IRVINE, California — The resistance isn’t dead. It’s doing deep-breathing exercises in California.
Not long after the election, a group of Orange County Democrats invited a therapist to help them process Donald Trump’s return to power. She clicked through topics ranging from “stages of grief” to how to “increase distress tolerance” and “how to self-soothe.”
And if the Irvine Democratic Club’s particular approach to coping with a second Trump administration positively screamed California , it seemed to fit the mood in this state — a fortress of progressive politics that served as an antithesis to Trump in his first term.
“This is a safe place,” the therapist, Rachel O’Neil, told the group of about two dozen Democrats as she put up her slides. Then, by show of hands, she asked how many people felt sad, or scared, or exhausted. She talked about mindfulness, “micro-dosing hope” and “radical acceptance.”…