Lesson 3.3: Mental Health and Personal Consequences

2. Everyday hostility and accumulated stress

The hostility circulating through politics, media, and public space does not remain abstract — it enters homes, workplaces, and bodies. Across Europe, participants in the RESIST research described a slow accumulation of stress: the constant need to defend one’s existence, to justify one’s work, to prepare for potential attack. Over time, this produces a climate of hypervigilance — being perpetually ‘on alert’ — which wears down both mind and body.

Those most affected are often people who already experience multiple forms of marginalisation: queer, trans, feminist, migrant, or racialised individuals. The emotional energy spent on staying safe and credible drains creative, intellectual, and collective capacity. What emerges is a pattern of chronic fatigue and internalised caution. Constant vigilance, defensive labour, and the need to justify one’s existence drain emotional and cognitive resources. Over time, this produces a climate in which exhaustion becomes normalised.

Across the RESIST case studies, many participants described symptoms of chronic anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion that persisted long after individual incidents had passed. These effects were especially visible among activists and educators — those who make gender and equality issues visible in public life.

Compounded trauma refers to the layering of multiple stressors over time. For example, living with fear of violence, harassment, and exclusion simultaneously. Unlike one-time traumatic events, compounded trauma builds gradually and often goes unrecognised. Compounded trauma is not only emotional; it also affects political imagination. When fear accumulates, people describe difficulty planning, organising, or envisioning safer futures.

Trauma and compounded harm

Ireland

This sense of residual fear — the quiet, enduring aftermath of trauma — recurred across interviews. In Ireland, for example, the trauma of public targeting lingered long after attacks ended:

The residual event […] it festers there, waiting for its next time to pounce. (Kevin, Ireland Report, p. 15)

Spain – Catalonia and the Basque Country

In Spain, the emotional dimension of ‘anti-gender’ politics was deeply tied to fear — of insult, job loss, or physical aggression. Participants spoke of living in a state of ‘hyper-alert modus,’ where even ordinary activities felt risky. Tiredness is a sensation of fatigue and exhaustion of having to argue, explain, or face attacks on a daily basis.

Hyper-alertness restricts civic engagement: people avoid public forums that do not explicitly welcome feminist perspectives.

There comes a point where, in order to participate in any political space that is not explicitly feminist, you have to leave aside certain feminist issues. (Núria, Spain – Catalonia and the Basque Country Report, pp. 9-10)

These reflections illustrate how continuous vigilance becomes normalised. Self-censorship and withdrawal are not failures of courage but adaptive responses to an exhausting environment.

Belarus

Finally, among Belarusian activists in exile, ‘anti-gender’ campaigns reopened older wounds. Many were already survivors of political persecution and described renewed trauma in exile, amplified by economic precarity and lack of access to psychological care. The Belarus report notes that:

The community’s capacity for mutual care is very low due to the trauma from the events of 2020 and their aftermath. (Belarus Report, p. 21)