Politics and mental health

(Nimue)

A lot of people in the UK are experiencing mental illness at the moment. Housing insecurity, job insecurity, the spiralling cost of everything, austerity, NHS waiting lists, climate crisis, genocide – there’s a lot to be depressed about and a lot that is stressing people into sickness. This disgusting shambles of a government has decided the answer is to blame people for getting ill and to put more pressure on them.

Tragically this is often the way of it where mental illness is concerned. We treat it as an individual failing, not something being caused. We fail to recognise the ways in which stress makes people bodily and mentally sick. We accuse ill people of making a fuss, and of being lazy, and then we punish them for not getting better.

One of the things about mental illness is that you can’t recover while what’s made you sick is still happening to you. If you can’t pay your bills thanks to corporate greed, then no amount of therapy will fix that. If you are depressed because of constant pain and enormous waiting lists for treatment, therapy won’t solve anything. You can’t positive-thinking your way out of that.

We could have a political approach that prioritised quality of life for all, and that would radically improve the country’s mental health. Universal Basic Income, a living wage, no zero hour contracts, no price hikes from profiteering business, no shit in the rivers, no selling bombs that kill children… it’s all feasible, they just don’t want to.

We could take mental health seriously and provide real and meaningful support for people who are suffering – not put them on waiting lists for years and then offer little or nothing by way of help. We could improve access to green spaces – which is known to improve mental health. We could make sure everyone could afford decent food and time for exercise – other known mental health improvers that not everyone can benefit from at the moment. We could collectively decide that we want people to be well and happy.

I passionately hate the politics of cruelty and punishment. I hate this culture of misery that promotes suffering and attacks the most vulnerable amongst us. I hate the way politicians blame those who are sorely disadvantaged for things they have no real power over at all.

Living with compromised mental health is awful. Some years ago we had a Chief Medical Examiner’s report that identified work stress as a major source of difficulty, but that’s been ignored. There isn’t a health problem out there that isn’t made worse by stress. Poverty is incredibly stressful and absolutely unnecessary. This mental health crisis is a direct consequence of political choices and it is vital tha we don’t let them gaslight us into thinking otherwise.

Resistance is Dangerous

(Nimue)

There’s a lot wrong in the world right now, and that can make it tempting to think in terms of resistance. Of course we have to resist, to push back, stand up for justice, speak out… And yet in some ways this is also a trap and it is as well to avoid it.

When we focus on resistance, what we do becomes defined by that which we are resisting. That can narrow how we act, and come to define who we are. Being against something means only existing in relation to it. Resisting can become a form of joining in, if we aren’t careful. It allows what we wish to resist to define how things work and the ways in which we all operate. It centres the problem, not the solution.

Being focused on resistance means being focused on fighting, and on reacting. It moves us towards combative stances, and conflict. That’s exhausting and hard to sustain. It also doesn’t lend itself to building peaceful, thriving communities.

If you build a group based on resistance, how will it survive and function if you win? To work for the long term, we need instead to focus on being restorative and creative. If we focus on what we can make and do, then we’ll work differently and more effectively. Our actions won’t be defined by those we see as being in opposition. History shows us that all too often, people who fight to bring down systems end up replicating them.

Being against things isn’t especially inspiring. It doesn’t bring people together in the same way – there can be a thrill and an adrenaline rush around fighting the good fight, but that won’t hold people for long. There’s always some new fight to get involved with. Sustained action for change can’t work on that basis. Being ‘for’ something is so much more appealing and sustaining.

If you are for something, and you lose a particular fight, that isn’t the end of your movement or your ideas. New avenues will be obvious. There will be other things to try and other efforts to make. Being too focused on one fight can leave you defeated by a significant setback. When you’re focused on what you can create, setbacks are just awkward parts of the journey.

Don’t define yourself by what you’re in opposition to. Frame it in terms of what you are in favour of. Talk about what you support, and what you envisage. It makes sense sometimes to focus on particular issues in specific ways, but don’t make that the heart of how you do things.  Build your vision and your inspiration so that you can bring people with you.

If you are feeling weary from the relentless fights, step back and take time to replenish yourself. Remember that the heart of all good social change is kindness. The heart of all environmental change needs to be kindness, too. We need to live gently, softly and lightly. We need to live with care and respect for each other. This is the basis of true peace. Sometimes it is necessary to fight for that, but never let what you are up against distract you from what you are for, and where you want things to be heading.

Universal Basic Income

(Nimue)

I’m not a great believer in magic bullets, but in terms of interventions that could radically improve everything, Universal Basic Income (UBI) has always struck me as a likely candidate.

If we gave everyone enough to live on, many issues would simply disappear. Every study of UBI in action has shown all kinds of benefits, including increased earnings from employed work too, reduced crime, reduced hospital admissions and more. It’s easy to find information about this online if you are curious.

At the moment, the ‘labour market’ is badly skewed by the far that most people are a paycheck or two at most from utter disaster. That means workers can be forced to accept poor pay and conditions and jobs they hate. Give everyone UBI and unpleasant jobs would need to be a lot better paid to get anyone to do them. That’s basic supply and demand economics, only turned around so that workers are more valuable and jobs less essential. We’d all benefit from that.

Having UBI would change everyone’s relationships with money, time and resources. How exactly this would play out is something we can only guess at, but it would be fair to say that it would cause a radical shift in how consumptive capitalism works. Scarcity is key to capitalism as it stands. What would happen if we instead based out systems on sufficiency? If no one was afraid of becoming destitute, how would our buying and consuming habits shift?

It’s interesting to think about the work you would choose to do if you had UBI. So much essential work is unpaid for, and carried out by volunteers. Would you do more of that if you could afford to? Would you invest in study, or start your own business, or grow food, or something else entirely?

One of the things we know from studies so far is that most people don’t just take the money and do nothing. Most people with access to UBI explore ways in which they can flourish. It creates the scope for more people to fulfil their potential and be of more benefit to others. It creates the possibility of kinder, fairer societies where no one is running flat out just to survive. My guess is that it would also lead to us doing the planet a lot less harm because our lives would not be dominated by consumerism in the same way.

The social justice aspect of UBI has always appealed to me. I believe strongly that no one should be obliged to suffer and struggle – we have the resources to house and feed everyone, we just lack the political will. I think if we gave more people the opportunity to choose how they want to live and what they want to do, that we’d have happier, healthier people leading lives they found more meaningful, and that we’d be better placed to work together to meet everyone’s needs, and take restorative action for the planet as well.

When do you admit defeat?

(Nimue)

Thanks to a recent prompt from Sheldon I thought I’d look at the flip side of praise culture. When do you admit defeat? When does trying to pull another person out of problematic behaviour and ways of relating to the world become something to turn away from? When do we stop helping?

The first thing to say is that none of us can take responsibility for ‘fixing’ or ‘saving’ someone else. You can’t help someone who does not want to be helped. How much time you are prepared to spend on establishing that is really up to you, but be aware that there is a price tag. Devoting years to trying to help someone who does not want to be helped is exhausting and demoralising. You can always hold space for a person changing and be ready to jump in if they do, but you can’t save them from themselves.

If someone is causing harm, and you can see it, then it is all too easy to feel responsible. I went through this with an abusive ex who I know went on to abuse several other women after me – I know because they got in touch with me to talk about it. I had talked to the police about him, there was nothing else I could have done to keep those women safe. The abuser is responsible for the abuse, but it doesn’t always feel like that, and victims are often put under pressure to try and protect others. If you do not have the power to stop someone causing harm then you also can’t be responsible for it.

Some people need a lot of time to heal and change. I have been one of those people. If you want to magically fix someone quickly it may be better to step away from them than to keep trying. Feeling under pressure to recover is not an aid to recovery! Often you have to let people handle things at their own pace. If that makes you uncomfortable you need to look at your own needs and act realistically. What people need most to heal is space, time, peace, support and kindness. You don’t need to fix people, often – you just need to support them while they get on with it.

If someone has opinions that you find problematic, one of the least confrontational ways to challenge them is to ask them to explain how that works. Where opinions have been absorbed in an unconsidered way, making people explain can do a lot to reveal to them that they don’t know why they’ve been persuaded of a thing. Taking the gently childish approach of ‘but why…?’ can get a lot done.

Being slightly amused is sometimes effective. Most people don’t like feeling that they might be laughable, and if you can pull it off, it can be a way of dissuading others from saying and doing harmful and toxic things. You have to be calm to manage this, so it’s easier when you’re tackling something you aren’t personally affected by.

You have to pick your fights. You have to manage your own energy in ways that work for you. Time invested where it’s getting nothing done is time that might have been better used in other ways. It is ok to give up on people and back away, and focus elsewhere. Some people can only be weathered and endured. You do not have to compromise your own viability to tackle someone else’s problems – having to do that is a strong sign to get out of the situation if you can.

Withdrawing energy can be effective. People respond to attention, and the withdrawal of attention in response to inappropriate behaviour can also work. If you leave family gatherings every time your racist uncle kicks off, that will make a point, and that can have an impact. You don’t even have to point out why you are going. Sometimes saying ‘I am not willing to be in this conversation’ and leaving can give people chance to review what they’re doing.

We do all have some responsibility for each other. Those with more privilege should be the ones stepping up to deal with people who are acting toxically or abusively. However, you are still allowed to walk away if it is costing you too much.

Positive feedback for social change

(Nimue)

Parenting taught me a lot about the power of praise. Children crave attention. If the only way they can get attention is by acting out, then they will do so, because being shouted at is often more appealing than being ignored. I went into parenting aware of how conditioning works and that the behaviour you reinforce is what you get more of. Attention is a reward.

If you are rewarded for being kind, helpful, funny, clever, or creative then you have every reason to do more of that. What happens to the person who is rewarded for acting out? Some will figure it out as they grow up and will make better choices. We are all able to do that, none of us is obliged to simply be the product of our upbringing. But, if you don’t get out of that, where do you end up? Attention seeing at school, and acting out to get attention – I wonder how many of the trolls online have had this kind of experience. It’s hard to be good when you don’t believe you are capable of anything much.

Praise builds confidence. Positive feedback encourages people to try things and to take risks, which in turn enables growth and self expression. Knock downs push people the other way, feeding insecurity and creating a hostile culture where mockery, bullying and undermining are to be expected. It doesn’t take much knowledge to hurt someone or undermine them. Building people up takes a bit more thought – but it’s not that difficult.

When we praise and encourage other people, we get to feel that. Making other people smile is a great mood lifter. Seeing someone build confidence and skill, and thrive because of your support is a truly wonderful and uplifting experience. There must be some temporary ego-boost in knocking someone down, but I don’t see any signs that it gives the person doing it much quality of life. Being cruel, trashing things, criticising and picking holes is intrinsically joyless.

Over the years I’ve had some really interesting conversations with people trolling on social media – mostly on Twitter. Often it seemed to be coming from feelings of alienation and not being valued. Some softened discernibly simply for being asked what was making them so unhappy – some people just desperately need attention and need to be heard. The trick is to do that without reinforcing the feeling that the acting out is what brings the attention.

Positive feedback is one of those small, everyday actions that you can pick up as a Druid. It’s a way of creating a supportive culture where people can flourish. It is an effective way of reducing unpleasant behaviour, and pushing back against the snarky, hateful ways in which some people behave. If you can approach challenging people with compassion, it is sometimes possible to get them to change tack a bit. That however, is not as effective as creating an environment in which people support each other. Small everyday actions can get a lot done on that score.

Living with fatigue

(Nimue)

With many people affected by long covid, there are now far more of us dealing with fatigue. It’s hardly a new problem. ME/CFS has been (somewhat) recognised for a long time although there are still people trying to diagnose it as an attitude problem rather than a physical condition. Many people who suffer from depression experience a dramatic loss of energy and motivation as part of that. Pretty much any illness or ailment will sap your energy. Fatigue is something most people will have to deal with at some point.

Low blood pressure has been a major issue for me in recent years. In the past there were often days when that meant not being able to stand up or move around. I’m a lot better than I was, but any activity that necessitates getting a good oxygen supply to my muscles is still challenging. I’m working on that as best I can. I also have the issue that hypermobile bodies are expensive to run and we tend to get tired more easily than non-hypermobile people.

Not all forms of fatigue respond well to rest. Cancer treatment fatigue isn’t alleviated by resting. With the hypermobility and low blood pressure it’s complicated – because if I lose strength or fitness I’m less able to deal with the underlying problems, so sometimes it pays to push. Pushing all the time is overwhelmingly exhausting, and that doesn’t work for the longer term either.

There aren’t any simple solutions here, because why you have fatigue in the first place will have a huge impact on how best to deal with it. If you’re burned out, or physically ill then total, short term rest is often the best choice. If you’re managing fatigue as a longer-term issue, then there are all kinds of balancing acts around what serves your mental health and what your body needs. Sometimes all you can do is pick the way in which you find it preferable to struggle. If I can get outside, I’ll do it even if it wipes me out afterwards because I need to get outside.

I’ve become very aware in the last year of just how huge an impact sleep has on body and mind alike. Enough sleep, and a decent quality of sleep makes such a huge difference. Being able to sleep is difficult if you are experiencing a lot of pain, stress or anxiety. Pain can be exacerbated by lack of sleep – it’s possible to get into some vicious cycles with this. Sometimes the only way out of that is with radical change, and not everyone has options on that.

If you are online then you are to some degree engaging with a society that is exhausting, overstimulating and stressful. We aren’t equal to processing the amounts of awfulness we are exposed to every day. Most of us do not thrive in the fast lane and do not flourish in face of constant stress. The social reasons that contribute to exhaustion are many, and pulling out of the culture we inhabit isn’t realistic. But, cultures can change, and talking about the problems is a place to start.

Creativity and privilege

(Nimue)

All too often, creativity gets treated as a privilege and a luxury most people are encouraged to believe they cannot afford. To be creative is to be human. Creativity allows us to express ourselves, is good for our mental health and also gives us problem solving skills. Creative people have a lot more options than people who can only buy solutions. It’s also essential for business, for science and for any other human endeavour you care to name.

Capitalism locks us into being users, consumers and workers. Life would be very different if we all saw ourselves as creators, helpers and givers. We could live that way, and a great many people are already invested in trying to shift us all in this direction.  Check out Transition Towns movements, and people campaigning for Universal Basic Income,  if you don’t know where to start.

As it stands, very few people in creative industries earn enough to live on. It’s normal to work other jobs, and that’s been the size of it for me for most of my adult life. Many people can only afford to be creative once they’ve retired. A significant percentage are able to be creative because someone else pays the bills. There should be no shame in any of this when it comes to how individuals get by. There should be considerable shame in the way big corporations extract profit and don’t pay creators properly.

We should all have the time to learn, practice, study and grow in whatever ways we want to. That should be true regardless of whether we’re making money out of doing those things. Adults should be able to go to music, theatre, art and dance classes if they want to. Everyone should have the time to explore subjects that interest them, and to develop skills – not with a view to having ever more side-hustles, but so as to be able to live a rich and interesting life.

This is why I support ideas like Universal Basic Income and four day working weeks. We have the resources to allow everyone to live well while causing far less harm to the planet. That we don’t is a political choice based on the belief that the rich getting richer is a good thing. We should all have the time and resources to live well without causing a great deal of harm. The scope to live more fulfilling lives would really help us all to reduce consumption and to reimagine what human life can be.

Stephen Palmer (author and musician) has some further insights on his substack, which I strongly recommend reading in full – https://open.substack.com/pub/stephenpalmer/p/art?r=22oodm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Creativity and class

(Nimue)

If you were a working class kid, or someone who went to an ordinary school, your sense of yourself as a potentially creative person has likely been impacted by this. I suspect it’s even more of an issue if you were part of a minority group and that there’s likely to be a big racial aspect to this too, but I don’t have personal experience of that.

If you aren’t privileged, you have to be good. Really good. Stunningly good without anyone even needing to teach you much. If you are stunningly good at something, there’s a chance that you might not be actively discouraged from doing the thing you are interested in. Otherwise you probably grew up with pointers about what you should do to get a ‘proper’ job. If you were lucky you were allowed to do something creative as a hobby, but many people don’t even get that.

This, I think, is a major contributor to the idea that a lot of this creative stuff is either a magical gift from the gods, or unavailable to you. This is not how it goes for rich kids. Rich kids get lessons, and tutoring and opportunities around things they express interest in. Most of them do not grow up hearing that it isn’t for them. It’s not a coincidence that an awful lot of people who do well in the creative industries came from well-off backgrounds. They do not have to be stunningly, naturally good in order to be given the slightest chances.

The myth of talent stops people from having a go. It encourages you to give up on yourself if you aren’t immediately brilliant at something. In reality, most people need time to learn, practice, study, develop and grow. That time has a far bigger impact on what you can do than any other consideration. If you aren’t allowed that time you will not find out what you might be capable of. The good news is that it’s never too late to start.

I was lucky. I had a grandmother who played the piano and the guitar and who sang and created art. I had a mother who had gone to dance classes growing up and wanted me to have those opportunities too. My father wrote. I grew up with plenty of loud and clear messages that I could not expect to do any of this professionally, but at least I could get to do it a bit. So I had a better start than average when it came to being creative, and the nerve to try anyway. I have done all kinds of jobs along the way, but I’ve managed to hold onto the creative threads.

Creativity is not a rare gift a few people have. Support to explore, study and create is however a much rarer thing and has everything to do with privilege and wealth. If you want to create, then trust yourself and give it whatever time you can afford. You did not miss out on the magic artist genes. There are no magic artist genes. If you want to create then you have all the core features a person needs to be creative. Everything else is learning and practice, opportunity and trusting yourself.

It’s very hard to make a living in the creative industries.That makes it difficult to work creatively without someone supporting you financially. That in turn means that being creative often depends on what resources you have. It’s difficult to work full time and significantly invest energy in creativity. If you’re ill or have caring duties on top of that, it’s nigh on impossible.

Creativity should be for everyone. Making things, expressing yourself and having room for ideas is intrinsically human stuff and it seems very wrong to me that the vast majority of people get little opportunity for that. Worse, so many people are convinced that they can’t create when the truth is that they just haven’t been given enough of a chance.

Need, communication and justice

(Nimue)

Give me a topic or let me run with a story and I’m a decent enough communicator. However, when it comes to expressing my own needs and feelings in a personal context, I have a lot to learn. Part of the issue here is that for a lot of things I’ll just try to be convenient and go with what’s wanted. I’ve spent too much time in situations where there just wasn’t any room for me wanting or preferring anything, and there wasn’t reliably room for things I needed. For too long I didn’t even feel entitled to name needs as needs.

I’ve now built a working definition of need, which is helping me navigate. To need something is to genuinely struggle to function without it. If my functionality is at risk, then I am allowed to call something a need and not a want. Sleep is something I need. I’m not the sort of person to do melodrama over trivial things and I need to trust myself on that score. I’ve had too much experience of not being allowed the things I need in order to function, but that doesn’t mean I have to keep treating those things like they don’t matter.

It’s hard to communicate effectively when I’m not making space for my own needs, preferences and feelings. I’m not in the habit of asking what would be best for me or what would make me most happy, and this is something I want to try and change. There is room in my life for me to have feelings and inclinations of my own. 

This is one of those situations that I could not fix on my own. How we handle need is a community issue, a social issue and a relationship issue – how we relate to each other informs how much space each of us is allowed to take up. The person who is invited to ask for what they want is in a very different position from the person who is told what they have to accept. By making space for each other, inviting input, giving each other options and accepting difference we can support each other around this.

People who grew up with poverty learn not to ask and not to want. People who have experienced abuse learn that their feelings don’t matter. Capitalism teaches us that without wealth we do not have the rights to basic things – be that good food, health provision, scope to rest, opportunities for joy. The less money you have the more you may feel obliged to put up with things that compromise your ability to function. 

As individuals there’s a limit on what we can do to tackle the systemic issues here. But, we can invite each other to express needs, feelings and preferences. We can give each other options and respect each other’s feelings. One way of doing this is to be alert to how people get trapped in roles – parent, carer, worker roles especially. Give people space to be more than that, and to meet their own needs. Think about emotional and social needs as well as basic body needs. Humans are social creatures and loneliness can be a killer.

It’s not good to be stripped back to the most basic essentials. There is more to being human than requiring water and enough food not to die. There are questions to ask about the differences between continuing to live and being able to flourish. Why would we want anyone to live a life that is not pleasing and meaningful to them? 

When you have lost your way

(Nimue)

Something I see regularly online is creative people saying that they are struggling. Loss of focus, lack of energy, absence of inspiration – and in face of this they are unable to do what they do. For some people this is the painful loss of what used to delight them. For others it’s the terrifying inability to do the things that keep a roof over their heads. 

You cann’t pour from an empty cup. I’ve been here many times and can speak to the issue with some confidence. We all need inspiration in our lives or we end up lost, stuck, and unhappy. Being inspired takes time and space. If you are drowning in exhaustion, overload, lack of rest, lack of resources, stress and pressure then you won’t have room for inspiration.

Much of this is systemic. Here in the UK the cost of living keeps rising while wages do not. Many are struggling to get by. Poverty is exhausting and the threat of it is highly stressful. Trying to make less go further takes a lot of creative energy. If that sounds familiar, then it’s a lot to ask of yourself that you also manage to be creative in other ways alongside this.

However, there are things we can do to help ourselves. Part of the wider social pressure involves this grinding sense that you are supposed to be working hard all the time. This is a notion that exists to crush people and is fundamentally untrue. Rest is essential to both mental and physical health. If all you do is slog away at things there’s never time to question what you’re doing or whether you could improve things. This is not an accident.

The answer to lost inovation and lack of motivation is rest and restorative things. Turn to whatever nourishes you and make as much time for it as you can. Even if that’s very little time, it is still worth the investment. Give yourself space to think and regroup. Ideas take time and space. That’s as true for meal planning as it is for poems. 

We have to allow each other this time and support each other in taking the time we need. We have to undermine this culture of perpetual hustle that burns people out and leaves them unable to function. Life should not be about working ourselves to death.So if you see someone struggling, don’t tell them to try harder and push more. It doesn’t work. Encourage them to take a day off, or do something that cheers them. If you can ease their load in some way, offer it. It’s also not much use standing at the sidelines telling someone to take it easy if they have no way of doing that. Give them a lift, cook them a meal, watch their kids for an hour… if you can.

Gentleness gets a lot done. It is an antidote to internalised capitalism, and all the anxiety and stress that causes. In gently supporting each other we can create better and more sustainable lives.