3 Quiet Resistance Moves to Share With Someone Who’s Struggling

This week’s tiny moves support reconnecting around shared purpose, cultivating self-compassion, and restoring agency and focus. (Stay Human Now Weekly #6)

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Each week brings more epistemic wreckage — the deliberate dismantling of the infrastructure of scientific inquiry, the norms of reason, and the elevation of conspiracy and deliberate misinformation as truth. This week, news swirled about the complete severing of Harvard’s federal funding and the cancellation of international student visas.

I’m doing my best to help others keep their footing, to stay oriented. But this was another week where it felt like someone had gone out into the trail system and maliciously changed all the signs — just to sow confusion.

Earlier this week, I published a piece about resisting authoritarianism as an introvert. That post struck a chord. Thousands of people read, liked and shared it, and many wrote to say it helped them feel seen, steady, and less alone. It got me yearning to explore specific tiny moves that help when the headlines get really loud and disorienting.

It’s spring in New Hampshire, and I’ve been hiking more — training for a backpacking trip and trying to reset my head. Keeping my footing on the muddy, rock-strewn trails in the White Mountains requires slowing down, staying focused on the ground beneath me, and forgiving myself when I slip. That practice has become a kind of walking meditation — a daily metaphor for how I’m trying to move through the week. These three tiny moves are part of that same effort. They help me find traction when the ground feels unstable.

Start a group chat called “What We Still Believe.” Invite a few trusted people.

Reconnect around shared purpose.

I started one this week—just a simple chat with that title at the top. The first entry came quickly: Truth is still worth defending.

Then I added a line I stole from a friend: We don’t have to match the tempo of the chaos to resist it.

Within an hour, two colleagues had added their own notes. One shared a quote. Another named a commitment.

Each entry became a small act of reorientation—breadcrumbs on a path back to what matters. This move creates a quiet container for collective clarity. It holds space for values that still live under the noise, and it reminds us we don’t have to carry them alone.

Write down: “I’m not failing for feeling overwhelmed. I’m responding to engineered chaos.” Tape it somewhere visible.

Cultivate self-compassion.

I wrote it on a scrap of paper and stuck it near my desk — eye level, easy to see. Seeing those words reminds to pause and check whether self-blame has entered my head. Then I redirect and reframe with the phrase “Of course…”

Of course I’m feeling overwhelmed – that is what the authoritarian blitz is designed to do. Each time I pause long enough to read the note, I feel my breath deepen and my thoughts settle.

That small shift helps me reconnect with the reality of the assault we’re under — what it’s designed to do, and what I want to protect in myself. It helps me return to purpose with more steadiness.

Block out one hour as unstructured time. See what emerges.

Restore agency and focus.

I cleared a block on my calendar and didn’t fill it. No agenda. No list. No electronic devices. Just space. I decided to go for a walk, phone turned off. It took a while for the noise in my head to quiet down, but once it did, I noticed a sense of calm strength resurfacing that I hadn’t been able to feel all week.

That hour became a reset. It gave me room to think deliberately, reconnect with what mattered, and choose my next move with more intention than urgency.

Keep your footing. Move with intention.

This week’s terrain was brutal. The noise, the power grabs, the manufactured chaos — it’s meant to wear us down and pull us off course. These tiny moves helped me re-anchor. They gave me something solid to move toward, even when the trail felt obscured.

None of them are dramatic. But each one preserves something essential: the ability to stay oriented, stay human, and choose your next step with care. That’s how we move through this — with focus on the ground beneath us, with careful intention, and with others who are learning to read the trail alongside us.

Remember: Stay human. Stay strategic. Shape tomorrow.

In solidarity,

Paul

☮️🙏🏼

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Strategies for Staying Human in the Face of Authoritarianism

If you’re looking for practices, tools, and deeper reading to help you stay grounded under pressure, this growing list is for you. It includes some of my previous posts and a section for other resources. These are starting points for staying human in hard times.

My Posts

• Resisting Authoritarianism for Introverts: An FAQ for Staying Human in Loud Times. A lot of resistance advice sounds like it's meant for someone louder. But what if your strength lives in quiet — and that's exactly what this moment needs?

• The Harms Are Cumulative. Your Overwhelm Is the Goal. Let’s Get Unstuck

  Trump and Musk weaponize chaos to exhaust our capacity for resistance. Recognizing the patterns of harm gives us the framework to protect our humanity and reclaim our strategic power. [Overview of the Authoritarian Harm Complex]

• Stay Human: 80 Tiny Moves for Everyday Resistance in the Authoritarian Harm Complex. What if staying human is one of the most powerful and most unappreciated forms of resistance? Shaping tomorrow and defeating tyranny takes more than big protest events and macro strategies.

• Stay Sane: 80 Tiny Moves to Resist Digital Despair and News Overwhelm in the Trump Era. Tiny moves live in the terrain between hypervigilance and retreat. They keep us agile and motivated.

• Staying Human Now #1: Start Where You Are. Authoritarian harm is real. So is your capacity to respond. These three tiny moves help you pace yourself with purpose.

• Staying Human Now #2: Define Your Waypoints. Confusion is the tactic. Navigation is the countermeasure. This tiny move helps you plan your own path.

• Staying Human Now #3: The Connection You Forgot You Needed. Authoritarian chaos thrives on disconnection. This tiny move helps you rebuild the ties that keep you human.

• What It Means to Stay Human in the Trump Era. Staying Human Now #4 - Trump’s actions are engineered to grind us down. Staying human is a key resistance strategy.

• From Authoritarian Harm to Clarity of Purpose. Looking Beyond Resistance: What if Our Collective Pain is Pointing to the Better Future Worth Fighting For?

• Befriend Yourself: A Strategy for Staying Whole While They Dismantle Everything That Matters. Trump and Musk want to disappear you into a cell of despair. Kindness to yourself is how you stay human—and begin your escape.

• When They Gut Your Mission: Start Here…. You’re still standing. That means you get to choose where to go next.

Blogs I recommend and have subscriptions to

• Invisible Threads. Veteran journalist Kate Woodsome is pioneering coverage at the intersection of democracy and mental health.

• The American Pamphleteer. “Because freedom won’t fight for itself—but together, we sure as hell can. Subscribe for bold, unfiltered takes on resisting fascism, building real community, and living with guts in chaotic times.“

• How To Resist. Great blog about sustainable ways to remain engaged in activism and mutual aid.

• Chop Wood, Carry Water. This blog is full of daily advice to take action and stay motivated.

• Your Time Starts NOW. If you like my content then you’ll love these posts by Lori Corbet Mann. Their tag line “Practical tools and strategies to help you stay steady in turbulent times” reminds me of my own “Tools, insight, and inspiration for people doing good work in hard times.”

Other Resources

• ACT for Moral Distress, online course by Dr. Jaimie Lusk. “Navigate moral distress with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a powerful evidence-based treatment that allows us to hold our pain while taking valued actions.”

• In Tumultuous Times, Think Like a Hostage. “Guidance given to hostages can foster psychological flexibility in tough times.” Very clever article by Dr. Jaimie Lusk.

• Please drop additional suggestions for resources in Comments

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My Consulting Services

Need a new strategic plan that protects your mission and your funding during hard times? I help mission-driven professionals and progressive organizations cultivate agility and resilience to navigate moral injury, authoritarian drift, and institutional harm without losing their purpose or humanity. Service include:

• Strategic plan revisions to meet the moment.

• Fundraising and communications.

• Developing resilient data systems to track unmet needs and the downstream harms resulting from authoritarian aggression.

Let’s talk. Direct message me to start the conversation. Or request a consultation using my website’s contact form: Progressive Strategy Now website

***From Progressive Strategy Now, a publication of Paul T Shattuck LLC. The views expressed here reflect my personal analysis as a researcher and consultant, and do not represent the positions of any employer, clients, or affiliated organizations.