..it's a commercial for Mac, Apple or something,
and it goes through each snippet of all these little videos
of like, today is the first day, and
it shows you like, "Chapter One," you know,
like it's all supposed to be motivating and inspirational,
like "use a Mac product and you'll suddenly be SO successful!"
Then it shows this little kid,
he gets on a snowboard, and he has a helmet on,
and he's like, "thank you everybody!"
"It's time to rock and roll!"
And he starts down the.. it's just the cutest thing.
Definitely. Let's rock and roll. Anyway.
Hi there! Thank you for checking back.
Today's topic is something that many of us struggle with,
and I've gotten a couple requests for this video.
And this has to do a little bit with,
I don't even know what the term I want to use for it,
but I'll just say if you have multiple diagnoses.
So you not only have and eating disorder, but
your doctor's also told you you have major depression,
and you have borderline personality disorder, you're bipolar,
You, who knows what it could be.
There's a ton of different things.
I know that everybody is different, everybody
suffers differently, and some of you I know
from one in particular, you get all this information all at once.
Oh my gosh, okay, you have bulimia,
you have bipolar disorder, you have.. all at once.
And that's a lot to take in.
And how do we manage recovery when we have all this other stuff?
It's hard enough to juggle a life with an eating disorder,
but now we're thinking about all these other things that we're given,
right? So what do we do?
Well, the first thing that I would tell you to do,
is if you haven't set up an appointment with a doctor,
set up an appointment with a doctor.
Whether it be your, in the states we call them PCPs,
primary care physicians, but I know in the UK
a lot of you call them your GPs, like your
general practitioner, whoever your regular doctor is,
make an appointment.
If you have a psychiatrist, even better.
Because they specialize in mental health issues,
and to be honest, I always prefer you to see a psychiatrist,
but I know for some of us that's really difficult.
So however you can get treatment, go get your treatment.
And when they tell you all this information,
let's say you get diagnosed with a bunch of stuff, ask questions.
I know we're embarrassed,
I know you're thinking "crap, they know everything,"
"Now they know all my secrets, I don't want to talk,"
"I just want to run away, I want to go home,"
"I want to forget this ever happened,"
But this is your time to get the information.
It's okay, I promise that once the first question comes out,
you'll feel a little better.
And you can ask all the questions you want.
If they put you on medication, what are the side effects?
What can I expect, do I have to take this forever?
You have to ask your questions. What does this mean?
Are there ways I can do this without medication?
You know, how do I tell my therapist about this?
Are you going to talk to them?
There are all sorts of questions that you should ask,
and things so that you can be better informed.
Because to be honest, in order for them to talk
to your therapist, you have to sign a release for both people,
so that it's okay for them to talk about you when you're not there,
just for privacy purposes, which is great,
because you don't want to think people are talking
to everybody about your problems, right?
So ask questions, talk about it. Like always, you need to talk about it.
And find out if there's other ways to manage it.
I know that I've had, goodness, many clients with borderline personality disorder
on top of an eating disorder. And that's very common,
and a lot of psychiatrists I know, and physicians
that I talk to, almost always check for that.
And I don't even know when they "check for that,"
usually there's different psychological testing,
and things they can do to find out, but
it is manageable.
DBT therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy,
can be very helpful for someone suffering from
borderline personality disorder. I know many of you
have left comments about how it's helped you,
and things like that, so look into it.
We have the internet, I mean I know a lot of doctors
are like "oh, I hate when people search the Internet,"
but it's at your fingertips. Be informed.
It's your body, it's your life, you deserve to know more about it.
Okay? If you have bipolar disorder, I know many of us
either bipolar I or bipolar II, a lot of us don't know
what the difference is,
but it just depends on if we've had a manic episode or not,
or a deep depressive episode, things like that,
but your doctor should know.
And the best thing for that is usually managed
with medication, so that we can start to deal with
the real problems. Because when our mood is all over the place
and we feel just kind of out of control,
it's really hard to deal with our eating disorder, right?
If we're feeling really depressed, and that makes us
either want to restrict or want to binge,
or whatever our eating disorder tells us,
it's really hard to get out of that.
If all the music and all the friends, nothing brings us out of it, right?
We sit in that depressive state for a long time.
Or if we're manic, we feel like we don't need any sleep,
we act impulsively, we might binge and purge a lot during that time,
or we might be really restrictive and exercising, and
who knows, right? Every eating disorder is different.
And having these concomitant diagnoses,
things that we have at the same time,
can make it even harder.
So ask your questions.
Find out ways you can better help yourself.
I know it's a lot of work. It is an additional thing that
we have to deal with, right? So it is harder.
But that doesn't mean it's impossible.
And that doesn't mean that we can't help ourselves.
So always ask for other options.
Make sure they can talk to your therapist,
or that you at least can tell them, and you
can change your treatment plan, and you
can work together.
Let everyone on your treatment team know about this.
And that way we can better manage it.
Does that make sense?
Now I know it's a lot. And I know it's overwhelming,
and we just want to cry and we want to scream,
and it's really unfair, and what the heck is going on?
How can there be so many things?
But to be honest, I've had many patients successfully
manage their other diagnosis and work towards recovery.
It's not something that can't be done.
But we just have to make sure that we're getting
the treatment that's necessary, okay?
So do your research. Ask your questions, be proactive.
Right? We're in control of where we're going,
we're in control of our recovery.
We need to understand more so that we can better act upon it.
Right? And leave your comments, let me know:
"Hey, I'm struggling with this,
do you have a certain kind of therapy that works best?"
Okay, because there's a lot of websites you can look up
therapists who specialize in different things.
I've told some of you about different eating disorder websites you can go to,
and things like that. So leave your comments, let me know.
And don't forget to check out my website or subscribe to my channel,
because my website has a lot of stuff you can't find on my YouTube channel,
things like that. Like I have a workbook that's out now,
it has videos and information that isn't on my YouTube channel
or any of my other Tumblr accounts or anything like that.
So feel free to check it out.
And we'll just keep working together.
I know it can be hard, it can be overwhelming,
but nothing's impossible when we work together.
And let's keep taking the next step to a healthy mind and a healthy body.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community