Just thinking about what it means to have brain/mind that goes wrong and weird situation of being able to examine my own thoughts and perceptions objectively. It's such a weird thing to be able to 'see' clearly where my thinking has gone wonky when I'm no longer in a wonky place
Sometimes I feel bullish about it and sometimes I feel a kind of deep, sorrowful shame when looking back at my own mistakes of thinking and perceiving. It feels like realising I've only been half listening to a conversation and just fabulated what I thought was being said.
Actually, shame is probably the most obliterating internal state for me. When in the throes of an attack of shame, all of my most useful skills and thinking just disappear. I give in, I give up, I give others far more space inside me than I should. That's one of gaps I fall into
As I get older, I realise more the contours of landscape inside me and can see more clearly from the higher ground exactly how and where I get lost in the thickets and undergrowth of my own misfiring thinking. It's a sobering thing and no mistake
All of this is a kind of explanation of the question I'm about to ask: what are the gaps or confusions in your own thinking that you are most aware of when afterwards you find yourself no longer lost in them? And what does it feel like when you realise?
Sometimes I feel unsafe in the world and my response is to give in, to try to be nothing: what right do in have to say or do anything? It's a classic passive freeze response and I hate it with a kind of desperate exasperation. Returning from that is like rebuilding my world

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More from @MarkOneinFour

22 Oct
Looking at the usual rehearsed hot takes about hungry children and families and thinking: people love to judge others levels of personal resourcefulness and to imply that they would know 'ten simple tricks' to solve the problem as if being in need were a failure of imagination
Hot takes around poverty are absolutely dripping with survivorship bias, as are any discussions of need where there is a notion that personal coaching can overcome systemic inequality. People literally only listen to the experiences of those who overcame, not those who cannot
People with their hot poverty takes absolutely adore valourising their own life hacks while suggesting that other people's attempts to get by are silly, misguided and morally reprehensible. Yes, your way of getting through worked for you but there were loads of people that didn't
Read 15 tweets
19 Oct
This is worth a look about the physical/mental split in ideas of mental ill-health in Western cultures. I kind of feel like there's still a lot to be found out about physical causes and social causes and political causes. I don't think everything is just social environment
I say this because brains are also physical organs. I'm thinking about head trauma and mood, about things that crate changes in the brain. I feel like the medication / therapy / social justice axes are super useful, but the debate slices up challenges in the wrong ways
I also think medicine (and society) has problems with any thing that makes someone 'ill' but which doesn't have a direct physical sign. I'm thinking of chronic pain, for example. There's been a shift away from medication for chronic pain, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist
Read 9 tweets
9 Jul
This makes me think about how 'end of history' the war on benefits claimants stuff from 2007 or so onward feels. The idea that everything was going so well that unemployment was a psychological problem rather than a practical one; using benefits to teach people lessons
When you look at it from a decade or more of distance; 'no rights without responsibilities'; 'reciprocity and obligation' social security clipboard wonk ideas of couple of years prior to the Financial Crash just carried over into the unholy mess of benefits policy that followed
The idea that need for benefits was somehow a symptom of people's own psychology and not their position within society came at high point of economic growth, as if the next horizon for social policy was the perfectibility of people. But that thinking stuck and grew and multiplied
Read 13 tweets
30 Mar
I was at a health conference once and I was talking to this bloke about Bill Gates style moonshots in health and eradicating diseases and he said that it didn't matter how many nets you sent if the government didn't care enough about poor people
His main point was that healthcare only works if those that rule care enough about the people they rule, other wise all of the money you tip into a problem just ends up making those on power safer and more comfortable
He said he'd worked in and around big Ebola outbreak and reckoned there were two reasons that moved the science on so quick. 1st was sheer panic and relaxing of some protacols in research but other was that the disease was unknown and rich people feared it as much as poor people
Read 7 tweets
16 Dec 19
Been thinking a little bit about the UK, as you might expect, and what now means. One of my first observations is we often fetishise the means of making people's lives good and fulfilling, while ignoring the fundamental entitlement to those good and fulfilling lives
Like, we talk about train fares and renationalisation, not how amazing it would be to travel cheaply and efficiently. We talk about council homes and rental deposits without talking about how everyone deserves a sitting room, a room to have hobbies in, a secure front door
We talk about economy, not the results of the economy. We talk about money in your pocket not wonderful things outside your window or at end of your street. We talk mostly about what people should settle for, not what they have every right to expect. In short we talk of policy
Read 19 tweets
24 Oct 19
I'm going to be doing bit of live tweeting today from #nsunagm19 and I'll also be speaking as well. Sarah Yiannoullou is introducing herself and saying she is happy to announce @AkikoMHart as her replacement. Akiko is now introducing herself to everyone and thanking Sarah
@AkikoMHart This is @AkikoMHart's statement of intent for NSUN, setting out her interests and ideas for the future of @NSUNnews. She's excited and the room gave her a massive round of applause in welcome nsun.org.uk/news/nsun-anno… #nsunagm19
@AkikoMHart @NSUNnews This is the agenda for today's @NSUNnews AGM is here. Membership business and speech in the morning, open mic soapboxes and discussion of the crisis of user led groups in afternoon eventbrite.co.uk/e/nsun-members… #nsunagm19
Read 68 tweets

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