I was raised by immigrant parents in the UK who were very strict about us speaking "proper English" (whatever tf that means). The result is that I can go from our home country's dialect/accent, to London, to perfect RP depending on my particular mood that day. The whole of the UK is still unfortunately very obsessed with attaching accent with class and intelligence which is utterly ridiculous since we have such a huge diversity of both native and foreign accents in this country.

Also no-one should ever be ashamed of their accent. The point of communication is to be understood and as long as people understand you that's all that matters - even if they have to work their brains a little bit. Funnily enough, I find when I speak in "perfect" RP less people understand me than when I just speak in my regular London accent.

As an aside - the Polish accent and language are really cool and anyone that clowns you - whether they are Polish or not - is being silly. There's a wierd hangover from cold war era politics of clowning certain accents/languages but the Polish language has such a rich history and so many beautiful idioms and expressions, only ignorance could explain anyone making fun of it!

This is so incredibly inspiring! I hope you don't mind if I save this comment. This is exactly the reason why I both want to work on myself and go through training to be able to work with others to reach this kind of result.

I'm curious about what it is about your approach that encourages depth and quality in the therapeutic relationship? You've perhaps actually answered that already in the love, respect and admiration you have for them. Would it be correct for me to say it's the non-judgemental but loving attitude that you show them that makes the difference? What have you seen shift in your clients' mentality when they make these huge changes in their life? Apologies for all the questions!

Thank you for replying with such a beautiful and inspiring comment

That's such an amazing story! If you don't mind me asking, what do you think it was about your approach or his understanding that shifted to spark such a profound change? Or was it perhaps external factors that laid the ground for the change? Thanks so much for replying, I bet that wine tasted extra good!

Thank you so much for these stories! These are such incredible examples but almost in opposite ways as you said - one shows how an individual was able to heal from by coming to an internal understanding and the other shows how someone progressed from having external pressure removed and a level of compassion and understanding put in it's place when he couldn't find the compassion for himself.

I also really appreciate you saying that you don't know if these improvements were long term or not but even so - it's incredible that they both reached a huge breakthrough even if it was only for a short period of time. Here's to hoping both changes stuck and they found themselves on an upwards trajectory in their life!

If you don't mind me asking, have you found the ACT approach to be particularly effective when working with clients who have been in long-term therapy or those who may be described as "treatment resistant" (if I'm using the correct terminology here) or was this somewhat of an outlier as a case? I appreciate that this is an incredibly broad question!

I'm taking away from this that having space to experience and believe that change is possible is the most important underlying facet to therapy being a "success" or not. Please let me know if you'd perhaps phrase this differently!

Thanks again for your response, it's been very enlightening :)

🤞

I genuinely don't understand why people do this. It's harder to hear and be heard on speaker, especially in a noisy public space where the mic picks up background noise and your ear is further from the speaker.

I think plant medicines can be very useful for people experiencing poor mental health or those struggling with trapped cycles of negative thinking or require a new perspective to move forward. There's a reason why they were historically used as part of very specific rituals by educated spiritual practitioners and I'm glad that western medicine is now starting to take them more seriously as treatments for depression, ptsd etc. I do strongly believe that they are far safer and more effective than most of the conventional psychiatric drugs used in western medicine today.

That said, I don't think that the recreational use of these plant medicines is particularly useful. Yes they may lead to some glimpses of insight but they teach little about how to cultivate the path to wisdom on their own. These medicines (generally) aren't addictive in and of themselves but people can become addicted to the feeling of psuedo-enlightenment and it distracts them from doing the work of cultivating their mind through right effort and hard work. They can be useful in showing people an approximation of what the jhana states are like but it's like showing someone a picture of a flower versus that person sowing the seeds and growing a field of flowers for themselves. People become so obsessed with looking at the picture of the flower that they don't notice when they walk past the flower in real life.

In short, yes plant medicine is highly effective for many (not all) people experiencing low states of mental wellness and/or psycho-spiritual blocks when used correctly with a knowlegable practitioner but many people become addicted to the hightened state of sense pleasures and bliss they provide and ultimately this is an unhelpful distraction from the path.

One of the few things in this election that genuinely brought a smile to my face. This man is infinitely decent, moral and has inspired hope in so many. He may not've been able to accomplish all he wanted to in his political career but he'd taught me what the benchmark for a "good politician" should look like. I hope he serves the next 5 years with all the integrity and compassion we know him for then retires to some beautiful tropical island somewhere and lives out the rest of his life in peace knowing that he spent his life making the world a better place.

Good. No more safe seats. They need to earn their vote rather than coast by on the goodwill of those who trust the "brand" of their party regardless of how little they offer voters in return.

Many of the comments are treating "dated" as a negative word by default when there's nothing wrong with having a dated look if you feel cute, comfy and confident in it! Being trendy isn't automatically a positive thing either, particularly as we get older and trends change faster, it becomes extremely wasteful to constantly be cycling through new clothes and trends for fear of looking dated.

It seems like gen z are currently fixated on late 90s/early 2000s baggy/oversized trends, just as many millenials were fixated on 80s fashion in our teens/early 20s. By this pattern gen Alpha will be all about the 2010s fashion making skinny jeans fashionable again so op is techinically ahead of the trend rather than behind it lmao.

Honestly I'd encourage op to go harder on the 2010s aesthetic, throw in a vintage belt, a mix of mismatched bracelets and wristbands, quirky earrings, a cute necklace etc. An outfit can be dated and very good, it's all a matter of styling, comfort and confidence.

It worries me that people genuinely seem to believe the royal family have little to no power in this country. They have immense amounts of wealth power and pirivilege in Britain and abroad. One of them should be in prison for the horrific acts he committed against children but we see how that was swiftly dealt with. The King has weekly secret access and influence over our democratically elected leaders whilst having no accountability to the public himself. We don't even know the full extent of the wealth of the Royal household but most research suggests it's grossly underrepresented. The monarchy's greatest power is making people believe they have no power at all when all common sense should scream the opposite.

Sometimes I look at images of North Koreans crying over their dear leader then at Brits crying for a monarchy they see as an extension of their own family and I realise that human beings, no matter where they come from, are all scarily susceptible to the same conditioning.

To actually answer the question, the point of the British royal family is the same point of every single other monarchy in human history - to accumulate, concentrate and maintain wealth and power into the hands of one family at the expense of the rest of society. It is more radical and illogical to argue that the King who technically owns all of the land in the country, owns all of the money, has the power to dissolve democracy if he chose to do so, has every state institution and organisation in direct service to him and legally cannot even be held accountible to the law never exercises any of this influence or power at all. I don't want to use the word brainwashing but the way the average person talks about the monarchy is disturbingly at odds with reality.

I think deep down you already know the answer but it doesn't sound like you're ready to accept it yet. Are you able to try out therapy? As long as you don't see value in yourself it doesn't matter how many people say you deserve better if you don't believe it. You sound like a really good guy and I'm sorry you're going through this. Hope things work out for you

Okay black British woman here to throw some ideas for what I think is happening here.

First off, it's really not that common for black women in the UK to go totally bald but I would ask you to think about this situation as you would with any other type of marketing - the models usually aren't reflective of the average person. Marketing/advertising teams make casting choices based on industry trends and these don't always correlate with reality for any demographic. Think of it like asking "all the white women I seen on tv are blonde and skinny but why all the ones in my town are fatter and darker haired". Marketing isn't designed to be genuinely representative of the average person, it's there to sell products to whoever is most likely to buy them.

If I'm to give a personal theory as to why they go for shaved hair, it's because black women's hair is so unbelievably political that sometimes it's easier to go for no hair and avoid the entire conversation altogether whilst also scoring 'representation points'. If a black woman on an ad has natural hair, people (mostly black people) will complain that it looks nappy and bad or will argue about the texture and style of the hair. If they use extensions or wigs others will complain that they arre too 'Eurocentric' and ashamed of their hair. The bald-headed cool model vibe is one that pretty much no one will argue against even though very few black women in the UK actually look like this (Skunk Anansie's Skin is hard carrying for the entire bald-headed team).

Personally, I think the bald headed black woman vibe is made to appeal to progressive middle class white people over any other demographic (not to say it doesn't appeal to other groups). The products and services I see that specifically target the black demographic generally have an entirely different vibe.

I was raised Christian and remember being asked to leave sunday school for belligerently asking about why dinosaurs weren't mentioned in the bible. I didn't like not being able to ask certain questions or being brushed off with 'just trust in Jesus'. I was actually very interested in spirituality and religion since childhood but constantly being punished for being rude and disrespectful for genuinely wanting to understand more. I left Christianity and went through the typical 'athiest bro' phase for a while but still had an interest in spirituality.

A family friend introduced me to Buddhism and I was always very fascinated since it seemed to offer answers to questions I felt Christianity was not able to handle. Unfortunately the sect of Buddhism I was introduced to is widely considered to be a cult. I didn't get sucked in too far but it made me very wary to this day.

Currently I do consider myself a Buddhist and I've found it to be the most logical and useful way of understanding the nature of the universe and our existence within it. I like that whilst Buddhism is a religion, it's also a very effective science of the human mind and there's good reason why modern psychology has started to pick up practices like mindfulness and meditation that the Buddha taught 2.5 thousand years ago. I also like that thinking for yourself, questioning and developing a deep understanding is highly encouraged if not mandatory to follow the Buddha's path. I sometimes joke that Buddhism is the most autistism friendly religion since sitting alone in a forest reading books is the highest practice and quietness/lack of stimulation is encouraged.

I'm black and unfortunately I see this type of behaviour coming from black people and it always disgusts me. Knowing what we've been through as a people it's insane to me that any black person would treat another minority in this way. I think a lot of this comes from minorities feeling like that have to compete for scraps so they start to turn on each other instead of recognising the shared struggles we all go through.

I have a lot of very close Asian childhood friends and we talk about this topic a lot. Both communities can be so disappointing in their treatment of each other. I remember my Chinese friends mum initially telling my friend not to hang out with me in case I was a bad influence but after actually getting to know me she ended up inviting me on their family trip to their province in China and she's like family to me now lol.

There's a lot of ignorance on all sides but those of us that know better have to be better than previous generations and call out bigoted behaviour from our own families/people whenever we see it.

I also have a co-worker that is your modern day BLM, pro black community stuff, which is great- but then the other day I hear him saying some Blaaaatantly racist stuff about Latinos. What the hell lol.

I have to add that as a black person I've started to see how these pro "insert minority racial group" movements can very quickly turn toxic and I pretty much steer clear of this stuff. I'm still very progressive in my politics but I'm all about solidarity. Someone being of the same race as me doesn't mean anything if they're spouting shit about another group that I'd expect to hear at a fascist rally.

In my culture we have a saying that goes "we were given two ears and one mouth because we should listen twice as much as we speak"

The idea that all beliefs should be respected or given equal weight is not compatible with rigorous academic inquiry.

It's simply not the case that all research is conducted by leftists. The issue stems from the fact that Conservatives - by the very nature of their ideology -tend to have a preference for traditional values and ideas over new developments in research. This incompatibility is built into the conservative way of thinking and this is why conservative thinking is marginalised in universities, not because of the left but because anyone that starts off with these ideas but are serious about their subject quickly realise how deeply unscientific much of the ideology is. It's lazy to blame this problem on the left.

Also I'd argue that most departments are centre/centre-left at best and many leftists find themselves marginalised as well, albeit for different reasons.

My point wasn't so much that one individual can end homelessness, but that you may walk past a homeless person in your own town who you might be able to directly help and potentially save that one life but most of us walk past and continue with our day. If you had enough money to send one addict to rehab but decided to save it for your child's tuition fees instead, would you be responsible if that addict died? These examples have a higher difficulty but a lower moral cost since they don't require anyone to die. The trolley problem have a very low difficulty but extremely high cost of you making the choice to kill two people.

But going back to a specifically Buddhist perspective, taking a life will always lead to negative karma, no matter if one thinks the actiona was noble or justified. The Buddha is pretty clear on this. What's not so clear is to what degree context for that killing reduces or increases negative karma. The Buddha specified that there are certain killings that immediately have the highest punishments eg killing a Buddha, arahant or your own parent. So arguably if the 5 people on the track included the Buddha and your parents you might be required to save them and take the negative karma of taking the lives of two strangers instead.

Anyway this is all very interesting to think about lol

Everyday we all fail to pull the lever for countless people around us. We walk past homeless people, ignore addicts in desperate need of help, we watch wars and conflicts through our screens and do nothing. We choose to continue on with our own lives in the face of all the great suffering and death all around us. If neglecting to save others from this suffering was on par with intentionally taking a life then almost every one of us would be condemned to hell.

There's a saying 'when your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail'. When children only ever understand violence we cannot turn around and be shocked when as adults, violence is their default strategy to deal with problems in life. And sadly many of these children end up being victims of DV too. When their parents teach them that it's normal for people who love you to hurt you, is it any surprise when they end up settling down with abusive bullies.

A person following the Buddha's path is forbidden from intentionally causing actions that result in the taking of life. By switching that lever you've made a choice to end the lives of the two people and will be karmically responsible for the deaths of two human beings. There is no requirement to save a life, human or otherwise, at any cost in Buddhism so I doubt the "positive" karma of saving 5 lives would outweigh the negative karma of ending 2.

A Buddhist take on the entire scenario would perhaps say that at some point we'll all find ourselves tied to the tracks and whilst it's down to our karma how long we avoid getting hit eventually the train will strike us as that's the inevitablility of samsara. The path teaches us how to free ourselves from the tracks and escape from ever being tied down again.

The moon might not shine as brightly but it's still beautiful if you give it a chance

Surely this is skirting the lines of legality with this packaging. It's quite obviously intended to be misleading in order to capture both the vegan and vegetarian market. With this logic a burger made with cow meat could advertise itself as having "plant based buns" and anyone not looking too closely could be fooled. They know that if a consumer sees the words "meatless" and "plant based" together, there's a reasonable expectation for it to be entirely free from animal products.

I'm sorry you've been through such hardship and are struggling so much rn op. I'm not sure if this is helpful but if you think about things from a Buddhist perspective you are a very fortunate person. To have a human birth is rare and precious as it's the most likely to reach enlightenment. And to have a human birth where you come in contact with the Buddha's teachings makes you one of the most fortunate out of all humans. Of all the trillions upon trillions of beings that exist right now you are in the upper 0.00001% of fortune in this life. The Buddha also taught that understanding suffering is the path to understanding the dharma. It sounds like you've suffered immensly but rather than look at this as meaning your life is hopeless, perhaps take the perspective that through your suffering you can gain an incredible capacity for compassion, kindness, wisdom and peace. As long as you still have breath in your lungs you can start over.

Wishing you the best op!