{"id":23925,"date":"2023-05-03T09:00:27","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T16:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=23925"},"modified":"2023-05-16T09:45:15","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T16:45:15","slug":"former-nexus-editors-first-book-looks-at-punk-rock-and-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2023\/05\/03\/former-nexus-editors-first-book-looks-at-punk-rock-and-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Nexus<\/em> editor\u2019s first book looks at punk rock and mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Nexus<\/i> managing editor Jason Schreurs\u2019 first book, Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey Through Mental Health<\/i>, is a non-fiction memoir that offers a glimpse into the punk ethos and the act of processing trauma while screaming at the top of your lungs. His book is an amalgamation of his journey and the journeys of others, with one overlapping similarity: punk rock saving people at their lowest point through a culture of acceptance and catharsis.<\/p>\n

Schreurs will be taking Scream Therapy<\/i> on the road for a book tour and will be stopping in Victoria at Camas Books & Infoshop at 7 pm on Tuesday, May 16. He believes audiences will be entertained and informed by the content.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be a smattering of different pieces from the book,\u201d says Schreurs. \u201cThe book has three different sections in it. So, at these readings, I\u2019ll try to kind of tackle each section with some different passages of each. And I\u2019ll have a few music clips that go with; essentially a book reading is just some person reading, it\u2019s not exciting like a concert will be. But the book itself has a lot of exciting stuff in it. So, I think it will be educational as well. I think it\u2019ll be informative and, hopefully, entertaining.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Schreurs first stumbled upon the punk scene, he felt like he had found his crowd. More than just having a similar style, the punk rock culture created a safe outlet for him and made him feel accepted for who he was.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Former Nexus<\/em> managing editor Jason Schreurs is releasing his first book (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWalking into a punk show is like opening up a whole new world for someone like me, who grew up in a very small town, listening to these bands and learning about what they meant and their lyrics, in a place that was very isolating,\u201d he says. \u201cTo be able to walk through the door of a punk show and find other people who are like me who were wearing the same kind of shirts that I was and who were talking about the same kind of bands and the same kind of issues was hugely eye-opening. And it made me feel like I had found my place, finally. After all these years of feeling like a total weirdo and freak, I was able to feel like I belonged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scream Therapy<\/i> covers a lot of ground, including trauma, physical and sexual abuse, and mental-health struggles (see screamtherapyhq.com\/book<\/a> for more info on the book). For Schreurs, it wasn\u2019t retraumatizing to write about his experiences. He felt like he had a story to tell, and he was able to sit down, leave it on the page, and carry on with life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like I just needed to get it out,\u201d says Schreurs. \u201cAnd, in fact, I\u2019m one of those kinds of writers that can just turn on the faucet and then write, and then I turn the faucet off, and I don\u2019t write. I\u2019m not a practice writer who sits down every day and writes for an hour and tries to like, you know, really bring up these difficult things. I just had a story to tell, and it was there, and it was fairly easy to write. There wasn\u2019t a lot of, like, \u2018Oh my god, I just wrote about sexual abuse when I was a kid and now I have to go and hide under the covers for two days\u2019; that\u2019s just not my experience. I\u2019m lucky, I guess, in that regard\u2014I was able to write it and get it out and not feel like it was a huge retraumatizing process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schreurs believes that attending a punk show can be a healthy way to process mental-health struggles, whether by taking part in a mosh pit or screaming along with the band; a punk show can act as a release for people addressing their trauma.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got a line in the book where I talk about, you know if you\u2019re at a punk show and you throw a guitar pick in the audience, yeah, you\u2019re going to hit people with trauma. But that\u2019s everywhere. I wouldn\u2019t say that trauma, ratio-wise, is more within the punk scene,\u201d he says. \u201cI think that trauma is dealt with in a more open and productive way in the punk scene than it would be in mainstream society. I think we\u2019re told to bury our trauma and I think by being at a punk show, or being around punks in the punk scene, we\u2019re letting it out, we\u2019re using productive means to get this trauma out and to process it, and to deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While punk rock can be misconstrued as being violent or aggressive, Schreurs says that in his experience the community is quite the opposite. In his opinion, the true culture behind being punk is to take care of one another and to stretch that care onto oneself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPunk rock is how you live your life, and it\u2019s using what I would call the punk rock ethos or being punk informed, in doing the kinds of things that maybe other people wouldn\u2019t do,\u201d he says. \u201cYou know, so maybe you\u2019re going to take someone aside and really try to help them or at least point them in the right direction. And to me, that\u2019s being punk, that\u2019s what punk rock is. To me, it\u2019s living life in a way that supports people living life, in a way that supports yourself going against the grain and trying to be your best person.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Nexus managing editor Jason Schreurs\u2019 first book, Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey Through Mental Health, is a non-fiction memoir that offers a glimpse into the punk ethos and the act of processing trauma while screaming at the top of your lungs. His book is an amalgamation of his journey and the journeys of others, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-may-3-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23927,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23925\/revisions\/23927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}