 My name is Oscar Newberger. I use he, him, pronouns. My name is Jules Caserta. I use they, them, pronouns. My name is Oliver Colwell. I use they, they, he, pronouns. Today is an episode going on with our mental health series. Today we're talking about self-harm. So trigger warning for self-harm, mention and talk about, talking about, and suicide. The date is June 11th. The date is June 11th, 2018. All right, going into that fun topic. Shall we start with our, shall we start with why people do it to start off? Why people self-harm? Sure. Why don't you start Oscar? Can I say the notes? Thank you. So I needed the notes because I have a bad memory. So some reasons, do you want me to read all of them? No, I want you to choose one. Focus on that and then we can discuss that. It was on, the instructions were unclear. I think you're unclear. Okay. So one that I'm going to pick is dysphoria because that's sort of something that I've struggled with in the past. And so dysphoria can lead to self-harm because it's, because you're having really bad gender dysphoria and body dysphoria can, can manifest itself into self-hatred, which can manifest itself into trying, wanting to hurt yourself. And I haven't struggled with self-harm and I'm lucky in, in that way, but I do suffer from pretty severe gender dysphoria and feeling, not feeling like you're in the right body and I don't like using that term because that's like very cis thing is that like you're in the wrong body. Like I'm not, I'm in my body, but it feels wrong sometimes. And feeling, feeling like that all the time, it gets heavy, especially if you don't live in an accepting community. And I live in a very accepting community. My family is pretty accepting and I don't have to not talk about it. I'm, I can talk about it. I can be open about it. I'm, I have the opportunity to actually transition. And so I don't really struggle with thoughts of trying to hurt, of wanting to hurt myself because, because I am able to, to live authentically and be myself. And so the self-hatred that can come from having bad dysphoria doesn't manifest itself into me wanting to hurt myself as much as it could with somebody else. I think some people who have dysphoria probably use self-harm as a way to, I guess like an alternative to what they want to do. Like if people want to transition and they can't transition, then instead they might like alter their body or hurt their body in other ways. Not that transitioning is hurting your body, but that that's sometimes a way for people to like cope with that when they can't do what they want to do. Yeah. I don't suffer from very high dysphoria and I also don't suffer from self-harm. So I can't really talk about how it affects dysphoria. How dysphoria affects it that much. I mean, I know what dysphoria feels like. Like I cry every time I go to the bathroom because that means I have to see that part of me. But I don't. Right. But you know, I don't try. Yeah. I've never felt it in that way, but I can clearly see how that could definitely lead into self-harm. I think self-hatred is in general the biggest cause of self-harm. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think hating your body and hating yourself are two separate things because you can hate your body without hating yourself and you can hate yourself without hating your body. So I think dysphoria while it might be connected to like real self-hatred is often just like hitting your body. And I think there's a line, but that people often self-harm like regardless of what it is that they're unhappy with. Self-harm can also, like going off of self-hatred, it can also be a form of punishment to that person. Like if you kind of, if you do have self-hatred for your like personality or whatever it could be, punishment for like say you said something weird in a conversation or you made someone upset that could cause you to potentially want to do that as like a punishment or like you failed. It kind of makes you want to find a way to punish yourself because like there isn't exactly a punishment, like a physical one. So it kind of gets people to focus on that and find a way to again punish themselves. I just kind of like a broken record going back and forth. Especially when you, because a lot of times like those little like social mistakes that can manifest themselves into wanting to self-harm and actually self-harming, often weren't as big as your brain makes them out to be and people who have like really circular thinking. I have very circular thinking as a result of my OCD and so I'll say one thing that's kind of weird or didn't really make any sense or was a non-sequitur and nobody having the conversation with me thought it was weird, but then I just think about it and each time I think about it, it gets worse and worse. And then eventually I get to a point where I'm like, I am the worst person alive and having this conversation was a mistake, which wasn't true and I just made a joke that nobody laughed at, which is very often because I'm not that funny and my sense of humor is dry. You're hilarious, Oscar. And so getting into that circular thinking loop and it's hard to step out of that like an analogy like that carnival ride where you get on and you hold the things and it spins in a circle. It's like watching it is terrifying. I've never been on it. What are you talking about? So it uses like inertia or whatever. I don't know the words. And it like, so you stand up and you're holding out of these bars, they're right here and there's like a seatbelt and you hold on, you stand against the wall and it spins really hard and then you're pushed against the back of your seat and you can't move. And so like that's kind of what it feels like is you're on that and you can't get out of it without help. I was imagining a little playground thingy. That's a smaller scale example. Like the merry-go-round is a smaller scale example of what I was saying. Yeah, but I totally agree with that and I also deal with that a lot where it's like you blow things out of proportion. Sometimes it can just be like this like annoying nagging voice in your head because it's not really you either. It's not like you thinking that. It's like I separate it. It's like I'm not thinking that. This bitch is thinking that. It's not me. It's my goblin brain. Yes. It's little greglins that like devour in your head. Devour all your logical thinking. Yeah. Can lead to just wanting to be able to do something focus on something so you do that. Yeah. It's kind of like taking control. Yeah, I think people tend to think that like awkward stuff they say or whatever mistake they think they made is a lot bigger than it is. So you should know that like it's not like it's not a big deal if you mess up in a conversation and it's hard to like absorb that information yourself but it's like it's good to be able to like try to understand that it isn't like a huge thing and probably other people aren't even noticing the things you're noticing so you shouldn't like resort to self-harm just because you like messed up in a conversation or had an awkward situation. And another thing about it though is like you can hear what Oliver just said like hear that it's not you didn't mess up it's not that big of a deal but that circular thinking will keep it doesn't matter how many people tell you it's not a big deal or how many people compliment you to make you feel better or anything how many pep talks you get it doesn't matter because you're still trapped on that city thing. It's like someone standing on the outside could be like you're okay you can get off of it if you just try right. Or it's not still trapped in the g-force isn't a big deal you can do it like you're still stuck there and so I think kind of what Oliver's intentions were there was to be able to reassure your other people and not like knowing that your friend needs to hear that information is or your friend your family member anybody needs to hear that information even if it might not help them it's still better than doing nothing I guess. No I'm not trying to invalidate people's like that kind of thinking by saying like it's no big deal but it's also like it's kind of no big deal it's good to clarify that it's good to clarify that a lot of it is just like making it bigger than it is and because of that where it's like you're stuck in this loop self-harp can also be a form of take control it could kind of be like getting you out of this loop almost in a sense it's like okay I can't really process anything that's happening I can't really do anything here's this one thing that I can do that makes me feel something different than this constant cycle if you feel a physical pain or an emotional pain so it's kind of their way of transferring the pain to something else so they can clear their mind and back to my amusement park analogy good analogy we're gonna keep using it you're stuck in it and like you're scared because you can't get out of it but then self-harming is like cutting the seatbelt and then you the ride and you're still stuck in the ride but you're being bashed around and now you're in pain so you're thinking about that instead of the fear of being stuck in this amusement park ride and then soon a worker will come and start yelling at you about cutting the seatbelt yeah which is kind of like someone telling you to stop self-harming which isn't really helpful because they're just telling you to stop doing something that's for the most part out of your control and you can't get out of the ride like if I could I would have already it's like stop self-harming I would if I could like what? also just telling you to stop and not giving them ways to stop is just dumb can you maybe elaborate tell me how I would love to get off this amusement park get off this amusement park analogy yeah but talking about ways to possibly like cope or what you can do instead or what sort of like I don't know just like what sort of things might help people get out of it ways to help people who are self-harming yeah I think first of all it's not going to be super helpful to just yell at them to stop so that's my main point I guess is that like if you know someone who self-harms probably just like yelling at them like stop doing that or asking them why they're doing that it's going to feel more invalidating and like bad than helpful it's going to be feel more invasive which is going to feel worse you said ask them why they're doing that sometimes they honestly don't know why it's like I don't maybe maybe they don't know they just do and they can't quite figure out why they do it they just feel bad and they're doing it and it makes them feel better they can't quite put their finger on oh here's what's causing you to do this here's the reasons I feel this way right because of that jumbled mess it's kind of like it's probably not like a coordinated thought process and more of just like emotions like you're angry and feel out of control and so you do that and maybe that's transferred into more like not necessarily calm but maybe you feel like a little bit more settled than before I don't know so before we continue on this good topic self-harm can literally be anything a lot of people think it's cutting or just cutting their arms it could literally be anything eating disorder could be classified as self-harm against a wall could be classified as self-harm anything that makes you feel pain that you are doing to yourself could be classified as self-harm right and I think some people say that like the pain doesn't really count if it's helping them feel better but it absolutely does like if you're harming your body in any way it's still like you're still causing yourself pain whether you know or not and alternatives that I have actually thought of this time discussion about this a while ago and didn't incorporate it into the last episode but we talked about like just like sound in general can be kind of helpful for some people like whether that means like blasting really loud music like into your like headphones or speakers whatever it is or just like going outside like yelling however you can be loud that can like get your energy out which maybe can help some people I've heard people talk about exercise helps for some people like if you can just like go outside and like run back and forth down the street whatever it is you can do to like I think the main thing is just like try to get some energy out so that you don't feel so like overwhelmed the way that I've heard also helps is gorging yourself on food which I mean I do everyday but like but to just kind of give you something else to focus on other than the kind of it also the food makes you feel better it makes you feel good like a physical good so just like just like um I guess like comfort foods or like treating yourself um and that might not be like an easy thing for people who are struggling with like eating disorders or like unhealthy eating habits because that might make them feel worse but um like if that helps people that is a tip that I think works for some people so if any of those are helpful um that's great if not um you can always like let us know comment or whatever um so that we can give more helpful information um because in the next episode we're doing like the mental health series I think we're going to be talking about self care and we might incorporate some more stuff into that and actually get prepared okay so touching back to what to say to someone who is self-harming um for it's really dependent on the person I think if you know the person well enough then you will probably know what is best to do when you figure out that they are self-harming and like I know some people who would probably just prefer to be hugged have nothing said just being like there and I know there are some people who would rather have someone sit down with them and have a conversation and like get it out so it's really specific but there are definitely things not to do what you did touch on which is like don't definitely don't yell at them or ask like why are you in this stuff doing that don't shame them for it either because if it's self-hatred they already feel bad enough doing it and the doing the self-harm will probably add to the self-hatred in general so shaming them for it is just pointless like they probably understand that it's not a healthy habit and that it's not a good thing and that like they shouldn't be doing it but um that doesn't give you the right to shame them for it because that will just make it worse it also doesn't mean that it's kind of like their choice like it doesn't mean that they can just stop even if they know that it's a bad thing it doesn't mean that they could just like grab it or fix it themselves also like shaming them into a counseling room isn't going to fix it immediately telling them to stop it isn't going to fix it immediately these things take time because there's obviously a big deep rooted issue that you're going to have to pull out which is going to take more than telling them to stop or setting them into one counseling thing yeah however counseling is good you do mention counseling if you have like a friend who you know is self-employed or a family member whatever it is if you can get them to some kind of professional help that's at least a start whether or not that ends up actually helping them it's just like to get them to a professional and have that professional like know what they're doing um might uh help them in some way whether that means like just letting someone know or whether that means that that person can actually help them but like um yeah so just like take them to whatever social worker or guidance counselor or if you can get them to go to a therapist a lot of people won't but sometimes it just means like dragging someone to a social worker or like guidance counselor yeah and um say someone comes up to you and like telling you that you like they're self-harming it's your responsibility to help them and help them get help but it's not your responsibility to like be their therapist yeah and you're not quality most of us aren't qualified to deal with any of this and sadly some of us still have to deal like even if you are a qualified therapist and it's your friend who's coming to you for help you still just because you're qualified doesn't mean you have to help yeah that's like a very specific situation but I don't know how many therapists are watching this right now but if you are you just let to do also like you shouldn't feel that your friends problems are like if they're or whoever the person you're like dealing with their problems shouldn't automatically like become yours and they can sometimes and when you're talking to someone who has a big issue like that it can be super overwhelming so you have to make sure that you're not taking on too much and yes get your friend help and like support them and whatever but don't um like make it into a thing that you feel you have to solve because this is not going to work out on your mind yeah to take care of yourself even if you have someone who is like self-harm and you know coming to your mental health still will come first like get them help support them but we can only focus on ourselves and make sure we are the best people we can be and once everyone gets to that point then yay Oscar do you need anything um not really about that specifically but something that um it's not on here but something that I was I'll take this but it wasn't on here something that I was just thinking about a little bit while you guys were talking about that um is the is like the stigma about self-harm um and reasons why someone might not seek help because they're like and stigmatize it to that because someone who's self-harming um there are a lot of reasons why they wouldn't get help and like I know um those examples that I've seen people um talk about their experiences with self-harm online they talk about it and then people in the comments are like stop trying to get attention you're just doing it for attention you need to get professional help like some random internet guy telling you in the youtube comments to go see a therapist isn't going to make you see a therapist yeah especially and then especially calling you attention seeking in the same comment and a lot of people say oh you're just doing it for attention and usually that is not the case usually people are not doing it for attention but people that do do it for attention that is another sign of a deeply rooted problem right it's not just being an attention yeah if you are so start for attention and need to be noticed and like some you need somebody to acknowledge you that badly that you're willing to hurt yourself to do to get there then that is another that is another issue and another there's a complete problem it's not a valid thing to feel it's not just oh my parents didn't buy me this I'm going to try to get their attention through this I don't maybe there's someone who would do that I personally never encountered anyone who would self harm for attention in the bad side yeah a lot of people say that people do stuff like this for attention but like as you guys said if you're doing it for attention then that is a deeper problem so when you say like when people say someone's doing something for attention they usually mean it in like an insignificant sense and in like I guess saying that that person is just like being annoying and obnoxious and trying to like be cool or something but I don't know what I'm trying to say here there's a deeper problem and nobody's just going to do it for like the everyday kind of attention you can get for like something relatively like safe and normal there's also nothing wrong with wanting attention right like it's a normal thing to want wanting someone to acknowledge you wanting people in your life to acknowledge you as a person and to have respect and to have people ask you how you're doing and just check in with you like that's a human thing that's a very human thing to feel like say like a bad thing but no we all want attention in a sense even if you're really introverted you still want to be acknowledged on some level you still like no matter how introverted you are on some level you want other people to acknowledge your humanity which is hey you exist I see that congratulations and another reason people might not seek help is because of like the main Olympics type thing so like in a lot of mental health support groups if you go you can talk about your mental health issue but then people will try to one up you by saying oh I have it worse oh you have depression oh well I have depression and I'm schizophrenic and then and and and and all this stuff and and they'll try to invalidate what you're going through because like you could like assist gender sexual white man living in America who suffers with depression is apparently not as valid as someone who is starving to death and also has depression like no those are both problems pain is pain one person has two different kinds of pain and it might be more serious pain but mental illness doesn't doesn't pick and choose based on life situations right anybody of any demographic living anywhere in the entire world can suffer from a mental health issue and undiagnosed or not it is not just a like a millennial thing like I know that there are some baby boomers specifically who are like millennials invented autism like no we definitely definitely didn't what does that even mean they're like back in my day we didn't have autism like yes you did people just didn't get diagnosed yeah or you just it wasn't a thing like it wasn't it wasn't oh this person is autistic it's oh this person is a little off and can't communicate properly and bashes their head they also have worse words for no apparent reason yeah it's not like oh this person is autistic and here's how we can help them it's oh this person is weird and we're going to ostracize them right so just because a group has been erased in the past doesn't mean they have been newly invented like trans people have always existed on millennials like you invented this thing oh the heck we didn't we inherited this crap from you yeah it can be genetic it's existed forever like it's existed forever it just hasn't been diagnosed it also can be genetic so like yeah lots of like mental illness you can be predisposed to that I'm very predisposed to mental illness because a lot of my family on both sides of a lot of people in my family on both sides my mothers and my father's side suffer from some mental illness and so my sister and I are genetically predisposed to be mentally ill and I struggle with mental illness and and my mother is a very anxious person my father he hates doctors he's very paranoid and he hates going to the doctor but my mother who is a medical professional thinks that I don't know my mother thinks that he has ADHD and I believe that just based on my obviously I'm not a doctor just based on my own personal experience with my father and with the numerous people that I know in my life who have ADHD he and my grandmother on my dad's side very very anxious all the time my aunt has OCD bipolar disorder and depression and my mother has struggled with depression and so it's not your fault mental illness is never your fault because it's a genetic thing it's a chemical imbalance in your brain it isn't something that you are doing to yourself and you're not faking it it isn't your fault it's not the same thing but it's similar it's still a sickness mental illness and mental health should be treated the same like if somebody gets in a car crash and they almost die they go to the hospital their family comes and they bring them flowers and they're like oh my gosh this is so terrible that this happened oh my goodness I'm so sorry but then if somebody tries to kill themselves and they survive they go to the hospital suddenly everything is really hushed and everything is really taboo and nobody wants to actually acknowledge what happened they're just like oh it doesn't matter what happened I just want you to get better no acknowledge the problem and say these are the steps we can take so that this doesn't happen again also in schools like say you hurt yourself like hurt your arm but you will get a pass out of gym say you're socially anxious and you have to go to present AS to present and you tell your teacher that the teacher is most likely going to say oh we're all nervous enough there you don't get a pass in school for mental illness just bull crap because if this person who has a hurt leg can sit out of the gym this person who has a mental illness should be able to sit out of this presentation and you shouldn't give them that grade for that I've had experiences with teachers I have a teacher who I guess like pretends he's an ally to all these people but he's like the most he's awful I went to so I have type 1 diabetes and that means that I have to leave class quite a bit just to like go to the nurse's office and so I ask him like when I leave class to go to the nurse because that's a procedure and I ask him and he's like yeah always of course you can go and then I asked him one time if I could go see a social worker because I was like on the verge of a mental breakdown and I asked him I was like can I please just go like see like go to guidance and he says no because this is your class and your class is important and he went on this huge rant about how like no you don't get to just go do that because you have to come here and this is important and I tried to explain to him that mental health is more important than school and he absolutely refused but whenever there's a physical issue with my health he's like of course go it's so much more important than this and it's just so there that schools and just like systems in general are wired to believe that physical health is more important than mental health did you just end up leaving? yeah I just left I was like bye I've done that in French before you were just talking about this before so I don't want to get into it but I've struggled a lot in French class for more reasons other than the fact that the material is hard that's all I'll say I was feeling very like I was having a really bad mental health day just I woke up and felt bad and I was really anxious all day I had to have French near the end of the day and I was very very anxious and just very very jumpy and I couldn't really focus on my work and the teacher called me out she was like Oscar why aren't you focusing I said oh I'm just having a hard day she was like whatever and moved on and then later I asked for help and she said I really want help because before you were just saying you couldn't focus and I'm like this is not valid you're not valid leave me alone and so eventually I was like can I go can I just go take a walk and she was like no and usually she today I asked to go for a walk and she let me go which was good and I didn't go back to class because today I was having another issue I was like I waited like 10 minutes I was like I have a migraine can I go to the can I go to the nurses she was like sure of course for a headache of course you can go and I'm like this is not valid you can't do this that's not okay and you don't need to you don't like you shouldn't invade your students' privacy also to make sure they're like valid in their mental health struggle like you shouldn't have to like my teacher that time when he refused to let me go to guidance he was like why like why do you need to go why are you on the verge of a mental breakdown like you don't get to ask that and you don't like you don't get to have your students entire like mental health history so that you can feel okay letting them go to guidance like it doesn't matter diagnosed undiagnosed if someone's having a rough time mentally you should like treat them the same as if they had something like physically like a physical element like you don't need medical records if you have to go to the nurse to get a bandaid so why do you have to like have that to go to guidance it's something I just hate in general is when people like you ask to like go for a walk go to the bathroom get a drink or anything did you just say no? like excuse me I'm not gonna say I'm gonna go to the bathroom thank you very much I have to go if anyone knows a little bit more about the English language than me it's gonna prevent me from going to the bathroom what is this or like no you can't go for a walk I can watch me as long as I'm in the school building I legally I would be in the school not in your class bye bye and just circling back to the guidance thing good tangent Jules but just going back for a second I don't want to speak for every school in our district let alone in Vermont or America or the world but in our school district going to guidance isn't like a fun time it's not like you just get to like hang out like you go and like you get asked like a hundred questions a second by any person usually there's crying or there's just like no one there to stop the guidance sermon you just go in there and like sit on the floor and you're like okay yeah like our guidance counselor is on family leave and there's no substitute yes she's she's been gone for like half a year and they don't do anything about it and then the other one has like the social worker has like a schedule with individual like pre-scheduled meeting times and I don't blame either of them for that but like you literally if you're having a rough mental health time and you're not allowed you get a detention if you're in a classroom alone so there's like no solution so you just have to leave the classroom and either like wander around the hallways or like sit on the floor and hope they don't notice you like there's you don't get a sub you expect all your students to be perfectly mentally fine for an entire year no we're in middle school it's just weird because then I'll go in and I'm just like there's like I need to talk to them whether there's no one in the office I just like sit there and I'm like okay and also at the same time like teachers shouldn't expect us to be mentally well if there is a guidance counselor like one visit to guidance isn't going to like ooh my depression is cured because I went to guidance like that's how it works depression can't really be cured because it could be better like people think with like antidepressants like oh that's a cure no it's treatment there's a difference I still have this thing just because I'm on these pills doesn't mean oh I'm mentally better I'm totally fine and happy and you never have an impressive episode ever and ever feel bad ever just to give you guys a little bit of hope for high school next year so it's set up in a really different way so the guidance counselors aren't really mental health people they're more there to help you with like your schedule and stuff and so if you want to talk to someone you have to go see the social worker or the nurse both of them are very good about stuff and if neither of them are there nobody's like following you around the hallway or monitoring you and like you can just like go sit somewhere like in the hallway you can sit outside the hallway or you can go sit in the library or literally anywhere and you can just like hang out and for the most part teachers aren't gonna come out of their classrooms to come hunt you down if they ask you why are you gone for so long and you say I went to see I went to go see the social worker they'll be like oh okay and they won't get even trouble so just that's that's a good thing that the school does well and like we have like two weeks to arrive so you were talking about nurses our nurse is so amazing like I needed to just sit and just talk to it Oliver and I walked into her and I had Jim and I walked in and I was like hey I'm not hurt can you give me a pass for Jim I need to go like sit down a deal and he's like yeah sure here you go I walked into Jim gave it to them they're like okay bye kid whoever you are and then I just sat there I was like what? and you just left I just left and the nurse like gave me a pass no questions asked I don't think I got a pass that time I just left I don't think you did I'm pretty sure you just came with me you know what but like it's okay I'm pretty sure you were skipping science that's valid but also like don't skip school kids it's bad yeah I mean you have to like prioritize because you have to be able to um we really are you have to be able to like prioritize um all your stuff like you should go to school if you can but also um like we're gonna talk about mental health days at some point in the future um but you also have to be able to like let yourself like leave class and don't shame yourself for taking breaks don't let other people shame you either if someone's like yelling at you for self arming just like get up, talk them off and leave that's what I would do honestly I mean I wouldn't don't swear at them that's a bad idea don't take my advice I'm very sorry just like don't let them push you around or shame you like you're allowed to stand up for yourself you're allowed to like say I'm not gonna sit here and take this bye like guys someone please keep talking so going off of what you were saying like a symptom or just a part of having a mental illness is you never think that you are right in a situation like you arguing with someone and you think that you're right while you're arguing but then afterwards you're like I'm not right this isn't real whatever whatever and you try to validate their opinion and their thoughts in your head no matter how awful their opinions were like I was bullied a lot when I was younger which contributes to some of my mental health stuff and just due to the nature of the bullying in my head whenever someone's being mean to me because I was bullied by someone who was at that time my friend and so in my head whenever someone's being mean to me I always try to rationalize it and I was like oh well I did this and oh well they were coming from like I tried to rationalize it and validate it and excuse it in a way but I know but I've been working on not letting that happen and just being like no that person is a shitty person sorry that person is bad is a bad person and they don't care about my feelings and I don't need to validate them right and in a calm rational argument it is fine to see the other person's point of view but like what I was saying excuse this for like I do this all the time and I will go to my friends and I'm like hey here's what's happening what's your opinion and then they'll tell me all the things that I thought beforehand and convince me of my argument because I need them to because I'm like well crap maybe I'm wrong maybe I'm being mean I like talking to your friends because you should be able to talk to your friends and then they can like give their opinions and I think that can be as you said validating your own opinions and also like using like seeing other people to be able to stand up for yourself and say stop shaming me bye so seeing like your friends and other people's points of view without turning that into a way to invalidate yourself I guess it's like a take away I don't know what we're talking about what are the notes say? literally nothing else things by people self harm wow they say nothing else so I think that maybe we should tie this into the theme of this show which is LGBT stuff so LGBT youth so the LGBTQ youth so that's lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans queer, questioning plus whatever else are at a higher like a dramatically higher risk of suicide and mental illness and self harm and there are a lot of reasons for that because some people who don't want to acknowledge how privileged works will say oh it's just a coincidence oh all that stuff no it isn't a coincidence and there's a reason that this demographic specifically youth those LGBTQ youth are at a much higher risk for depression and anxiety and attempting suicide or self harm there's a pattern there and it's not just a random statistic and I think that what we should we should talk about that why that might be okay quickly before we do that we will talk about that I want to make something very clear suicide and self harm are two very different things you can self harm and not be suicidal you can be suicidal and not self harm there are different things that just happen to be sometimes closer to each other in certain situations all over the image of it so they can connect but they don't have to is what you're saying I was just saying that as like an overarching thing I was just going to clarify so it all sort of ties together into heteronormativity is this sexism because we were talking about like self hatred earlier and I think for queer kids a lot of the time that can be tied into internalized homophobia and transphobia which we discussed a little bit before at some point in the last episode we discussed something at some point but I think so yeah self hatred can be connected to heteronormativity in that way which all just makes it more likely for queer kids to self harm and I think it's awful that those heteronormative thoughts are so deeply ingrained in our society that it literally makes kids more likely to hurt themselves it can also be it can also be a cause of bullying too and you like try to excuse them and then you maybe start to believe what they're saying and that can lead to self hatred so like having someone say oh you're an awful person or whatever they say to you and then you rationalize it and you make sense of it and you start to feel that way this whole cycle there's like a timeline and that leads to kind of the sad ending where either potentially they could commit suicide but again they're separate things yeah like growing up in a society that tells you that your attraction to someone is wrong your gender is wrong that your gender isn't real that your pronouns aren't real that you're just making stuff up for attention is really really harmful and like one of the hardest times for me was when I had when I was forcing myself to be feminine because I knew that I thought that I had to and because I was so angry about being feminine I had this was when I was 13 so I was like I don't really know how anything works at all I was like oh I must be a lesbian because they're masculine which is not the truth which is not a thing but my head of a normative brain was like lesbians are always masculine and that's how you know when you see one that's how you can identify one and so I want to be masculine so I must be a lesbian not the truth I am a gay trans guy very different very different and not even close no not even remotely and when I was forcing myself into that identity that didn't fit me and I was still uncomfortable that was so hard for me and I was going through a lot like being 13 for one I was going through a lot just being that age is hard and and then on top of trying to make sense of how you're feeling when you don't have words for it is very hard and when nobody wants to talk about it like at school a teacher who is gay might not talk about their partner might not have pictures of them with their partner like heterosexual teachers just have their wedding pictures up adorable it's so cute to see that but a queer teacher might be more hesitant to put up a photo of them and their same gender partner and that causes students to not have a sense of normalcy when it comes around like I'm not normal no one else I know is like this no one else is talking about it no one else is guiding me in a sense I'm not normal even queer people don't talk about their queerness sometimes just because heteronormative and cisnormative society so if you're a kid in school and you're like well all my teachers are straight and cis well they might not be but they're probably not talking about it because probably the school system is going to shame them for it and they're going to get like in trouble with some parent is going to get angry because they're homophobic or transphobic whatever it is and so it all just leads back to this discussion not being had and the same goes for mental health so it all just sort of like connects into an awful mess I used to think that all of my friends are straight and cis and look at me now I have no straight and cis friends because well then again I have no friends but still but like I used to think that I was completely alone and then people started to be able to like talk about it more with like having the GSA in our school and having it kind of being more broadcasted in our school people were able to kind of do that and I was like oh holy crap I'm not weird well I'm still weird they all come out of the woodwork straight cis friend group because it was at lunch when we were in like for a while and then eventually we all just like came out and now we're just we're literally all queer there's like all of her hey I'm queer and all of her was like oh hey same and then and then I'm like hey I'm trans and you're like cool and then two months later you're like same it was amazing we all just like group together we flocked together without even knowing it like my two best friends in the whole world when I first met them one of them said to me and I specifically remember this because I thought it was so funny because at this point I was like I'm a lesbian because I'm so now I have an excuse to be masculine and I get a pass now which is very harmful thinking that I grew up on sort of society and I don't at all encourage to think like that because that's not true I was already out as like being lesbian and my friend who my friend Max back then his name wasn't Max but I'm not in the business of dead names I know he's my son he said to me and I remember this so strongly because it's so funny to me now he says well I'm living proof that hanging out with gay people doesn't make you gay and now Max and now Max is trans and he is dating a boy and it and I just thought that was and on my friend Alvi said to me once dead name if you were a boy you'd be gay and I said says who and pause for laughs and then my friend and then I said to Alvi well dead name because his name wasn't Alvi then well dead name if you were a girl you'd be a lesbian and then Alvi says to me yeah cause I like girls which is not the case Alvi is very non binary and very queer and just we all start as cishets who are confused and we flock together somehow knowingly and we all just gradually are like wait I had a mind blowing discovery as we were talking I came out right after I joined GSA what the frick I think it's just probably because your um queerness was buried so deeply like hello it was buried so it's I think well like jokes aside kids grow up thinking they're cishet because or like shaming themselves as default so that's why no that was correct I support you so I think that's why this is such a common experience having your friend group like all suddenly turn queer like we were queer the whole time but society raised us to like they just put on this outer layer on us that's like the cishet versions of us and then eventually when we like really realize like find the words and like validate our own feelings or have them validated by someone else we can like break out of that and shed that and get rid of it and then like it's just it's weird that we have to go through this whole extra transformation process just because we're not cishet and that's another thing that I have to say about baby boomers is there there's like this generation everybody's gay now and everyone's bisexual whatever that means and it's just a trend now like no Rebecca it's not a trend more people are just like if I say that I'm gay or trans I'm not going to get murdered instantly exactly like people feel safer to actually like the population of gay people has always been high it was just illegal to be gay up until like 60 years ago maybe less so don't even give me that Rebecca you are wrong you said turning queer and for some reason it maybe thought of werewolves and they're like oh no the full moon is here I become fabulous I don't know why but that's just what I thought I'm not seeing that you're not seeing it come on imagine it like it's the full moon and you just turn a rainbow as much as I enjoy your strolls Rebecca or Lane you shouldn't do it you shouldn't do it when you're being filmed the topic at hand we have been on a tangent for a long time I feel like we connected we kind of connected some of this stuff together because a lot of these ideas like you can go on a rant about like any of these topics and it all just ends up connecting and literally our show structure just ranting you guys it's fine to like validate my rant back to our original topic we were talking about self harm we were and one thing that some people find helpful because we talked about alternatives this isn't a direct alternative but if you're struggling with this stuff one strategy you can use is calling a hotline or a text line and these are just like helpful numbers and you can just call these up and there will be someone there who just like talks to you and you can just like like gush to them about all your problems and whatever avoiding gushing to your friends and if you don't have like a supportive group to be in if you're surrounded by assholes here's what to do or if you're surrounded by people who support you it's just like too much to talk to them about it especially because they're a part of your life to like you see them every day and it's like oh hey I know that you're doing that thing these people don't even have a faith when you talk and they're like oh here's this voice that's a helpful strategy so if you want to read off the hotline so the first one is it just says suicide p I assume that suicide prevention hotline it's one eight hundred two six three eight two five five and the Trevor project which I have called before to talk about stuff is very good I would definitely recommend it the person who picked up had a lovely Australian accent and she was very nice oh fine I love accents their number is two one two six nine five eight six five zero now let's hope I got those numbers right and an alternative because calling the number is hard sometimes because you're so like if you're very anxious and calling talking on the phone makes you anxious if you it's I'm alive I think I'm alive.org but if you just google I'm alive as all one word it brings you to an online chat like crisis I'm not sure you can text the suicide hotline yeah I've it takes a really long time to get in though because they get there's this there's like a queue and so you have to wait in line for someone to be available because if no one is available they just route you to another call center but they don't have enough people who are they can route you to if you try to text so you can text but it you're less likely to get in in time to have to like process something before you like do something rash like self harm yeah so you can call them or just I'm alive all one word and it should be one of the top results and it's an online texting thing so you won't get billed for using data if you have minute by minute phone bill and it's confidential so you don't they don't they don't ask for names they don't ask for well they ask for names but you don't have to give them your name and they everything is private and the chat deletes automatically so it's a good way to like get out your feelings or if you're in like like a panicky moment and you can't talk to someone in real life or if that's stressful whatever it is that's a really good way to calm yourself down or get some kind of solution to your problem through that or those people could give you like tips to help you with future situations so that's a good strategy thank you for watching this has been all things LGBTQ youth edition next time we are on we'll be talking about self-care continuing with our mental health series see you next time bye