Monthly Livestream Happening Now!!

Q1: 22.10 It's that time of year when my therapist takes a two week vacation, and this year, I am taking vacation on one side of that, so we will go four weeks between appointments. This fills me with so much anxiety. What tips do you have for surviving therapy vacations? Q2: 27.00 How can I tell the difference between unconsciously looking for confirmation biases regarding my personal opinions (ie diagnosis) or being actually misunderstood by my therapist in case of a disagreement? Q3: 31.43 What's the best way to bring up to your therapist that you’ve had some fairly serious suicidal thoughts? Been doing therapy since June and things were really bad in that area when I first started but I never had the guts to share that information during my sessions. Can you share some ways you’ve had people bring it up and how you handle these disclosures from the therapist point of view? Also do therapists get mad or disappointed when a client waits so long to bring it up?. Q4: 47.10 Hi Kati, can you talk about having credibility after a mental break? As you know, I had an episode after trying to start medicine and now I'm very nervous about not being taken seriously by my family. Or worse doubting myself on wondering if what I'm feeling is real or just another break. How do people recover a sense of agency from that? Also, can you give me some tips on how to handle it if I get unlucky at work and another episode happens when I try a new medicine? Q5: 56.15 Last session over the phone with my therapist I had a panic attack in session and my therapist had to calm me down and bring me back by using grounding techniques after talking about some pretty intense stuff. What does a therapist think in that moment and how do they know when it is a panic attack or something else? What signs do they notice and how do they know when to act on the signs? And please how can I stop feeling embarrassed over this and somehow accept the help? Q6: 1.07.52 I only have a few more therapy sessions left until my insurance won't pay for any more and I can't afford to go on privately at the moment. I am wondering, do you have any advice for motivating and disciplining myself to work through my issues by myself when all I really want to do is hide in my bed and turn off my phone because doing this on my own feels like such a huge challenge? Q7: 1.09.53 Why did my therapist ask to see where I self harmed and how deep I self harmed? Is it because she wanted to make sure I’m safe Or because was my first time expressing with her about my self harm? Q8: 1.17.34 I’m wondering where you draw the line between being healthy with what you eat/how much you exercise without overdoing it and it potentially turning into an eating disorder. I’ve been told by my doctor I need to lose weight so I’ve been trying to eat better and exercise a bit more. I’ve never been able to find a balance while still trying to lose the weight I need to. Q9: 1.17.34 I’ve just started working at a family violence centre - it’s the best opportunity and I’m so grateful, but as a HSP it’s really exhausting me. I even had to enter my own file which was weird. I’ve been so focused on doing a good job that I haven’t been eating well/at all (eating disorder in my past) and now when I try to eat, I get sick. It isn’t intentional I don’t think, it just isn’t a high priority. I also recently read the ‘serious incident report’ from my friends suicide in a ward and the details of that have been weighing heavy. My therapist says it’s all fine and I’ll adjust.. but I find that response so frustrating and I feel invalidated by her. It’s a busy time so I haven’t really been seeing friends. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to cope healthily, would you have any tips? Q10: 1.25.10 Hi I'm 48 and was just diagnosed with Bipolar and the person I thought I was and wanted to be, is me in hypomania/mania, I don't know which one I have yet. How am I supposed to know the "real me"? I feel a bit lost. Q11: 1.29.05 I've never been religious so I believe that nothing comes after death. Ever since I understood death when I was in third grade, I have contemplated death and suicide often, in recent years almost daily. Far from being a crisis, thoughts of suicide are entirely ordinary to my daily life. When I'm tired or hungry, anxious or frustrated, I turn to thoughts of suicide to calm myself, imagining that I could die and no longer feel those unpleasant feelings. I don't think I will kill myself. When it comes to following through on my day dreams I always stop myself, remembering my responsibilities. I think I have gathered these responsibilities intentionally, to keep myself alive. To be honest, imagining suicide is my favorite invisible addiction. The DBT workbook says that we should seek coping mechanisms that don't cause harm. Thoughts of suicide have never left a mark on my body. It also feels kind of depressing and gruesome though. What do you think? Q12: 1.34.29 How can I get back my motivation to recover? For the better part of the last two and a half months I worked really hard to try to get into residential, but when I was originally told I’d need to go inpatient first, it’s like a light switch flicked in my mind and I resigned myself to the fact I was just going to let myself die from this. Since talking to the admissions lady and you about inpatient it doesn’t sound nearly as bad as I thought and so I decided to majorly reconsider it, however, the light switch didn’t flick back on and it’s like I’m stuck in the mindset that I tried and now it’s time to give up and I should let it kill me. I don’t know how to get that motivation I had before back. I know I need it back but idk how to mentally get back there. I feel like I’m letting a ton of people down, especially since a ton of my friends want to start a go fund me for me to cover the out of network fee that I don’t want to have to ask my family for this close to the holidays (to be very clear I would never ask anyone to do this for me, one person brought up making a go fund me for me and a ton of people jumped on the bandwagon behind them), the idea of people shelling out $3,750 because I’m incapable of eating makes me want to crawl out of my skin, I don’t like being selfish and I feel like accepting that kind of charity would be highly selfish of me. I don’t want to tell people that I’ve virtually given up because I don’t want to let anyone down, I just want to know how to regain some amount of the fight I had in me before last week back so I can get myself to go to treatment. Q13: 1.40.48 So I recently noticed how happy I can be for others but I find it more difficult to feel this way for myself. When I read texts, emails, and social media posts about friends and family with good news, I feel honestly happy for them and those feelings come easy. However, when it comes to myself I notice that feelings of contentment, pride/achievement, or happiness don't come as easy. I've had to get more into the habit of literally stopping what I'm doing in order to take time to recognize and appreciate personal milestones in order to produce anything resembling happiness for myself. What's that about?? Why is it easier for me to be happier for others and not for myself? Q14: 1.43.48 There's always been people I've met in my life with a certain energy or personality trait that always makes me feel guarded and closed off. They might not be bad people, but I think in some way I feel threatened by them. I know the problem is in my train of thought and what I focus on, however I really don't know how to stop feeling inferior to others. I usually do this in social situations, since I have social anxiety, I can't always be around others who are confident in social situations. At times, I know when I'm disliked by others, I just don't know how to be resilient towards this happening. Because I'm a people pleaser, I think I also shut down so I don't bother other people with me being me. Q15: 1.48.25 Is it possible that I have parentified myself or at least made it easier to become a parentified child? Or could this be like a transference thing from my childhood onto my siblings? It's like my identity is built upon me taking care of my youngest sister, rather than focusing on myself. Most of the times I feel stuck at a younger age than I actually am, which is why I haven't really thought about what to do in life because that's a problem for "future me" (Or is that from the anxiety and depression?) Am I parentifiing myself and could this be a good thing because I won't kill myself? Q16: 1.55.38 My question is how do you deal with Corona fatigue /depression?

Katie K