February is Dating Violence Awareness Month

Check out this website to get more information and find out what you can do to help!

Are you unsure of whether your relationship is healthy or not?

You may be in an abusive relationship if your partner:

• Monitors what you’re doing all the time
• Unfairly accuses you of being unfaithful all the time
• Prevents or discourages you from seeing friends or family
• Prevents or discourages you from going to work or school
• Gets very angry during and after drinking alcohol or using drugs
• Controls how you spend your money
• Controls your use of needed medicines
• Decides things for you that you should be allowed to decide (like what to wear or eat)
• Humiliates you in front of others
• Destroys your property or things that you care about
• Threatens to hurt you, the children, or pets
• Hurts you (by hitting, beating, pushing, shoving, punching, slapping, kicking, or biting)
• Uses (or threatens to use) a weapon against you
• Forces you to have sex against your will
• Controls your birth control or insists that you get pregnant
• Blames you for his or her violent outbursts
• Threatens to harm himself or herself when upset with you
• Says things like, “If I can’t have you then no one can.”

Signs of an UNHEALTHY relationship:

• Focusing all your energy on your partner
• Dropping friends and family or activities you enjoy
• Feeling pressured or controlled a lot
• Having more bad times in the relationship than good
• Feeling sad or scared when with your partner

Signs of a HEALTHY relationship:

• Having more good times in the relationship than bad
• Having a life outside the relationship, with your own friends and activities
• Making decisions together, with each partner compromising at times
• Dealing with conflicts by talking honestly
• Feeling comfortable and able to be yourself
• Feeling able to take care of yourself
• Feeling like your partner supports you

This information came from womenshealth.gov, a project of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health.

http://www.womenshealth.gov/violence-against-women/am-i-being-abused/#b

]]> http://oregonyouthline.org/1445/dating-violence/feed/ 0 http://oregonyouthline.org/1443/the-truth-about-weed/ http://oregonyouthline.org/1443/the-truth-about-weed/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 04:18:47 +0000 kaitlyn http://oregonyouthline.org/?p=1443 Real stories from real people! Check it out.

hi my name is kayla my friend showed me this site cause she waz worried bout me. she said if i emailed u guys u would be able 2 help. i have been mildly depressed since i was in the 5th grade lately it has gotten a lot worse cause of school i dont know what to do please help ive tried every thing  please help me i dont know what to do any more… ,-_-, please if ur still reading this please write me back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! please…

Dear Kayla,

We are so glad you reached out to us and asked for help. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to your problems with depression. Depression is definitely a serious problem that you can’t solve alone, and it is great that you have a supportive friend that helped you contact us.

It’s especially hard to have depression worsened by school – you have to be there 5 days a week, so there is probably no good opportunity for an escape. Perhaps if there is a specific issue with school that is bothering you, you could try talking to a school counselor to find a solution.

As for non-school related depression, there are lots of things you can do. For one thing, if you need immediate support, you can call us at 1-877-968-8491. We can give you resources for counseling or other things in your area if you need that, or just give you someone to talk to. Our teen call workers are available 4-9 PM on weekdays, but we have other workers 24-7, so we’ll never miss a call from you.

If you aren’t comfortable talking on the phone, there are a few other things you can do when you feel depressed. If you find it hard to cope when you’re depressed, for example, you might want to read this article one of our volunteers wrote on coping strategies: http://oregonyouthline.org/829/coping-strategies/ It’s just some basic things, but even if you don’t like the suggestions, it’s a good way to start thinking about what would work for you personally. Basically, you can just do something that relaxes you and makes you feel happy. Whatever works for you and is healthy is good.

Most of all, just remember to take care of yourself mentally and emotionally – eat well, sleep well, give yourself breaks when you need them. And again, call us if you need someone to talk to.

-YouthLine

We are having some long lasting issues with our chat software, but we are working hard to get it back up and running as soon as possible. We are so sorry for the inconvenience, and we encourage you to either call us at 1-877-968-8491 or send us an email by going to the “Ask a Question” section on our page (if you give us your email address we can respond to your question, otherwise we post the answers in the “Read Your Answer” section). Thank you for your understanding!

-YouthLine

Check it out here: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/info-for-teens/

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/victim-brutal-lgbt-bullying-ohio-school-tells-his-story

1. TRY NOT TO FREAK OUT
I know it seems really hard sometimes when your entire grade, life and future are riding on that ONE test, but seriously try to STAY CALM. Finals are super high pressure, but panicking and over-thinking the test will not help you study at all. You need to sit down, take it slow and turn that nervous energy into productivity.

2. DON’T PROCRASTINATE
Everyone’s guilty of it, don’t even try to deny. Get off facebook and stop skyping your friends who are procrastinating. You just need to FOCUS. Start early so you don’t have to last minute cram and you can absorb more information into your brain. Plan ahead and have a study schedule.

3. GET INTO YOUR ZONE
Find a place that you feel comfortable studying in… but not too comfortable. It is never a good idea to study on your bed with a heated blanket. But try to find a room where you can study without being distracted. Put on your dubstep and try to get into your zone where you can really concentrate.
-Also a note about study groups: Sometimes they are really effective, but sometimes they suck up a kajillion hours and lead to other activities such as baking cookies, climbing walls and singing karaoke. In my experience, study parties NEVER work and it’s always my friends’ fault… mostly. But overall, they are a terrible idea if you expect to get anything done.

4. TALK TO YOUR TEACHERS
You need to communicate with your teachers and ask them what you should expect. You can get all the help you need from a teacher. Ask for a study guide, ask for clarification on a problem. They want you to succeed, so talk to them. If you know what to expect on the final, it can be a lot less stressful.

5. STUDY YOUR NOTES
Don’t try to read the whole textbook before your final. A lot of the new, detailed information you won’t need anyways, and probably won’t remember the next day. Instead, look back at chapter summaries and your notes, and try to create a study guide with all the basic concepts that you’ve learned this semester.

6. GET SOME SLEEP
Put the books down, put on the PJ’s and crawl into bed – without your physics book! Trust me, it is way more worth it to get a little sleep, like 5 hours at least, than cram for an extra two hours, show up to school with craters underneath your eyes and have a sleep deprived eye twitch the whole day. This is currently happening to me, which is bad because I need to see out of both eyes. It is better to get a couple hours more sleep that try to memorize anymore.

7. TAKE TIME TO RELAX
Take time to do something for yourself. Human beings can’t study all the time 24/7 because we are not robots. Make sure to take care of yourself and your body and not burn yourself out. Eat healthy meals. Try not to drink too much caffeine. Take a bubble bath. But this is relaxing time – don’t turn it into procrastinating time. There is a very fine line, so set a time limit on your study breaks.

I hope this was helpful you hardworking high schoolers. Good luck!