- Hey everybody!
♫ It's finally Friday
We're about to hit the road a-runnin',
let the good times roll.
Thank goodness it's Friday.
So I am, on Friday's, I'm on Facebook.
If you're new to my channel, welcome,
and don't forget to subscribe because I put out videos,
as you're noticing I'm sure, five days a week.
And you don't want to miss any of them,
'cause you never know, your question might get answered.
(gasps) So anyway.
Today I have three questions as well as a journal topic.
Without further ado, the first question is:
Hey Kati, I am 18 years old.
I was raped for seven years by my neighbor since I was 11.
Last session I told my therapist all about it
but every time I think about it, I regret telling her,
and then I start cutting.
How can I stop feeling regret
and start feeling like she's going to help?
This is honestly one of the things
that I find most common among people
who've been sexually abused is,
kind of those feelings of regret, and guilt,
and embarrassment, and shame,
and all of the things that we know, as a therapist,
things that we're trained in,
is things that come along with sexual abuse.
Especially if it went on for long periods of time,
if we knew this person, if we trusted this person,
there's a lot of anger towards that,
sometimes like you were supposed to be taking care of me
and instead you did that.
And oftentimes something,
I was just reading an article about the other day,
and I plan on doing a video in more detail
about this in the future, but when I was reading this,
they were talking more about how,
oftentimes when we are sexually abused, when it's happening,
we don't actually necessarily feel bad it about,
'cause we understand a lot of times what's going on.
The shame, the guilt, the anger,
all of that stuff comes later when all of a sudden
we realize what was going on.
And so oftentimes, in my experience,
and you can all correct me if I'm wrong,
or let me know what your experience has been,
but when I've had clients talk about it,
a lot of them express, just like this person is saying,
that once they've started talking about it,
then they regret it and they feel bad about it.
And I've talked a lot about how sometimes
when we start working through things,
things get worse before they get better,
because we've been hiding these situations
and stuffing the emotions down
and we haven't been dealing with it.
And once we open it up, it can feel very overwhelming,
because we prefer to go back to the way that it was before
where everything is stuffed and we're okay.
And so that's most likely what is happening,
is that the first time we start to talk about it,
it's really hard.
But stay the course.
Something that can help is journaling about the process.
I know a lot of you are like,
Kati I fricking hate journaling, stop telling me to do it,
but there's nothing better than writing things down
and actually going through the process with ourselves.
Another thing that can help
stick the course with this is mantras.
Like it can be something
as simple as I will get through this.
It can be a longer mantra like this is just a process,
I'm just starting this process, you know, this is a process.
Or it can be anything that you want to kind of remind you
that things will get better
and you're actually on the right track.
Talking about it is the first step into recovery
and I'm really proud of you for doing it.
Know that you can express to your therapist
how you're feeling, like I feel regretful that I told you,
and it's really stressing me out
and it's made my urges worse,
because that's what we're here for.
Talk to your therapist, get the extra support you need,
and just take it one moment at a time, okay.
Question number two:
Hi Kati, I am experiencing what I believe to be OCD.
I will be seeing someone to confirm, however,
from asking OCD sufferers and doing research,
I'm pretty certain that that's what it is.
I'm glad that you're going to see someone to confirm.
And I'm worried I may be developing self-harm tendencies.
This only really started a few days ago, but I've been,
I've started punching walls deliberately
with the intent of causing harm to myself.
I think this counts as self-harm
even though I'm not cutting, but I'm not doing it majorly,
and I'm worried that I may be
starting a pattern of self-harm.
How do I get out of it before it may possibly begin?
I wanted to talk about this because I hear from many of you
that you think you may be starting to do something,
you worry that you may like catch a disease or disorder,
and I kinda just want to talk about that as a whole.
And when things begin, how do we recognize it,
and how do we get out of it?
So no, you can't catch anything from anybody else.
You can't catch a disorder.
However if we're looking for a coping skill
because we're really having a hard time, and you know,
we may be being abused, maybe life is really stressful,
maybe our parents are getting divorced,
maybe we're moving, maybe whatever,
and we're looking for a way to cope with that,
oftentimes we can, you know, try self-harm,
try eating disorders, or anxiety, depression,
all the things that our brain may do to try to help us cope,
can come up and we can utilize that
as a way to cope with it.
Now it sounds to me, in this case, that punching,
a lot of people punching walls, it is self-harm,
just so you know.
Cutting isn't the only form of self-harm,
it's just the one that we, I guess talk about the most,
maybe it's the most common,
I actually don't know the statistics.
But there are many ways we can hurt ourselves.
If you think for just a second,
there are a lot of ways we can hurt ourselves,
and I count them all the same.
The way that we can get out of it,
is when you have those urges early on,
is doing something else instead.
Utilize a healthy coping skill.
Pick, try today to pick five different ones.
Whether it's, you know, going for a walk,
calling a friend, you know, any kind of art.
If you like music, or coloring,
or painting, or anything like that.
Finding something that helps you cope
will be really, really helpful and doing that instead.
And do all five if you have to
before you result to punching.
And do your best to put it off, because the thing is,
is we get caught in your routine.
And I talked a long, long time ago about our brains,
how I think of 'em as like balloons filled with sand,
and as we have this trigger, whatever the trigger is,
let's say a stressful situation,
and we think I'm gonna punch a wall and I'll feel better.
The more we actually do that and make that connection,
the more this marble is rolling from one to the other,
and getting deeper in the sand,
and making it harder for us to make other decisions.
I don't know if that's clear but that really helps me
see how our, 'cause our brains are really adaptive,
and we know as humans, we're very adaptive.
And so as we do things more and more,
it becomes like a knee-jerk reaction instead of a choice.
And right now in the early stages,
you still have somewhat of a choice,
and so we're gonna choose to do something else.
And hopefully that helps.
And if any of you have ways that you got out of it early,
and you would like to share,
as always share your tips and tricks, okay.
Last question: Hey Kati I was wondering
why we self-sabotage and how to stop?
Every time I'm doing well in my eating disorder
and self-harm recovery,
it's like I flip a switch and I spend days
or even weeks undoing all of my hard work,
and starting over is even more devastating each time.
I think it's partly because I'm scared
that my life won't be better or I still won't be happy
once I'm recovered, so it's safer to stay sick.
But this isn't what I want, how do I get over it?
Please, please help.
Self-sabotage is interesting,
and you're right on the money
with the fact that a lot of times
it's a fear-based response, because we're afraid that,
A, we will fail and it won't work out.
B, once we actually get to where we're trying to get to,
that it won't be what we thought.
C, that the people around us won't pay much attention to us,
won't love us if we're not sick.
There's a lot of beliefs we have and the fear around those
is what continues the self-sabotage.
Now, the best way out, to be truthful, is therapy,
and talking about it, and recognizing those fears.
And in a way we can do the same thing that we do
with how I talk, the negative self-talk in our head,
and how we talk back with a healthy voice.
We can do that for these self-sabotaging voices.
Because I would bet, if I was a betting woman,
I'd put money on the fact that before you actually
take any action to undo all your good work,
you have a lot of negative self-talk going on.
It might be for the day leading up to it,
it might be for the week leading up to it,
it might be a few hours leading up to it,
but I have a feeling that when we self-sabotage,
we usually tell ourselves this person isn't gonna love me,
or this isn't gonna work out,
or I'm never gonna get where I want to get.
And there's all these negative things, and then boom,
we're overwhelmed, we don't believe in ourselves anymore,
we don't believe in our recovery,
and all the amazing work we've already done,
(finger snaps) and we sabotage it.
But the thing that we're also forgetting,
so there's that part, so arguing back,
talking to a therapist about it,
venting about it, can really help.
And then once we've slipped up,
don't think you have to start all over, because you don't.
All the work you've done is still there.
We know what worked for us.
We can get back up, we can keep fighting.
I know it seems hard and we think all is lost, but it's not.
Trust me, all the insights you've gained,
all the work you've done, is still there when you fall down.
And you can get back up and start right into it again.
You don't have to start all over from the beginning.
You can start where you left off, okay.
Now the journal topic today is another one from my momma,
'cause my momma has some really good quotes
and she's really good.
And she said that is something she's working on,
so I thought, if she's working on it,
we can all probably, you know, use some working on.
And it says: patience is the calm acceptance
that things can happen in a different order
than the one that you have in mind.
And that's by David G. Allen.
I just thought that's really great because I am guilty,
I'm a planner, I'm like an extreme planner,
and I like to plan my whole life out,
and it never works out the way that you had planned.
And it took me a long time to figure out
that I had to stop planning, and be patient with it,
and allow it to unfold on its own.
And so that's what I would wish for you this weekend.
Take some patience, enjoy the process.
Allow yourself to be in the process
and know that that's okay.
Have a wonderful weekend, I will see you all on Monday,
and on Tuesday I'll be on Tumblr
so ask your questions there.
Okay, bye.