BC HEALTH
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

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/
We often get stuck in an anxiety spiral because we put too much energy into the forth space:

4. The space inside them.

Systems Theory reminds us that spending time and energy on that space is not only futile, it is destructive.

6/
But the first 3 spaces? To coin an old Seinfeld reference, 'That's gold, Jerry. Gold.'

What is mine to carry, what is theirs, what is God's?

7/
Ed Friedman reminds us that working on the nature of our own anxiety, noticing recurring patterns and reactivity in ourselves, is what gives the most potential for change.

8/
The world needs leaders who practice calm presence. Leaders who listen to learn rather than listening to defend or fix. Leaders who can stay connected while strongly disagreeing, who can maintain their own values while connecting to people who violate their values.

9/
Fortunately we have Jesus of Nazareth as an example of calm, aware presence in the face of hostility and values violations.

10/
So connection and lowering reactivity starts with hyper awareness of the 3 spaces.

1. The Space inside me.

It may sound silly or weird, but maintaining connection with yourself is essential.

11/
A simple example: I have a set of values for my social media behavior because I don't trust myself in the moment as I read people's posts. I get reactive, then I get self righteous, then I fall into the lie, 'one corrective comment from me will help.'

It never does.

12/
I have already established behavior values, so I don't succumb to reactivity. I can live out of my pre chosen values.

That is a simple ex. of being connected to myself. Clarifying my posture, values, behavior BEFORE I get anxious so they can guide me WHEN I am anxious.

13.
The space between me and God is as key because anxiety and reactivity fill that space and infect my awareness of God.

One of the simplest, but most difficult ways to know you are anxious: you forget that God is with you. It is because anxiety has blocked your view.

14/
'We love because He first loved.' All our action is action reaction to The Actor. But anxiety tells me I must initiate, I must act.

I, I, I.

But God invites me into response.

15/
This is no cop out to sit in life's lazy hot tub while God acts. Some of the finest justice advocates I know are the most connected to God. But their activism is a RE-action to the Active God.

16/
So attending to the space inside me, the space between me and God....

Generally, that helps sort out space #2 at the top of this thread and keeps me from falling into the daily temptation to focus on space 4 which is OFF LIMITS!

Peace of Christ be upon you today.

17/17

More from Steve Cuss

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
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/
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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/
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Steve Cuss
Steve Cuss
@stevecusswords
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/
HEALTH
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

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ECTOPIC PREGNANCY

A woman just lost her life due to ectopic pregnancy!

It's a pregnancy in which the embryo attaches outside the womb. It can be life-threatening.

But we can save lives by helping educate women on our Timelines with this.

THREAD 🧵


In the human body, a fertilized egg hardly survives outside the womb. If allowed to grow, it may damage nearby organs & cause severe blood loss.

The bulk of ectopic pregnancies occur in/along the Fallopian tubes.

Some in the ovaries, cervix or a random location in the abdomen.


The usual symptoms of ectopic pregnancy a woman may experience esp. in early pregnancy are;

* Abdominal pain
* Vaginal bleeding, &
* Amenorrhea (missing your period)

Other pregnancy symptoms like breast fullness & occasional nausea may be there too.

But the common DANGER SIGNS of ectopic pregnancy that may signify rupture are;

🔴 Rigid abdomen

🔴 Severe abdominal pain

🔴 Shoulder tip pain, &

🔴 Signs of shock such as cold hands & feet.

With these signs, immediate medical attention is needed to save the woman's life!

Your chances of having an ectopic pregnancy are higher if you have;

1. Previous ectopic pregnancy

2. STI's like gonorrhea

3. Fertility treatments like IVF*

4. Fallopian tube surgeries

5. Pregnancy while using an Intrauterine Contraceptive Device

6. Smoking history! 🚭
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Now you know I love to sh-t in Harvard. But I also like accuracy. So I decided to go look at Harvard’s catalog to see its lack of military history that this article describes (they only teach history of pets it claims) and what I found shocked me! Shocked me! A thread: 1/


First off, Harvard students literally have multiple sections of military history that they can take listed. (It appears these ones are taught at MIT, so they might have to walk down the street for these) but... 2/


Say they want to stay on campus...they can only take numerous classes on war and diplomacy...3/


They have an entire class on Yalta. That’s right. An entire class on Yalta. 4/


But wait! There is more! They can take the British Empire, The Fall of the Roman Empire for those wanting traditional topics... 5/
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matthew remski
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A staple of anti-lockdown conspiracism in yoga/wellness is that public health measures are oppressive, authoritarian, and stifling what it means to be human. Masks suppress identity and speech. Vaccines assault the sovereign body. Influencers must rise up against tyranny! /1

Ironically, pandemic management in economies where yoga/wellness is lucrative has been a neoliberal, choose-your-own-adventure mess in which centre-right governments barter with public health to enact a patchwork of half-measures that punish the poor and marginalized. /2

The goal is not universal health rights, or protecting medical systems, or saving as many lives as possible. The goal is to return to business-as-usual, using public health as a pit stop on a productivity race off a cliff. The ice caps aren’t melting fast enough, I guess. /3

Right-leaning governments, like influencers, have assessed the COVID threat with the magical bias of limitless optimism. Then they work to normalize COVID casualties as a new cost of doing business. *This* is what alt-healthers and Qamoms call “socialist”, or “communist”. /4

Centre-right governments and wellness influencers share a goal: get back to the optimism of making productivity heroic and consumption virtuous, without any reflection on structural issues of injustice, or what universal health care funding and standards would look like. /5
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G Peters \u267f\ufe0f It's still a pandemic btw.
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Let's talk honestly about "informed consent."
Someone with decades of training gives someone with none advice usually packed into 1-3 mins. Huge amount is based on trust. Huge potential for bias built in. But also there is no obligation to provide real alternative options.


I am classified as 'gifted' (obnoxious and ableist term). I mention because of what I am about to say. You all know that I was an ambulatory wheelchair user previously - could stand - but contractures have ended that. When I pleaded for physio, turned down. But did you know...

I recently was chatting with a doctor I know and explaining what happened and the day the physiatrist told me it was too late and nothing could be done. The doctor asked if I'd like one of her friends/colleagues to give second opinion. I said yes please! So...

She said can you send me MRI and other imaging they did to determine it wasn't possible to address your contractures.

Me: What?
Dr.: They did a MRI first before deciding right?
Me: No
Dr: What did they do??!
Me: Examined me for 2 minutes.
Dr: I am very angry rn. Can't talk.

My point is you don't even know if you are making "informed" decisions because the only source of information you have is the person who has already decided what they think you should do. And may I remind you of a word called 'compliance.'
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Celestial Emily
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Our conscious experience exists. In fact, it's the only thing you can directly observe, as everything about reality and how we perceive it is filtered through how our brains process stimuli and information. You are the only one who can define who and what you are.

Don't get me wrong, I am a materialist who believes the universe exists in the absence of beings who can observe it from an intelligence standpoint, but we are all collections of atoms, our function governed by chemical processes, not perfectly replicated by the process of birth.

Our means of DNA replication is imprecise because of billions of years of random evolution. We are on one branch of many, and there is countless variation in how all living beings are formed, and how we classify traits of those creatures, including sex and reproduction methods.

It would be an error to say that people who are intersex and/or transgender are the results of mistakes or errors in reproduction, because it implies DNA is "trying" to create a binary model of people and sometimes gets it wrong. It doesn't "try" to do anything; DNA != conscious.

Rather, our biological blueprints are not precise, and this is true for all living things. We can crossbreed plants and animals because of that imprecise nature, it's responsible for what we perceive as the "races" of people, etc. We can observe variation everywhere.
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