self-care Archives - Tools of the Trade

Published April 17, 2024 by CZ Edwards

Luxuries Bought With Others’ Lives: NPCs, Dehumanization, and Pandemic Ethics

Opening monologue:

This is Free City.
Look at this guy. He’s one of the sunglasses people.
And the people who wear sunglasses? Are heroes.
They have a devil-may-care attitude and they run this town.
Bombshell:You are so hot.
Revenjamin Buttons, dropping into driver’s seat: Oh, I know.
See? That’s not even his car. Or his wife.
For the sunglasses people, they get to do anything they want.
They go on all sorts of missions, they got cool hair, cool clothes.
I mean, laws aren’t really laws to them.They’re more like mild suggestions.
Like, I don’t think he’s gonna return that car.
Or that nice lady.
See what I mean? Hero.

current events fiction Media critique Pandemic psych self-care social media

media politics psych Social contract

Published April 1, 2024 by CZ Edwards

Cruelty from Fear, Selfishness from Anxiety

A rescued thread from Twitter, originally posted in March, 2022

An interesting observation from a session today: Cruelty evolves from fear, because if one cannot name a fear, all unknowns become a threat. And selfishness evolves from anxiety, because anxiety’s universalized unnamed fears limit the ability to use theory of mind skills.

Health psych self-care

Health psych public mental health self-care

Published December 1, 2023 by CZ Edwards

Writing in the Dark: navigating creativity in the anxiety/depression/insomnia/trauma cycle

Originally a Twitter thread in 2019. Some additions and clean-up, and updating.

I keep lists of my DNF (did not finish) reads. I noted a pattern forming in the last three months and it’s got me thinking, but as usual, please consider it a workshop piece, a first draft.

craft fiction psych self-care

Published April 24, 2022 by CZ Edwards

Was 1918 Better Equipped to Weather a Pandemic?

Was 1918 better equipped for a pandemic? Quite possibly yes, despite having almost no medical interventions once people did get sick. They barely had oxygen, no antibiotics, steroids or bronchodilators. What they did have, we haven’t been able to rebuild.

This is a partner piece with Luxuries Bought With Others’ Lives.

current events Emergency Preparedness Health Pandemic politics psych self-care social media

Pandemic politics psych Social contract Writing

Published November 27, 2021 by CZ Edwards

Kagan, COVID, Expanding SCOTUS

Originally a Twitter thread.

From Slate: Elena Kagan warns the Supreme Court’s new California COVID decision may kill people.

This is why we lack time for a 180 day thinking period on the USSC. 5 members are radical hard right Catholics. They are extremist activists far outside of mainstream.

current events History Pandemic politics psych self-care

politics Social contract

Published November 8, 2020 by CZ Edwards

After the Shaking Stops – a compiled twitter thread

Originally a twitter thread, November 8, 2020

Hey all —
At the end of trauma (or when you know the trauma will be ending) everything feels incredibly shaky.
You’ve gotten used to the feeling of the earth shaking, and when it stops, it takes a minute for your emotional equilibrium to catch up.
It’s normal.
It’s OK.
You’re OK.

politics psych self-care trauma

politics psych

Published April 20, 2020 by CZ Edwards

Eleven Questions

I have eleven questions for you.

I don’t need the answers, you do.

Emergency Preparedness Health Pandemic psych self-care trauma

abuse Health psych safety trauma

Published May 25, 2019 by CZ Edwards

After Exit: Sick Systems and Repairing the Damage

Originally a Twitter thread. Minor editing, spelling & reformatting in this version.

Putting on my behaviorist hat for a thread. Our popular narrative arcs tell us that the story ends when we successfully escape the monster, defeat the corrupt government, flee the abuse, walk free of oppression.

This is where we end stories.

Our narratives lie to us. We are not made whole when the narrative ends. The conclusion of one lifecycle of narrative spawns the next. We move from the resolution into the next origin story, and as we proceed into the next cycle, we carry with us the damage, and skills, we gained in our previous cycle.

fiction Galantier Health psych Rebellion self-care trauma

Galantier psych socio-economics Writing

Published March 20, 2018 by CZ Edwards

UTS: A Case Study of the Insecurity and Anxiety that underlies gun ownership/collecting

This started as a twitter thread in March of 2018. It remains a case study of all of the failures underlying gun harm.

After his family died, he threatened to kill himself. So the police took his guns.

⬆️ Washington Post article that inspired this. Read it first.

Let’s start with career: a police officer. He seems like he was as pro-social as a cop can be, but two aspects of personality are drawn to law enforcement: a need for control, and authoritarian thinking. These two traits tend to lead to dysfunctional behavior.

Health Policing politics self-care trauma Writing

psych Social contract Writing

Category: <span>self-care</span>