When You Lose: Three Steps to Keep Going

On Thursday, Congress passed a budget bill that slashed Medicaid and food assistance by over $1 trillion over the next decade, along with burdensome paperwork requirements and job loss penalties that will likely result in a lot of people losing coverage. A lot of dedicated people have spent the last several months fighting against those cuts, but they passed anyway. It’s a devastating loss for our community.

In advocacy work, good people often still lose high-stakes fights. It’s brutal. At the same time, we (collectively) don’t really have the luxury of simply packing it in after a loss. We can’t afford to lose too many people to burnout. Even if other passionate people step up to fill the gap, we’ll have lost out on the burned-out advocates’ hard-won wisdom and experience. And of course, it’s always better to have those new, passionate advocates and experienced advocates, because numbers count.

But these kinds of losses can drive frustration and burnout, especially if we don’t take the time to take care of ourselves after a loss. Here’s three critical steps to maintain your effectiveness—and that of your movement—when things don’t go well.

1. Feel your feelings (but avoid overthinking)

Feeling your feelings means actually spending time thinking about how you feel, not what you think. This is harder than it sounds. When we’re upset about something serious, it’s extremely tempting to spend a lot of time thinking about the likely consequences of the loss. There’s a time and place for that—after you’ve spent some time actually acknowledging how the loss is making you feel.

So first, put those thoughts aside for a bit. The first step is to simply recognize how you feel—such as angry or sad—and let that actual emotional response go through you. Don’t try to escape from it, even if it feels awful in the moment. Spend time with the feeling until it feels like it’s washed over a bit - the feeling will still likely be there, but it will be a bit more manageable. Repeat as necessary. If there are times when you truly don’t have the luxury of taking a moment to do this, it can help to literally pencil it into your schedule.

There are several benefits to doing this. First, it trains your brain not to be as terrified of your own feelings. When we’re afraid of loss, we can end up avoiding being invested in future projects that aren’t guaranteed success—which is obviously not conducive to good advocacy. Second, it means that when we do start thinking about the likely challenges we’re now going to face after the relevant loss (and how to meet those challenges), we’re doing it with a bit of a clearer head. That makes us more able to make realistic predictions, craft better strategy, and actually start imagining how future advocacy can make a difference.

2. Be kind to your colleagues (and yourself)

Movements are most effective when they are made up of people who like and trust each other. Liking and trusting your movement partners isn’t always easy: movements are often full of personality conflicts, old grudges, and strong differences of opinion on strategy, tactics, and goals. But one of the biggest threats to that kind of cohesion is the impulse to withdraw or even blame each other after a loss.

Perhaps there’s someone who you think made a serious strategic error, or didn’t put in the level of effort you wanted them to, or kept focusing on an issue other than the one you thought was the most important. In your anger, you’re tempted to call them out on their behavior, placing the responsibility for the loss squarely on them. Perhaps you think that person was you - leading to a spiral of shame and self-recrimination.

This can be a natural human response. Blaming someone gives us a sense of control. Blaming someone close to us gives us a greater sense of control than blaming someone who doesn’t know us or care what we think. Lashing out can give us a temporary sense of power at a time when we feel helpless—but it’s not fair to others and it weakens movements in the long term.

Of course, if someone truly is toxic to your movement, you may have to deal with that eventually—but not now. Wait until you’ve cleared your head.

Meanwhile, make sure to actively reach out to the people who did good work. If you’re sad, they probably are too. Thank them for their work and remind them that they’re good people. If you’re both interested and have some time, let it turn into a mutual vent/emotional support session. Thank yourself too.

3. Create something

Creating something is, in my experience, one of the best ways to combat learned helplessness, which is one of the biggest drivers of burnout. It doesn’t have to be something relevant to your movement in any way - just something that wasn’t in the world before, that’s now in the world because you made it. This act of creation is a reminder that you have an impact on the universe.

Personally, I favor creating something tangible, like a craft or a drawing on paper. If you create something digital or ephemeral, it can help to share it—just so that others can confirm it actually is a thing that exists.

Did these steps help you? What are you doing to take care of yourself and maintain your effectiveness? Please comment and keep the conversation going!

And as always, if you have an advocacy question you’d like to work through, please feel free to message me, or reach out to me through my website for a consultation!