Hey Everybody! Happy Thursday, now that means that i'm on twitter answering your questions
so if you use the #katiFAQ, then I went through as many as I could and I am going to answer them right now
and i also have a journal topic at the end to get you thinking, cause that's always good.
Um, so without further ado, now the first two questions are kind of related but also kind of different
but i put them back to back so you can kind of understand both sides I guess
Ok, so, question number one.
I can't hardly eat anything, but when I do, I don't keep it down.
I am not currently underweight so do I qualify for help or do I need to be smaller?
And I get questions like this all the time, many people wondering
'do I have to be underweight?' which I actually have a video called
I think it's called 'Can I be overweight and still have an eating disorder?'
I think that's the name of it, but you can probably search 'overweight' and you'll find it.
So, not that we have to be overweight, but even if we're at a normal weight
yea, we can still have an eating disorder. A lot of people do, it's why they added Binge Eating Disorder to the DSM
and, we dont have to be small to be taken seriously we don't have to be small to have an eating disorder
we don't have to be small to get help, we can always get help so don't let that eating disorder voice tell you otherwise
cause that's who's actually telling you that, you're not sick enough and what you're doing is not good enough and blah blah
it's a bunch of shit, and to be honest the sooner we get help the better and it's actually better for our bodies to get
help sooner because the longer we, um, starve ourselves or binge, or purge or a combination of all the things I just
mentioned, um, the longer we do that the harder it is on our body and the harder it is to recover, okay.
Now question number two is 'Why do some people say that you can be overweight and anorexic
yet the DSM states otherwise?' Now, we can't have the diagnosis of anorexia and be overweight
that's just not how it works, it is part of the diagnostic criteria that we are, if you watch my anorexic video
I put out, ah, two years ago, my anorexia nervosa video you will see I talk about the diagnostic criteria.
Now what has changed within the DSM is, that there if we're overweight and we have a lot of the same
tendancies as an anorexic person, or as most of their criteria except for the weight then we would have
an Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified or EDNOS which I believe they have changed the name of it, and I've talked about it before
but I hate the way they have changed it, it's stupid it's like eating or feeding disorder not otherwise
something, it's like a really ridiculous, sometimes the DSM pisses me off, but that's what you would most likely be
diagnosed with, I don't know what it is within the community or people thinking one diagnosis is better than the other
because they're all horrible, we need to fight to be free of it because having that nagging voice all the time is not healthy
it's not normal and nobody likes it and I don't care if you think one is better or worse than the other, trust me
none of the people with any of those diagnoses are happy about it, so let's all work together, right?
Let's break through the stigma, help people help themselves and help one another and I have a free eating disorder
workbook on my website katimorton.com that can help you get started. Ok, hope that clears that up.
Question number 3
Hey Kati, I have a question. I've recently had my first therapy appointment, she was nice
and I had a good feeling about it, but I haven't been honest with her and I haven't told her everything.
Is it normal to lie and not tell everything in the beginning??
Now the reason I'm talking about this and I know i've talked about this in the past, is because I
get questions like this all the time, I even get um, comments or questions where they're like
I can't tell my real therapist but I want to tell you and then they'll tell me what's going on
and the thing about it, is, first of all yes that's normal it's normal to not want to tell them the whole truth
because let's be honest, we don't know them we're getting to know them and it can be really
awkward at first, and they might have a lot of questions about your history and they might ask you a lot of stuff
and you just don't really elaborate, that's normal it's kind of our own defense mechanism to keep
us kind of safe, and not let people in too quickly and things like that, so give yourself time,
breathe, it's okay. And, the fact that maybe later on you may go back and amend some of the things you said
like 'I know when we first met I told you such-edy such happened but that's actually not really how it happened,
what really happened is...' and you go into it.
And as a therapist we're expecting that I have clients, I mean as bad as it sounds
I have clients lie to me all the time and half the time I know they're lying to me but it doesn't matter because I know in their own time
they will tell me, and so, as long as you keep working on it, you keep talking to your therapist the best you can and
working through things, and just doing the best you can, it's going to be fine, and he or she, whoever your therapist is
will understand and you can, you know, change your story later when you feel more comfortable and more able
to tell the truth, okay?
Question number 4
Welcome back Kati! I'm unsure how to ask this question but here's the situation
A couple of weeks ago, I was a victim of a form of sexual assault. I'm dealing with the common symptoms one does
with/after that happens to a person but I'm unsure if something I did is considered a "symptom" or not.
I was feeling vulnerable and experiencing flashbacks to former traumas.
I tried to get my mind off of the current situation and found a person that I thought that I could console with,
one thing lead to the next, and we ended up having sex, I wish that I could go back in time and stop myself from doing that.
I'm currently, working with my therapist on both of those things. I wrote a letter to her explaining all of this. We're working on it.
The form of sexual assault does bother me, so does the sex with that person, because he was a professor of mine.
And now, I feel that I won't be able to tell her that part out of fear. I'm wondering if this is common for victims. Thanks!
I'm so sorry that this happened to you, first of all the assault and now that this is just kind of all compiling on one another
often times, if we've been previously assualted or if we're children of incest or sexual assualt
in our past or we've been abused it's very common for us to struggle to set our own boundaries.
Now, with that being said, well, I guess what I am trying to say is, when someone's broken through our boundaries repeatedly
and everything's on their timetable and they don't care what we think and they don't care if we say no
and there's no, we have no say, we sometimes forget our own voice, and that can definitely happen later on
until we properly work through it and processed through the trauma which I am so glad you're seeing someone and if any of you
out there have had this similar situation, please please please see a therapist someone who is good with working through
traumas and has experience in this realm because it can be so helpful and I know it sometimes gets a little worse before
it gets better, but it does get better, so, having, having said all that it's very common for us to find ourselves being a victim again
not that you were saying you were a victim in this sexual situation but you, it almost feels wrong, or we, we feel like everything's our fault
and the sex that we have is tainted and we have all this baggage and we have all these things that we believe in our head
or that those voices tell us because of our previous, um, assaults or um, incest or rape or whatever happened, um,
we'll have those voices coming up, but it's not your fault this is just something we have to work through
often times, we have to learn how to put up boundaries have to learn how to say no, have to learn to say what we feel
and what makes us comfortable and to take our time and if we're in a relationship with someone
and we decide we want to have sex we can take our time with it we need to have someone who understands and will meet us
where we're at. Right, and it's okay, and I know that healing from trauma like that is really hard
I know that it is not your fault at all, and we're just re-learning how to have boundaries, how to have happy, healthy sexual
relationships, um, and you know, feel okay about it. Okay? I hope that helps explain and if any of you
have had similar situations, let us know what's helped you because I'm trying to build a community where everybody
helps everybody and we share in our experiences because it is really powerful, right?
Now the journal topic of the day, I, when I was studying for my tests there is a form of therapy called narrative therapy
and it's like, it's not anything that I've ever heard of anyone using but it's one of the potential therapies
that we can be tested on, so there's like 11 that you're responsible for and you have to know about them, but I really enjoyed the fact
that part of narrative therapy, just like it sounds, a narrative is that you can change your story.
That's what the whole goal is. And so, the way that they have you do that is by changing the story you tell yourself first
so your own internal story, so what I encourage you all to do is to take the time to notice what story you tell youself
is it 'I'm a horrible person, everything's terrible, nothing's ever going to work out, I'm going to go here and fail this test
i'm going to lose my job' do we tell ourselves that negative problem saturated story, or is our story in the middle
are we like 'some days are bad and some days are good' or are we all positive?
I want you just to notice, if you're a journaller, maybe journal some bullet points about the story you tell yourself
and then, I want you to try and change it for the positive change those negatives to positive one by one
and repeat the story to yourself with those new added in positive highlights and I promise you
you will feel so much better, I've been practicing it on my own, and it is really helping, so I hope you like that
I love you all, I will see you tomorrow, cause you know what it's finally Friday, and I will be in Seattle, so I am flying to
Seattle tonight to meet up with my girlfriend, Ashley and then my family, cause I am an aunt now
and I gotta go see my niece! Um, and so I will be vlogging from there! So I will you all, and I will be gone next week in Washington
I will try to keep up with my vlog videos but if I miss one it's just because i'm busy enjoying time with my family, ok
I will talk to you later, bye!
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