Additional Resources
A step further...
Many child abuse survivors were not given the skills and confidence we all need to relate to the world successfully. For those who need more personal guidance to navigate a complicated world, please use these tools.
Anxiety Lab hopes to provide guidance to those who need extra help, without profiting from you or trying to influence you in any way other than to teach skills.
These are good methods for everyone, not just abuse survivors.
Tools:
1. Habits for Humans
2. Critical Thinking Skills crash course
3. Social Media Detox help
Habits for Humans
We all have well-developed technology skills by now.
But many other necessary skills may be getting soft because we have replaced most human activities with devices.
This may not be good for our long-term survival.
Companies can now sell us any device to do anything, making it harder to remember WE CAN STILL DO ALL THE THINGS WE USED TO DO FOR OURSELVES. If we prefer devices to do everything, that's a choice. But it means sacrificing privacy and autonomy. Many people will gladly give those up in exchange for convenience. But to continue to BE ABLE to do things for ourselves may be wiser in the long run.
Revitalizing our OWN skills in addition to our new digital skills may be a better approach.
Keep these human skills alive:
1. Read a physical map once a month (hiking, driving, train route)
2. Fix things by hand: small appliances, clothes, fence, toys
3. Do basic math by hand on paper
4. Memorize 2 friends' phone numbers and dial them from memory,
(do not use speed dial button)
5. Read 2 long books a year, (1 should be fiction). Actual physical books with paper pages
6. Write in cursive a little every day (it's good for the memory)
7. Once a week appreciate beauty: nature or art
8. Practice critical thinking skills
9. Meditate on recognizing how much we do not know
10. Explore the philosophical attitude: bracket your emotions (put them aside) and just observe the world with no judgment, expectation or desire
11. Admit you're wrong when you are wrong
12. Question technology.
Critical-Thinking Skills: Crash Course
All about critical thinking skills.
(Coming soon.)
Social Media detox help
A short series of activities to help re-center ourselves in the physical world.
To remember how to connect with others and how to operate effectively without a destructive over-relianace on social media.
1. Memorize names and numbers, facts and figures sometimes
2. Memorize 2 friends' phone numbers and dial them from memory, (do not use speed dial button)
3. Take a digital “day-off” (Sabbath) once a week – use no screens, stay off the internet and phone except to make necessary voice calls. (Go half a day at first.)
4. Read 2 long books a year, (1 should be fiction). Actual physical books with paper pages
5. Write 2 hand-written letters or postcards a year
6. Find 2-4 sources of information that you can trust that are NOT online, (books, newspapers, magazines, local experts, the librarian, knowledgeable friends)
7. Cultivate empathy – understand that other people's struggles are just as worthy as your own struggles
8. Practice critical thinking skills and skepticism about on-line information. (If the information is free and instant, it's probably not trustworthy.)
9. Have 1 debate a month with someone you disagree with. End the argument on friendly terms by agreeing to disagree and shake hands
10. Practice being non-judgmental and non-reactive to the bait that is online (don't be triggered and inflamed by divisive content)
11. Read one poem a year
12. Question technology.