Unfollow the Self-Help Noise, Follow the Resistance

When self-help ignores authoritarianism, it becomes complicit. This move helps you get more strategic about who shapes your thinking. (Stay Human Now #10)

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My Instagram feed seems increasingly surreal and is making me doubt my sanity. Time to Unfollow!

The self-help industrial complex continues churning out advice that seems no different today than a year ago — as if the country wasn't falling apart, as if democracy and human rights were not under attack.

"What's your attachment style?"

"Set boundaries."

"Overcome people pleasing."

Meanwhile, mass deportations are separating families. Vital infrastructure is being dismantled. Healthcare is being stripped from millions.

This disorienting disconnect highlights complicity.

Disconnect from voices that ignore the world burning

Here's what I've started doing: I'm unfollowing influencers who have not once mentioned the fact the world is on fire.

There's no such thing as apolitical self-help advice when systemic pressures and galloping authoritarian aggression are primary sources of personal distress.

Your anxiety isn't from codependency. Your exhaustion isn't a personal failing. Your rage isn't something to manage away.

You're responding to conditions designed to break you.

Strategic curation

In my recent post about moving from reactivity to strategic engagement, I wrote about how Trump's regime profits from keeping us spinning between overwhelm, cynicism, and scattered activism. The self-help industrial complex feeds this same cycle — offering individual solutions to collective problems while ignoring the systems causing the harm.

Instead, I'm following voices that help me stay grounded AND engaged. People who acknowledge the systemic harm while pointing toward strategic action. Writers who understand that staying human requires both self-compassion and collective resistance.

Your turn

What voices are you ready to disconnect from? What accounts help you stay both human and strategic? Share in comments.

In solidarity,

Paul

Remember: Stay human. Stay strategic. 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.