Why People Follow Trump — or What Makes us Vulnerable to Hypnotic Figures.

By Faythe Buchanan

Donald Trump may not keep his word, his reality can change by the minute, unless you are 100% in favour of everything he does, he will put you down. He is demeaning to women, coercive to other politicians and creates divisions in the world that have stripped the US of its leadership role. Trump lies and fabricates and has a totally creative relationship with truth.

Yet millions follow him. And I have to admit, many people I know (including myself) though certainly not fans, still give this man a massive amount of attention!

So what is behind Trump’s magnetic pull on our awareness?

Whatever is confusing is hypnotic!

Have you ever seen an ad that makes no sense yet you can’t stop thinking about it? Has one of your friends suddenly done something you can’t understand and you just can’t think about anything else?

In the world of entertainment, movies, books and TV, — are you pulled in by not knowing who done it? (For most of us, if you can figure out the entire plot at the beginning of a story we totally lose interest.)

All of this is because if something is confusing, it is hypnotic. It gets our subconscious attention and won’t let go. We are like a deer in the headlights, transfixed in amazement, shock, fascinated horror, or greedy curiosity.

This is where Donald Trump comes roaring into our field of attention and we can’t get him out!

Three Brains and the Trump Effect

You may not have known it, but all of us have three brains or levels of the brain.

The one we assume is most important, the evolved cortex, is where we think, have language and logic, compare, and are intellectually focused.

When you use this level of the brain you are really quite brilliant. You can solve problems and engage reason in effective ways. The challenge is, this level of mind has only 3–7% of your brain power. Unfortunately, it has little influence on motivation which is why you can have five super rational reasons for going to the gym, but you still don’t go!

Then there is the emotional brain which is where we have feelings. Have you ever tried to figure out your finances when in a really emotional state? Or solve a relationship problem when you were really sad or angry? Doesn’t work too well, does it? This is because the emotional brain, while it still uses language, does not have access to logic. So if you or someone you know is expressing feelings, don’t expect them to make sense. They need to be heard, supported and comforted, but you need to wait until they come back to their thinking brain before anything will be figured out. Feelings are important, and sharing feelings helps us connect. However, when we express emotions, we are not necessarily rational.

This still has little to do with the subject at hand, i.e. Donald Trump as his feeling brain really isn’t working. Trump cannot process feelings and has no idea how others feel, nor the impact of his behaviour on other people. You may say he does nothing but express feelings! Actually, what he shouts to the world are not feelings; they are something that comes from the next level of our brain, the least evolved and yet the most powerful.

The level of the brain that runs the Trump phenomenon is the experiential brain or the survival brain. Some call it the old or reptilian brain. Whatever you call it, it is really powerful and it runs on impulse, old patterns, and habits. When we are children, this part of the brain makes a map of the world from the experiences we have. This map, created without words, is the experiential blueprint we all live from unless we go in, look at it and consciously decide to do things differently. When you use your conscious awareness to decide how to live, and what patterns and values to live by, you are living by the opposite of automatic pilot. Trump has neither the interest or the self-awareness to do this.

At the impulse level of the brain there is no continuity, no flexibility, and when someone is tapped into it, they can’t be reached with logic.

This is so Trumpian! This level of mind has no logic; it just does things. Reactions are very fast because the survival brain used to keep us safe by making quick conclusions about danger. It is where we interface with the animal world so we can hunt and survive.

Or at least that is how things used to be. The way things have evolved, you don’t actually have to take your knife, bow and arrow, or guns to the grocery store to bring home food. But sadly, some people are still experiencing most of life in terms of moment-by-moment impulse.

Donald Trump is living full-time in his impulse brain, which is what makes him confusing and hypnotic. Those of us that give him their attention listen to what he says. We are listening from our thinking brain, waiting for the next thing he says to relate to the first. But it doesn’t! So we watch and wait for the logic that never comes. We wait, watch, and listen, endlessly trying to make sense of his rhetoric, then we do it all again with the next amazing antic.

It is actually our shock and amazement that keep us watching Trump. None of us can’t quite process who he is, so we keep pretending he is like us, that somewhere he must have logic and will make sense, he will value truth, or we will eventually figure him out. This is the same sequence that keeps people in abusive relationships. When someone is perpetually shocked and horrified at someone’s behaviour, they are not accepting who the person actually is. If they were to use their thinking brain they would realize: “Yes, this person lies to me, yes, they hurt me, and yes, they often then apologize, but then all of this is repeated over and over again. I need to stop being surprised and accept that this is the reality of my relationship.”

The trouble is, when someone lives from their old brain, there is nothing to figure out. All we are ever going to get is a string of impulses that has no logic. There is no real plot to this story but we won’t give up trying to make our ongoing confusion into some kind of reasonable, understandable person.

No story, just a series of impulses.

Donald J Trump is really very, very predictable. It is a matter of accepting who he is and how he functions to be able to let go of the excitement of the chaotic challenges he creates and that someone else needs to solve because he can’t.

When we stop being amazed and confused, we will also stop paying attention. There is a drama and excitement in not understanding and therefore wanting to follow the story to see what happens next. But the Trump story has no end, and in fact we need to stop pretending it is even a story. It is just a series of predictable impulses that run together in meaningless chaos.

How brain chemistry affects behaviour.

A lot of blame has been placed on Trump’s childhood to explain his behaviour, and it’s true that early experiences are incredibly important. At the same time, there is another piece of the puzzle in understanding how people experience the world, and that factor is there from birth.

In her book “Why Him? Why Her?” Helen Fisher brilliantly describes four kinds of people according to primary brain chemistry. She describes a person who:

• Cannot process other people’s point of view as their own brain is completely full of their own experience. For this person, their brain treats ideas and behaviours that are not theirs, as an enemy. To them, this enemy is not part of what is and needs to be destroyed.
• Does not relate to other people, they only compete. This kind of person is only comfortable when they feel superior and they maintain superiority by criticizing others, and always being right. If you have an idea, they have a different one, and they do not notice what others contribute or achieve. This leaves them feeling they do everything, and are the only person of value. They also are convinced they are a victim if you don’t see them in the same way they see themselves.
• Fabricates to always make themselves look good. In extreme cases, this type of person has genuine trouble knowing what is real because their brain automatically deletes anything they have said or done that is not in their favour, and will do the same with external circumstances. They don’t even know this is happening, so it gets hard to know if they are lying or their brain is fabricating so fast that they believe their own creations.
• Have really no access to feelings. Impulses like anxiety (the impulse to run away) or rage (the impulse to attack) can look like feelings, but impulses are much quicker to manifest than feelings and are not accessible to logic. So basically, you can’t reason or receive any kind of empathy when interacting with people who are run by impulse.

Some of this should sound familiar in regards to Mr. Trump. In this type of brain chemistry, the dominant feature is testosterone and it is not gender-based. Many women experience this way of being and many men do not. When someone has an extreme of this brain chemistry they can become a model citizen if in childhood they are taught respect, taught boundaries, and taught right from wrong. None of this comes naturally and parenting needs to be supremely consistent and fairly non-emotional so as not to engage with the child’s high level of impulse.

Why Do People Follow Trump?

Are you someone who loves to know the steps you need to take in life? Do you like to know what is going to happen or what you need to do next? Do you really enjoy and maybe even crave predictability?

If so, you are not alone. Many of us feel peaceful if we have a plan, know the steps and feel competent about what to do next. We want to know the procedures!

Many people love predictability!

Surprisingly this is what hooks many people into following Trump. You see, he sounds like he is creating predictability! “I will build you a wall to keep you safe from drug dealers and other very bad people!” “I will cut taxes for my rich friends and treat them as very special!” “There is no problem with the environment (so you can feel safe and not deal with economic complications in that department).” “You voted for me and I won the election.” “Immigrants want to use us and take our jobs so I will keep them out.” “Everyone who does not agree with us is bad, is against us and is a threat so I will teach you who to trust, and who not to trust!” He clearly divides people into black and white (not race, but into categories of good or bad) so everyone understands the safety landscape. This makes people who need to know what is happening feel cared about and protected, although in Trump’s case most of that is betrayal rhetoric.

People love how Trump makes them feel!

People love it when you sympathize with their fears, make sure they know their problems are not their fault, and that you have defined a common enemy. All of this creates a feeling of clarity, safety and predictability. It includes a powerful feeling of belonging which so many of us want.

The story of Trump seems to deliver all of these things. Many of Trump’s followers are used to predictability and they see it as their right. Their brains love a life that does what it is supposed to.

So you might say “How can they tolerate Trump’s inconsistencies?” The answer is, they don’t process them. Like Trump himself, their brains delete or ignore messages that are not consistent with what they believe about him. They so need the sense of safety, understanding, predictability and being told what has happened and what to do, that their brains do not see what is incongruent in the Trump experience.

The book “Trauma Betrayal” describes this phenomenon in detail. The main theme in that book is when we need to trust someone, we don’t see where there are hazards and inconsistencies. Many people see their parents this way, as all good, rather than as fallible people.

People don’t expect to be lied to!

In the book “The Liar in Your Life: The Way to Truthful Relationships, author Robert Feldman begins by saying “in our daily lives, even though people lie a lot, we don’t expect to be lied to.” If we did we would be going around paranoid and suspicious of everything people say.

So, it is actually healthier to believe that most people will tell us the truth, especially the President of the United States! This belief in truth telling makes people vulnerable to lies and fabrication, and when people are hearing lots of what they want to hear, it is easy to delete what doesn’t fit with mere logic.

People can’t tolerate mixed feelings!

Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who don’t really enjoy feelings, and would rather operate fully on either impulse or logic. And when they have to tolerate feelings, they sure don’t want more than one to show up at once! When this is your tendency, if you feel loyal to a person, a political party, a family, a career, you just don’t pay any attention to things you don’t like, things that don’t fit your values, or that create discomfort. If you had to figure out nuances of feeling, that is just way too uncomfortable.

It is much easier to have one set of feelings, enjoy those, and ignore anything that would interrupt the clarity you are enjoying.

Why do Evangelical Christians follow Trump?

I grew up with a father who was a “hellfire and brimstone” evangelist and minister (and not a rich and famous one; we were incredibly poor). He also taught for many years at cult-like Bible Schools where I was exposed to hundreds of evangelical events with enthusiastic, hypnotic speakers who coerced the audience into “going forward to be saved.”

When I watch Trump I get this churning in my stomach as I see him gesture, talk, walk, condescend, pontificate and intone like an evangelist. His whole style makes him seem like the kind of person evangelicals trust even though he consorts with prostitutes, lies, steals and humiliates others.

His values are not Christian, but his demeanour is and they can’t tell the difference. Also, Trump throws them a bone now and then like indiscriminate support for abortion.

If it sounds like a chicken, walks like a chicken, behaves like a chicken, maybe even smells like a chicken, it must be a chicken, right?

The Evangelical “Chicken”

Fake Followers

Looking for a vehicle for a belief platform.

There is a final group associated with Trump who aren’t really followers. They see the US President as one of them. They feel like co-conspirators to push aside the norm and have their way no matter how extreme. These associates may actually not care about Trump himself at all, they are using him as a megaphone and a way in, for their own belief platforms. Just like he treats others, if he becomes of no use to them, he will be pushed aside.

Trump-based Anxiety

I often refer to Einstein’s concept that if we understand a problem and where it comes from we are well on the way to solving it. This is why I wrote this article.

People can experience a lot of anger and anxiety when there is a leader as confusing as Trump. My thought is if you understand that all of the confusion puts you in a hypnotic trance, then all you need to do is look away from the situation to find your own thoughts again.

There is also, I believe, a place of compassion for the millions who hear Trump’s message and feel he understands them and is creating a safe, predictable place for them. Stepping back and looking at the facts of the past 4 years can give perspective and help people see if indeed Trump is creating safety, or is the price of following him actually submission to the authoritarian control he is trying to implement behind their backs.

Breaking the Trance

Trump’s erratic behaviour puts many of us into a trance, but there are steps we can take to observe without getting caught. Sometimes someone like this breaks the trance for us. They do this by behaving in such extreme ways that people suddenly wake up and see what is really happening. It depends on how deep the trance and how powerful the events are as to whether people can go back to thinking for themselves or stay tranced out.

We may not like this man who creates self serving chaos. But we can decide to watch with clarity rather than confusion. If we accept the facts of who Trump is rather than getting swallowed up in the excitement of his unpredictability, we can avoid the trance, stay grounded and do our part to stay connected to reason.

Sometimes anxiety is a problem for people because of what is going on in the media. If that is you, and you would like help to get rid of it, I would be happy to meet you at livanxietyfree.com There you can pick up the ebook “Learn to LAF — Live Anxiety Free” which includes the proven 4-step framework to deactivate anxiety whenever it shows up, and train your brain not to worry.

Thanks for joining the conversation!

livanxietyfree.com