Seems like everybody’s got a price
I wonder how they sleep at night
When the sale comes first and the truth comes second
Just stop for a minute and smile

- Price Tag, by Jessie J

Some of you may be too young to remember this, but back before Jonathan Torrens was J-Roc, and Kim D’Eon was an Entertainment Tonight reporter, they both starred on separate runs of a CBC show called Street Cents.  Street Cents was a show about media and consumer awareness, where they reviewed products, tested them against each other, and talked about the kinds of messages (both true and false, though generally false!) carried in marketing and commercials.  What’s more, the show was so committed to having a clean and uninfluenced perspective that they were a rare TV show to run with no commercial revenue, so ran for a full half-hour.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it was a show made for teens that didn’t talk down, condescend or get spiced up with “hip lingo” and other such bull.

The formula is actually so rare, especially given how teens are probably the single most sought after market demographic, that I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a show like it anywhere.  Ever.  The show ended back in 2006, but the real heart-breaker here is that this kind of thing isn’t just about money… it’s really about life.

Money is one of those things that is so massively important right now that even if you’re not really very materialistic, you’ll still generally need to worry about things like a job, rent, buying food & clothes, or even paying for the simple things you like to do, like watch a movie or get new music. (Yes, some people pay for music.) Now consider how important any single one of those things is, and think about how often anyone teaches you anything about it.  Does anyone ever really teach you how to get or keep a job?… how about how to leave one without burning that bridge?  Has anyone ever taught you how to make a budget?… or why you would even bother?  How much should you expect to pay for rent?… what would be a good reason or trade-off to pay more or less than that?  Ultimately, sure, these are money skills but they’re really life skills too.

Even more unfortunate is that it’s actually hard to know what to believe and who you can trust about this kind of thing.  Would you trust a web site sponsored by Visa (a multi-billion dollar company that profits largely from people being in debt) to tell you how you should manage your money?  Is it even possible to find someone who doesn’t have a vested interest in selling you something to get advice from?  All of a sudden, it becomes clearer how important it is to find a source that’s has a good reputation, isn’t being sponsored or paid for in some way by the things it’s critiquing, and is accessible.  Free would be nice, easy to get to would be great, interactive so that you’re actually talking about things with someone, rather than just reading or being lectured to would fantastic!

So how about school?

No, wait, seriously, come back, I’m not kidding!

What if your math teacher taught you how to calculate the terrifying truth about what happens when you get a credit card, then only make the minimum payment every month?

What if part of your social studies were to look at how advertising works, the brain science of why it works on you, and how to figure out the reality of things?

What if school career programs weren’t just for specific trades and careers, but also talked about some of the harsher realities out there, like how to get and then survive a crap job that you hate but absolutely need?

One way or the other, you’re probably going to have to learn these things, and I guess I’m wondering whether there’s a way we can keep from having to learn the hard way.

To have a look and laugh at what people were wearing twenty years ago, check out an episode they posted for the CBC’s 75th anniversary here.

We took our shot at talking about advertising, more in the context of body image, last summer with an entry on “Real Real Beauty”.

I think I’m afraid to be happy… because whenever I get too happy, something bad always happens.

- Charlie Brown

This week will announce the launch of the “new and improved” Mindcheck.ca, a youth-focused interactive site aimed to help youth to learn about mental health (like moods, stress, substance use and such) and themselves, with info, self-help tools, quizzes and such.  They’re people we know at BCMHAS so we thought it might be worth mentioning, especially given that it complements some of the info we’ve tried to include in our Youth Issues section.

Really, though, this is part of a bigger push to get people to learn more about mental health in general.  With “regular” health, nutrition and such, we generally figure that the more you know, the healthier you can keep yourself… knowing how to care for your body, learning to watch out for warning signs, checking in regularly with people, all good things, right?  So why not do it with mental health?

This has the added bonus of helping of fight stigma.  A lot of the shame that people feel about reaching out may be softened if we, as a society, knew more about mental health, if we realized that pretty much everyone struggles with these kinds of things every so often.  The same way education (and acceptance!) can help cut through the kind of ignorance that fuels stuff like racism, knowing more about mental health could go a long way to create more acceptance for people getting the kind of help they need, whether it’s just being able to talk about your feelings with your buddies without being called a wimp to understanding that just because someone’s seeing a therapist doesn’t make them an unstable basket case who’s not fit to do their job.

‘Course a little star power never hurts, so Tuesday night, the Vancouver Canucks will set aside some time to promote the site as well as kick off the In One Voice campaign: a pledge to support mental health, to learn more, to speak up and so that the struggles we all go through won’t have to hide in the silence.  Starting with a bunch of Canuck players who are posting videos talking, particularly, about their friend and teammate, Rick Rypien, who suffered with depression… Check it out, and if it resonates with you, check out Mindcheck’s page on it… I know they’re looking for submissions as well!

Butterflies come to pretty flowers

- Korean proverb

Meet Kelley Katzenmeyer.  Two years ago as a high school senior, her short film “To Be Remembered” screened at film festivals across the US and after graduating, she received a scholarship to study in Korea for a year where she began filming a documentary all about what life is like for high school students there.  Particularly, she was interested in the incredibly high level of academics there and the tremendous pressure students are under, as well as the monstrously high rate of suicide in high school students.  The documentary (tentatively named “한” or “Hahn”) follows a group of teenagers as they struggle through the most stressful point of their lives: their last year of high school and, particularly, their college entrance exams.

Korean High School (Documentary Preview) from Kelley Katzenmeyer on Vimeo.

Through making the film, though she stumbled on another huge stress there: the Korean ideal of beauty, and how much pressure teenagers, especially young girls, felt in trying to live up to that ideal.  They learned about “sang ka pul” (double eyelids), bigger eyes, pale skin, and high noses… And the fact that many are willing to get – and even looking forward to – plastic surgery to “fix” themselves.  And while some of those ideals are different than in the west (where, say, a tan is often considered a good thing), the massive pressure to be physically perfect is similar.

Dangerously, the tie-in to self-worth is also similar… much like academic success, beauty is taken as a measure of how successful and valuable a person you are, a topic we’ve gone over before, with all the extra stress and pressure that creates.  It’s even reflected in the proverb we quoted up top.  (Incidentally, for those of you who care, it’s not entirely true… butterflies tend to like bright colours and often favour flowers with lots of nector and pungent aromas.  But I guess “Butterflies come to smelly flowers” doesn’t have the same ring to it…)

Check out the trailer in the embedded video, read up on the project and stay tuned!  Kelley’s documentary is set to drop August 2012.  For news, updates and a glimpse at her other film, check out their site at www.koreanhighschool.com and their kickstarter here.

Reality is a crutch for people who can’t handle drugs.

- source unknown

Happy new year everyone!  Truth be told, we’ve been slacking so far so to make up for it, we’ll push out three back-to-back entries this week… some stuff that we’ve been meaning to talk about for ages, maybe something from current events too.  So that’s the goal: 3 days, 3 entries, then back to once a week.  Let’s dive right in and talk about the recent ecstasy-related deaths that happened recently… 5 in the Lower Mainland, and another 5 in Calgary, so pretty serious and worth bringing up, I’d say.

The backgrounder is that all ten deaths have been attributed to the ecstasy has been laced with PMMA (paramethoxymethanphetamine), a chemical that is often cut into pills because it’s a synthetic hallucinogen with some stimulant effects, so produces an effect that’s vaguely like MDMA (which is usually what people mean by “ecstasy”).  The problem here is that unless y’all are chemists specialized in this kind of thing with your own fully stocked chemistry laboratories, it’s hard (read: impossible) to tell what’s in the pill before you take it.

Massive props to the Maple Ridge RCMP for going out on a limb (considering they’re police) and:

Instead of telling teens to “just say no”, Mounties are encouraging parents to start a conversation about drugs.

“Making your child aware about [drugs] being out there may assist youth in making a good choice, should they be tempted to try them,” said Dunlop.

(source)

Either way, the risks are real… but there’s stuff to talk about.  A little while ago when we went over “Safer Partying“, we talked a bit about knowing your source, and the fact that since it’s nearly impossible to know what’s in a pill/powder/paper, knowing where it came from may be the best hint you have… which isn’t always that great.  The linked article also mentioned that because the effects of PMMA take longer to kick in, they may have assumed it was a “weak batch” and taken more, compounding the risk.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like if you follow all the advice on our page that we think you should go out and take all the pills you want!  There’s a real difference between encouraging you to think and talk about it, and encouraging you to actually do it.  But if you’re interested in reading more about that distinction, maybe take a look at our entry from this time last year about harm reduction.

Maybe it might be worth talking to people about it?… I realize that it may be daunting to approach your parents about it… or maybe it’d be easier if you’re from the area and it’s come up around the dinner table already.  There are other folks as well, though… friends, teachers, D&A workers (if you’re in the Vancouver School Board, your school prolly has a SACY worker you can look up!)  Of course, you can always come yak with us too, if it’s on your mind.

See you tomorrow!

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

- Not Ready To Make Nice, by Dixie Chicks

Now if there’s anything I’ll admit we have a soft spot for, it’s youth who aren’t afraid to take the longer, rougher road home… even if it means facing possible shit-storms along the way.  It’s not that it’s always pure poetry in motion, but kidnapping a chicken, building a life-size barbie, or defying the rules to take your partner to prom, are ultimately about making decisions that might not be popular or might get you in trouble… all in the name of what you believe.

This time, all eyes on Emma Sullivan, a high school senior from Kansas who, two weeks ago, tweeted to her friends: “Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.” while in Topeka as part of a Youth Government program… which considering she had around 65 followers, shouldn’t have meant a thing, right?  But apparently the governor’s communications people seem to be doing regular sweeps of google, twitter and such (back in the day, we called this ego-surfing), spotted it and… well… freaked out.  They called to make a stink with Emma’s school principal who, in turn, demanded that she write a letter of apology by the following week.

The day before the apology was due, Emma tweeted: “I’ve decided not to write the letter but I hope this opens the door for average citizens to voice their opinion & to be heard! #goingstrong” (her mom also had her back, and has said as much)… the next day, the governor’s office issued a statement apologizing for the drama, saying that their staff overreacted… the school likewise backed off on their punishment.

So funny enough, she never actually told Governor Brownback in person that she thought he sucked, certainly not the way she said… though she has said that she disagrees with many of his politics, policies and decisions.  And the story is all but over now, with the only remains being a ton of editorials and blog entries about how much the author either loves her for having the guts to stand up for herself and for free speech, or thinks that she should be punished anyhow for being so darn rude to the governor.  Again, it wasn’t the most poetic tweet ever written, and you could argue the merits of it all day… but it’s the decision that comes afterwards that’s most interesting:

Is this worth fighting for or not?

… How important is this principle?

… Do I think the punishment is unfair?

… How would I have to protest to make it worthwhile?

… Do I have the time and energy to be fighting this fight right now?

And that’s life, really.  Where will we learn to pick our battles, or to stand up for what we believe in?  Some say school, some say family, some say society… where do you think?

It’s my life
It’s now or never
I ain’t gonna live forever
I just want to live while I’m alive

- It’s My Life, by Bon Jovi

So assuming you’ve ever watched TV before, you’ve probably seen a PSA, or Public Service Announcement.  You know, those commercials or TV-show tack-ons where they try to raise awareness for an issue and/or encourage you to do something in particular, like not do drugs… or go out and vote… or recycle.  In fact, you’ve probably seen so many of them that they all kinda fuzz together.  But it’s not easy to know how to pass a message like that, even if you think your message is particularly good.  Like us… we like to encourage people to come talk to us about suicide and that seems like a good enough cause, right?  So what’s the right way to get the word out… how do you get people’s attention, how do you get the message to stick, and how do you help people to actually DO what you want them to?  Well, if you have the answer to that, you’d probably be working for Coca-Cola, not us!

And we’ve talked about this before… from condoms to drugs to date rape, we see it all the time, and sometimes it hits you just right, and sometimes you point and laugh, then forget.

There are a ton of ways to grab attention, and ask anyone who grew up in the era of GI Joe’s “Knowing is half the battle!” or “Sonic Sez”… And you might know exactly what I mean by “Not even once”, or “You wouldn’t steal a car!” (“Yeah, but I can’t download a car.“).  Definitely a decent first step, but just because people remember your catchy (or inadvertently hilarious) anti-drug slogan doesn’t mean they can relate to it.

If everyone who ever offered me a cigarette or drugs were a giant needle, or some ridiculous leather-jacket-wearing badboy with a mohawk who’s never ever spoke to me, I’d be 100% ready to JUST SAY NO!… but it’s hard to relate when the kind of pressure, the kind of complicated situation that PSAs show doesn’t really reflect your reality.  The problem with PSAs like that is that it feels completely disconnected from you, and you feel like whoever’s doing the talking has no clue what they’re talking about and doesn’t understand you at all.

Of course, none of it’s any good if the advice just isn’t handy… say because if you’re already doing it, it’s not enough just to say “Stop it!“  Often, the things they’re talking about are such strong habits or situations that are so awkward to get out of gracefully that the sort of confrontation that they’re asking for is super uncomfortable.  So sometimes it helps to not just say “doing this is good” but also to show how you can make it easier on yourself to do.

And just to show you that it’s possible, here’s one from New Zealand, where I think they’re definitely doing something right.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

- Aldous Huxley

I’m not sure how it happened, but I had meant to tell a short story at Thanksgiving, but since this week is American Thanksgiving,

Years ago, I was at this shelter… a safehouse where you could go if you ran away from home, where counsellors meet with you and your family if you needed to work through some stuff before you went home and offered a place to stay until then.  Some of the kids there were from foster homes, some were between group homes, others had spent a ton of time on and off the streets, some of them were from “nice” homes where you’d never think anything was wrong.  No one was ever forced to stay, you could leave any time you wanted or needed to, so most people were pretty happy to be there even if it wasn’t their first choice.

They had a tradition there, where every day when we’d sit down for dinner, we’d go around the table and everyone (kids, counsellors, volunteers, everyone) would be asked to say something that they were thankful for.  It was pretty easy the first day (“Hurr hurr X-box and chicken nuggets”), but every day that went by, it was easy to put pressure on yourself to try and think of new things to say.   And every day, you’d hear a dozen or so other answers, some of which were pretty serious because these were often really important moments in people’s lives… so sometimes that would remind you of things you probably should be thankful for, or answers that made you think, “wow, I guess I’m pretty lucky.”

Funny enough, while I was looking for something to put in the intro for this post, I found quote after quote about how gratitude must be said out loud… how thanks not given is thanks not had.  But funny enough when it comes to being thankful, remembering standing around that table every night reminds me how important what happens inside is just as important.

Thanks for reading, everyone. =)

Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. The beat the curiosity out of the kids. They out-number kids. They vote. They wield resources. That’s why my public focus is primarily adults.

- Neil deGrasse Tyson, Renegade Astrophysicist

A few months ago, I sat in an auditorium while a school principal from Vancouver Island made a rousing speech to a room full of teachers, guidance counsellors and other professionals.  He said that students know what they want and have a desire to learn… and that while school works out for a small slice, for the rest, it systematically stamps out that passion… and that we needed to rethink how we teach and what we do in schools.  He was greeted with massive applause, and part of me wonders what it would’ve been like if he were making the same speech to an auditorium full of high school students.

The quote above actually came from a Q&A on Reddit with Tyson, who’s been surprisingly visible for an astronomer, popping up in odd places like late-night talk shows and taking advantage to share his passion for planets, stars, galaxies and science in the hopes of having you join him.

One of the top comments on that Q&A brings up the idea of shoshin, a concept  from Zen Buddhism whose Chinese characters (初心) mean “the beginner’s heart”.  The idea is that when you’re a beginner, you’re still eager to learn, open to possibility and free of preconceptions… and that even once you become better at something, smarter or older, you should try to continue to be as open as you were in the beginning.  Sounds kinda nice, doesn’t it?… but in an era of standardized testing and fixed curriculum, unfortunately school doesn’t always teach us to be curious, or continue encouraging us to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to tell anyone that they need to get excited about school… but if you’re not anymore, do you think there ever was a time when you were?  If you knew you had to be in a school for 6 hours a day for 12 years, what would you have done with time if you were in charge?  What would you be learning about, talking about or doing that would’ve made you excited to learn more?

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea! – incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.

- from Pudd’nhead Wilson, by Mark Twain

Happy Halloween weekend!  Last year we went as a stick-in-the-mud, but this year we figured we’d go as something a little more in keeping with the season: the bogeyman… because what exemplifies the holiday more than fear?  OoOooOooooOooo!

All kidding aside, there’s a good reason for talking about fear; It’s the kind of theme that comes up again and again in literature, music, movies and, frankly, our lives and it’s probably one of the most basic feelings we have, pushing us to “fight or flight” in those tensest of situations.  That feeling that there’s a danger to us is what can push us to face it, run from it, but sometimes also freeze up.  Similar (but not exactly the same) is the feeling of anxiety, where you might be uneasy or uncomfortable, maybe even to the point of completely freaked out… not because you feel threatened, but because you’re worried about something, in a way that you just can’t seem to shake.

This will sound familiar if you’ve had a look at our section on Stress, but anxiety and fear are actually pretty normal reactions, and they’re there for a reason.  If you were never afraid, you’d probably never avoid danger and you’d probably get hurt an awful lot… maybe even be killed by a situation you should’ve reacted to!  Likewise, if you were never anxious, you’d have a much harder time pumping yourself up and preparing your body and mind for confrontations before the danger has arrived… you’d be pretty chill and all, but when trouble is brewing, it can also pay to be alert!  The hard part is that taken to extremes, fear and anxiety can be so paralyzing that you just freeze up or, just the opposite, sometimes make you so uncomfortable that you lash out or overreact at the wrong time.

Like with stress, for some people the first step will be to learn about it… learn what you’re afraid of, what makes you anxious, what stresses you out.  Because those moments can be especially difficult because you feel out of control, or don’t know what to do, or feel overwhelmed, sometimes it can be comforting to know why you feel the way you do and learn about what kinds of reactions to expect out of yourself in those times.

Next, learn strategies to help you relax to get through those tough moments.  To start with, what do you do already that helps you to relax when you feel all wound up, uptight or stressed?  Are they things you could do while you’re not at home or not in private?  In different situations, you may not be able to use all the strategies you had planned… and the strategies that work to calm you down when you’re angry might not work when you’re nervous.  Having a basic breathing exercise (here’s one from our stress section) is a nice first step… Once you have that, though, you can probably imagine how having a bunch of different tricks in your bag for different situations will help you to be even healthier.  It also helps to have backup plans when your go-to strategy doesn’t work!

Finally, if you feel like this is a problem that’s going to haunt you for a long time if you don’t deal with it, you may want to unravel and challenge the thoughts and fears behind your anxiety.  If it’s not a situation you can avoid forever or it’s becoming really disruptive in your life, I can see how you’d feel like it needs to be “fixed”… depending on the issue, there are a wide variety of ways to work through it, either through self-help, peer support, or professional help that may not only help you get on with your life, but be able to face those situations without them completely messing up your day.

If you’d like to learn more about fear and anxiety, AnxietyBC has a fantastic page in their self-help section about general self-help strategies, as well as more specific pages on some of the more specifics steps you might want to take to get things under control.

Our own Stress Management section has pages dedicated to some of the things we mentioned today:

• Recognizing your own personal signs of stress
• Taking stock of the strategies that you use to cope with stress
• The exercises that our centre’s Community Education team does in their school workshops, including a basic breathing exercise

If you’re in the Lower Mainland and you’d like them to come do a stress management workshop at your school, you can email us at youthinbc@crisiscentre.bc.ca, or check out the Community Education page on the Crisis Centre’s web site.

It’s not easy bein’ green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over ’cause you’re not standing out
Like flashy sparkles on the water or stars in the sky

- It’s Not Easy Being Green, as sung by Kermit the Frog (youtube)

If you’re young and in BC, you’re probably at least vaguely acquainted with the notion of race, culture and how often they can touch our lives.  There’s a pretty good chance that you know a pile of people who don’t have an identical ethnic background as you… heck, BC being as diverse as it is, there’s even a decent chance that your parents are a mixed-race couple.  But I wasn’t going to talk about what you probably thought I was going to talk about.

Nope… not racism.

I was inspired by this amazing photo set where this young woman who put herself into all these photos twice, to reflect the two sides of her life, the American and Iranian.  I wanted to talk about this kind of “personal” multiculturalism, and being caught between cultures.

For some of you, this may be familiar feeling because you fight that battle inside of you all the time.  Not all divides are as simple as what kind of food you eat at home… If you grew up feeling like you had one foot in Canada and one foot in a completely different country (especially if you immigrated here!), there were probably many times where you felt like you had to choose between the two at some moment.  Maybe you had to choose between groups of friends, or where you thought of as “home”, or where you were planning on living.  And maybe you were lucky and found a nice balance between the two, but sometimes it can leave you feeling like you belong to neither culture, which can be pretty lonely and leave you feeling pretty lost.

For others, it may not be so much of a personal, internal thing, but something you deal with at home.  If you’re the child of immigrant parents but feel like a Canadian, the struggle may be trying to bridge the gap between your parents’ “old country” ways and the realities of your life here.  The traditions, the values and responsibilities may be completely different and it isn’t always easy to understand values you didn’t really grow up with, both for yourself and for your parents.  Often parents will push for their kids to hold on to as much of their culture as they can so that it’s not lost… and if your parents did that, you might even push back, if you felt like language school, dancing lessons, or only dating within your culture would get in the way of fitting in or doing the things you enjoy.  It may even may make up the biggest source of tension with your family.

As usual, I’m not sure there’s a magical answer, really… I guess the first question is: “Is it something you can talk about?”  Feeling like you have someone who shares your experience can be comforting, especially if it’s a huge source of stress for you… And interestingly, that person doesn’t necessarily have to share your ethnicity to understand or to have gone through similar experiences.  If you feel that having a chance to reconnect with your culture on your own terms would help, there are places like community centres for some ethnic groups… or maybe you’d like to start with something way simpler, like trying out some of the food!

Regardless of what you decide to try, it might be worth putting some thought into what’s important for you.  What cultures do you identify with?  Some of them may not even be in your blood, frankly… Maybe you just grew up in that kind of neighbourhood!  What aspects of the culture are important to you, and what would you like to preserve?  Do you want to make sure you speak fluent whatever-ese by the time you have kids of your own?… or had you planned on visiting your home country or territory?

And if you’re stuck for people to talk to about it and want someone to bounce ideas off of, we’re around if you’d like. =)  You can chat live with a volunteer, noon to 1am any day.