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Nick Taber
@NickTaber
Thinking about authoritarianism in the mental health system, school system & families. Self-awareness & human potential. #TroubledTeenIndustry survivor
Nick Taber’s Tweets
Individuals who repeatedly attack your confidence and self-esteem are quite aware of your potential, even if your not.
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I can imagine a world full of people who deeply care about respecting other people's boundaries.
Who feel that their own lives are improved when they respect other people's boundaries.
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“Psychiatric institutions are, in fact, part of the carceral state...they are part of the many systems that function to: contain people, take away their locus of control, offer surveillance, isolate them from their communities, and limit their freedom.”
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Sensitive and creative people are more likely to be misdiagnosed, misunderstood & mistreated in the mental health system.
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A picture of Trayvon Martin at space camp. He posthumously received an aviation honorary degree.
Today would've been his 28th Birthday. #BlackHistoryMonth
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All the invasive sounds and sights, smells and textures, laughs and stares - ugh - frightened by the constant threat of hearing the sound of one's own name called out, spoken about or down to... into the crowd.
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"When schooling is compulsory, schools are, by definition, prisons. A prison is a place where one is forced to be and within which people are not free to choose their own activities, spaces, or associates."
- Peter Gray
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Having more self ≠ selfish
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You didn't become selfish; you became harder to manipulate. Don't confuse the two.
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Things that Schools should teach: 🧠
• Being wrong is not a bad thing.
• It's Okay to question what you have been taught.
• Grades aren't as valuable as skills.
• Understanding is more important than memorization.
• Making mistakes is Okay. Learn from your mistakes.
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I think the “better get used to it” model is a good way, not to produce people who can delay gratification, but ones who struggle to allow themselves to experience joy.
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Do children need to be made to stick at things they hate so that they learn that life isn't all about doing what they prefer? Are we setting them up to fail if we allow them to quit? Here are four reasons why not. 1/
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"Human engineering is spectacular. It's just, when it's linked to a rapacious, wounded inner child and not a conscious being, conscious adult, and a conscious species it becomes very destructive. So it's really not an ecological crisis but a moral crisis"
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This is a very important truth that people desperately try to hide in our society. Therapy can be genuinely dangerous and keep people unhealed for decades longer because it replicates the same dynamics that wounded them as children.
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"And they haven't got a clue that they are really very wounded and unresolved and unhealed. And they love seeing their clients as troubled so they can fix their clients, so that they don't have to look at themselves."
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"Most therapists haven't done their own work. They haven't really gone into the wilderness and the desolation of the abandoned wounded child. They like to use their clients as someone they can dominate like their parents dominated them."
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"...children and their parents are increasingly propagandized to believe that disliking school means disliking learning."
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They REALLY don’t want to do that. Read Excellent Sheep by
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Sorry this isn’t totally on point with what you were saying. It’s just what was coming up for me
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Or I should say won’t face their difficult feelings.
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The issue with so many families is this: the parents can’t face their own difficult feelings which means a. they can’t mirror it in the kid and b. when the kid inevitably does things that surface that feeling in the parent, they just suppress the kid.
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If I hadn't focused on self-compassion in the face of my mistakes, I would have been consumed by the pain and shame of them.
Then I wouldn't have been able to do the radical things I did with my family!
Be obsessive with giving yourself Grace.
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The U.S. education system historically has not been a place that fosters an abolition mindset. It is carceral and oppressive in nature. Who do you think profits from a population of docile, conformists with no imagination or critical thinking skills??
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Solid evidence that schools are dangerous for teens “using county-level variation in school reopenings in Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 we find that returning from online to in-person schooling was associated with a 12-to-18 percent increase teen suicides.”
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Yes, long term implications are scary. All of the research on happiness and well-being points to purpose, agency, and community as essential features of well-being. Schooling, as experienced by most students, is a machine for destroying all 3 in a crucial developmental phase.
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Replying to @flowidealism
Exactly right. They learn to disassociate from meaning & purpose. Long term implications are scary.
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I definitely think that taking the side of the child is a massive step towards healing.
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Psychiatric care has become the illusion of science. They make a ton of shit up.
Recently a parent called out the psychiatrist on her bullshit. "My daughter keeps feeling worse under your care. You are just throwing labels & drugs at us & hoping something sticks".
Sums it up
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"teaching behaved brains". We're truly in a dystopia.
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This education conference will focus on the brain science behind disruptive behaviors, executive deficits, emotional dysregulation, and learning disorders. Explore evidence-based strategies for dealing with challenging behaviors, ADHD, and autism in your classrooms and schools.
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"...despite three decades of intense neuroimaging research, we still lack a neurobiological account for any psychiatric condition." cell.com/neuron/pdf/S08
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This education conference will focus on the brain science behind disruptive behaviors, executive deficits, emotional dysregulation, and learning disorders. Explore evidence-based strategies for dealing with challenging behaviors, ADHD, and autism in your classrooms and schools.
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Thanks to for sharing this. Anyone whose situation has been framed in the disempowering, dystopic context of mental health might find this very helpful.
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Super valuable resources from Mindfreedom International on protecting oneself from the harmful, authoritarian aspects of the mental health industry.
mindfreedom.org/wp-content/upl
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Super valuable resources from Mindfreedom International on protecting oneself from the harmful, authoritarian aspects of the mental health industry.
mindfreedom.org/wp-content/upl
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- being forced to sit still for an unnatural amount of time
- being robbed of autonomy and self determination
- coming from emotionally dysfunctional families
- being in a dehumanizing social setting
And then we put them on Frankenstein medication.
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It’s really appalling that we tell these ADHD kids and their parents that they’re biologically inferior and make them feel guilty - when there is SO much that’s screwed up about the environment that they might be responding to. Including but not limited to:
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I have thoughts about the typical adhd-kid trope of 'can't sit still in class' and then the actual hard medical data we have that shows sitting still for too long will make you die earlier. Some things are obvious until we get convinced they aren't... twitter.com/NickTaber/stat…
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I have thoughts about the typical adhd-kid trope of 'can't sit still in class' and then the actual hard medical data we have that shows sitting still for too long will make you die earlier. Some things are obvious until we get convinced they aren't...
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It's amazing we're collectively deluded into thinking that it's healthier for kids to spend their days inside hideous buildings than it is to be outside.
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“The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives.”
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It's amazing we're collectively deluded into thinking that it's healthier for kids to spend their days inside hideous buildings than it is to be outside.
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Report card of 2012 Nobel prize winner John Gurdon, 2012 Nobel prize winner:
"his other work has been equally bad, and several times he has been in trouble, because he will not listen, but will insist on doing his work in his own way"
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Survivors suffer from a strange disorder where they speak the truth and it pisses criminals off.
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