BC HEALTH
Saved by @jay_millerjay

Anxiety resides in 4 spaces:

1. The space inside you
2. The space between you and another
3. The space between others
4. The space inside another.

A powerful de escalation tools is to first locate the anxiety. Where is it?

Often the answer is 'all 4.' Yikes!

1/

 Anxiety is contagious, we spread it and escalate it unless we know how to manage it.

This was perhaps my biggest lesson as a trauma chaplain - the very hard work of not catching someone's anxiety.

2/
When I caught it, I was no good to them. I no longer saw what was going on, I was now 'infected' by my own triggers, assumptions, the story I tell myself. I was all wrapped up in myself.

But when I managed my anxiety, I was able to be calm, aware and fully present to them.

3/
Even in the very worst moment of their lives, even if they had me by the shoulders screaming, 'how could God allow this to happen?'

4/
Incidentally, early in chaplaincy, I thought this was an actual question. Because I was anxious, I was more infected by my need to answer than I was to simply be calm and present with them in their pain.

5/
One way to practice anxiety management is to sit with someone in deep pain for a long time without offering a suggestion, advice, help, without relieving them of their anxiety.

Without shrinking their pain down to a size that feels better for you.

!!!

6/
You can also watch anxiety spread between people - between you and others, but also when you walk into a room and already sense a mood.

We have all 'stepped on a mood' when we walk into a room.

In fact one anxiety tool is to learn your impact when you walk into a room.

7/
Especially for people of extra privilege, we don't initially understand our power. (I speak as one: tall, deep voice, white, male, leader, Aussie. Plenty of privilege there.)

To understand my impact can help me manage anxiety.

8/
And to make this a briefer than usual thread, because hey now, it is a beautiful Saturday morning....

the 4th space: the space inside another.

Holy ground. Sacred territory.

Stay Away. Danger, Will Robinson.

9/
Much anxiety is generated when we ruminate on 'why do they do it that way, why don't they think this way?'

That is space inside another. You cannot manage that space. Out of the 4 spaces, that is the space between them and God.

10/
Much initial anxiety can be relieved by asking yourself, 'what is mine to carry, what is God's, what is theirs?'

It gets anxiety back where it belongs.

11/
It helps you carry the 'each day has enough troubles of it owns' anxiety, keeps you from reactivity, rushing in to solve, rescue, 'make people feel better' which is usually impossible.

So 4 spaces. God inhabits all of it.

12/
When we know God is with us, anxiety gets displaced.

Anxiety is displaced by love and laughter.

When do you feel most fully loved?

God is not only with you, but ahead of you.

That meeting you're walking into. You are walking into the active presence of God.

13/
It is not all on you, in spite of what Anxiety tells you. God is with you and ahead of you.

When in your life do you feel most fully loved?

What if you could answer that question with dozens of examples, not just one or two?

Peace this beautiful Saturday.

14/14

More from Steve Cuss

Steve Cuss
Steve Cuss
@stevecusswords
The Inner Critic.

Ugh.

Its hard to dislodge the power and influence the IC has over us. Here is a helpful tool:

1. Find at least one other who cares about you and get together.

1/

2. Have your friend write down the messages your IC tells you as you share it.

3. Then ask her/him to write the adjectives of these messages, ex: 'harsh,' 'unrelenting,' 'condemning.' etc.

So now you have the actual messages on one line and descriptors on the other.

2/

4. Now write the descriptors of God's character and God's posture toward you. Patient, loving, kind etc.

5. What if I were at least as ________ to myself as God is.

3/

We tend to get wigged out by talk of Satan and Spiritual Warfare, but the more I work with people on chronic anxiety, the more convinced I am that our self talk, our IC, the story we tell ourselves about how we MUST be and how the world MUST be is keeping us trapped.

4/

Paul says, 'it is for freedom that Christ has set us free' yet so many are bound by our IC and .the story we tell ourselves.

We give it WAY too much authority, too much real estate in our soul. It has a 'gospel' which is always some form of legalism and condemnation

5/
LIFE
Steve Cuss
Steve Cuss
@stevecusswords
There are 4 spaces in life, 3 we can do something about. We spend too much time and energy focusing on the one that we cannot and ought not try to manage.

1/

1. Space inside me. What is going on in me? How do I know when I am anxious? We all carry a bubbling collective of pressure, pain, assumptions, inner critic etc that can block our awareness of God and distort reality.

2/

2. Space between people. This can be space between me and you or space between others. Ever walked into a room with people and you felt off? You might be picking up the space between others.

Anxiety is contagious and often the most anxious person has the most power.

3/

3. Space between me and God. It is disturbing how often I forget God With Us.

Chronic anxiety seeps through us like that foam insulation. It finds the nooks and crannies and squeezes out our awareness of God.

But it can be quickly displaced with some tools.

4/

4. The space inside them.

This is the space we spend too much time and energy worrying about. If you've ever thought, 'what were they thinking? Why did they do that, Why wouldn't they _____' you're fixated on the one space you cannot manage.

5/
LIFE
Advertisement
Steve Cuss
Steve Cuss
@stevecusswords
The events of the week have shaken us all. Murray Bowen described 'societal regression.' Anxiety is contagious in any group and a society is one giant interconnected group, so over time, societies become more and more anxious unless the anxiety is displaced.

1/

Displacement requires calm, non reactive leadership at every level and we have lacked that at a federal level, hence the massive escalation of anxiety on the 'system' of our society.

2/

Bowen predicted that as we regress we would no longer be able to listen to each other, we'd become highly reactive, continuing the vicious cycle of catching each others' anxiety and reactivity.

We are there.

3/

But we are not doomed. Especially knowing we have a God who cares.

But it requires calm, aware leadership at every level.

4/

Systems theory often measures anxiety and action through the lens of responsibility and control.

I frame it through the notion of spaces

1. The space inside me

2. The space between us

3. The space between me and God.

5/
HEALTH
Steve Cuss
Steve Cuss
@stevecusswords
John says 'perfect love casts out fear.'

Perfect love displaces fear. I think fear can displace our awareness and experience of perfect love. It cannot displace God's love, but it sure can displace our awareness of it.

1/

Knowing you're in anxiety's grip is actually not as easy as we think. We tend to bear down and try harder instead of pausing.

One way to notice it: you are no longer aware of God's presence and God's love.

It could be that your anxiety has displaced your awareness.

2/

Warning Signs:

- you start to think it is all on you/all on your shoulders.
- 'if it is to be, it is up to me.' An anxious statement if ever I heard one.
- An impending feeling of doom or hopelessness.
- Rigid thinking, either-or locked in thinking.
- double binding.

3/

Chronic Anxiety has a 'gospel.'

'it is on you, there is not much you can do, you are not ______ enough, YOU are not enough, there are only bad options, try harder, do more of the same.'

Recognizing Chronic Anxiety's message helps you displace it with the actual Gospel.

4/

Even though we have the Gospel, we often don't access it. We spend most of our time living by our false selves, not by the Gospel. I have been doing this work for decades and I still spend more time living for false self, than I do resting in my identity in Christ.

5/
LIFE
Steve Cuss
Steve Cuss
@stevecusswords
I've been doing more study on the constant critic(s) that every church leader deals with. Its amazing how a steady group of 2-5 critics can really tax a leader's health and impact them way beyond their numbers. ie, more than 3 feels like 'legion' to a leader.

1/

All vocations face criticism of course.

I wonder if church criticism is unique because:

a) church leaders tend to conflate personal identity and church health more than most.

b) critics falsely think they know about leading a church because they attend a church.

2/

For example, doctors and teachers face criticism. People come into a Doc with diagnosis from Internet etc. But I wonder if attending and serving in a church makes someone more confident that they know when they really don't know.

3/

I've often marveled, and been hurt by how strongly someone has an opinion about something they've had zero training in. They are oblivious to how broad a church is - they think everyone thinks the same.

4/

One reason they think this is because their phantom mob is usually made up of like minded people. A handful of passionate people agreeing, so they say, 'everyone thinks' but actually it is less than 1% of the church.

5/
LIFE

More from Health

Plum
Plum
@getplumhq
12 things you should look out for before buying health insurance

A thread 🧵

It’s a good idea to make sure your health is protected under an insurance policy so that you don’t shell out large sums of money for hospitalization and treatment. But buying an individual health insurance policy can be daunting in itself.

Websites and policy documents can be overwhelming. There’s a lot of loaded terms, there’s a whole bunch of things that your policy may or may not cover. It’s important to know and understand the details though, so you’re not surprised later.

In this thread, we'll talk about the things you absolutely need to watch out for when buying an individual health insurance policy for yourself or your family members :)

If you take an individual health insurance policy and the insurance company offers to pay up to ₹15 lakhs during the year whenever you’re diagnosed with a disease or meet an accident, that amount is the 'sum insured'.
HEALTH
Dinesh S. Thakur
Dinesh S. Thakur
@d_s_thakur
This is a limited point about availability of efficacy data for vaccines under development in the context of the approval for CovidShield and Covaxin in India.

There have been many so-called experts on the idiotbox opining about apparent availability of P III data which 1/n

2/n apparently the SEC had access to based on which it "supposedly" approved Covaxin. Another argument that is prevalent is other regulators (US FDA and MHRA) also approved vaccines based on P II data alone. Let me give you a few facts so that you can make your own decision.

3/n The protocols for both mRNA vaccines are publicly available. You can check. Both protocols *define* when the interim analysis will be done. This is not subjective. They clearly define how many infections need to be documented before the Data Safety Monitoring Board meets.

4/n Find the protocols for the bridging study for CovidShield and Covaxin and look for a similar milestone.

Here is one set of efficacy data post the interim analysis of a mRNA vaccine.

Source: https://t.co/BAPnP3PxEb


5/n This data was analyzed post the interim analysis where the blind was broken by the DSMB. Now ask yourself this question:
How does the SEC, or the sponsor of these studies, or the experts who are offering their opinion liberally on the idiotbox know what the efficacy is
HEALTH
Advertisement
Eric Feigl-Ding
Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
NEW—CDC was truly suffocated by Trump WH at every turn. Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at CDC, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, witnessed WH dismissal of science, WH’s slow suffocation of CDC’s voice, meddling in messages & siphoning of CDC budget.
https://t.co/HeuNbUggiw


2) ““Everyone wants to describe the day that the light switch flipped—It didn’t happen that way—more of like a hand grasping something, and it slowly closes, closes, closes, closes until you realize that, middle of the summer, it has a complete grasp on everything at the CDC”

3) “Mr. McGowan and Ms. Campbell, both 34, say they tried to protect their colleagues against political meddling from WH and HHS but was largely stifled by the Trump administration.

4) “The White House insisted on reviewing — and often softening — the C.D.C.’s closely guarded coronavirus guidance documents, the most prominent public expression of its latest research and scientific consensus on the spread of the virus.”

5) “The documents were vetted not only by the White House’s coronavirus task force but by what felt to the agency’s employees like an endless loop of political appointees across Washington.
Mr. McGowan recalled a White House fixated on the economic implications of public health.
HEALTH
Eli Tyre
Eli Tyre
@EpistemicHope
I know some people who seem (to me) more concerned with receiving VALIDATION for their mental health issues than solving them.

They seem to care most about other people BELIEVING their problems are real.

I'm curious about this.

Like, it's more important to them that people know how debilitating their anxiety is, than to overcome the anxiety.

Or it's important to them that others believe that they're actually depressed, not "just sad."

Or they want people buy into the narrative that they've been traumatized, and might be something like offended if someone minimizes that.

What do we make of this?

1. One possibility is that if solving the problems seems hopeless or even just really hard, you need external support to be able to cope.

If no one cuts you slack because of your mental health stuff, maybe you're in a really bad place, so you need people to believe you.
HEALTH
Gbenga Samuel-Wemimo
Gbenga Samuel-Wemimo
@GbengaWemimo
They called it elephantiasis
A disease said to be caused by a strange mosquito
I was at the Bible College at the time
I had been sent for my Teaching Practice at a church located at Ogudu Ori-Oke
The pastor of this church was a gentleman
He and his wife were chartered accountants

and they were blessed
I was a personal assistant to another pastor and the coordinator of the Bible College had to practically beg my boss to allow me to observe the Teaching Practice at another church (He had insisted I do it with him and I would have spent the time carrying his

Bible and practicing nothing)
When I reported for duty, I was assigned the duty of follow up and evangelism
My primary assignment was to liaise with the follow-up lady and visit all the members who have not been to that church in weeks
I was also given the altar to minister one

Sunday a month (sermon) and other Sundays in various capacities like leading the church in prayer, taking testimonies, and closing prayer
We met this brother on the way to a member's house early one Sunday morning
He was sitting outside a building, wearing yellow slippers and

looking hopeless
We had walked past him but my spirit reached out to me, so I asked the sister to turn around with me so that we can minister to this brother
He was happy we came around
He said he had spent everything he had on the leg and he was desperate enough to accept any
HEALTH

You May Also Like

Anu Satheesh \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Anu Satheesh 🇮🇳...
@AnuSatheesh5
Agastya Muni & Kaveri River
#story
This is a story which describes how River Kaveri was brought on earth by Agastya muni. There was a king named Kavera lived in the Brahmagiri hills who prayed to Brahma for a child. He was blessed with a daughter whom he named Kaveri.


Agastya muni married her. A demon, named Shoorapadma, wanted to trouble people so he prevented rain from reaching South India. As a result famine occurred in South India.
Agastya Muni who came that way was very sad seeing this. He started to pray Mahadeva for a solution.


Shiva gave him small amount of Ganga water in his Kamandalu (small pot) and said wherever you spill this water the river will flow from there. Agastya Muni travelled lot of places to find a suitable place to pour water. Feeling tired he kept his Kamandalu and took rest.


At that time Ganesha took a form of crow and perched on the Kamadalu and made a hole that water began to flow as river Kaveri. This place is now called as Talakaveri (Karnataka), located in the Brahmagiri hill.


Tala Kaveri has temple for Agastheeswara, which denotes the story between Kaveri and Agasthya muni. Kaveri is a part of Ganga, thus, also called Dakshina Ganga.
🙏🕉🙏
ALL
Loren Brichter
Loren Brichter
@lorenb
So it turns out that Google Chrome was making everything on my computer slow *even when it wasn’t running*, because it installs something called Keystone which is basically malware.

I made a website because this shouldn’t

Wired first reported on how bad Keystone was 11 years ago when they put it into Google Earth (they seem to put it in all their popular

The fact that Keystone hides itself in Activity Monitor is bizarre. (The only sign of it was excessive CPU usage of WindowServer which is a system process).

I don’t know if Google was doing something nefarious with Keystone, or a third party figured out how to (which Wired warned about). But either way, I’m not inclined to give Google-the-organization the benefit of the doubt (despite the many good people who work on Chrome)...

...since it's been a decade+ and this still hasn't been "fixed".

There is no reason for auto-update software to need to do what Chrome/Keystone was doing. It also has a long history of crashing Macs.
TECH
Advertisement
Tom Hirst
Tom Hirst
@tom_hirst
How to create a freelancing website that makes money.

Everything I've learned.

A thread.

As a freelancer,

Your website is everything.

First, prioritise its existence.

Second, prioritise its improvement.

The technology you use is irrelevant.

- WordPress
- Notion
- Carrd
- Wix

It doesn't matter which you choose,

What matters is you have a website.

Pick a platform that you're comfortable with.

If you can:

- Capture leads
- Add content easily
- Have a clear design

You're good.

If your website doesn't get leads,

It's not working.

Don't rest on a website that doesn't work for you.

Improve it until it does.
STARTUPS
Kaspars Ozolins
Kaspars Ozolins
@lettlander
THREAD: Meditations on marriage metaphors in Ruth

The book of Ruth is, of course, a story about a beautiful marriage. But even before the courtship and the wedding and the important genealogy at the end, we find interesting language that is strikingly reminiscent of Genesis 2:24


That important verse reads:

'Therefore a man shall leave [יַֽעֲזָב] his father and his mother and hold fast [וְדָבַ֣ק] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'

The verb עזב can be quite strong in force. For example, Joseph leaves behind [וַיַּעֲזֹ֤ב] his garment as he flees from Pharaoh's wife's sexual advances. Countless times, Israel is depicted abandoning the LORD, for example in Judg 2:12 [וַיַּעַזְב֞וּ], and going after other gods.

Likewise, the verb דבק is rather striking. Lot is mortified of disaster overtaking him [תִּדְבָּקַ֥נִי] as he flees from Sodom. Israel is commanded in Deut 10:20 to cling fast [תִדְבָּ֔ק] to the LORD and serve him and swear by his name.

Together they illustrate how radical God designed marriage to be. Marriage is a real severing of family relations in order to form a new, permanent bond with another human being.

Something very similar to this takes places in Ruth's life.
HISTORY
\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8 Jules \U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
🇺🇸 Jules 🇺🇸...
@mayweliveasONE
2021 Predictions‼️

Made by James Howard Kunstler

👇🏻👀

Kunstler is said to be one of the best thinkers and authors of our modern era. He’s well known as an expert in energy economics, among other topics.

He is NOT a fan of Trump which makes his predictions even more interesting.

1) The election is re-adjudicated, fraud subtracted from the tally, and President Trump is declared the winner.

2) The mail-in vote for the Georgia Senate seat runoff is disqualified as systematic fraud is revealed. Stacy Abrams is indicted for organizing the fraud.

3) A number of political celebrities, DC swamp rats, K-Street hustlers, media figures, and tech company executives are arrested and charged with serious crimes around election fraud.

4) The CIA is purged and reduced to a strictly analytical role for advising the executive.
FOR LATER READ