Day 4.

Chronic anxiety or 'reactivity' is based on false needs that feel real in the moment.

Acute anxiety is based on real threat.

Slamming the brakes, swerving to avoid an accident, losing a child on a playground, seeing a snake when you're out jogging - acute anxiety.

1/

Not doing it perfectly, letting someone down, needing to be understood - chronic anxiety.

The problem is, the 'chronic' VERY much feels like the 'acute' in the moment.

Your body cannot tell the difference until you train it.

2/

Day 3.

Unaddressed reactivity wears us down.

We get reactive when we don't get a false need that feels like a real need.

What do you think you need that you don't really need? We all have dozens of false needs and when we don't wrangle our many false need, they pile up and get the better of us and wear us out.

2/

Day 2.

Reactivity stops us from being human sized.

We end up getting bigger or smaller than human sized.

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Some of us, when we are reactive get 'bigger.' We must have the last word. We no longer listen to learn, we now listen to advise, fix, correct, or mansplain. We get aggressive, we dominate the space. Some of us literally make ourselves bigger.

2/

Reactivity exists and spreads in 4 spaces. Our tendency is to focus on anxiety in others, or to react to it but not notice it.

Some of us focus on others by enmeshing with them. When momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy...

1/ Sometimes we focus on them by fixating: blaming, moving into self righteoussness, or irritation. 'Why do they do that?!!!'

But the absolute secret to reactivity management is to spend most of your time in 1st space.

Here are the spaces:

2/

A gentle reminder that your inner critic is telling you a gospel. It just happens to be a gospel of condemnation and shame.

I fired my IC, but he kept coming to work, like Milton from Office Space. I've learned to quieten it by containing it with God's first and last word.
1/ This is slow transformation work, not one and done. I started in 2016, noting how often I called myself 'stupid' or a 'moron.

50-100 times per week. Lord have mercy.

I vowed to treat myself the way God treats me. It was harder than I thought it would be.

2/

One of the most powerful ways to lower reactivity in you and your people is to learn to notice it.

Noticing is sort of a reactivity power tool. It builds your immunity and you're less likely to catch and spread it when you're working on noticing.

What situations or types of people tend to generate reactivity in you?

How can you put yourself in those situations this week so you can practice noticing what goes on in you?

Then, after a few reps, as you walk into those situations, how can you pause to get your noticing radar set?

I'll give an example from my own life:

1/ A surefire generator of reactivity for me is when people ask me questions and I don't know the answer. I am a recovering 'stupidholic' and when I don't know something, especially if it is within my responsibility, and someone asks, I feel exposed.

*This, of course, is a false need.*

So in elders meetings which are monthly for our church, it is common that an elder asks me about, say, the children's min budget trend from the last few years.

2/

Parents, what do you do when your child is coming at you anxious, either anxious because of you, or simply spilling their anxiety?

1/ Step 1 is counter intuitive:

Connect to yourself.

By connecting to yourself, being aware of what is going on in you, you increase your capacity to manage anxiety. Notice your temptation to fix, shrink or irritability etc.

Irritibility IMO should be all 'i's.'

2/

I have been playing with a new tool:

"Put yourself on your conscious list of relationships."

It sounds weird and can feel counter intuitive, but it is transformative.

Here is the idea:

1/ When someone asks about my family and friends, I NEVER list myself. I cam get to great, great aunts and second cousins once removed before I even think to add myself to that list.

But I have, in fact, been in relationship with myself for sometime.

2/

A quick reminder of some basics of Systems Theory.

1. Chronic Anxiety spreads in 4 spaces.
2. God exists and moves freely in those 4 spaces.
3. Anxiety tends to block our awareness of God.
4. Awareness of God's presence and goodness tends to cast out anxiety.

1/ Chronic anxiety is a specific form of anxiety. It is generated by:
- False belief.
- False need.
- Assumptions.

Other forms of anxiety: PTSD, Grief, GAD, Acute etc act differently and require different tools - often specialized professional attention and medicine.
2/

The human tendency is to focus on others rather than take responsibility for ourself. That, along with our tendency to minimize can keep us anxious and in stuck, predictable patterns.

1/ Sometimes I focus on others but blaming them, I noticed this especially with unreasonable critics. It was so much easier to be frustrated at them than it was to take responsibility for my part of the dynamic with them. Once I took responsibility, the dynamic changed.

2/

I've been feeling a bit....er....thread bare lately, so here goes.

The nature of every belief.

The reason we struggle to enjoy the Gospel is because we do not realize how wholesale-ly* we embrace other gospels.

*Twitter allows word invention. It's a thing.

1/ So we do not realize that we believe the Gospel of Jesus but we also believe dozens of other gospels at the same time. We syncretize our beliefs and meld them as if they are all belief in Jesus.

This can be subtle or very destructive.

2/

On each pod episode, I put my guests through a GAUNTLET of anxiety questions. Men cry and women quiver, but all survive the gauntlet. I typically choose 3 - 5 questions. Below are the entire list over the past 5 years. Also known as the world's worst party ice breakers:

1/ 1. How do you know when you are not well?
2. What practice that takes 5 minutes or less helps you connect to God?
3. What sort of leadership situations generate anxiety for you?
4. What types of people trigger you the most?
5. What do you do to stay connected to them?

2/

What does 'systems theory' actually do? At its simplest, it helps you notice anxiety, first and always first in you and then later in between your people.

It only focuses on one type of anxiety: chronic anxiety.

1/ Unlike anxieties that are based on something true or real, chronic anxiety is based on something false.

Trauma: real.
Grief: real.
Acute anxiety: real.
Chronic anxiety: false.

2/

A learned skill that some vocations have in common:

'Restrain and reflect.'

Vocations that practice this: chaplains, social workers, therapists, crisis responders, spiritual directors, some pastors.

Maybe others?

1/ It is the rare and difficult skill to restrain your impulse toward 'saying something or doing something' long enough to reflect with God if God is actually calling you to say/do something or if it is just your reactivity calling you to do that.

2/

We throw around the word 'anxiety' a LOT now days. It is a very good thing that we talk about it more than we used to and FYI, our millennial and Gen Z are helpful to us because they are more fluent in the language than the rest of us.

However...

1/ Question No. 1:

What kind of anxiety are we talking about here?

My field is 'chronic' anxiety.

Chronic anxiety is the most common anxiety humans carry in the work place and home place. It is generated by:

Assumptions
False expectations
False beliefs
false needs.

2/

God With Us, God Ahead Of Us.

A brief thread with an invitation.

Humans strive for up to 5 core false needs:

control, perfection, knowing the answer, being there for others, approval.

Where are you on the 'Big 5?'

1/ For me? Knowing the answer, being there for others, approval.

These are my strivings and nemeses:

I want you to know that I know something.
I struggle to discern between someone's need and my need to be needed.
I want you to like me/not be disappointed in me.

2/

Acute anxiety: actual potential danger. Swerve to miss a car, drop everything and find a missing child etc.

Narrator in your life: get to safety!

That narrator is always reliable.

1/ Chronic anxiety: false danger. Make a mistake in public, don't know what to do, disappoint someone etc.

Narrator in your life: Armageddon is coming!

Now your narrator has become unreliable.

In the moment, it is difficult to tell the difference between acute and chronic.

2/

It is not a good idea to listen to Beth Moore's memoir in the same season I am trying to finish my next book. Beth's flow of teaching, memoir, metaphor and humor is phenomenal. My writing is so clunky and pedantic in contrast.

1/ I don't say that in some form of false humility. I am not looking for a 'you're a great writer!' I am enjoying being a rookie writer. I struggle to get my natural in-the-moment wit onto the page. I desire to be more metaphorical, but I tend toward the simple and concrete.

2/

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/

Chaplains, social workers, therapists and disaster responders have all been trained in a common tool: awareness and restraint of our impulses.

That is the crux of all my work and has helped me profoundly: learning to notice my impulses and assumptions.

1/ Rather than living on auto pilot, rushing in, saying that thing, giving advice etc, I was trained to be wary of my first instinct.

Does the situation really require a word from me? Is that person asking for advice or are they needing a listening ear?

2/

The insidious thing about anxiety: it numbs you to its presence so you end up running on the treadmill of anxiety for a while before you even know you are in its grip.

If you can detect it sooner, you can get off the treadmill sooner.

Anxiety is a bit like a tapeworm...

1/ ...in that it starts small and you don't know you have it, but then it feeds off your energy and next thing you know, you have a 6 foot parasite boring a hole out your leg.

Has anyone had breakfast today, by the way?

2/