Look without and see the claret sky The sun is falling like Greek wine tonight As sparrows hide in holly,safe from eyes
We need protection till our minds sublime Into dusty corners shine their lights Look without and see the curious sky
Tell your heart, your truth, though others lie Seem rewarded with both cash and spite Oh, sparrows hide in holly, leaves awry
A man is called an emperor , yet he dies Look without and see the fatal signs The sky is turning panic to delight
At last, philosopher, the silence sighs Throw away the your thoughts, cold or benign As sparrow safe in holly, shut their eyes
The hawk may soar across the sacred lines Where patterns of complexity arise Look without and see the open sky When sparrows rest in holly, owls surpris
As Mary stood by the fridge at bedtime, a can of fly killer brought by dear Annie fell off the top and struck her red,orange and brown framed spectacles on the top.The heavy can hurt her nose I hope nobody thinks a man has done this. she said to Emile Well,I didn’t do it ,he mioawed cheerfully It must be an Act of God, she mused.I hope there is no bruise Ah,well.Are you sleeping on my bed,she asked Emile No,I think I might go out roaming Looking for frogs,she teased him I may return, depending on the weather Suddenly Annie knocked on the door Are you all right, she asked anxiously? Why, what is wrong,dear? Your nose is blue It’s that fly stuff, it fell onto me! I’m terribly sorry.We must put it somewhere else. Choose between me and the flies,Mary joked. You are my best friend.I will not bring this stuff again I am off to bed,Mary cried.Let me lock the door behind you Annie ran out, and stole The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk.She wanted to discover why Mary liked Wittgenstein.And it covers a dangerous and terrible era in human history from the end of several Empires to the Second World War and beyond I wonder what the children of Dr Mengele and the other dreadful criminals who committed torture and atrocties would feel like when they learned the truth abou their fathers So Annie is embarking on some serious study while Mary is reading Woman and Home magazine.What is causing this strange change? In bed ,Mary gazed at an article on ” How to dress well when you are over 80″ Alas all the clothes were expensive.Very Does it matter what I wear, she pondered? I suppose people do judge by appearances, she concluded.But which people? Maybe I shall dress in one colour from now on.But not black. Blue is a good colour.From now on if I buy new clothese, they must be blue Maybe just a blue silk scarf is enough to make a vivid impression Mean while Annie is crying over “The Duty of Genius” because at least two of Wittgenstein’s brothers took their own live and his sisters were almost captured by the Nazis who had to be bought off by the family wealth unlike Freud’s sisters So what are we complaining about in the UK, she asked herself before saying some almost forgotten prayers. And wished her husband were there to hold her in his arms.At least one of her husbands would have been most welcome
about the problem for a couple of weeks and get on with my life. In that intervening time, my unconscious brain decided for me. I simply walked into my office one day and the answer had somehow become obvious: I would make the change to studying the weather and climate.
More than four decades on, I’d make the same decision again. My fulfilling career has included developing a new, probabilistic way of forecasting weather and climate which is helping humanitarian and disaster relief agencies make better decisions ahead of extreme weather events. (This and many other aspects are described in my new book, The Primacy of Doubt.)
There is this achievement-oriented culture,” said Ms. Schulte, that teaches us that our only purpose is to produce. Why pick up the guitar if you’re not going to become the best at it? Why make something if you can’t sell it? Better spend your time doing something that actually has value. “You get busy and you feel like you don’t deserve it and you
It was almost jarring,” said Carrie Lee Lancaster, 20, a rising junior. “On our campus, everything can feel like such a competition, I think we get caught up in this idea of presenting an image of perfection. So to see these failures being talked about openly, for me I sort of felt like, ‘O.K., this is O.K., everyone struggles.’”
The presentation is part of a new initiative at Smith, “Failing Well,” that aims to “destigmatize failure.” With workshops on impostor syndrome, discussions on perfectionism, as well as a campaign to remind students that 64 percent of their peers will get (gasp) a B-minus or lower, the program is part of a campuswide effort to foster student “resilience,” to use a buzzword of the moment.
Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford, calls this the “fixed mindset” — the belief that failure is a dead end instead of a stop on the road to improvement. What you want to have instead of a fixed mindset is a “growth mindset” — the ability to see failure as an opportunity to learn.
I advise my students to ask themselves the following questions when they’re hesitant to take a risk:
What’s the worst that can happen?
Then, can you deal with that outcome? What resources do you have to handle it?
What are some possible benefits of your failure, even if the situation doesn’t
J 1947, W. H. Auden published an obscure poem called “The Age of Anxiety” — a title that has resonated through the years as a perfect distillation of the uncertainties of contemporary living. Perhaps we’re hearing that phrase even more often these days, as the United States has come to be known as the most anxious nation on Earth. As of late 2017, almost 20% of American adults had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder over the preceding year. The lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorders in the American population is even higher, at over 31%. Several studies suggest that anxiety has been on the rise over the past few years, too: the American Psychiatric Association recently released a poll showing that our anxiety increased measurably between 2016 and 2017, and again between 2017 and 2018
Sitting in a garden down in Kent A cat climbed on your knee though it was Lent They should be “fasting” like the Christians do Unless that little cat was a born a Jew
Christians do not fast in more than name For this deception, who can heaven blame? The Muslims and the Jews fast from all food But cats and heathen people eat and chew
They drink no water,eat no bread nor meat Thus their Fasting is from animals complete Their minds receive perceptions as you saw When that cat caressed you with its claw
Take another standpoint once a week In the garden, cats may bite your feet
I breath as softly as a little bird Like the robin did in Arnside Wood Quick yet calm, who for some food would dare.
The view from Arnside Knot is broad and fair The atmosphere is pure, we see trains chug The Estuary of the Kent will never bore
Further South the Lune runs like old tears Morecambe Bay endangers, how it floods Behind the Pennines rise, the edges fierce
Dent is ancient, mobile phones won’t dare To penetrate the music of its blood Nor bring their tones to hurt the mad March hare
Hutton Roof , cathedral, how we stared A gentle hand caressed my heart to good Meek flowers grew in the cracks as safe,as pure
How my heart expands and I am glad For mourning heals and I am no more sad I breath as softly as a little bird I tiptoe on the path the peace is shared
Stan was sweeping the garden path.He had a stiff broom with a small head that was useful for cleaning the edges of the steps.Emile, his beautiful cat was sitting in the old apple tree gazing down on Stan.
“Is it time for coffee yet,”Stan asked himself.He had forgotten to put on his watch.
Suddenly he heard a shriek.He peered through a hole in the fence.His neighbor Annie was lying on her back in some mud.
“Hang on, I’ll come round!” he called.
There was a gate in the old fence which was rarely locked since Annie loved to drop in on Stan.
“Oh,Annie, how are you feeling?” he asked her anxiously.
“Bloody annoyed.I’ve only just bought these,”Not your daughter’s jeans” and now I’ve torn them,” she replied politely.
“But you don’t have a daughter!” he informed her loudly.
“I know that.It’s just they are better cut for the mature figure.”
“Your figure is not mature.You are quite slender.my dear,” he murmured lovingly.
“Well,I never feel happy with it!” she said mutinously.
“Whereas I am very happy feeling it,” he responded romantically.
Tears came into her green eyes lined with purple eye shadow.Alas, it was not waterproof and purple rivulets ran down her cheeks across the peach blusher with which she had valiantly decorated herself earlier.
“Can you get up?” he asked tenderly.
“Yes, but it would be nice if you picked me up.”
He leant over her and licked the purple streams of tears off her cheeks.
“I hope it’s not poisonous,” she murmured.
Then with the aid of Emile, his cat, he lifted her to her feet and helped her into her large trendy kitchen.
The kettle switched itself on as they entered and a robotic voice asked if they’d like coffee.
“God in heaven, what the hell is that?” he cried confusedly.
“It’s my new computerised hot drink maker.After that fall I think a double espresso would be good.”Emile ran in and asked for coffee too.”Emile, you usually have milk,” Stan reminded him softly.
“Well, coffee is a new taste for me but I like a little.” the cat whispered sweetly.
“I’ll give you some of mine in a saucer,” Stan replied.Emile began to sob.”Why Emile, whatever is wrong?”
“I want a cup and saucer just like you” the cat howled.
But you have no hands, Emile,” Stan reminded him.
The poor cat was crying loudly now.So Stan rang 999.
“Can you please send the emergency ambulance round.the cat’s crying and all his hankies are in the wash.”
Soon Dave, the transvestite paramedic appeared.
“I love your light teal kitchen,” he informed Annie,
“And your eyes look like two deep pools in a coal mine.”
She slapped his cheek naughtily.
“Have a look at Emile” she ordered him sweetly.
I got you some Kleenex for Cats in Sainsbury’s.” he said gaily.”I want a real hanky,” cried Emile
.Dave took a clean hanky from his own pocket and dried the cat’s tears.
“What made you cry.Are you feeling bad.”
“Yes, I want to go to Cafe Nero,” Emile mioawed.
“Who told you about that?”
“Another cat down the road has been and he said it’s lovely for people watching.”
“The town is not safe for cats like you, Emile.”
Dave urbanely replied,
“But when summer comes I’ll take you to the out of town
Marks and Spencer’s.They have a cat’s coffee corner upstairs.”
“Wow,isn’t it amazing,”Stan wondered out loud.
So Dave poured out the coffee and they all sat down and discussed Ray Monk’s Life of Wittgenstein.Ray has discovered that Wittgenstein liked cats but as he moved around quite a bit, he never owned his own cat though Elizabeth Anscombe let him play with her three cats now and then.
We may all be different but most of us value the love of a good cat.Even boiling their hankies and ironing them is very nice.We all have this problem though.
Where can a cat carry his own hanky?
Do cats need shoulder bags?
What would Wittgenstein say?
And how about all of us?
I learned a hymn in our old grey chapel
I realized then God ate that apple
Eve took the guilt and asked no,Whys.
Since then all women need to cty
Yet we went to church and we all sang.
The organ played and the big bells rang.
But we never heard the answer then
till a strange loud voice called out,”Ah! Men!”
I’m not sure if we were made to sing.
Yet, what but joy can we each bring?
The psalms will comfort us at night.
And in the dawn we see the Light.
Then we rise up and our songs float out.
The cats miaow as they run about.
The dogs join in to bark and growl.
And from the sky we hear God howl!
I slept right in the centre of our bed Instead of in that mouldy sleeping bag I slept so near the edge it wore away And I slid to the floor one night last May
In the middle all the space seemed large No-one there to hold me in their arms I did not read a book,I was worn out Pondering on the means and on the doubts
I’ve been lonely like a little child That mother sent to Office in a file Waiting for the “open now” command Will I get to heaven or be condemned?
The file is cold,the Word has little shame Not guilty of my lack of love and name I got Office 35678 I can ‘t make attachments , it’s too late
The world collapsed upon me like a cliff I fell down this dirty yellow rift Nobody could hear my screams and yells Perhaps being truly dead may be less hell.
I crawled into my bed as into arms Solid reassuring, warm and calm I lay there in the middle , tried to pray I can’t believe you’ve really gone away
I pray for all my family by name My sister, brothers,cousins and the lame I pray for readers who send notes to me And for that random apple on the tree
I pray for friends who don’t believe in God I pray for others ,mentally down-trod Then I feel at loss and dream of you Polishing my old black boots anew
Still I feel the emptiness inside When I wake I know I feel your smile Yet it’s not the same as being enrobed In the arms of one who has great love
I guess we change but slowly and with pain Like the folk who marched, their hope Remains
It only happens in a small number of cases if it’s worth doing now the meditation and mindfulness is being pushed as a cure for everything. If you feel uncomfortable stop and go for a walk through the park instead
Knitting puts me in the moment. As someone who has failed every attempt at meditation, or even at mindfulness, knitting calms my mind and brings me to the table, real or metaphorical. My hands move, I am aware of their movement. The yarn moves through my fingers, around my fingers, and I am aware of the tension (tension is another term with a technical meaning in knitting, and also, of course, a certain metaphorical importance).
The north is a closely knit, indigenous, industrial society,” he said. “A homogeneous cultural group with a good record for music, theatre, literature and newspapers, not found elsewhere in this island, except perhaps in Scotland.” He added, with a wry smile, “And, of course, if you look at a map of the concentration of population in the north and a rainfall map, you will see that the north is an ideal place for television.”
Rivington Pike Tower. Photograph: Alamy
The mast is only a little higher than three older landmarks. Most walkers catch their breath at the Grade II-listed Rivington Pike Tower, built as a hunting lodge in 1733 on the site of an older beacon. Another focal point, a little further down, is the Pigeon Tower – built by William Hesketh Lever (aka Lord Leverhulme) as a birthday present to his wife, Ellen. The tower and the terraced gardens it overlooks were part of Lever’s private estate, landscaped by Thomas Mawson between 1905 and 1925.
The third landmark, the Two Lads Cairn, is a pile of stones on Crooked Edge Hill, large enough to resemble a tower from certain angles. Conflicting legends say the lads were two Saxon princes, two sons of a bishop, or two children employed at a mill.
If the summits of our more celebrated peaks have a generally middle-class atmosphere – the technical gear, the smart gizmos, the “hydration” drinks – the top of Winter Hill felt everyday, multi-generational, multi-ethnic and communal. This was especially fitting, given the hill’s role in our nation’s rambling history.Pigeon Tower, which was built by William Hesketh Lever (aka Lord Leverhulme). Photograph: Ruaux/Alamy
In August 1896, Colonel Richard Henry Ainsworth, scion of a wealthy family that had made its fortune in the bleaching trade and resident of Smithills Hall, decided to close a well-used track that crossed his land on the south-east slope of Winter Hill. His business’s reliance on the hill’s watercourses had perhaps given him a proprietorial outlook. Moreover, he regarded walkers – whether tramping to work or heading up there for a breath of clean air after a week’s slog in factory, mine or mill – as unwanted intruders on land he used for grouse-shooting. He had his gamekeepers turn people back and build a gate on Coalpit Road to show the way was closed. A melee ensued, but the colonel’s private army was no match for the great mass of demonstrators
Local people took umbrage at Ainsworth’s decision. Cobbler Joe Shufflebotham, secretary of Bolton Social Democratic Foundation, advertised a march up the disputed road, which won support from journalist and Liberal party radical Solomon Partington. On Sunday 6 September 1896, about 10,000 people joined in the march as it progressed along Halliwell Road through a densely populated working-class district, and up the hill track. A handful of police and gamekeepers were waiting for them at the new gate. A melee ensued, but the colonel’s private army was no match for the great mass of demonstrators; the gate was smashed and the procession continued. When the victorious party arrived at their destination, Belmont, on the north side of Winter Hill, they drank the hostelries dry.
The Bolton Journal reported that “the multitude far exceeded what had been anticipated … the road was literally a sea of faces and the multitude comprised thousands of persons of all ages and descriptions”. During that fervid September, there were three weekend marches and one on a Wednesday, the only day shopworkers were free to join. There was a further march on Christmas Day.
Despite the numerical success of the popular uprising, Ainsworth had writs issued against Shufflebotham, Partington and others. The marches were stopped while the case was heard in court. The colonel won, leaving the marchers to bear the costs. The tail of the trial was long: though locals were able to use the path from the 1930s, it wasn’t until 1996 that public access was formally secured.
The massed march (the walkers wouldn’t have thought of it as a “trespass”) of 1896 has never been accorded anything like the attention given to the 1932 march up Kinder Scout, led by Manchester communist Benny Rothman, which is usually credited with leading to the creation of the UK’s national parks.
“Although the march was a massive event, it was very local, only involving people who lived within two or three miles,” says Bolton-based historian and author Paul Salveson, an expert on the Winter Hill events. “That, and the fact they lost the case, might explain why it’s not better known, though it did lead to greater awareness about rights of way in the Bolton area. The first world war led to the slaughter of many of the participants and brought the curtain down on so many working-class activities. When I met Benny [Rothman] for the Kinder Scout 50th anniversary in 1982 he had never heard of Winter Hill.”
View of landscape around Rivington Pike. Photograph: Alamy
Paul has written a book about the march and was involved in commissioning a play for the first commemoration, back in 1982. His most recent publication, Moorlands, Memories and Reflections, celebrates the countryside writing of dialect writer and radical thinker Allen Clarke, who wrote about the march and penned the stirring song about the Winter Hill protest, Will Yo’ Come O’ Sunday Mornin’?
A memorial stone to the marchers stands on Coalpit Lane. But, unless you go looking for it, you could walk for miles around without seeing any record of the historic clash. Just as most drivers ignore Winter Hill, so many walkers miss the glorious story of their recreational space.
This year – the 125th anniversary of the march – things might at last be about to change. Bolton Socialist Club, the Ramblers, the Woodland Trust, housing association charity Bolton at Home and other community organisations and unions have joined forces for a commemorative march along the original route for the weekend of 6 September. Folk singer Johnny Campbell is releasing a single for the occasion. There’s even talk of a new memorial, to be built by a local quarrying company.
“The events of 1896 showed how important the countryside was to working-class people in the north,” says Salveson. “It still is. This year’s celebration of those momentous events 125 years ago isn’t just a reminder of Britain’s biggest-ever rights of way demonstration. It’s intended to be a rallying call that the countryside is still under threat, with rights of way being eroded and inappropriate development threatening the landscape.”
• Join in the 125th anniversary events via Facebook
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.
Dr Sanah Ahsan is a clinical psychologist, poet, writer, presenter and educator
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com
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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?
Dr Sanah Ahsan is a clinical psychologist, poet, writer, presenter and educator
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ContinueRemind me in Novemberhttps://6bd2070874e8cb4fdc70397ff773cf80.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0
Cat’s small child cries
in the dark where loneliness hides.
Cat’s small child beats
its breast in the soft
furriness of its need.Cats don’t beat their breasts,
cats yell with lust
in the dark where loneliness hides?
Is it I, then, that cries,
mad child running wild?
Is it I that lies
in the dark where loneliness hides,
that listens as the wild geese wing
past short of the stars,
rime my roof with their dung?
Cat’s mewling, sky’s
sibilances, these
are the thieves of my ease?
What else waits
in the dark where loneliness hides?
My song has a crooked spine.
Should I break a bone
as I straighten it?
Or birth its crookedness in
the dark where loneliness hides?
How my heart speaks 