- Hey everyone, it is Thursday,
and that means that I am on Twitter,
and I'm answering your questions for you.
So if you asked your question using the hashtag KatiFAQ,
I found it, and I'm answering it.
And I have four today, as well as a journal topic.
Some of you, I know you miss the journal topics,
I'm sorry, but sometimes, there's so much to talk about,
and I have to compress it into a video
where you're not like, "Kati, stop rambling."
Blah, blah, blah.
So without further rambling, first question.
When in recovery, this is a great question.
When in recovery, how do we know what is the most important
to treat if we have multiple diagnoses?
Let's say we have MDD, PTSD, and BPD.
Maybe we also have an eating disorder, right?
Who knows what's going on.
I truthfully work with my patients
to find out what I call "The Core" diagnosis is.
And this is usually the one that happened first, okay?
So with this, the PTSD, BPD, and MDD,
I would venture to say that the PTSD happened first,
then came the MDD, and then came the BPD.
And I'll work with my clients to usually put a
timeline together, 'cause we know what happened, right?
If we think about it, we know what happened first.
So I usually have my clients work on the original,
the first instance, 'cause the other things, honestly,
are just side-effects of that central, core issue.
So if we're working ... let's say PTSD is our core issue,
I would work on the trauma that they had experienced,
whether it's working with the Courage to Heal Workbook
or another workbook, or just talking it out with me,
we'll do that first, okay?
I hope that answers your question.
Question number two.
I'm attached to my therapist, ah!
I'm just kidding.
And I'm not so sure what to do.
She's so nice and caring,
and no one else has ever been like that to me.
I don't know what to do.
All I know is that I'm going to end up
even more upset and not see anyone else.
Any tips slash advice?
Thank you, oh and how is it possible to be attached so soon?
I haven't seen her that many times.
That often happens, and I don't know the full story
behind this person's question,
but I can usually kind of guess about what's going on,
and many times, if we have had either a traumatic upbringing
or a lack of a real parental figure in our life,
and no one's really paid us that much attention
and we've never really gotten the support and the love
and the nurturing that we needed
and we felt kind of neglected,
many people who've had that kind of an upbringing
often struggle with attachment issues.
That's because we've never had someone there
that we know they're there if we need them,
we know that they're coming around,
we know, I can always call mom,
or I can always call my brother,
and they'll always help me out, and blah, blah, blah.
If we don't have that, when we finally find someone
like a therapist who is there for you.
We're there for an hour to listen to you
to find out what's going on, to be supportive,
to understand, it's like, that person.
I've finally found that person, oh my God.
And we wanna attach to them, and it happens very quickly.
It's nothing to be ashamed about,
it's nothing to be embarrassed or worried,
or feel like you can't talk about it.
I would bring it up with your therapist.
I know that's gonna make you nervous.
But I promise, we deal with this kind of stuff all the time,
and it happens because you've never been cared for,
and we get that, right?
And a lot of times, my borderline patients
will have that issue as well.
They'll either try to push me away,
where they'll cancel appointments, be really elusive,
and then all of a sudden they'll wanna be back all the time.
We see that a lot, so I would talk to her,
and just be honest and open about it.
It's one of those perfect therapeutic relationships
where you can actually be honest with one another.
It's what's wonderful about those types of relationships
rather than the ones that we have in our regular life,
is that it's a safe place to bring things up
and talk about it,
'cause that's what we're there for, right?
I hope that helps, okay?
Question number three.
Since I started self harming badly,
when I'm actually leaving scars,
I have had only one intimate relationship,
which didn't really last too long.
Opportunities have come to get in to new relationships,
but I'm too scared because I really wouldn't want
to let them see my scars and cuts in case they laughed
or even told others.
Any advice, or should I just stay single forever?
No, we don't have to stay single forever.
One thing I do caution all of my clients on is that
if we aren't loving on ourselves,
if we're still engaging in our eating disorder full blown,
we're still engaging in our self harm, just all the time,
we're still extremely suicidal,
whatever it may be, right?
If we're still having all those urges,
it's probably not a good time to get into a relationship.
And the reason being is because for that time in your life,
you really need to focus on you.
The worst thing that can happen is
we get into a relationship where we're dependent on
that person, they're dependent on us
instead of us having a healthy relationship
if that makes sense, okay?
So I encourage my clients to wait to get into a relationship
until they're more recovered,
and they're not feeling so volatile.
Because we want them to love you for you.
We don't want them to think you're a project
and they can help you with your issues
because that's not what they're there for.
They're there to love on you and support you,
but you need to work with your treatment team
and get yourself feeling better
so that you can love others, right?
We gotta love ourselves first, and then love others.
I would just encourage you to keep working with your team,
and when you're feeling really good about your recovery,
and where it's at, then when those opportunities arise,
you take them, you go on those dates,
you have a good time, okay?
Question number four, and this kind of goes in
from question number three, it's a nice segue.
What's the difference between recovering and recovered?
Now, I did a video a long time ago called,
What is Recovery? And so you need to check that video out
because I talk about this a lot.
And I believe, honestly, that once you even think,
you have that little seed of thought about recovery,
you're already in recovery.
You're already thinking about it.
Maybe I should do it.
You're obviously gonna be at the beginning end of it.
And the end, end will be like, I rarely have any behaviors.
I never even really have any urges,
I'm doing really well.
I think of it as a spectrum.
And the only difference is how often
you're engaging in the behaviors,
and how often you still need extra support.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
And it can take years.
It can take many years.
It can take days, months, weeks, years.
Don't feel like there's a certain timeline
that you have to fit into.
The only difference is kind of where you are
on the spectrum.
We may slide along for many years, but that's how I see it.
And you can leave your experience
and your thoughts about that below,
but I really think that it's all and the same.
We're all working, right?
We're fighting, we're trying trying to beat those urges,
and we'll get there, okay?
Journal topic of the day, drumroll.
Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.
It's very true, and I want you all to think,
think about this, and I want you just to hold this
in your mind for, I don't know,
I would say the next week, but I'll just say the next day.
And when something happens to you,
and you find you have that visceral response where
you just be like, ugh, or you're like, eh, you wanna cry,
or you wanna be like, "Get out of here" or whatever,
I want you to think about it, and I want you to think about
how you could react in a healthier way for you in the end.
'Cause I know, if I get pissed off in the car,
like some crazy person cuts me off and then honks at me,
I'm like, "You mother, what the"
and then for hours afterwards, I can be like,
"I'm so angry" right?
And it can ruin my day.
And so what would be better for me is to be like,
"Oh, excuse me, I'm gonna slow down,
let you go, no problem" right?
Put my music on and jam.
So I want you to keep that in your mind,
and then let me know the things that you've done
where you've reacted a different way,
and you took the time to respond helpfully.
Does that make sense?
I hope it does.
Okay, I love you all.
Thank all of you so much,
so many of you are plus one-ing my videos,
thank you, thank you, thank you.
Don't forget to add me on Google Plus
so that I can easily approve your comments and comment back.
We can keep our conversation going.
And I think that's really it.
Thank you all, I'll see you tomorrow
'cause it's finally Friday and I'll be on Facebook.
Okay, bye.