- Hey everybody, it's finally Friday and my mom
is filming my video.
Thanks Mom.
'Cause I'm in Seattle like I told you all.
I got on a flight last night and I am up in Bellingham,
almost to Canada, almost because my brother and his wife
had a baby.
Anyways, I gotta get this done 'cause I gotta
go see the baby.
I have four questions from Facebook 'cause it's Friday.
The first one is #katifaq, what is the difference
between a counselor and a therapist?
Now, technically speaking it's an education thing.
So a counselor is someone who is only, and I shouldn't
say only, someone who has their Bachelor's Degree.
They have a four year degree and then they just choose
to counsel people.
That's what they want to do.
They probably got their Bachelor's in Psychology.
Now a therapist is someone who has their Master's,
who's gone onto two more years, so six total,
has gathered their hours and taken their licensing exam,
like me.
It's usually someone, a social worker or a marriage
and family therapist.
Okay?
I hope that clears that up.
I know there's a lot of terms people throw around
and half the time it doesn't make sense
and you're like, who am I seeing and what
are their credentials?
You can always ask.
If someone calls themselves something else,
ask them what their credentials are.
Question number two, I know it's not Friday,
well it is now, but I was just wondering
if I could ask you something?
Anyway, my question is what do I say if one
of my friends touches me a lot, like on the shoulder
or the arm and they sit really close to me on the bus
and it just makes me really uncomfortable?
I just tense up completely when this happens.
This could have something to do with me
being sexually abused in my past as a child.
So, what do we say?
Now, if they're your true friend, be honest.
Honesty is the best policy, so you can always say something
like, you know, Sally, just pretending her name is Sally.
Sally, when, I'm just really not comfortable
with people touching me a lot.
I don't know, maybe something that happened in my past,
but do you just mind giving me a little personal space.
And explain what happened.
Then she won't, her feelings won't be hurt.
The way that people's feelings get hurt is when we
don't explain what's going on and we just kind
of cut them off or we push them away
and we don't explain why.
SO I would be honest.
And if any of you have struggled with this and you
have other ways that you verbalized it,
or helped get through this, let us know below.
As always, if you're struggling with sexual abuse
and you've had something happen in your past,
seeing a professional and processing through that
is key to recovery.
Question number three, Kati, I don't know
if you still answer questions, obviously, I am,
but I thought I'd give it a shot.
My husband is a veteran and he's been home
for about three years.
He's seen a counselor on his own, which is really good.
I'm really glad.
He often talks about me and our relationship.
Recently he came home and said that his counselor said
I'm only allowed to say two sentences when we are arguing.
After two sentences, apparently my husband
no longer listens to me.
Have you ever heard of this?
All that has done is cause my husband to focus on the length
that I'm talking instead of what I'm actually saying.
I'm highly frustrated to think that this is making
us take two steps back.
Thank you.
I honestly haven't heard of that.
That's very interesting and because he's already seeing
someone and it makes things a little complicated
to go against that, I would encourage you
to seek couples counseling, because what it sounds like
is obviously he's going to his therapist, and you could
even verbalize this to him.
He's going to his therapist and getting help
for what he's saying is happening and as we all know,
there are two sides to every story, right?
And so even if he's not hearing you after two sentences,
then that leaves you feeling like you haven't expressed
how you're feeling and that's important.
So there's got to be some kind of negotiation
and therapy can actually help you talk through
those arguments in a safe environment and you could feel
like you actually get to express yourself
and then he can try to repeat back what he heard,
so we make sure he's hearing all sentences that you say.
I would agree that this would be setting you back,
not that that therapist is necessarily not good
at their job, but that particular tool that they gave him,
I don't really think is helpful.
So I would encourage you to seek couples counseling, okay.
'Cause it's important to go together.
Now the final question is, I am currently
in therapy/counseling mainly for my self harm,
but I don't feel like I click with my therapist.
I just don't really feel comfortable telling her stuff.
I'm not saying that she isn't doing a good job
or that she isn't nice, because she totally is.
What am I supposed to do now?
I feel like I can't tell her because I can't think
of anything that she could change.
It's entirely my fault.
Should I just try to get used to her and pretend?
Also, before I went to see her, I talked to my teacher
at school who is kind of a school counselor
but not officially, if that makes sense,
and I really like her.
I felt comfortable talking to her, however,
in contrast to last year, she's now teaching
one of my classes again.
Would it be inappropriate to seek her help?
I feel like it's not her job to do this
and like it would be selfish to ask her and stupid
to assume that she would care.
Now first of all, I talked in many of my videos
that it's really important that you feel like you click
with your therapist and it's not your fault
and it's not your therapists fault.
Sometimes, we just don't click with people.
I don't know why, it just doesn't always work out.
It's just like people in general.
Sometimes you meet somebody, like oh, she's totally nice,
but would I hang out with her, hmm, probably not,
for no real reason.
It's just not there.
There's no, no chemistry for relationships in general,
and I think it's okay to express that.
I know it makes us uncomfortable, but the great thing
about seeing a therapist is that we're trained
to be able to give you advice and give you support
and understand and have it be what we call corrective
emotional experience where you can say things
that in a regular relationship would be, maybe kind
of upsetting and I might get mad, but with a therapist,
we understand and we listen and we're like,
I totally get it.
We'll give you some referrals.
We're actually legally bound to give you three referrals,
so make sure you get those.
As far as seeing your teacher who
is now teaching your class,
that's completely up to them.
There's nothing wrong with asking.
I don't know what their ethical boundaries or rules
or regulations within the school are, but I don't really
see any reason why you can't still talk to them.
I would go on in and ask and just say you're interested
and see what they say, 'cause we don't know
until we ask, right?
If any of you have had any experience with this
and you maybe know about some rules and what's happened,
I know many of you do talk to your teachers,
let us know below and let us know what helped you, okay?
Now, the last thing, my journal topic (drum roll)
and it actually more of a craft, something that I think
will really help.
This is something that I've had one of you make
and send to me, which I really like and it's very cool.
This is making your own coping bank.
Now one of you referred me to this, so thank you so much
for sending me the link.
Now the way that this works is we're going to need
to get a container that we can put things into
and we can also open up easily, so like a jar,
or you know like, if you get one of those big things
from Costco.
Let's say it holds like cheesy puff balls or something,
that would be good, so you can cut a hole in the top
and you can also take the top easily off so you can
get things out of it.
You can kind of see where this is going
by what I'm talking about and the way that it works
is and you can use a shoe box too.
That's another recommendation, so if you don't
have a cheesy ball puff jar, you have a shoe box.
And we're going to put in healthy, coping alternatives.
All those things I tell you, write in your journal,
listen to favorite music, write down some affirmations,
put those in there.
Play your favorite instrument, tell a person how you feel.
These are all things you want to write on little strips
of paper and put into your shoe box,
puffy cheese ball thing, or whatever.
And then when you're having a tough time,
you can pull it out and do what it says.
It's your bank and you can add more to it
and you can take ones out if they don't work
and not put them back.
And it's kind of cool 'cause you're like making deposits
and withdrawals, like a bank.
If any of you have really good coping skills that
have helped you out or that you're going to put
into your bank, share those below because sometimes we have,
you know, like almost like creative block.
We're like, I can't think of anything else to do,
so that would be really helpful.
Have a wonderful weekend.
I will try to see you all on Monday, but I'm
on vacation this week, so if I don't put out a Vlog,
don't think that you've lost me, but I'll have
my regular topic video going up Monday and then Tuesday
through Friday, I may just do one here, okay?
Bye.