with gentle fierceness | metabolising god | https://t.co/ITg08u2uvP | https://t.co/wJbuQaaLOF
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May 31 • 29 tweets • 4 min read
Ok threadapalooza style, here are (maybe up to) 100 things I've learned in the past few months while trying to change a complex government system
1. Some people care about your thing and some people don't. If they don't care, your job is to make them trust enough to not obstruct you doing your thing.
Jun 2, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
get yourself a vocation where a day's work involves puzzling over the nature of coercion, writing deep emotional+technical content for hours, training people who love your mission in how to help, and hunting for clipboards in a chaotic re-use depot
in the last few weeks I have cold-called approximately 45 mobile crisis teams, some of them multiple times. this is way more exciting to me than however exciting you think it is
Jan 18, 2023 • 28 tweets • 5 min read
I read a book called Enactive Psychiatry by Sanneke de Haan which explained ‘what a mind is and what a mental disorder is’ in an elegant way I found extremely convincing and I find it very difficult to explain but also a perfect explanation. Gonna try a bit.
The core insight of enactivism (one philosophical understanding of minds) is that a mind is not quite a thing like a rock is a thing, but a thing more like a family is a thing—a unit made up by the relationship between its constituents
Mar 11, 2022 • 25 tweets • 5 min read
I was just awarded a grant by Emergent Ventures to start a nonprofit working to reform the psychiatric crisis system-- psychcrisis.org.
I'd like to explain what that is, why it matters, and what the hell I'm gonna do about it.
A psychiatric crisis is what happens when your internal experience becomes so disorganised or intense that you are at risk of killing yourself, or seriously hurting yourself or someone else. You might be suicidally depressed, manic, psychotic, or...
Dec 7, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Essays that permanently live rent-free in my soul, each with a bad description to entice you to read them:
Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde
Women's erotic energy has been suppressed as a method of control, leaving us depressed and listless. Allowing your erotic energy to transform you will make you alive, divine, and very dangerous.
A few days ago, on August 1st, the Australian government quietly introduced an amendment to their already strictest-in-the-world covid immigration laws.
This amendment bans Australian citizens who live overseas from returning to the country they live in without applying for and receiving an exemption.
Aug 4, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
What single technique, therapy or method has been most life-changing for you, that can be practiced without paying a professional?
(I.e. doing a bioemotive session with a friend counts, solo journalling counts, seeing a therapist weekly would not count.)
I think in recent times for me it is either Peter Levine’s somatic experiencing or David Schnarch’s ‘hugging til relaxed’
May 3, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Things that have surprised me about being an adult:
Any kind of accomplishment worth doing, if done honestly and not as an attempt at surface-level acceptance, is roughly 10x harder than it looks from the outside, at minimum.
Doing things honestly and not as an attempt at surface-level acceptance is a) literally the only way worth doing anything and b) terrifying
Feb 1, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There’s something in this that connects why people stop feeling passion in committed relationships to why people stop loving their passions when they turn them into jobs.
In Passionate Marriage Schnarch says that in order to keep a marriage alive your differentiation needs to keep pace with how important your partner is to you.
Feels like I could ctrl-f-replace relationship with career here and it would 100% explain my problems with work.
Jan 23, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A good apology is one where you’ve paid attention to how what you did affected someone else, and you have reflected on it, and realised that you could only have acted that way, then, because of the ways you were limited at the time.
And that now you see clearly that there are different ways you could act, because of the person you can be now. You can imagine being in that situation now and responding in a different way, that takes their feelings and experience into account.
Jan 19, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I somehow ended up explaining somatic trauma healing in a DM on Hinge (ladies...) and I think I ended up with something surprisingly succinct.
An ELI5 of somatic experiencing:
So, when an animal is in a scary situation, it has a protective response.
Fight, flight, all that...
Jan 3, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I've been doing the kinds of reflections you do at the changing of a year, and there's one thing in particular I would like for 2021. I'd like to finish more--ship more projects.
2020 was a year of learning to walk in a particular way--of learning to make decisions in my work and personal projects with a kind of authentic integrity that feels uniquely mine. And I did do that! But working this way last year was very slow. I'd like to make it faster.
Dec 26, 2020 • 33 tweets • 3 min read
Slowthread of unqualified strong opinions:
To sing well you have to have had good sex
Nov 26, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Everyone says they want ‘community’, but do they also want the endless social obligations, 3am crisis calls, constant attention to the trust between two people who aren’t you, hours spent on the phone hearing why one person is mad at another? And this is in a healthy community!
There’s also the agony of having put your faith in a group of people and watching that group crumble or the faith be unearned, the anxiety of new-group formation, the need to protect from people who will poison the well, & the self-doubt about whether you’re doing the right thing
Nov 26, 2020 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
I open Twitter. And I scroll. Maybe I’m hoping there will be something I find that starts thinking itself into my head, but my head is not really thought-y and it thinks all thoughts are wrong
I watch people I know in real life and people whose voices are just made up sounds in my head whose first names I’ve never heard squawk joyously and frustratedly and parade sex and triumph and pride all over the timeline
Jul 21, 2020 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
I’ve run dozens of deep reading club sessions by now, and I’m kind of obsessed with the format. It’s doing something new and wonderful in a subtle way I want to try and explain.
Why deep reading clubs are fucking rad, a thread:
How a deep reading club works:
Someone chooses a book & invites a group to read it. You read together, aloud, taking the time it takes to read & absorb the text. You annotate the text together, then your annotations become the catalysts for whatever conversation comes next.
May 13, 2020 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Bored of job titles. When I meet someone, I want to hear their self-identification as the simplest possible archetype
Artist
Healer
Mage
Carer
Warrior
Steward
Teacher
Merchant
Lover
Craftsman
Explorer
‘Hi, I’m an IP lawyer’
‘Ah, so a warrior then’
‘I’m founding a startup to make Uber for dogwalking’
‘Ah, so you’re an artist then’
Mar 15, 2020 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
I live in a 12-person community house in SF. We bought extra food and supplies a few weeks ago, made a written quarantine plan about two weeks ago, and pulled the trigger on our first level of quarantine last week.
Most of us are lucky we can work from home; another handful work without being around other people, and one helped persuade her work (with lots of kids) to cancel events and end the semester early.
Jan 2, 2020 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
I'm at my parents' place, 1hr south of Sydney, Australia.
Bushfires have hit coastal communities (swollen with holiday tourists) a few hrs south of us - thousands of people trapped on beaches or on boats by fires, in areas where all the roads are now blocked off.
People have been directed to leave where possible, but there are several issues. Firstly, driving is hard:
- There is no power, limiting gas stations' ability to offer fuel
- Gas stations are running out of fuel
- Even roads that are open have terrible visibility bc smoke
Dec 16, 2019 • 103 tweets • 16 min read
1 like = 1 opinion on witnessing or being a spectator 😱
1. (Oh god so many likes already)
A lot of emotional processing is secretly a process of having your emotional experience witnessed by another. Witnessing is a pretty core kind of care.
Dec 4, 2019 • 6 tweets • 5 min read
Advice on living a creative life - the author was only 27 when he wrote the first of these letters.
On letting sadness move through you, and become your fate:
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