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This podcast is full of comparisons between the Snowflake Generation and other generations past, including my own. Some are obvious, and some are more subtle. But if I had to single out one area where young people are truly different, and consciously trying to be different consistently, it would be around diversity and inclusion. It's a defining theme for the Snowflakes because there is always huge media attention, and such push-back from older and more conservative people around it, particularly when it comes to diversity in the workplace. In this episode, I talk about the Snowflakes' desire for inclusion instead of exclusion and how I think the world is going to be so much better for it. 

OK, this is a big one. And one I feel really strongly about. Gender was easy once. If you had a penis and testicles, your gender was male. If you had a vagina and a uterus, your gender was female. If you were male, you wore blue things, and were good with tools, and provided for your family. If you were female, pink was your colour, you were good at cooking and cleaning and raising a family. But you were terribly reliant on males, obviously. Gender was easy once, except if you didn't identify with any of that crap.  In this episode, I invite you to bring an open mind and try to suspend your reality for a moment, if you are someone fortunate enough to be born with a clear and defined gender orientation, because not everyone is.

The rehab facility that I went to (twice) was very big on feelings. Which, at the time, was very uncomfortable. At the start of every day, and at the beginning of every group therapy session, everyone was required to state out loud their first name, the reason they were there (for instance drugs, alcohol, depression, anxiety) and then how they were feeling in that moment.  That task was made slightly more difficult (that task is already fairly difficult when you are in the throws of a mood disorder or detoxing from drugs or alcohol), by their insistence that you can only choose from one of eight feelings: joy, anger, love, guilt, shame, fear, loneliness, and pain. Pretty bleak. I really struggled with that for the first couple of days. Firstly, because I had trouble identifying any feelings I was having really, and then secondly because once I could actually identify and name a feeling, it wasn't one of those eight. Hope, despair, and frustration had to be renamed joy, pain and anger.  I felt denied my feelings, my brand new and newly-acquired feelings weren't even correct? Once I stopped letting my child-self have control over me, though, I could see the rational for both focussing on feelings and limiting them to just a handful: ordinarily we don't. In this episode, I talk about those feelings, and why the Snowflakes have the edge over other generations with their ability to name them, feel them, and own them.

But the biggest difference in how addiction is treated in 2018 as opposed to 1951 when my dad was a child, is that there are now medically-based treatment programs, whether as an inpatient or conducted in the community, that are run by medical professionals, backed by published research, and monitored by psychological and psychiatric practitioners. For a long time, recovery treatments were conducted and overseen by people who weren’t formally trained, largely because addicts were shunned - and shamed - by the medical community, and therefore they sought out help from each other. This is basically how 12 Step programmes were born. It is now widely understood - and the Snowflakes are getting the benefit of this now - that addiction is a disease, it’s not a weakness, and as a disease it should be treated medically and out in the open, just as other chronic diseases are treated.

I love meditation. It could have helped me a lot during times in my life before I was introduced to it. One of the most interesting things about meditation, for me, is its uniqueness. There is no right or wrong way to meditate, no required duration, posture, location. It is what it is to everyone who is doing it in that moment.

I kind of think that everyone should be in some sort of therapy. If for no other reason than we all need some sort of connection to at least another person that extends beyond the small talk, on-the-surface type interactions. I certainly haven’t always thought that. And, until the last few years, I thought that parents who had their children seeing a therapist were the really crazy ones. Like most people still think today, I thought all kids needed was a bit of discipline, some tree-climbing and football-kicking, and just to bottle up their negative feelings and push that shit way down deep. That was clearly working for my generation, and my parents’ generation. Right? But of course that wasn’t working, and still doesn’t.

In this episode, I talk about the differences in how we were treated as children, how much we were disciplined, and what that discipline consisted of, and whether that still works, or is appropriate, today. I talk about smacking children, and the many reasons it doesn't work, including that IT DOESN'T WORK. How do you discipline your snowflakes?  

This is Steel Snowflakes, a podcast about the differences in growing up today to when I grow up, or when my parents and grandparents did, how society has changed, how what we believe and hold dear has changed, and why our kids will be the best adults ever made. My name is Nick Bowditch. This podcast is broken down into episodes that are based on a certain theme that is or will be different for the younger generation and generations to come.