Befriending Yourself Is A Strategic Priority For Sustainable Resistance
My body sounded the alarm. These are moves I’m returning to — because survival isn’t the endgame. (Stay Human Weekly #7)
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Every week I share a few small actions to help us stay human and strategically grounded in the face of Trump-era harm.
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I’ve been eating for comfort, skipping workouts, waking at 3am with my jaw clenched. Then judging myself for all of it. Noticing the weight gain, the fog, the shame. Paul can be pretty hard on Paul sometimes!
Authoritarian aggression continues at an overwhelming pace. Daily news is saturated with cruelty at scale and sneering contempt in every falsehood.
I’m trying to help others stay grounded — while some days barely managing to stay upright myself. I’m proud of the consulting and writing business I’ve built since the election. And it’s also true that getting purged from my job for expressing solidarity with federal workers, worrying about ICE coming for loved ones, making a Plan B to flee the country I love if it becomes necessary, and wondering if we’ll earn enough to pay all the bills this year has taken a toll. The whole darn package has knocked me off my mental and physical health routines it took me decades of therapy and recovery to build.
But isn’t that one way authoritarianism lands in our personal lives? Not just through policy, but through erosion of the infrastructure of safety, trust, and stability we each try to build for ourselves and our loved ones. It frays your clarity. Hijacks your routines.
Worst of all? It can rewire how we treat ourselves.
So this week I’m returning to practices I drifted from. The four practices below are distilled from a prior piece: Befriend Yourself: A Strategy for Staying Whole While They Dismantle Everything That Matter.
Befriending yourself isn’t fluffy self-help speak. In times like this, it’s a way to stay human when the systems around you are engineered to make you buckle and submit. Befriending yourself in the Trump era is a vital form of resistance.
Four Practices for Befriending Yourself When They Want You Broken
Whether you’ve been purged, silenced, coerced, or harmed in some other way - these are places to reclaim agency by affirming your intention to treat yourself with kindness and grace when the systems around you won’t.
These aren’t productivity hacks or wellness cliches. They’re footholds. I’ve used them before. I let them slide. Now I’m picking them back up (without beating myself up) to reclaim the ground I need to stand on.
1. Anchor in the Present
We’re talking presence with compassion. Feeling your feet touching the floor, the breath moving in and out, noticing all the different shades of green spring delivers to your eyes. You don’t need a meditation app to become more present. You just have to pause, notice what your senses are taking in, bring some intention to your breath and your movement. Slow down. Nothing to fix or resist for a whole minute. Appreciate the fact you are made of stardust that is billions of years old. Remember that life is miraculous. Remember that you are precious and worthy of good treatment - especially from yourself, especially when systems want to grind you down.
2. Reconnect With What Matters
They say we hurt where we care. And oh boy - are many of us hurting! I’ve written before about how on the flip side of where authoritarianism is causing pain we can sometimes discern what matters most to us. When the world feels upside down, values give me a compass. I ask myself: What do I still believe in today? Then I act from that — something real and small.
3. Repair the Rupture Through Connection
Shame and moral injury often lead me towards isolation. Withdrawing and curling up to protect the soft parts is how I survived a childhood full of chaos and harm. Those reactive patterns run deep. As I said in my prior post on befriending: Overwhelm convinces you that no one else feels this way. That’s a lie.
Find one person you can tell the truth to.
Check on a friend who’s hurting.
Start a micro-circle of people who refuse to disappear.
You don’t need a big group. You need one moment of solidarity.
Connection interrupts the spiral. Truth breaks the spell.
4. Reclaim Your Humanity Through Your Body
THIS!
I really need this one right now. We’re four months into the Trump era and my body is definitely “keeping the score.” Weight gain, sleep loss, elevated BP. Ugh. The relentless urgent headlines lead me to dissociate me from my body. Anxious loops of rumination become quicksand for my mind.
I need to remind myself that one of the simples forms of resistance is to remember to come back into my own body and take good care of it. I’m not talking empty wellness tips. We deserve care - especially in the midst of aggression aimed at hurting us.
Each of these is a small way to come home to myself — and a way to remember that how we survive shapes what comes next.
Moving Forward
These reflection questions from the original Befriend Yourself post are helping me this week. You might want to sit with one of them too:
What parts of yourself have you been forced to silence—and what would it take to give them voice again?
If you fully believed your values still mattered, what’s one small act you’d take today to honor them?
When you look back on this moment five years from now, what will you be proud you protected—within yourself, and in the world?
What habits of survival are no longer serving you—and what new practices might help you rebuild from a place of dignity?
Who in your life helps you feel less alone in the fog—and how can you deepen those connections, even a little?
What truths have you stopped saying out loud—and what might shift if you named just one of them today?
What’s one way you can create a small pocket of safety, truth, or meaning this week—for yourself or someone else?
Start where you are. Recommit if you need to. Don’t beat yourself up for slipping or needing to recommit.
Befriend yourself like it’s a form of strategy — because it is.
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.
Tools
Explore my growing library of tools designed to help you stay grounded, focused, and resilient. Some are free. Others are available for a small cost — and every purchase helps sustain this work.
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
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.