How to Stay Grounded When the World Feels on Fire - A Practical Guide for Political PTSD

Hope Infusion Newsletter "Wisdom Wednesday" Edition - March 12, 2025

You wake up.
Check your phone.
Cue the avalanche.
More headlines. More crises. More moments where you think, “What fresh hell is this?”

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted—or all three—you’re not alone. This isn’t just about the news. It’s about psychological warfare, designed to make you feel helpless, hopeless, and too burned out to resist.

I’m not a therapist. And I don’t play one on TV. But I am a voracious reader who’s wandered way too far down the literary rabbit hole, searching for actionable countermeasures to the avalanche of shock and horror being aimed at the collective psyche right now. And I’ve found a few things worth sharing.

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Step One: Understand the Game

Authoritarianism 101 isn’t just about tanks in the streets (though… yeah). It’s about mental manipulation, emotional exhaustion, and information overload. Here are a few top tactics from the autocrat playbook (courtesy of the history books I can’t stop reading):

➡️ Flood the system → Overwhelm you with so many crises that you can’t focus on any of them.
➡️ Normalize extremism → Repeat the outrageous until you tune out or give up.
➡️ Confuse and contradict → Erode shared reality until no one knows what’s true.
➡️ Create learned helplessness → Wear you down until you stop fighting back.

(Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny is a brilliant crash course in all this. How Democracies Die by Levitsky and Ziblatt lays out how it happens in chilling historical detail.)

Once you see the game, you’re no longer playing it on autopilot.

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Step Two: Reclaim Your Nervous System

You can’t outthink chronic fight-or-flight. You have to ground your body first.

Some quick tools:

• Box breathing (Inhale 4, hold 4, exhale 4, hold 4.)

• Move (Stretch, walk, dance, shake out your hands.)

• 5-4-3-2-1 grounding (Name 5 things you see, 4 you feel, 3 you hear…)

• The Calm App works in a pinch.

• Or just… step outside. Seriously. Sunlight is anti-fascist. (Okay, maybe not scientifically. But it helps.)

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Step Three: Control Your Information Diet

My facebook feed has become an unending stream of “disaster” headlines posted by people, understandably angry, annoyed, and anxious about these unprecedented times. I understand and empathize, so I’m going to hold your hand when I say this: Constant doom scrolling is a fast track to burnout!

• Limit "Doom scrolling" → Set a daily news check-in window (e.g., 10 min in the morning, 10 min in the evening).

• Pick 2-3 Trusted Sources → Don’t drown in the flood. Curate what you consume.

• Unplug Before Bed → Political trauma disrupts sleep. Protect your rest.

One of my preferred sources is Dr. Heather Cox Richardson’s "Letter from an American." It’s free and posted daily to both Facebook and Substack.

I appreciate her work because it consistently centers the day’s headlines within the broader context of historical events, offering clarity and a perspective I haven’t found elsewhere. She’s well-respected, cites her sources, and doesn’t leave me feeling hopeless.

My point is not to tell you who to follow, but to encourage intentionality about where you get your information and how often you engage with it. Don’t let the endless scroll hijack your peace!

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Step Four: Focus Where It Matters

You can’t do everything. But you can do something.

• Pick ONE issue that matters to you.

• Take ONE action, consistently.

• Find your local people. National politics can feel hopeless. Local action is where things change.

(And yes, sometimes that action looks like resting, feeding your kids, or planting tomatoes in defiance of doom. That counts.)

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Step Five: Protect Your Spirit

Fear is being weaponized. Joy is resistance! But let’s take it deeper. The world is heavy, but it is also beautiful. It’s easy to get lost in the darkness—so make a conscious choice to remember the light.

• Go outside. Feel the sun on your skin.

• Listen to music. Let it move through you.

• Laugh with a friend. Let it remind you of your aliveness.

• Watch the seasons shift. Spring is coming. The days are getting longer.

• Touch the earth. Walk barefoot. Breathe deeply. Return to yourself.

There is power in presence. There is resistance in joy. No matter what is happening in the world, love is still real, beauty is still here, and we are still standing. Let’s hold on to that. Better yet—let’s hold each other to that.

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Resources That Help

📚 On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder (Field guide for lresistance).
📚 How Democracies Die by Levitsky & Ziblatt (Understand the playbook).
📚 Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit (Hope is not naive—it’s necessary).
🧘🏾‍♀️ The Calm App (For your frazzled nervous system).
🌿 TRE (Tension Release Exercises) if your body needs to offload the stress.

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Parting Thoughts

They want you to give up.
They want you to burn out.
They want you to believe it’s hopeless.

It isn’t!
We’ve been here before.
And we know what to do.

Stay awake. Stay grounded. Stay human.

And if you need a little help remembering where the light still shines, I’ll keep leaving the porch light on.

In Love and Solidarity,

Olivia