Spots 
Though Djurdja Padejski was raised in communist Yugoslavia, her life there felt stable and uneventful for a long time. In the 1980s, under Yugoslavia’s “soft” one-party government, Padejski and her friends read Western literature, watched Hollywood movies, and listened to the BBC. “We grew up in a very comfortable, naive environment,” Padejski says.
That changed in the 1990s when Yugoslavia split into several republics. Civil war broke out, and a virulent strain of nationalism took hold in Serbia, the Yugoslavian state where Padejski lived. Firebrand leader Slobodan Milošević ascended to power and began meddling in elections, targeting opposition leaders, and igniting ethnic cleansing campaigns.
“He captured the entire society and his party,” Padejski remembers. “Very soon I found myself on the streets protesting.” Padejski’s activism against repressive Serbian regimes would continue until 2011, when she and her husband, investigative journalist Djordje Padejski, left the country after people threatened to kill them.
The Padejskis arrived in the U.S. with hard-won knowledge of how to outlast repression over the long haul. In recent years, they’ve tapped back into that knowledge and shared it with those around them as they witness here in America the illegal destruction of government agencies, election tampering, and warrantless arrests of citizens and non-citizens. This isn’t just true in the United States—around the world, democracy is declining.
How can we go on defying rising authoritarianism when no clear endpoint is in sight? Psychology and motivation research complement the experience of people like the Padejskis by addressing how to conserve energy and sustain commitment to your ideals in challenging conditions.
“The goal of the authoritarian regime is to desensitize us to extremes, to things we should never agree with or consider normal,” says Djurdja Padejski, now a language and culture researcher (and doctoral candidate) at Arizona State University.
Surviving repression depends on rejecting this presumed “normality” and refusing to let your inner state mirror extremes imposed from above. To that end, here are seven research-backed ways to subsist under indefinite duress. 1. Acknowledge your own limits as a prelude to targeted action
Life under repression feels exhausting due to the colossal scale of so much of what is happening: attacks on the free press, denial of life-saving aid to millions overseas, ongoing ICE killings on the streets and in detention facilities. Reading about such developments understandably triggers feelings of overwhelm. Research finds that these feelings can drive people to shut down their emotions, dampening their motivation to help in concrete ways.
Djurdja Padejski has come to recognize that to avoid that trap, she has to face her human limits squarely without drowning in self-recrimination. As a young adult under Milošević’s rule, she learned early that worrying about what she couldn’t do was a waste of time and energy.
“It is very important not to get stuck in that moment, not to be clutching your pearls,” she says. “We have to be strategic to preserve our resources.”
Though Djurdja Padejski was raised in communist Yugoslavia, her life there felt stable and uneventful for a long time.