There’s a reason the Left seems more psychologically distressed than the Right

EverettChris

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Basically, the Left act out of emotion (like children). We see that here every day.

As a therapist, I’ve seen it first hand: only on one side of the divide is emotional pain rewarded or turned into a political weapon

https://dailysceptic.org/2026/03/17/why-the-left-is-more-distressed-anxious-and-filled-with-hate-than-the-right/


In my clinical practice, one pattern has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Among a subset of patients on the political Left, hostility toward political opponents goes beyond dislike or even hatred.

It sometimes takes the form of moralised fantasies about an opponent’s death, disappointment that Donald Trump’s shooter did not have better aim, or statements that certain public figures ‘deserve’ to be eliminated for the greater good. These remarks are rarely presented as literal intent. But they nevertheless offer a revealing glimpse into emotional regulation and psychological wellbeing.

What stands out is not only the content of these expressions, but their tone. They are often delivered with intense anger and no shame, as though such thoughts are an understandable or even justified response to the political moment. At no point does the patient see these reactions as excessive or out of control.

Similar behaviours can be observed in real life, too. I was walking around New York City in the summer after the ‘No Kings’ protests. I was looking at a heaping high pile of anti-Trump signs and a woman came up to me and said: “Aren’t these great?” My response: “I kinda like some of what Trump has done.” Her response: “WELL F— YOU THEN!”’

Conservative patients tend to behave somewhat differently. I routinely hear strong dislike, contempt and anger toward political leaders they oppose and it’s not uncommon to hear a patient say they disliked President Biden or strongly disagreed with his stance on the border. Many patients viewed Kamala Harris as incompetent and not at all prepared to be president. Some even described her as “dumb”.

But in my experience, this hostility rarely crossed into wishes of annihilation. Political opponents might be seen as wrong, corrupt or dangerous, but they are still human. From a clinical perspective, that distinction matters.

On the Right, by contrast, there has long been a tendency to emphasise emotional restraint. Stoicism is admired. Complaining is viewed with suspicion. Personal struggle is expected to be managed privately. I have found that conservative patients are far less likely to describe their distress in therapeutic language or frame discomfort as pathology. That does not mean they suffer less. It means they express suffering differently.

Political anger on the Right more often appears as cynicism, resentment or disengagement rather than vulnerability or victimhood. Many conservative patients view politics as important but ultimately secondary. Their primary sources of meaning might be family, work, faith and local responsibility. When elections are lost, they tend to return to careers, marriages, children and routines. Politics frustrates them, but it does not typically dominate their life.

On the Left, political identity can often become inseparable from selfhood. When politics is experienced as an all-encompassing struggle between good and evil, emotional intensity escalates. Opponents are no longer merely wrong, but dangerous. Disagreement becomes existential threat. Loss becomes catastrophe.
 
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Right-wing beliefs function as a salve for people who are chronically anxious and fearful, at least according to one of the oldest and most influential theories in political psychology. Yet recent research shows that liberals, not conservatives, are more prone to negative emotions. The link between mental health and ideology has generated much interest, sending journalists and pundits scrambling to figure out why liberals are so “depressed, anxious, or otherwise neurotic compared to conservatives”.

American adults who identify as politically liberal have long reported lower levels of happiness and psychological well-being than conservatives, a trend that mental-health experts suspect is at least partly explained by liberals’ tendency to spend more time worrying about stress-inducing topics like racial injustice, income inequality, gun violence and climate change.

Now a team of Columbia epidemiologists has found evidence that the same pattern holds for American teenagers. The researchers analysed surveys collected from more than 86,000 12th graders over a 13-year period and discovered that while rates of depression have been rising among students of all political persuasions and demographics, they have been increasing most sharply among progressive students — and especially among liberal girls from low-income families.

There is a strongly elevated risk for mental illness among the extreme liberals (+150%), a small increase among the liberals and slightly liberals (+29-32%), and somewhat lower rates among conservatives and extreme conservatives (–17-24%). Breaking the pattern, slightly conservatives had a marginally increased rate (+6%). A variant of this analysis was also carried out by including the happiness metrics reverse-coded. This produced materially the same pattern, but was weaker since the happiness items had a weaker relationship with political ideology than the mental illness variables.
 

The moment the West decided evidence no longer mattered — if it got in the way of utopia.

Melanie Phillips (former Guardian journalist):
“Objective evidence was cast aside because it was too inconvenient. The very idea of reason and rationality was dismissed.

All these ideologies — multiculturalism, lifestyle choice, deep green environmentalism, moral relativism — were utopian. They promised perfection. Anyone who brought facts against them wasn’t just wrong… they were evil.”

Result?

- Evidence became “right-wing”

- Dissenters were bullied, ostracized, fired, threatened

- The Guardian itself became the heart of this ideological machine… until she fell foul of it.


When ideology is sacrosanct and the world must be perfected, facts become the enemy — and truth-tellers become heretics.

Have you watched this shift in real time — where inconvenient evidence gets labeled “hate” or “misinformation”?

Which sacred ideology do you think has done the most damage to open debate?
 

The moment the West decided evidence no longer mattered — if it got in the way of utopia.

Melanie Phillips (former Guardian journalist):
“Objective evidence was cast aside because it was too inconvenient. The very idea of reason and rationality was dismissed.

All these ideologies — multiculturalism, lifestyle choice, deep green environmentalism, moral relativism — were utopian. They promised perfection. Anyone who brought facts against them wasn’t just wrong… they were evil.”

Result?

- Evidence became “right-wing”

- Dissenters were bullied, ostracized, fired, threatened

- The Guardian itself became the heart of this ideological machine… until she fell foul of it.


When ideology is sacrosanct and the world must be perfected, facts become the enemy — and truth-tellers become heretics.

Have you watched this shift in real time — where inconvenient evidence gets labeled “hate” or “misinformation”?

Which sacred ideology do you think has done the most damage to open debate?
There is a reason that here on the Tug you don't get anything remotely related to a fact based rational discussion on policy from the tards. They can't define black for AA purposes. They pretend men can be women. They pretend that socialism is a viable economic system. That crime can be reduced by releasing criminals and defunding the police and not prosecuting crime. That dirty expensive green energy isn't dirty and is cheap. Just fanatic delusions.
 
Schools have all trained people to communicate thoughts as feelings. It semi-pisses me off when someone expresses and thought by saying "I feel like..."
I feel like affirmative action isn't discrimination because it only discriminates against white men and Asians. I feel From the River to the Sea doesn't mean we want all the Jews dead. It's just a slogan. Same with Death to the Little Satan. Just a slogan.
 
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