- Hey, everybody.
♫ It's finally Friday!
And thank God, 'cause I'm very tired.
But, I finally went to the doctor.
And he says...
I love my doctor, and he even has dogs in his office,
which I also love.
But, he says I have a really bad infection in my ears,
so, my ears are kind of blocked up
and he gave me some Nasonex stuff,
and some antibiotics.
He said I should feel good immediately,
so, I'm hoping as of tomorrow, I'll be a new woman.
Hurray!
'Cause I'm so worn out.
But, Sean and I are having a White Collar marathon,
so, we're just watching those,
'cause I never watched that show before, so haha.
Anyway, so, that's what I'm doing.
But, I have five questions today,
so, I don't have a general topic.
I'm sorry for many of you who like the general topic.
So, I'll be back on Tuesday with the general topic,
so, stay tuned for that.
First question.
"I normally love my job,
but I really need advice" "coping with my difficult boss."
"He criticizes me through email, and in person daily"
"and it's really taken a toll."
"What are some ways to cope."
Now, there's a couple of things.
First of all, know your rights.
This, when I read this, I was like,
god damn it, what an asshole, jerkity jerk boss.
Print out those emails.
I know might have deleted them,
but hopefully you didn't delete the deleted.
Print 'em out.
And then, go to HR, you file a report.
You be like, this guy is a dick wad
and I hate his guts, he makes my job really difficult.
Because, they can't do that to you.
That's not okay.
And, we have rights as workers,
and that's what HR is there for.
And if you don't know what HR is, it's Human Resources.
So, they're the people who let us know
what insurance we have...
My friend Liz even works in HR,
so, I know all of the shenanigans that go on.
But, you can file a complaint.
He won't know it's you.
They have to hold your name,
you know, keep your name withheld and it's anonymous.
But please do that.
Stand up for yourself,
'cause you deserve to feel safe,
happy, healthy when you're at work.
And those are our rights.
The second thing you can do,
because it sounds like it's happening all the time,
and it's probably even affect you when you go home,
'cause then you're really frustrated,
then you go home, then you're like,
ugh, I hate my job, you know,
it like follows you everywhere.
I would, start talking back to what he says at home.
Taking time to journal and vent.
If you need to go out with friends on Friday,
for like happy hour and vent about all the shit
that's gone on this week,
make sure you're taking time to do that
to take care of yourself and to vent
and get some feedback, where people are like,
yeah, he was a jerk.
'Cause that will feel really good.
Because holding it in,
just makes us feel like it's our fault,
like we've done something.
And we haven't.
He's just a total jerk wad.
So, yeah, those are my ideas.
If any of you have dealt with this,
and you have any good tips about it,
please leave your comments below.
But please, please report him to HR
because, the more people that speak up,
the more likely it is that he might lose his job,
or get in trouble, which he deserves to,
'cause you can't treat people like that.
Okay?
Question number 2.
"I'm 18 and I'm currently in therapy."
Good.
"I've gone about 8 times now,"
"and I'm having trouble opening up completely"
"due to past abuse."
"Are there any consequences,"
"confidentiality being broken if I mention who my abuser is"
"and that I often contact with this person?"
No.
Since you're 18, we're not legally bound to report
abuse that happen in the past.
You can, if you want to,
but we're only legally bound, at least in the states,
and I'm speaking from California state law,
it's that, if you're under 18 and you've been abused,
I am bound to report it.
But you can talk about it now.
You can be freely open about it.
Whether or not you wanna report it is up to you.
I would encourage you to file,
because they could be doing it to someone else,
and that's just not okay, right?
We wanna help protect others,
and it can also really feel healing for you.
I know it's hard and you don't always want to,
but it can be really healing.
Especially since you have to have contact with them,
and I don't know if that's triggering, or hard,
but I would definitely talk about it with your therapist.
Know that there's nothing that's gonna be forced upon you.
These will all be choices you can make when you're ready.
Okay?
Question number three.
"Hi, Kati, my question is, is it "normal" to experience"
"lapses of memory after traumatic events?"
"Basically,"
"I've had very bad long-term"
"and short-term memory in general"
"but particularly of times that had been more traumatic."
"I feel like I've completely lost huge pieces of my life."
"It's upsetting, and it can also be very scary"
"when memories do surface."
Yes, it's very normal.
To be honest, a lot of people will experience this
when they have PTSD,
and it's a way that our brain kind of copes.
It's almost like a dissociation,
which, I'll have a video coming out about that soon,
so, stay tuned for that.
Make sure you subscribe
so you make sure to know when that video comes up.
But, our brain and our bodies are really adaptive, right?
And they focus on helping us survive.
And so, if a bunch of traumatic things are happening,
our brain is like, oh my gosh, this is so overwhelming,
how am I ever gonna deal with this!
It will often, like, block it out.
That's why we have repressed memories.
Now, it will be really difficult,
and working through it with a therapist is hard,
but it's the best thing.
Talk therapy is the best.
And that, Courage to Heal workbook is good
if your past traumatic events revolve around abuse.
Also, you can work with a CBT therapist as well,
if it's something that's happened to you,
like a car accident, or any other kind of thing
that may have been traumatic to you.
You can kinda walk through it with them,
and just, to be honest,
processing through the situation
and talking it out,
and knowing that it's okay
and having someone hear your side can be so healing.
So I would encourage you,
if you're not already seeing someone,
or if any of you out there that have a similar thing
where you feel like
you can't remember certain portions of your life,
you don't know why.
A lot of times it's our brain's way
of just kinda protecting us.
And when we dive into those parts,
and we start talking about it,
some of those memories will come back,
and it can be really hard.
So, make sure you're doing it with a therapist,
and you have regular sessions,
and you can open up and take your time with it.
'Cause it's so healing,
and yes, you won't always have all that memory loss.
The only time we ever really have actual memory loss
is if we've had some damage to your brain,
like a concussion,
or if the accident was something like,
like I said, like a car accident and we hit our heads
and we went into a coma or something like that.
Other than that, as you work through it,
most of those memories should come back. Okay?
Question number four.
"Hi Kati, I'm really, really sorry to bother you."
"Here's my question."
"If I enjoy an activity,"
"but I'm aware that it might trigger a relapse,"
"should I avoid it?"
"I'm in college, and I'm on the crew team."
"I'm recovered from bulimia"
"but I gained weight during the first semester."
"I will be rowing again in the spring"
"and I know the tight uniforms we wear"
"will be triggering for me."
"Because I know this, do you think I should quit the sport?"
"I really enjoy it, but I'm worried that wearing spandex"
"will make me feel uncomfortable and lead to relapse."
This is always tricky.
And I honestly take it case to case.
Depending on my client,
depending on their level of recovery.
If you're worried that it's gonna spur a relapse
and you're new on recovering,
we'll still have slip ups, and still really hard,
I would encourage you to not do it.
I would do something else.
If you could do rowing, like at the gym,
I know there's like rowing machines,
and you enjoy that.
Or, if you could take it out on your own,
if you have a couple of friends
and you could go rowing together.
If there's any way to integrate it, I would try to do that.
But, until you feel secure in your recovery...
I always tell my clients to try to avoid, if they can,
situations that are gonna be particularly triggering
or something that may have triggered them
back when they first started having their eating disorder.
'Cause, a lot of my clients are dancers,
or athletes at college, or in high school
and it's really a lot of pressure.
And a lot of it is based on how we look
and how we perform,
and everything feels like it's out of our control
except for our eating,
and that's why we turn to our eating disorder, right?
So, I would encourage you, if you can,
to not do it, and find other things that bring you joy.
If you feel your recovery is solid enough
and you have a treatment team around you,
and you have constant appointments,
then, you might be able to try it.
If you are wondering, you think,
maybe I can do it, maybe I can't,
there's no harm in trying
if you're just honest with the coach
in telling them that,
you know, I've really struggled with this in the past,
I'm gonna do my best,
but if not, I may have to leave.
And knowing that that's okay.
And that those are your boundaries
around what's good and what's healthy for you.
Okay? I hope that gives you some good options
and some good insight.
Okay, question number five.
Facebook Friday question.
"Why do I get so jealous of my friend having other friends?"
"Even her having conversations with other people"
"makes me jealous, and it's really triggering for me."
I've heard this from a lot of people,
that we get really jealous
when our friends have other friends.
And in my experience,
this is something that
we're gonna have to work on personally.
We're gonna have to take some time,
we're gonna have to journal or talk in therapy.
If you have a therapist, I would bring this up.
Talking about your own boundaries
and your own beliefs about yourself.
The boundaries is because, we often feel,
we enforce this rigid boundaries around our relationships
and we believe that that person can only be friends with us,
and we can only be friends with them.
And talking about what our boundaries are,
what we believe they are,
how they operate in our life,
how we've learned to have these.
Sometimes it can help to look in your family,
at the way that your boundaries,
the boundaries in your family were.
I have two videos on this.
So, if you wanna search on my channel for boundaries,
you can re-watch those and get some new insights
into boundaries.
How they work and what they are.
The second part is how you feel about yourself.
And this is where I do a lot of journaling
and a lot of self-exploration around
what are your beliefs about friendship?
What is it you believe if your friend has other friends?
Is it a firmly held belief that you're terrible
and you're not good enough,
and they're not gonna wanna be your friend anymore?
Is it, I only have this one friend,
and if I lose them, I'll have no one?
Is it the fear of abandonment?
Are you just afraid they're gonna leave you?
Start thinking about what it comes from
and what your worries are.
And then,
once you kinda figured out
what these firmly held beliefs are, right,
we're doing that CBT,
we're downward arrow questioning.
So, okay,
so if that's true, then what does that mean?
Okay, well, if that's true, then what does that mean?
And we're going down and down and down,
until we come to these core beliefs
we have about ourselves,
And then I would encourage you to take them one at a time,
and try to talk back against them.
Try to argue against these beliefs.
What in your life has proven that they're not true?
What has happened to you that proves to you
that that firmly held belief
may not actually ring true in your life?
And, it takes time.
This is a big process.
It's something that a lot of us have to do
to figure out what we believe about ourselves
and how we can change that. Right?
We're changing like, the core of what we've believed,
maybe for a long time.
So, be patient.
Know that it's okay.
A lot of people struggle with this,
but you can get through it.
So, take it one thing at a time,
and I think that will really help. Okay?
Happy Friday everyone!
Get some rest.
I know I'm gonna rest this weekend.
I'm gonna drink a lot of tea,
I'm gonna watch a lot of White Collar,
I'm gonna catch up on all sorts of shenanigans.
And hopefully, when you talk to me on Monday,
I will sound normal.
♫ La la la
But now, I'm still very stuffy.
So, I love you all.
On Monday, I will have a video coming out,
so, make sure to subscribe.
And Tuesday, I'll be on Tumblr,
so, ask your questions there using the #katifaq,
and I will see you then.
Love ya, bye!