Americans are facing uncertainty, and it's starting to seem as if uncertainty is the norm. Over the past eight months we have battled the never ending war with COVID, started, stopped and restarted virtual school, and witnessed the reanimation of a civil rights movement. We've watched daily as news outlets recount death tolls and survival numbers for the pandemic, all while trying to give our family a semblance of normalcy, but nothing about this is normal and the helpers we are used to turning to are burning the wicks at both ends.

In today's climate, therapists are battling the same battles as our patients. Once upon a time before COVID, our stressors would occasionally overlap, but in recent months the stressors are exactly the same as the majority of our clients. Therapists are encouraging our clients to do the very basics to keep from spiraling into a depression, all while we struggle to change out of our pajama bottoms for virtual sessions. At times it's difficult to put aside your own personal struggles to focus on the needs of our clients, but we still show up.

We keep showing up ready to hold space even though our own cups are empty, but the fear of the election outcome is a different level of connectedness that we as therapists were not prepared for. The fear around elections is not new, of course; we navigated this in 2016. But with the very palpable division in our country, our clients are scared. They're scared of either outcome, and so are we.