I work with dying Trump supporters. It's...confusing by Scott Janssen
I’m driving down a gravel road in rural North Carolina, looking at mailbox numbers. A hospice social worker, I’m headed to meet Petey, a patient dying of metastatic cancer. When I’d called his wife Jackie to schedule our first visit, she’d told me they’d been married more than 60 years. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she’d said, her voice heavy with sadness. “I don’t know how I’m going to make it in this world when he’s gone.”
A few homes down I see a ranch style house with a Trump flag hanging limp from what looks like a homemade flagpole. Hell no, not that one, I think, before realizing the number I’m looking for is on a grey mailbox at a driveway leading to that very house.
Now, I see that my anger may have fueled a cognitive distortion or two. Or three. Cognitive distortions are patterns of thought, typically automatic and unconscious, that cause an inaccurate, negative view of situations, people, and/or events. These include things like jumping to conclusions; black-and-white thinking; negative mental filtering; overgeneralizing; mindreading (incorrectly believing we know what others are thinking, what their motives are); and emotional reasoning (believing that if we are feeling something, or if what we are thinking is associated with a strong emotion, it must be true).
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Excellent, thought-provoking piece.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/4/6/2233194/-I-work-with-dying-Trump-supporters-It-s-confusing?detail=emaildkre&pm_source=DKRE&pm_medium=email
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