As it turns out, the answer to this question is surprisingly unanimous – it’s nature! Seemingly, we find natural environments to be inherently calming. This involves being physically ‘in’ nature – wooded areas,1 gardens,2 and ‘green’ spaces – but also indoor features such as the natural light3 and scenery provided by windows,4 or the presence of potted plants.5 Even simulated nature, including recorded soundscapes, synthetic plants, and photos or paintings of natural environments seem to create a calming effect.6 (By contrast, reportedly, abstract art causes confusion and can even increase stress levels!)2 Whether this is because finding solace in nature is evolutionarily advantageous,7 or because it simply provides restoration from the demands of our day-to-day lives,6 it makes sense, surely, that we find it to be so calming. Reading all of this indoors, on a laptop screen, with very little nature in my immediate vicinity suggested to me that, perhaps, I needed to rethink my relationship with the outside world a little. Seemingly, all the platitudes were right – being outside in nature (or even just being able to see it) does us a whole world of good. In fact, as well as reducing stress levels, it also improves focus, has been shown to boost energy and performance,5 and it seems, in some cases, even has a meditative effect.8 These findings will certainly inform the design of the Confidence Centre.
We could not have simply consulted secondary sources in this research process, however. It was also crucial that we understood the needs and lived experiences of our local community. Thus, we also ran a survey, asking the community how The Confidence Centre should look, and what services it should offer.
I carefully collated the responses received, with extremely interesting results. Here are some of the findings:
- Short videos were the overwhelmingly preferred form of advertisement for the Confidence Centre
- People would feel most encouraged to enter the Confidence Centre if there were a notice on the door explicitly expressing that everyone is welcome
- Regarding the interior of the Confidence Centre, the strongest interest was in having a range of comfy seating options available – but being warmly greeted upon entry was a close second
- When invited to suggest their own ideas around the design and services, respondents expressed strong interest in the following:
- For services: educational resources on anxiety, and social forms of support (e.g., workshops)
- For design: a welcoming vibe, and, overwhelmingly, the presence of low-sensory elements
- For promotional material: simplicity, accessibility (e.g., it being open to everyone), and a clear idea of what to expect
- Across all areas: a range of choices (e.g., different support options, and different things to do / different places to sit within Manga Hapahāpai), and an overall non-clinical approach
Sound relatable? I certainly hope so, because these findings have been absolutely key in informing our design of Manga Hapahāpai / The Confidence Centre.
If you’ve got an idea you’ve not seen expressed here, get in touch! Our survey led to a wealth of awesomely creative suggestions, something we’re always keen to hear more of. While we’re close to opening, The Confidence Centre will remain responsive to feedback and subject to change:)
1 A comparison of the restorative effect of a natural environment with that of a simulated natural environment (Kjellgren & Buhrkall, 2010)
2 A Review of the Research Literature on Evidence-Based Healthcare Design (Ulrich et al., 2008)
3 Psychophysiological Effects of a Single, Short, and Moderately Bright Room Light Exposure on Mildly Depressed Geriatric Inpatients: A Pilot Study (Canazei et al., 2017)
4 Windows, view, and office characteristics predict physical and psychological discomfort (Aries et al., 2010)
5 Green schoolyards as havens from stress and resources for resilience in childhood and adolescence (Chawla et al., 2014)
6 Multisensory, Nature-Inspired Recharge Rooms Yield Short-Term Reductions in Perceived Stress Among Frontline Healthcare Workers (Putrino et al., 2020)
7 Stress Recovery During Exposure to Natural and Urban Environments (Ulrich et al., 1991)
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1. Courage isn’t about not having fear, it is about having and feeling that fear but still going ahead and finding our way through it.
2. Courage is about hearing the negative thoughts, the red zone story reel that we have running, and not letting that rule, not letting that take over our life. It is acknowledging that the changes that we are embarking on or the steps we are taking may not feel safe, they may well feel unfamiliar because they are new, but having the determination to make them, however, small those steps have to be…
3. By being courageous we gain evidence that we are capable, we can do whatever it is, and each piece of courageous evidence from the green zone helps us to break down that red zone story reel of b*llshit that we have running.
The best bit about this is that we can gain evidence that we are capable, that we are deserving, through the smallest of steps, smallest of actions, and the more of those steps and actions we can take, the more evidence we are gaining to disprove the beliefs, to break down that story reel.
Those actions can ‘simply’ be about doing something different, and we have so many opportunities to do that during the day.
It could be choosing a different drink/type of coffee when going out, it could be going a different way to work, it could be trying a recipe of something you have cooked so many times over.
The best bit? We might hate the turmeric latte, we may believe our recipe is actually better, the end result doesn’t matter half as much as the decision to do something different! That is where the healing is.
4. What has stopped us before? Fear, others’ beliefs and values that we have taken on, society’s expectations, cultural say-so, previous experiences related to it or not; not even our own experiences, stories we have been told. We don’t want to dwell here, but recognising what some of those barriers have been in the past, can help us be aware of them when they do pop up again…
5. Change takes courage and courage takes energy. When we are in a place of making a choice, the choice that will lead us closer to where we want to be can often feel the harder thing, the option that requires us to be vulnerable, it requires more patience, more resilience, more capacity, and therefore more courage.
It is much easier to carry on doing the same thing we have always done, we know what it looks like and feels like, we know how others react to us in that space. For us to have the energy to be courageous to make the changes we want we need to be filling up the tanks and doing self-care. Navigating change from an empty tank can make the journey much harder, so when setting goals or making plans please factor in how you are going to look after yourself along the way….
6. Courage can enable us to meet others with empathy. When we have faced situations, when we have walked through our fears, when we have approached heartache or whatever it might be and navigated our way through, then we can sit alongside someone and say “I may not have been through the same thing, but I get it.”
7. I have read in a few places that one of the biggest regrets of the dying is not about what they have done, it is about what they hadn’t. What if you were able to reduce some of those regrets by taking some courageous steps in this chapter of your life.
8. Being connected to our true self can help make life different in so many ways. I describe our core values as the backbone of our soul. When we know who we are we can find that we have resources we can draw on, as well as being sure that what we are working towards, the changes that we are wanting to make, are actually ours. Our true essence is always there, it never leaves us. Sometimes it takes courage to find our way home.
9. As mentioned before change involves us being vulnerable, not only is this made easier when we have energy but also when we have that connection to our true self, when we have those foundations in place, it can help us to feel safer, to find and create the safe spaces that we need to enable us to get back up the next day and do what is required of us.
10. If we are not open to change if we are not willing to be vulnerable, if we are not able to sit with pain and loss, then we do miss out on the good stuff too. We miss out on joy, love, connection, wholesomeness.
The courage to feel it all, the red and the green, the dark and the light. The courage to stay with what we are feeling, the experience we are growing through and whatever it is bringing us. All the things that keep us in our box.
When we have the courage to feel it all, to be open to what life brings, life can go from feeling very bland and beige, to having more colour and vibrance once more.
Written by our Lead Coach, Liz – liz-fry.com
]]>“Rewind a bit to 2017, I wasn’t doing great. It wasn’t all doom and gloom by any means, but there was some tough stuff going on and tough stuff that I was ‘dealing with’ by drinking more booze. One ‘Sunday Funday,’ I was looking down the bottom of a bottle of wine wondering what was going on, this wasn’t the plan I had for my travels, for this chapter.
It was time for change.
I hadn’t done a lot of travelling when I first came over to New Zealand, so I decided it was time to explore a bit more, get on the road, make some stuff happen, reconnect with my original goal of travelling to do life differently.
Over the next few months, I put that plan in to action.
Back in Christmas 2016 had me vowing to myself that I would be in a different place emotionally and financially. I didn’t know what that was going to look like or how, but it was a promise.
December 23rd 2017 saw me heading out of Auckland, having given up my rented accommodation, given a lot of my stuff away, put some in a friend’s garage and the rest packed in my car, along with a cheap tent and sleeping bag.
Christmas 2017 saw me camping at Stony Bay in Coromandel. I had kept my promise, I was in a very different place. I remember that afternoon thinking all I needed now was a bbq to finally get my ‘Kiwi Christmas,’ but I was happy with the snacks that I had bought. (Hadn’t upgraded to a gas stove at that point!) In the afternoon a guy walked off the beach and we got chatting and he invited me for steak and all the trimmings for dinner! Whoop! Christmas BBQ after all!
My travels took me exploring the North Island and some of the South, and I was in Cambridge when it was starting to get a bit chilly in my tent, and the plan was to find somewhere to volunteer for the Winter, have a base and then move on.
Putting my plan out on Facebook, a friend said she had seen this place on GoodSorts (TV programme). So I got in touch with Taranaki Retreat and after a few conversations back and forth, I was down there staying on a friend’s bus and embarking on this chapter of ‘three months volunteering!’.
I have told this story many times, and you may well have heard it before, but as I write this time and pause to think back as to the version of me I was then, who had zero expectations of where these three months would take me, was just rolling with what was.
It has been such a beautiful relationship with the team, such a healing one. We often talk about how we are all on a wellbeing continuum, we move up and down. At some points, I felt like I was literally scooting up and down that continuum like nobody’s business!
For a long time in my life I never finished anything, had all these ideas but quietly let them fall away. I think this is one of the reasons why this journey alongside the Retreat has meant so much and been so pivotal in my healing journey. It made me stay in one place, it made me face what I had been avoiding, and supported me as I faced the wounds and the pain.
We often say it’s been x amount of long years. But these haven’t been long, they have just been ginormous, and I am so incredibly grateful.
2024 marks six years with Taranaki Retreat and Waimanako.
This isn’t just a celebration for me. It’s a celebration that life can be done differently, it doesn’t have to look a certain way. Is it easy living on the other side of the world to my family, who are all in the UK, no I miss them every single day. But I believe I have found what I am meant to be doing and where I am meant to be doing it right now, and I am trusting that.
Just know that if things aren’t great right now, that life can be different.
Learning to open our hearts and say yes to life can be a great first step.
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Manga Hapahāpai / The Confidence Centre is part of Waimanako – based at 33 Devon Street West, New Plymouth – and will be offering a kete of support programmes, tools, and a drop-in service for anyone dealing with anxiety (especially rangatahi), or anyone concerned for someone dealing with anxiety.
We’re excited to show you round and share with you how it’s all going to work, answer your questions – and, to celebrate and say thank you!
Please join us on Friday 3rd May from 5:30pm. Everyone who comes along will have the opportunity to:
- Get the above intel, first-hand
- Enjoy some refreshments and music
- Take away a delightful free gift:)
- Meet others involved in this mahi
- See what we’ve set up and why
- Bring along a book (or several) to donate for our book corner (books can be comforting, eh – bonus points if they’re relevant to anxiety support)
- Have your handprint and message put on the window of the Centre (for koha)
Manga Hapahāpai / The Confidence Centre will also be open during the day – you’re welcome to come and take a look before the celebrations start, if you’d prefer something more lowkey!
This project is the outcome of many generous people pulling together with a shared goal in mind. For your part in that – then, now or still to come: THANK YOU!
Developed by Cecily Bull who has run Mindfulness courses at the Retreat for over a year, this is a new course designed to give you some really useful tools…
Instead of focusing on what’s wrong and trying to get away to a better place, learn to relax the body and focus the mind, while practising kindness towards yourself and others. Develop inner peace and discover solutions right in front of you.
There are four parts to the course – these are usually fronted with a ‘taster’ session, so that you can see if this workshop is a good fit before fully committing.
Interested? We’d love to see you there! You can give us a call, text in, or sign up on our homepage to book a space! We highly recommend that you register for our workshops, as spaces can fill up quickly, and it also means we can let you know if it gets postponed.
Make sure you also grab a delicious Barista coffee or amazing snack from our Koha Cafe before or after your workshop. 😉
Koda the Samoyed
Retreat Hosts Hayley and Mac have recently welcomed a number of new pets into their home. Additions to the whānau are Molly the kitten, Scribbles the fish, and a handful of aracuna chickens. They join Koda and the lambs as essential Retreat joy-bringers.
As someone who lived on the Retreat Site back in the day, I feel that it is worthwhile reflecting on the importance of pets within this support environment. It is designed to be a place of tranquility, situated out in nature, its rural location a material manifestation of the idea of ‘getting away from it all’. Guests are encouraged to take a step back from social media and other such digital pursuits – alongside all of the fast-paced, stress-inducing, productivity-driven mentality that comes with it – and to absorb the natural beauty of the Retreat (as well as taking part in an amazing array of workshops, making progress with their support worker, and enjoying a communal evening kai).
One of the resident lambs
An essential aspect of this natural beauty is the resident animals at the Retreat. They bring a unique, invaluable dimension to this time out space. Perhaps you’ve heard of cases of dogs being brought into hospitals or universities to relieve anxieties; the concept of equine therapy; or even the existence of ’emotional support pets’. There’s a reason that these exist! Animals provide a kind of comfort that humans simply cannot manage. There’s that aspect of non-judgement; the humbling joy they seem to feel at the simplest things; and the perfect example they set of ‘slowing down’. We used to have ducks at the Retreat, and they would spend the entirety of their day waddling between cycles of foraging, paddling and grooming, perfectly content (I think we all would be, with that life!).
Animals can also be so reflective of us humans. When we had goats at the Retreat, the grass immediately outside of their enclosure would always be neatly trimmed down to the root, as they would frequently attempt to reach the patches of grass just out of reach – neglecting the wealth of luscious green that surrounded them. Similarly, after a day spent tethered outside of their enclosure, eating as they pleased, the goats would always strain desperately for a few final bites of grass when returned home. One of our dogs at the Retreat, Tui, had an odd partiality for apple cores; the other one, Miti, felt no such affection for them, but would do his best to stomach them if it meant that Tui missed out. They provide an opportunity for hilarity and reflection upon our own occasionally absurd thought processes.
But I digress. The therapeutic power of animals is not something to be underestimated. So often, during my time at the Retreat, you would see it firsthand through our resident cats – Bella and Odin. They continue to live at the Retreat, and seem to have a knack for turning up when a bit of support is what’s needed. Countless Guests have expressed how Bella showed up for a cuddle, or slept on their bed when they were feeling particularly alone, scared, or upset. Even Odin, despite his gruff act, selects the occasional Guest that needs him. They seem to ‘get’ their role – and we know that the Retreat would not be the same without such beautiful, simple facets of support.
Bella loves to curl up on people’s laps!
Odin can get very cuddly, when he feels like it!
And so it is with delight that we welcome more animals to the Retreat whānau. Every pet has its own therapeutic value; whether it’s Koda the dog’s zest for life, boundless joy, and impossible fluffiness; the soothing feeling of watching Scribbles the fish explore its tank; the joy brought on by watching the lambs spring through life; the simple hilarity of observing the aracuna chickens in all of their absurdity – things simply don’t feel as bleak when you’re faced with those gentle scenes of pecking and clucking; the adorableness and cuddly nature of Molly the kitten; or watching the animals interact with each other – they truly contribute towards providing a calming ‘space to breathe’. At Taranaki Retreat, the pets are not just for the hosts’ joy. No, they are part of the team, and their support work makes a major impact.
Scribbles the fish
Molly’s already settling into her role of being adorable and friendly
The new aracuna chickens
Corporate:
Winner – NZHL Taranaki
Best dressed – Primo Wireless – the Ethernet cable dreads won the Judge’s eye!
Really gave a Duck – Paysauce – donated by Jo & Grainge Kyffin. We received absolutely legendary support from this crew – they rallied the troops and sold hundreds of ducks, sponsored a llama (decorated bright red), and provided our team with sustenance and bandanas!
Individual:
Fastest duck – Aria Eldershaw – her duck was streaks ahead of everyone else!
Second place – Margo Beale – this duck took the race seriously and was neck and neck with third, pulling away just at the last minute to snag second place
Third place – Anne Knox – a great run for second, but just pipped at the post!
Most original route – Margaret & Danny Mullan – this duck bravely took flight to get this prize!
Last across the line – Te Hira Rain – all ducks matter and this little swimmer had the stamina to get right to the end!
The best dressed was hard to determine with some excellent and innovative efforts by our corporate sponsors. The first yellow duck across the line was one of the smallest, and bravely swum upside down. It just goes to show that not everyone has to do things the same way!
We have raised well over $7,000.00, with the final figure still to come in at the time of writing this. We could not have managed this event without the support of volunteers – both from our team and others who showed up before and on the day – thank you for all of your hard mahi. It was such a fun event, enthusiastically supported by the public. A big thanks to Americana for supporting the running of the duck race during their own event, and thank you to everyone who gave a duck!
]]>We have long sought to support and journey alongside this community through our programmes, kai for koha cafe, and Listening Ear service – but we have avoided any more in-depth engagement until we were ready to ‘do the mahi’ properly. It is complex support work, requiring time, capacity, and specifically dedicated team members.
In preparation, we have undertaken literature reviews, analysed similar models (within Aotearoa and beyond), and had discussions with our rough sleepers, funders, and other service providers.
At the end of 2023, we reached out to the Toi Foundation and shared our vision for this community project. We were absolutely stoked that the Pilot received partial funding – sufficient to proceed with exploring with other funders.
Project Objectives
Develop an inter-service collaborative co-designed pathway to support the homeless community
- Collaborate with local service providers, police, government agencies, and non-profit organisations to create a comprehensive support pathway.
- Conduct outreach programs to connect with homeless individuals, providing advocacy, information, goal-setting/coaching assistance, and long-term supported routes to housing
Tackle antisocial behaviour, particularly in the New Plymouth CBD
- Develop strategies (including education) to address safety concerns while respecting the rights and dignity of homeless individuals.
- Implement measures to “design out” antisocial behaviour in public spaces, such as community-building initiatives and activities in the CBD that help to build confidence and collaborative relationships rather than ‘fear of the other’
- Support individuals into exploring opportunities for constructive use of their time, including mentored assistance in community projects; and pathways into training and employment opportunities
In the next part of the story, we explored working with our local Police, Taranaki Housing Initiative Trust, and District Council to make this happen. So far, so good – all three are keen to be involved /collaborate, and NPDC has, awesomely, signed up as a further funding partner.
Our next steps will be:
- Seeking out a further funding partner – in order to make the pilot programme achievable (Is this mahi your passion? Could YOU as an individual or via your organisation/business get this project across the line? We would be very, very keen to hear from you. Please reply to this email – or drop a message to [email protected])
- Recruitment for the roles required for the Pilot Project to run
- Holding collaborative community hui and stakeholder meetings, and engaging in pathway co-design, resource allocation, and outreach worker training.
We will definitely keep you in the loop as things happen – and would love to hear from you if you’re keen to collaborate or find out more.
Arohanui, Jamie
]]>Netsafe Micro Learns
A new online safety program to support New Zealand families to become aware of key safety considerations while using Meta products has been released, with the goal of empowering New Zealanders with the digital skills they need to stay safe online. Netsafe developed the 6 “micro learns” (taking 20 minutes or less) including some general Facebook and Instagram safety tips modules for parents and teenage users.
They also created a series on the “Metaverse.” Virtual Reality (VR) headsets are slowing making their way into mainstream usage in New Zealand education institutions and entertainment centres, with Augmented Reality like filters on smartphones part of everyday life. Netsafe held a focus group with parents and teenagers to understand what they wanted to know about this technology, and what safeguards they wanted companies like Meta to build into them. They gave families the opportunity to try the Quest headsets – some for the first time.
The Media Literacy micro learn is another important topic for families this year. Their research in April revealed many New Zealanders don’t understand what misinformation is. Only 28% feel confident to identify misinformation. So the Netsafe education team partnered with AUT’s Dr Helen Sissons as subject matter expert to create a resource that would help families understand the changing media landscape, with many now getting their news from their social feeds.
Ia – Rainbow Research
A new e-portal collating decades of Rainbow research has been launched by Auckland University of Technology (AUT) – the first collection of its type in the world.
The e-portal, called Ia, was unveiled on Wednesday 6 September at a special launch event with guest speaker Ambassador for Gender Equality (Pacific)/Tuia Tāngata, Louisa Wall. Ia will initially house more than 100 Rainbow-specific dissertations and theses, reports, books and queer themed published research journal articles. Head here to check it out!
Convergence Information Hub
Convergence – Bay Of Plenty Consumer, Peer Support, Lived Experience Workforce Forum – have created an Information Hub, full of resources for the Mental Health and Addictions Lived Experience community.
What a wonderful resource for our whānau – check it out here!
Co-design in health: an introduction
Co-design is a tool that involves consumers, whānau and communities in the design, delivery and evaluation of health services. Co-design in health: an introduction is a free resource available through Manatū Hauora / the Ministry of Health’s Learn Online platform.
The course is open to anyone (first-time Learn Online users will need to create a login). Learners will be able to work through the course at their own pace.
To learn more, click here.
Ko wai ahau? Who am I?
A resource from The Mental Health Foundation designed to help rangatahi make a personal safety plan. Head to this link to check it out!
Lived Experience Leadership Digital Library
The Lived Experience Leadership Digital Library is an initiative of the National Mental Health Consumer and Carer Forum and the National Primary Health Network Mental Health Lived Experience Engagement Network with support from Mental Health Australia.
They welcome everyone to access their Digital Library the aim of which is to gather a wealth of useful resources about all aspects of lived experience leadership. Click here to check it out!
When I was a teen – not too long ago, that is – I had pretty bad anxiety. In our current climate, this statement is so common, so run of the mill, that it’s hardly likely to excite any sort of intrigue in anyone. I almost cringe whenever I see the anxiety diagnosis listed in my medical record: accompanying depression – the classic package deal – it marks me as a stereotype of my age, generation, and social climate. Anxiety has reached a point of cultural ubiquity; perhaps the best reflection of this is how it has found its way into the realms of dark, then mainstream, humour. Many of us joke about being perpetually anxious – in a world where cases of this mental illness are exploding exponentially, there seem to be few alternative coping methods.
At age 15, after receiving my anxiety diagnosis, I was presented with some shiny new medication: beta-blockers, which had the power to stop anxiety attacks. The catch? They needed to be taken 30 minutes before said attacks. Anyone with any sort of experience with anxiety will know that this isn’t always the most realistic ideal. Still, they did help – if I knew in advance that I’d need them.
That’s the thing! Medication can work wonders. But there are some things that it can’t treat. Most problematically, in my view, it can do very little about situational circumstances. In my case, and in many others, this is quite a problem.
When I got my hands on those beta-blockers, I was going through an extremely anxious period of my life. Part way through year 11, I suddenly found myself unable to attend maths classes – that is, I’d start having a panic attack if I tried. Panic attacks in maths class might sound like a laughably relatable prospect in the abstract, but in reality, it totally sucked. Still, maths wasn’t a favoured subject of mine, and it could be dropped. The real problem came when I started getting panic attacks on the way to school, and quickly found myself unable to attend any class whatsoever. Each morning was approached with cautious hope – maybe today I’ll return to normal – before, in the process of getting ready, my proverbial alarm bells started to ring, and I was once again cast far away from any possibility of normalcy. Another failed day.
I had hated high school for almost as long as I’d been there. In popular culture, it’s this place where you make this incredible, close-knit group of friends, with whom you engage in all of the teen ‘rites of passage’. So when I reached my third year and was still sitting alone, I found myself reeking of failure. Among other things, high school became a place of isolation, exclusion, and shame. It was a reminder of being an outsider – someone ‘not quite right’, whose life experiences and ways of being seemingly didn’t line up with expectations. Again, in popular culture, being an ‘outsider’ made you cool and alternative – in reality, it was just depressing, lonely, and decidedly uncool. Each day of attendance was heavy with dread, so I suppose it’s no wonder that my brain eventually became thoroughly sick of this seemingly endless ordeal. However, while my mind could be pacified with medication, those beta-blockers could never find me friends; they could never solve quite why I didn’t ‘fit in right’. They couldn’t remove the necessity of schooling from my life. All they could do was shield me against the worst effects of my day-to-day circumstances.
And so it goes for countless causes of anxiety. Medications can’t alleviate the terror of poverty, unstable work, housing insecurity, impending climate change, political polarisation, or any other such symptom of our damaged culture. As such, they can rarely be a complete solution. But then, what could be? There is no quick fix to these sorts of problems. There’s therapy, of course – this is actually designed to help people examine root causes – but it still has its limitations. In particular, the cost is prohibitive, and availability critically low.
I guess this is why I’m quite so excited at the prospect of Manga Hapahāpai / The Confidence Centre. While open to anyone dealing with anxiety, its primary focus is rangatahi – young people, that is – given our disproportionately high rates of anxiety. I think, if something like this had been available to me as a teen – a free service, without a miles-long waitlist, its raison d’etre a sign that I was neither alone nor a failure for my experiences – things would have been significantly different.
Despite all of the jokes surrounding it, no one wants to be able to identify with the phenomenon of ‘anxiety’. It is debilitating. It disrupts and disturbs your life, robbing you of your autonomy and freedom. You become dominated by fear. What’s more, I don’t think it’s uncommon for anxiety to make you feel like a total failure. In the case of being a teen, not only do you see yourself as the maligned stereotype – the young person hiding on their phone with their headphones on, escaping to the online world because reality is too much, and ultimately isolating themselves further in doing so – but you also see all of the expectations of this period of your life go dancing by. Enraptured by stories of what older generations got up to, envious of the excitement and relationship drama playing out on various Netflix teen shows, being told repeatedly of the value of youth and that you could well be living out the ‘best years of your life’ – free as you are from adult responsibility – you come to the conclusion that your life is perhaps over, before it’s even really started. What’s the point, then? When I went through this, I struggled to find such a point – and there wasn’t really anything outside of the exclusive world of therapy to help me.
The Confidence Centre, then, is a response to aching need. It takes one look at the suffering of so many of us rangatahi, and extends compassion, warmth, love, and hope. There’s no whiff of derision, air of superiority, comments about the corruption or foolishness of the youth. No spiteful blame for our being guinea pigs, thrust into a digital, online world almost from birth – before there was any cultural inkling of the potential fallout this could cause. There’s just a genuine willingness to improve lives. Unlike medication, (which, again, does have its place), the Confidence Centre will work to help people with their immediate situation, alleviating some of those circumstantial hardships that drive experiences of anxiety.
Sure, the Confidence Centre may not be able to solve the structural causes of poverty, or reverse climate change, but it does offer free, non-judgemental support. It is a reminder that you are not alone, that there are people who care about your situation, and that there are solutions – your problems need not be medically suppressed forever. Moreover, it will provide connection and community – something so many of us are so desperately lacking these days. Isolation is a nasty driver of anxiety that works as a vicious cycle – no connection increases social anxiety, which decreases your ability to connect. It was certainly a key problem for me, one I’m still learning to resolve. Even if you can make your way into the world of therapy, it lacks, like so many aspects of modern life, a similar community vibe. We need connections more than ever. I see the Confidence Centre as a place that fully understands this.
Against the bleak backdrop of widespread suffering in both my age group, and the current generation of teenagers – those hardships I experienced being repeated again and again – the Confidence Centre fills me with hope. It’s going to make a huge difference.
I think that’s pretty amazing.
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