting to hate him. It was very hard on his spouse, too. The wife couldn’t take it anymore. It’s tough when one spouse is at war with the children.”

Sadly, in this case, even though the husband did leave the job, the couple eventually divorced. Thanks, Trump Anxiety Disorder.

So how did a nation of tough individuals who conquered the Great Plains:

Or crossed an ocean to become (legal!) Americans:

Or struggled against segregation and Jim Crow laws:

Ever become this, just because of a Presidential election?

Now do you recall the 2012 Presidential election? I sure do. My husband and I were at a GOP watch party, meeting with other happy Republicans fully expecting that Mitt Romney would defeat President Obama.

Except it didn’t happen that way, did it? As the returns showed up on the big screens in the event hall, the gaiety turned into gloom. We were going to have another four years of President Obama, while many of us were expecting we would welcome a President-elect Romney.

So what did we do the next day? Well, my husband returned to his studio to get design work done, including work for clients who were probably Obama supporters. I took the long trek to our rehab clinic near Ft. Leavenworth, where a group of us speech pathologists, occupational, and physical therapists worked with military members and their families. No one mentioned the election. It was just another day serving the people who serve the nation.

And that’s the way we should always look at elections. We win some, we lose some. Learn it, live it, love it. And for heaven’s sake, get off the damn social media, and don’t base your life’s value on whomever occupies the White House. We’re all worth much more than that.