Some context: the new neuroliberalism and “behavioural insights”
The behaviourist turn in government administration – the use of targeted citizen behavioural conditionality in neoliberal policy making – has expanded globally and is linked to the growth of behavioural economics theory (“nudge”) and a New Right brand of “libertarian paternalism.”
Reconstructing citizenship as highly conditional stands in sharp contrast to democratic principles, rights-based policies and to those policies based on prior financial contribution, as underpinned in the social insurance and social security frameworks that arose from the post-war settlement.
The fact that the poorest citizens are being targeted with behavioural theory-based interventions also indicates discriminatory policy, which reflects traditional Conservative class-based prejudices. It’s an authoritarian approach to poverty which simply strengthens existing power hierarchies, rather than addressing the unequal distribution of power and wealth in the UK.
Some of us have dubbed this trend neuroliberalism because it serves as a justification for enforcing politically defined neoliberal outcomes. A hierarchical socioeconomic organisation is being shaped by increasingly authoritarian policies, placing the responsibility for growing inequality and poverty on individuals, side-stepping the traditional (and very real) political/structural explanations of social and economic problems.
Such a behavioural approach to poverty also adds a dimension of cognitive prejudice which serves to reinforce and established power relations and inequality. It is assumed that those with power and wealth have cognitive competence and know which specific behaviours and decisions are best for poor citizens, who are assumed to lack cognitive competence (because they are poor and therefore make “the wrong decisions”). Apparently the theories and insights of cognitive bias don’t apply to the theorists applying them to increasingly marginalised social groups. Policy has increasingly extended a neoliberal cognitive competence and decision-making hierarchy.
It’s very interesting that the Behavioural Insights Team now claim that the state using the threat of benefit sanctions may be “counterproductive”. The idea of increasing welfare conditionality and enlarging the scope and increasing the frequency of benefit sanctions originated from the behavioural economics theories of the Nudge Unit in the first place.
The increased use and rising severity of benefit sanctions became an integrated part of welfare conditionality in the Conservative’s Welfare “reform” Act, 2012. The current sanction regime is based on a principle borrowed from behavioural economics theory – an alleged cognitive bias we have called loss aversion.
It refers to the idea that people’s tendency is to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. The idea is embedded in the use of sanctions to “nudge” people towards compliance with welfare rules of conditionality, by using a threat of punitive financial loss, since the longstanding, underpinning Conservative assumption is that people are unemployed because of alleged behavioural deficits and poor decision-making. Hence the need for policies that “rectify” behaviour.
I’ve argued elsewhere, however, that benefit sanctions are more closely aligned with operant conditioning (behaviourism) than libertarian paternalism, since sanctions are a severe punishment intended to modify behaviour and restrict choices to that of compliance and conformity or destitution. At the very least this approach indicates a slippery slope from “arranging choice architecture” in order to support the “right” decisions that are felt to benefit people, to downright punitive and coercive policies that entail psycho-compulsion, such as sanctioning and mandatory workfare.
Psychology is being misused by the government to explain unemployment (it’s claimed to happen because people have the “wrong attitude” for work) and as a means to achieve the “right” attitude for job readiness. Psycho-compulsion is the imposition of often pseudo-psychological explanations of unemployment and justifications of mandatory activities which are aimed at changing presumed beliefs, attitudes and dispositions. The Behavioural Insights Team have previously propped up this approach.
Welfare conditionality and its experimental approach to behavioural change doesn’t operate within an ethical framework, citizens cannot withdraw from behavioural experiments, nor is this framework based on informed consent. The impact of state directed psycho-compulsion and potential harm that it may cause citizens is not being monitored.
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) is composed of mostly behavioural economists, who also claim the title of libertarian paternalists (and who have a clear and distinct ideological premise for their behavioural theories, while attempting to claim “objectivity”.)
They claim that while it is legitimate for government, private and public institutions to affect behaviour the aims should be to ensure that “people should be free to opt out of specified arrangements if they choose to do so.” Apparently, that proviso doesn’t apply to poor citizens.
The nudges favoured by libertarian paternalists are also supposed to be “unobtrusive.” That clearly is not the case with the application of extremely coercive and punitive Conservative welfare sanctions.
When it comes to technocratic fads like nudge, it’s worth bearing in mind that truth and ethics quite often have an inversely proportional relationship with the profit motive. It’s a cognitive bias, if you will.
And when one nudge theory fails, there are always lucrative and political opportunities to generate more.
Of course Dr Kizzy Gandy, a leading researcher at the policy unit says: “We are optimistic that behavioural science can help government departments to better design policies to help those who are ‘just managing’ in order to prevent and overcome poverty.”
In a new report released today from the Behavioural Insights Team, the authors say: “There is evidence that welfare conditionality in the UK – mandatory behavior requirements such as attending meetings with work coaches or providing repeated evidence of disability in order to receive benefits – is associated with anxiety and feelings of disempowerment.”
“However, as far as we know no one has examined whether welfare conditionality has cognitive depleting effects.”
It’s particularly worrying that there is a proposal in the report for further experimental pseudo-psychological approaches to policies aimed at the poorest citizens. The researchers call on the Department for Work and Pensions to conduct experiments into whether welfare conditionality actually had any positive effects and suggested that “self-set” and “enforced goals” might be a better way of “helping people into work.” Although this allows for a little tokenist self-determination and permits a little autonomy, it is still an approach ultimately based on coercion and enforcement.
There is a clear distinction to be made between “behavioural science” – which is almost entirely about economic outcomes; what is politically deemed “best” for citizens and social conformity, and mainstream psychology – which embraces a much broader and deeper perspective of the complexities of human potential and wellbeing.
For anyone curious as to how such tyrannical behaviour modification techniques like benefit sanctions arose from the bland language, inane, managementspeak acronyms and pseudo-scientific framework of “paternal libertarianism” – nudge – here is an interesting read: Employing BELIEF: Applying behavioural economics to welfare to work, which is focused almost exclusively on New Right small state obsessions.
(Update 27/10/17 – the link to the original document no longer works. But I found a copy with the same page layout here, luckily: – https://www2.learningandwork.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/CESI_employing_BELIEF.pdf).
Pay particular attention to the part about the alleged cognitive bias called loss aversion, on page 7.
And this on page 18: “The most obvious policy implication arising from loss aversion is that if policy-makers can clearly convey the losses that certain behaviour will incur, it may encourage people not to do it,” and page 46: “Given that, for most people, losses are more important than comparable gains, it is important that potential losses are defined and made explicit to jobseekers (e.g.the sanctions regime).”
The recommendation on that page: “We believe the regime is currently too complex and, despite people’s tendency towards loss aversion, the lack of clarity around the sanctions regime can make it ineffective. Complexity prevents claimants from fully appreciating the financial losses they face if they do not comply with the conditions of their benefit.”
The Conservatives duly “simplified” sanctions by extending them in terms of severity and increasing the frequency of use. Sanctions have also been extended to include previously protected social groups, such as lone parents, sick and disabled people.
The paper was written in November 2010, prior to the Coalition policy of increased “conditionality” and the extended sanctions element of the Tory-led welfare “reforms” in 2012. I wrote about this at length earlier this year, here: Nudging conformity and benefit sanctions: a state experiment in behaviour modification.
The Behavioural Insights Team, (otherwise known as the Nudge Unit) was set up by David Cameron in 2010. In their most recent report called Poverty and decision-making: How behavioural science can improve opportunity in the UK, the nudge researchers now say that burdening unemployed people with responsibilities, using the threat of sanctions might actually be making it harder for them to get jobs.
According to the behavioural economist theorists authoring this highly jargonised report, government policies designed to help people are reducing and impairing people’s so-called cognitive scope and abilities.
However, it’s difficult to imagine how punitive sanctioning, which entails the removal of people’s lifeline income, originally calculated to meet the costs of only basic survival needs, such as for food, fuel and shelter, could ever be seen as “helping people.”
I don’t believe that Orwellian semantic shifts (or ‘thrifts’, in this case) can ever provide a genuine and effective solution to poverty and inequality.
Some major inconsistencies and incoherences in the report
In the latest BIT report, loss aversion is mentioned again: “People dislike losses more than they like equivalent gains. Babcock, Congdon, Katz, and Mullainathan (2012) hypothesise that people may experience loss aversion if they consider taking a job paying below past earnings. Therefore, they may stay on unemployment benefits longer than they should. Unrealistic wage expectations may be reinforced when the social status and personal identities of workers are strongly tied to their previous job.” [My emphasis]
Note the phrase “unrealistic wage expectations” and later incoherent comments in the report about in-work poverty, which I will highlight.
The summary report states in the introduction: “A third of the UK population spent at least one year in relative income poverty between 2011 and 2014.
Traditionally policymakers and anti-poverty organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) have focused on boosting people’s economic capital (e.g., income) and human capital (e.g., educational attainment) to reduce poverty. While investments in these areas have led to important gains in opportunity for many Britons, emerging research from behavioural science shows that other less tangible resources, which derive from psychological, social and cultural processes, significantly influence people’s ability to overcome disadvantage.
BIT was commissioned by JRF to examine the role of individual decisions in shaping people’s experiences of poverty in the UK and to identify the drivers of these decisions. This reflects JRF’s interest in looking beyond traditional, structural drivers of poverty. Our findings, based on a review of the published literature, are presented in a new report, launched today.”
Let’s cut to the chase. The entire document is framed by the use of a distinct and established narrative; it’s composed of a pre-loaded ideological language, references and signposts, using comments and phrases like “[…] we explain some of the ways that cognitive, character and social capital influence social mobility, via decision-making.”
And a sub-heading: “Character capital: Self-efficacy and responsive parenting.” Apparently, “home visits by health workers have had positive effects in preventing intergenerational poverty.” That’s quite a remarkable claim, given that the document acknowledges poverty is actually increasing in the UK.
The whole concept of character capital is itself founded on the notion that people with an “internal locus of control” tend to perform tasks better than those with an “external locus of control.” This is about where people place the responsibility for what they achieve – either “inside” individuals, based solely on notions of merit, specific skills and talents, or external to individuals – “outside” of them, based on environmental conditions such as competition, chance, opportunities, socioeconomic, employment market context and so on. However, the cited evidence to support this theory was later contradicted in the report.
One of the key features of poverty is loss of choice and a steady erosion of control over one’s decisions, of course.
It’s also worrying that it is implied those who believe that achievement is linked with structural conditions are “under-performers.” It reads a little like a Samuel Smiles Victorian treatise on “thrift, character and self-help.”
It’s also an almost subliminal method of dismissing the impact of structural constraints on the opportunities available to individuals. It serves to make invisible what was once a key consideration in public discussions about poverty: the unequal distribution of power, wealth, resources and opportunity.
Also of note: “low levels of financial literacy” was conflated with notions of “human capital”, which “potentially exacerbate the effects of depleted cognitive capital among low income groups when choosing between credit options.” Nothing to see here, then, regarding the behaviour of lenders. I mean whoever heard of a bank offering an overdraft to people who actually need one. Still, thank goodness there are generous companies like Wonga, always ready to step up to the mark, with eye-watering interest rates to offer those on low incomes.
The research authors seem to think that the only human potential worth recognising is that of our economic decision-making. Yet when people are materially poor, budgeting and decision-making are invariably constrained – that’s intrinsic to the very nature of poverty.
Limited decision-making and reduced available choices don’t cause poverty: they are the subsequent exclusion effects of poverty.
It’s telling that none of the recommendations made in this document actually address the structural and political causes of material poverty and growing inequality in the UK.
There is a substantial incoherence in some of the claims made, too. For example: “The world of work is possibly the single most important policy area for maximising individual and household resources to prevent and overcome poverty.”
Yet: “Just under half of those in poverty in the UK live in a workless household (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2014)”. So work clearly doesn’t pay for over half of those people in poverty.
In fairness, it is later acknowledged that: “However, simply being in work is not sufficient to prevent or overcome poverty. Nearly two-thirds of children in poverty live in working families.”
This heavily jargonised rhetoric is, on the whole, about looking for cheap individualist “solutions” to poverty that disregard the need for improving people’s material and financial situations, by extending on an existing neoliberal narrative of alleged individual fault, character deficits, cognitive bias and decision-making flaws.
None of this will raise the profile of crucial issues such as the conditions imposed by austerity and neoliberal policies, socioeconomic organisation and political decision-making, that are having a profound impact on growing inequality and increasing poverty in the UK. The persistent use of the word “workless” rather than “unemployed” is another linguistic signpost for neoliberal competitive individualism, too.
Geographer David Harvey describes neoliberalism as a process of accumulation by dispossession: predatory policies are used to centralise wealth and power in the hands of a few by dispossessing the public of their wealth and assets. The report does not refer to the mode of political-economic organisation of which growing inequality and poverty are an intrinsic and inevitable feature.
Proposed solutions: more of the same
Summary of recommendations:
MINIMISING COSTS
Consumer credit
1 Make it easier to access low cost credit through extending access to interest-free Budgeting Advances; assisting credit unions to expand online services; and providing tax relief to individuals taking out payroll loans.
2 Further restrict practices by high cost credit providers that play on consumer biases, and test remedies that will improve consumer credit decision-making.
3 Continue to evaluate financial capability programmes through initiatives like the Money Advice Service What Works Fund.
(Access to credit does not alleviate poverty in the long-term.)
Savings
1 Test ways of automating rainy day savings through employer enrolment, default savings accounts with banks, and Universal Credit payments.
2 Evaluate the effectiveness of financial apps for helping people save.
3 Optimise the Help to Save matching scheme, through testing auto-enrolment and prizes for regular saving, to encourage low-income groups to save.
(Poor citizens do not have sufficient funds to make savings. And research shows that absolute poverty is growing in the UK, which means that many people often don’t have sufficient funds for meeting even fundamental survival needs, such as for food and fuel.)
MAXIMISING RESOURCES
Work
1 Use identity-building activities in Jobcentres to cultivate intrinsic motivation for work in order to improve the quality and sustainability of jobs that people find.
2 Collect longer-term and more holistic outcome measures of labour market interventions to understand their full impact on poverty.
3 Develop a simple tool for Jobcentres to identify capital deficits in order to match interventions to individual job seeker needs.
Entitlements
1 Develop a common “cognitive load stress test” that measures how easy it is for eligible groups to access government entitlements.
2 Use annual entitlement summaries to prompt existing welfare recipients to apply for other assistance they may be eligible for, and to help them budget.
3 Experiment with the design of welfare conditionality to boost cognitive capacity and self-efficacy, such as having claimants set their own payment conditions.
PREVENTING INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY
Parenting
1 Provide families in or near poverty with free access to evidence-based online parenting programmes.
2 Develop community to strengthen social ties between parents from different backgrounds.
3 Conduct research into whether small and inexpensive adjustments to housing conditions can reduce cognitive load and improve parental decision-making.
Post secondary education
1 Make the application process for post-secondary education as simple as possible, for example, by pre-populating application forms.
2 Use personalised assistance and prompts to encourage students and parents to apply to post-secondary education.
3 Link formal information about returns to post-secondary education with informal information (from peers) about what post-secondary education will be like.
Every single intervention recommendation fails to address the structural causes of poverty, which lie outside of the control of people experiencing poverty. Yet most of these recommendations are aimed at prompting the state to act upon individuals.
Proposals such as providing access to parenting programmes, “identity-building activities in Jobcentres to cultivate intrinsic motivation for work”, “rainy day savings”, and to “develop a simple tool for Jobcentres to identify capital deficits in order to match interventions to individual job seeker needs” all sound like a New Right blame-storming exercise. Again, the problem of poverty is regarded as being intrinsic to the individual, rather than one that is about material deprivation which arises in a wider political, economic, cultural and social context.
Post secondary education costs money and isn’t supported by the state. The Education Maintenance Award (EMA) was withdrawn by the Conservatives, and the cost of a university education is now far too much for many young people from poorer backgrounds because of the tripling of fees and reduction in maintenance support. It’s the government that need a nudge, here. This is a good example of how opportunities and choices are being limited for poorer citizens by cuts and constraints imposed by the neoliberal ideologues in office.
The government never question the decision-making of the powerful and wealthy, yet it certainly wasn’t the poorest citizens that caused the global recession in 2007, nor was it the poorest citizens that imposed damaging austerity policies. The poorest people are burdened with a disproportionate weight of austerity cuts to their income and support. The wealthiest citizens have meanwhile been gifted with substantial tax cuts.
Nudge is a state prop for neoliberalism, inequality and social control
Neoliberals argue that public services present moral hazards and perverse incentives. Providing lifeline support to meet basic survival requirements is seen as a barrier to the effort people put into searching for jobs. From this perspective, the social security system, which supports the inevitable casualties of neoliberal free markets, has somehow created those casualties. But we know that external, market competition-driven policies create a few “haves” and many “have-nots.” This is why the welfare state came into being, after all – because when we allow such competitive economic dogmas to manifest without restraint, we must also concede that there are always ”winners and losers.”
Neoliberalism organises societies into hierarchies. Inequality is therefore an inevitable feature of the UK’s current mode of socioeconomic organisation.
The UK currently ranks highly among the most unequal countries in the world.
Inequality and poverty are central features of neoliberalism and the causes therefore cannot be located within individuals.
Neoliberals see the state as a means to reshape social institutions and social relationships based on the model of a competitive market place. This requires a highly invasive power and mechanisms of persuasion, manifested in an authoritarian turn. Public interests are conflated with narrow economic outcomes. Public behaviours are politically micromanaged. Social groups that don’t conform to ideologically defined outcomes are stigmatised, and outgrouped.
Shamefully, in a so-called first world, wealthy liberal democracy, othering and outgrouping have become common political practices.
Replacing spent micro-managementspeak with more micro-managementspeak
The Nudge Unit, which was part-privatised in 2014, have now warned that some Government policies were reducing so-called “cognitive bandwidth” or “headspace” of the people they were designed to help. So more theoretical psychobabble to overwrite the previous psychobabble which didn’t work when applied via policy.
This is bland neoliberal managementspeak at its very worst. The policies are causing profound damage, harm and distress to those they were never actually designed to “help”. Let’s not permit an evading of accountability and techniques of neutralisation: the use of rhetoric to obscure the real intention behind policies, as well as the consequences of them. It’s nothing less than political gaslighting.
Of course the report attempts to apply “the latest findings from behavioural science to improve government services.” In a neoliberal framework, there are many lucrative opportunities for private companies to experiment in the psychological management of populations who have become the casualties of political decision-making, for political ends. The ethical relativity, moral entrepreneurship and sheer financial opportunism on display here certainly reflect some fundamental neoliberal values and principles. The main one being profit over human need.
Dr Kizzy Gandy proposes that cost-effective “simple tweaks” to services could help improve the way services worked. “Government policies should help people to have less on their mind, not more,” she added.
However, I propose that government policies in democratic societies should also be designed to meet the public’s needs, including alleviating poverty, rather than being about impoverishing targeted social groups and then undemocratically acting upon individuals, without their consent, directing them how to behave in order to accommodate government ideology and meet politically defined neoliberal outcomes.
Material poverty steals aspiration and motivation from any and every person that is reduced to struggling for basic survival. Abraham Maslow (a real social psychologist) explained that when people struggle to meet their basic physical needs, they cannot be “incentivised” to fulfil higher level psychosocial needs – that includes job seeking.
Further criticism
Labour Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Debbie Abrahams, said: “Even the government’s own Behavioural Insights Team now recognise the mountains of evidence that the widespread use of sanctions is not leading to better outcomes for people seeking work. Indeed, this government team’s report suggests that sanctions may be operating as a barrier to finding a job.
“This government should be ashamed of their persistent failure to act on this issue over many years, after I, and other campaigners, have provided evidence of the devastating impacts of their sanctions policy. I have committed to putting an end to Tories’ cruel and unnecessary sanctions regime, as part of our work to transform the social security system.”
In fairness to the BIT, the report does say on page nine, among the listed areas of proposed future research: “A significant portion of behavioural science research focuses on improving the decisions of end-users – in this case people in poverty. But what about the decisions of service providers and policymakers? How can we improve the quality of their decisions to support people [to] escape poverty? And how can we build their empathy with those whose opportunities are at stake?”
But who is nudging the nudgers? I would think nudgers are “incentivised” by those providing the contracts that pay their salaries, on the whole. The government part-own the nudge unit.
Researchers from a variety of universities across the UK, using qualitative longitudinal interviews with nine groups of welfare service users from across England and Scotland, aim at determining longer-term effects of sanctions. The first wave findings from this collaborative ongoing study regarding the effects and ethics of welfare conditionality were released last year
It was found that linking continued receipt of benefit and services to mandatory behavioural requirements has created widespread anxiety and feelings of disempowerment. The impacts of benefit sanctions are universally reported by service users as profoundly negative, having severely detrimental financial, material, emotional, psychological and health impacts. Some individuals disengaged from services, some were even pushed toward “survival crime”.
The most surprising thing about these findings was the general lack of surprise they raised.
A recurring theme is that sanctions are grossly out of proportion to “offences”, such as being a few minutes late for an appointment. Many reported being sanctioned following administrative mistakes. The Claimant Commitment was criticised for not taking sufficient account of individuals’ capabilities, wider responsibilities and vulnerabilities. Many saw job centres as being primarily concerned with monitoring compliance, imposing discipline and enforcement, rather than providing any meaningful support.
Power relations, class and economic organisation have now completely disappeared from public conversations about poverty. Neoliberal anti-welfarism, amplified by a corporate media, has aimed at reconstruction of society’s “common sense” assumptions, values and beliefs. Class, disability and race narratives in particular, associated with traditional prejudices and categories from the right wing, have been used to nudge the UK to re-imagine citizenship, human rights and democratic inclusion as highly conditional.
This is not just about shifting public rational and moral boundaries to de-empathise the electorate to the circumstances of politically defined others. It also obscures the consequences more generally of increasingly non-inclusive, anti-democratic, prejudiced and extremely punitive policies.
The bottom line is that government policies are expressed political intentions regarding how our society is organised and governed. They have calculated social and economic aims and consequences. In democratic societies, citizens’ accounts of the impacts of policies ought to matter.
However, in the UK, the way that policies are justified is being increasingly detached from their aims and consequences, partly because democratic processes and basic human rights are being disassembled or side-stepped, and partly because the government employs the widespread use of linguistic strategies: euphemisms, superficial glittering generalities and techniques of persuasion to intentionally divert us from aims and consequences of ideologically (rather than rationally) driven policies. Furthermore, policies have become increasingly detached from public interests and needs.
For example, the state has depoliticised disadvantage, making it the private responsibility of citizens, whilst at the same time, justifying a psychopolitical approach that encodes a punitive Conservative moral framework.
According to the behavioural economist theorists, in their highly jargonised and fairly meaningless report, government policies are reducing so-called “cognitive bandwidth” or “headspace” of the people they were designed to help.
That the government imposes additional “cognitive costs”, as well as material and financial ones, on low-income groups, is hardly a groundbreaking revelation.
I can put it much more plainly, and strip it of neoliberal psychobabbling: imposing sanctions on people who already have very limited resources is not only irrational, it is absurdly unjust, damaging, distressing and spectacularly cruel.
See also:
Benefit Sanctions Can’t Possibly ‘Incentivise’ People To Work – And Here’s Why
Welfare, Conditional Citizenship and the Neuroliberal State – Conference Presentation
Politics and Insights 
I have a Mental Health Condition and I am in the support group and have been unable to work for nearly 5 years. I am a Mother and apart from my sons early years I have worked full time most of my adult adult life. I became a lone parent when my son was 2 years old. After being abandoned by my husband financially life became very tough. During my working life I also studied hard and updated my skills on a regular basis. When my son flew the nest (I was now aged 49), I went to University and came out with a high 2:1 honours degree.
During my time at Uni I had a seisure and a breakdown. Despite this I carried on and completed my degree however now I needed a mentor to support me emotionally.
During my Degree study I also worked as a cleaner at the Uni as I needed the money. I worked between 20/30 hours a week.
I then lost my job due to my mental health problems. What a humiliation.
My experience at the UNI became a nightmare. To be effectively dismissed from the institution I had recently graduated from.
It was this period that opened my eyes to the world of politics.
You know. I would love to work again.
I have spent the last 5 years living in one dark room, with little natural light.
I am in a Rich City, I was not born in, I have no friends here.
I rarely go out, when I do, I am afraid. Afraid of what!
Afraid of failing a WCA or PIP.
I live in CONSTANT FEAR of losing my securty.
I am an abuse survivor, I spent my life living in fear. Never knowing when the abuse was going to come.
This is how my life is now. Never knowing when they are going to strip away my dignity, Never knowing when they will stop my support.
Oh how I wish I could go back out into the world and find me a life worth living. I still have much to offer….. I have many talents….. But the fear of having to live up to their strict and harsh conditions, and having to live with that sort of fear and anxiety is no ENCOURAGEMENT. It stops me trying.
I never gave up before…. ;throught my life, no matter what was thrown at me, I managed to find a way through…….
But they have put bars in my way and they have my key.
Im 57 now, alone, afraid and in despair…….
No one can help me.
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I know what you mean about living in fear of having your dignity stripped away with the next WCA. I’m currently in the support group. I’ve been through one appeal and won, only to get another assessment appointment just 3 months after the tribunal. I’m too scared to claim PIP in case I don’t get it and that leads to another WCA. But I need to claim PIP as I can’t always manage to cope with essential tasks like shopping. At my worst I can’t even manage to cook.
I share your feeling about having much left to offer. But we both write and share something of the best of our skills with others. We also make what we have studied and learned accessible, to share it with others. Neither of us have given up.
And neither of us are alone.
Have you got any professional support, Linda?
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I have a great Gp, but of couse thats limited. Mind have helped me with my new PIP claim, but as you know, MIND aint what they were, and that support is being squeezed to the bone. My advisor there gave me the impression he could be cut any day, and hes the only one. My psychotherapy ended *thank god). I finally managed to walk away from her). The last few things she said to me was that there was nothing Malign about me.?? That it was her belief that Everyone Should be Self-suffient etc. That I have no power. Her Private businesses now have private contracts scooping up victims of the state programs and she gave me the impression Business had never been so good!!!
Bath, is a Tory City, very little goes on Support wise, unless its funded by the STATE.
Sometimes it all gets too much, especially when in yet another assessment process. Its the process of constant reassessment, or the fear surrounding it, the limboland, that compounds conditions which are hard to manage on a good day…..
Thanks for listening, sometimes I call out because I feel so trapped and alone. x
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You can call out here ANYTIME. xxx
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I think its going to be some time before I can get my X Psychotherapist out of my head. Think I explained to you before about her ‘techniques’ and Ideology. Constantly trying to persuade me that I should become Self Employed! Constantly refuting any update I gave her about Gov Policy around Social Security. Her last words to me was that “I was Obsessed with the DWP, and Always had been”. On our last session, she said to me ” Wouldnt you like to find someone to help you loose weight” Find someone to help you find work and stay in work”! I felt she was trying to manipulate me once again. So I told her, that my time with her had left me feeling retraumatised much of the time, and that I would NEVER consider Psychotherapy again. I then got up and walked out. Much of her Behavour Modification techniques, were aimed at getting me to claim responsibility for the abuse I suffered in the Past. She never spent time with me to explore what happened. We only ever touched the surface, when I did speak about LONDON, and the BLACK cars transporting me around, she would tell me I had no proof and couldnt rely on my memories. She never helped me to own what happened, just created more doubt. My early memories are disjointed. The one thing she did tell me however was that she had worked with Paedophiles and she know what techniques they used in order for memories to be wiped. ie I was drugged, therefore memories unreliable. I didnt trust her motives in the end. But it took me Years to own my instincts about her. and she spent years trying to get me to accept that I couldnt rely on myself, because of my condition. DID. She was Cold.. Provocative, spent much time using Gas-lighting Techniques to destablise my train of thought etc, and for years she succeeded. She nearly destroyed my sense of self, she certainly damaged my self confidence, and self belief. She also managed to destroy my belief in Psychotherapy. She also constantly reinforced that my condition was because I was unable to relate, she did not consider it mental illness. It was only after spending years researching the political scene in these arenas that I begain to join the dots and to understand that she was not offering what I assumed I was getting. It was BrainWashing.
sorry to go on, but I left her in July and this is the first time Ive spoken about it. Her techniques have altered me, IM having to work out what bits of her she has implanted in me that are not good for me. Like, be compliant, dont speak out, dont cry or show emotion. I could go on.
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I think I described to you before that during my time with Her I felt that I was being trapped in something that could be described as Stockholm Syndrome. Well, NOT ANY MORE.
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Reblogged this on michaelsnaith.
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Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
A “must read” if understanding is required on how government is brainwashing and manipulating the plebs.(That would be us)
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What kind of therapy would be useful for treating the psychopathy of the leading Tories?
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The only thing likely to have a positive impact is removal of their wealth and power. That won’t cure them, but it will make them a little less dangerous to others
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Thanks for the blog. Lots of interesting points and links.
I’ve wondered what the justification is for prioritising nudging the imperfections of those at the bottom of society rather than nudging the more influential behaviour of those at the top.
You might be interested in the problems surrounding the first medical trial the DWP helped fund. It was examining the benefits of the ‘biopsychosocial’ management.
There are some summaries here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-simon-duffy/the-misleading-research-a_b_9726490.html
https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/21/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-pace-trial/
With more detail here:
http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/news/major-breaktn-pace-trial/00296.html
http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/type/pdfs/in-the-expectation-of-recovery.html
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Reblogged this on Christopher John Ball.
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