In the final analysis, the Trump Crazy Train is about this:  how much space in our heads does Donald Trump is he entitled to, does he deserve, or do we wish to give him?

To me, the most disturbing thing about Trump is his aggressive and invasive intrusion into my thoughts and privacy, and sense of self.  He spreads prolifically and undesirably and harmfully.

I understand now that he wants to get inside our heads, but it’s up to me if he can or does.

There is something creepy about his need and ability to that.  It’s about dignity and identity. He doesn’t get to share that big a piece of me. It is both intrusive and incestuous, and it is the source of his power and presence.

We can live on his terms or ours.

For me, the freedom to choose what train I ride has been a seminal goal of my life. Trump takes up more space than I care to give him. Many of his supporters disagree. He has seduced many of them.

For many, he has become a kind of Ur-God, someone to be worshipped and protected. The politician who can do no wrong to his or her followers is not a politician at all, but something else, something that is not right for democracy.

No politician deserves that much of me.

How do I stay off of the Trump Crazy Train when I have been writing about it almost daily for several months?  It seems like a contradiction in terms.

President Trump gets paid a lot of money to play golf and tweet all day and work to screw up our election structure. I would imagine that would piss working people off in time, or perhaps, he will get sick of himself and prepare for his Florida winter of golfing and more intense tweeting.

This is good work if you can get it, I don’t imagine anyone would offer it to me.

Still, I’ve learned in the past four years how to (mostly) stay off of the Trump Crazy Train. When I stumble, I have a great therapist to call or I just go for longer walks with Zinnia and meditate for longer periods.

I usually recover quickly and return to myself.

By now, my therapist is brimming with ideas about staying off the train and living with stress. She has a lot of clients asking her for help.

One way to stay off the train is to love the person you are living with. Maria and I have learned to ground one another and get each other through the bumps and valleys of life.

We know how to lead each other out of panic and into reality. One of the first things I learned about panic attacks is that they come when we lie to ourselves. Our conscious self does one way, the subconscious another.

It’s rare for me to panic about things that are really frightening, usually, they come when someone or something triggers something old and dark.

It helps to have three wonderful dogs. Trump is getting boring and repetitious, he reminds me of an old Vaudeville hoofer dancing past his time. Time to hang it up, when he rants, I walk the dogs.

They keep me company, make me smile, go on walks, meditate at my feet, wake me up whenever I try to nap (above) and bring me down to earth when I begin to lift off.

Writing about politics was helpful. It forces me to step back, seek perspective, and stay out of the daily scrum.

My big discovery in 2016 was that doing good feels good, and you don’t need to be Mother Teresa or St. Francis to do it.

Every day, I make a point to help a Mansion aide, bring clothing or soap to a Mansion resident, get gift cards to a refugee family, help a kid buy a winter coat, make sure the school has the safety equipment necessary to function during a pandemic.

I call them Small Acts of Great Kindness and good people all over the country have signed up to help. It works every time.

Doing good is the healthiest work I’ve ever found, and it has become the focal point of my life.

I do not watch any news on any devices from dusk to 7 or 8 a.m. Very little of what is on cable or digital news is actually news, most of it is confusing and hysterical slop repeated 200 times a day.

I do not argue my beliefs and opinions on any form of social media ever. Social media is an integral part of the Crazy Trump Train, a kind of crack for the angry or the anxious. I don’t care to talk to myself that much.

I am fond of my beliefs, much too much to dilute or diminish them by fighting about them with strangers, family members, or friends.

Take me or leave me, but don’t send me conspiracy theories in the mail. When I get one I just explain that Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are hiding out in my barn, plotting to take everyone’s freedoms away. The sign on the barn says “Caution: The Radical Left Lives Here.”

The messengers invariably flee.

I am careful when I look at the news.

When something important happens, it will be waiting for me in the morning. People who watch the news 100 times a day are giving themselves serious mental health problems. There is now a ton of evidence about this, it is boom time for therapists.

Donald Trump is a 24/7 chaos machine, our first addictive President. People who love him or hate him pay close attention to him and talk and argue about him all of the time.

Among his many gifts to us is what the shrinks call the Trump Effect:

Trump, writes Dr. William Doherty in the new book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, has triggered a revolution among therapists, expanding the frame of psychotherapy now and beyond.

Dr. Doherty is a professor of family social science and director of the Minnesota Couples On The Brink project. In May 2016, he authored the Citizen Therapist Manifesto Against Trumpism, which was signed by more than 3,800 therapists.

One new therapeutic category he advocates is called Public Stress, which refers to challenges for personal and relational well being stemming from forces in the neighborhood, the community, and local institutions such as schools and the police, as well as forces in the larger, political, economic, cultural and historic environment.

In other words, Trump.

The second is Political Stress: This is a type of public stress that refers to how the words, actions, and policies of government bodies, elected officials, and candidates for public office create challenges for personal and relational well-being.

Well, Trump again, but other things too.

The Trump Crazy Train is powered by what psychologists call the Trump Effect on the human psyche. He is desperate for attention and affirmation, he takes up an enormous amount of space in our imaginations, media, and civic life.

This, I think, is why so many people are wary of him, and people are already emailing me about what they call “Trump Burnout,” even some of his oldest supporters are just getting weary of him. He is getting boring and predictable.

Using the language of “public” and “political” stress allows therapists to expand their work beyond traditional therapy, argues Doherty, while still paying attention to the personal: how clients are thinking, feeling, and acting in the face of intense and continuous stress.

In one sense, Donald Trump is going to be going away soon.  That’s a kind of fantasy. In reality, he will be around for a long time, and so will the Trump Effect and the need for skilled therapists.

But his power and influence will wane, that’s the nature of politics. There is a big difference between being President of the United States and another right-wing radio or cable TV windbag.

Trump, I think, is often most loved by the people he professes to hate the most: therapists and journalists. Like journalists, therapists are now addicted to Trump, even as they benefit from him.  He is their great dream come to life – a powerful nut job who makes people crazy.

Each needs and feeds off of the other while pretending to be horrified.

Therapy is growing in the Trump era, say professional mental health studies.  He is making at least half of the country – maybe all of it – crazy.

Doherty’s new idea about therapy makes sense. Therapists are learning how to get people off the train.

The age of Trump, says Dr. Doherty, calls therapists beyond the personal/public split in which therapy now operates, a blind spot that has kept professionals engaging in comprehensive care for people who “bring to us their whole selves, private and public. It’s an invitation to expand and enrich the work we do for our clients and communities.

Doherty has been traveling the country holding de-polarization workshops with “Red” and ” Blue” Americans.

He recalls one in particular: thirteen hours in rural Ohio with eleven Hillary supporters and ten Trump supporters. The goal was to learn if people could better understand their differences (beyond stereotypes) to see if there were common values and to share, if possible, something hopeful with their community and the larger world.

“For me,” says Dr. Doherty, “it was like couples therapy with twenty-one people  – intense, painful, illuminating, and ultimately gratifying. Therapists all over the country have been organizing similar “de-polarization groups.”

They say there’s hope.

Trump drove me back into therapy after a 10-year separation. He was just wearing me down. I’m in a very good place.

Trump needs to foment anger, chaos, and fear, it is what he is all about.  Following it closely and reacting to it each time is the very definition of getting on the Trump Crazy Train.

He is always the big story, and the more offensive, outrageous, or disturbing, the bigger the story.

Trump, says Doherty, is redefining therapy, Trumpism is an invitation to expand and enrich the work therapists do for their clients and their communities.

When this train leaves the station, it will be pulling a lot of stressed-out people with it. I would be careful about getting on that train.