- Hi, everyone.
In today's video,
we are going to be going over some potential responses
to the very commonly asked question of "How are you doing?"
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to the Living Well with Schizophrenia channel.
My name's Lauren,
and I make videos
about what it's like to live with schizoaffective disorder,
or schizophrenia.
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All right, so diving into the conversation
around how to respond to the question of:
"How are you doing?"
This is something that comes up a lot,
within interactions within our socialization circles,
and there's different variations
of what kind of interaction can be intended.
So it is something that your grocery clerk will ask you
when you go up to the till at the grocery store,
you know, "How are you doing?"
And we're just so accustomed to just responding politely,
with, "Oh, doing good, doing okay, doing fine".
"How are you?"
"Doing okay, doing good, doing fine".
But you know,
there are other circumstances
where a friend, or a family member, or a loved one,
or someone like that, is asking you how you're doing,
and they're really wanting to know how you're doing,
but we're just so habituated
to responding with this easy, quick, "Doing good,
doing fine, doing okay",
that a little bit of connection is lost there.
I understand that there's multiple reasons
why we just go to this habituated response
of the quick and easy "Doing good".
It could be, you know, just because
that is our trained response to that question.
Or it could be something a little bit deeper,
where you don't want
to inconvenience your loved one in any way,
or you don't want to burden them
with how you're actually doing,
or you maybe feel like they don't actually want to know
how you're doing.
And so there is a bit to navigate there.
Ultimately, though,
this quick, habituated response of "Doing good"
does not serve us,
and it does not serve growing our relationships
in a meaningful way.
So how should you respond to the question of:
"How are you doing?"
So, like I said before, there is a bit of context involved.
Like your grocery clerk may not be
the appropriate place or person
to release all your woes and and what's on your mind to,
just because there's maybe not necessarily enough time,
or it's not the most appropriate place.
And this does not mean that your grocery clerk
doesn't care about you, or your response to that question.
It's just maybe not the most appropriate place
to delve into all of that in a vulnerable and intimate way.
Whereas again, if a loved one is asking how you're doing,
and you know, you have a bit of time to connect,
and converse and whatnot about it,
there's definitely room
to give a more honest and genuine response,
which will ultimately improve connection, hopefully.
Now this is something
that definitely requires a degree of vulnerability,
which requires practice as well.
You know, it's like I said,
we're all habituated to the simple,
"Oh, I'm doing good, doing okay, how are you?"
But I think diving into vulnerability a little bit more,
and really taking a moment
to think about how you're doing,
and sharing that with the person who's asking,
can really go a long way.
I often am a little disappointed in my interactions,
when I am checking in with a friend,
or a loved one or whatnot,
and I ask them how they're doing,
and I really do want to know.
I'm either worried about them or they've been on my mind,
or I really want to know how they're doing.
And they respond with "Doing okay",
or "Doing good, how are you?"
and it feels like the connection has been broken,
in terms of, you know, reaching that person,
on an intimate level.
And so, I think what has been helpful,
in terms of getting people to share more with me,
when I really am wanting to know what they are feeling,
is to share myself, how I'm doing,
and then asking them again.
And usually if you practice vulnerability, it opens the door
for other people to practice vulnerability as well.
So what are some useful tools
for practicing this vulnerability
and giving a more meaningful answer
than just the "Doing good"?
So one thing that you might want to start off with,
for people who you interact regularly with,
is a number scale.
And this can be really helpful
if you're not really used to being vulnerable,
or sharing, in a descriptive way, how you're feeling,
because it provides
just a fairly quick and easy way
to let your loved one know where you're at,
on a 10 point scale,
with 1 being "I'm really, really struggling",
and 10 being, "Oh, I'm doing really, really great".
And so you can kind of give a quick and easy answer
to how you're doing along the spectrum to a loved one.
Now this works best for checking in
with someone who you check in with regularly,
who kind of knows your baseline,
and knows where you're at on a day-to-day basis.
Now, if you want to take this a step further,
you can use descriptive language
to help describe how you're feeling,
to the person who's checking in with you.
So I'm going to provide a kind of a list of words,
of descriptive words, for how you may be feeling,
at any given point.
And, you know, this list is not going to be exhaustive.
There are going to be other things that you may be feeling,
but hopefully it will help to kind of, you know
jog your brain in terms of thinking about how to describe,
or how to identify, first, what you're feeling,
and then how to describe it to someone else.
And, you know,
one of the benefits of describing how you're feeling
to someone else,
is that if you verbalize how you're feeling to someone,
it may help yourself to identify what may help,
in terms of employing coping strategies,
or it just may help you to better understand yourself,
and how you're feeling in that moment.
So before I dive into this list of descriptive terms
for how you may be feeling,
I do want to mention a few things first.
So first, I want to encourage you
to kind of stay away from descriptive language,
such as crazy or insane,
because it's really stigmatizing language,
and it really doesn't ultimately
give an adequate description to the person,
about how you're feeling.
You may have labeled it as,
"Oh I just feel crazy right now", or "I just feel insane",
but communicating that to someone
doesn't really help in letting them understand,
what it is that is making you feel that way,
or what it is that you're feeling,
and it's ultimately
just more stigmatizing to mental health in general.
Another thing that people commonly experience,
when they're trying to connect,
and describe how they're feeling to other people,
is just the inability to articulate what they're feeling.
And this is actually a medical term called alexithymia.
And this is basically just when a person
is unable to identify, within themselves,
what they're feeling,
and communicate that in a meaningful way.
And so, if you are experiencing this, you're not alone.
There are a lot of other people who experience this.
I have experienced this,
I experience this quite regularly, actually,
believe it or not,
it is very hard for me to identify
and articulate what I'm feeling, but, you know,
through practicing and through practicing vulnerability,
and communicating with others, you can get better at it.
Alright, so diving into the list of potential,
you know, descriptive terms that you can use
to describe how you're feeling,
you could be feeling foggy, or slow, or scattered,
and these are kind of good descript descriptors,
for how you might be feeling,
in terms of your mental state,
and how you may be feeling
in terms of not really being able to focus,
or to effectively communicate.
And these may be helpful descriptors for that.
You may be feeling uncertain or doubtful.
You may be feeling tense, anxious, or impatient, or worried.
These are some more anxious descriptive terms.
You may be feeling low, or depressed,
or you may be feeling really happy, and elevated,
in terms of describing mood.
Another kind of descriptor for mood,
or how you might be feeling along that spectrum,
is feeling feelings of emptiness,
or feelings of being alone.
You may be feeling overwhelmed or restlessness,
like an an unable to sit still.
So this is a really common one for people
who are on anti-psychotic medication,
or just psychiatric medication,
this feeling it's actually called akathisia,
and it's when you just have an inner restlessness,
that is just very uncomfortable,
and it almost feels like
you want to just jump out of your body,
but you can't, obviously.
And so that can be a really uncomfortable thing.
And it's helpful to describe to people when
you're feeling this sort of inner restlessness.
And, you know, I mentioned this in another video,
but a really helpful way for me to help other people
wrap their mind around what this feels like,
is that a friend described the feeling
of being over-caffeinated,
or having too many coffees in a day,
as this feeling of doom within yourself,
this impending doom, that you're just kinda like buzzing,
and you want to jump out of your body,
and that's kind of what akathisia feels like.
So if you're trying to help someone,
or if you're trying to help someone understand
what akathisia, what this inner restlessness feels like,
it can be helpful to give this example
of doom, from over-caffeination.
Alright, so that was kind of an overview
of general descriptive terms.
And again, there are many other ones,
and we will share some of those other ones
in the description below too.
If you want to kind of go over that list.
I also wanted to share some
that are maybe more a little specific
to when you are in psychosis,
what you may be feeling,
and some descriptive language
to help people understand that, as well.
So you may be feeling obsessive
about certain thoughts or whatnot,
or compelled to do things.
And those are descriptive terms
for how you might be feeling.
You may be feeling scared,
or terrified, or frightened by what's going on.
You may have this sense of paranoia,
or feeling that something bad is going to happen,
which is also helpful to describe to other people.
You may have a general mistrust,
in people or in systems around you.
Another one, kind of around this mistrust,
is maybe that you're feeling controlled,
by an external source or an external, an external person,
or maybe you are feeling like you were exerting control,
over other things.
And so that's kind of helpful to describe to people as well.
You may be feeling ashamed or embarrassed,
which is definitely a helpful thing
to convey to people so that they can build, you know,
more empathy for how you're feeling,
and maybe have a better idea of how to interact with you.
And so again, this list is completely not exhaustive.
There are so many other terms,
and ways that you can describe how you're feeling,
but hopefully that kind of gives you, you know
a general framework of things that you can pull from,
in terms of communicating with someone
how you're actually doing.
Alright, so that kind of wraps up
what I wanted to share in terms of how to respond
to the question of: "How are you doing?"
And now I've kind of mentioned that this is very useful
for when loved ones are asking you how you're doing.
But it can be also very, very helpful,
in terms of communicating with your care-team,
your doctors, your therapist, in terms of, you know
picking descriptive language,
to adequately describe how you're doing.
So I would love to hear from you as well.
If you have any other terms or expressions or whatnot,
that you use to communicate
how you're doing with your loved ones,
I would love to hear what those are in the comments below,
if you're comfortable with sharing.
It may help other people to see what you've used,
and to maybe pull from that for them as well.
So thank you so much again for watching.
Again, if you want to see more videos from us,
make sure to subscribe to our channel.
And also, if you would like to help
support the creation of future videos, like this one,
please check out our Patreon page.
Thank you so much for watching,
and as always, wishing you, and your loved ones,
good health.
See you in the next video, bye.