- Hey everyone, it's finally Friday.
And you know what that means.
It means I'm on Facebook and I'm answering your questions.
And, I'm doing six questions now.
I've been getting faster, answering questions like crazy.
And, I have your journal topic at
the end so stay tuned for that.
So, the first question, drum roll please on my DSM.
Doesn't make quite the nice drum roll.
Is, can a person have more than one anxiety disorder?
And the short answer is yes, you can.
I actually had someone correct me on my Q and A video,
and thank you so much for that.
I'm always open to your guys' corrections.
Sometimes I just get so many things going in my mind
that I misspeak, so thanks for catching that.
And if you guys are wondering what my error was,
you can check the comments in my video from yesterday,
and you can see that I talked about selective mutism
and instead of saying that if you talk, you can speak
and then you can decide not to speak due to a trauma.
It can actually be an anxiety component as well,
something that makes us really anxious
and we can't talk around certain situations or
certain people cause our anxiety level is so high.
So thank you so much for correcting me on that,
I didn't realize I said that.
With that, with the anxiety disorders, let's say like
the video I was talking about yesterday.
Someone was asking the difference between different anxiety
disorders, and if we, let's say we have social phobia,
like I was talking about yesterday, we can also have
selective mutism which is another anxiety disorder.
Because they present differently, and they have a
totally separate set of diagnosis, okay?
Or the criteria that we have to meet.
Question #2: I have a therapist who tears up when
I tell her about things in my life.
Is this normal, is my life so bad that I'm making her cry?
This is actually really interesting.
And, I'll give you two sides.
On your side, on the client's side, that's ...
No, it's actually not anything to do with you to be honest.
It sounds like what your therapist is responding to
is a little bit of what we call in the therapy world,
counter transference, where you may
be talking about something sad ...
And I have a lot of clients like this.
We'll be talking about a really, really sad situations,
and they cannot show any emotion because we're
so disconnected from that situation, that in order
to feel something we have to be connected.
Does that make sense?
So, because we're disconnected, we may not express emotion.
And that emotion that we should be feeling is
actually what she's allowing herself to feel, which,
as a therapist, we're supposed to be trained enough ...
And I'm not saying that she's not trained.
Like I don't wanna put her down, 'cause I don't think
she's necessarily a bad therapist.
I think that maybe she's overworked and she
doesn't have enough separation between her
therapeutic work and her life.
Because I find that if I'm really maxed out, I can get
tearful in sessions, or fight the tearfulness in sessions.
Because I'm supposed to be able to let you bounce things
off of me, and me say "I'm noticing that you're not
expressing emotion, this makes me very sad."
And you know, to be able to talk about it
like that without getting emotional.
So no, that's really not normal.
It is a normal personal response,
but in therapy we're supposed to have boundaries,
and we're supposed to be able to allow you to
reflect off us and for us to tell you what
we're experiencing without actually doing it.
I know that's kind of difficult to understand.
I hope that makes sense, okay?
Question #3: What is the difference between
PTSD and adjustment disorder?
There seems to be a lot of overlap.
Yes, there is.
The main difference between PTSD and adjustment disorder
is PTSD means that we have to have had a trauma
that we've been exposed to, and that's why
we're having all these stressors, and flashbacks,
and nightmares, or whatever it may be.
Whereas adjustment disorder, and I'm lookin' at my DSM,
'cause I don't wanna misspeak.
Where if it's adjustment disorder it is a stressor.
And I know that it sounds like "Well that's the same."
But in a PTSD situation, it usually happens
and then we have the response within six months.
Whereas adjustment disorder can happen all the time,
and this stressor can keep coming up.
It can be, let's say it's everyday at work
we run into this person and it's really stressful
and so we have a psychological response to it.
So that's the differentiation.
I know it sounds very similar, but I hope that's clear.
And really, there's different sub-types under
adjustment disorder whereas PTSD is just PTSD.
But under adjustment disorder we can have
depressed type, we can have ...
Let me look, I'll read you a couple more options.
With depressed mood, with mixed disturbance
with anxiety, with all sorts of things.
It could be acute, it could be chronic.
And PTSD doesn't have all of those different types, okay?
Now, number 4, "How do I talk to my friend who I just told
about my eating disorder, and she said that she has one
too and hers is much, much, much worse?"
And this person was saying that her friend seems
to usually seek attention from others,
whether it's positive or negative.
And how do we talk to them?
To be truthful, I know that she's your friend,
but she's not really acting like one.
And when it comes to your eating disorder,
I would probably find someone else to talk to.
Someone else that is supportive, whether it's even
a therapist or a dietician, or your doctor,
your parent who knows about it and is helping you.
Anybody who's supportive, because this
person's actually not really helpful,
they might be toxic to your recovery.
But you could say, and I would actually encourage you,
to talk about it with her, and just say
you know, let's say, I'll say her name is Liz,
'cause I have a friend Liz and that makes
it easy to pretend that I'm talkin' to Liz.
"So, hey Liz, you know yesterday I talked to you
and I brought up something that is really hard for
me to talk about, and it was something that's
really secretive, and I found your response really hurtful.
Can you tell me why you responded that way?"
I mean that's kind of the way that I would talk about it.
You could also say something to the effect of,
"You know I really came to you and I felt really vulnerable
and I was looking for support, it that something
that you think you can give me for this?"
I mean, you can bring it up any way you're wanting,
but like I said, I have a feeling this person's
not gonna be the best person to talk about
your recovery to because they're always going
to try to one-up you, and eating disorders are
very competitive and that could really
just hinder your recovery, okay?
So just be really careful, protect
yourself and your recovery.
Okay, number five.
How do I go about making an appointment with you?
I get this question a lot.
And currently, I'm not taking any new clients.
I may open up a few more hours here.
I'm hoping to hear from the BBS, so I have time to study,
'cause I haven't been taking new clients for awhile
so I'm not actually a full load anymore.
But, I'm hoping then I'll be able to study
for my exams and pass, yay.
But my ... I haven't updated my office online, either.
I know, I'm sorry guys.
But, my office is on 7th Street in Santa Monica.
Until I'm licensed and I can actually apply for insurances
to accept me I can't accept insurance.
So, I know those were a couple of the other
questions that I get, but don't worry.
I will let you all know, I will actually probably
say it in a video once I've taken my exams.
And you can all assume, once I've passed both my
exams that I'm licensed, yay!
Then I'm opening up to more clients
and you can contact me on any of my sites.
I find twitter to be the easiest to keep in touch with
and that's how you can make an appointment.
And then we'll go from there, okay?
Number six on my final question.
What could you do to help ...
What could you do to help find the words in session?
A lot of times I have so much to say
but I stutter and I can't think of the right way to say it.
Is there a way to stop that?
To be honest, a lot of it's comfortability
with the therapist, and it can take awhile.
That's why a lot of times I'll have my clients write down
the things they think about when they're on their own.
And they're feeling more relaxed and they're things
they really wanna talk about.
And then you can bring that in, and you can read from it
or you can give it to the therapist.
And that can actually cut that out,
that time to even stutter or be upset about it.
And it also, it allows her to know it.
And a lot of times our anxiety level goes down
'cause she already know that information
and we can talk about it a little bit freer.
So I would practice journaling about it.
You could even practice saying it out
loud and how you wanna say it.
And then if you get too nervous in session
I would give it to her and help that move along.
And I would also bring it up in session
and just say "I have trouble finding the words,
sometimes I stutter and I don't get out what
I wanna say, and that's why I brought this."
So that she knows, and then we can work on it, okay?
Now the journal topic for today is ...
You know I love quotes and I can't help but
always look up motivational quotes, read them,
and you know, make journal topics about them.
So the quote today is "If you don't design your own
life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's.
And guess what they have planned for you. Not much"
And that's by Jim Roan.
And, you know, we're all on our own path to recovery
and it's our own process, right?
I'm always saying it's your own process.
It's not perfection.
So, and I'm reading my notes here 'cause I think
about this and I write these things down.
What can we do today to help ourselves better accept that?
Is it positive self-talk, is it standing up for ourselves?
Is it reaching out for help?
Even if someone's told us that we don't actually the help.
What can do to create our own life plan
and design it ourselves, and realize
that it's our own and it's wonderful
and we're unique in that way?
And we're gonna work through it, you know?
So think of the things that you can do to kind of
help keep designing your own life plan.
And you know, can we do it?
I think we can, so today I would like you to journal
about some things that you can do to help
design your own life plan and know that it's
uniquely and wonderfully yours, okay?
Have a wonderful weekend everyone, I love you all.
It's finally Friday, so I gotta get back to work.
I did this in the middle of the day on a little break,
so I'm off to the office, and I will see you all on Monday.
Bye!