- Hey everybody, happy Thursday.
Now today's question actually comes from Patreon
because each month on Patreon, if you don't know,
at certain tiers, people get extra videos each month.
The last month's video had a bunch of good questions
that I thought would be helpful to share with everybody.
So that's where this question comes from and let's just
jump into it.
The question is:
Kati, I've had some really low points in my life
where I've shut down and no one had a clue.
Definitely more true depression I guess.
I've been seeing my counselor for six months or so
and I've noticed lately I can tell when I'm slipping
and going down that not so good path.
I'm wondering, is the fact that I can notice this
and tell my counselor a good thing
or is it a sign that things are actually improving
over all or should I just be taking feelings just
as seriously as before?
This is a good question, something I haven't talked
about before and in the therapy world, in therapist
to therapist talk, we call that patient insight,
meaning that the patient that we're seeing
has personal insight.
They know what their norms are and when things
are off kilter, which is something I would encourage
all of you to do and part of the reason I wanted
to answer this question is we should all recognize
what our norm is, meaning what's that little, kind of area,
that we oscillate between, mood wise, day to day,
month to month.
That's why tracking your mood is so incredibly helpful
because we have to know what our regular norm is
before we can know if things are getting
a little off kilter, or out of sorts or we're feeling
a little weird.
If we don't know what our norm is, we can't really figure
that out and that's why, knowing that things are going
badly, like she says, "I notice when I'm slipping
and on a not so good path earlier on",
that's amazing news.
Hooray, yay, because that tells us that you,
the person who asked this question, knows what their norm
is, what they normally lie in and knows that when things
are out of it, they feel it and they recognize it
and they can get back on track, lickety-split.
Obviously there's a lot of hard work involved.
First, it's hard to even notice our norms,
so if you're out there and this is something that maybe
you want to work on, it's a great place to start
just by tracking our mood.
There are great apps that can help out with this.
I even have my clients just take some notes on their phone
or write things down at the end of the day, like how
was my mood in the morning, like those feeling charts
I've talked about so so very much.
How was my mood in the morning, afternoon, and night?
How much am I sleeping on a regular basis, like roughly,
and the hours that I am in bed, asleep?
How hungry am I?
Am I feeding my body well?
How much energy do I have, like mid-day, end of day,
all of that stuff.
Taking that into consideration and taking notes and kind
of watching it across a few months can help us better
get the help we need when we find ourselves slipping,
because the worst thing that we can do, as you know,
is just wait and wait and wait until we hit rock bottom
and we need hospitalization.
It'd be best if we reach out early, if we speak up right
away and we try to get back into that therapist
or call that psychiatrist we used to see and get
the help sooner.
We know we can get those symptoms under control
much more quickly.
I also want to address the last portion of her question,
which was, "should I take these feelings just as seriously
"as before?"
The short answer is yes, because no matter if we're
recognizing it or not, the feelings are still there
and they are still potentially dangerous because we know
depression, if left untreated, can completely debilitate us
and possibly cause us to think of suicide, or even
attempt to take our own life.
It's important that we still take the feelings
really seriously, but we also give ourselves a little
yay, pat on the back, five gold starts, whatever you want
because we recognized it ahead of time, which gave
you the opportunity to get help more quickly.
I hope you found this video helpful.
Such an interesting question and something that
is so great to talk about.
So I would encourage you, leave in the comments,
how do you know when you're slipping?
What are the signs and symptoms you look for when you're
just a little bit off track.
Also, if you have ways you track your mood
and track your eating and sleeping in a healthy manner
let us know about those too, because as a community,
we're working together towards a healthy mind
and a healthy body.
I'll see you next time, bye!