For over two weeks now, the press has insisted, based on almost no evidence, that many UK citizens who voted to leave the European Union weren't all that informed, didn't appreciate the implications of their vote, and now regret their decision.
Two examples signify the press's desperation to cling to this meme. The first is their contention that post-referendum UK-based Internet search requests for basic information on the EU are coming entirely or mostly from "Leave" voters. There is no good reason to believe that. The second is their treatment of the obviously bogus, heavily-pranked, easily-beaten petition for a second EU referendum as if it's something real, when it obviously is not. These efforts are so over the top that they may strike some readers as psychologically troubled "Remain" supporters having a tough time adjusting to reality. Well, it turns out that this is a far from minor problem among "Remain" supporters.
Emma Court at MarketWatch.com reported the following Thursday morning, citing numerous UK-based sources (links are in original; bolds are mine):
The real Brexit winners? British therapists
Brexit frustrations have become a prime topic for therapists
Britain’s vote to exit the European Union has prompted some to enter therapist offices, seeking counseling in the aftermath of the contentious event.
The controversial referendum, in which about 52% of voters favored leaving the EU and 48% favored staying, has prompted anxiety, worry and social media rants, especially after media reports suggested voters did not understand the full ramifications of an exit. Many have taken to therapy to deal with some of their emotions after the fact, especially those that favored remaining in the EU, according to therapists’ reports.
U.K.-based psychotherapist Susie Orbach wrote in the Guardian a week after the vote’s results emerged that her therapy sessions with patients began with and were dominated by Brexit.
“The vote experienced as an assault on senses of self, of identity and community that people didn’t know they carried inside of them and relied upon until the vote shattered it,” Orbach said. “The alienations and sorrows that drove people to therapy in the first place are writ large in Brexit. Questions of insecurity and belonging are uppermost; do I have a place, do we have a place, how unbearable that others don’t feel they have a place.”
The aftershock has been wide-ranging. Free counseling was provided to employees of England’s National Health Service in certain neighborhoods, according to the Daily Mail. Schools and parents have had to navigate explaining the issue to children, the BBC reported.
Many therapists have written personal blogs about the “emotional fallout” they have seen in their offices, with anxiety and depression reigning supreme. Psychotherapist Hilda Burke said that her clients, who by and large supported remaining, feel guilt and shame as a result of the outcome. Orbach said she’d seen feelings of helplessness, along with fears about racism fueling the Brexit vote.
... “In shrinks’ offices across the country, just as in homes, pubs and offices, people are trying to come to terms with the surprise and shock of the Brexit result,’” psychologist and psychotherapist Jay Watts wrote in the Guardian. “Many people feel transported into a dystopian Britain that they ‘do not recognise, cannot understand’. Thousands are hatching plans to leave the country. Social media are full of suddenly violent flaming between former friends.”
It seems reasonable to believe that the references to patients seeking therapy as "especially those that favored remaining in the EU" and as those "who by and large supported remaining" are really telling us that almost all of those seeking therapy are "Remain" supporters.
It would be worth asking those who "feel guilt and shame" if they had those same feelings when the 15-year, primarily immigrant-orchestrated sex scandal, facilitated by PC-intimidated authorities, involving an estimated 1,400 underage girls in Rotherham, England was finally exposed in 2012. That certainly sounds like "a dystopian Britain" an ordinary person would not "recognize ... (or) understand’." Perhaps they might acknowledge that "Leave" supporters who don't want to see recurrences of such horrors are voting not based on race, but instead are voting based on knowledge of very bad immigrant-related experiences and on a desire to put a halt to the societal deterioration which made it all possible.
As to the "assault on senses of self, of identity and community that people didn’t know they carried inside of them," it's often been said that politics turns into a de facto religion for leftists who reject genuine religion and spirituality. It seems that some of them instead have taken to worshipping at the altar of a utopian single-state EU, and that they have implicitly or explicitly assumed all along that it would occur. Now they can't handle the idea that the majority of the UK electorate wishes to be genuinely independent from the continent. Hence, the "they really didn't know what they're doing" meme. Hence, the bogus second referendum petition being treated as if it was real. Hence, the flight to therapy.
Thus, it would appear that quite a few "Remain" people are the ones who really do not understand what's happening in the world around them. But don't expect the rest of the U.S. media, which, two weeks later, is still insulting "Leave" voters at every opportunity, to ever make this situation widely known.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
