- Hey everybody, happy Thursday!
And when it's Thursday here,
if any of you are new, welcome to our community!
I either, A: answer your questions,
just like on kind of part of Monday
and all of Tuesday I'm in the comments
and I'm on my website and this is me typing,
if you're curious what that is,
and I'm answering your questions
and then I pick from those some questions
that I get a lot, or something that I think
may help many of you, and I answer them today.
Or talk about things happening in the media
and many of you sent me your ideas
and I am looking into them and getting it ready,
but my world right now is in chaos.
I'd move my camera to show you,
but my kitchen is being renovated
and so literally I'm sitting on my kitchen table
filled with all of my kitchen wares.
And so, I'm just a little out of sorts
and I haven't had as much time as normal
to research all of the media things you sent me.
But today's question is a really good one,
so let's get going.
Question says: "Hey Kati, for most of my life
"I've been walking on eggshells for everyone.
"This includes bottling up and ignoring my emotions,
"feelings, and thoughts on everything.
"instead of understanding and accepting
"how I truly feel and expressing myself appropriately."
Oh, sorry: "Instead of expressing how I truly feel
"I keep my nose inside of a book.
"I never socialized or really talk to anyone,
"other than my therapist,
"mostly because I believe I have nothing to contribute.
"Are there any techniques or advice you can give me
"to help me understand who I am a little bit more?
"I'm told the answers are inside me,
"but I'm having trouble accessing that information.
"Perhaps my pesky brain considers my feelings
"to be classified.
"I love your videos, they finally help me look into therapy.
"Keep up the excellent work."
Oh, yay!
I'm glad that you're in therapy,
well as you said you only talk to your therapist.
I really like this question for a couple of reasons,
the first is, I think a lot of us bottle up
our emotions and, potentially, either take them out
on ourselves, through our depression,
anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, you name it,
we take it out on ourselves,
or we take it out on the people closest to us.
And I'm even guilty of this sometimes.
if I haven't properly expressed how I'm feeling,
or I'm angry, let's say somebody's really mean
to me today, or I had a really hard day,
I come home and maybe I'll be angry with Sean,
or edgy, like: "Oh, I'm frustrated!"
And that's my fault because I didn't express it
or get it out in another healthy way.
With that, I want to let you know
that there are a couple things that you can do.
The first is: express it to the person
who is being an asshole.
So if someone's really hurting your feelings,
upsetting you, or whatever, express it to them.
Now I don't mean yell, I don't mean meet them
at the level that they're talking to you so mean.
Don't do that.
Instead, we're gonna try to communicate
in a clear, short, succinct manner.
Saying things like: "I'm gonna stop you there
"because I'm already feeling really upset.
"Can we continue this conversation later
"when we're not so heated?"
That's an option.
Or talking after this has happened if it's like a quick,
sometimes I call them like drive-by arguments,
or somebody's like: "I hate you, you're such a jerk",
and then they leave so you don't any chance
to say anything or do anything.
Then, we may approach them later,
let's say it's someone at work
and we can say: "You know, the way you talked
"to me earlier just really left me feeling upset.
"Is there any way we could sit down
"and kind of talk it out,
"so this doesn't happen in the future?".
And I know that it's hard in the moment.
I don't like confrontation myself.
I don't really like doing that,
coming up to people and being like:
now because of the situation I'm feeling
this way and I'm sorry.
I don't really like that kind of stuff,
but I find when I force myself to do it I feel better.
Then we feel heard, we feel like we've expressed
what's going on, and hopefully it won't happen
as often in the future.
So that's one of the things that I think we can do.
The second thing, so if we can't talk
to the person, let's say this person doesn't even know us,
it's just some jerk in line somewhere,
or somebody who cut us off, or we had something,
who knows what happened.
We can still express how we feel
by A: venting to someone that we love on the phone,
like I call my mom...
I call my mom every day, but I'll call her sometimes
and be like: "Oh my god, this guy was such an asshole
"and he said this to me and I don't even know him."
And I get it out that way.
if there's nobody you can call,
sometimes I put on angry music in my car
and I scream or sing it really loud.
it's like when you're going through a breakup,
I mean I just turned 32, so that tells you
when this song came I was like in college,
and the Kelly Clarkson song: "Since you've been gone".
Like you put on songs you like
your anthem and you sing them
and you get so angry, or frustrated, excited, whatever,
and that helps you better express your emotion,
instead of keeping it bottled up.
'Cause bottled up only really leads to one thing
which is taking it out on ourselves,
or someone we love.
The second thing that I wanna address
with this question is her question
on figuring out who we are.
Who am I, what's happening, is this real life?
And that is something that a lot of you have asked me,
especially those of you in recovery,
because we can feel like so much of who we are
is wrapped up in our sickness, illness, what-have-you,
that when we are just working on recovery we're like:
"Well then, what's left, who am I?"
And the truth of this is that we...
First of all, if it's an eating disorder,
or self-harm, check out my free workbooks on my website.
Both of these have tasks within them
to help you do what I call inner child work.
A lot of us when we struggle with depression,
anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders, what-have-you,
for a long period of time in our life,
we're kind of frozen at knowing who we are
back when we were, let's say eight years old,
or 12 years old, or whatever,
we're kind of frozen,
like developmentally arrested at a certain time.
And so it's important that we go back
and we start journaling from that voice,
from that inner child voice,
we start nurturing that inner child
maybe things that you needed as a child
that didn't get met, or like, my dad said he'd take me
to this museum, or exhibition,
or something, or to Disneyland,
and he never did.
And then we can find someone in our life
who is supportive and loving and they can do those things
with us and help us heal our inner child.
I know that that is kind of hard sometimes
to conceptualize, but if you're with a therapist,
talk to them about it and say:
I watched this strange lady on YouTube
and she said that doing inner child work
is really helpful for this.
And she, or he, will know what I'm talking about.
So that's something we can do to figure out who we are,
because we have to heal ourselves
in the past to be better and healthier in the future.
And the last thing is trying different things.
I'm still learning about myself.
I'm still learning things I like and don't like,
whether it be activities outdoors,
certain people in my life, things I like to eat,
all sorts of things.
And we're always changing and growing,
so I encourage you to challenge yourself.
Start joining different groups,
join a hiking group, try to do different things
and see what you like.
Maybe try an art class, maybe try music.
Anything that you think might...
Maybe a book club, there's all sorts of ways
to try different things and at the same time
meet new people and help us learn more
about who we are, or maybe what other people see in us.
I think group therapy is really great for this.
I know it's not available to everyone,
but ask your therapist to look into some groups
in your area because that can help you learn more
about yourself and feel like you have a better understanding
of who you are and who you're becoming.
I love you all, I hope this was helpful.
Leave your comments below, and let me know what you think.
And I will see you all on Saturday. Bye!