Many Democrats, Progressives, Moderates, Normal People, and Liberals are still traumatized by what the shrinks call the “Trump Effect,” even though it is clear he lost the November election and will soon be taking his Crazy Train elsewhere.

For them, there is no good news. I used to refer to those people as bedwetters, but that was both inaccurate and hurtful.

What they are are trauma victims who don’t quite know it. Trump is a trigger, but he is not really what they fear.

I wrote the other day that I didn’t believe that 80 percent of Republicans actually believe that Trump won the election or had it stolen from him.

It doesn’t make sense when scores of Republicans, along with Republican judges, are saving our democracy.

Researchers and political surveyors guess that many people who say that are trying to be supportive, but the actual number of fantasized Trump zealots who think he won was probably closer to 20 percent.

I somewhat foolishly thought this was promising news, that some might even be relieved. Iris was one of the first to respond and set me straight.

It didn’t take Iris but a macro-second to get to worry: “I read your piece, and I worry about the 20 percent. They will never accept Joe Biden, and they will work to undermine anything the new administration does.”

Writing about politics, I’ve learned that there really is no good news for the traumatized opponents and victims of Donald Trump.

There is the only news that leads to more bad news or complaints and a grimmer future. Liberals don’t seem to go for the idea of living in the now. Many seem attached to worrying about the future.

They see alarming signs and bad tidings everywhere; it is a tough way to think and live.

The shrinks call this “the Trump Effect.” Dr. Betty Teng,  a trauma therapist who works in New York hospitals, writing in The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump, explains that “when we consider how many Americans experience personally or intergenerationally, the traumas of slavery, immigration, war, natural disaster, and genocide, we start to understand on another level how it is that Donald Trump, a wholly unqualified president who neglects history, highlights divisions, and makes impulsive decisions, would foment unrest in us all.”

Trump likes to be seen as the Great Disrupter, but an equally accurate label might be The Great Traumatizer. He even upsets the people who love him, turning them into paranoid outrage and conspiracy zombies.

That is a high price to pay for liking a politician or following him too closely.

In fact, Dr. Teng writes, the debate over whether post-Trump stress disorder is “real,” and if it is as serious as PTSD, is itself a kind of trauma response. My e-mail these past few months supports her analysis.

The answer to the Trump Crazy Train is something I learned from living with animals – donkeys, sheep, dogs, barn cats, chickens, coyotes, and foxes. I’ve also learned a lot from: stay in the now. Buddha was on to something.

Animals are wise in their own way. I often compare them with humans, and I’m chagrined at how often we come up short in comparison.

A donkey or sheep or dog would find Iris’s response puzzling.

There is no future for animals. They live in the moment, accepting it fully. In the here and now, they are at ease. They live for safety and survival, and in the cases of domestic animals, for attention and shelter.

If they have what they need right now, they are secure. Animals have a lot more enemies – and lethal ones – than we do. They live in awareness of their dangers, not in fear.

Watching them, living with them, I was struck by their ability to be both at peace and secure, even though their lives are much more uncertain and menacing than hours.

When I am anxious, I go to them – walk the dog, sit with the donkeys, herd with the sheep. They calm me, which makes them wiser than me. They live so much in the moment; this peacefulness goes right through me; I absorb it in much the same way I absorb and drink in humans’ many fears and worries.

What calms me is their existence in the moment, in today, right now. Are they getting fed? Or not. Would they like a scratch. Or not?

Buddhist and spiritual teachers have long preached the value of living in the now, which has always made sense to me. That precious wisdom is more valuable now, in 2020 than ever in my lifetime. And I can testify to the good it has done for me.

The past is a trap it so often is of no relevance to now. We change, the past never does.

The future is unknowable. I have never been able to predict the future; neither are the so-called “pundits” and prophets and seers of our world. It is simply not knowable.

I wrote back to Iris and told her I was sorry she couldn’t draw more pleasure from some of the good things we are learning..

What is happening now is that Trump has lost the election, is losing his struggle to overturn it, and will soon be leaving the White House. That is all I know right now, and all I need to know.

Tolle, a famous spiritual counselor, has written that the psychological condition of fear and worry is divorced from any concrete or genuine immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, etc.

Much of our worries about Donald Trump now are not about what he is doing, but about what he might be doing or says he is doing.

That is not something that is happening now, or that might truly happen at all.

I’ve been reading a lot of psychiatric evaluations of Trump and the “Trump Effect” lately, and one important thing to remember, as difficult as it is to grasp: Trump is not the problem, he is a trigger.

For that reason, arguing with people about him is pointless. Truthfully, in cases of continuous or extreme fear, it isn’t really about him.

Mostly, he awakens or reflects the traumas in our lives – authoritative fathers, abusive men, irrational or cruel people. Once people come to terms with that, the rest flows more easily.

Therapists and psychologists report that Trump can be especially frightening to women, as he triggers wounds, fears,  memories, and past experiences with dominating, or frightening and assaultive men.

There is no acknowledgment, understanding, or communication with men like that. They cannot take responsibility for their behavior, or ever concede wrongdoing. The more powerful they are, the more frightening.

It is stunning to me to also learn from experienced psychiatrists that Trump quite often triggers fear of predators in women. I can’t imagine that any other President of the United States has triggered that, or that so women overlook it.

Trump says a lot of things, he even acts on some.

Every day until January 20th, he will say or do an outrageous or upsetting thing. That can be your daily meditation if you wish, or you can focus on something else: like your life, right now.

Trump will never be the most important element in mine. In part, that is because I have surrendered to him. I yield to his rage and desperation.

“Surrender,” says Eckhart Tolle, “is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.” I can vote or help out, I can’t turn this awful wave back.

Our physical selves are here in the now; our minds are in the future.

We become so overwhelmed by our lives that we lose our identity, sense of self, and Being. We carry in our heads the insane burden of a hundred things that we will or may have to do in the future.

In so doing, we forget to focus our attention on the one or two things that we can do now; we lose track of the joy of being. The people who did the most to defeat Donald Trump in November were not the people worrying and arguing online or on social media.

They were the people who went out and voted. In the rain, the cold, the pandemic. In interview after interview, I heard people saying it brought them much joy.

When I see the news that is upsetting in some way, and so much of it is, I learned to pause and ask myself one or two questions. Is there joy or ease, or lightness in what I am doing? If not, time is covering up the present moment, and life is a burden or a struggle.

When someone like Trump is the face on the mirror all day, that is a lot of burden and struggle.

I refuse to accept that; I ask myself where I am now, what I am doing now, and when I do that, I regain the initiative and control my feelings, rather than submit or turn them over to someone else.

Tolle teaches that whenever one acts of awareness of the present moment, then whatever they do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love. This applies to even the simplest actions – talking a walk, a bath, jogging, listening to music, hugging a dog, making love.

Mother Nature gave animals a great gift when she deprived them of the ability to worry about the future. The boundaries around their lives are secure and practical.

Those of us without boundaries permit our minds to wander all over the place, back to the past, far into the future. We forget to pay attention to where we are right now.

Donald Trump has given me 1,000 chances to understand the power of the now, and Tolle and Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen and a dozen others have given me 1,000 ways to respond well.

Be present. Stay in the now.

Many changes seem frightening and troubling at first glance, but I have learned that they create the space for something new to arrive. And something new always does.

But the present is really all that I have; now, it is the center and focus of my life. When I read that not all Republicans have slipped into the dark side, I feel relieved and hopeful. I leave that feeling right there; that is where I am now.

That is not the time for me to rush into the future and push that good feeling aside and begin to panic. The future is a void. We can fill it with anything we wish. We can see new opportunities or old dangers. I think about the future, it would be foolish to ignore it completely,  but my focus is today.

The big idea when dealing with the psychological challenge of Trumpism – hatred, bullying, chaos, and cruelty – is that it centers on the grievance, complaint, disappointment, and resentment.

If you let your psyche get stuck there, or become obsessed with it,  it will mesh with all of that ugliness and anger. You can easily become the very thing you hate.

It’s not a good place to go.

Trumpism focuses almost exclusively on victimization and resentment. They screwed us, so anything goes when it comes to dealing with them.

Acceptance is the boundary and the balm.

“Accept everything,” says Tolle. “Anything that the present offers you accept it as if you chose. Work with what you have, not against it.”

Another way of putting that – and once again, Trump comes to mind – is to go with the flow of life, not stand against it. When I look at the news, which I do when I write about politics, I see things clearly. I pay attention to what I see, not what I might see one day.

Donald Trump is here now; he will be with us for another 60 or so days. I accept that on every one of those days, he will seek to upset, divide, frighten, and traumatize every single human being who did not support him.

It does not surprise me or turn me upside down.

Does the Donald Trump Flying Circus mean I don’t have a long list of wonderful things in the present: Maria, my farm, the dogs, my blog, my readers, the donkeys, my photography, my heart, my friends, my very life?

Is there really nothing good today when Trump swears he’ll serve another term or run in four years? Or when he insists he won the election and that it has been stolen from him?

I accept that millions of people will embrace his insanity and loss of reality. That is their problem, and I am sorry for them; soon, they will be recovering from their delusions, much as I have had to do. It’s not easy for them or us.

But there it is.  I can either resist the nature of life or accept it.

Donald Trump is no Hitler, he isn’t half as smart or skilled. He has bumbled and fumbled his presidency and much of the country right into the ground. I feel for him, and for the damage, he has done all of us.

As the Greeks predicted, hubris is the most dangerous of all foes.

I am not afraid of him.

There will always be Trumps floating around the ether, looking for more opportunities to get attention and make money and exploit fear and bigotry.

They are a part of the human condition, although they don’t usually get elected President of the United States.

Perhaps what is so frightening about Trump is his alienness, his extreme abnormality. Humans need normalcy, just as animals do.

Psychiatrists often argue that the main cause of unhappiness is rarely the situation itself, but rather one’s ideas about the situation. We create our own tragedies and joys.

A meaningful life is useless if you fear how long you can keep it. I’m sticking with today, one day at a time, being in the present.

I have enough trouble with that.