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Florida Kerry supporters meet for group therapy 
Voters shout epithets at President Bush during first PEST counseling session 
  
Published Thursday, December 2, 2004 at 6:00 pm 
by Sean Salai

Twenty John Kerry supporters met for their first group therapy session in 
South Florida Thursday, screaming epithets at President Bush as they shared 
their emotions with licensed mental health counselors. 

The first of several free noontime therapy sessions at the American Health 
Association in Boca Raton was designed to treat what mental health 
counselors have dubbed Post Election Selection Trauma (PEST). 

"If I had a cardboard cutout of President Bush, and these people wanted to 
throw darts at it, I would let them do it," Robert J. Gordon, AHA executive 
director, told the Boca News after the session. "It's no joke. People with 
PEST were traumatized by the election. If you even mention religion, their 
faces turn blister-red as they shout at Bush." 

Although the meeting was closed to the press, AHA therapists obtained 
permission from participants to provide an anonymous transcript to the Boca 
Raton News. 

"I'm scared," said one man. "Democracy is at stake and nobody is rising to 
protest this president." 

Gordon said the participants also granted reluctant permission to open up 
next Thursday's meeting to the general press. Reporters will be forbidden 
from taking photographs or using the real names of patients. 

"The media outlets, especially Rush Limbaugh and his ilk on talk radio, 
scare our patients to death," said Gordon, facilitator for the meetings. 
"More than anything else, people with PEST tremble physically." 
Gordon said the Kerry supporters in therapy are predominantly Jewish and 
older than 50. Most are registered independents and all live in Palm Beach 
County. 

"We mostly let them vent during the first session," Gordon said. "By the 
third session, we'll be doing some meditation exercises to aid some of their 
symptoms. We may use visualization and some techniques designed for bipolar 
disease and other mental disorders. That might help them adjust to reality." 
According to AHA officials, symptoms of PEST are similar to post-traumatic 
stress disorder. They include nightmares, sleeplessness, hostility, 
listlessness, and emotional outbursts including threats to leave the 
country. 

"There's an overall sense of emotional helplessness and abandonment," said 
Sheila Cooperman, a licensed AHA psychotherapist from Delray Beach. "In 
psychology, we call it �learned helplessness.' After you zap a caged dog 
twice, he stops moving because he knows there is no place to go. That's what 
happened with these Kerry voters. They've been zapped so many times that 
they're on the verge of giving up on politics."
 
Cooperman, also a practicing psychic, added, "One person today said he 
thinks the country is now run by fascists. Another felt personally 
threatened by the president's love for big business. Many believe Bush is 
going to draft their grandchildren. The anxiety may not affect them every 
day, but it affects their energy level."
 
An additional 30 people are signed up for two other AHA election support 
groups, which will meet for the remainder of the year and possibly beyond. 
Gordon said his patients' emotional problems typically started with the 
"hanging chad" debacle of 2000. 

"First, they need to realize they're not going to overturn the 2004 
election," Gordon said. "They have to live with it. The problem is they have 
no faith because they think the religious right has hijacked the political 
system. We try to tell them there is still an election in 2008. You can't 
just give up and be apathetic." 

The AHA, using a holistic approach to health that has been mocked as new age 
voodoo by some national talk show hosts, has stressed to patients that their 
post-election emotions are normal and deserve to be taken seriously. 

The Boca Raton News first reported on Nov. 9 that depressed Florida Kerry 
supporters were seeking trauma therapy in the wake of the Nov. 2 
presidential election. One Boca psychologist alone, Douglas Schooler, 
eventually treated 20 Kerry voters with intense hypnotherapy � for a sliding 
fee. 

The trauma specialist, whose bills were covered by clients' insurance 
companies, was later accused by some colleagues of unethically "cashing in" 
on the misery of Kerry voters. In interviews with the Boca News, Schooler 
said many of the Kerry supporters had visited him for severe mental problems 
prior to the election. 

Unlike Schooler, the AHA is a registered Florida non-profit and its 
therapists do not charge for sessions. Conservative talk show hosts Sean 
Hannity and Rush Limbaugh recently offered their own "free therapy," irking 
the AHA counselors. 

Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@bocanews.com or 561-893-6427.