Okay, we're going. Check check check check check check, okay!
Kati
We didn't cut off her head good, okay. Hey everybody. happy Thursday!
You are correct, this is not my house. I am in Palm Springs, attending ClamourCon.
It's the first-ever year that they have created this event
and it's a great way to meet other youtubers. So I wanted to film kind of all on the road, because
for those who follow me online, you know that I've been traveling a lot.
But without further ado, this week's question comes from YouNow.
Have you been on YouNow? Hanging out on the live streams? I can promise you one thing, It's a good time!
We have a lot of fun.
We get to catch up and it's part of the reward, because we hit so many likes.
You got to pick the question this week, so the question is: hey Kati
How do you help a friend in crisis when you yourself are also in crisis? I get a lot of questions like this,
every week about how do I help a friend with mental health issues if I myself am struggling with mental health issues? There can be
20,000 different ways we can ask this question. But the truth of it is, that if we ourselves are struggling,
how can we help someone else who is struggling? And the truth of it is, the barebones, like realtalk with Kati is
We can't!
And I know it sucks, and I know you hate to hear that,
but it's like, I have talked about this before, like if we're a pitcher of water.
I like to use analogies that are visual, it kind of helps me in general,
but so if for this analogy imagine that our bodies are pitchers of water and
every time we take care of ourselves, we pour more water into our pitcher.
We're feeling good.
We're full of water, so if somebody else needs some water, we can pour out some. We can help them a little, we can reach out and
talk to them.
But if we ourselves are having a real shit time and our pitcher is almost empty,
we don't have the ability to pour any out to someone else.
Does that makes sense? Does that resonate with you? That always resonates with me, because I think of water as like a self-care tool.
That's what they talk about it in like astrology and stuff like that.
How water is like part of what helps us grow, like we're plants, right? I like that analogy so much.
Therefore if we ourselves are feeling terrible, if our mental health is just doing.. we are doing poorly.
Let's say our health itself, our physical health isn't going very well. Whatever is happening with us. If we ourselves are in crisis, we
legitimately do not have the wherewithal to help someone else, but here's what we can do instead.
We can check in on friends
who are struggling when we have a free moment.
When we feel like reaching out, when we know that talking to someone else who may be in a similar situation or understand our
situation can maybe help and be affirming and validating, so we can still
reach out to other people. Do not feel
that by me telling you that you can't help them, doesn't mean you can't have a relationship with them, because those are two totally different things.
What I'm just warning you against is trying to put out more energy to other people without taking care of yourself first
and that's when the first rules of being a therapist
I think, is that in order for me to be able to help other people, I first have to help myself and that's why in
grad school
I think they should require that everyone who wants to be a therapist, has to be in therapy
themselves, because during that time we can start working through our own issues.
Figuring out what's happened and processing through anything that maybe has been devastating or hard in our life.
By the time we get to treating other patients and other people who are struggling,
we are full of water and we feel good. So just be aware.
I want you to know that you can
be
caring and
worry about other people. And you can let them know that they're on your mind and that you care. You can send out a simple
text like that. But just be aware that if you yourself are in crisis, like the term crisis,
I believe it to mean that things feel out of control,
we don't really know how to help ourselves right now and all we can do is just barely survive. At that point
we actually don't have the
ability to care for anyone else. Once you're through that crisis and you start to feel better,
that's when we can actually check in with friends and
be there to support them and be a kind ear if they want to vent.
We can offer up some tips and tools that worked for us. We can just check in with them.
Those are some things that we can do, but when we're in crisis, when we are actually struggling ourselves,
just promise me that you'll make sure to take care of yourself first.
And if we don't put energy back into ourselves,
it can cause a lot of things to happen. Number one, it can cause us to burnout. It can be hard on our
relationships and be hard on the relationship
we have with ourself. And secondly, it can cause our mental and physical health to deteriorate more rapidly, so assess,
breathe,
prioritize your own health first.
Then we can go and we can offer up a safety raft to someone else. Another great analogy is when we're flying in planes. Cause I have been
flying on a lot of planes. When they are like: put your own mask on first before you help someone else.
So just keep that in mind though, that you can still be a
supportive friend. You might even want to be honest and be like: I'm in crisis myself, so I'll reach out when I'm feeling better,
but know that you're on my mind and I care about you. That's enough.
Just make sure you take care of yourself first, because you are so important and your mental and physical health is just as important.
We have to help ourselves first before we try to help others. I love you all!
Thank you so much for watching this video. Click here to subscribe if you're new. If you want to check out something else
I've done, you can click over here and I will see you next time. Bye!