- Hey, everybody, it is Wednesday
here at katiemorton.com,
and that means I'm on the website katiemorton.com,
as well as on my YouTube channel.
If you haven't subscribed, you should subscribe,
because I put out videos all the time.
You wanna know.
And also, I am still having issues,
I know many of you newcomers, I'm gonna keep
reminding you about this,
we have to, you have to add me to your circles
on Google Plus now, so if you can click here,
or on a lot of my videos, you notice I'm like,
click here to add me to your circles,
now YouTube's doing something even more annoying
where I'll take all this time to answer your question,
I'm like, hey, thanks so much, this is
what I think would be best, even if it was
an FAQ that wasn't able to get into the video,
I often answer them.
So then when I hit Enter, Send, it disappears,
and at the top it's like, you can't comment.
They're not added to your circles.
So that's annoying, and I'm sorry.
So if you're not getting any responses,
it's 'cause you're not in my circles.
So click here, do that, and that
will really help me out, okay?
Question number one.
I feel so guilty, all caps.
So guilty.
Saying anything negative about my family to my therapist.
I feel disloyal and then spend the rest of my session
trying to defend them or justify their actions.
I know to get better, I need to deal with the past abuse,
but the guilt is stopping me from opening up.
How can I get past it?
I have a lot of clients who struggle with this,
and oftentimes, I find it can be a cultural thing,
like in our family, our family culture
is that we don't talk about the family outside the family.
If you check out my boundaries video,
I talk about this a little bit as well.
Something that can help is talking to your therapist
in one session about your family dynamic.
That's not putting your family down,
you're just talking about it.
And I find that once we kind of air that,
and we say, you know, I was raised where
we don't really talk about the family,
and so it's really hard for me,
so if you could help support me and let me know it's okay,
I will do with my clients, and you can even
request this from your therapist,
you can say, you know, when I say something,
you can say to me, I understand they're not
a bad person, your family's wonderful,
but this is something that happened to you.
And sometimes we see that affirmation
to kinda keep us going, because otherwise,
like you said, we'll stop,
and then we end up just spending the whole session
being like, but no, I promise, my brother's not bad,
just one thing he did.
We need to still be able to have your experience,
because what you experienced is true
and what you felt is true and you have every right
to feel and experience that, right?
So I would talk with your therapist,
so that they can kinda help you get through it, okay?
And if anybody else has gone through this,
and you have other helpful tips, as always,
leave 'em below, okay?
Question number two.
I feel unjustified guilt a lot.
Like what I ate, or bothering my therapist,
wasting my parent's money on therapy,
if I don't exercise one day,
failing at something I tried hard on,
et cetera, the list goes on and on and on.
What are some ways to deal with guilt
that is not anything bad that you did
and is unjustified, like it's unjustified guilt.
I know I say this a lot, but it also applies to this,
and it applies to a lot of the questions that I get,
is talking back to that voice.
'Cause the guilt, that guilt and that shame
and that embarrassment that we often feel
that's associated with our eating disorder
or our self-harm or our anxiety or
our social anxiety or our depression, whatever,
is often a negative voice, and it sounds like
that negative voice is getting you,
'cause they're like, well, you didn't work out today,
so you're just lazy, and look at you,
and how dare you?
How dare you do this and watch TV and relax?
It will go on and on and on.
And I'll even have it in my life.
Like, you told that person, Katie,
you'd respond to that comment,
and you haven't done it!
And I'll get out of bed and do it,
which is crazy-making, right?
So what we have to do is we have to talk back to it.
I often just make notes and stuff too,
like Post-It notes, like you're good,
you're doing good, keep at it,
and my Building a Better Body Image, I talk about it.
And we just have to talk back to that voice,
because what it's telling you is a lie.
Like, you know it's unjustified.
So sometimes just telling yourself,
like what I'm feeling right now isn't justified.
I work hard.
I tried to do this, and if you can't think
of it for yourself, be like, what would Katie say?
'Cause I'd be like, shut the heck up, nasty voice!
Like, I work hard, I try hard, I exercise plenty,
my doctor says I'm only supposed exercise X amount,
so that's what I'm doing, and I'm eating
what I'm supposed to eat, and I'm supposed to enjoy this,
or whatever, if you can't do it with your voice,
you can try with my voice, okay?
I hope that helps.
Question number three.
Hey, Katie, I've never asked a question here before,
I'm a newcomer.
Well, welcome, welcome.
You talk about getting rid of bad energy,
bad things slash people, so that you're happy.
What if that thing is kinda permanent in your life?
For instance, it's my dad.
He says my depression isn't real,
he says a lot of hurtful things about it and me.
And I can't just leave, and he's really hard to talk to,
so how do I approach it?
I get a lot of questions about this,
and that's why I selected this,
because many of you have parents who are
kinda toxic and we can't get rid of 'em, right?
Family is family, and if we live there
and we're younger, we can't really get out.
I find the best thing to do
is to set boundaries for yourself.
Now, I know that sounds a little weird,
but I often find it's helpful for, like,
I'm only going to interact with my dad for 20 minutes.
And if he starts to get negative
or says something that I find kinda triggers me,
I'm gonna walk away.
I'm just gonna go away, whether I walk out of the house,
I have to run errands or I forgot to do this
or I'm gonna go grab a coffee
or I'm gonna go in my bedroom and I'll put my earbuds in,
and I'm just gonna listen to music.
Set some boundaries for yourself.
Because if you can't really talk to them,
there's no sense in me trying
to tell you how to talk to them.
But you can always just say,
I don't wanna spend time with them.
And so we'll think of ways to get out of it.
And I know we always wanna be truthful,
and we think everything should just be easy,
but people aren't always easy,
and they're not always reasonable.
So I would set some healthy boundaries for yourself,
whether it's the amount of time you spend with them,
when you see them, if you have the luxury
of not living with them,
I would set up other appointments,
so even if you go over, you have to leave,
things like that.
So setting little boundaries around
what you know is safe for you
and what makes you feel okay.
It'll really help ease the anxiety
and just the frustration of having to deal with them.
Okay?
I hope that helps.
Now, final question, question number four.
So I'm terrified, or I'm terrified (chuckles).
I'm terrible, wow, that was a really bad misread,
I'm terrible at finding balance.
I'm not currently engaged in eating disorder behaviors
as I've been in recovery,
but I've found that I seem to have bounced
from being a very strict eater or stricter exerciser
to the opposite extreme of eating
pretty crappy food and a lot of it
and not exercising at all.
How can I find and maintain a healthy balance
between these two unhealthy extremes?
So, first of all, check out my video
called Black and White Thinking.
I talk about, like, living in the gray.
And I encourage my clients to start to make a list
of things that have to be done in a certain way,
or that they've swung, like you just noted some of them.
So start making a list of those things.
And then I want you to come up with one thing
you can do every other day or so,
I don't want any rigidity, right,
we want it to be kinda gray,
where you can give yourself a little wiggle room.
Like, I'm gonna go with my girlfriend
to meditative yoga on Thursday,
'cause that'll feel good to me,
and I won't feel like it's extreme exercise.
So we're kind of finding a gray zone.
Or I'm gonna have that salad,
but I'm also gonna have a couple pieces of pizza,
'cause that's what I want.
And part of it will be working on intuitive eating.
There's an intuitive eating workbook
that you should definitely check out
that will help with the eating extremes.
But as far as life, try to find things
that you would normally do in extreme,
and find a not-so-extreme version.
And just kind of pepper these in over the next
couple of weeks and notice how you feel.
I think the key to all this is self-check,
like checking in with yourself, how do I feel,
how's this going, is that enough,
is it too much, because oftentimes we don't
even think about that, we don't check in with ourselves,
we just go for it.
We either do all or nothing,
and we need to find a nice balance.
And I promise you, after working at this,
it will get a lot easier, okay?
Now, the journal topic from Courtney Kahler.
She had a really, really cool quote,
and I've heard it before, and it's amazing,
and so I decided that it would be perfect for today.
The quote is "Do something today
"that your future self will thank you for."
I think that's amazing, and if you can
think from that future self,
maybe even write a letter to your future self,
which I find extremely helpful and cathartic,
and you can read it later, and it's awesome.
Think from that mindset, and what's something
that you can do today, just one thing.
Just one thing.
Yeah.
Let me know.
So I will be, tomorrow is Thursday,
I'll be on Twitter, so ask your questions
using the hashtag katiefaq, I'll answer them,
and we'll do this again tomorrow.
Okay, bye!