A Resource Guide for What to Do When You’re Already Running on Empty
Special appreciation goes out to Paul T Shattuck, MSW, PhD*, who writes Stay Human – Shape Tomorrow* right here on Substack. Please subscribe and support his work.
Also, appreciation goes out to Patrick Casale (He/His), and Megan Anna Neff. 2026. Episode 144 (Season 5): “Neurodivergent Advocacy in Turbulent Times and The Future of Divergent Conversations.” Divergent Conversations, February 6, 2026. Podcast audio. https://divergentconversations.captivate.fm/episode/144
I’m a 53 year old autistic, gay fella who has complex-PTSD, and a whole host of other things that come with that special mix of sunshine.
I wrote this piece to help myself and my neurodivergent friends (and anyone else) to learn what living under the threat of authoritarianism does to the nervous system… and some gentle things we can do, when we don’t have a ton of capacity to do everything we would like to do.
I hope it’s useful for you. 
Steve
I couldn’t get off the couch the other day. Not in a “lazy Sunday” way. In a way where my body felt like wet sand and my brain kept looping: what’s the point.
Kept telling myself, “you watched too much news yesterday. ugh.”
I know what that is. That’s a Shutdown experience. I’ve mapped this territory for years. And still… when the news hits a certain pitch, when someone screams something cruel in a parking lot and my stomach drops even though I keep my face perfectly neutral… because that’s what I do, right? I mask. I hold the face. I pay the cost later, alone, wondering why I’m so tired when I “didn’t even do anything.”
Many of us are scared right now. Or maybe you can’t name it yet, or wouldn’t exactly call it “scared”… just a tightness, a wrongness, a sense of waiting for impact. That counts too.
And if you’re scared, you’re probably trying to figure out what to do with that fear (or anger) without destroying yourself in the process.
This isn’t just politics. It’s the air. It’s the tone. It’s the hats people wear. It shows up in how your body tightens when you walk into a grocery store and feel something off in how people are moving… sharper, tighter, less patient.
Someone snaps at a cashier. Someone across the parking lot screams, “Go back where you came from.” You keep your face neutral. Your stomach drops anyway. And if you’re someone who masks… if holding that neutral face is labor your system has been doing since childhood… the cost of that moment is double what anyone around you realizes.
And if you’re like me, with complex-PTSD from abuse… when a voice is raised, or has that unique intonation to it… your whole body locks up in protection.
Online, it’s just as bad, if not worse. The pace is brutal. A new crisis arrives before the last one settles. The same arguments loop. Everything is urgent. Everyone is either “with us” or “against us.”
A lot of the public world starts to feel like a place where intimidation gets rewarded and cruelty becomes background noise.
Confusion isn’t an accident. Overwhelm is not a side effect. It’s a tool.
When people are flooded in their nervous system, they lose track of what matters, what’s real, what to do, and who to trust. They get tired. They get reactive. They isolate. They fight each other. Or they shut down completely.
If your system feels scared and overwhelmed, that isn’t a personal failure. It’s evidence your nervous system is detecting danger.
And it’s detecting it accurately.
Start Here (Especially If You’re in Shutdown Right Now)
This piece is long. If paragraphs aren’t landing… if your eyes are sliding off the page… start here. This is the whole thing, compressed into three moves.
If You’re in Shutdown: arrive + one thread.
- Arrive: name 1 thing I see, 1 thing I hear, 1 thing I feel.
- Thread: text someone, “Thinking of you. No pressure.”
If You’re in Sympathetic: channel + boundary.
- Channel: one letter to a representative / one task / one meeting.
- Boundary: one media limit. Then exit.
If You can access Safety: one lane of action, timed. 30 minutes. Then stop. Close the loop.
That’s the path. Not because you don’t care. Because you do… and because your nervous system is part of what you’re protecting.
If you want the longer version, keep going. If you can’t right now, you already have what you need. Bookmark this. Come back when your capacity opens.
What This Does to a Nervous System (And Why Neurodivergent Adults Get Hit Hard)
A nervous system can mobilize for a threat. It can recover. It can mobilize again.
But it isn’t designed for day after day of “something is happening” without resolution.
Research from trauma and neuroscience has shown that “trauma produces actual physiological changes, including a recalibration of the brain’s alarm system, an increase in stress hormone activity, and alterations in the system that filters relevant information from irrelevant.”¹
When the alarm system recalibrates, the filtering system changes too. You start treating more things like threat. You can’t tell what to ignore. Everything has teeth.
For neurodivergent adults, this lands even harder because many of our systems already run extra labor… every day, before the political climate even enters the picture. Scanning for sensory threats (fluorescent lights, sudden sounds, texture shifts). Filtering (trying to distinguish signal from noise when everything registers as high signal). Translating (neurotypical social cues into something navigable). Masking (holding the performance of “fine” so you don’t become a target). And recovering from all of it… constantly, invisibly, with nobody counting the cost.²
You may already be doing “constant threat assessment” in a world that doesn’t feel predictable.² So when the outside world becomes louder and meaner, your body might start running like a smoke detector in a burning kitchen.
That’s not “overreacting.” That’s your system doing its job… with less margin than most people realize you’re working with.
The question becomes:
How do you work with your nervous system while the world stays unstable?
Your Overwhelm Is Engineered
Paul Shattuck, a writer, consultant, researcher, and longtime organizer, names what many of us are feeling: “Your overwhelm isn’t personal failure… it’s a natural response to engineered chaos.”³
Where wellness culture implies we should regulate our way through political crisis, Shattuck names what’s actually happening: authoritarian systems weaponize chaos to exhaust our capacity for resistance.
He calls this the “Authoritarian Harm Complex”… deliberate destabilization that targets “not just systems, but our sense of meaning, safety, connection, and agency.”
He identifies seven domains of harm: material, civic, moral, relational, narrative (what’s true), existential (what matters), and what he calls “internalized authoritarianism”… the psychic absorption of retributive logic.
When you start policing your own thoughts, second-guessing your own perceptions, or attacking yourself for not doing enough… that’s the intended outcome.
Shattuck writes about how we may feel like: “My body has been breaking down… exhausted in ways rest doesn’t fix.”³ Or the possibility of a “frozen feeling of disorientation, fatigue, ambient anxiety, and internal pressure to move without knowing where to start.”
He names this as a natural downstream effect of authoritarian assault.
And here’s the asymmetry that makes it even harder:
“Power is the ability not to have to learn.”
The system with power can stay simple. Everyone else has to become a full-time analyst just to survive the day.
Your goal is not to “keep up with everything.”
Your goal is: keep enough internal integrity to choose your life, and choose your action, without burning yourself down.
ANSEM™ as a Map (This is the Terrain)
The Autonomic Nervous System Experiencing Model (ANSEM™) maps three territories:
- Safety (connection and capacity available)
- Sympathetic (mobilized… hyperarousal)
- Shutdown (immobilized… hypoarousal)
This isn’t a personality test. It’s a live map of what your body is doing right now.
Safety is where connection and choice are possible. You can think clearly. You can feel without drowning. You can act without losing yourself. You can connect with others and yourself.
Sympathetic is mobilization, often by fear (but also by passion, desire, inspiration, ambition, etc.). Under threat, it’s fight and flight energy. It can look like urgency, anger, doomscrolling, compulsive planning, arguing, “I have to do something right now.”
Shutdown is immobilization, a constriction of energy. It can look like numbness, heaviness, blankness, avoidance, “I can’t,” collapsing into distraction, losing access to meaning, dissociation.
None of these are “bad.” They are intelligent strategies. That doesn’t mean they feel good… Shutdown can feel like death, Sympathetic can feel like drowning. But your system isn’t malfunctioning. It’s responding.
A note about blends: We are never sitting cleanly in one state in biologic and neurologic reality. But the ANSEM™ is an experiencing model, so in extreme states it can feel like we’re in a single state. In reality, you might be in a Sympathetic-Shutdown blend… that jangling exhaustion where you can’t stop thinking but also can’t move. Racing mind, heavy body. Wired and collapsed at the same time. If you can’t tell which state you’re in, that’s information too. Start with whatever feels most dominant, or just pick whichever menu below your eyes land on first. There’s no wrong door.
Each state comes with different access and different capacity. If you try to make high-output decisions while you’re in Shutdown, it’s like trying to sprint through wet concrete. If you try to “stay informed” while you’re in Sympathetic, it can become self-harm, or lead to harm to others. If you try to “calm down” while your system is mobilized, the energy often intensifies because it still needs a track.
So the work is not “feel better” or “calm down.”
The work is: match the move to the state.
Why Authoritarian Environments Target Your Nervous System
Authoritarian environments don’t only try to change what you believe. They try to change what your nervous system can tolerate and therefore, reduce your capacity.
Living with constant threat weakens your relational bandwidth. Under sustained pressure, your system doesn’t just feel bad. It loses access to connection… to yourself, to others, and to the Greater Reality of Love, or the Divine… whatever that means to you.
And connection is one of the main ways humans stay sane.
So authoritarian environments don’t only attack laws. They attack relational bandwidth. They turn the world into a place where your body doesn’t want to trust, doesn’t want to reach, doesn’t want to soften. That makes people easier to isolate and easier to steer.
They thrive when people are flooded, exhausted, ashamed, and alone. When community breaks down, people become easier to manipulate. When people feel helpless, they comply, disengage, or attack each other.
Which means: your nervous system is part of what you’re protecting.
A Path Neurodivergent Adults Can Actually Walk
What follows is not a cure. It’s not a five-year plan. It’s a way to keep your footing while the ground stays unstable. These aren’t steps in a sequence. They’re moves you can make in any order, from wherever you are right now.
Move 1: Name your state before you touch content
Before you scroll, check what state your nervous system is in. (If you’d like a PDF of the ANSEM™, pleaser just comment “ANSEM” below and I’ll send it over.)
Ask: am I in Safety, Sympathetic, or Shutdown?
You don’t need perfect accuracy. You need a working guess.
Safety: you can breathe slow, feel your body, think in sentences, imagine doing one thing and then stopping, feel a kind-hearted connection with yourself or others.
Sympathetic: forward-leaning urgency, tight chest, racing mind, argument-building, “I must respond.”
Shutdown: heaviness, fog, numbness, “I can’t,” a pull to disappear, no access to meaning.
This is navigation.
If you can’t feel your body clearly… and this is common for many neurodivergent adults, it’s not a failure of awareness… use external cues instead:
- Did I just snap at someone for no reason? (Likely Sympathetic)
- Am I staring at the wall unable to move? (Likely Shutdown)
- Can I think about tomorrow without panic? (Possibly Safety)
- Have I been holding my breath? (Check… sometimes just noticing changes something)
- Is my jaw clenched, are my fists tight? (Sympathetic is often in the hands and jaw before you feel it anywhere else)
If your senses feel muffled or far away… if the world looks flat or sounds seem distant… that’s information too. You don’t need to feel clearly to know where you are. Muffled is a location.
Move 2: Stop letting “urgent” decide your day
Authoritarian chaos runs on manufactured urgency.
Your nervous system hears “urgent” and thinks “danger.” Then it hands your attention away. For those of us with ADHD or attention differences, urgency can hijack the whole system in seconds… not because we lack discipline, but because our attentional wiring responds to intensity like a magnet.
Build a new reflex. One sentence. Out loud if you can:
A. “I don’t have to have a take on this right now.”
Or, slightly different:
B. “I don’t have to take this on right now.”
Those sentences don’t fix anything. They create a gap. And inside that gap, you get choice back.
Paul Shattuck calls these “gap-making moves”… small phrases and actions that interrupt automatic reactivity.³
They’re simple on purpose. You’re not trying to change the world in this moment. You’re trying to stay in contact with your own agency.
Move 3: Match the move to the state you’re in
Menu A: When you’re in Shutdown (immobilized)
I know this one quite intimately. Shutdown is where I go when the accumulation gets too heavy and my system says enough. It doesn’t ask permission. One minute I’m reading the news, the next I’m staring at the ceiling with no access to myself, motivation, or movement.
You’re trying to come back online. The moves need to be tiny, subtle, and avoid spiking you into Sympathetic. The smaller, the better.
These aren’t assignments. Pick one that feels least impossible right now… not to change your state… to meet yourself within Shutdown:
- 30-second arrival: name one thing you see, one thing you hear, one thing you feel in your body. If your senses feel muffled, that’s okay. “I see a wall. I hear the fridge. I feel… heavy.” That counts.
- One thread of connection: text “Thinking of you. No pressure.”
- Drink water slowly enough to notice temperature.
- Cancel one nonessential obligation. This is a real move. Your system is telling you something about capacity.
- Stand up and feel your feet for ten seconds. (If you have POTS, like I do… be careful with this one. Go slow. Hold on to something.)
- Screenshot something for your “I’m Not Imagining This” folder (no analysis required).³ This is a place where you document evidence of harm or gaslighting. Requires no thinking. This supports you when you inevitably start to wonder if any of this is real.
- Open your Waypoints folder… photos, poems, lyrics, anything that helps you navigate when frozen.³ A pre-made photo album on your phone with photos of family, poems, song lyrics, prayers, or anything that has helped before.
- Say out loud: “I’m not failing for feeling overwhelmed. I’m responding to engineered chaos.”³
Scene: You’re on the couch. Your body feels heavy and far away. Your brain keeps saying, “What’s the point?”
You don’t argue with the thought. You name three objects in the room. You feel the blanket. You send one “no pressure” text. You drink water.
You don’t become “fine.” But you come back online by one inch.
That inch matters.
Your mind will likely say it doesn’t matter enough. That’s fine. It doesn’t have to matter enough, and you don’t have to convince yourself.
Then your mind will follow by saying something about how you really long to be able to do so much more. That’s real. That will bring up grief. Let yourself feel that… gently. Of course you do. And right now, you’re here. You did what you could, with graciousness and kindness and sincerity.
Nothing in our culture tells us that going this slow… this small… is worthy. But it is. And from a nervous system perspective it’s CRITICAL.
Here’s why: “Well-being depends on a flexible autonomic nervous system.”⁶ Shutdown isn’t flexibility. It’s conservation. So your moves are about gently restoring a little flexibility without demanding a leap.
Otherwise, if you go too big too fast, you keep yourself stuck in the loop.
Menu B: When you’re in Sympathetic (mobilized)
When you have a lot of mobilizing energy, you don’t need to erase it. You need to give it a track to run on so it stops eating you.
For some of us, Sympathetic is where we live… the constant hum of vigilance that’s been running since long before the political climate made it worse. If this is your baseline, be gentle about the difference between “I need to channel this energy” and “I need to rest from a lifetime of running hot.”
Channel moves (pick one):
- Write one short letter to a representative. Three sentences is enough. Once you locate your representative’s phone, email, address… save that info wherever you’ll remember to find it (phone contact, notes, etc.) This makes it easier next time. You can also use a service like Resistbot.
- Do one concrete support action: donate, share a resource directly to a person, offer a ride, sign up for a shift.
- Attend one local meeting, even silently. Presence is real.³
- Create a “Don’t Adapt to This” list: what you refuse to normalize. Keep it short.
- Reach out to someone who might be isolating. Connection interrupts spirals³ and can help you co-attune, creating more safety in your system.
- Do something with your hands that has a beginning, middle, and end: fold laundry, cook one meal, organize one drawer.³ This works partly because your hands give your nervous system proprioceptive feedback… the felt sense of contact, pressure, completion. If you’re someone who stims, this is the same principle. Your body knows how to use your hands to settle. Trust that.
Boundary moves (pick one):
- Turn off notifications.
- Put the phone in another room for 10 minutes.
- Choose one trusted source at a set time, not “whenever I panic.”
- Replace rapid-fire clips with one long-form explainer.
- Take a no-scroll hour. Just be where you are without checking devices.³
Scene: You read something frightening and feel heat rise into your chest. Your fingers open social media by reflex.
You stop. You open a blank note titled “Don’t Adapt to This.” You write three bullets: “I won’t treat cruelty as normal. I won’t dehumanize people to feel safe. I won’t let my life become one long emergency.”
Then you write three sentences to an official. Then you close the app and take a shower.
The world didn’t change in ten minutes. But your nervous system did. It learned: “Energy can move through me without hijacking me.”
Podcast hosts Patrick Casale and Megan Anna Neff emphasize this: not everything is meant to be tracked, and paralysis is often the outcome of too much input.⁷
Information flooding is intentional. The constant barrage of crises is a deliberate strategy. Overwhelm and decision fatigue allow harmful actions to proceed unnoticed.
Your individual resistance doesn’t have to match the collective flooding. It’s meant to intimidate you and make you feel insignificant. You and your efforts are not insignificant.
Menu C: When you have access to Safety
You’re building things that last.
In Safety, pick a lane for the next 30 days. (For my neurodivergent friends… yes, I know… when did we have a 30-day stretch of “good?” This piece can be stretched / divided into segments over several months if need be.)
Consider three areas (write them down if that helps… or just hold them loosely if writing feels like too much right now):
- People I can actually help
- Skills I can actually offer
- One place I can actually show up
Choose one intersection. Not forever. For 30 days (stretched or divided into segments if need be).
Then make it repeatable:
- one weekly letter
- one monthly meeting
- one mutual aid task
- one friend check-in every Friday
- one resource doc you maintain and update
- one local action (city council, mutual aid network, neighborhood group)³
Scene: You’re steady enough today. You don’t “catch up on everything.” You choose one action that touches real life.
You spend 30 minutes making a small resource list for your community. You send it to two people. You stop. You eat. You go outside.
Your body registers: “I am not powerless.”
That’s what Safety is for. Capacity.
Move 4: Protect your attention
A lot of neurodivergent adults get harmed by the belief that responsibility equals constant exposure.
It doesn’t. It equals chosen exposure.
And if deep research is your way of feeling grounded… if tracking patterns and building detailed understanding is how your system makes sense of chaos… that’s valid too. Some of us have nervous systems that settle through comprehension. The deep dive is the regulation strategy. Just check: is this increasing my capacity, or is it flooding me?
Here’s a structure that might work for you. Make adjustments for your particular system:
1. No news before you’re inside your body.
Water. Food. Bathroom. Two minutes of feet on the floor. Then decide. If mornings are already hard… if executive function doesn’t come online for an hour… build this around your actual rhythm, not an idealized one.
2. Two trusted sources, checked at a set time.
Once per day, or three times per week. Patrick and Megan note: you cannot support everything. Choosing which causes you track closely is required, not failure.⁷
3. Prefer long-form to rapid-fire.
Fast clips shred attention. Long-form restores context. Familiar voices, predictable structure, and known cadence reduce adaptive load.⁷ If you already have podcasters or journalists whose rhythm your system trusts… lean into that. Predictability is a gift to a neurodivergent nervous system.
4. Never scroll in Shutdown.
Shutdown plus scrolling deepens collapse. And this is often the first thing we do in Shutdown. If you need distraction, chose something inert (old sitcom, or fiction-based podcasts, for example).
5. Never scroll in Sympathetic.
Sympathetic plus scrolling becomes self-harm. Research shows that doomscrolling is physiologically destabilizing… rapid context shifts, repeated headlines, and intense visuals overwhelm neurodivergent systems.⁷
6. Use social media purposefully, then exit.
Social media has a unique strength: rapid mutual aid, real-time documentation, information sharing when traditional media fails. Enter for coordination or information. Do not linger indiscriminately.⁷
7. Retrain your algorithm.
Like, save, and share content that supports your nervous system attunement. Joy-based content… animals, humor, hobbies, beauty… helps counterbalance threat exposure.⁷
If these feel impossible, don’t shame yourself. Add friction. Move apps off your home screen. Log out. Put timers on them. Put the phone across the room for ten minutes. Ask someone to help you set it up if the executive function demand of changing your habits is the thing stopping you.
The goal is reducing the number of times your system gets hijacked without your consent.
Move 5: Protect joy as fuel
There’s a lie that says joy is irresponsible during hard times.
Joy restores capacity. And capacity is what makes action possible. This is especially true for neurodivergent nervous systems. Pursuing joy… even before what might seem like more basic needs (like cleaning or showering)… can increase capacity and safety.
And joy might look different for you than it does for other people. It might be stimming. Echolalia. Infodumping to a friend who actually wants to hear it. Replaying the same song forty times (this is mine). Rocking. Spinning. Watching the same comfort show for the dozenth time. Joy doesn’t have to look productive or dignified or even recognizable to anyone else. If it restores you, it counts.
If joy feels completely inaccessible right now… if you’re in that numb place where nothing lands… try “neutral good” instead: things that don’t cost you. A warm shower. A familiar song. Petting an animal. You’re not aiming for happiness. You’re aiming for “not worse.”
This can be small:
- a song
- a funny clip shared with a friend
- a walk where you soften your eyes
- five minutes with an animal
- a meal eaten slowly
- music, dancing, laughter… modeled especially by Black and Brown communities as refusal to surrender humanity⁷
Scene: You catch yourself laughing and then feeling guilty. You don’t argue with the guilt. You let the laughter happen anyway.
Later, you have enough energy to send one letter, or check on one friend, or show up to one meeting. Joy didn’t erase reality. It refueled you.
Paul Shattuck frames joy and “staying human” as part of resistance, not a detour from it.³ He writes: “Consciously choosing to allow joy, wonder, and connection to enter our lives, even when… especially when… the world feels designed to prevent it.”
Fun and play “restore energy, strengthen connection, and undermine the fear and solemnity authoritarianism thrives on.”
Move 6: Stop confusing intensity with impact
This is where caring people get destroyed. We think: if I don’t feel wrecked, I’m not doing enough. Even if you don’t consciously think that… it’s how we behave. It’s an undercurrent.
I catch it in myself constantly. The belief that my suffering is proof of my sincerity. That if I’m not up at 2am reading about the latest executive order, I’ve abandoned my people. My body absorbed that equation decades ago. Masking taught me that exhaustion equals effort equals worth. And, from my childhood abuse… I learned to stay ahead of the tide because when I didn’t it got worse.
Being wrecked is not a virtue. It’s often chronic Sympathetic plus shame.
Choose repeatable action over heroic action.
If you do everything for three weeks and then collapse for three months, your nervous system learns: “Caring equals danger.” Then even small action starts to feel unbearable. If this is you, and you want to take action to resist authoritarianism… this is a perfect time to practice shifting your relationship with this pattern. That will matter long-term.
The goal is sustainable endurance.
Shattuck is explicit: “We need tools that work to keep us steady now AND build capacity and endurance for years of resistance ahead.”³
And Patrick and Megan emphasize: resistance doesn’t have to be dramatic to matter. Neurodivergent participation will look different… often quieter, often behind the scenes, often relational.⁷
Quiet forms of resistance… writing, organizing behind the scenes, offering care, crafting strategy, research, digital coordination… are just as essential. Movements need more than front-line energy. They need organizers, writers, logistical support, financial coordination, moral anchors.³
You don’t need to become someone else to stay in the fight. You just need a way forward that fits you and your system.
Move 7: Practice sovereignty in micro-moments
Here’s a sentence to remember:
“The nervous system experiences power not as domination or collapse, but as sovereignty, choice, influence, and trust.”
Authoritarian pressure tries to teach your body: “You have no choice.”
For many neurodivergent adults, this isn’t new. You’ve already spent years learning that showing your real self… stimming, saying no, needing accommodations, processing differently, taking longer, needing less stimulation or more… leads to punishment. So your nervous system learned: real choice isn’t safe. Authenticity gets you hurt – especially in relationship with others.
This is why practicing tiny moments of agency matters now. You’re not just resisting authoritarianism. You’re undoing decades of coerced compliance… the kind that started in classrooms and doctor’s offices and family dinner tables long before any political regime confirmed what your body already knew about how power works.
So you practice choice in tiny, daily ways:
- Choose when you check information
- Choose who gets access to your attention
- Choose one action you can repeat
- Choose one relationship you keep alive
- Choose one “no” that protects you
- Say “I’m protecting my energy” instead of making excuses³
That is nervous system countertraining. And these small actions change your neurology. It will get easier the more you do it, consciously, and with celebratory acknowledgment.
Shattuck names this the space “between trigger and response. That’s the space.”³ You’re not trying to suppress reactive states. You’re trying to notice them. To create a gap where choice becomes possible.
And doing these things nourishes two of the three Characteristics of Autonomic Tone: Self-Containment and Sovereignty. This supports nervous system well-being.
Move 8: Keep your humanity local and real
Authoritarianism turns life abstract. People become slogans, categories, enemies.
Your nervous system stays intact through the concrete:
- a friend’s face
- a neighbor’s name
- a real need you can meet
- a real boundary you can hold
- a real choice you can make today
Scene: You feel yourself slipping into despair and isolation. You want to disappear. Instead, you go downstairs and get your mail. You say hello to one neighbor. You pet a dog.
You come back inside and send one “no pressure” text. You didn’t fix the country. But you refused isolation… which is one of the main goals of authoritarian pressure.
Local engagement increases impact. Working in immediate communities reduces abstraction and increases felt agency.⁷
This might look like:
- Learning a neighbor’s name… just start there³
- Attending a local meeting, even if you don’t speak³
- Hosting a no-agenda afternoon tea where people can just be³
- Reconnecting with someone you drifted from³
- Checking on someone who might be pulling back³
And if leaving your house feels impossible right now… if the sensory demands of “out there” are too much on top of everything else… “local” can mean your online community, a Discord server, one text thread with people you trust. Connection doesn’t require physical presence. For a lot of us, the screen is where we find our people. That’s real.
Community is a primary stabilizer. Collective action and mutual support regulate more effectively than isolated coping.⁷
And here’s something crucial: resistance is plural. There is no correct or superior way to resist. Frontline protest is not the benchmark. Skills-based contribution counts. Values-based action is more sustainable than reactive action.⁷
Move 9: Know what to do when shame shows up
If you have any kind of public presence… even just a social media account… you might notice this pattern: awareness of your reach or privilege triggering a shame spiral. “I have a platform, I have privilege, therefore I should be doing more, therefore I’m failing” collapses into self-attack rather than action.⁷
For those of us whose systems run rejection sensitivity (RSD)… where the gap between “what I should be doing” and “what I can do” lands like a physical blow… shame doesn’t just slow us down. It can shut the whole system offline.
Doomscrolling fuels false narratives of inaction. Overexposure leads to “I’m doing nothing” stories that are inaccurate. When you attune even slightly, you can name real contributions already happening.⁷
If shame arrives, try this:
First, if shame hit like a freight train and you can’t think… just name it out loud: “Shame spiral.” That’s it. You don’t have to fix it yet. Just name it so it’s not invisible. Bonus points if you can call someone and share it with an understanding friend who won’t try to fix you.
When you’re ready, write a factual list of actions you’ve already taken this week. Not what you wish you’d done. What you actually did. Even if it’s “sent one text. Donated $5. Showed up to one meeting. Didn’t share that hateful post. Wished I could do more.” (Yeah… when you’re neurodivergent, even wishing matters… because even wishing takes more energy than you have to give. IYKYK)
Shame is demobilizing. Guilt and “not enough” narratives reduce capacity to act.⁷ When you replace shame narratives with factual accounting, you restore accurate self-assessment. And the last thing authoritarians want you to be able to do is track facts. So even this is training your resistance.
Move 10: Remember what your system is actually designed for
Your nervous system is not designed for endless solo vigilance.
“Our nervous systems are social structures that find balance and stability in relationship with others.”⁵
Co-attunement is not a luxury. It’s how the system works. Connection restores energy for many… human connection, conversation, collaboration, shared presence can increase capacity even when starting depleted.⁷
This is why isolation is so dangerous under authoritarian pressure. And why even one thread of connection matters.
If authoritarian harm thrives on fragmentation, then reconnection is a counter-strategy. It doesn’t have to be public or dramatic. Just one relationship. One thread.³
If you’re deeply introverted, or find that being in connection with others drains your battery… even if the connection is amazing, healthy, and enjoyable… you’re not broken. You just need to take these actions in small doses. Set clear boundaries, and honor them. If zoom is more sustainable than in-person… do that. If text is more sustainable than zoom… do that. If sending a voice memo into the void is all you’ve got today… do that. Adjust your relational engagement to fit what serves you and is sustainable.
A Note on Practice
If something on this list makes you feel worse, stop. Your nervous system knows what it needs better than any framework does. This isn’t a test. It’s a menu. Take what helps. Leave the rest. Come back another day and something different might fit.
What This Looks Like Over Time
You’re not going to do this perfectly. Some days you’ll doomscroll. Some days you’ll collapse. Some days you’ll rage at people who don’t deserve it.
That’s not failure. That’s being human under pressure.
What you’re building is not a system that never breaks. You’re building a system that knows how to come back.
You’re learning to notice states before they hijack you. To create gaps where choice becomes possible. To match moves to capacity. To protect your humanity while the world stays hard.
You’re developing autonomic tone… even though you may not even know what that is. Trust me… it is always healthy for your nervous system well-being.
And you’re doing it not alone, but in relationship… because that’s how nervous systems actually work.
The visible acts of defiance matter. But so do the invisible ones. The text you send. The meeting you attend silently. The joy you refuse to surrender. The neighbor whose name you learn. The one choice you make that proves to your body: I still have agency.
Crisis often reveals humanity. Disaster brings out collective care and mutual aid. The worst conditions can evoke the best responses.⁷ This paradox is fragile, but real.
And hope is not abstract. Hope is relational. Hope arises from witnessing people protect and care for one another.⁷
One Last Thing
Paul Shattuck writes: “Staying human isn’t just about feeling better and preserving our softness. It’s about protecting the inner architecture that lets us discern, connect, and act with integrity and sustainable energy.”³
You’re not just protecting your nervous system so you can feel okay.
You’re protecting your nervous system so you can stay human. So you can think clearly. So you can choose integrity. So you can discern what’s real. So you can act in ways that last.
That’s self-care as infrastructure.
And it’s one of the most strategic things you can do.