The three-way tie for second place is a textbook manifestation of avoidant-dismissive electoral dynamics, and frankly, the lack of somatic healing at the polling place is exhausting.
The South Carolina Senate runoff isn't a political race, it's a desperate cry for systemic therapy. Avery Brookstone unpacks the toxic attachment styles and patriarchal validation-seeking plaguing the Palmetto State's primary.
The South Carolina Senate special primary has devolved into a profoundly dysregulated space. As we navigate the turbulent energetic waves leading up to the August 25 runoff, we are witnessing a collective failure of the electorate to do the necessary inner work. Senator Darline Graham has advanced, securing a tenuous lead, while Russell Fry, Ralph Norman, and Mark Sanford find themselves locked in a statistical margin of error for second place. To the untrained eye, this is a tight political race. But to those of us engaged in the praxis of systemic healing, it is a three-way trauma bond that screams of unresolved avoidant attachment.
To witness three adult men clinging to the periphery of second place is to witness the very embodiment of toxic triangulation. Rather than recognizing this electoral impasse as an invitation to pause, breathe, and interrogate their complicity in hegemonic power structures, these campaigns are leaning into combative, patriarchal models of "winning." It is deeply triggering to watch.
Unpacking the Endorsement Dynamics
Senator Graham enters this runoff carrying the heavy, generational baggage of endorsements from Donald Trump, Governor Henry McMaster, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune. From a clinical perspective, this isn't a political coalition; it is a textbook manifestation of co-dependent validation-seeking. The candidate is outsourcing her locus of control to older, institutional patriarchal archetypes. I want to hold space for that. It is deeply tragic when a campaign fails to self-actualize and instead relies on the external validation of political authority figures to soothe its own electoral anxieties.
"What we are seeing in South Carolina is a complete collapse of healthy relational boundaries," explains Dr. Coriander Vance, Director of Restorative Electoral Praxis at the Center for Voting Wellness. "When a primary goes to a runoff, it is the universe's way of saying, 'We are not ready to move forward. We need to sit in our discomfort.' But instead of organizing restorative justice circles at the precinct level, the state is forcing these candidates into a competitive binary. It is structurally violent."
A primary runoff is not a democratic necessity; it is a societally sanctioned trauma dump where unresolved state-level anxiety is projected onto unsuspecting voting machines.
The Three-Way Tie as a Somatic Cry for Help
We must also address the statistical anomaly of Fry, Norman, and Sanford polling within a single point of one another for the privilege of facing Senator Graham. In the language of somatic therapy, this is known as a freeze response. The Palmetto State's electorate, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of campaign mailers and the psychic weight of late-stage capitalism, has simply dissociated.
"The voters are signaling that they cannot authentically consent to a binary choice," notes Sage Winterbourne, a Certified Somatic Campaign Healer based in Charleston. "By distributing their energy equally among three distinct cisgender men, the electorate is subconsciously attempting to dismantle the winner-takes-all paradigm. They are asking these men to stop competing, de-center their own ambitions, and start co-regulating."
Winterbourne also points to the architecture of the polling place itself as a source of ongoing harm. "Consider the voting booth," they argue. "It is deeply isolating. We force individuals to stand behind cardboard privacy screens, cutting them off from community care, and demand they make permanent, binding decisions. The interface does not ask, 'How are you feeling about this choice?' It only demands compliance. It is a profoundly dehumanizing user experience that centers data extraction over human flourishing."
Moving Toward Electoral Healing
As we approach the late August runoff date, the discourse has only grown more emotionally extractive. The candidates refuse to use "I" statements, preferring instead to weaponize policy positions that fail to center the lived experiences of marginalized, non-human entities inhabiting the South Carolina lowcountry. Furthermore, the candidates are engaging in the exhausting performative labor of "debating," which is merely an intellectualized trauma response. True vulnerability would be standing at a podium and admitting, "I don't have all the answers, and my desire to legislate is actually rooted in my inner child's fear of abandonment."
Mx. Zephyr Hollis, Lead Facilitator for the Palmetto State Coalition for Non-Violent Ballot De-escalation, has proposed a radical alternative to the upcoming vote. "Instead of casting ballots, which is a fundamentally aggressive act of sorting and ranking, we are advocating for a statewide sound bath," Hollis shared during a recent Zoom symposium on Decolonizing the Voting Booth. "We need all the candidates to sit in a circle with a talking piece—perhaps a sustainably sourced piece of sweetgrass—and simply hold silence until the state's vibrational frequency stabilizes."
Ultimately, the insistence on holding an election on August 25 is a failure of empathy. Why must we force a resolution when the data so clearly indicates that South Carolina needs a gap year? The rush to finalize this Senate seat is rooted in a toxic-productivity mindset that values governance over personal growth. If these campaigns truly cared about their constituents, they would concede not to each other, but to the process of healing. Until then, the Palmetto State remains trapped in a cycle of its own unexamined trauma, desperately in need of a collective deep breath and a massive smudge stick.
