Irritation at anything and everything, the urge to disappear from the subject, a tiredness that doesn't come from any effort. On the strain of the final stretch, and how to tell the tiredness of the moment from a condition that was already there.
It was over a container with no lid. She opened the fridge, found the beans uncovered on the top shelf, and what came out of her mouth was much bigger than the container. Her husband looked at her, startled. She was startled too, a second later. She wasn’t angry at him, and she couldn’t have said what she was angry at.
It was Thursday night. During the day, she had muted two group chats and left a third, turned off the car radio when the topic came back around, and steered the conversation elsewhere three times when someone at work started talking about Sunday. Not out of conviction, and not out of fear of arguing. Out of tiredness. A tiredness that didn’t seem to come from any effort, but that weighed on her whole body.
If she had the nerve to say it out loud, she would say that what she wanted was to disappear until Monday. Not follow anything, not weigh in, not listen to anyone. Wake up when it was all over.
Brazil’s runoff between Flávio Bolsonaro and Lula is two days away. Those planning to vote for one, those planning to vote for the other, and those who still haven’t decided are, for the most part, reaching this Friday the same way: worn out.
A tiredness that doesn’t come from the body but weighs on it
Physical tiredness follows a familiar logic: a person exerts themselves, wears down, rests, and recovers. What many people are feeling in this final stretch is of a different nature. Nobody has been carrying anything heavy. But there have been months of campaigning, a tight first round, and three weeks of overtime, and through all that time a silent kind of work has been going on inside.
It’s the work of holding back what you think at the family lunch. Of weighing a sentence before sending it to the group chat. Of hearing a coworker say something that bothers you and deciding, in two seconds, whether it’s worth answering. Of anticipating the argument that might happen over the weekend. Of carrying an expectation about the outcome, and the fear of the opposite outcome, with nowhere to put either one. This work doesn’t show up on the calendar, but it drains you.
This isn’t just a Brazilian phenomenon. In 2024, a survey by the American Psychological Association found 69% of American adults saying the presidential election was a significant source of stress; in 2016, it was 52%. Polarized elections are exhausting in any language.
The irritation that picks the wrong target
Irritation is usually the first sign, and it almost always goes to the wrong address. It’s rarely aimed at the debate, the candidate, or the poll. It lands on the container with no lid, on the kid who asks the same thing twice, on the driver up ahead, on the coworker who talks loudly on the phone. Tolerance has dropped, and any small friction takes on the size of an insult.
It doesn’t respect political lines either. Some people get irritated with the uncle who votes differently and, in the same week, with the cousin who votes the same way, because she won’t stop talking about it. Some get irritated with themselves, for getting into an argument they had promised to avoid, or for staying quiet when they felt they should speak up.
It’s worth saying clearly: this irritation, under these conditions, is not a character flaw. It’s what happens to someone who has spent weeks with their margin of tolerance eaten up by a subject that never leaves the stage. The problem isn’t feeling it. It’s not realizing where it comes from, and letting it do damage to relationships that have nothing to do with it.
Fight or disappear: two ways out of the same threat
The urge to disappear from the subject often comes with a touch of shame, as if it were indifference, cowardice, or a lack of commitment. It’s worth looking at it differently.
The British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion, who worked with groups during and after World War II, described in Experiences in Groups (1961) states in which a group sets aside the task in front of it and starts behaving as if it had come together for another reason, never spoken but shared by everyone. He called these states basic assumptions. In one of them, fight-flight, the group acts as if there were a danger and only two possible responses: confront it or escape. What matters here is that fight and flight appear in the same assumption. They are two ways out of the same sense of threat.
A polarized campaign pushes a lot of people into this state at the same time. That’s why the same person who is ready for battle in the morning just wants to vanish by nightfall. These aren’t two different people, or two opposite attitudes. It’s the same alarm, now shouting, now running.
Bion set against these states what he called the work group: one that can attend to the task in front of it and think about it. What gets lost most in these weeks may not be calm. It’s the capacity to think with some room to breathe, without everything turning into attack or flight.
Tiredness of the moment or a condition that was already there
This is the distinction that matters most, and it isn’t always easy to make on your own.
Tiredness that comes from the context has a few hallmarks. It’s tied to the subject: it gets better when the person manages to spend a day away from it and worse when the topic comes back. It leaves room for other things: a good lunch is still good, a conversation with a friend about anything else still brings relief, sleep recovers when it gets the chance. And there’s a date when it starts to wind down. In the weeks after the result, with more or less of a hangover, it tends to give way.
In some cases, the picture is different. The election didn’t create the tiredness; it gave it a convenient explanation. When the person looks honestly, they realize they were already running low on energy before the campaign began. That the lack of interest isn’t only in politics: it reaches work, friends, the things that used to bring pleasure, including the ones that have nothing to do with the country. That the irritation doesn’t need a reason to show up. That sleep is poor even on calm days, appetite has changed, concentration has gotten shorter, and a sense of heaviness is there when the person wakes up, before any news. Sometimes it’s an anxiety that already existed, attached to other themes, which found in the election a new subject, and a far more socially acceptable one.
In these cases, “it’s the election” works as an alibi. It’s an explanation everyone accepts, that embarrasses no one, and that promises to resolve itself on Sunday. That is exactly why it can postpone, for weeks or months, an evaluation that was already needed.
In someone who already has a diagnosed mood disorder, persistent irritability, short nights without feeling tired, or energy far above the usual may also be something else, and they deserve to be brought to the treating doctor without waiting for the election to pass.
What the coming weeks may show
Sunday will pass, and the weeks that follow work, in a way, as clinical information. If the noise dies down and the tiredness dies down with it, it was probably the context. If the noise dies down and the tiredness stays, the election was covering something up, not causing it.
But some signs can’t wait. When sleep disappears for several nights in a row. When distress starts to take over the day, and the person can no longer work, take care of the house, or be with the people they love. When frightening thoughts come up. In those cases, a specialist evaluation shouldn’t wait for the result of any election.
A careful psychiatric evaluation exists precisely to make the distinction this piece tries to describe: what is the strain of a difficult period and what is a condition that calls for its own treatment. It looks at the history, the timeline, the body, and not just at what the person is feeling this week.
And there’s a place for psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy that goes beyond telling one thing from the other. The irritation of these weeks, the urge to disappear, the outsized anger at someone close often carry more than politics. Sometimes an old disappointment with the family, resurfacing at the lunch table. Sometimes a fear of losing one’s footing that long predates any candidate. Having a place to examine this calmly, without having to defend a position or be convinced of anything, tends to give the person back something the campaign took away: the possibility of thinking about what they feel, instead of just reacting.
The election ends on Sunday. Whatever doesn’t end with it deserves a careful look.
Related reading
- Depression is not sadness: when the body stops first
- It is not just the way he is
- The guilt of losing your patience with someone you love
Is this tiredness just about the election?
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Dr. Leonardo Sodré is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in Brasília, Brazil (CRM-DF 14.206 · RQE 14.761). He holds a PhD in Psychiatry from UFRGS and teaches at the University of Brasília School of Medicine. This content is informational and educational, and does not replace individual clinical evaluation, diagnosis, or treatment.