- Hey everybody!
It's fun and live Friday.
And it's Halloween.
So for those of you who are in the states,
or in the areas in the world where you celebrate Halloween,
'cause I know that they don't do it all over.
Be careful.
Be safe.
Don't do anything stupid, make sure you have rides home.
Cross the street and look, make sure if you're
wearing dark colors you know it's kind of scary time.
I know I sound like a mom and I don't even
have any kids but,
I always think of Halloween as kind of a scarier
night, not because of the ghouls and the ghosts, boo.
But still just because everybody is out,
a lot of times we're wearing dark clothing,
we're walking on streets where there may not be good light.
And so, I just kind of get worried.
So be careful, everybody, okay?
Okay.
So, I'm on Facebook and I have three questions
today as well as a journal topic that
I actually found on my mom's Facebook page,
so thanks momma for that.
And it's a cool video I want y'all to check out,
so, anyway.
Without further ado, let's get going.
'Cause I know that you all have places to go and be,
and you're probably painting your faces as I speak.
Okay, So, first question, oh, nose itching.
Says, hey Kati I love your videos.
Today I went to the school counselor with my friend.
Yay!
We went because his mom was being a jerk to me, so,
she's so unfair and hates me.
My counselor said kill her with kindness,
but I already am.
I told her that but she keeps doing,
she keeps doing,
I'm not sure what she means by that,
but she keeps telling her to do that.
I thought that was stupid of her,
like she never gave me any really good advice.
I was wondering if,
if I didn't like what she said because
it was really a good answer or if it really
actually wasn't good advice.
Sorry if this is so long, love you.
So, I thought this was a really good question
for the main core of it being that
sometimes we'll go to a therapist or
counselor and they'll
give us advice,
or, talk us through things,
and it won't be what we want.
It like won't, sorry my camera's moving.
It won't be the advice that we were hoping for.
And it can be really frustrating.
Now, the kill her with kindness thing,
I'm not a big fan of it.
I think we definitely can and it never
hurts when we're struggling with a relationship
to be extra nice to people,
because often times if we don't fight back
they don't know what to do.
And then we're not giving
them any more ammunition in fact, we're
like taking it away.
So it can definitely help diffuse situations
if they are really volatile.
However,
if you are,
I mean the real reason that you go to therapy,
I think I would, I would in my next appointment,
say something to the effect of,
you know I'm really here because blank.
Whatever your real reason is.
If it's because you know school is hard,
you're getting stressed out.
Or, you're really having an issue with your mom,
or your friends mom or something.
And then you can work on things like
communication skills, and boundaries.
And things like that.
So I would talk to the counselor
and I'd just say you know,
the killing with kindness thing is helping,
you can just even pretend it's helping
but it's just not enough,
you know maybe if I can work structuring
like teaching her how to treat me,
or giving her new boundaries or anything like that.
And just kind of let them go from there.
The tricky thing that I find as a professional,
like from professional professional,
some school counselors aren't actually therapists.
They actually don't have to have like a marriage
and family therapy license.
Or a social worker license.
A lot of them just have a psychology undergrad degree
and then they've found themselves in the school system,
and so they're school counselors,
and a lot of what they do is,
classes, and managing you know, disgruntled kids
and people who are bullying or something like that.
So they don't actually don't do as much work as we
do kind of like on the internal side.
So if you're able, and if the counselor just doesn't
jive with you, see if there's a referral to a low cost
clinic that's really close, nearby.
Or if they, a lot of schools,
I know my school even growing up,
because one of my friends dad was this person,
but they have someone that is a licensed professional
who makes the rounds to usually the schools
within the district.
And you can make an appointment with that person.
And usually it's free.
So, anyway some things to look in to.
And you're not always going to like the advice
of your therapist or counselor,
but that doesn't mean that it's not appropriate.
But I would just encourage you to try what they're
saying and then come back to them with
what else you want to work on.
'Cause sometimes we don't get all the
information from you and so the more
we get then the better we can help you.
Okay?
Question number two.
Question, I'm afraid next week that I'll
be told my seizures will be boiled down
to me being epileptic and I'm afraid.
How do I cope?
Now I wanted to answer this question because
I get a lot of these.
Like, this is happening and it's always
around something that's anxiety provoking,
slash, worry that somethings gonna happen right?
And it's all, it's all anxiety.
Let's be honest.
And the question is how do I cope?
Or how do I get through this?
Or how do I prepare?
Or what do I do?
And the truth of it is that,
distractions are amazing during this time
because the reason that we turn this mole hill
into a mountain is because we don't know
what we're going to find out.
Like for this person in this question,
she's afraid that next week she'll be told
her seizures mean that she's an epileptic.
But we don't know that yet.
And we, there's nothing we can do from here
to now to make sure that we are prepared.
Or that we have the right information.
We can't change anything.
We don't know anything.
We can't do anything.
And, not being able to do anything is
when our anxiety goes bonkers because our
brain just spins with the what ifs,
and maybe this will happen,
and I don't know and what about that, blah blah blah.
Until we just feel frozen.
It's just too much.
And so I would encourage you,
if you find yourself ruminating and worrying,
and letting your anxiety go, (du syllable increasing pitch)
and just peak.
Get on my,
Get on my YouTube channel,
search for my,
all of my different breathing techniques.
There's one, the breath of fire, don't do that,
'cause that was like energize you.
The others are more calming.
Even do some of my Yoga.
I have one Yoga video, which I'm thinking
about getting a Yoga person on my channel.
Doing some Yoga flow since I'm not a
certified Yoga instructor.
Let me know what you think about that.
Give this a like or leave comments below,
just to let me know 'cause I'm trying to figure
out ways to expand our channel next year.
So that's an idea of mine.
But, those are all things that can help calm your anxiety.
Also, distraction, distraction, distraction.
I have a video I'm going to put out soon
I just recorded it.
It'll be a Monday video about distraction
techniques and DBT.
But, some of those are,
distract with chores,
distract with pleasurable activities,
and then like snap a rubber band.
Squeeze ice, there's all sorts of things
that we can do to distract ourselves
from whatever is ruminating in our mind.
So I would encourage you,
write down some things you enjoy doing.
Maybe do some chores, maybe this is a time
when you want to go through your closet.
Not that we really want to go through our closet
but you know what I mean.
We have to stop the thoughts from
continuing to spin.
Because there's really nothing we can do right now
and we have to wait to find out all
the rest of the information.
Okay?
Question number three.
I have a question.
I do self harm mostly cutting,
sometimes I smoke weed.
I know what I need to do to stop these
behaviors but I don't feel ready
to give them up yet.
So my question is,
how do I make myself ready to want
to have a better life essentially?
And I hear this all the time.
We're not ready to give them up.
And to be truthful,
at the root of it,
no one's ready to give them up.
We don't have to decide that we're ready
to give them up by reaching out for help.
That's not what that means.
Reaching out for help means,
and this is all you have to think about.
I don't like my life right now.
I don't like doing this.
I don't like how I feel about it.
I don't like where I'm at.
I want to be somewhere else.
I want to, you know, get over this.
I want to move past it.
It doesn't mean you want to give it up,
necessarily, it just means
you just don't feel good about where
you are right now.
And you wanna help, we want help changing that.
That's really it.
No one is ever ready to give up coping skills
until we have a firm grasp on some new ones
that work sometimes.
So, until I get patience to try some new like,
okay today we're going to try music,
we're going to try breathing,
when you feel these urges to self harm
or you feel urges to use your eating disorder.
Or your depression's coming in,
we're going to use these things,
and until those start to feel helpful,
we can't let go of the other things.
we're holding on to this other coping skill still.
And you don't have to be ready to let go of it
for quite a while.
So don't worry.
I would encourage any of you out there
if you're worried about reaching out for
help because you actually don't want to let
go of your eating disorder, your self harm,
your anxiety, your depression, whatever it is,
if you're not quite ready to
get over it.
Don't think that that should stop you from
seeking help, because we don't have
to be ready when we first seek help.
We just have to be wanting something more.
That's it.
Okay?
Now.
Journal topic.
I want you all to open a new tap.
Boop, new tab.
And we're going to go into YouTube and
we're going to search for a video called look up.
Look, l o o k space u p,
look up.
And, my challenge to all of you,
because the whole video is about
how we spend so much freakin time on technology
that we don't even interact with one another.
We'll be out to dinner, we're all on our phones
like scrolling through Instagram or whatever.
Or we're worried about taking
our selfies just right.
And we'll sit on trains and buses and not
talk to anybody at all because we're all
on our phones.
And it encourages you to look up.
To participate, to have eye contact with people,
to sit with your friends,
and have a no phone rule for dinners
when you get together or something like that.
I mean it doesn't have to be that extreme but,
participate with one another.
I encourage all of you,
leave your phones at home or turn them off
for a portion of your day this weekend.
It doesn't have to be all day,
let's shoot for at least an hour.
And then I want you to tell me,
I want you to comment below,
I want you to tweet to me,
I want you to Instagram me photos of how it felt,
what it was like to unplug for a hot minute,
because there's nothing like communication,
eye to eye,
talking to people, relating to one another.
Learning new things, meeting new people.
And we can always turn the phone back on
if it's just you know, to anxiety provoking or something.
But I challenge each of you to
save this chunk of time where you're
not on your phone.
And let me know how it goes.
Okay.
I love you all.
Have a wonderful and safe weekend,
and a Happy Halloween.
And I will see you on Monday,
and on Tuesday I'll be on Tumblr
so ask your questions there.
Bye.