- Hi everybody! Happy Wednesday!
And on Wednesday's, if you're new to my channel
it means I'm on the website, katimorton.com
and I'm also on YouTube.
So if you asked your questions on yesterdays video,
and you used the hashtag, katifaq, I found 'em,
and I've already answered many of them
on the website and on YouTube, so if you're wondering
if your question got answered,
you might wanna go check it out.
Yeah, and so today I have three and a journal topic.
So, without further ado, let's get started.
First question, "Hey Kati, is there such a thing
as turning off your eating disorder for your family
so that while your living at home, you don't
carry out and eat-y behaviors, or does this mean
that you never had an eating disorder to begin with?
Thanks!"
I thought this was a great question
and it got a lot of thumbs up.
For any of you who are new, also don't forget
to subscribe because I put out videos all the time,
as I'm sure you're noticing, but you can give
questions a thumbs up if you agree with it,
if it's something you want to have answered, a lot of times
when I have a bunch of different questions that I'm like,
hmmm I like all of those, I'll choose the one with the most
thumbs up, so that's a way for you to make sure
that your questions get answered, OK?
So, can we turn our eating disorder off? Yes.
Can we do it for a really, really long time? No.
This is just in my experience with my patients.
Most, most of the time I find, because we use eating
and our eating disorder, whether it's eating too much,
not eating enough, exercising a lot, whatever it is,
we use it as a way to cope with things,
and often, my clients will say that they can turn it off
for a period of time, because they don't wanna like,
hurt other people in their lives and then during that time,
often they'll be doing something else.
Like for my patients who usually don't eat that much,
and they really are restrictive, I find that they'll
exercise, or they might purge when they're at home.
But they don't do their, the, the whatever behavior
they think is the most noticeable.
And often times we can kinda, shut it down
and do something else as away to cope in the mean time.
But, I find you can't keep it up for that long,
it will come out one way or another.
But even if you're able to turn it off for let's say
a month or two, that doesn't mean you never had one.
That just means, that you may have found
another way to cope, or you may've found
another way to stuff those emotions down.
Unless you're working on it.
If you're working on your recovery, then that could
just be a great sign, but it doesn't mean
that you didn't have an eating disorder.
It often means that we're finding other ways,
and other outlets to cope.
And if any of you have experience with this,
if I'm not covering it fully, let me know below, OK?
Question number two, "Hey Kati,
do therapists ever feel guilty?
My therapist tells me to text her whenever I'm upset
and I feel like cutting, so I do, I text her.
And most of the time she'll respond
to me quickly and talk me through things.
But what about when she doesn't reply
and I go through with my urges to cut?
I don't want her to feel guilty.
Do therapists ever feel guilty about stuff like this?
Or am I just overthinking everything?
Have you ever had this happen to you?"
It's a toss up, it probably depends on the therapist.
For me, I don't feel guilty, I wouldn't say that
that's the word I would use.
I say helpless sometimes is more the word I would use.
Because I can't be there with you 24-7,
that's not how my job works.
If I worked at an inpatient center and I was there
during the day and we have people there at night,
and you were still doing stuff, I may feel more guilty,
like maybe this treatment center is not very good,
or maybe the protocol we're using isn't up to snuff,
and we're not doing enough to help our patients.
Those are things I would think about.
But at the end of the day, I'm working with you
in this process, and everyone's process is different.
And even if my clients are still acting out,
which a lot of them are, I mean, I'm not
a miracle worker, I'm just trying to help you best as I can.
And sometimes the urges are gonna be too strong,
but you know what's great about it, I always think,
is that it gives us more information.
How come it got you this time?
What can we do differently next time
so that it doesn't happen?
And so, I never see it as a bad thing, I never feel
guilty about it, I honestly am just glad
that they feel good enough to reach out, and that
I can support them the best I can.
Because, I can't be available all the time either,
because I have to sleep, and eat, and have friends
and things so that I can keep doing what I do.
So I wouldn't worry about it.
She said to text her, text her.
She obviously cares a lot about you, wants you to do well,
and she's just in it with you, she's in the process
with you, so allow her to be there
and don't worry about it, OK?
Question number three.
"Hi Kati, this has been lingering in my mind.
Four years ago I experienced tactile hallucinations."
Now I wanna explain to all of you
what tactile hallucinations are.
That's when we feel things.
I had a client, oddly enough when I was in the hospital,
who was floridly psychotic, if you have questions
about schizophrenia, I have a video on that, so I will
put an annotation here so you can link to it.
I'm learning how to do more things here
and getting better at linking videos
in the middle of a video.
It'll open in a new screen, so don't worry.
But anyway, tactile hallucinations are when we feel things,
and I had a client in the hospital who felt like
someone was always squeezing her butt.
And I know we kinda laugh like, oh that's funny,
but it can be really scary for someone, and then you like
turn around if you're in line and you're like,
Son of a bitch! Who's doin' that?
But it's in our head.
So it can be really frightening.
So this person had them and they were pretty terrifying
she says, see so it's really scary.
She honestly believed that bugs were living
and crawling around in her skin.
I've had a lot of patients report
that they've had that in the past.
"I was never treated for it at all, it lasted only
for about two weeks before I was able to snap out of it,
and I've never hallucinated since.
I, to this day, I've never been diagnosed with anything,
but I've never forgotten about those two weeks either.
I guess I'm a bit delusional, but nothing
that really hinders my life I think.
My question is, does this make me more prone
to hallucinating in the future?
Is it possible that what happened back then
did have significance after all?
I'm just wondering because I never did anything to cause it,
I was living a fairly healthy lifestyle
at the time, thank you."
I thought this was a great question because it's not
something that I touch on a lot, but.
So when, when, just to clarify I guess,
when we have hallucinations or delusions or
schizophrenic-like symptoms, the rule is, and this
is just the way I remember it because
it's how I was taught in school, we have one day
to be as crazy as we want, we can think things
are happening, we can think aliens are talking to us,
we can believe the TV is speaking directly to us,
we can think whatever the hell we want for one day.
After one day, then it would be diagnosed as
brief psychotic disorder, which is what this person
struggled with, because it was only two weeks.
With brief psychotic disorder it's
anything after one day to one month.
After that, then we get into schizophrenia
and schizophreniform, I don't wanna get too
convoluted with all the details.
So brief psychotic disorder is less than a month.
Now does it make us more predisposed
to have that happen again?
Not necessarily, I actually did some research on this
and read in the DSM a lot of the prevelance
and diagnostic criterion, what's different,
and how it shifts, and if you are still delusional,
which I don't know cause she say's I may be still
a bit delusional, it may be that, more than that.
And you just had that tactile hallucination for
a short period of time, but the other symptoms progress.
And I would encourage you to get some help
and see what's actually going on.
Cause, a lot of therapies and medications
can really help out with that.
But having brief psychotic disorder, if any
of you are thinking, Holy shit, I've had this happen!
Oh my God, does that mean I'm schizophrenic?
No it doesn't, it doesn't make us more prevalent
to have more episodes in the future.
The only thing that makes us more
prevalent is if there was a trigger.
Like, we actually have bipolar disorder and we went
into a manic state and that's when those happened.
Or we had a severe bout of depression.
Or an intense stressor or trauma.
There are certain reasons that it can cause the psychosis
or hallucination delusion, whatever you wanna call it,
that can cause that, and those things, if they happen again,
can possibly push us into having that, those symptoms again.
Is that clear? I hope that makes sense.
If you have more questions about this, let me know.
Schizophrenia, schizophreniform, brief psychotic disorder,
it's very difficult and there's a lot of information
to express in a short video, but don't worry,
it doesn't make you predisposed unless
there was a trigger that caused it, OK?
Now the journal topic today, and I actually really like this
it was, it was kinda like a, I don't know,
it brightened my day, so it says,
"Everyone wants love, no one wants pain.
But you can't get a rainbow without a little rain."
And I love that because often I find in my life,
I don't appreciate what I have now, all the time.
Right, we can't always be appreciative,
like, wow, everything is going so well for me,
and this is amazing and I'm so lucky.
Although we should try to, right?
It's great to be positive, it's great to turn things around,
but it can be nice to remember how shit things used to be,
or all the things you went through.
There's this Rascal Flatts, cause I'm a country fan,
a Rascal Flatts song, I think it's called, The Winding Road,
or, The Road That Led Me to You, anyway.
And it's talking about how he met the person that he loves
and how, you know, the broken road.
If he hadn't have had all these things happen
he wouldn't have met that person.
And I would encourage all of you to think about
where you are now, and where you were before.
And often I find, I'm like,
I woulda never have guessed I was doing that.
Or wow, I can't believe that all worked out,
I was really stressed about that.
And it can be a nice reminder, that even with a little rain,
we still get our rainbow at the end.
So I hope you liked that, and I'll see you all tomorrow.
I'll be on Twitter so ask your questions there, bye!