Storytelling Critique: Seize the Awkward - Tess Harkin

Seize the Awkward is an organization dedicated to raising awareness of mental health issues and equipping young people with the skills they need in order to help their friends and themselves. Their model of action is to encourage people to “seize the awkward” silences or situations they find themselves in as an opportunity to ask a friend if everything is okay. Seize the Awkward is supported by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

On the Seize the Awkward website, there is very little text and really just a homepage to navigate on. There are explanatory and interactive videos for each section instead of text. In the place of an “About Us” section or something similar, there is a minute long video describing Seize the Awkward. There is also a section where different celebrities are interviewed about their experiences with mental health and the videos are shared.

            In these videos, the celebrity is usually speaking about a personal struggle with mental illness. This would sometimes come in a narrative focusing on their own issues, or their experiences helping a friend. The video I chose to focus on in particular features Tyler Posey, an actor best known for his work in Teen Wolf. He speaks about his depression after his mother lost a battle with breast cancer several years ago, and his experiences in therapy as well. I think having these featured stories focus on people speaking with their own voice to their own experiences contributes to feeling genuine by letting the stories flow in an organic matter.

            Posey isn’t presented in a particularly heroic manner, but I don’t think he is victimized either. I think the role that he plays in his story is passive in nature, but the whole point of his story revolves on personal growth to become more active in his own life. He speaks to his transformation from depression to beginning to take action to improve his mental health after speaking with friends who were checking in with him. This model works well for the type of advocacy that Seize the Awkward is trying to promote because it echoes exactly what they’re encouraging people to do in their initial introduction. It makes reaching out to a friend seem attainable, and the positive results of that interaction tangible, as opposed to remaining as an abstract concept of something that could be done.

            The story doesn’t utilize any of the six key foundational values as described by Matthews et al. (2016), but it does address values like care and loyalty in a more colloquial sense. Care obviously comes into play when discussing mental health as a value to consider, such as seeking care or taking care. Loyalty is also a value that could be inferred as relevant by the connotation holding being loyal to one’s friends by supporting them through tough times.

            The main objective of Posey’s story is to encourage people to seek help for themselves, or to speak with a friend that they may think is struggling. He addresses being on both sides of those two conversations in the video. His story fits extremely well with the overall message and other elements of the campaign, as mentioned previously. All of the celebrity videos echo Seize the Awkward’s objectives in a way that make speaking up seem easy and important to do, and Posey’s is no exception. Seize the Awkward has done an excellent job at identifying stories and narratives that support their mission.