Hey everybody! Happy Wednesday,
we call that hump day here in the US.
Happy Hump Day.
So when it's Wednesday, that means for the 'W',
that means I'm on the website, katimorton.com
And if you haven't gone on there and checked it out, I encourage you to do it
And I'm also on youtube, so if you asked your questions on yesterday's video,
Under my video for Tumblr Tuesday,
Then, using the #katifaq I have four of them,
and I need to get through these because I have a Pepperdine Illumni event
I'm attending, and we gotta scoot cause traffic is terrible,
and a journal topic, so let's get crackin'.
Question number one:
"My question is if you have to get away from the person who sexually abused you to really start recovering.
I was raped by my brother on my seventeenth birthday, it's been a year but I still struggle with it. My family doesn't know, and we still live together.
It's just hard sometimes being around him."
Completely understandable. I never give any ultimatums, or
black and white, like yes and no. So I wouldn't say that you have to get away from someone
to recover from it, but yes, it would be a lot easier.
And I would encourage you to give yourself space from the person,
because first of all, I don't know how long it's been since he sexually assaulted you,
but I worry that it could be a danger, still.
And secondly, to be reminded of that all the time
can be really hard, and so we're almost making it harder on ourselves
by you know just putting ourselves in that- it's like almost traumatizing ourselves again,
or triggering potential flashbacks. So I usually tell my clients if we're able,
first of all, you said that your parents don't know about it, and I would
encourage you to speak up,
to have this reported, and I know it sounds terrible and it's really scary,
but something terrible happened to you, and you deserve to heal from it, and have people know about what happened and move on.
And I know it's hard and it's really difficult in the moment but,
like I said about therapy and going through traumas,
is that we have to almost go through all the details and that gross nitty gritty stuff we hate,
in order to come out on the other side and feel good about it and be okay.
so, I would encourage you to speak up, as well as get some space.
Go out with friends, stay overnight over there, make plans, do things, get out of the house,
but yeah. And if any of you have experience with this, obviously your experiences can vary just like everyone else,
and so please leave your comments and let us know what you do. It helps so much,
you have no idea how helpful and encouraging it can be to others going through very similar situations, okay?
Question number two:
"Hey Kati! My question is I now find therapy kind of useless. I feel like I'm recovered, and I want to tell my therapist that I want to stop,
but I don't know the right way. Can you suggest how to stop therapy?"
This can be kind of hard because, we don't really need it anymore.
Now, the way that I talk to my therapist, I'm just going to give you my personal experience,
and then I'll tell you what clients have done, or what I've done with clients.
So, last time I saw my therapist, cause I'm taking a break right now,
Is she said to me, 'Do you feel, how do you feel about therapy right now, how are you feeling about what's going on?'
And I said, 'You know what, I just really don't feel like I need to come for a bit.' and I said 'Is that okay?'
And she said, 'Of course that's okay! I'm not retiring, you know me, give me a call, I'm sure I can get you in in the next week or two when you call, if you feel like you need a booster session'
And, so that's kind of how it worked with my therapist.
Now if your therapist hasn't asked you how you're feeling and she's like "Okay when's our next appointment, okay let's set up our next appointment"
I would say something to the effect of, you know whatever his or her name is,
let's say you're talking to me. You're like, 'You know Kati, things have been going really great and I'm actually feeling really good about things. I think I'd like to take a break from therapy for awhile and see how things go.'
That's fair, that's what I have had clients tell me. Obviously as a therapist I always try to check in and ask because I don't want my clients
To feel like they always have to come in to see me. Because it's good for us to move on, it's like then I feel as a therapist I'm like yeah!
It was a success they're doing great. So don't think that we're going to be offended, because it's nothing to be offended about.
We'll be excited for you. So I would say something just like I said before.
'Ya know, things have been going really great, and I'd like to take a break and see how it goes.'
That's how I would do it. Okay?
Question number three:
"Hey Kati my question is why do we hurt the people that are closest to us?
I made a promise to a very close friend and my mom that I would never self harm again, but unfortunately
things have been slipping for awhile and I ended up breaking that promise. My friend came over
and had seen the mess I'd made, and now I feel so bad that I've hurt her, as well as myself because I've made that promise, and I break it.
I'm struggling to sleep at night because I worry that she will give up and walk out on me,
for good because I can't seem to stay away from doing when I need it the most."
Now, we tend to hurt the people closest to us because they're closest to us,
Because they're there. They're the ones that we talk to the most, that we see the most, the most involved,
that's really why we hurt them.
Now, I would encourage you to have an honest conversation with your friend and your mother and talk
about how recovery is a process, it's not perfection. You can lead them to one of my videos,
Have them watch one. It takes time it's not something that heals automatically, we can't go all or nothing.
It's a process, so I would talk to them about that and how it's a coping skill that
you're using, just like someone goes for a run, calls a friend, maybe eats food, maybe shops.
Whatever their vice is, or their coping skill, healthy or unhealthy, they'll start to understand where you're coming from,
and tell them that you're really working hard and you'd love their support,
but know that it won't be all or nothing. That's the best we can do,
We can't promise that we'll never do something again
when we're really trying not to, that's the best we can do is really try not to.
So, try to have an honest conversation with them about that,
and I have no doubt that they'll be very supportive of that okay?
Question number four:
"Do suicidal thoughts really matter? I've been having suicidal thoughts for a number of months now.
I've had them before, but not a constant train of thought, nearly 24/7
like I'm experiencing as of late, though I don't plan to act on them.
So my question is, do suicidal thoughts matter, if that's all they are? Just thoughts?"
Now matter, I would say they definitely matter.
Obviously you're not going to act on them, so is it a crisis? No.
But do they matter? Yes.
And the reason that they matter is because as a person that likes to help other people,
right that's my job, I don't want to see you having to deal with that all the time.
It's not a 'normal' state of mind to think about killing ourselves all the time.
Whether or not we're going to do it is kind of a mute (?) point when it comes to this question, because
you say you're not, but I would encourage you to get help and talk about it because
you don't have to live in that state. There will be a time, if you work on it,
when you don't have those thoughts anymore.
I would be very clear with the therapist that you talk with that you aren't going to act them out,
that you don't have a plan, you don't have the means, you're not going to try to do it,
you actually don't even want to, but you have the thoughts all the time.
Because sometimes it can be anything from you know just a horrible depressive episode that we're having,
It could even be, with some clients is like obsessional thoughts,
It's kind of part of our OCD, where we ruminate on certain thought trains for a really long time.
But because I know it's not a good place to be, in our you know, our good head space to be,
I would encourage you to seek help, okay?
Now the journal topic today comes from Rachel, Thank you Rachel!
Healing doesn't mean that the pain never existed.
It means we no longer allow it to control our lives.
And she said, "For my own recovery, this quote rings true. I belive we need to remember
that as scary as getting better is, we should be able to do it without guilt.
No one is trying to belittle the pain and suffering that occurred for however long.
That does not mean that we cannot allow ourselves to reach our full potential as well."
I thought that was just really great, and she says it all.
I would encourage you to rewind the video a little bit, listen to that again,
and journal about what that means for you, and if you've been holding on to your pain,
so that people will believe it's there.
Because we all deserve to heal, right?
And big shout outs to Tracy, ElliePixie (sp?) on my website,
as well as Cat22 and BriTaylor, Carly, and everyone else who's been working really hard
checking in on each other and making a difference in our community.
Without you, it wouldn't be a community.
It wouldn't be as active and supportive as it is, so thank you so, so much.
And don't forget to click below and share the video, send it off
so that you can help someone else because every time I do these,
I'm putting out information right, and if someone else has a question,
we might not even know someone else that we know, is struggling, but
sharing a video on any of your social media sites can help them, and people we don't even know.
It's really powerful, the internet. Isn't it?
I love you all, I'll see you tomorrow, I'll be on Twitter, so ask your questions there, using the #katifaq.
Byee!!
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