President Joe Biden ’s debate debacle has left Washingtonians paralyzed in a collective state of anxiety over fear of the unknown. Many, it seems, are eating, drinking, texting or crying their way through a strange darkness, hoping a feeble lightbulb will shine brightly enough at least to save them from a life sentence at Gitmo . It feels akin to the disorienting shock of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, which is triggering stress, according to Paul Sheesley, a Washington-based psychotherapist whose clients include CEOs, politicians, lobbyists and diplomats.
Sheesley told The Daily Beast that given Biden’s disastrous debate performance, people are concerned that the “person they may be cheering for, Biden specifically,” may not win the presidency, much less the Democratic nomination. “So there is definitely a mental health reaction to that,” he said, adding that many of his clients are “really feeling blindsided and really uncertain.” No longer able to ignore what they had already feared, they hang on Biden’s every word as if he’s a visiting great uncle from their parents’ home country whose language they don’t speak.
“There's suddenly this rapt interest in watching and listening to everything Joe Biden says, and gauging how well he's doing,” Washington social doyenne Juleanna Glover told The Daily Beast. And plenty of anguished politicos have taken to the bottle. A regular client at Violet Salon in Washington’s tony Georgetown neighborhood did.
