Browsed by
Tag: stress and trauma

A lit candle in hands, introducing an article about non-toxic positivity
Hoping for the Best: Reaching Toward Healthy Non-Toxic Positivity as We Move Forward

Hoping for the Best: Reaching Toward Healthy Non-Toxic Positivity as We Move Forward

Comments 2 comments

Okay, so as I’m writing this, we’re all facing down the end of that strangest of years, 2020—and looking ahead into 2021. As we do so, I’ve been reflecting a lot about the topic of healthy non-toxic positivity in these sorts of dark times. This blog post will be about just that—looking at the distinction between toxic and non-toxic forms of positivity and why it’s important to keep hoping for and working toward a better world. A Reminder Of Where…

Read More Read More

Don't give up on a typewriter--intro to a blog post on coping strategies to keep going when you can't fix everything
Strategies for When You Can’t Fix Everything (Especially Now)

Strategies for When You Can’t Fix Everything (Especially Now)

Comments 1 comment

NOTE: If you look at the date, you’ll see this post was written before President Biden was elected and before Russia’s invasion happened, and at a season when more wildfires were happening. But its advice is still starkly relevant here in March 5, 2022 when I’m adding in this note. Okay, so the world is scary and overwhelming. The Hopi, as a friend shared with me, have a word for this situation: kayaanisquatsi. It means “Nature that is out of…

Read More Read More

Man afraid of scary shadow is meant to illustrate the hypervigilance the article is about
QAnon Conspiracy Rhetoric, Hypervigilance, and Questions of Trust

QAnon Conspiracy Rhetoric, Hypervigilance, and Questions of Trust

Comments 3 comments

If you’ve been following along here, you should know that I’ve already been doing a series on the rhetoric of conspiracy for the last few weeks. I previously talked about conspiracy theories here, here and here. This week I’ve seen sex trafficking experts having to work extra hard to refute unhealthy conspiracy rhetoric around that subject (check out, for example, this post I shared recently on the Assertive Spirituality FB page). This piece is a response to that while continuing…

Read More Read More

Image of a person dealing with stress to introduce an article introducing a stress-research-based serenity prayer
Creating a Healthier Serenity Prayer for Stressful Times

Creating a Healthier Serenity Prayer for Stressful Times

Comments 3 comments

I’ve long loved the Serenity Prayer in its classic version. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” When this prayer is paired with a rich understanding of the emotions and stress response processing that has to go with it, it’s great. The problem, of course, is that when it is separated from those things and only viewed cognitively, this prayer can…

Read More Read More

When “Christian Nice” Gets Mean about Emotions

When “Christian Nice” Gets Mean about Emotions

Comments 8 comments

NOTE 8/28/21: I’m reposting this article, to emphasize its content (which is still disturbingly relevant), but note that this was pre-pandemic. I’m not presenting at the Wild Goose Festival in Fall 2021. If you haven’t been keeping up with my schedule, by the time you read this, I’ll be largely done with speaking about “Stress, Trauma, and Conflict Communication” at the Wild Goose Festival, which is a progressive Christian social justice-themed festival in the Bible Belt in the Southern US….

Read More Read More

“Leftists” and Socialists, Oh My! The Politics of “Devil Terms”

“Leftists” and Socialists, Oh My! The Politics of “Devil Terms”

Comments 6 comments

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post was originally written in 2019, which means that references to the “current head of the administration” refer to the now-former 45th president of the United States. Sadly, his unhealthy use of devil terms continues in the right wing (not that that’s new–“socialism” has been a right-wing devil term since at least the 1920s–sigh), so this post still applies. In the US State of the Union speech, the current head of the administration used the word “socialism”…

Read More Read More

[echo chamber picture]
In Defense of Echo Chambers

In Defense of Echo Chambers

Comments 0 Comment

Okay, before you get your stress response hormones pumping too much, I’m not here to say that echo chambers are always a fabulous thing. As anyone who has followed this page ought to know by now, even if we do hang out in spaces where we find people who think like us, I think we definitely need to sally forth to interact with those who think differently. And when the beliefs are toxic, to resist such behaviors. In fact, I’m…

Read More Read More

Stress and Conflict; Or, Why We All are So on Edge

Stress and Conflict; Or, Why We All are So on Edge

Comments 4 comments

I’ve been seeing the symptoms of the stress of this particular political moment for a long time. Lately I’ve seen a lot of “friendly fire” recently breaking out in online groups trying to make the world a better place. In this article, I’ll discuss what living through this kind of stress has been feeling like for me lately in light of the research on stress, trauma and conflict communication. In the process, hopefully I’ll be able to articulate more of…

Read More Read More

On the Complexities of Counting the Costs

On the Complexities of Counting the Costs

Comments 0 Comment

Okay, so as anyone who’s, well, read the name of this site knows, I’m all about people speaking up as assertively as possible, including about spirituality and politics. But I wanted to spend a little time before the holidays talking about counting the costs of speaking up to family, particularly over the holidays. (I hope this advice will also be helpful throughout the year.) I felt driven to write this article after I heard lots of strong voices at the…

Read More Read More

The Complexities of Love and Limits

The Complexities of Love and Limits

Comments 4 comments

So yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about the questions of shame and ego, individualism vs. collectivism, love and hate, sensitivity and insensitivity, strength and limits. (You know, small insubstantial issues :)). These issues impact every sphere of life at every level—and they lie at the heart of so much humanity, including questions of spirituality. In this week’s article I tackle a few aspects of these problems by talking about the challenges, dissonances, and paradoxes of emotional labor, task labor,…

Read More Read More

The Complexities of “White Fragility”

The Complexities of “White Fragility”

Comments 0 Comment

Hello! I think I’ve recovered enough from the powerful and vulnerable and imperfectly perfect experience that was the first Evolving Faith conference to write this now. (If you’re new to this page, you might not know that I was there as a sponsor, which was in itself a totally vulnerable leap of faith for this little fledgling Assertive Spirituality project that’s currently just me, and a labor of love to offer the expertise I have to those who are willing…

Read More Read More

Breaking the Cycle of Weakness-Shaming: Political Disgusts (Part 4)

Breaking the Cycle of Weakness-Shaming: Political Disgusts (Part 4)

Comments 2 comments

This article is the latest in my series on political disgusts (see part 1, part 2, and part 3 here). I don’t tell a lot of my story this time. But you’ll see that it is connected—I grew up among those who had a deep disgust for Nazis (which meant we always laughed when Harrison Ford would say things in the Indiana Jones movies like “Nazis. I hate these guys”). In this article I’ll talk about how, after much reflection,…

Read More Read More

On Feeling All the Feels This Week

On Feeling All the Feels This Week

Comments 1 comment

I’ve started this week’s article at least several hundred times, and discarded all the ideas until this one came out. The week’s events here in the US have been so overwhelming for everyone, especially all non-bullies (the specific instance right now is the wake of the Kavanaugh hearings, but it could be anything else, really, at a different time and place). Because of everything, there’s a lot of pressure inside me to say the right thing, feel the right thing,…

Read More Read More

On Facing Difficult Conversations from a Trauma Background

On Facing Difficult Conversations from a Trauma Background

Comments 3 comments

If you’ve been following the Assertive Spirituality Facebook feed closely, you know I had one of those difficult conversations this week. Without sharing personal details about the encounter, I asked for support there. Because no matter how skilled you are and knowledgeable you are about conflict, these things are hard. That is especially true when there is a trauma background involved in the conversation—and there was on both sides of this particular encounter. This week’s long-and-raw but hopefully worth it…

Read More Read More

Toward Healthier Communication Climates; Or, Why We Need to Speak Up

Toward Healthier Communication Climates; Or, Why We Need to Speak Up

Comments 10 comments

As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up in a culture of what I called Christian (Midwest Middle Class White People) Nice, which had some great things about it, but also some toxic side effects. Most notably, I left my childhood with a strong aversion to calling out negative behaviors. I was a little better at speaking up against unhealthy narratives, but still felt awkward and inept at doing so. In this article I’m going to introduce two communication theory concepts…

Read More Read More