iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Language matters. We hear so much about the need to “regulate” or “stabilise” emotions, rather than “integrate” “encompass” “befriend” “interpret” or “honour”.

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Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle @drdoylesays.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

We can understand the pain or history that drives an abuser's behavior, without excusing it or taking on responsibility for things they did to us. Sympathy & empathy can be tools-- but it's real important we not let them blur the lines for what was & wasn't acceptable behavior.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

You’re not “rotting” in bed. You’re resting. Your worth isn’t tied to your output or willingness to perform through your pain or exhaustion. So please rest.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

What's happening to Prince Harry currently is a graphic illustration of what happens to any survivor or scapegoat who tries to speak out on systems that harmed them. But despite the hostility aimed at him and his chosen family, I hope the Prince will continue to speak.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Finally, the winner of the 2025 Weasel Words Pageant. This just just off the scale shocking.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Any time someone calls you a late bloomer, you want to tell them how much of your life was lost just surviving the soil you were born into.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

The idea that over-diagnosis of mental disorders is down to a profession that actively campaigns against the medical model is, one feels, wilfully ignorant www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinica...

pulsetoday.co.uk

Minister announces crackdown on private sector therapists at Pulse conference

The Government will crack down on ‘unregulated private sector’ therapists and counsellors, the primary care minister announced at Pulse Live.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

As a 3-5 year old growing up in UK I had a recurring dream in which I was part of a convoy of people moving on foot from one place to another, destination unknown, sometimes walking through squat whitewashed dwellings or camping on beaches. I recently asked an AI to recreate the image from my memory

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Anyone else low-key wonder if waking life is just the data-capture phase for the real life, which is lived in sleep via the collective consciousness? #wednesdaythoughts

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

If someone isn’t trying to shut you down are you even speaking the truth?

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Nate Postlethwait @natepost.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

If you’re a person who has spent a lot of their life in survival mode, it’s likely you need the reminder: You don’t owe people near what you think you do.

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Dr Susan @siac1.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

We need more fun and joy in our lives.

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Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle @drdoylesays.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

It's annoying to almost everybody to be misunderstood or misrepresented-- but to trauma survivors it can be uniquely triggering. We have experience w/ abusers purposefully twisting what we say to manipulate both us & others around us. Our nervous system recognizes that trick.

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Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle @drdoylesays.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

The fact that they exploited their power over you, whether you were a child or an adult, to hurt you is shameful-- toward them, not you.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

« Capricorn: you need to buck up, everyone’s going through a tough time, it’s not just you. » I see my parents started writing my horoscopes 🤷‍♂️

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Joanna Moncrieff @joannamoncrieff.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

'As soon as one theory is discredited, the advocates of the biological paradigm turn to another, putting forward a new set of ropey, inconclusive and ambiguous studies as putative evidence' (from Chemically Imbalanced). Article by Bruce Levine www.madinamerica.com/2025/03/do-c...

madinamerica.com

Do Critics of Biological Psychiatry Have an Alternative to a Life of “Whack-A-Mole”?

Psychiatry has offered many biological theories, but the ones that stick are the effective marketing devices for money-making drugs.

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Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle @drdoylesays.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

I won't tell you it's risk free to assert yourself. It's not. There are absolutely people who will try to silence & punish you for asserting yourself. There are absolutely risks associated w/ boundaries & self expression. What I will tell you is: those risks are worth taking.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

It's not on you to save the people who hurt you, no matter how much you need them to love you. As people get older, they either do the work to take accountability and make right with those around them, or they double down on the wrong position. In that case it's often safer to love them from afar.

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Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle @drdoylesays.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Mourn. Don't be ashamed. Don't let anyone shame you for the desire or need to mourn. Whether "they" think your attachment to what or who you lost is legitimate or valid or understandable doesn't matter. Literally couldn't matter less. You get to mourn.

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Joanna Moncrieff @joannamoncrieff.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

The Defeat Depression Campaign (& other awareness campaigns) set out to persuade the public that emotional reactions were medical conditions requiring drug treatment. Surveys showed previously people viewed emotions as meaningful reactions and were sceptical of using drugs.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Attachment styles are all the rage right now, but the trend seems not to be towards self reflection and an understanding of how attachment injury can be healed, but rather to reify attachment styles as discrete and immutable identities, a movement that to my mind creates less freedom, not more.

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Dr Jen Daffin @jendaffin.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Safe secure affordable housing is a mental health intervention.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

There’s no listening without empathy, but equally, there’s no empathy without listening ♻️

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Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle @drdoylesays.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

You were not abused because you were "bad." You do not experience trauma reactions because you are "weak." Recovery is not going slowly because you are "lazy." Trauma Brain is feeding you fake news. Ease up.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

We are entering an era where collective action is not only essential and urgent but also feasible and likely. I’m hopeful that the world will ultimately choose community and care over oppression division and hate.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Most clients I see have been harmed or neglected. By people or by systems (familial, educational, spiritual, social, political or economic) designed to keep them anxious, ashamed & diminished. And yet the MH industrial complex still bangs on about genes and neurotransmitters

media.tenor.com

Elephant Elephant In The Room GIF

Alt: Images an animated Elephant Elephant In The Room GIF

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

In any effective psychotherapy, the client's lived experience is more important than my theoretical training, by orders of magnitude. Anyone who suggests the reverse is drawn to the power imbalance inherent in invalidating the vulnerable, not to the job of healer.

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Prof. James Davies @drjamesdaviesbskys.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Study finds that rooting your problems in within you, via self-diagnosis, rather than understanding them from a more sociologically informed perspective, can be harmful to youth self-esteem. www.madinamerica.com/2023/06/self...

madinamerica.com

Self-Labeling with Psychiatric Terminology May be Harmful for Youth

A new study shows that self-labeling with mental health diagnoses can be harmful to youth self-esteem.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

The person has a strong sense of justice, questions the status quo, communicates directly, notices patterns, suggests creative solutions and is capable of deep focus to deliver on them. So clearly defective. Stigmatise them quickly before they build us all a better world 🙄

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Why are we pathologising « highly sensitive people » instead of asking what’s missing with those who are insensitive to their environments and the needs of others?

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Attachment styles are tendencies not immutable facts. Don’t use them to reduce or minimise a person’s infinite complexity and beauty.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

The Insta-therapists’ insistence that every relationship difficulty is narcissistic abuse makes it that much harder for true survivors to be taken seriously

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

People who use the language of therapy to wound others: 👎👎👎

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Lisa Gray Therapy @gray-therapy.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

First can we stop using DEI as an acronym? If you’re talking to me I’m gonna make you say the whole thing, tell me you are against diversity, equity & inclusion so we all know what kind of person you are. #DEI #diversity #equity #inclusion

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

In this video I talk to Tania at 2 Healing Minds about the Person Centred approach to human distress and how it differs from medical model of “mental illness” youtu.be/pHWSo35JNyU

youtu.be

Transform Your Life and Heal Deeply: Powerful Advice from Therapist Richard Lewis

YouTube video by 2 Healing Minds

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

If you experienced childhood neglect or devaluing then walking away as an adult from someone you love, but who will not or cannot meet your needs, is one of the hardest things to do with confidence. But you know what you need … you got this.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

If it was reality, it wouldn’t need promoting or enforcing. What it is is fascism.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Those whose nervous systems are frazzled from what you’ve survived, remember that safe love doesn’t show up as intensity, it shows up as consistency.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Those who take extra time and care to process their experiences may find themselves taken advantage of and, by the time they are sure of what they see, there may be a lot of disrespect to counter. Don’t deplete your energy litigating. They’ve had time to show you who they are. Set the boundary.

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Prof. James Davies @drjamesdaviesbskys.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

“Rising antidepressant prescribing is not associated with an improvement in mental health outcomes at the population level, which, according to some measures, have worsened as antidepressant prescribing has risen.” Our piece in the BMJ: www.bmj.com/content/383/...

bmj.com

Curb antidepressant prescribing to improve mental health, say campaigners

A group of 31 medical professionals, researchers, patients’ representatives, and politicians has called on the UK government to reverse the increase in antidepressant prescribing seen in the past deca...

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

The reframing of our natural responses to trauma, stress and abuse as abnormal psychopathology that requires corrective treatment is arguably one of the greatest humanitarian injustices of our time.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

The current zeal around the use of hallucinogens as therapeutic agents completely ignores the problem of Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (#HPPD), which affects up to 1 in 25 users, is poorly researched and has few treatment options.

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Dr Jen Daffin @jendaffin.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

When you were given antidepressants to correct your serotonin levels in your brain did anyone do any measurements before you started taking them? Did anyone measure afterwards to see if they’d returned to within normal range?

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Abusers always make it a bigger crime to talk about the abuse than to commit the abuse. So if someone is angry about your reaction to their behaviour, you know how to classify them.

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Richard Lewis @rlewistherapy.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

Approx 20% of adults in the UK are on antidepressants and they take them in good faith. What they’re not told is that the “largest and longest study ever done to evaluate depression treatment,” was born of scientific misconduct and only showed a 3% stay-well rate after one year.

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