Monthly Livestream Part 2!!

Q16: 00.24 What is an appropriate way to answer the phone, especially for therapy and doctor appointments? Q17: 05.15 If someone apologizes with something like- 'sorry if what I did offended you' or 'sorry if you thought that what I did was inappropriate', is that really even an apology? I don't sense any remorse or regret for the behaviour or deed in a statement like that. Seems to me that it's pretty insincere and self serving. The kind of fake apology that we see so much of late seems to me to be gaslighting. I just wondered what you thought and how we should deal with it if we do get one of these 'sorry if you didn't like what I did to you' type of apologies? Q18: 14.32 I had a really difficult session with my therapist last week and I’m not looking forward to the next one. I was in an irrational state and not open to listening to anything she was saying, and I was upset because I feel like everything is just one crisis after another at the moment. I said something along the lines of ‘why do people put up with me, it’s just one thing after another that I need help for.’ And she said that I should look at it and see that either everything is happening because I’m working through a lot of difficult stuff, and I know it does get better because it has before, or am I unconsciously self sabotaging my happiness? I am much more clear headed now, and my logical brain is telling me of course I’m allowed to have difficult times, because I am working through some serious shit, but I still have this underlying fear that my therapist believes I’m self sabotaging, and that I can’t have things going well. I don’t want to go to my session because I’m ashamed of how all over the place I was at the previous session and I’m afraid of what she really thinks about me. How do I deal with this? Q19: 21.20 So I’ve noticed that I’ve been feeling a lot of disappointment in myself overall lately, but I can’t pinpoint any reason why. I’m doing great at my job, I have a great relationship, I’m doing my best in therapy and I have wonderful friends. The only slightly unfortunate thing is that the person who sexually abused me was recently released from prison and I was informed he lives near my work. I’ve seen him while I’ve been driving (but he hasn’t seen me) a couple times but other than some dissociation I’ve dealt with it fine because I feel like I have the tools to cope well. Honestly, I do really enjoy dissociating though. I just feel as if something I’m doing is still wrong or bad. Having very mild depression isn’t something I’m used to- it used to be very very bad but I’ve done a lot of work. Even telling people I’m doing well feels wrong, even though I mean it. I feel like I’m living in a constant confusion! Q20: 26.24 I’m trying to get a better understanding of what happens mentally, emotionally and physically to a person when they go into shock as a result of a traumatic event. Is the way a person experiences shock linked to their fight-flight-freeze-fawn response? Is it a form of dissociation? Are there helpful/important things to know about shock to support others and ourselves? I’ve always wondered if this is where deep emotions such as shame or guilt take hold deeply in the aftershock. Q21: 34.48 I have a complex relationship with anger. The first time I really remember dealing with the emotion was in elementary school. I was then placed into a special anger management program where I was taught to hold my breath and count to ten when something angered me. Rather than teaching me to constructively deal with situations that made me angry it taught me that there is no real solution to bad situations. This feeling of helplessness really pissed me off. At the same time, at home, my dad was drinking a lot and he was impatient and angry. I ended up simultaneously feeling lots of anger and being strongly motivated to suppress it. I was constantly pissed off by things and constantly trying to hold it in because I didn't want to be pathetic like my father. Now, as an adult, I'm remodeling a house.I recently gave an advance to a dry-waller and he proceeded to find all sorts of reasons to increase the price. At first I half heartedly agreed to some price increases but only because I didn't want to argue. Later I was surprised to find that his written offer was smaller in scope than our written inquiry and that I should have never agreed to the price. I ended up cussing him out over the phone on Friday and spent the weekend angry with myself over having lost my temper. On Monday he actually ended up walking back the price increases and agreed to do the full work that we had requested. Maybe it was good for me that I cussed him out. I seem to be in a cycle where I let people walk all over me, internally my suppressed anger grows, then I explode into an angry outburst and then I spend a couple of days hating myself for being out of control. None of this is pleasant or good for me. How do I get out of this loop? Q22: 42.42 My question this month is all about how to know whether I’m ready to face the more difficult issues in therapy again? How do I know I’m ready to face my trauma again? I know patience is not really my strong suit when it comes to myself, so I’m afraid I’ll want too much too soon, and I then might fall apart again. Or that this urge might just be a way to self-sabotage, since feeling bad is a much more familiar state of my mind. On the other hand, I do feel better right now. Q23: 50.37 What do you do about an impending sense of doom? I've done my breathing and have tried to sleep, but no matter what I do, I can't stop myself from really feeling that my world is going to end at any minute. My therapist keeps telling me that I need to count my breaths or distract my brain, but it seems like there is an asteroid in the sky. Q24: 54.04 I’ve noticed that I’ve been falling into a pattern of needing to justify getting treatment by feeling the need to continuously make my ED worse. I don’t know if the months and months of trying and failing to get into treatment has somehow exacerbated my feeling like it’s not bad enough or I don’t deserve treatment and therefore I need to get more sick in order to be validated but I don’t know how to get out of this cycle. This fucking sucks, I’m so hungry and I want to stop but I don’t know how. How do I justify to myself that I need treatment if not by losing more weight and how do I break the cycle of trying to be as sick as possible prior to treatment (if I even ever get into treatment)? Q25: 1.01.28 I don’t know, it just feels like I’m in a very dark place. Been working hard in my therapy, but I still keep coming back to where I’ve started. I’m considering to stop taking my antidepressants and just give up. Would things ever change for me? Would it ever be better? Can you help somehow? Q26: 1.03.57 I will be changing therapists soon which unfortunately is out of my hands but it is totally scary, mostly probably because of BPD. So I was wondering if there’s a way to request a document (I’m not sure if my therapist keeps a file) so I don’t have to play catch-up with my new therapist, as I have a difficult time putting my feelings into words and trusting someone enough to share my whole life story with them. I’m not sure if all the stress from this is taking a toll on my sleeping, as I have gone from sleeping literally all the time to being diagnosed with insomnia. Is that a BPD trait? Q27: 1.07.53 Recently I stumbled across the Myer Briggs Personality Types again, took a test and came to a – not surprising – result. Now I know that there is some controversy regarding this typisations but yet it rings quite appropriate. Do you think there is some correlation between some personality traits and mental illnesses? Are certain types more prone to develop different mental illnesses? I would love to hear your thoughts about this. Q28: 1.12.45 Are therapists actually objective or do they tend to side with the client? I don’t know why I have this tendency, but many times when I talk about my relationships with others during therapy, I will start thinking about how the other person would tell their side of the story to my therapist (or theirs), and how she would respond to their side if they were her client. If my therapist would validate me for feeling hurt, would she also validate the other person? Does that mean that what they did was okay, even though it was hurtful? And if it does, then how are my feelings valid? Q29: 1.18.01 I wanted to ask if you could talk about psychomotor agitation, especially how it appears in bipolar disorder. I've become familiar with the terms psychomotor agitation and psychomotor retardation because I work in the behavioral health field and my familiarity with the PHQ-9. Q30: 1.26.04 My Question is for myself and anyone else who needs help with knowing how we can start to trust ourselves and continue to trust ourselves especially after a lot of changes. Q31: 1.30.19 Since my dissociative realisation...I now realise I am almost always numb or numbing out. Whether or not I use behaviours, like the ED, depression, etc...I'm not ever 'present'. This has been my normal for sooo long....like over 15 years. It's how I've coped...how I've managed....how I've survived. When I mentioned to my psychologist the other day that I had only just begun starting to feel things again...she asked what it was like. I couldn't answer because I still don't know because I'm back to numbing out. I have to journal most days otherwise it's like my day doesn't exist and I simply can't remember...thankfully my psych allows me to email my logs through from the week so we can actually discuss necessary subjects...otherwise every response is "I'm good/ok" or "it's good/ok". I'm honest with my psych about it all...but I feel like the ED always gets so much attention. I just don't know how to start being OK with being present again and finding my 'present' self. This has been me/my thing for the majority of my life....all of my adult life. It's how I've coped with not being perfect. I'm scared of what's next...Any tips...or 'homework' you could recommend? Q32: 1.35.59 I get very depressed due to hormones twice a month. I know it's inevitable, I know what causes it. I can take medication to control the pain and mood but not forever or I get sick. I'm back at uni, last two subjects and am finding it SO hard to push through. Covid has really made me more anxious again and crave alone time all the time and I've become addicted to Twitch (the gaming part) and have started streaming myself playing. I LOVE it! But it means I'm not doing other things I used to enjoy like horse stuff. Twitch helps with my depression SO much! With horses and walks etc., so much effort is required, with games, none really. And it's like a performance and I've always loved acting. How to balance Twitch (which is really helping me) with uni which is a chore and hurts my brain. Q33: 1.41.12 I have managed to disconnect from my family. How do I deal with a sense of loss of identity? I had to make a call that putting up with the abuse was the worst option for myself, since leaving my health has been improving, but now I finally have distanced myself I have to build myself from the ground up. It feels weird to not have the “family identity” to carry forward with me. Q34: 1.46.39 Most of my past questions have had to do with this (sorry for the repetitiveness lol) but I'm still struggling with virtual. There's a chance we might stay virtual for the foreseeable future too. I have such a hard time not catastrophizing and thinking my therapist is doing something else. She remembers everything even the smallest things so logically I know she is paying attention but I still get nervous every time her eye contact goes somewhere else. Q35: 1.51.07 After a recent change, a major change to two of my main support systems, my mind exploded. I mean (as my therapist calls them) the “Itty Bitty Shitty Committee” didn’t just immediately call for a meeting in my head, but rather had a fully beefed up seminar decked out. I became so dis-regulated. Freeze/Fight/Flight? Yea, I did all 3 a bunch. How do I back them out of my mind and regain some sort of stability before the “committee” has me give up or l get lost in their shenanigans and lose sight of myself?

Katie K