stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu @stefkaufman Twitter profile

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

2 years

As a Mad care worker and psychiatric survivor, I wrote this piece about the work I’ve been doing with @projectlets for the last decade, + some tangible tools, visions & possibilities for a liberated anti-carceral crisis response. #PsychAbolition

Visions for a Liberated Anti-Carceral Crisis Response

from a Mad Crip care worker and psychiatric survivor

medium.com

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

4 years

People are *breaking* down. Losing it. Losing people. One trauma after another after another. No breaks, no pause, no time to grieve or reflect. Mostly everyone I know is crashing. This is sad, unsustainable, + the impacts will be with us for years to come.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 months

This is also one of the core themes of ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ (it’s how the book opens) and the foundation of PTSD research in America. Which is why we can all find another book about trauma that doesn’t center sad white men who blew up entire villages and communities.

Towarzysz Patryk 🚩🔻

@Patryk87837486

3 months

Good morning Comrades

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

PTSD is a white, western, colonial concept that locates the source of trauma in the past and requires a “non-traumatic baseline” to compare to. What the Palestinians are experiencing is not PTSD. There is no comparable framework. The trauma is enduring.

Hurt CoPain

@SaeedDiCaprio

10 months

I need everyone to read this headline

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Are houseless people in urgent need of psychiatric treatment or are they in urgent need of, say, HOUSING?

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

There is *truly* no better irony than the updated DSM-5 creating a medical diagnosis for prolonged grief in a country that refuses to face it’s own present reality with mass death. AKA, “you have an illness if you can’t get on with life like the rest of us.”

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

8 months

“Joy is a form of resistance” Yes, for the Palestinians. For the oppressed. For the colonized. Not for white people who want to dissociate from the reality of genocide by continuing to uplift and center personal nervous system regulation & happiness to the detriment of the WORLD.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

If mental illness is a medical condition, then why is inpatient care treated so differently (outside of ICU restrictions)? Why can’t we have phones or laptops in the psych ward? Why is there 1 phone for patients to share? Why is time outside limited? Why is visitation restricted?

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

I thought my first flight with @Delta was dehumanizing. This flight was somehow worse. Delta “lost my wheelchair” & I was the last one on the plane for 40+ minutes, unable to go pee without my partner— who had to run around tracking down my chair.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

The prison and psychiatric industrial complexes both operate from a carceral logic that is centered around the belief that if you do not comply, behave, perform, or act the “right” way, your body is not yours + someone else gets to make the decisions about what happens to you.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Any other neurodivergent people find that you underreact to things you’re expected to have a Big Response to (death, break ups, terrible news) and overreact to things you’re expected to not get upset about??

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

Truly I must ask, what makes Jewish people believe that our suffering is so unique that it justifies the colonization and slaughter of other human beings? For example, 10-15 MILLION Congolese people were murdered under the colonial direction of King Leopold of Belgium.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

Do people understand that parents of unvaccinated toddlers are fucking losing it? We have no options. Our kids are not okay. We are not okay. And every time we think about asking someone for help we have to contend w/ the fact that they could get infected, so many of us don’t.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

4 years

If you are in a position of power: *wake up* to the reality of what is happening around you, me, us. Fight against the cognitive dissonance with everything you have. This is not okay. We are not okay.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

4 years

Abolition *MUST* include psychiatric facilities. They are yet another means of disappearing people — especially Black + brown multiply marginalized folks. Abolition IS Disability Justice.

derecka

@dereckapurnell

4 years

22,000 people are involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitals with no determined release dates 😱😱😱

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

We are truly enacting a surveillance state on each other by taking photos + videos of regular people doing regular things (or things we deem funny/weird) and sharing them online. As a person prone to paranoia, I am constantly thinking about this if I am out in public.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

4 months

I am a mom + I don’t need to imagine “what would you do if this Palestinian child was yours?” I don’t need to replace their faces with the faces of my kids. They are my kids by way of being alive. THE CHILDREN ARE OURS. Weep because these children were meant to create the future.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

When Disabled people say we can’t do something, respect it. We might physically be able to do it (walk w/o a mobility aid or jump or lift something or socialize or concentrate for hours uninterrupted) but the consequences of that action is not something we want to deal with.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Let us stop assuming that people who typically communicate verbally but cannot or struggle to do so when distressed or activated are being manipulative, dramatic, difficult, or "attention seeking." There are plenty of reasons why verbal speech capacities can go offline.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

8 months

I think people seriously underestimate the degree to which terrible things can be happening to your body but you just adapt until it becomes a new baseline because you have no choice and nobody is helping you or they’re actively telling you nothing is wrong.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

There is no space for grief in a culture that defines mental health by your ability to function. How long is the “right” amount of time to grieve? Not one loss, but many? Thousands? Millions? What are we *doing* here?

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

I don’t think people understand the reality of what happens when police show up to your house for a wellness check or “safety”intervention. If you survive, it’s enough to traumatize you + stop you from *ever* sharing your truth again. Forced into a life of emotional isolation.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

8 months

My partner is from Swaziland, and when he graduated as a traditional healer he found a plot of land to begin his healing work. I asked him if there was a paperwork process involved. He laughed at me loudly and said no. I was worried & asked how will anyone know the land is yours?

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

4 years

So Zoom just very quietly added live captions + a full transcript option that also saves on a recording???? Keep in mind it’s automated so it’s not 100% accurate by any means but it’s there! And it’s a resource for folks! Gratitude to every Disabled organizer who pushed for this.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

When my father had a stroke, I was able to sit in his room with him 24/7. Why is it standard practice to leave psych patients/inmates alone? I’ve heard staff say they don’t want to disrupt the healing of patients, but that comes with the assumption that healing is… happening.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

7 months

Please don’t forget that therapists are trained to uphold a specific worldview, and in a Eurocolonial lens that likely means favoring individualistic responses and actions that benefit the self over collective ones that benefit us all. You’re not wrong if that feels wrong to you.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

7 months

1) The ADA was only passed in 1990. Many Disabled people, which you describe in your tweet, were not allowed to participate in public education. 2) Disabled children were either kept hidden at home, or institutionalized, where they were kept out of all public spheres of life.

Carole Mac

@HerbsandDirt

7 months

I was in elementary school in the 70’s. My experience: Did not know ONE autistic child. No one had a gluten allergy. No one had peanut allergies. No one had milk allergies. No one was bouncing off the walls from ADD or ADHD. No one had autoimmune diseases at that

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

Am I the only person who finds the term “compassion fatigue” absolutely appalling?

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

“There is no ‘post’ because the trauma is repetitive and ongoing and continuous. I think we need to be authentic about our experiences and not to try to impose on ourselves experiences that are not ours.” - Dr. Samah Jabr, Palestine’s head of mental health services, 2019

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

Dr. Samah Jabr, Palestine’s head of mental health services, has been speaking about this for years. It is an injustice to the Palestinian people to describe their suffering in western & colonial terms, when they experience “justified misery.”

Palestine’s head of mental health services says PTSD is a western concept

“What is sick, the context or the person? In Palestine, we see many people whose symptoms are a normal reaction to a pathogenic context.”

qz.com

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Let alone folks who use their tech as AAC. If my mom or my best friend wanted be on a video call with me all day, or sitting in my room with me, why can’t they? Why are they not welcome to be part of my healing process? Because we are all about control. Not healing.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 months

Trauma and Recovery (Judith Herman) Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (Pete Walker) What My Bones Know (Stephanie Foo) Healing the Soul Wound (Eduardo Duran) The Body Remembers (Babette Rothschild) Black Skin, White Masks (Frantz Fanon)

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

I see a lot of tweets like “I’m so glad I found out I’m autistic instead of mentally ill because I always thought something was wrong with me, but now I know it’s just who I am.” I want to offer that you don’t have to be autistic to have the freedom of rejecting pathology.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Phones and laptops are restricted for “healing” / “for our own good.” But when we go back out (if we get out) we get to interface with outside; phones; laptops: family; peers. Most people I speak to have massive spike in anxiety thinking about losing tech.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

We need to truly reckon with the fact that most us know in an embodied way that treatment and help starts to feel, look, sound, and smell like punishment & criminalization. What are the actual incentives to receiving this type of “care” in the mental health system?

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

7 months

White people own about 45% of the land in Swaziland (eSwatini) despite being only 1% of the population. White people own 72% of the land in South Africa despite being less than 10% of the total population.

Prof Ann Lopez

@DrAnnLopez

7 months

White Namibians, who are descendants of colonizers from Germany and South Africa make up 6% of the population, own 70% of the land in Namibia Colonization is ongoing.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 months

The reason you don't hear about postpartum altered states and psychosis until somebody is dead is because we are culturally fixated on punishing any parent we deem to be unfit or a risk immediately. HOW can you get care without removal and carceral outcomes??? You cannot.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 months

You never have to forgive your abuser :-)

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

1 year

I’m really tired of the narrative where patients who are “violent” are viewed as aggressive monsters while doctors are upheld as passive bystanders and innocent victims of violence— when for SO many of us, the medical providers ARE the perpetrators of violence.

Amy Faith Ho, MD MPH

@amyfaithho

1 year

The first time I was assaulted, I was a 3rd year medical student, and a psych patient handcuffed to a gurney rail in the ER fought so hard, the entire metal rail (still cuffed to his arm) separated from the bed. The 6ft piece of heavy steel would’ve gone flying into my skull

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

1 year

We need to offer ways to get support in community that do not require us to first build community. Being a known, loved, present, valued, or respected person in community should not be a prerequisite for receiving care.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

I am feeling extremely sad, dehumanized, disposed of, ashamed (because of what I had to do to relieve myself), and downright broken right now. I am tweeting this not for pity or sympathy, but for evidence, proof, and documentation. I am so fucking tired.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

8 months

He told me that the proof was in his relationships. The land is his to steward. And stewarding the land means stewarding the relationships connected to the land. People will know it’s his land because the land will know it’s his land. Because the others will. This in Indigeneity.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

No C-PTSD in the DSM but this? Really asking folks to question your allegiance to psychiatry, if you haven’t already. It is a colonial tool that creates, upholds + reinforces the status quo. There are SO many healers that can hold space for griefwork in a real way. This isn’t it.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

There is no level of adequate mental health care that can be given to someone who is houseless that will change the structural conditions of their houselessness. Safe shelter is a baseline, a foundation, for any remotely useful psychiatric care.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

I’ve said this before but *please* be cautious when seeing mental health providers who will label your accurate + necessary COVID safety and precautions (like continuing to mask, social distance, stay home, etc.) “intense” or “extreme” or signs of an anxiety disorder.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

4 years

my dream for all single parents is that they/we have people in our lives who say “let me take your kid for a day or two, you need to rest.” dismantle the toxic individualism that forces us all to do this alone. normalize care work + interdependence.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

4 months

Encampments showing us the power of open + collective community commons. Barber shops, hot food, COVID PPE, medic tents + supplies. Imagine what is possible. Among rising incarceration of homeless people + criminalization of using public space, these protests can teach us a lot.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

It’s getting increasingly frustrating that (in theory) people want autistic, Mad, or neurodivergent educators and facilitators — but only for the identity label. Nobody actually wants to navigate what that means and what comes along with it: pace, tone, structure, flow, etc.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

Instead of Zionists recognizing their interconnecting freedom struggles with other oppressed peoples, they decided the answer was ethno-isolation. Except in a colonial world, you cannot create an ethno-nationalist state without committing genocide.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

I am also specifically not advocating for CPTSD right now. I am calling for a return to Indigenous sovereignty around conceptions of *their own* distress + trauma. Indigenous sense-making, like: ethnostress, historical trauma, soul loss/ wounds, colonial trauma/genocide response.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

As I finally left the plane, about to pee myself, I see a bathroom. The separate accessible toilet is locked with a “maintenance” sign in front of it, & there are no bathroom stalls big enough for a wheelchair. I am desperate at this point, and have no options to relieve myself.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

14 days

Just because someone doesn’t disappear into a psychiatric hospital doesn’t mean they are not going through Something Major & life/time-stopping— like crisis, altered states, death, illness, etc. Maybe communication isn’t there b/c we’re not even tending to our basic needs!!

Ify Alexis Lee

@IfyAlexis

16 days

If you’re someone who withdraws during hard times & re-emerges when things are lighter, you have to understand that the people in your life may struggle to adjust to your ebb & flows, especially when you don’t communicate them. They may not be ready to re-engage just bc you are.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

9 months

Many Disabled people actually want to work, in the sense that we like doing interesting things or stuff we find meaningful with our time, but find that we can’t maintain work (not bc of the work itself) but because work culture is so DEEPLY ableist. Including @ Disability orgs.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

Black people face a deadly anti-Black environment daily. People of the Global Majority face colonization, climate disaster, + economic exploration. Trans people have been targeted for death. Who is entitled to safety in a white supremacist, colonial, imperialist world?

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

I would love for anyone to show me research that solitary confinement, use of force, restricted visits, limited time outside, no access to personal technology, and limited contact w/ supports and the outside world improves healing and treatment outcomes. Wasn’t that the goal????

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

Do you know what genocide does, even to those who survive? It writes early death, complex illness, and Who Could Ever Possibly Process This (or want to?) Grade-A Trauma into your body, your bones, your DNA. It is a story that cannot be unwritten. Even the unborn are suffering.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

But I’m also assuming most folks have no idea how RIDICULOUSLY hard it is to find/see/support some in a psych ward. It’s a black hole. Unless you are a parent or guardian or spouse. Even if you brought this person there or came with them.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

It’s not “free Britney until she does something I personally disagree with and find extreme or uncomfortable or dangerous.” So many of y’all claim to love us until we don’t perform sanity in the way you want. Get a grip

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

8 months

This is what the genocidal Israeli settler colonial state will never have. True relationships with the land or the Indigenous stewards of that land. Real power exists in the people, in the community, in the collective. It does not exist inside of machine tanks. It never has.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

8 months

Here is my partner Thabiso that day. All smiles. Community is beautiful.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

When people say shit like “I don’t want to be a wheelchair user” / “I’d rather be dead than not walk” / “My life would be so much harder” … what you’re really picking up on is ABLEISM. Life shouldn’t change all that drastically just because you’re sitting instead of standing.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

11 months

It is excruciating to watch people in the so-called US continue to live their lives, post their coffee and breakfast on Instagram, and laugh about mundane things — while Palestinians are being exterminated for the world to see. Yes, the world should stop. IT SHOULD STOP.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Since you have to clarify everything on this app: I believe that deciding who can + can’t visit should be determined by the person (and yes kids are people). I’m not saying the community should have free access to people who are seeking some type of safety or separation.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Some people find therapy helpful because it's the only time + space to be centered & receive support or care that is just about you. This is a societal and interpersonal failure. We don't know/have lost knowledge of how to provide centered support without a financial exchange.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

These are intergenerational wounds of the spirit and soul that will have profound impacts on us, including prolonged mental distress or grief that doesn’t go away in 6 months. Why should it? Grief is sacred. Grief is an honor.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Millions of people all over the world have died alone, away from loved ones. Families + communities unable to engage in cultural or religious grief & mourning practices, or funeral and burial practices that have deep ancestral and spiritual meaning.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

Kids adjust quick. PJ asked me once what was wrong with a very worried face. I said nothing’s wrong, mama’s body just needs some rest & this chair gives me the freedom to move easier. She said “okay, mama— take me!!” And then we went for a ride around the house. That was all.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 months

Decolonizing Trauma Work (Renee Linklater) Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self (Susan Brison) The Generation of Postmemory (Marianne Hirsch) The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice (Staci Haines) The Deepest Well (Dr. Nadine Burke)

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

Please share this thread. I’ll also link my original Delta thread below. Wheelchair users are not disposable.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

4 months

Many people right now are tapping into the heartbeat & cries of the universe and the oppressed, and it is leading many of us towards altered/extreme states (what is perceived as psychosis). Here are some important reminders for supporting someone navigating altered states:

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

7 months

Everyone is looking for medical terminology to try & make sense of the depth of non-humanity we are witnessing from the IOF, but it’s pretty simple. Indigenous people have offered us this knowledge. What we are witnessing is called “soul loss” & its impacts show up in many ways.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

Everyone deserves a safe haven, but only one group of people who experienced genocide had the colonial superpowers of the world back the creation of their state - not in the name of Jewish safety or liberation or Indigeneity, but in the name of colonial and imperial domination.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

I encourage folks to engage with Black and/or Indigenous decolonial healers + scholars like Dr. Renee Linklater, Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, Frantz Fanon, Ignacio Martin-Baró, Eduardo Duran, Malidoma Somé, and Dr. Jennifer Mullan of Decolonizing Therapy. This work is not new.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

5 months

@literElly Do you know I legitimately forgot about $5 footlongs. Crying.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

9 months

Sharing as Brown alumni, posted by Brown Students for Justice in Palestine — A message from our classmate & friend, Hisham Awartani: “Had I been shot in the West Bank, where I grew up, the medical services that saved my life would likely have been withheld by the Israeli army.”

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

7 months

Therapy in the context of our carceral mental health system will only ever present the possibility of healing to people with layers of social protection & identities that translate into power. The clinical mental health system is a white man’s invention to maintain social order.

trash jones

@jzux

7 months

“therapy doesn’t work for me” ok well I hate to break it to you but the mental illness isn’t working for you either

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

1 year

It took me so many years to realize what everyone else called a mental health crisis was actually my inability to continue tolerating the physical sensations inside of my body any longer. I had nobody help me figure out that my pain was lodged inside of sensations I could feel.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

So now @Delta thinks they can buy my silence with a $250 voucher to fly with them again … ??????? I haven’t even filed a complaint yet. Where did this $$ come from?!? Who is watching my Twitter @delta ? An apology and accountability would be a great first step.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Exactly this. Healing and mental health care and accommodations and medicine and CARE in general should be accessible to everyone, regardless of a diagnostic category.

Chain_Lube

@Chain_Lube

2 years

@stefkaufman Imagine if people could just ... go get therapy, for however long they need, without an ICD-10 code

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Tired of people summing up violence in the mental health system to a lack of funding + staff capacity. Plenty of people are overworked + underpaid and do not participate in the types of domination and punitive violence we see embedded in the psych system + it’s nurses/docs.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Here’s the article:

How Long Should It Take to Grieve? Psychiatry Has Come Up With an Answer. (Published 2022)

The latest edition of the DSM-5, sometimes known as “psychiatry’s bible,” includes a controversial new diagnosis: prolonged grief disorder.

www.nytimes.com

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

It’s wild to me that there are hundreds of people sharing their horrific experiences with isolation & abuse in psych wards & 99% of nurses + providers are responding with vague statements about rules and policy. Please reflect on your humanity.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

4 months

Therapy inside of the medical industrial complex was never intended to be a place of healing. It was intended to pathologize + separate outsiders under a white Eurocolonial lens, “fix” behaviors that challenge authority/power, and force us to better cope with inhumane oppression.

Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura

@Rrrrnessa

4 months

If everyone is in therapy, why is everyone still so utterly miserable and rude and stuck and not growing and not changing and depressed and anxious and mean and isolated and lonely and just overall in a really shitty space?

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

7 months

You, as a white autistic person, do not get to call a Black person a flying monkey & then justify it by saying you are autistic & cannot be held accountable for your anti-Blackness. BLACK AUTISTIC PEOPLE EXIST. There is no state of neurodivergence responsible for racism. My god.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 months

Wretched of the Earth (Frantz Fanon) Healing Resistance (Kazu Haga) Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds (Stef Craps) Medicine Stories (Aurora Levins Morales) Woman Who Glows in the Dark (Elena Alvia) Waking the Tiger (Peter Levine)

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

Adversely, criteria for autism is getting stricter because “too many people” are getting diagnosed. Why is this a problem? There is no medical cure or treatment for being autistic. There are options for managing our distress. But you can’t fix or eradicate us. That’s an issue.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

1 year

I’m tired of the “Disabled people are competent! We are capable!” So what if we’re fucking not? We just don’t deserve respect and humanity? Let’s *please* not hinge the fight for our liberation and equity on competency & capability.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

Very confused (not really: it’s because of ableism + sanism) as to why schizophrenia and psychotic “disorders” are not listed as a high risk eligibility when folks are three times more likely to die from COVID + it’s the second greatest risk factor after age.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

2 years

& as always, who will be more subjected to these diagnoses? Those who were able to escape the realities of COVID with their wealth? Or multiply marginalized folks who were on the frontlines? Black, poor, Indigenous, Disabled, houseless, elders, confined folks.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

Who comes to expect it? Who feels absolutely perplexed and shocked when they realize they do not have it? Who is willing to kill to maintain their sense of it?

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

1 year

Before starting psychiatric treatment (especially medications), I recommend* folks get tested for: - Low vitamin B-12 and D - Autoimmune disease - Nutritional deficiencies - Post-viral infections - Inflammation *If accessible, affordable, or possible. Which it is often not.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

8 months

He told me that he would approach the chief to talk about the land. And once an agreement was made and cows were given to the chief, the entire community would be invited to a celebration where they meet you, meet your family, and ask about intentions + desired use for the land.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

9 months

When parents don’t or can’t pass down sacred cultural knowledge for whatever reason ancestors will step in and call upon a child that they believe will restore the integrity, history, and medicine of that lineage. This is the only type of knowledge transfer that can’t be stopped.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

10 months

This resource on ‘Healing Outside of the Medical Industrial Complex’ includes a list of books to read about trauma that are not ‘the Body Keeps the Score’:

Healing Outside the MIC — Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu

www.stefaniekaufman.com

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

It’s hard watching people we love + rely on become bitter, resentful, or angry — because they are tired of supporting us (even if they can’t admit it to themselves). This a daily reality for Disabled, mad, and neurodivergent people who live so interdependently.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

I had an asthma attack this morning + barely had enough inhaler left to keep me out of the hospital. I called my PCP for a refill, which a nurse ordered over the phone. I got a call back from another nurse saying my doctor blocked the script b/c I am “overdue for a physical.”

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 years

I also got a call from a baggage claim rep from @delta at 4 PM today saying “her supervisor told her to call me about a broken wheelchair complaint.” I have not made a complaint yet, so unsure what’s going on behind the scenes at @delta

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

11 months

We really don’t need to ask “what do we do with the rapists and murderers in a world without prisons?” because we are already living in a world full of uncaged rapists and murderers and people who perpetuate egregious forms of violence that will never be considered a “crime.”

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

3 months

We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health (L.D. Green and Kelechi Ubozoh) Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice (Dr. Jennifer Mullan)

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

11 months

Please understand that calling the police on someone experiencing a crisis does more to calm your own stress and fear and sense of helplessness than it does to help the person in crisis. It is primarily a way for *supporters* to find relief.

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stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

@stefkaufman

1 year

Reminder that people who are more interdependent with others to get their needs met (Disabled people, elderly folks, etc.) do not have to just fucking accept whatever version of Help is being offered. We’re allowed to have our own preferences, desires, and priorities.

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