So this week's video has to do with self-harm and how everyone around us responds to that
[Kati Morton - MFTI]
Now what I mean by this and what I'm kind of hoping to do this week
is just normalise your experience.
Because I know all the time, for all different veins, whether it is on my twitter account or youtube
or tumblr or on my website, I hear from everybody that, someone or something has either
made you feel like you are the only one that has this problem. They make you feel like a freak.
Or a weirdo or what you are doing is just so disgusting, 'ugh' and that just makes us feel worse
Right? Because nothing is worse than feeling like we don't fit in, what I'm experiencing is really weird,
nobodys heard of it before, nobody knows what to do
Nobody likes to feel that way, right?
And I'm here to tell you that you are not weird, that you are not alone.
This is not something that's unheard of, and you know who is saying that?
People that are uneducated and they should be ashamed of themselves.
As part of the professional world and therapy, doctors and psychiatrists, LSWS if any of you
see a social worker, part of our licensing every year we have to gather, and it depends on the licensing
how many hours, but roughly about 30-40 hours of continuing education.
You know what that says to me? I need to broaden what I know, right?
So when somebody says to you, if you are self-harming, 'woah, I don't deal with that, I don't
really know, ugh', that means they haven't broadened their knowledge.
That doesn't make you weird.
That means that they haven't learned and they are ignorant as to what is going on, okay?
But the first thing and the most important type of person that I want to talk about is our family,
and I will even lump in friends with it because it is those people that are really close to us
and kind of know us for who we are or who we were before this or maybe what happened to cause this.
They have all the information.
And in my experience, and I've been reading, I have been doing a lot of research about this, because I
want to make sure I'm gathering all the information. But, it sounds like, my experience is kind of what's
happening and what other peoples experiences are, and that is that family's first response is fright.
"Oh my gosh, I don't know what to do, oh my gosh, my kid" and they freak out, right?
But instead of just letting that happen internally and "okay, what do I need to know" and you know,
gathering that information, a lot of time that turns into anger.
So, they're scared and then they react angrily.
A lot of people say things, like parents I have heard say to some of my clients, like
"How could you do that to yourself, who would be so stupid as to hurt themselves", right?
And that is not coming from a place of love and care. That is coming from a place of misunderstanding.
They don't know, they don't understand what is going on and the worst thing to parents
and the hardest thing for me to ever get them to understand or to accept, is that one of their children
is showing signs of a mental disorder, a mental illness.
And that's kinda of why I'm even creating what I'm creating here, is to try and break through the stigma
of mental illness. It is not something to be scared about or angry about.
It is just something that needs to be understood, right?
So, if you have had that experience, if your parents have said things like
"How dare you, I can't believe you do that" and then get angry, or they even become almost narcissistic
"Like, what is this your way of making me feel guilty because I didididi..."
They might go into that kind of stream. Know that that's normal.
I know that doesn't make it okay and I know that the hurt is still there.
But know that is most common.
And that's really why we have to work together. Why I need you to share this, why I need you to comment.
Because we need to get a larger voice so that we can break through the stigma
and we can minimize that for people in the future
Because something, if I look back in history to like the 70s, when eating disorders were just becoming
more prevalent, people responded that way to them.
Anger, fright, it's like 'their weird', we don't know how to deal and although we still have a long ways to go,
with eating disorders we have come a long way. In the States, there are treatment centres all over.
This was unheard of in the 70s in the United States, this was like hospital treatment, tube fed.
That was it. There was no mental health help. They were not actually giving you any therapy or
working on the problem, they were just trying to refeed you as if that was all the problem was.
So, let's work together. Let's kind of cut this time down, right?
Because not everybody has to get that response.
So the next thing I want to talk about, so we have family and friends, and then I want to talk a little bit
about therapists and other professionals and how they might respond.
And I've had many clients come to me and say "yeah, I was referred to you from so-and-so because they
told me that they can't deal with me. They're...not in their scope of practice"
Or they'll use some type of term that therapists use to refer patients out.
And to be honest, from a therapy side, I am glad that people refer people out if they don't
have the knowledge, because nothings worse than having someone working with us,
when they don't really know what they're working on, right?
It can be kind of hard, like we are guiding our own treatment versus the opposite, right?
But, how does that make us feel?
I go into see somebody I finally got up the courage to call-in and I make an appointment, I sit there,
and then she tells me "oh I'm sorry, I don't deal with self-harm or cutting, I just don't.
I'm going to have to refer to you somebody".
It makes us feel like we are weird, like somethings wrong with us, and people don't know how to
handle and treat us. It comes along with a lot of those emotions and that's okay.
I would hate to feel that way.
It is the same thing I was just talking about with family and how people 'treat' it or not treat it, right?
And that's kind of been the experience of people.
In the media, they dramatise self-harm. They show the worst case scenario. And they make it this big deal.
"So-and-so does this everyday" (shock). People recoil and get bad, nasty faces and ugh
and they act like it's so horrible. It's not.
We watch, I mean I watch, I'll speak for myself, I watch like CSI and stuff.
I'm addicted to crime, mystery, solving the case. I love that stuff. But I watch that.
But then people are going to recoil when they see a small scratch or burn.
If I fell when I was a child I'm sure my Mum bandaged my knee. She didn't recoil and freak out, right?
So why are people doing that and I don't really like that media is dramatizing it
and turning it into this nasty thing, because there is nothing nasty about it, right?
So that's just something I want to talk about because I feel that a lot of us feel alone and you're not.
And a lot of us think we are the only ones experiencing this, the only one whose parents,
or therapist or teacher or the media, that we're the only ones that feel that.
And I'm here today to tell you that you are not.
You are not alone.
You don't have to go at this alone, okay?
So just, be prepared. Things like this may come up.
When you decide to finally tell people about it, know that there may be a bad response.
But how do we prepare, right? I always talk about preparation.
If any of you read my questions and answers, I'm always preparing people.
So, what do we do?
We need to know how we are going to respond if someone doesn't respond well.
What do we say? How do we get help anyways? How do we persevere?
We reach out, right? This whole community is filled with people struggling with the same thing.
Let's talk to one another. Let's support one another.
That is the best thing we can do right now because we are going to work together so as the years pass,
and as we keep fighting, other people coming before or dealing with this later on, don't have to go through this
You and I can make a difference and that's really what I'm here for
because we are working together towards a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Body.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community