This plays a key role in activating the parasympathetic nervous system- otherwise known as your “rest and digest” state. Because your vagus nerve runs through both the larynx and pharynx in your throat, humming creates a vibration that stimulates your vagus nerve and can increase your vagal tone (aka the health of your vagus nerve!).
We have too many eggs in the fridge
Well, buy a hen and give her a nest,Then we”ll have some chickens
But they won’t fit in the fridge either!
Why do we eat eggs every day?
What else could we do with them?
Is it legal to throw eggs over the wall?
Not the iron wall
Some people believe they are good for our hair
Like hairdressers, you mean?
Just think.We can’t get our hair cut
Well, we can’t get our toe nails cut either
A bit dangerous in bed, then
Hair never harms anyone
If it were long it could strangle your lover
A nice way to die
I curry eggs, I stuff them, I cover them in sauce
What’s wrong with that?
I am bored of them
With them?
No, they are not bored.
How can you tell?
Intuition
What is my crime that placed me in this cell?
What is my sin that I must never tell
I did not know my guilt for I felt none.
I was not destroyed in blood or bone
Satan fed me scruples till I broke
My mind was cracked like some dejected bone
I wanted to attend some lectures free
I went to Oxford ate all that I could see
To revive my thesis I would have to pay.
Dirac married late, why such delay?
I wish that he had died at 33.
His equation was the death of me.
2 percent of Brits are Ph.D
How shall I win,with IQ 63?
If I worked hard and made a better case
Academic standards seem debased.
Anyone can win a Nobel prize.
If you can read and write and tell good lies
Love is cruel to those who are left
They have their strength,they have their health
But their grief is like a knife
That cut the husband from the wife.
Fortune favours those who die
For all alone they will not lie.
Every object, every place
Reminds us of the lost embrose.
Grief is anxious,insecure
We may have gold love’s not assured
Looking into unknown fields
May these rhythms some mercy yield
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/poignant
is remarkably poignant, sombre yet comforting, evocative of distant associations, yet not too explicit.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
The morphology of the village became a medium for the realization of another of the period’s most poignant and generative concepts, the open form.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Instances of undeserved pain and suffering provide us with our most poignant examples.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
The understated nature of the coda, especially the pianissimo passage starting in bar 108, enhances one’s experience of the narrative as poignant, troubled and unresolved.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
He gives a poignant and moving account of their last years together and the profound sadness following his loss.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
The resonances of the questions are particularly purposeful, moral, heartfelt, and poignant.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Their article, which includes highly poignant and well-observed case studies, demonstrates the seriousness of the problems encountered.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
His fieldnotes and letters back home were always filled with poignant observations, good wit, and honest introspection.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
This short, poignant film seems to resonate perfectly with the mood and flow of the music.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
For an immersion teacher education setting, this is particularly poignant.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
King Alfred
Lately I have been loaned by providence a graceful beautiful cat.Early on he was a shrinking, hunched and nervous creature who slept by the back door on the daily newspaper.He ate hungrily and drank water with a drop of milk.
He was reluctant for a couple of weeks to venture further but as the tranquil peaceful time went by he began to sleep on a towel by the hall radiator and eventually on my knee.
The most striking change was in his size.As he ate more and was petted more he relaxed so that when stretched by the fire ,more of his body was in contact with the floor and he looked larger all over.He was loosened up and comfortable.
If he were human I might say he had a good mother.He is affectionate and initially I feared his demands might be excessive.When he came onro my bed I was concerned.But after five minutes of being stroked he went off to his own place again.
Sometimes when he’s been out in the garden he reappears with an air of humorous triumph as if he has worked a miracle to enter through his door.Another time when I was reading in a different room from the usual one he appeared mid morning with a face full of more expression than I can easily put into words.
He was anxious and relieved,puzzled and afraid,happy and a touch angry with me.How can you do this to me? was his query.Suppose you had gone altogether?Oh,the insecurity of being a tame cat.
I wonder why cats do not miss their own species.Or maybe they meet them outsi
de.Often though they fight to defend their territory but fortunately they have no WMD as yet.I like to read and stroke him as I muse over my book,
https://www.poetryarchive.org/interview/wendy-cope-interview
I don’t set out to write humorous poems it’s just sometimes my sense of humour gets into them – well quite often. As a reader I suppose I laugh when I recognise something – I think laughter often is when you recognise something is true but you’d never actually allowed yourself to think that or you’d never heard it put quite so well. I think it’s possible for a poem to be funny and serious at the same time and I get very annoyed with the assumption that if a poem is funny then it can’t be saying anything important and deeply felt. Some of my poems are just playful and could accurately be described as ‘light verse’ but I think in a lot of my poems, although there’s humour in them, they are saying something that matters and something that’s deeply felt and I don’t think…I think those things can co-exist in the same poem.”
Mary was walking down the High Street of a little town a few miles from Knittingham. Here stood tall trees, which have been hacked into stumps by the local council,They are vehemently opposed to anything that might change the town into an upmarket suburb of Knittingham. They wante it to be ‘modern’, like a small version of Manhattan or Paris, maybe, or even London. but there was not enough room to build a skyscraper or a Gherkin, like the one that Ken Livingstone had erected in London after he went to Soho
Mary was wearing a long, blue, unlined, woollen coat from Marks and Spencer, over a dark grey and green sweater dress, with matching leather boots . iIn her hand, she carried a large green handbag, which contained her Kindle Paperwhite and her purse
Suddenly she had a loud cry: “Mary, Mary!”.
She looked round and there was an old friend whom she knew before the advent of smartphones and computers and, therefore, not being very well organised, she had lost the address of this dear lady, Margaret.
“Shall we go and have a cup of coffee in that Turkish restaurant?”, Margaret inquired politely.I have my cat in the car and I’ll get him a scone.The people are very friendly
“What a brilliant idea!”, Mary cried, “I have come out just to have a change of scene and Annie, my friend in in Knittingham, has got measles I have a cat myself
“I do hope you’ve had measles already”, said Margaret.
Yes, I have”, Mary lied.
“Well, tell me your latest news. How is your rheumatoid arthritis? Have they given you any of these new drugs, which suppress your immune system to stop it from attacking your own body?”
“No, they haven’t given me any yet”, Margaret replied cheerfullyA bit late now
“I believe that, nowadays, they give them to people right at the beginning of the illness tbut, in my day, they did not give them to you until it was fully developed , unfortunately, I have become somewhat disabled.”
“Well, how do you manage living on your own?”Do you have a lover who might help you?
“No lover as yet but I have various devices that I can use”, Margaret told her with a twinkle in her eye, giving Mary the impression that Margaret was the owner of a gigantic array of vibrators and other similar implements trying them out for some Health Magazine for the handicapped
Mary was thinking that they were probably better than codeine for taking your mind off your pains and aches which, in the case of arthritis can be excruciating, making it impossible in many cases for a woman to have sex though she had imagined marrying her cat Emile as he had expressive eyes and did not desire her body
She did not tell Margaret what she was thinking but said:
“I know that you can get a stand for your electric kettle, so that you can pour the water out of it without lifting the kettle up from the work surface., and you can also get vacuum cleaners that are self-propelled.”
As Mary had a great many books, she was unlikely to buy one of these vacuum cleaners, because they would knock over all her carefully choosing piles of scholarly works and art books, not to mention the tubs full of pens and pencils, and coloured pastel chalks.
When they went into the cafe, the waitress was very polite and soon they were drinking their coffee at a little table in the window, from where they could see the local people passing by.Many were wearing badges asking for an end to the Civil War in Britain
“You’ll never guess what happened to me”, Margaret said
, “I was in the bookshop, where they have a folding chair for me to sit ; they know I can’t stand up for a long time without suffering pain. I’d just sat down when this young woman came up to me and said:”
“You can’t sit there and read: you have to go upstairs and sit in and armchair.”
“Well, if you show me the lift, I will be very happy to go upstairs ” , I said humorously
.Or maybe you can carry me up as you are very heavy and strong
“We don’t have a lift”, t he woman cried loudly, “We only have one for us to take books upstairs and we do not allow customers to use it, because it is not insured.”
=Would you mind if I just sat here for 5 minutes?”
“No!, you cannot sit there for 5 minutes”
“ Well, I was unable to get up, straight away”, said Margaret “but, as soon as I could, I put the expensive book, which Ihad been going to buy, back onto the rack of new non-fiction and saved £20 there and then
” “That’s not very nice”, continued Mary. i“It might even be illegal to tell a disabled person to go up some stairs, when there is no lift or escalator.”
Margaret called
“Let’s talk about something else. I like that coat: it’s a lovely shade of Prussian blue
“Never say the word Prussian to me”, said Mary “it reminds me of the war.”
“Well”, said Margaret “if our luck continues on its present track and also the Middle East, there will be almost no country that we can talk about it without getting distressed by the name.”
It’s a real indictment of humankind.Civilisation is inextricably linked to War.Let#s put that thought aside and talk about clothes instead
“I like this coat however we name the olour”, said Mary “because it is made of wool and the sleeves are lined but the body is not lined, which means that is suitable for this early spring weather and also quite llight to wear always an advantage for the older lady. iIt also covers up whatever else I am wearing underneath because it is quite long.”
“What on earth are you wearing underneath?”tMargaret asked humorously
“For all you know I might have nothing underneath it”, said Mary “exccept a pair of silk knickers and a silk vest.”
But I have a dress on over my silk and wool underwear,I am using an deodorant called
Unarmed and dangerous
“ I have changed a lot since my husband died and I do all sorts of peculiar things. For example, I believed in times it will soon be legal to marry an animal and I would like to marrylEmile, so that he can sleep in bed with me rather than on top of the bed.”
“But he might scratch you accidentallyy! “, cried Margaret.And can he kiss you?
“Oh, there’s always a fly in the ointment”, Mary said.
“Well don’t marry the fly”, her friend responded.”I don’t think that Father Brown would like that, even if it could speak and say ‘I do’; it would definitely not want to sleep in bed with you. it will be flying around your bedroom, buzzing all night, and I don’t think it’ll be the only. one”
“I have to marry a spider then”, said Mary, “Maybe two spiders”
They both laughed uproariously, to the amazement of all the other people in a cafe
“It’s good to see old ladies laughing isn’t it?”
It certainly is.”
“So will you be going back to that book shop?”
“Well, I did try to go back but, as I approached the door, my mouth went very dry and I realised I was getting that ‘fight or flight’ reaction, even though I didn’t feel so anxious but something inside me was worried that history was about to repeat itself and I ’d be the object of scorn and derision.”
“Yes, it’s horrible to feel humiliated isn’t it”, said Mary.
“I was reading an article in the Guardian, which said that some scientists of the most social sorts have discovered that even the nicest people unconsciously see disabled people as less than human.”.
“Oh my god! that is very frightening because I am getting older and I might get disabled and then I will suffer like you do.”
“Well, you have to be tolerant of suffering”
But how tolerant should one be? I don’t want to have back some of those politically correct people who go around like Methodist -preachers, attacking people who are agnostic or who want unisex toilets
“Are there any heterosexual toilets?”
“I’ve never seen any but you never know.”
After drinking their coffees, they walked into Marks and Spencer’s to look at the new spring clothing
That looks like a satin tracksuit!”, Mary called politely
“I believe that the short trousers are coming back into fashion. tThey are a big problem because itthey puts all the focus on your ankles, so you cannot wear those dirty old socks that you can wear at home or with long trousers. I think they are a plot to make us buy ankle boots.”
Everything’s a plot now, isn’t it.
“Don’t say that to the doctor or she will think you are getting paranoia.”
“Getting paranoia? I’ve been paranoid all my life.”“How sad!”
We’ll, nowadays you need a bit of paranoia, especially if you come from Europe and believe that you can work in Britain and contribute to the economy, while enjoying all the lavish pleasures of London city and nightlife.”
“The so-called foreigners are much more courteous than English people. iIn fact I a’m ashamed to be English now and I pretend that I came from Ireland instead.”
You look more like a Valkyrie.”
“Don’t say that! I hate the composer Wagner.”
“I do believe the word existed before he wrote the music but I understand how you feel. It’s not your fault that you’ve got blonde hair and blue eyes and a white skin.”
“My hair isn’t really blonde any more. I think it’s more silvery, like Helen Mirren.”
“Does it really matter what her hair looks like now?”
”“Well, we have to amuse ourselves somehow and, since we no longer have husbands, wel ’re deprived of much pleasure and love, and we have to put out the wheelie bins ourselves, which I think is really awful.”
Well, it’s a sort of exercise, isn’t it?”
“If that’s all I got, I’d be paralysed by now!”
“So, what else do you do?”
“I do some vacuuming, now and then, I move books out of the bookcase and carry them into the other room and, you won’t believe this, last week I accidentally put a bag of nearly new clothes into the ‘dirty’ wheelie bin and found I still had the rubbish in the hall.! Unfortunately, the bins had been emptied and there was nothing I could do to get them back.Mind you, I did feel a certain relief but as the hall was no longer full of black bin liners and other stuff like that..
Not to mention all those cables, cords, and chargers that we have nowadays. I think the computer was invented purely to give us more things to buy, to keep the economy going. Nobody really wanted to have computers but they realised that, once you got one, you would want to connect it to your camera, or your television, or the printer, and so it would mean a big market for those cables and cords.
But it gives me something to do, while the Government argue about Brexit.”
It’s not just the Government who are arguing. My gardener nearly hit me when I said I wanted to remain in Europe. I am forbidden to mention Brexit anywhere near him.”
“I have noticed that it doesn’t matter what the evidence is,; even the most intelligent people will not change their minds, so it must be coming from a deeper level.”
“It sounds as though people are trying to understand why Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews and they have come up with all sorts of theories about his childhood. I thought it might be related to sexual fantasy but the latest idea is that it is beyond explanation in any human terms; it is evil beyond our ability to explain. It is not true that, if Hitler did not exist, someone else would have behaved the same way. He could have lost his mind when he was defeated by Russia at Stalingrad but, if you lost your mind, would you go and exterminate six million Jews and gays or 6 million other people?
The frightening thing is that it could so easily become the way that Muslims are treated. People say to me: “I don’t want to think about politics, it’s upsetting me”,
but isn’t that what the German said in the 1930s? If we don’t bother about it, we may find ourselves in a trap that we can’t escape from.
It is painful to think about these things, when we would rather think about the daffodils and the magnolia flowers, but who will protect us or guard us, when we go further down this lunacy track.”
“Yes, I see what you mean. iIt’s like thinking that know, if people are depressed, sad, worried, it’s just thought to be very, very bad and they have been put on tablets and getting CBT when, in fact, it may be appropriate to feel that way, as long as one can channel it into some useful activity.”
i“It can give you energy… I believe there’s a big march in London against racism and fascism. I don’t know wherether the big marches have any effect. dDo you remember the one against the Iraq War? One of the biggest matrches ever seen in London and yet it made absolutely no difference to Tony Blair.”
“Anyway, just give me your news before we depart.”
“I shall tell you what; I’ll give you my email address and then we can communicate about our children or our other activities: grand-children etc. Maybe we can meet more frequently now, as we don’t have to rush home to make the dinner.”
The two women hugged each other before they separated and then Mary went back to the High Street. although she couldn’t remember now what she was going to buy.It might have been an electric tin opener, or a bottle of wine, or a throw from Robert Dyas to hide under, if anybody looked through the window.
Does it matter what she was going to buy? s She just wanted to get some fresh air, and meeting old friends always a good things, especially for aged people
I’m sure Emile would agree, if Mary brought him with her in her handbag, but he was putting on weight and is a little bit too heavy to carry. It would be wonderful if Emile were very big, then Mary could ride on his back as if he were a donkey
Why not buy a real donkey?
“Oh no! cry all of us .”
O
Have you done a thesaurus search on “poignant”? I’ll bet there are other words or phrases that may have a slightly different flavor – such as “heart-felt moment”, “touching”, “meaningful”, etc. –
Kristina Lopez
Jun 26, 2014 at 16:08
‘Poignant’ is the often painful counterpart of the often pleasurable ‘piquant’. ‘Connotation’ is misused in the question, but the particular misuse is common; the question is also overstating the case with respect to senses of ‘poignant’, but the same would hold true of a reversal with reference to piquant: “Piguant denotes touching and significant, but is often used to refer to pleasurably stimulating or fascinating sensations or ideas. Is there a word that has that same general sense, but is often used to refer to painfully stimulating or fascinating sensations or ideas (poignant)?” –
JEL
Sep 2, 2016 at 5:04
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As far as I know, poignant does have a positive connotation, meaning something that is moving or touching but also slightly painful. One wouldn’t describe an event as a ‘poignant tribute’ if it had a negative connotation.
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answered Jun 26, 2014 at 15:12
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thecrease
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Agreed. There is no negative connotation to poignant. Words that have a negative connotation are words like mawkish, blubbery, even sentimental. –
FeliniusRex – gone
Jun 26, 2014 at 15:18
1
The negativity is in the sadness (cf heart-rending) of poignancy, which normally refers to the past; there is always some regret in reviewing the past, and that’s part of being poignant. But not necessarily
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As far as I know, poignant does have a positive connotation, meaning something that is moving or touching but also slightly painful. One wouldn’t describe an event as a ‘poignant tribute’ if it had a negative connotation.
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answered Jun 26, 2014 at 15:12
Sorted by: Highest score (default) Date modified (newest first) Date created (oldest first)
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As far as I know, poignant does have a positive connotation, meaning something that is moving or touching but also slightly painful. One wouldn’t describe an event as a ‘poignant tribute’ if it had a negative connotation.
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answered Jun 26, 2014 at 15:12
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If I could not see
I’d miss the bare black branches
Against dim burgundy.
Trees nod heads gently
Accepting night fall and moon
Neon light, vulgar
Dark blue,plum, soft grey
The sun dies bleeding , upwards.
As it sinks to darkness
Would I notice skies
If I wasn’t alone searching?
I found more wool gloves
I found wrist warmers
It is no longer freezing cold
But no warmth
Darker and darker
Now the branches join the sky
All plum velvet deep
Indifference tolls the knell of humankind
So easy just to turn our eyes away
We often self deceive or mimic blind;
So Hitler goosestepped; foolish Pope but prayed
How bright the candlelight on Christmas trees
And tender children widen joyous eyes
Yet for the other,we will hear no pleas.
At every heartbeat “foreign” babies die..
Can we love any but those who share our genes,
What sense the tale of Arab aiding Jew?
Is the underlying truth not seen?
As Jesus said the chosen are but few
We split the world into a double view;
The good, the bad,the heart of darkness slew
My red-haired neighbour loved her high heeled shoes
She dressed in cream and black when she went out
Her smart appearance called in many views
Even when she fell and was much bruised
Her eyes so sharp drove off marauding louts
My red-haired neighbour saved for grand cream shoes
She dyed her hair blood red, oh men confused!
Though she was ninety she was never stout
Her dear appearance wondrous was well viewed
By the Daily Mail, she was bemused
She meditated, used it to wrap sprouts
My neighbour dyed her hair and matched her shoes
Suddenly her blood its power would lose
Her nights out and her cooking were in doubt
She so stylish no more could be viewed
She went to Mass on Sunday, sin to rout
Her hair fresh dyed, she died where God’s about
My red-haired neighbour loved her pretty shoes
In her coffin, may she be amused
Oh ,Frances has got cancer and her husband had a stroke
Is brother had got Parkinson’s and died before he spoke
A lot of time to think again and pray for what is best
Life for human beings no seems to be a test
As we grow old and people die we learn we maybe next
God is not our mother so there’s no joy being vexed
My sister died when she lay down, how my brother cried
Now he’s in the hospital and seemed to be okay
He fell while walking down the ward that was yesterday
Q he broke his thigh bone when he fell, my sister could not cry
She’s got cancer in her lungs who’ll the first to dir?
The doctors were on strike last week they did not do the scan
Now they have he’s had a stroke,oh doctor strikes be damned.
Resign yourself and tell your sins the priest he’s waiting here.
Write a few apologies and drink a pint of beer.l
But there is another way to see this crisis – one that doesn’t place it firmly in the realm of the medical system. Doesn’t it make sense that so many of us are suffering? Of course it does: we are living in a traumatising and uncertain world. The climate is breaking down, we’re trying to stay on top of rising living costs, still weighted with grief, contagion and isolation, while revelations about the police murdering women and strip-searching children shatter our faith in those who are supposed to protect us.
As a clinical psychologist who has been working in NHS services for a decade, I’ve seen first hand how we are failing people by locating their problems within them as some kind of mental disorder or psychological issue, and thereby depoliticising their distress. Will six sessions of CBT, designed to target “unhelpful” thinking styles, really be effective for someone who doesn’t know how they’re going to feed their family for another week? Antidepressants aren’t going to eradicate the relentless racial trauma a black man is surviving in a hostile workplace, and branding people who are enduring sexual violence with a psychiatric disorder (in a world where two women a week are murdered in their own home) does nothing to keep them safe. Unsurprisingly, mindfulness isn’t helping children who are navigating poverty, peer pressure and competitive exam-driven school conditions, where bullying and social media harm are rife.
If a plant were wilting we wouldn’t diagnose it with “wilting-plant-syndrome” – we would change its conditions. Yet when humans are suffering under unliveable conditions, we’re told something is wrong with us, and expected to keep pushing through. To keep working and producing, without acknowledging our hurt.
In efforts to destigmatise mental distress, “mental illness” is framed as an “illness like any other” – rooted in supposedly flawed brain chemistry. In reality, recent research concluded that depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance of the brain. Ironically, suggesting we have a broken brain for life increases stigma and disempowerment. What’s most devastating about this myth is that the problem and the solution are positioned in the person, distracting us from the environments that cause our distress.‘I’m glowing’: scientists are unlocking secrets of why forests make us happy
Individual therapy is brilliant for lots of people, and antidepressants can help some people cope. But I worry that a purely medicalised, individualised understanding of mental health puts plasters over big gaping wounds, without addressing the source of violence. They encourage us to adapt to systems, thereby protecting the status quo. It is here that we fail marginalised people the most: Black people’s understandable expressions of hurt at living in a structurally racist society are too often medicalised, labelled dangerous and met with violence under the guise of “care”. Black people are more likely to be Tasered, sectioned, restrained and over-medicated than anyone else in our mental health services today.
The UK could learn a lot from liberation psychology. Founded in the 1980s by the Salvadorian activist and psychologist Ignacio Martín Baró, it argues that we cannot isolate “mental health problems” from our broader societal structures. Suffering emerges within people’s experiences and histories of oppression. Liberation psychology sees people not as patients, but potential social actors in the project of freedom, valuing their own lineages, creativity and experience, rather than being forced into a white, eurocentric and individualistic idea of therapy. It directly challenges the social, cultural and political causes of distress through collective social action.
This framework makes complete sense when we hear that the pandemic in the UK has affected poor people’s mental health most. Does it mean wealthy, privileged white men don’t experience suffering? Of course they do. We’re still learning about the complicated ways these structural issues affect our everyday lives. For example, how the pressures of individualism and capitalism may lead to isolation and substance abuse, or how colonial violence towards immigrant families plays out within homes and on bodies.
Let me be clear, I’m not saying people in distress should be out there on the picket line. Pain can be debilitating. But those of us who are supporting people in distress, such as mental health workers, have a key role in social transformation. Social action is the medicine that relieves people’s personal and collective distress.
Instead of trying to change “mindsets” in therapy, we need to change race- and class-based hierarchies, the housing and economic system. Universal basic income has psychological benefits, and recent studies show how it improves the “crises of anxiety and depression”. As a clinical psychologist, some of my most powerful work has been not in the therapy room but in successfully advocating for secure housing for, or working in the community with, queer, black and brown facilitators in organisations such as Beyond Equality, to prevent gender-based violence. The network Psychologists for Social Change shows us a practical imagining of this work. We also need social change that is preventive, such as investing in young people and community-led services such as healing justice london and 4front. They work to shift trauma in marginalised communities through building social connectedness, social action and creativity, towards futures free of violence.
None of this is to dismiss the value of one-on-one therapy (that’s part of my job, after all). But therapy must be a place where oppression is examined, where the focus isn’t to simply reduce distress, but to see it as a survival response to an oppressive world. And ultimately, I’d like to see a world where we need fewer therapists. A culture that reclaims and embraces each other’s madness. Where we take the courageous (and sometimes skin-crawling) risk of turning to each other in our understandable, messy pain.
Meaningful structural transformation won’t happen overnight, though the pandemic taught us that big changes can happen pretty quickly. But change won’t happen without us: our distress might even be a sign of health – a telling indicator of where we can collectively resist the structures that are hurting so many of us.
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But there is another way to see this crisis – one that doesn’t place it firmly in the realm of the medical system. Doesn’t it make sense that so many of us are suffering? Of course it does: we are living in a traumatising and uncertain world. The climate is breaking down, we’re trying to stay on top of rising living costs, still weighted with grief, contagion and isolation, while revelations about the police murdering women and strip-searching children shatter our faith in those who are supposed to protect us.
As a clinical psychologist who has been working in NHS services for a decade, I’ve seen first hand how we are failing people by locating their problems within them as some kind of mental disorder or psychological issue, and thereby depoliticising their distress. Will six sessions of CBT, designed to target “unhelpful” thinking styles, really be effective for someone who doesn’t know how they’re going to feed their family for another week? Antidepressants aren’t going to eradicate the relentless racial trauma a black man is surviving in a hostile workplace, and branding people who are enduring sexual violence with a psychiatric disorder (in a world where two women a week are murdered in their own home) does nothing to keep them safe. Unsurprisingly, mindfulness isn’t helping children who are navigating poverty, peer pressure and competitive exam-driven school conditions, where bullying and social media harm are rife.
If a plant were wilting we wouldn’t diagnose it with “wilting-plant-syndrome” – we would change its conditions. Yet when humans are suffering under unliveable conditions, we’re told something is wrong with us, and expected to keep pushing through. To keep working and producing, without acknowledging our hurt.
In efforts to destigmatise mental distress, “mental illness” is framed as an “illness like any other” – rooted in supposedly flawed brain chemistry. In reality, recent research concluded that depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance of the brain. Ironically, suggesting we have a broken brain for life increases stigma and disempowerment. What’s most devastating about this myth is that the problem and the solution are positioned in the person, distracting us from the environments that cause our distress.‘I’m glowing’: scientists are unlocking secrets of why forests make us happy
Individual therapy is brilliant for lots of people, and antidepressants can help some people cope. But I worry that a purely medicalised, individualised understanding of mental health puts plasters over big gaping wounds, without addressing the source of violence. They encourage us to adapt to systems, thereby protecting the status quo. It is here that we fail marginalised people the most: Black people’s understandable expressions of hurt at living in a structurally racist society are too often medicalised, labelled dangerous and met with violence under the guise of “care”. Black people are more likely to be Tasered, sectioned, restrained and over-medicated than anyone else in our mental health services today.
The UK could learn a lot from liberation psychology. Founded in the 1980s by the Salvadorian activist and psychologist Ignacio Martín Baró, it argues that we cannot isolate “mental health problems” from our broader societal structures. Suffering emerges within people’s experiences and histories of oppression. Liberation psychology sees people not as patients, but potential social actors in the project of freedom, valuing their own lineages, creativity and experience, rather than being forced into a white, eurocentric and individualistic idea of therapy. It directly challenges the social, cultural and political causes of distress through collective social action.
This framework makes complete sense when we hear that the pandemic in the UK has affected poor people’s mental health most. Does it mean wealthy, privileged white men don’t experience suffering? Of course they do. We’re still learning about the complicated ways these structural issues affect our everyday lives. For example, how the pressures of individualism and capitalism may lead to isolation and substance abuse, or how colonial violence towards immigrant families plays out within homes and on bodies.
Let me be clear, I’m not saying people in distress should be out there on the picket line. Pain can be debilitating. But those of us who are supporting people in distress, such as mental health workers, have a key role in social transformation. Social action is the medicine that relieves people’s personal and collective distress.
Instead of trying to change “mindsets” in therapy, we need to change race- and class-based hierarchies, the housing and economic system. Universal basic income has psychological benefits, and recent studies show how it improves the “crises of anxiety and depression”. As a clinical psychologist, some of my most powerful work has been not in the therapy room but in successfully advocating for secure housing for, or working in the community with, queer, black and brown facilitators in organisations such as Beyond Equality, to prevent gender-based violence. The network Psychologists for Social Change shows us a practical imagining of this work. We also need social change that is preventive, such as investing in young people and community-led services such as healing justice london and 4front. They work to shift trauma in marginalised communities through building social connectedness, social action and creativity, towards futures free of violence.
None of this is to dismiss the value of one-on-one therapy (that’s part of my job, after all). But therapy must be a place where oppression is examined, where the focus isn’t to simply reduce distress, but to see it as a survival response to an oppressive world. And ultimately, I’d like to see a world where we need fewer therapists. A culture that reclaims and embraces each other’s madness. Where we take the courageous (and sometimes skin-crawling) risk of turning to each other in our understandable, messy pain.
Meaningful structural transformation won’t happen overnight, though the pandemic taught us that big changes can happen pretty quickly. But change won’t happen without us: our distress might even be a sign of health – a telling indicator of where we can collectively resist the structures that are hurting so many of us.
To return to the plant analogy – we must look at our conditions. The water might be a universal basic income, the sun safe, affordable housing and easy access to nature and creativity. Food could be loving relationships, community or social support services. The most effective therapy would be transforming the oppressive aspects of society causing our pain. We all need to take whatever support is available to help us survive another day. Life is hard. But if we could transform the soil, access sunlight, nurture our interconnected roots and have room for our leaves to unfurl, wouldn’t life be a little more livable?
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ContinueRemind me in Novemberhttps://6bd2070874e8cb4fdc70397ff773cf80.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0
You revealed the face within your face
Human,lowly,humbler than an ant
The pathos in your eyes made sad my gaze
The other face, defended, has no grace
With it ,you appear quite confident.
Yet you revealed to me your hidden face
I know now of the suffering of your days
A fear of tragic pasts feared imminent
The pathos in your eyes made sad my gaze
The mental torment heavy all your days.
Yet you must hide from men intolerant
You revealed the face within your face
Like martyrs, you were tortured and disgraced
You wandered feebly,lost, itinerant
The pathos in your eyes makes sad my days
If Love exists then would that not embrace
The lost, the lonely, even the vagrant?
You revealed the face within your face
The pathos in your eyes made me feel base
My heart is like a jigsaw incomplete
Who stole the pieces,turned joy to defeat?
When you went away it cracked in two
How can I be me when there’s no you?
Turn me into metal melt me down
Recreate me.Let me be unknown
Let me start again for love of God
A pilgrimage of grace I can afford
We had to learn in school what our religion was about so I’ll try to put down the main ideas.
It’s good to take thorns out of lions’ paws.
Men should never cut their hair nor anyone else’s.
Sausages are rude because they look like penises.That’s why some folk can’t eat pork,I think.
When we receive Communion and bite the bread,Jesus can feel it.That worried me
Candles can help the soles in purgatory as they can see others then
If you have no sins to confess,you should be ashamed of yourself as you are too proud.
Jesus was God’s son but God’s name was not on his birth certificate so Mary was on child benefit and housing benefit too.And it was not wrong because God told us to help each other and the poor.And it was a test.Which we have failed.
God can sew because Jesus liked needles with small eyes. and did embroidery.
God didn’t want Jesus to die but human beings are cruel and tend to attack the good… like God’s own chosen people who were given the ten commandments to pass on.There were more than ten but they lost a few in the desert when their tablets’ batteries went flat.
God likes to hear us sing but not rock music as it makes his head ache.
God has his own Spirit to fortify him but he doesn’t smoke every day.He’s like a dragon,you see.
After we die we can be improved by being roasted in a hot fire and eaten by cannibals.It’s called the Inferno and Dante wrote the script before God made the film which seems hard to find but we kept looking.
When we are in heaven we will never have sex again.Or in some cases leave out the “again”.
I saw the blind man hiding in the doorway of a shop
I went over to him quickly to find out what was up
The noisy drills were violent as men dug up the road.
Noise confused the Old man’s mind
He didn’t know where to go
Gently then I took his hand and we began to walk.
The workmen in their ragged clothes turned the drill right off
They stood in silence watching us,
While the sparrows laughed
After we had crossed the road he said he was ok.
I pressed his hand with my own hand. Then we went our ways
I’ve never seen this man again but I shall not forget
The special silence we walked in that holiday we met
Suffering does not benefit mankind.
Retaliation causes further horm
Blindness does not benefit the blind.
Brooding will embitter suffering minds.
bitter are the lessons we must learn
Suffering does not benefit mankind
God the artist plays with shape and lines
It’s we who have to distribute the alms
Blindness does not benefit the blind
We try to find what Jesus left behind
Perception is more moving when we’re calm
Suffering does not benefit our minds
Remember Blythburgh church and angels’ arms.
Even demons can’t resist their charms
Suffering does not benefit mankind
Blindness does not benefit the blinds
How my heart speaks 