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Business As Usual - CNS Office - Tag Kingston

Posted Aug. 18, 2022, 3:52 a.m. by Lieutenant Commander Serena Stone (Executive Officer) (Sam Haynes)

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Janna Kingston (Counsellor) in Business As Usual - CNS Office - Tag Kingston

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Serena Stone (Executive Officer) in Business As Usual - CNS Office - Tag Kingston

(snips)

“They can be a different kind of pace, for sure. The Athena has been in some intense high-stakes situations, so I agree that this feels a bit… calmer for everyone. Tell me about the anxiety,” Kingston said.

~Janna Kingston, CNS

She nodded as if expecting the question. There was a momentary flicker of anxiety, a flutter deep in her gut. She pushed it away as she took a slow, deep breath. The corners of her lips drew down into the faintest of frowns for a split-second. “Well, I feel like it’s at a manageable, fairly normal level. There’s a lot of great medical care out there, combined with the appropriate therapies.” Her gaze turned distant for a moment, her eyes dropping, shifting back and forth as though looking back into the past. “The Dominion War broke out when I was nine. My colony saw more fighting than I cared to admit. Rebuilding was … ” She paused to consider her words carefully. “Well, it was rebuilding. Parts of it were fun. Parts were sad. Hard lessons learned. If it happened again, we would be far better prepared. The thing is, living through a war as a kid leaves its mark.”

“Yes it does,” Kingston said with a nod.

She shrugged. “We still had to deal with a lot of our own defense. And we had to fight off raiders years later, too. It was during then that I guess it put me on this path.” She paused just long enough to bring her blue-gray gaze back up to Janna. “Imagine you’re nine years old again, and you tend to spend your days exploring the forests, hills and mountains all around your home town. Then one day the sky begins raining fire down on your world. At first you think it might be meteors. But then there are ships overhead, and there are rock people on the ground shooting at people you know. Tends to shatter your world view a bit. And then spending years wondering when the next attack is coming, going days without food, never knowing if the trail you used to play on is going to kill you with a leftover mine or improvised explosive. Is the ship overhead that just dropped out of warp come to help, or to drop ordinance on you.” The redhead shrugged again, but laced her fingers tight, stuffed between her knees. For the briefest of moments her features seemed drawn, pained. It wasn’t physical, but the echoes of the past.

Janna watched carefully for signs that it was too much, but she said nothing and just let Serena unfold her story as she felt the need to.

Taking a shaky breath, she pushed the ghosts away. “I got good at planning. Which I suppose is an attempt to control the variables of a situation, so it goes my way. Always thinking ahead, living in the future, looking for the darkest timeline. If you expect the worst, hope for the best, you’re never surprised or caught off guard, right? Took a long time to stop trying to look around every corner before I get to it. Figuratively speaking. It’s a waste of energy after a certain point. Tactically, it makes sense. Even for a lot of normal operations it helps to look ahead, though. I do like routines and procedures as they feel ‘safe’. But generally I’m pretty flexible too. And I suppose being prepared for the worst, and even expecting it, does make me good in a crisis.” She smiled then just a small one. “It’s not all bad. And it allows me to intercept some trouble before it ever snowballs from nothing into something.”

“A lot of the trauma and damage from those years was undone, and regular checks and scans have kept it to a healthy level. Speaking of, you should have a scan from my boarding physical, filed a couple of hours ago,” she added.

Lt Cmdr Stone, XO

((If you’re interested in the science behind that, there’s a lovely 15 minute TedTalk about it, which Janna would know. You can find it here..))

Sam H

“Perfect. I’ll be sure to look over everything carefully,” Janna said. “And I can tell by the way to have told me your story that you have done a lot of the hard work to not just move past those events but integrate them into the whole of who you are. I want to just take a moment to acknowledge that that takes a lot of courage and you should be proud of the work you’ve done,” she said with a small but warm smile.

She wasn’t even sure what that meant. ‘The whole of who you are’. Confusion flickered across the surface of her mind and showed in a slight lowering of her eyebrows for a half second, a tug at the corners of her mouth.

“That doesn’t mean though that we can’t be triggered and what we feel we’ve moved past can’t suddenly cause anxiety to show up. So tell me what sort of coping mechanisms you have in place for those moments and how often you find yourself needing them.”

~Janna Kingston, CNS

“Well, it depends. If I’m overwhelmed, I’ll usually take a few minutes to brain dump and re-prioritize. Most immediate or important things get handled first. Or if I’m planning for the next day I try to eat the biggest frogs first. If you have to eat a frog, best way to do it.” Serena thought for a moment. “I try to deal with most things directly. Letting them pile up is bad and just makes things worse. If it’s handled early, it’s a non-issue. I try to make sure communication is clear and thorough, so I’m not seeing problems where there aren’t any and start spiraling. And I get stuck in an anxious ‘what if’ loop, I’ve learned to interrupt it, or reframe it. Instead of ‘What if I screw up’ or ‘What if x bad thing happens’ …” She sighed, then took a breath. “‘What if it all works out?’ Or… ‘What if we pull x thing off? Then what?’ The former is all about failure and disappointing people. The latter looks for success, for the right outcome, but it’s not wishful thinking. It’s giving the reticular activating system better programming.”

She chewed her lower lip for a moment. “When there’s something I don’t want to do, but need to do, I’ll tend to use The Five Second Rule. I count backwards in my head from five. Five, four, three, two, one… And go. It interrupts the pre-frontal cortex, breaks the cycle, makes a decision. And if you can start, the rest gets a lot easier. Starting rituals. All I have to do is work on whatever it is a little bit. Five minutes. A paragraph. Whatever it is. Soon as I get started, it gets over the hump and builds momentum. The resistance is just mental. It doesn’t actually mean the task is any harder. It’s just how I’m feeling about it.” She shrugged one shoulder.

“I guess I’ve picked up some tools over the years,” she added.

Lt Cmdr Stone, XO


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