Not Everything That Doesn’t Fit Is Broken

Read the full article here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/lucywishart/p/not-everything-that-doesnt-fit-is?r=71cs29&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Not Everything That Doesn’t Fit Is Broken

There’s a moment that happens in systems.

Something doesn’t fit.

And instead of the system expanding…

the person gets reduced.

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Most mental health frameworks are designed to identify problems.

So when something unfamiliar appears — something intense, precise, or difficult to categorise — the question becomes:

“What’s wrong here?”

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But not everything that doesn’t fit is broken.

Sometimes what’s being encountered is:

- clarity without a framework

- experience that hasn’t been named yet

- a way of being that sits outside current models of understanding

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Lived experience often sits at this edge.

Especially where mental health and spirituality overlap.

Because not all experiences arrive in a form that can be easily diagnosed, explained, or managed.

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When there’s no shared language for what’s happening, it often gets pulled back into the closest available framework.

And that framework doesn’t always fit.

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This is where misrecognition happens.

Not because people are careless —

but because the system can only recognise what it’s designed to see.

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The question isn’t always:

“What’s wrong with this person?”

Sometimes it’s:

“What are we not yet able to recognise?”

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This is the space I’m exploring in more depth — where lived experience, mental health, and spirituality meet, and where our current models begin to reach their limits.