Hey Everybody, happy Wednesday,
And since it's Wendesday, I'm on my
website, KatiMorton.com, or, I'm also on
Youtube, so if you asked your questions
under yesterday's video, I've already
gone through and commented, and commented
on comments. And, answered some questions
on there, and then I've picked three today
and I don't have a journal topic because
uh, first of all I didn't see any that
anybody sent me, so make sure you tag
them if you do, 'cuz then I can find them,
y'know, title it "Journal Topic" or
use #JournalTopic or #KatiJournalTopic
maybe? Um, but I also --the last question
on today's video, I want to spend some
extra time on it, so I didn't want to eat
up that time with a journal topic because
I think it's really important. Okay?
So, let's get going. Question number 1:
"Hey Kati, why do I crave sympathy
from others? I am willing to go as far as
hurting myself just to seek sympathy
from, mostly teachers at school.
I'm not sure if this is part of my father
being an alcoholic who doesn't always
say 'I love you,' or want to hang out
with me, but I just don't understand
what's wrong with me. Please help.
Thank you for all of your videos,
they help me get through a lot."
Well, you're very welcome. I'm glad
you found me on here.
So, I want to talk about this because
I hear this from a lot of you. Um, that
part of your eating disorder, part of your
self harm is, not attention seeking but
it's so we can get some love and
um, attention, and I don't mean it in
a negative way. The reason that oftentimes
we seek sympathy, we seek attention
from others because of our mental illness,
is because we've been lacking it
for so long. It's almost like we didn't
get the love and attention from --
like this person wrote about her father,
if your father's an alcoholic, y'know,
I've worked with many clients
that struggle with this and we talk about
how people can be "cheating on us" with
alcohol, or with their eating disorder,
or with work, or with school or with
the kids, it's kind of like,
in a relationship, whether it's
father-daughter, mother-father, y'know,
uh, siblings, it doesn't really matter,
even if it's just a friendship or
boyfriend/girlfriend, um,
it's what we invest in it. The time we
invest that makes a relationship
so valuable, and feel so good, because
we all crave connection with others,
and that kind of closeness,
and that feeling of being understood,
and, heard, and important to others.
And when we don't get that from our
nuclear family, our mom/dad/brother/sister
whatever, that small nuclear family
we grew up with, we crave it in other ways
and so, my guess would be that
the sympathy that you're wanting
from your teachers is just because
you really just want to be hugged,
to be told, y'know, "I love you,"
to have support, to have someone
to reach out to and to talk with
on a regular basis. And so,
I would encourage you, instead of
resorting to hurting yourself or
doing things to get attention that way,
I would encourage you to seek help from
a therapist or counsellor at your school,
and maybe see them once a week,
maybe twice a week. It's okay to see
a therapist more than once a week.
It's actually fairly common.
And that's why a lot of therapists
book up quickly, like myself, because,
if you're only in your office for 2 days
a week and people are seeing you
twice a week, that fills up real quick.
Um, but it's really great and I think
it'll be really healing for you to have a
consistent relationship with someone
that's there to support you, that's there
to help you understand what's going on,
and to give you others ways to get those
needs met. Maybe through friendships,
through other relationships with other
healthy adults in your life, whether it's
an aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa,
teacher, uh, coach, anything like that,
um, there are other ways that we can
fill that void that doesn't involve
hurting ourselves. Okay?
I hope that helps
and helps kind of explain where
it's coming from.
Okay, question number two:
"Is it common to be attached to certain
plates, bowls, etc. during your
eating disorder recovery? Is it harmful
if it reduces your anxiety around eating,
and why do we do this?"
This is something that a lot of people
struggle with.
It goes hand in hand with "safe foods"
and, "safe places to eat"
One of the things I struggle a lot with
many of my clients is getting them out of
a routine. Everything's so rigid with our
eating disorder, and in our recovery,
sometimes we fall into that same rigidity,
it's just the rigidity of recovery,
not straying from our meal plan,
not straying from the places that we've
eaten at before and we know are "safe"
and, um, part of the bowl, plate,
I've even had people who wear
certain clothes when they eat, it's all
around that kind of ritual structure,
eating disorder like behaviour.
And, it's not necessarily detrimental
to your recovery at the beginning,
I even encourage people, if you have
a safe place that you can eat, or if
there's a certain you do pre-emptively,
before you eat, I'll encourage them
to do it because, when you're early on
in your recovery, or, if you're having
a hard time and you feel like you're
backsliding in your recovery, those are
safe havens that we can go to help us
get back out of it and start working
back up the road to recovery. But,
if we're doing it for a long period
of time, and we're not finding another
way out, and we don't feel safe
for a while, I would definitely
bring it up with your therapist and
I would start challenging those
"eating disorder thoughts" that are
still occurring in your recovery.
Um, it can often tell us that this is
only the safe thing to eat out of, and
I feel calm and, like, that I don't
know how big the other bowls are.
If it has -- the thing is it's often
linked to things like that, like
the bowls -- "I know the size of this,
I know what fits in it, I know what
my food looks like in it." It feels safe
like that. Other ways it's just unknown
and "Wah!" Um, you're gonna have to
start challenging yourself little by little
to try to not use them for every meal,
and then how do you feel afterwards,
and, you know the process, we notice
what the thoughts are that come up,
we talk back to them, we talk to our
therapist about it, we try again,
we challenge ourselves more, um, yeah.
And it's a slow process getting out of it,
but it's very common, that's why I know
all these different things about it,
'cuz it happens all the time.
Um, but it can definitely, if it goes on
a long time, that's not what I would call
like a "normal" behaviour. Like I would
eat out of any bowl, or any plate,
it doesn't matter, but, when it's
in recovery we want to slowly titrate
off of that. Okay?
Question number 3, now this is a long
question, but I want to read it out to you
'cuz I think it's really important,
and I think a lot of you struggle with this.
"I always feel worthless and hopeless,
like my life is stuck in a place
I don't want and that I'll never
get better. Like, even the fairly low
expectations I have of my life,
even those seem impossible, and that
everything I do is utterly pointless,
and just a waste of my time, and worse,
a waste on those around me.
People seem to think I have potential
and that I'm good at things,
that I'm a good person, but I feel like
just telling them that I'm sorry
that they were wrong and I'm sorry
for wasting their time. I feel like
everything is wrong in my life and
I only have myself to blame.
Honestly, there really isn't much wrong
with my life, which mostly makes me
feel worse about the way that I am.
I think about suicide a lot."
And then the person goes on
to talk about what they would do
to commit suicide, I don't wanna, um,
trigger anyone with that.
"Yet I don't even care enough to want to
change things - Myself, my situation
or my thoughts. I don't wanna
get 'better' anymore. I tried counselling
a bit and I didn't get much out of it.
Paxil worked a bit better but eventually
just stopped a long time ago now.
I feel like I deserve this. Do you hear
sentiments like that a lot, and how
do you handle them?"
This is really powerful, and I know
a lot of you out there feel like this,
we feel really hopeless, our future
seems really bleak. Everything seems
terrible and the interesting thing about
depression, is, for those of you who
don't understand the way the brain works,
is that a lot of the way that we feel,
our mood, and even our overall health
can be affected by hormones.
That's why pregnant women sometimes
act crazy and irrational and they cry
when they don't expect to, and they
yell when they didn't think they were
that angry, and, um, even feel nauseous
when they're, um, in early stages
of pregnancy. All that has to do with
our hormones, and the way that
our brain works, and the chemicals
in our brain affect our mood.
Seratonin, Norepinephrine, Dopamine,
all of these things affect how we feel.
And, when we find ourselves in depression,
we tend to be really really low
on Dopamine, potentially, um,
low on Seratonin, we're just kind of --
our brain is needing for more. And, um,
SSRIs, and other.. other antidepressants
out there, there's SNRIs,
there's all sorts of different things now
and there's new groups that I'm not
as familiar with. But, those work to
give our brain more of the "happy"
feelings and the happy hormones
and, um, chemicals that our brain needs.
But when we're stuck.. and we're stuck
in this dark, deep place.. it almost
snowballs on itself, because, chemically
our brain doesn't even feel like it can
be happy. So we feel like shit all day,
everything looks terrible, even things
that are normally happy for other people,
and we see other people
having a good time -- we can't even
participate in it. We don't enjoy
things we used to, we have trouble
getting out of bed, we can't sleep
or we sleep too much, we can't eat
or we eat too much -- it creates
our own hell, right, and we just sit in it,
and it just feels like it gets shittier.
Now, I hear that a lot. That's why suicide
comes to people's mind a lot when
they're depressed, is they see no way
out, they feel really helpless,
everything looks terrible and nothing
seems like it can get better. And,
I understand. I know that it can
feel that way. But know that
there are options. I know we don't
want to get better, we don't even
have the energy often. I've had patients
tell me they just haven't committed
suicide because they just don't have
the energy to make it happen. And,
I get that, but know that if it's possible
for you -- 'cuz it sounds like this person
has tried therapy for a little bit --
I would encourage you to try it again.
I know it sounds hard, and it's terrible,
and you don't even want to think about it
but just talking to someone can
really help and it's all about
that connection, it's all about you finding
someone that you feel gets you,
hears you, is working to understand,
and working for you to get better.
And when we're in this deep,
dark of a place, take yourself to
the hospital, tell them that you're suicidal
they'll try medications for you.
I know many of you out there are like,
"Kati, I don't want to take medications,
it's the devil, it's horrible."
It can help so much. Even this person
said that Paxil worked for a bit,
but eventually just stopped
a long time ago. And poop-out is very
common with antidepressants.
They'll start working, and they'll work,
and then they'll stop. Our brain like,
poops out, and really what needs
to happen is we need to be switched
to something else, they can increase
the dose, there are a lot of different
things they can do. But chemically,
once they fix the deprivation
of the certain, y'know, let's say
"happy chemicals," in our brain,
the better we'll feel. And, if it can
get us out of that deep, dark hole,
and help us get the energy
to go to therapy, to work on things,
to reconnect with friends, then I think
it's worth it. I know it's difficult
and it's hard, but, trust me,
if you have no energy and you just
don't even want to work on
your recovery, just take yourself
to the hospital, tell them you're suicidal
and you need to be put on
an antidepressant. If we're at that point,
that's okay, we have to have
a safety plan. I have videos on:
creating a safety plan, suicide prevention
Watch those over and over,
however many times you need
to give you back that little bit of hope
that I know lies in all of us, that we can
get better and that we want more,
that life is worth more than what we're
living right now. 'Cuz you all are worth it,
you all can do it. I don't create
these videos just for my own
shits and giggles, I do it for you because
you're all worth it. Would I spend
extra hours doing this, no, but you're
worth it. Get off the couch, take yourself
to the hospital, call your psychiatrist
if you have one. Make an
emergency appointment. Life is too short
I don't want you feeling, y'know,
shitty like this any longer.
And medication can really help us
get out of it, so then we can have
the energy to actually participate
and try to work on things. Because,
for me to tell you, "You just need to go
to therapy and start talking and
journalling it," That's not gonna happen.
Sometimes we're in such a dark place
that we really need medication,
we might need inpatient, we might need
to go to the hospital for a while to get
some extra support. There are tonnes of
inpatient programs out there
for depression, for anxiety, for self-harm,
for eating disorders. Finding them,
getting into them, I know that that's
a little extra work, 'cuz you have to
do an intake, but please, please, please,
if you can just make that call,
I promise it'll get so much better,
and you're all worth the fight, and things
actually can get better, and I know
you feel like you deserve this,
but that's the depression talking,
and you gotta tell it to shut the hell up,
because we're here to fight,
we're here to get better, and the more
we talk about it with one another,
the more we support each other,
we share what happened, below, about
going to the hospital, what that was like,
getting to inpatient, if there are programs
that you know of, please share them below,
let us know of the ones that you liked,
so that we can help one another,
because, I don't want any of you to feel
like there's nowhere to go,
or that, it all is hopeless,
and you're in a dark place 'cuz
that's what we're here to do
as a community, we're here to
help one another, support one another,
and pull us out of those deep, dark,
and ugly places. Okay?
I hope that helps. I know many of you
feel that way but know that we're all here
for you.
I love you all. I'll be on Twitter tomorrow,
so ask your questions there
using the hashtag #KatiFAQ, okay?
Bye!!
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