A Guidebook: How to Survive Oppressive Systems
This series is meant to be a psychological survival guide and illustration on how to hold on to yourself, the truth and each other when people in power positions try to resolve their wounding by controlling and dominating us.
Know Yourself
When we know ourselves, we become harder to manipulate. We aren't easily triggered by our fears, shame, or grief because we understand where these feelings come from. We know how to soothe ourselves through difficult moments and don’t need to escape.
Take Your Seat
We can learn to take a comfortable seat inside our own minds and bodies. Find a practice that helps you tune in - meditation, therapy, yoga, art, exercise. This practice isn't about fixing or managing. It's about observing, listening, and connecting - even when you want to escape discomfort.
This doesn't mean being happy about everything we experience inside. Quite the opposite. It's about becoming comfortable in relating with the feelings of shame, grief, uncertainty, terror, etc. All of it.
We Do It Together
Connect to others who are doing the same wake up call from within. Support each other and encourage each other. You are not alone in the work. Collectively, we can enforce the individual work that we each have in our own systems.
This work is hard. We have been taught to ignore our internal world. Our minds have had to figure out complex ways to cope with the internal suffering - minimize, dissociate, blame, people-please, push through, etc. We have to listen to these protections and befriend them in order to get to the places inside us that hold the pain. It takes patience. It takes persistence.
From Inner to Outer
We can learn to practice relating to our internal dialogue from a loving, compassionate center. This leads to a more fearless and honest life, connected to who we naturally are.
When we stop avoiding our own pain and grief, we can stop avoiding the pain and grief in our world. Those manufactured, bite-sized stories start to taste too sweet. We crave something more complex, more real. Something closer to truth.
This deeper knowing extends outward. Learn to tune in as we take in the world around us. Pay attention to body signals and behavioral patterns - these are clues to knowing ourselves more deeply. The digital systems we use every day know these things about us…so we should too.
Open Heart,
Open Eyes
Open-Hearted Connection
Authentic connection is essential for survival - it allows us to share resources, skills, and knowledge. How can we love others while seeing them clearly? When we deceive ourselves to maintain relationships - to people, institutions, and even our own country - we become vulnerable to manipulation. This self-deception leads us into black and white thinking about people and situations. Once we accept these oversimplified stories, we become susceptible to the black and white narratives of larger systems - family, government, corporations. Those in power know how to exploit this by creating division through oversimplified stories that prevent us from seeing the full complexity of both people and systems.
The Water We Swim In
Humans connect through the stories we share - stories passed down through generations without question. Stories like - productivity equals worth, money leads to happiness, men shouldn’t cry, and children should be seen and not heard. These aren't truths. They're ideas the generations before used to make sense of the world and survive.
These stories BOTH hurt us and connect us to our people. When we can see them clearly - the water we swim in - we realize how we're all trapped in them. Even those who seem to benefit from these beliefs are cut off from their authentic selves.
To move beyond these stories, we first have to see how they show up in our thoughts, beliefs, and judgments every single day.
But with seeing comes…grief. Letting go of what we think connects us to our people, to the earth, to life - this can be the hardest part. We can begin to see our past and the people we love through the lens of these inherited stories. We can then tend to the suffering and damage they've caused.
What felt like belonging begins to feel like conformity. But once we release these false stories, we connect to everything and everyone in deeper, more authentic ways. We can invite others into this questioning process - not to destroy connection, but to find truer ground beneath our feet.
Connection Through Boundaries
We can love others and acknowledge their harmful behaviors. Even those abusing power. We can fully see them, love them, set boundaries and hold them accountable. Allowing people to experience their own consequences instead of rescuing them is compassion.
To have an open heart with others, we need good boundaries. Boundaries that are flexible and fit each situation. Ask yourself: How well does this person know themselves? How is their behavior affecting me right now?
These same principles apply when we engage with oppressive systems - we can see them clearly, refuse to participate in their damage, and work for change.
Create space where you can love others AND love yourself at the same time. Boundaries allow for more connection, not less. Passively allowing others to harm us is harmful to everyone.
Discern and Protect
The Digital Landscape
We live in a world of algorithms designed to capture our attention and shape our thoughts. Learning to discern truth from manipulation has become essential survival knowledge.
Our children are especially vulnerable. They're growing up in digital spaces that we barely understand ourselves. Their developing minds are targets for systems designed to create dependency and division.
Protection Through Connection
Protection means more than monitoring screen time. It means connecting our children to community, to the earth, to their own inner knowing. When they're rooted in real relationships and natural rhythms, they're less vulnerable to digital manipulation.
Teaching Discernment
We can teach discernment by modeling it. Show them how to pause, how to question, how to check in with their bodies when consuming information. Help them understand that algorithms are designed to trigger strong emotions - and strong emotions make us less able to think clearly.
Ground them in practices that connect them to themselves and the living world. This is how we protect what matters most: their capacity for authentic connection, critical thinking, and trust in their own inner wisdom.
When children are rooted in community and connected to the earth, they develop the inner resources to navigate digital spaces with discernment and strength.