S1E52 - Smokey on Mental First Aid

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11/18/22 • 67 min

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Live Like the World is Dying

Episode Notes Episode Summary

Margaret and Smokey talk about ways to go about mental first aid, how to alter responses to trauma for you self and as a community, different paths to resiliency, and why friendship and community are truly the best medicine.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Next Episode

Hopefully will come out Friday, December, 2nd and will probably be This Month In the Apocalypse.

Transcript

LLWD:Smokey on Mental First Aid

Margaret 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast are what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy. And, this week or month...or let's just go with 'episode'. This episode is going to be all about mental health and mental health first aid and ways to take care of your mental health and ways to help your community and your friends take care of their mental health, and I think you'll like it. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.

Margaret 01:52 Okay, with me today is Smokey. Smokey, could you introduce yourself with your your name, your pronouns, and I guess a little bit about your background about mental health stuff?

Smokey 02:04 Sure, I'm Smokey. I live and work in New York City. My pronouns are 'he' and 'him.' For 23 years, I've been working with people managing serious mental illness in an intentional community, I have a degree in psychology, I have taught psychology at the University level, I have been doing social work for a long time, but I've been an anarchist longer.

Margaret 02:43 So so the reason I want to have you on is I want to talk about mental health first aid, or I don't know if that's the way it normally gets expressed, but that's the way I see it in my head. Like how are...I guess it's a big question, but I'm interested in exploring ways that we can, as bad things happen that we experience, like some of the best practices we can do in order to not have that cause lasting mental harm to us. Which is a big question. But maybe that's my first question anyway.

Smokey 03:12 I mean, the, the truth is bad things will happen to us. It's part of living in the world, and if you are a person that is heavily engaged in the world, meaning, you know, you're involved in politics, or activism, or even just curious about the world, you will probably be exposed on a more regular basis to things that are bad, that can traumatize us. But even if you're not involved in any of those things, you're going to go through life and have really difficult things happen to you. Now, the good news is, that's always been the case for people. We've always done this. And the good news is, we actually know a lot about what goes into resilience. So, how do you bounce back quickly and hopefully thrive after these experiences? I think that is an area that's only now being really examined in depth. But, we have lots of stories and some research to show that actually when bad things happen to us, there is an approach that actually can help catalyst really impressive strength and move...change our life in a really positive direction. We also know that for most people, they have enough reserve of resiliency that....and they can draw upon other resiliency that they're not chronically affected by it, however, and I would argue how our society is kind of structured, we're seeing more and more people that are suffering from very serious chronic effects of, what you said, bad things happening, or what is often traumatic things but it's not just traumatic things that cause chronic problems for us. But, that is the most kind of common understanding so, so while most people with most events will not have a chronic problem, and you can actually really use those problems, those I'm sorry, those events, let's call them traumatic events, those traumatic events they'll really actually improve your thriving, improve your life and your relationship to others in the world. The ...

Episode Notes Episode Summary

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

Next Episode

Hopefully will come out Friday, December, 2nd and will probably be This Month In the Apocalypse.

Transcript

LLWD:Smokey on Mental First Aid

Margaret 01:52 Okay, with me today is Smokey. Smokey, could you introduce yourself with your your name, your pronouns, and I guess a little bit about your background about mental health stuff?

Previous Episode

S1E51 - This Month In the Apocalypse: October

Episode Notes

Episode Summary For this episode of This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Margaret, and Casandra chat about more horrible things and some ways to work through some of these problems. They talk about supply chain shortages, corn, ways to keep your house warmer without using a ton of energy or resources, dubious debunked how warming myths that also might burn it down, and a thorough introduction to hurricane preparedness.

Host Info

Casandra can be found on Twitter @hey_casandra. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke is just great and can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter @ogemakweBrooke

Publisher Info

Next Episode

Hopefully will come out Friday, October 4th, and every two weeks there after.

Transcript

An easier to read version is available on our website TangledWilderness.org.

This Month In the Apocalypse: October

Brooke Hello and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, one of your hosts today, along with the brilliant Margaret Killjoy and the iridescent Casandra. This is October 2022 installment of your most favorite Live Like The World Is Dying sub-segment, This Month In The Apocalypse. Today, we're going to talk about the latest shortages, the looming crisis in energy, fuel sources and what can be done about the crisis, war, climate disasters and probably some shit about the economy. But first, we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle from one of the other luminous podcasts on our network. Doo doo doo.

Jingle Speaker 1 Kiteline is a weekly 30 minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system, you'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions and how it impacts all of us.

Margaret Behind the prison walls, a message is called a kite, whispered words, a note passed hand to hand, a request submitted the guards for medical care. Illicit or not, sending a kite means trusting that other people will bare it farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kiteline, we hope to share these words across the prison walls.

Jingle Speaker 1 You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at Kiteline radio.no blogs.org.

Brooke And we're back. Quick introductions for those of you who might not remember each of us or might be listening for the first time. I'm Brooke an indigenous, baby anarchist woman who loves spreadsheets home remodeling and connecting with the land. And I'm going to toss to Margaret.

Margaret I'm Margaret, and I am someone who writes a lot and is on podcasts a lot. And does useful stuff too. But, those are some of the things I do. And I will pass it to Casandra.

Casandra I wasn't prepared for an introduction.

Margaret Neither was I.

Casandra My name is Cassandra. I garden and weave. Check!

Margaret Yay.

Brooke And do amazing art.

Casandra Yeah, I make books. And drink tea. Okay.

Margaret That's good tea.

Casandra Yeah.

Margaret Back to you, Brooke.

Casandra Oh, yeah, we're supposed to remember to plug things. Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness is putting out our...Well, it's not really technically our first book is it, Margaret?

Brooke Speaking of books, I feel like there's a book that you've been working on lately. I know we're suppo...

Next Episode

S1E53 - Ellie on A Better Gun Culture

Episode Summary

Margaret and Ellie talk about building a better culture around guns, the importance of gun ownership for community and self defense, some basic tenets of firearm safety, ideas around conflict deterrence, some problems with our current gun culture, consent and guns, mental health and guns, and unsurprisingly how community might be a big piece of the answer to maintaining better gun culture.

Guest Info

The Guest is Ellie Picard and she is a hand gun instructor with Arm Trans Women. The group can be found at https://linktr.ee/atw.firearms.inst or on Instgram @ATW.firearms.inst or @Codename_Ellie.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

Next Episode

Hopefully will come out Friday, December, 16th.

Transcript

Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And this week we are going to be talking about what it takes to build a better gun culture, a gun culture that keeps people safe instead of not safe. And, with me to talk about that I'm going to have on an instructor named Ellie Picard. And, I think that you all get a lot out of hearing what she has to say. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show in the network.

Margaret 01:36 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of your background with the stuff that we're going to be talking about today?

Ellie 01:46 Yeah, for sure. My name is Ellie Picard, and I use she/her pronouns. Currently living in Charlottesville, Virginia, I'm originally from the District of Columbia. And, I've been interested in firearms for most of my life, I've only been actively shooting and training with guns for the last three or four years. I became a certified handgun instructor a few months ago, and I work with another trans instructor. Here in Virginia, we have a company called Arm Trans Women. And we offer classes, not just for trans folks, but for literally anyone who signs up. But, we particularly enjoy and emphasize the importance of teaching queer folks, people of color, other marginalized people, because we're the ones who really need to know how to defend ourselves in our communities and our families, because no one else is going to. And I'm also a doctoral candidate, a researcher in political science, and my research focuses on radical queer militancy. And so studying and paying attention to radical gun culture, or queer gun culture has been a big part of my research life as well as my personal life. So, I'm not just actively, personally involved in these things. It's something that I dedicate a lot of intellectual, you know, resources to thinking through and dealing with as well.

Margaret 02:07 Yeah, I get really excited when I have on a guest and I didn't even realize they're even more qualified than I originally thought.

Ellie 03:09 I'm not qualified, but whatever.

Margaret 03:18 I didn't know about the the academic work. Well, the main thing that I want to talk to you about, yeah, is this idea of building a better gun culture. But ,before we get into that, do you want to talk a little bit about the the trainings that you do? Like, what does it mean? Are you teaching to a certification? Are you helping people get, you know, concealed carry permits? Or is it more of like a self defense class? Or what kind of work are you doing there?

Ellie 03:44 So, most of what we do is we teach heavily modified versions of the NRA basic pistol course and the NRA concealed carry course, because that's what most states require people to take in order to get a concealed carry permit. Here in Virginia, folks need to take the basic p...