How to Break Up with Donald Trump

The psychology of why you can’t look away — and how to do it anyway

Catherine Price
Aug 2, 2018 · 9 min read
Illustra on: Richard Chance

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Pop quiz: On average, who do you spend more me thinking about?
A. Your best friend
B. Donald Trump
A. Your mother
B. Donald Trump
A. The person you love the most in the world
B. Donald Trump
If you answered all Bs, you’re in good company: America is obsessed with Donald
Trump. With our smartphones as our enablers, we’re reading about, listening to, and
discussing Trump from the moment we wake up in the morning un l we lay our heads
down at night. It’s an unhealthy rela onship, and for the sake of ourselves and our
country, it’s me for us to take back our lives.

Considering how much me we spend paying a en on to him, it can seem hard to

believe that not so long ago, Donald Trump really didn’t ma er. He was like unenriched
uranium: yellow and slightly radioac ve but unable to inflict harm on a mass scale.
Fast-forward to today. As president, Trump has been weaponized, able to unleash his
destruc ve power — and control the news cycle — simply by tapping his thumbs.
His favorite tac c is to encourage the nas er sides of human nature, such as tribalism
and cruelty. But Trump also has managed to turn one of our posi ve traits against us:
As responsible ci zens, many of us feel that it’s our civic duty to follow the news. Under
Trump, this has gone from a patrio c pas me to what feels like a full- me job.
As The Appren ce made obvious, Donald Trump is not someone you want as your boss.
He exhibits many of the signature traits of an emo onal abuser — and just because we
don’t know him personally doesn’t mean that we’re not vulnerable to his a acks.
In par cular, Trump is an expert at gasligh ng — a term described by the Na onal
Domes c Violence Hotline as “an extremely effec ve form of emo onal abuse that
causes a vic m to ques on their own feelings, ins ncts, and sanity.” (It’s not a
coincidence that gasligh ng is also a favorite technique of Vladimir Pu n.)
Gasligh ng techniques include ques oning the vic m’s memory even when the vic m
remembers the events correctly, changing the subject when challenged, blaming
others, and denying and/or pretending to forget what actually occurred. They read, in
other words, like the instruc on manual for Trump’s Twi er account.
Whether it’s being deployed against a person or a popula on, gasligh ng has the same
goal as all forms of abuse: to assert power and control. In the mind of Trump, this
translates to ge ng people to pay a en on to him. And that’s where we come in.
When his 53.4 million Twi er followers obsess over his every word, we’re giving him
exactly what he wants.
Trump craves a en on in part because he’s a narcissis c bully. But it’s also a strategy:
The faster he creates new headlines, the less me we’ll have to process — and protest
— what happened the day before. Our shock and outrage leave us paralyzed, and this,
in turn, gives him even more control.
To be clear, I’m not equa ng following Trump on Twi er with actually being trapped in
a personal abusive rela onship. In fact, that’s the point: They’re not the same. In an
abusive personal rela onship, it can obviously be difficult and dangerous to leave your
abuser. But our rela onships with Trump are not personal — which means we can
escape.
If you want to break up with Donald Trump, your first step should be a reality check:
Are you really checking the news to stay up to date on world events? Or are you
checking the news for news about Donald Trump? This is easy to figure out: Go to your
favorite news site and try to read an en re ar cle about Brexit. (Or global warming. Or
cryptocurrency. Or, really, any ar cle that doesn’t have “Trump” in the tle.)
When I tried this myself, I was horrified. Just as intelligence officials have reportedly
begun to resort to “models, physical demonstra ons, and extensive use of
photographs” to keep Trump’s a en on during their security briefings, I apparently
needed at least one Trump reference per paragraph to retain my interest. The idea that
I was constantly checking the news out of a sense of civic responsibility was as plausible
as someone claiming to watch General Hospital out of an interest in health policy.
I’m not unique. Nicholas Kristof, the award-winning New York Times columnist who
writes frequently about human rights, environmental issues, and other things that
Trump doesn’t care about, conducts a yearly analysis to see which of his columns were
the most and least read. His 2017 conclusion? “[T]he common thread of my poorly read
columns was, disconcer ngly, a spotlight on injus ce or humanitarian needs.” His
Trump-related columns, on the other hand, received “incomparably greater
readership.”
This might be sad, but it also makes sense. Even if you hate him, you have to admit that
Donald Trump is entertaining, and it’s a lot more fun to read about White House gossip
than it is to spend your morning coffee break catching up on Syria. Unfortunately, the
more we ignore real news in favor of lla ng headlines, the more we live up to the
stereotype of ignorant, self-centered Americans — which is to say, the more we
become like Trump.

There’s another reason we spend so much me on Trump: We’re addicted to him.

The word “addict” is derived from the La n word for “slave,” and this is more
appropriate than you might think. While substance addic ons like heroin tend to get
the most a en on, it’s also possible to become addicted to behaviors, such as
gambling. And as it turns out, financial conflicts of interest aren’t the only connec ons
between casinos and our commander in chief. Every me we see a Trump-related tweet
or headline, our brains release the same chemical that’s triggered when we pull the
lever of a slot machine.
That chemical is dopamine, a neurotransmi er that tells our brains when something is
worth doing again. Dopamine plays a crucial role in helping us establish habits, which
means that it’s evolu onarily essen al — it’s released, for example, in response to food
and sex.
But dopamine is also a key player in addic ons. Our brain’s dopamine systems don’t
dis nguish between habits that are good for us and those that are harmful. Anything
that s mulates the release of dopamine is something we’ll want to repeat — and the
more dopamine that’s released, the more powerful the urge will be.
This lack of selec vity means that, much like the DNC’s servers, our dopamine systems
are vulnerable to being hacked. Doing so is easy: You simply iden fy things that cause
dopamine to be released, and then incorporate as many of them as possible into your
product’s design.
Packed with dopamine triggers, slot machines are a perfect example of how effec ve
this manipula on can be. They’re also widely considered to be one of the most
addic ve devices ever invented. This makes it worth no ng the many traits they share
with Donald Trump, including bright colors, loud noises, and, most important,
unpredictability.
You’d think humans would be drawn to ac vi es with predictably good outcomes. But
instead, the less predictable something is, the more a rac ve it becomes. Or, to put it a
different way, the possibility of a reward is o en more sa sfying than the reward itself.
(Defini ons of “reward” can vary: For one person, it might be Bre Kavanaugh’s
Supreme Court confirma on; for another, it could be an indictment. Our addic on to
Trump is surprisingly apoli cal.)
As a reality television star and natural showman, Trump exhibits an incredible ability to
keep people guessing (and to get the media itself to act as his enabler). Did his
campaign collude with Russia? Are we going to have a nuclear war with North Korea? Is
he related to this bird? No one knows!
And even if a ques on seems like it’s been answered, there’s no guarantee that Trump
won’t contradict himself five minutes later. His unpredictability is itself unpredictable,
which leaves us in a constant state of an cipa on over what he might do next.

Addic on is o en defined as being unable to stop yourself from engaging in a behavior

even when you are aware that it is harmful. So, what are the consequences of being
stuck on Trump?
To start, if you’re paying a en on to Trump because you hate him, then you’re allowing
yourself to be controlled by anger and fear — which are the very same forces that gave
rise to his presidency. It’s also probably making you miserable. (Seriously, when’s the
last me you closed a news app and thought, “Well, that made me feel be er”?) For
many of us, every day of this presidency brings a nausea ng sense that nothing ma ers
anymore.
Instead of protec ng ourselves, however, we respond by giving him even more of our
me. And that’s an even bigger problem, because me is a zero-sum game. Whenever
we spend more me on one thing, we must, by necessity, spend less me on something
else. Every minute we spend on Donald Trump is therefore me we are not spending on
our friends, our family, our communi es, our colleagues, or ourselves. We are not
working, or crea ng, or relaxing. We are not thinking, or helping, or learning, or doing
things that brings us meaning or joy. And we’re not doing anything to fight back.

The argument against limi ng one’s exposure to Trump usually goes like this: Donald
Trump is the important news story right now, which means that if you don’t keep your
eyes on him at all mes, you’re being complacent. It’s like the bumper s cker maxim:
“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying a en on.” And it’s true. We need to keep
reminding ourselves, over and over again, that from his sympathy toward white
supremacists to his reluctance to call out Russia for its a acks on our democracy, this is
not normal.
But I’m not sugges ng we pretend the president doesn’t exist. I’m simply sugges ng
that we cut back on the me we spend on him — for example, by refreshing our news
feed five mes a day instead of 50, or reading ar cles for 10 minutes instead of two
hours. This need not be an all-or-nothing affair.
Also, trust me: If you stop deliberately seeking out news about Donald Trump, it will s ll
find you. The man is impossible to fully escape. And this, in turn, means that if you cut
back on your exposure, you won’t stop being outraged. You’ll just have some energy le
over to actually do something about it.

How do we strike a balance between performing our civic du es and maintaining our
sanity? Trump himself has provided some useful sugges ons.
Build a wall. Not between the United States and Mexico, but between yourself and the
media. Decide how much me you want to spend per day on the news. Then, ask
yourself: When and where do you want to consume it, and for how long? (For example,
I feel less bad about Trump through the filter of Stephen Colbert.) Just as important,
iden fy places he is not allowed to enter, such as the dinner table or your bedroom.
Lock [him] up. I don’t mean that literally (yet). I mean preven ng Trump from
disturbing you without your consent. Disable news-related no fica ons on your phone.
Be er yet, delete your news apps en rely and only check from a web browser, which is
less user-friendly and thus less likely to suck you in. If you want to go further, buy a
newspaper (remember those?). And, for God’s sake, stop following Trump on Twi er.
Make America great again. Every hour we spend rumina ng on Donald Trump is an
hour not spent making anything great. But if we want to break the habit, we have to
give ourselves something construc ve to do instead.
Give yourself a minute to write a short list of things that you think make America great.
Like our na onal park system, for example, or the fact that I won’t be arrested for
wri ng this ar cle. Then, when you no ce that you’re about to dive into a Trump spiral
(or that you’re already in one), do something to support one of the items on your list.
Invite your friends and family to volunteer with you at a local charity. Do something
nice for a stranger. Donate to an organiza on you believe in. Call your congressional
representa ves — and be polite to the person who picks up the phone.
And in your darkest moments, the mes when the fallout from Trump’s elec on causes
you the most fear, remember the thing about America that has always — and will
always — make us great: the fact that we can vote.
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