- I'm Dr. Sam Rader.
I'm a licensed clinical psychologist,
and I'm going to be answering some of your
mental health questions.
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In my understanding, personality isn't something
you're necessarily born with.
It's something that gets shaped through early experience.
We learn what parts of us feel acceptable
in our family system, what parts of us feel
unacceptable, and we adjust all the parts of ourselves
to shape into a personality that's gonna fit
in our family system.
And what I do as clinical psychologist, is
I help my clients look at their personality.
For example, if someone's really shy,
we try to understand what that's really about,
and see if we can find more confidence.
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Clinically speaking, something becomes a disorder
when it starts really getting in the way
of you being able to function as a person
in relationships, at work.
Then yeah, it might be some kind of anxiety disorder,
and you might wanna seek treatment.
Otherwise, if you're able to have a fairly normal life,
but big waves of anxiety come now and then.
All I can say is, join the club.
It's normal to have some anxiety sometime.
It's really great though, to have some practices
to know how to self soothe when you have that anxiety.
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I'm just gonna go with, no.
How 'bout not talking about my friends with my friends?
You know how much better if feels to not gossip?
So yes, the sacredness of protecting the confidentiality
of my clients comes first.
And I'm learning from that how sacred it might be
in my life outside of here to keep
confidence in friendships.
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When tears just spill out for seemingly
no apparent reason, my best guess at why
that's happening is that maybe feelings
have been held inside too often.
When we go for days or weeks or months
with not expressing ourselves, not reaching out
when we need help, not getting enough hugs,
sometimes we can fill up like a bucket,
and when that emotion bucket gets all the way to the top,
the water is going to spill out.
And that's gonna spill out in the form of tears sometimes,
even when it makes no sense why we're crying.
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There's so much less of a stigma around depression now.
It's probably safe to tell most employers
if you're suffering with it.
Especially if that will help them understand
if things are changing a little bit in your work style.
There's no shame in asking for what you need,
and ultimately your employer, if they're someone
who's a good business person, will be really happy
that they know what's going on, because then they
can help support you in continuing to do good work.
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Well, whoever you are, I adore you, and I agree
with you completely.
Touch is so healing.
I have a lot of answers to this question.
The first is that maybe even massage is enough for you,
who really knows how to hit all those sweet spots.
In terms of traditional therapy, it's often frowned upon
to touch your clients.
There is a style of therapy that's really wonderful,
called Somatic Experiencing.
In one of the types of Somatic Experiencing,
touch is used as part of the therapy.
So Somatic Experiencing is basically sitting,
sensing into your body, noticing what you feel where,
and allowing the body to heal itself; whether it's trauma,
or pain, emotionally or physically.
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That question has a lot going on inside of it.
I have taken many, many clients who swear up and down
they have incurable depression, and
we get them feeling better.
If there's a way to latch back on to life,
there's a way to come out of depression.
But if you have a stubborn depression, I encourage you
to keep fighting for wellness.
We've all been in those dark moments.
It's just a state of mind because you are loved,
you are cared about, and that somebody wants to hear
from you today if you're struggling with suicidal thoughts.
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What people imagine is going on in therapy
is that it's gotta be very clinical.
They're my doctor, and I have to sort of,
not tell them what I'm thinking and feeling about them.
Most of the work that I do with my clients
is in the transference, which is the relationship
between myself and the client.
So if a client came in and said, hey, this isn't
working for me, I don't like the way you're doing this,
I would think, Yeah!
Jackpot, we're really gonna get somewhere.
Because if we're able to talk about our relationship,
what's going on between us, how it feels, what they like
about what I'm doing, what they don't like about
what I'm doing.
This might be the beginning of a really exciting time
of growth with your therapist.
So if all else fails, and you're really sure
it's not a match for you, you can just let them know,
and say, thanks for our time together, I'm clear that
you and I are not a match.
I wish you all the best and this will be
my last session today.
I think it's so cool that we live in a time
where people are becoming more and more aware
of mental health.
There are countless self help books out there,
resources on the internet, even apps that can help you
with depression.
Find ways to get back out into your life.
Have real genuine experiences.
Share your feelings.
Laugh, dance, sing, cry.
This is life.
A lot of clients ask me if it's possible to change.
And in my experience the answer is absolutely, yes.
(signal ding)
(laughs)
Ding!
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