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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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/

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.

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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.

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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/

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Social Intelligence 101:

If your friend is telling you about an accomplishment, do not try to one-up them by sharing an accomplishment of your own.

Tame your ego.

Sit back and actively listen.

❤✈️🌎 2 years ago today @JamesIvings and I sold all our belongings and left the UK to travel for a year. We've never been happier and we have no plans to ever return there 🙂

Thread 👇

Since then we've started a remote web dev company @SquarecatWebDev and been lucky enough to have completed several freelance projects 💻 that have kept us on the road.

In the last few months we've become a huge part of this amazing new Maker community and have found so many new friends from @makerskitchen, @women_make_ and several others! 🥰

We love travelling together (even if I'm only a glorified laptop watcher 😒) but we're both much happier being able to share our ideas outside of our own little bubble and our products have benefitted too!

Here's to another year of nomading with my favourite person and to the Maker community continuing to grow with our help! Maybe one day we'll all get to meet each other ✌️ 💛

MEANING, EXPLANATION & INTERPRETATION OF YOUR DREAMS, ALSO ITS EFFECTS IN COMING DAYS

Sigmund Freud had explained the interpretation of dreams in the last century, but our scriptures explained this thousands of years back. What is the significance and meaning of our dreams.

These are explained in Kanv shakha of our scriptures.
Dreams in the first quarter(पहर) of the day give result in one year, if the dreams are in the second quarter(प्रहर) the results are in eight months, for third the dreams are fulfilled in three months,

the fourth one takes one fortnight, the dreams of dawn take ten days, morning dreams after you awaken after dream are fulfilled forthright.

If you dream during your tense and worrisome period those are never realized. People with Negative traits never get their dreams fulfilled.

Also your dreams will never be realized after you get up from a dream and then go to sleep again. Never narrate your dreams to others.

You will gain wealth if you see the following things in your dream- cow,elephant, horse, palace, climbing mountains or trees,

eating and crying or injured.

You will attain more land if you see someone
singing with veena in his hands.

You will attain amrit if you see yourself entering a red sea or entering into narak.

Some of you will probably know I'm currently grieving. It's a month since my fantastic sister died. I've been thinking a lot about loss, progress and reckoning and coming to terms, both personally and as a society. And I've been wondering: how will we remember the pandemic dead?

The UK is filled with memorials to the dead of wars, of disasters, of lifeboat crews and atrocities. We are a landscape haunted by attempts to remember the brave and the innocent. Villages, towns, businesses, communities: all grouped together to pay for plaques, statues, gardens

I have a terror that in our desire to get 'back to normal' we will forget those lost and things lost during the current pandemic. There's not an enemy they were overcome by; not a single flashpoint of tragedy. Those lost to the pandemic are an uncomfortable reminder of failure

Rebecca Solnit talks about hope only coming from knowing history. People may be optimistic about the future post-covid-19, but that's just desire and dream. For us to build a hopeful future we need to acknowledge and feel what has been lost; to repair and grow, not just erase

The thing is, I don't know if our communities know how to remember what is lost, not in ways that are meaningful to all of that community. Religion is a great enabler of remembrance, but that's not something everyone has. I'm wondering how we fully inhabit our collective sorrow