Jeffrey S. Barkin, MD, DLFAPA, is a practicing psychiatrist in Portland and the former president of the Maine Medical Association. He co-hosts “A Healthy Conversation” on WGAN.
“I don’t know how to fix this.”
The man sitting across from me was not talking about depression, even though depression brought him to my office. He was not describing a failing marriage, financial hardship or a frightening diagnosis. He was talking about his younger brother.
For more than 60 years, they had shared nearly everything. They hunted together every fall. Their children grew up together. They celebrated birthdays, graduations and holidays around the same table. When their parents became ill, they cared for them side by side.
Then came an election. A disagreement about politics became an argument. The argument led to silence. The silence lasted years.
“I don’t even remember how it started,” he finally admitted. “I only know I don’t have a brother anymore.” That sentence has stayed with me.
As a psychiatrist, I’ve learned that people rarely come to my office grieving an election. They come grieving what was lost because of it: a brother, a friend, a child who no longer calls, a neighbor who now looks the other way.
As another election season approaches, Americans will again be inundated with campaign commercials, polls, fundraising appeals, social media posts and predictions of catastrophe. Candidates will insist that the future of the nation hangs in the balance. Supporters will become energized. Critics will become louder. None of that is new; democracy has always involved vigorous disagreement, as it should. Important issues deserve passionate debate.
What concerns me is something quieter. The greatest casualty of political incivility may not be democracy itself. The casualty I see is the quiet death of ordinary relationships. Democracy survives elections. Some families do not.
Somewhere along the way, many of us began confusing conviction with contempt. Conviction is not the problem. We should care deeply about questions involving war, taxes, immigration, abortion, guns, healthcare, education and the proper role of government. These are consequential issues, and reasonable people will disagree about them, sometimes profoundly.
Contempt is something else. Contempt transforms disagreement about an idea into judgment about a person. Someone who disagrees with us is no longer simply mistaken. He becomes stupid, selfish, ignorant, immoral or dangerous. Once that happens, an important psychological shift occurs. We stop trying to understand the other person and start gathering evidence for why our negative judgment was correct all along. Every provocative statement becomes confirmation. Every reasonable statement is discounted. Ambiguity disappears. We hear what supports our conclusion and overlook what complicates it.
In psychiatry, we spend considerable time trying to understand how people arrive at their beliefs, fears and judgments. We listen for context because behavior that initially appears irrational often becomes more understandable once we know the history behind it. That does not mean every belief is correct or every behavior excusable. Understanding and agreement are not the same thing. But understanding usually requires curiosity, and contempt destroys curiosity.
Political labels make that easier: Republican. Democrat. Liberal. Conservative. MAGA. Socialist. Woke. Extremist.
Once we assign someone a category, we can convince ourselves that we already know everything important about them. As physicians, we are trained to resist premature conclusions. A patient may arrive certain that he knows the cause of his symptoms. Sometimes he is right. Sometimes he is not. Either way, we begin by listening because the story matters.
I have watched political differences damage marriages, friendships and relationships between parents and adult children. I have seen families that survived decades of ordinary disagreements become estranged over politics. Politics is often only the spark. The lasting injury comes from what happens afterward: humiliation, contempt and the conviction that reconciliation would somehow amount to surrender.
Once we begin regarding another person as fundamentally foolish or morally defective, even neutral behavior is interpreted through that lens. Listening becomes harder. Empathy begins to feel undeserved. An apology may be dismissed as manipulation. An effort at reconciliation may be interpreted as weakness.
And because political beliefs increasingly function as markers of identity, arguments can quickly become personal. A disagreement about immigration may no longer feel like a disagreement about policy. A dispute over abortion, guns or taxes can sound like an accusation about who we are and what kind of people we are.
Yet people are far more complicated than their ballots. The Republican sitting beside you at Thanksgiving may also be the brother who drove through a snowstorm when you needed help. The Democrat across the street may be the neighbor who shoveled your driveway after surgery and never asked for anything in return. Those facts do not disappear on Election Day.
Another patient once described a group of longtime friends who had met for coffee every Tuesday morning for years. They talked about their spouses, grandchildren, sports, health problems and all the ordinary details that make up a friendship. Then politics began dominating the conversation. At first, there were jokes and occasional arguments. Eventually the arguments became the point. Several members stopped attending. Others followed. Before long, there was no Tuesday coffee group.
“I miss my Tuesdays,” he told me. He did not say he missed winning the arguments. He said he missed his friends.
We sometimes behave as though every objectionable political statement requires a response. It does not. Sometimes there is wisdom in allowing someone we care about to be wrong.
There is even more wisdom in remembering that occasionally the person who is wrong may be us. That is not intellectual weakness. It is humility. One of the most useful phrases in psychiatry is also one of the simplest: “Tell me more.” It conveys neither agreement nor surrender. It communicates curiosity.
Compare that with, “How can you possibly believe that?” The first invites explanation. The second contains a verdict. That difference may determine whether a conversation continues or a relationship begins to fracture.
None of this means abandoning deeply held beliefs. Civility is not moral surrender, and compromise is neither always possible nor always desirable.
Modern political communication often makes that destruction easier. Outrage attracts attention. Humiliation spreads quickly. The most inflammatory statement is often the one most widely shared, while nuance and uncertainty attract far less interest. That can create the impression that Americans spend their lives enraged at one another. Most do not.
After a close election, nearly half the voters may wake up disappointed. Yet Republicans and Democrats will still work together the next morning. Their children will attend the same schools. They will shop in the same grocery stores, sit beside one another at Little League games and wait in the same doctors’ offices. Eventually, many will stand together at weddings and funerals.
That perspective is critical. Politics, however important, occupies only part of our human life. Years from now, few of us will remember every political argument we won. We will remember who came when we were sick. Who telephoned after someone we loved died. Who celebrated our children’s successes. Who made us laugh. And, most importantly, who showed up.
The man who told me he had lost his brother understood that too late. The election that helped separate them is long over. Politicians have come and gone. Campaign signs have disappeared. News stories that once seemed momentous have been replaced by hundreds of others. His brother is still absent.
Before the next argument, that may be the calculation worth making. Ask yourself not only, “Am I right?” but also, “What am I risking in order to prove it?” Sometimes the answer will be that the principle matters enough to justify the conflict. Sometimes the answer will be Tuesday mornings.
As another political season grows louder, participate. Democracy needs citizens who care. It also needs citizens who understand that political opponents remain neighbors, colleagues, friends and family after the votes have been counted.
Preserve some humility. Protect the relationships that matter more. And remember that the person on the other side of the ballot is still on your side of the street.