I Have Gifts That You Don’t Have, and You Have Gifts I Don’t Have.

     Recently, I have started to read a book called God is Not a Christian by Desmond Tutu.  He discusses tolerance, interfaith and oppressed groups.  In one chapter he discusses an African worldview, they refer to as UBUNTU, which is a term representing the idea that “a person is a person through other persons.”  No matter where we come from we need other humans, otherwise we cannot function completely in the world.  It teaches us not only trivial things like walking and talking, but it teaches to get along with other people. Tutu makes a comparison to Descartes who is famous for believing the phrase “I think, therefore, I am.”  Tutu changes that view into “I am because I belong.”  We are created to be part of a family, we are created for togetherness, and we are human and also subhuman.  This is a beautiful thing, all people need is other people to learn, grow and think.  This really made me begin to think of all the people I know in my job and the commonality among all those who struggle.  That is the sense of belonging, being in connection, being vulnerable to allow other humans to enter their hearts.  The students have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves, therefore not learning Ubuntu.  Ubuntu encompasses generosity, hospitality, compassion, caring and sharing.  When this lacks, life becomes grey and the path unclear, especially for young people who are trying to find their way.  Without the experience of belonging in a group of other humans, we cannot know what is right and what comes next, therefore, making “bad decisions.” For teenagers who are lacking a supportive family and home environment are told they make bad decisions, this makes me shake my head.  These may seem like bad decisions, but they had to make this decision not knowing the right thing to do and without having other people to watch and collaboratively learn together, they are left in the dark to do this alone.  Troubled young people may be from poor families and may be “less fortunate” so to speak, however, it is not the material things that make them “less fortunate” because they lack what is important, other people.  Especially in today’s society, even the families who are rich with material possessions, lack human beings.  Unbuntu speaks of the intrinsic worth of a person as not dependent on extraneous things such as status, race, creed, gender, or achievement.  I believe for many families today, rich and poor, this has been lost.  Materialism has gone beyond its essential purpose and use.  Tutu described groups of people who had Ubuntu, as families who worked together and learned to develop as humans with one another, if we could achieve this we could see a switch, we would be compassionate and gentle, we could use our strength on behalf of the weak, and we would not take advantage, we would treat others as what they are: Human beings.  Although this may be thought of as an old concept, however, today in African family life, Ubuntu is still greatly admired and followed.  Our western world has moved towards individualism.  This creates loneliness, even when surrounded by people.  An example to illustrate this is the typical bystander scenario.  There is an attack across the street and passerby’s can walk past without being involved.  More and more people have learned to separate them self from other people.  Ubuntu lessens the distance with others, and it eliminates the status of success and failure, it gets rid of the idea that we can discard other people because they are poor or different.  Ubuntu reminds us that we belong in God’s family, which is the human family.  Take a moment, walk down the street, acknowledge people around you.  Acknowledge your family and allow them to belong with you, don’t move them into a dark and unclear road, and allow them to live in God’s family.  Try to understand the African worldview of Ubuntu, because the greatest good, says Tutu, is the communal harmony.

Huffinton Post is a fun Newspaper I like to check out once in a while.  Here is an article to follow up with my last post about Charlie Sheen. 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/urizenus-sklar/charlie-sheen-nihilism_b_838065.html

Cheers

Glamorizing Mental Illness

People who live with a serious mental illness do not tend to be open and public about it.  Mental illness to many is stigmatized and can be a shameful experience.  Imagine having no control over behaviors, overwhelmed by irrational thoughts always swimming around in your mind, confused by a delusional world and reality, constantly feeling the need for attention from others, unanswered anger, continuous sadness, extreme loneliness, do I really need to go on?  The feelings that go along with mental illness are nothing close to glamorous and the people suffering have pasts that haunt them, they resent who they are, they just want a peace of mind.  Why then, is mental illness being glamorized by celebrities who are going through the turmoil of mental illness? 

The obvious answer to this question is, because they can.  They are already in the spotlight.  Public awareness can be a good thing for mental illness sufferers, however, when its belligerent and negative attention seeking, it is no longer an appropriate way to cope, and it is giving mental illness, and those living in it, a poor image.

Over the past few months, the Charlie Sheen escapades have been talked about as much as the biggest political events occurring all over the world.  Although this man is in the entertainment business, his outrages and comedic attempts are consistent with symptoms, such as, loss of control, impulsivity, anger and rage, and possible psychosis.  He is painting an absolute false image of mental illness.  He is making mental illness “funny.”  And although, humor is a natural and adaptive coping strategy, he is being hurtful and mean about it.  It is not necessarily Sheen who has let this show go too far, show business has allowed it, and at other’s expenses.  Recently I listened on the radio that he was going on tour and his tickets sold out in minutes.  REALLY? 

His rants and foul language are being tolerated because “he is mentally sick.”  When someone is mentally sick, they need to seek help, not allow it to be in the spotlight getting the highest ratings in Hollywood! As I noted earlier, awareness is good, however,  he is allowing terms like “insane,” “crazy,” and “lunatic” be accepted.  He is giving himself this label. This label is transferable, others should see him as judgmental to others.  It is completely CRAZY to be allowing him to be using those labels in the first place, and he is allowing the incorrect and degrading terms to be used for someone who is obviously experiencing mental illness.  Should Sheen be allowed to continue his career in entertainment?  Yes, of course, that’s what he does.  I would want nothing more than to see my clients be able to continue and pursue careers if they were functionally able to do so.  But Sheen is not functionally able to do so.  He is, in my opinion out of control and it is a sad vision.  He needs help.  He is not functioning when he is putting messages out into the public eye that being “insane” is a party and glamorous life. 

Awareness for mental health is taking positive actions, especially in Canada since Clara Hughes, speed skater and Olympic medalist teamed up with Bell Canada. She came out to the public about her combat with depression and started her “Lets Talk” campaign, which encouraged people to open up about mental illness and allow it to be accepted in society.  This type of awareness not only allows people to feel listened to, it creates empathy, support, and advocacy.  Sheen on the other hand, consumes society with extreme ideas about being mentally ill and people buy into it as entertainment. The last few months of Sheen on television has made mental illness a joke, its turned into celebrity scandal and gossip, making people with addiction and mental health look crazy.

I hope people who know anything about mental illness, and I know there are more than one could even fathom, see Sheen, shake their head and pray for him and others to seek the needed help in order to ease their minds and accept who they are and I hope they create awareness about mental illness and what it really means to affectively cope with their inner conflicts.

I am Resilient!

As I entered the lunchroom with my co-workers we began talking about a few students we have been working with.  The students we work with come from very stressful and dysfunctional situations. As we were talking about the hardships our students face, situations most of the staff would have a very hard time imagining, but it made me think.  How can some people go through their lives hardship after hardship?  This is the life of many people on this planet and how do they continue to get through these situations.  We see students everyday, attending school to achieve a better life than they have lived so far in their lives or better lives than they witnessed their parents having. It is amazing what one human can get hit with and still be able to communicate, get to places they need to go, care for a child, and the list goes on, seemingly as though nothing has happened. In many of my students, I find it most interesting, what the human mind and body is capable of.  This is the idea of human psychological resiliency. What a great capacity rooted deep into each one of us. For better understanding of this term, Psychological Resiliency refers to an individual's capacity to withstand stressors and not manifest psychology dysfunction, such as mental illness or persistent negative mood.  Psychological stressors or "risk factors" are often considered to be experiences of major acute or chronic stress such as death of someone else, chronic illness, and sexual, physical or emotional abuse, fear, and unemployment and community violence.

I just feel this is an amazing characteristic human’s carry.  When we think we cannot imagine these major stressors happening or when we say we could never deal with these tough situations we see others dealing with, we can back up and say, we can!  We all have this incredible resiliency within ourselves.  So why then, do some people seem as though they are not coping?  The three explanations I have come up with is this:

1)    Is it an environmental result that either gives us a higher tolerance for stressful events? Does repeated risk factors give us a better resiliency? Or do we have less resiliency with  the lack of exposure to highly stressful events?

2)    Or is resiliency innate?  Do we have this built-in ability or inability to cope with stressful situations? 

3)    My own personal query: Is mental illness or risk-taking behavioural problems the result of a lack of resiliency?  This is an interesting question to ponder and I am challenged, it may be a question that is unanswerable, however, we can look to find what others have decided about our human capacity to be resilient in the toughest situations.

Some therapeutic approaches to intervening with at-risk children and youth come from promoting resiliency as a skill.  This skill is believed to be a technique that will help children cope in order to succeed in school.  It is used as a way to teach coping strategies, which is where the terms coping and resiliency become interchangeable, which, I believe to be two separate ideas. Coping skills can be taught, but resiliency, we do not know at this point.  I want to say no. Are coping skills and resiliency different? We have read into the definition and theory of resiliency in humans, coping follows this path:

Coping is to face and deal with responsibilities, problems, or difficulties, especially successfully or in a calm or adequate manner. 

I like to believe our resiliency is one’s personal attachment and recognition of God. Are we following the path of solving problems before they emerge into bigger problems?  Perhaps without the vision of God, the path is less clear.

I would like to leave this question open-ended, I would like to leave it as an amazing aspect of Human Lives.  Next time you hear of a situation and think to yourself or say, “I could never deal with that, or how do they still function each day,” think to yourself,

I AM RESILIENT!

Lets Talk...

Let’s Talk…..

Something today provoked my desire to start blogging my experiences with people, mainly young people, teens, troubled teens.  I work as an alternative education instructor.  My true profession and passion is Behaviour.  Each day I am faced with listening to real struggles and challenges that I could not have imagined as a young person.  I interact with teenage parents, students getting abortions, students living with influences of drugs all around them, students who have lost track of their parents, students in foster homes, students who have been homeless and addicted.  I notice different trends and patterns with the students I work alongside each day and I wonder, is this behaviour true for most social groups or just the lower economic group?  The biggest barrier I have observed is communication.  “What’s wrong?” “Nothing” “OK.”  If your teen replies to this question in this way, do you leave it simply at that?  Or would you pry a little further?  I am feeling as though teens don’t talk, and parents, teachers, elders, (we) don’t make them.  Perhaps it’s a case of “No news is good news.”

Let’s look at a middle-upper class family.  Parents are working, may not return home from work until well into the evening.  Perhaps their kid(s) have already fed themselves dinner, or perhaps there is hired help to do this.  The parents get home in time to hop in the car and drive to piano, sports, etc.  They arrive home and go to bed.  Parents are exhausted and only think of getting to bed to do it all again tomorrow. 

As a lower socio-economic family, the children may be home alone, they may have parents who are working any hours they can find, and perhaps this is a group living environment, such as a fostered home.  They may have to work anything they can because if they don’t the next meal may be difficult to find.  Perhaps the kids are off hanging with friends.  Maybe this is a single parent family and so time becomes cut in half compared to a two-parented family.  

**  Note:  I understand problems between social classes overlap.  I am simply trying to identify a few scenarios, not meant to be interpreted as stigmatizing or discriminating.

As I think more about this I begin to understand.  TIME.  Time in the present day seems to be of the essence.  Time is not free, do we need to buy time from people and do parents have to buy time from their teens?  Have we been inclined to be so caught up in our own personal lives due to societal changes, employment and additional activities and opportunities that we have minimized the time we have with our own families, or others in our lives.  Rich or poor, people no longer value the face-to-face time with our own families that live under the same roof.  The consequence of this is that EVERYONE is always too busy to talk. 

Additionally, fear plays a significant role in not knowing or engaging deeply into conversation with our younger counterparts.  Teachers don’t want to feel as though they are crossing boundaries, boundaries past their acedemic responsibility.  Parents fear that if they are not focused and dedicated to their job they may lose it, which turns into a belief that perhaps they won’t be able to support their family members.  Times are tough, no one wants to be without employment.  However, this does not have to be the result.  Parents always will have the time, and teens will remember when they are older, the time their parents took to just talk.  Adolescent years are not easy, but they are even more difficult without guidance, boundaries, and especially communication.  We all have the time, the truth is, and we aren’t making time.

In a book I recently read, The Brain That Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge, M.D., described various stories of how plasticity of the brain is controlled primarily by the “Use it, or lose it,” rule.  Meaning, the behaviours we are constantly performing are easily performed because we continue to practice, or rehearse them.  The less we practice learned behaviours, such as social skills and communication behaviours, the more difficult it becomes to efficiently perform them.  As human’s we build our personal repertoires of behaviours to serve our endless amounts of functions.  Without having the ability to retrieve behaviours of communicating and socializing out of our repertoires easily, other behaviours that are easy to grab will be used instead, which could end up with less than desirable results.  If parents can simply continue to allow their children to talk and communicate, they can prevent these behaviours from getting lost, out of their repertoires.

Parents have the sole responsibility of protecting, educating, and listening to their children, among other things.  Parents have the right to question and investigate. In a world of text messaging, Facebook, and instant messaging, parents have a greater responsibility of keeping up with events in their child’s life.  Things can be kept secret and things can go on undetected.  I hope parents and teachers can recognize what these modes of communication are doing to our ‘Y’ generation.  Talk, question, listen, and make time. This needs to change.  Youth should not go through their teenage years keeping things from their parents, parents need to take a stand, make time, simple as that.  Teachers need not be afraid of getting too involved, find what is causing persistent behaviours and discover communication, support a student; they may have no other outlet of communication in times when they need guidance.

  

Behavioural Beings Begins

Human Behaviour fascinates me, I want to share my observations with others.  I love working with young people, and I hope I am one person in their lives who encourages them to make small changes towards positive behaviour.  I hope you all like some of the things I want to talk about, I would like to be able to share my experiences and perhaps something will strike a nerve and create awareness for people around you.  Enjoy.