Trump's Goal Is to Break You. Here’s How to Stay Whole and Effective.

Cycling between overwhelm, cynicism, and scattered activism is exactly what Trump wants you to do. Here's how to recognize you're stuck and then move from reactivity to strategic engagement.

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You know this pattern: Last Friday I was monitoring ICE raids to see if it was safe to go grocery shopping. By afternoon I was texting dark jokes about how nothing we do will matter. By evening I was frantically responding to all the activist calls to action that hit my inbox that week. Three different unhelpful reactions to the same chaos.

Maybe your reactivity looks different - endless doom-scrolling while your inbox fills up, or avoiding all news then feeling guilty, or saying yes to every activist event while your body begs you to stop.

You're Not Losing Your Mind

You're being systematically destabilized by a regime that profits from your reactivity. With the “Big Beautiful Bill” gutting everything from Medicaid to voting rights while ICE budgets triple and the Supreme Court green lights the dismantling of democracy, they're cranking up the pressure. That disorienting feeling when systems you thought were solid turn out to be sand - that's institutional vertigo, and it's a normal response to abnormal times.

MAGA needs you spinning - overwhelmed, detached, or burning out. That sick feeling when you realize you're bouncing between these states? You have not failed, it's exactly what Trump and his enablers intend with their strategy of engineered chaos.

And you know what? Fuck their strategy.

Here's what they don't want you to know: once you see how this cycle works, you can start steering instead of being dragged around. This is part of my ongoing work helping people stay human, stay strategic, and shape tomorrow during this authoritarian period.

Let me show you the three states they're cultivating to keep you reactive...

The Three States They're Using Against You

Trump’s team designed this trap. These aren't random emotional states - they're predictable responses to deliberate destabilization. Fast, unconscious bouncing between states, always moving away from pain. When you're reacting frantically, you're not strategizing.

Collapsed Overwhelm - Their engineered chaos is designed to freeze you.

That heavy dread when you open news about families torn apart by ICE raids. Your chest tightens reading about Medicaid cuts hurting people with disabilities. The tears when your trans friend tells you they are relocating to Canada to be safe. You start scrolling to "stay informed" and three hours later you're still in pajamas, drowning in information but paralyzed to act. That terror you feel? It's actually your system trying to make a strategic assessment when your usual decision-making frameworks are compromised.

Why it serves them: Overwhelmed people don't organize and don't resist.

Numb Cynicism - When hope feels dangerous, detachment masquerades as wisdom.

Someone mentions the latest outrage and you actually laugh - not because it's funny, but because hope feels dangerous. That familiar deadness behind your eyes when people ask how you're doing. "Of course they're doing this. What did you expect?" The hollow where your heart used to live. You've gone numb to protect yourself from unbearable contradiction.

Why it serves them: Detached people don't fight back. Cynicism spreads like contagion.

Scattered Activism - The stakes feel enormous and saying no feels immoral. So you try to do it all.

You care deeply. The calls to action never stop - track this bill, share that link, write these letters, show up to every protest. Each one feels urgent, necessary. So you try to respond to everything, without prioritizing time to think strategically about where your specific skills and energy could make the biggest difference. You're moving faster than you can process, moving in too many directions to build sustained focus on any one thing. The system rewards this scattered response - it keeps you busy while ensuring you never develop the deep expertise or sustained relationships that actually build power.

Why it serves them: Burned-out people disappear. Frantic action looks like resistance but often lacks strategic focus or sustainability. You're reacting to their agenda instead of advancing your own.

Their perfect system: You're either frozen, numb, or burning out. But here's how to break free...

Steer Instead of Spin: Three Strategic Alternatives

You're not escaping the storm - you're learning to move through it on purpose. Here's the key difference: reactive states move you AWAY FROM pain, discomfort, and overwhelm. Strategic states move you TOWARD your values, purpose, and what matters most. You'll still shift between modes - but now with awareness and choice.

Grounded Presence - What this feels like: You can read about ICE raids without your nervous system flooding. You take in just enough hard information, feel the appropriate emotions, then ask “How much information is enough” and "What's one action I can take?" You've learned the difference between staying informed and drowning in too much information. Your breathing stays steady even when the news is devastating.

You'll know you're here when: You can witness suffering with presence instead of overwhelm. You can put away the news instead of doomscrolling. Your groundedness anchors others when everything feels chaotic.

Strategic Hope - What this feels like: You see the horror clearly but refuse to go numb. You can hold complexity - acknowledging things are terrible while still believing change is possible. You remember that when hopelessness is fabricated by those in power, choosing hope becomes radical resistance. You engage without naive optimism, choosing fierce defiance instead.

You'll know you're here when: You stay connected to meaning even when progress feels impossible. You model realistic hope for others drowning in despair.

Sustainable Engagement - What this feels like: Calm purposefulness. You choose commitments based on where you’ll be most effective, not guilt. You measure success by sustainability, not quantity. Trumpism is not going away soon. You're building for decades, not performing for approval. You treat rest as strategic maintenance, not luxury.

You'll know you're here when: You can say no without guilt. You use your most useful skills to contribute consistently without burning out. Others ask how you stay so grounded.

Emergency Protocols: When You're Spinning Right Now

If you're reading this while doom-scrolling: Stop. Right now. Set your phone timer for 5 minutes. Finish this paragraph, then close all news. Ask: "What's one thing I can do that aligns with my values?" Do that one thing.

Three stupidly simple tools:

Tool 1: The Reality Check

• Ask: "Which reactive state am I in right now?"

• Say: "I'm being dragged by this crisis"

• Choose: "What would steering look like?"

• Reach: “How can I make one small move in that direction?”

Tool 2: Strategic Tiny Moves

• Collapsed Overwhelm → Grounded Presence: Set 15-minute news timer, then choose one values-based action

• Numb Cynicism → Strategic Hope: Write one sentence about what you still believe and share with one friend

• Scattered Activism → Sustainable Engagement: Before saying yes to anything, ask "Best use of my skills right now?"

Tool 3: Pain as Compass

• Notice what you're moving away from

• Ask: "What does this hurt tell me about what I care about?"

• Move toward that value instead of away from the pain

When nothing works: If you're too overwhelmed even for tiny moves, that's okay. Sometimes survival is enough. The framework will be here when you're ready. Your only job right now is to breathe and be kind to yourself. Tomorrow is another day.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

The long game they're playing: With ICE budgets tripling and social safety nets shredded, the regime needs sustained opposition to collapse. Trump’s strategy depends on us burning out, checking out, or staying frozen. Every headline is designed to push you into one of those three reactive states. The end goal is authoritarian control and democratic collapse.

Your advantage: When you can navigate these states consciously, you become ungovernable. Every time you choose strategic response over reactive pattern, you're breaking their system. They're counting on you to spin. When you steer instead, you're already winning.

What's at stake: Democracy needs people who can stay engaged for years, not months. The movements that survive authoritarian pressure are built by people who've learned to move between grounded presence, strategic hope, and sustainable engagement without burning out.

Beyond this crisis: This framework works for workplace chaos, family stress, any sustained pressure situation. The reactive → strategic pattern shows up everywhere power tries to destabilize and harm people.

Send this to someone who's bouncing in these reactive states: They need to know they're being manipulated. And there's a way out.

In solidarity,

Paul

Remember: Stay strategic. Stay human. Shape tomorrow.

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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

• Tiny Moves, Big Shift: How to Stay Human When the Blitz Won’t Stop. The footholds that helped 80,000 people stay grounded are needed now more than ever. This is your updated guide for defiant practices that build strategic agility under authoritarian pressure.

• Screwing People Who Play by the Rules: Trump’s “Long Train of Abuses and Usurpations”. That sick feeling in your stomach? It's systematic betrayal. Name it and claim it to fuel your resistance.

• When Trump Attacks Your Work: 75 Grounding Moves to Stay Effective and Human. You can't serve from empty. But stepping away isn't an option. Strategic positioning for public servants trying to do good work under siege.

• What Have You Been Carrying? A Self-Assessment for Navigating Authoritarian Harm. Your overwhelm isn't personal failure — it's a natural response to engineered chaos. This assessment helps you get unstuck and start strategizing.

• 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.

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 public service 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.