I Refuse to Be Traumatized by People Like Trump

Sometimes the most strategic move is defiantly protecting your own attention. (Stay Human Now #9)

Jul 11, 2025

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This week felt like drinking from a fire hose of executive orders, threats, and manufactured crises. I found myself cycling through news tabs, trying to track every new assault while my actual work piled up around me.

Then I heard historian Lorissa Rinehart say something that stopped me cold:

"The whole project of Project 2025 is to traumatize people into being unable to act. I just refuse to be traumatized. I've spent enough time being traumatized by people like that."

That phrase - "I refuse to be traumatized" - cut through the fog I'd been carrying. Not as a feel-good slogan, but as strategic clarity about what's actually happening to my attention and energy.

The Trump administration’s engineered chaos is designed to keep people like us spinning, overwhelmed, and too depleted to build anything meaningful. I've been handing over my focus to Trump's chaos machine, and it's been working exactly as intended.

Protect Your Attention Like It's Classified Information

I started asking myself a different question this week:

What deserves my focus versus what's trying to hijack it?

Trump threatens to arrest Zohran Mamdani for “being here illegally" - even though Mamdani is a naturalized citizen who just won a Democratic primary. That's worth knowing. But I don't need to read seventeen takes about what it means or spend an hour doom-scrolling responses.

The distinction matters:

“Just enough” information serves me. Overwhelm serves them.

Lorissa calls her approach "solutions-based activism" - staying additive in the world instead of just reactive to whatever fresh hell appears on the timeline. That landed hard. I want to be useful to the people I care about and the future I'm working toward.

Spinning in outrage and anxiety doesn’t make me more prepared.
It just makes me less useful.

One Move That's Helping Me This Week

I've started treating my attention like classified information - something valuable that requires intentional choices about access.

When I feel the urge to check news for the fourth time in an hour, I pause and ask: "Is this helping me think or just making me spin?"

If it's spinning, I do something else. Reply to a friend's text. Make actual progress on a project. Step outside for two minutes.

Small redirect. Big difference in where my energy goes.

The authoritarian playbook counts on people like us burning out our capacity to focus, connect, and act strategically. Refusing that script is a vital form of resistance.

You don't have to stay serene. But you can stay useful. And useful people are dangerous to authoritarians in ways that overwhelmed people aren't.

In solidarity,

Paul

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Blogs I recommend and have subscriptions to

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.
The Female Body Politic. Historian Lorissa Rinehart delivers a chronicle of the past, present, and future of women's participation in American democracy combined with timely news analysis from a feminist lens.
Invisible Threads. Veteran journalist Kate Woodsome is pioneering coverage at the intersection of democracy and mental health.
Your Time Starts NOW. If you like my content then you’ll love these posts by Lori Corbet Mann.

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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***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.