ep.37 "I Was An Emotionally Neglected Child & Teenager" | AKA

you can ask her why breakups suck or why you've hit a plateau inquire all those questions you've always wanted to know ask katie anything hey everybody welcome back to another episode of ask katie anything and i swear no matter how many times i adjust my microphone when i finally start talking to you i always readjust it i can't help myself then i'm like oh that was not what i wanted um we have some great questions today first of all how are you doing just checking in how are you really doing i um i'll check in as well today has been a good day i was glad because i was able to squeeze in a quick little body movement workout um even though my day was a little bit busier than normal so that made me happy that i was able to do that because it makes me feel good it gives me more energy surprisingly enough and i've been feeling kind of lately um but anyway yeah today's a good day it was sunny out and the weather cooled down we had a weird you guys we had like two hot days all of a sudden and i'm not gonna get it right in celsius but in fahrenheit it was like 86 degrees the other day yesterday i was like wait what and then 84 the day before and then it went back down to like 62. it's crazy i don't know what happened um so we had those couple hot days and i think in celsius that'd probably be what like 20 28 am i i don't know you guys let me know i'm not good at uh figuring that out so things are good got outside went for a walk that feels good um yeah just now get to do this get to hang out with you guys get to answer some questions and you have wonderful questions as always and i feel like i don't really have anything else to share my book is still slated to come out in uh fall of 2021 i know a lot of you are excited about the trauma book it's going to be called traumatized i cannot wait to show you guys the cover i love it so much um with the ru okay book my first book baby i didn't love the cover and i know that sounds silly but i didn't have any say really like i gave them some colors i liked i told them i didn't want it to be me on the cover i'm not really big on getting my photo taken and it made me kind of uncomfortable and so they put that together and i gave pushback on like oh hey i like these kinds of covers and they were like no so with this one i really got to be a part of it and i love how it turned out so anyways i'm really excited to show you guys as soon as i get the okay to share it i will and yeah everything is is actually pretty good just trying to change my perspective about the about the holidays because shawn and i aren't able to go home to montreal to see his family or to washington to see my family because hello pandemic and we're very concerned about potentially getting someone that we love sick or you know someone that we love getting us sick and so i'm just i ordered us some garland to put up so that'll be really pretty and i changed i was talking about my on my instagram stories recently how i changed the uh all the little smellies in our house like uh wallflowers or glade plugins whatever you prefer but i put them like those pumpkin spice smell and it's so nice so anyway i'm really enjoying the holidays oh and i did want to talk briefly i have 10 questions we will get to them do not worry i'm going to get into them quickly but i had a note here i was just sometimes i just ponder just let my thoughts go while i listen to like me you know kind of benign music and i was i have some questions and things that i wanted to talk out really quick and sorry to talk from my phone but this is where this is where i take my notes because if i don't write them down right in the moment when i think them then they get lost in the abyss that is my brain okay so my thoughts are and i'm very curious about your thoughts on this too but my question is does being empathic or sensitive make us harder workers is it motivating because we always feel more responsible than we should and don't want to let others down i just let that sit for a sec because i was listening to some podcast i feel like i think it was dax shepard's armchair expert or it could have been where do uh where do i begin or where to yeah i think it's where do i begin with esther perel um anyway i just i'm curious what are your thoughts on that because part of me thinks that's true like as someone who is more on the highly sensitive empathic scale and is very sensitive to how other people perceive me and other you know i'm working on it trust me i've been working on it therapy for like five six years now or even longer probably um but anyway i wonder if that is motivating because we don't want to let anybody down i don't know it just really blew my mind so i'd love to hear your thoughts on it i'm still letting it kind of sit in my brain and and figuring out what i think about it but i i so far in voting for yes i think being highly sensitive or being empathic does relate to us being harder workers i don't know but i'd love to hear your thoughts in those comments so let me know okay let's get into your questions because enough about my thoughts and my shenanigans those are just things that were in my brain this week first question is you guys always have questions about this and i love it it says hi katie what does a healthy attachment to your therapist feel like for the client i'm constantly wondering whether my attachment is healthy for example is it okay to be excited to tell them something that has happened to you during the week and for you to wonder how they might respond to certain scenarios that haven't even happened to you i hope this makes sense and thanks for all that you do of course that makes sense and i also there's a follow-up question that was from the comments that i'll get to after this but a healthy attachment to your therapist yes of course it is fine to tell them something that's happened during we can get excited about it that's that's totally normal i think really feeling anything like for instance for me i'll be excited to see my therapist for the like when i realize that i get to go either tomorrow or the day of i'll get kind of excited because i'm like oh i get to finally talk to them about stuff and like no i just need that vent and i'm looking forward to it kind of thing other times when it's a really difficult work that i'm doing in therapy i might dread it and that's normal too but when it comes to the attachment based stuff i think that it's when we start wishing our therapist was our friend or wishing our therapist was our mother or father or you know someone we could talk to all the time i want to see them all day every day it's that kind of stuff that ends up being a little bit unhealthy and i don't really like the healthy and healthy i know i've used that word in the past but i think it's more about like is attachment something we need to work on in therapy or not and that's really what that tells us okay and so if you are out there and you're like hey i really wish my therapist was my mom or my dad or you know a friend or whatever that's okay that's very normal it just means that that's something that you should work on in therapy because that isn't the goal of the therapeutic relationship that that i guess we want to use the healthy unhealthy that is indicative of an unhealthy attachment meaning that we're placing them into a relationship that doesn't fit like that's not the role of a therapist is not to be a caregiver right but for many of us a therapy a therapeutic relationship is the first time anybody's given any shits about us and so it feels really fucking good right and we want more of it and so it totally makes sense but i guess that's how i would so the healthy attachment so the question is what does healthy attachment to your therapist feel like for the client i think it feels like a great supportive companion that you go to see and you look forward to their feedback you look forward to sharing things with them or not right you don't always have to i'm just saying for the attachment component and you understand the boundaries of that relationship and it's not really something that you have much thought about i know that sounds really ridiculous but for those of us who don't have attachment issues there isn't a ton of thought about it like for my therapist for instance i might call her to reschedule an appointment but i would never unless there was an emergency or i was in crisis i would never consider reaching out to her at a random other day like it would just be for my appointment also i'm high functioning right if any of us are really struggling know that it's okay because then you're in crisis right you're having a tough time and that's okay too that has nothing to do really with attachment unless we find ourselves creating crises that didn't really exist in order to give ourselves permission to reach out to our therapist and so i think overall the overarching theme that even as i'm just talking this out with you is that if we find ourselves thinking about our therapist a lot of the time not just briefly before an appointment or right after if we find our brain like being pulled to them and we are wanting a deeper closer relationship with them i think that's kind of indicative of attachment issues and i would encourage you to bring that up in therapy also just for anybody out there if you have had a crush on your therapist or anything like that know that that's also very common and that's like part of that transference part of the attachment issues maybe we don't really know what love looks like in any other form and therefore if someone finally shows us attention we think we love them and that's important to work through in therapy as well and there's nothing weird about it there's nothing to be embarrassed about it's just it's a very common thing and it's something that we have to work on that's why therapy's so great is because a therapeutic relationship is a is a resource right it's something we can utilize to better understand our relationships with other people in our world and so yeah the healthy attachment is you look forward to seeing them you want to talk to them but in between sessions and stuff you don't feel like oh i want to tell them everything or oh um we might write notes down and be like man i keep forgetting to tell them that shit write this down that's very normal um but i think it's when we want to place them into a relationship they don't belong when we want to pull them out of that therapy bubble in the therapeutic relationship and place them into friend lover of mother father stuff like that now the comment on the end that i want to get into is oh and also it's very normal to you know wonder how they might respond to certain things and want their feedback that's kind of part of therapy too so all of that is very normal and the person who wrote that question it sounds like so based on what you told me your attachment to your therapist is very very healthy very normal but the comment says is quote unquote stalking your therapist on social media on their professional slash business profiles okay katie should i tell my therapist i'm doing it this is very interesting and it's something that i've personally like back when i first started my channel i was really worried that a lot of my patients would see my social media stuff and then they would be bothered by it or they would know more about me than they should and obviously as you guys know i've whittled down my private practice throughout the years and my patients that i've been that i'm still seeing are the ones that are very high functioning most of them don't even care that i'm online and aren't interested at all which is kind of funny to me that they just don't care at all they're like i don't i don't really want to watch any of those things i i get you you know in session and that's fine um anyways it's it is an interesting conversation to be had because you don't want to solely the therapeutic relationship however because it's their professional business profiles it's fine to check up on them i think it's totally normal to follow if it is a professional profile the the i guess the it's kind of tricky you guys anyway i've had these conversations with patients of mine who who've brought it up or something or i've thought it was important to bring up because they'd make mention of a video or something but the ones i'm seeing now nobody really watches anything so it's become a non-issue however i think if we're stalking them to try to find out more information about them or it gives us some again going back to the original question like if we feel like we're putting them into a different relationship bucket where we're like well i just want to know more about them i want them to be my friend i want them to be my mom you know i dream about them being my caretaker all this stuff if we have those kinds of thoughts related to it and that's what's fueling the stalking that's something that you should bring up and i'm also curious what you mean by stalking because if you just look up stuff or look up your therapist which i think everyone should kind of check their therapist you should go online and see who they are and if you think that they could be a good fit right that's how we find the right therapist and we maybe want to read some reviews although i will tell you that most therapists don't have any reviews online and if they do it's like one begrudged patient who leaves like because i have a psychiatrist i've worked with for years who's wonderful his job and i love him he's great he has this really shitty review online that he hates that it's there and the story that nobody gets to hear is that that patient was looking for opioids because they have addiction problems and he wouldn't offer them and that person became very angry and wrote a bunch of nasty comments and nasty reviews so you know um checking up on social media i think is fine however if you're doing it because you're wanting to enrich that relationship outside of just the therapy you know boundaries then that's a problem and then if you find that's the reason behind it if you're being honest with yourself and that's the reason then yes i think that you should tell your therapist you're doing it and talk about it it's all helpful i think a lot of us worry like oh what is my therapist going to think they're going to think i'm so weird therapy is not a place for judgment and if you feel judged by your therapist if they say things like what you did what why would you do that if they ask you a lot of stuff like that and their face reacts that's not a very good therapist and that's also maybe not a good fit for you and it's okay to you know consider seeing someone else who is less judgmental so we feel free to come to them with all of the what we think are weird things that probably aren't and the things that we're doing that we're like i don't know why i'm doing this we need to feel free to come to them with that stuff we shouldn't feel hung up on the fact that they're going to judge you or think you're weird or crazy or any of the above it should be a judgment-free zone as much as possible we're all human there are gonna be things that we're gonna think or do but i've gotten really good at my poker face you guys and all therapists should feel the same like they've gotten really good at their poker face because we want you to feel free to share and it's important and it's part of what makes therapy so healing okay moving on a little bit of water and we'll move into question number two it says hi katie i'm just curious to know if therapists stalk their patients on social media i love these questions because they always kind of roll into one another i would find it so tempting to know want to know more about my patients if i was a therapist and i feel like i would want to look through their instagrams and social media is there some sort of ethical rule that says you shouldn't do that as a therapist or is it a common thing to do just curious thanks for all you do there was a comment on this that was almost you guys i love how you help each other and share in the knowledge that you have it's really wonderful to see and i love it and this someone shared a comment that's pretty much in line with what i think about this first i've never stalked a patient on social media i've actually never looked up anyone's social media i did have this patient who was like adamant about seeing me and just kept leaving messages even though i had told the person that like hey i don't have any openings and i also don't treat addiction you know i was trying to give them good referrals which even as someone who's not their therapist i don't have to do but if i ever tell someone no i'm not open you know i can't see you i always offer them some resources of people that i trust and love hopefully that they will then find a way to trust and love and can see someone but i did look up uh that person online just out of curiosity to see what was going on but i didn't stalk them i was just like is this a real person is this like something online that someone's you know i was just curious um but i've never stalked any of my patients on social media i've never looked at any of their social media mainly because and here's the real reason i don't know if there's any ethical rule about it but it's very gray however the reason that i would not do this is because it could color or change the way that we interact in session because the great thing about therapy is it's a place where you get to tell me what's going on from your perspective and uh how you're feeling and what you're doing and i just take it at face value i mean obviously i'm gonna push back if there are things i think are false beliefs and stuff like that but i'm just saying that i don't know anything else about you i only know what you tell me and that's part of what makes therapy so magical and so amazing and so therefore i wouldn't go looking for other information about you other than what you share not to mention that you could look really put together online or super successful but in my office you're talking about how much you're struggling and and i want to not be i don't know influenced by seeing a different part of your you even though i mean even that example i'm like of course everybody puts their best online not everybody but most people and so i wouldn't trust it at all anyway because social media is kind of you know it's not necessarily known for all of its candor and honesty if so um anyways no i don't i want you to have the freedom to tell me what you want me to know in session and work from there and me to get you get to know you that way not through anything that's posted on social media also you know i don't have the time and frankly i think it could solely the relationship in some ways like you know i think there's just too much at risk and it's it's not necessary and i would i want you to feel like you have the relationship with me in the way that you want to have it and i shouldn't go looking to change that so yeah so that's the answer that's interesting though i've never really thought about it and i don't know i i didn't uh one of my colleagues is a law and ethics professor and she always like weighs in on certain things sometimes if i have questions about it but i didn't ask her about this one but i do not believe there's like an ethical rule although i wouldn't be surprised if it would wouldn't catch up with us because the thing about law and ethics when it comes to mental health uh medical you know any kind of health related i'm not even just content but like health related stuff all the law and ethics around that takes a while to change and shift and so i don't know if it's even caught up with the fact that social media is everywhere and it has been for a long time sometimes these powers that be like the apa or whatever or whatever you know they're the ones that create the dsm that's why they came to mind but there's the law and ethics boards of each state and the federal government and all of that stuff i don't know if they've caught up and it might take them a little while to like meet and decide on stuff like that but i wouldn't be surprised so okay moving on to question number three says hi katie i have a question i'm 21 and i've suffered from depression and anxiety for several years i've tried therapy on and off starting when i was 14. i would always just talk with a therapist about how i was feeling but it never really went anywhere i eventually stopped because it wasn't helping i feel frustrated because i want therapy to work but every time i've tried it it's never ended up changing anything i feel like i've always come out of it the same way i went into it feeling unhappy depressed and anxious i've also tried numerous medications none of which have ever helped my question is why hasn't therapy been working for me and if i try it again what should i do in order for it to work what advice would you give someone who has tried therapy and it hasn't helped them i feel overwhelmed and don't know what to do thank you so much for your guidance and support of course happy to help happy to be a resource you guys the okay the truth about this i have a couple of questions and obviously you can't answer right back but i'm just putting them out there into the ether because if anybody's been thinking therapy doesn't work for me i want to ask about it number one you said off and on since you were 14 i'm curious how much of a trial you gave therapy so for how long was it ever on like what's your longest stint because it does take unfortunately i know because therapy can be expensive trust me my insurance doesn't cover anymore thanks for all the changes to my insurance every year that's fucking terrible so uh it takes about four weeks you could get some resources depending on the therapist and what type of therapy they offer but it can take us a while to open up it can take us a while to get to know you on the therapy side and it can take us a while to understand what's going on so that we can then offer resources so giving it four to six weeks to kind of start seeing some real momentum and movement i think is good and even then it won't really be a ton of change that you feel right away but you should feel like oh i'm trying different things i'm challenging my thoughts or i have these resources i'm giving a try we should have a little something to go from okay and to feel like i have some some stuff i didn't have before okay so that's my first question then the second is when trying numerous medications i'm curious how long you were on them i'm not a doctor okay you guys i'm not a psychiatrist i'm not here to offer any advice on what types of medications or anything like that however i do know in consultation with the psychiatrist that i work with over and over again they will always ask my patients who said oh i've been on tons of medications and nothing's ever worked they're always asking for a complete history they want all the paperwork because they're curious how long were you on each medication and did they give it a full trial meaning sometimes uh psychiatrists will put us on let's say an ssri like an antidepressant let's say they put us on i don't know zoloft and we're on it for two weeks when we come back to them we call them we're like nothing is better i feel worse this is shit i don't want it please take me off and some psychiatrists will just say okay i'll take you off you know or you know titrate down over the next week or whatever right so don't quit medications without talking your doctor just throwing that out there withdrawal is a big is a real thing okay so anyway sometimes that will happen and those two weeks or maybe even three weeks isn't a sufficient in my mind in a lot of psychiatrists minds isn't a sufficient trial some medications unfortunately especially psychotropic medication meaning medication for our mental health they can take four to eight weeks sometimes to show full effect and to get up to the right dosage and so i'm just asking some questions these are some basic questions because i've had patients in the past who've been on a whole swath of medications then all of a sudden their doctor changes their regimen puts them back on something that they already tried leaves them on only that increases the dose a couple times and boom they feel better and it's just because we did weren't able to give it a full trial i know it takes fucking forever i know it's frustrating you feel like shit now i hear you and i know it sucks but i'm just telling you that that could be another i'm just another question another potential answer just wanting you to know um that sometimes it just takes longer and i know that sucks okay now into the the kind of the bigger and more direct question is like what advice would i give to someone who's tried therapy and it hasn't helped them a lot of times i think it's just not the not the right type of therapy or not the right therapist and i know for a lot of people they struggle like how do i know if i'm seeing a good therapist how to know if they're bad i have videos about both you can go on youtube you can search just kati morton good therapist katie morton bad therapist they should pop up and so i really think uh that that could help there help you kind of better recognize um maybe it just didn't work for you or maybe they weren't good at their jobs just like therapists or just like any other worker really like let's say we have uh i don't know someone who doesn't cut hair very well we can have someone who doesn't do therapy very well because not everybody puts as much effort and i don't know it's not even just love and support because that's not really what therapy's about but it's just effort and focus and care into their patients and their patients growth as they should also some people just aren't good at being a therapist and they should never have gotten into it you know so all in all we need to find one that's a the right fit that's it and then the second part that i that i mentioned was like the right type of therapy if you're wanting more instructive care meaning that's kind of what i do okay you guys i have to put out the caveat that i personally believe in therapy being more directive with homework assigned to it because one hour a week just does not it's just never seemed sufficient to me to help us move the needle and start feeling better right to get us back into a better space we need follow-up stuff we need things to do in our free time not all therapists are like that and that's fine it doesn't mean that's bad therapy i'm just saying that i come from the school of give me some shit to do in between because that my life doesn't feel good and i need a little i need a little bit more but i have patients who adamantly oppose homework i don't fight them on it i just make them do it in session with me we do it together they just don't realize they're doing it haha sneaky sneak but i'm giving up all my secrets here um but you might want therapy that like cbt meaning cognitive behavioral therapy or dbt dialectical behavior therapy those are both very directive very goal oriented very homework focused styles of therapy you may have seen a therapist who is more psychoanalytic or object relations meaning it's more about like dynamics of our family and how we are within it and what we uh trying to get into the root of some of the beliefs we have about ourselves and our upbringing it could be like slower types of therapy i personally don't like psychoanalytic therapy i think it should be like dismissed for the most part like freudian uh that kind of comes out of freud and most of unfortunately i mean i love freud because he started the conversation which gets us to where we are today however most of his research and things that he stated is big has been like debunked over and over and over and over and over again and his styles of therapy and the things that he believed just aren't even helpful at all for anybody and so just keep that in mind you know it might just be the wrong type of therapy for you and yeah so my advice truly would be let's try again i know it's fucking exhausting but we need to find you a better treatment team we need to find you a therapist that you feel hears you and gives you resources and tools out the gate i would encourage you to tell them the reasons why you haven't felt that therapy has worked for you before you feel like you're just talking and there's no resources or tools or i don't know maybe they're not challenging you could be a bunch of things maybe take some time to journal about that so you have you know concrete bullet points you can share with your new therapist and just see if you feel like they're good if you kind of like them if you feel comfortable with them do they seem to understand and actually listen to you do they remember important things about you and your family and your life um that's why watching my videos about how to know if you're seeing a good therapist could be really helpful and that will hopefully give you that little flicker of hope so that you don't feel so overwhelmed and it gives you kind of an idea of what you can do next because yeah and better help is a great resource for that um i know i've talked about them in the past and a ton of people from our community have found it to be really helpful but better help has there's links in the descriptions of all my videos if you want to just access it that way but they let you switch over all the time like if you don't like a therapist you'd be like i want to be fitted like you know find me another one and they will and there's no if fans or buts about it and it's super easy so that might be good for you too especially it's online and i know that most things are online these days um and it's they it's a little bit cheaper if you have to pay cash you know your insurance doesn't cover it like me um then you know you might uh if it's cheaper is all i'm saying it can be very a lot cheaper than traditional in-person therapy so hopefully that helps i know i totally understand why you feel frustrated this can really suck but finding the right therapist is actually way way more important than a lot of people give credit to and i just i feel like you just haven't found that person yet and that's okay i went through like four or five therapists before i found the one that i loved and then she retired and then i tried two before i found one and then yeah i've been seeing her forever but i'm not really seeing anybody right now just to be honest um for quite a little you know like a couple months now mainly because we're moving and i was gonna try to find a new person in my new area so also i just need a little more tough love my therapist right now is a little bit more like a little softer which used to be what i needed but you know i've changed i've grown i need a little more like knock it off katie you're being a turd face and i will say okay thank you okay moving on to question number four this is an interesting question i'm so excited okay says hello katie do you think birth order can play a role in mental illness and have you seen any trends in your counseling sessions such as depressed middle children eldest children facing too much pressure youngest who might have been smothered i'm a middle child one of three girls spaced out two years apart and i have memories of my parents and teachers getting angry with me in elementary school when i would do badly on tests things like spelling words wrong when my siblings would do well in comparison and being slower to learn how to tell time the school put me in a quote unquote reading recovery program and gave my parents homework to go over the basics and catch up as an adult i brought this up with my mom and she admitted that she didn't spend the same amount of time with me as she did with my siblings due to being busy and having done it all before with the eldest i understand raising kids is a tough job however this lack of support growing up contributed to my depression and my low self-esteem my younger sister has always was always spoiled and given more affection because she was the baby of the family i now find hugs awkward and use humor as a coping mechanism to this day i still sometimes hear my mom mutter but she's the baby when giving my sister more privileges or defending her behavior the effects of birth order have definitely followed us into adulthood and this year i finally bit the bullet and got a referral to see a psychologist yay i'm so glad you're seeing someone yes birth order can play a role in mental illness it doesn't always it kind of depends um just like having shitty parents you know a lot can depend on that as well uh i've talked i talk about in my book my book that will come out next fall the traumatized book about resiliency and how some of us are just born with more of it and we're more resourceful than our siblings just because we are and we don't really fully understand why sometimes we're more social therefore we reach out more and speak up more just out of our own nature as a person like for instance my my brother is actually very social now but growing up because he was bullied for a while in school he has a cleft lip uh so he has a scar and he got bullied i fucking hate those kids and i would punch him in the throat today if i saw them but he got bullied terribly he was older than me though so i was like a little squirt but and that quieted him down and as he grew up he felt he was definitely more shy but then now that he's an adult he's just like fuck it whatever and he's he's like way more outgoing than i like me as a child was super super quiet and then as i came into my own and started sports and i loved school and i had a great group of friends because i played sports with them like year-round pretty much um i really came out of my shell and became much more gregarious than the person that you kind of know today and so even though i'm the youngest and he's the oldest there are certain pressures that you're going to feel however i think a lot of it has to do with our parents and how we are just as a person and i know that like the story of my brother it doesn't really make any sense but just to tie it back to this my brother talks all the time about how he had a lot more pressure on him and he had to uh break through i forget the words he used but you say like i'm the one that had to break through all the barriers and you just got to walk straight through because he was the first one to get his license and the first one to have a girlfriend and the first one to you know try to have a party of friends over at the house all the things that my parents would like push back on or have rules or like you know uh why can't i think of a curfew i was like deadline that's not the right word wow i'm getting old a curfew at night you know he was the one to push back at like you know 9 00 pm is too early 10 pm is too it's too early i want to let you know all the stuff that he fought for he feels like he fought for it and i just got all the benefits and and i'm the baby right because it's just him and i and so there are without even great parents are going to have like some differences in the way that they raise their first child versus their last child let's say because the first child they don't know what the fuck they're doing they don't have any other children that are taking their attention and therefore we find there are there are studies and if you want to look these up i think you'll find it just as fascinating as i do but there are studies in research to support that birth order does come along with certain characteristics and and certain personality traits not all the time like everybody's going to be different just like i said some people have more resiliency just because they do because they tend to talk more to people and they're more outgoing or maybe they got into sports at a young age and that just was the thing that helped them build their confidence and grow their support system i don't know right there's all sorts of variables and i believe there are too many to blank statement that birth order is the cause of certain mental illnesses but i do not i do believe there's enough research to support the fact that birth order can play a role in mental illnesses and i'm not going to lie when i say that and i i should look up some uh the actual links to these so you guys can read them yourselves i'll try to remember but the first child the oldest child tends to be more anxious middle childs tend to be a little bit more depressed and more uh introverted and the youngest child's tend to be more gregarious and outgoing and to have a little bit more self-confidence but they could obviously have their own issues as well i would assume and maybe be more people-pleasing because that got them things more probably struggled with boundaries because their parents could have really smothered them because they were the last ones or they were the baby anyway so you can see how there's just too many variables to really say but there are you know different beliefs around birth order and i'll link at least one of the articles down in the description i'll remember don't worry so that you can read about it i do find it really interesting and that's really all i have to say because it's not it's not my specialty obviously i don't think it's anyone's specialty but i think that there are different things that affect children differently and a lot of it has to just do with the parents like it sounds like in your situation your mom you being the middle child which i would assume you just had the one other sibling you know middle children tend to be not ignored that sounds bad to say it that way but tend to not get as much attention or affection or effort as babies or the first child and so it does come with its own issues or it can but i i think yeah it's just it's just more to do with the family and the parents and the way that you're catered to talk to treated and all of that and so i'm sorry that that had to happen i'm sorry that they didn't give you as much attention as they did your oldest and youngest sisters but yeah it sucks and there there are connections so anyway i'll link the article so you can read about the connections because it is a thing it is real but again it's obviously not nothing in mental health or even in medical spaces like all cases are xyz but i do believe there are patterns and i do believe that you know parents tend to be more active with their first child in not as active with their third let's say but sometimes parents are good at divvying up tasks and having support from other family members or other nannies and caregivers so that they can give their children you know alone time one of my friends actually mindy and sean mcknight have six children and something that they do really well is they spend one-on-one time with the children like they'll divvy up the you know the caretaking and stuff and maybe they have a nanny that watches some of the kids and then one of them will go off with one of the children at a time and spend a day with them and then they just are always constantly scheduling these dates with their children so that they each get this one-on-one time and i think that's just a really it's a really great thing if you're a parent out there and you're like well how do i make sure i don't do this schedule those one-on-one dates do something on your own with your child one-on-one because that's the time when you're going to have an opportunity to hear how they're really doing how school is going what's happening in their life what are they thinking and feeling um i know at different ages they might not be as open to it but if we start you know from a somewhat young age they get more and more comfortable spending time with us talking to us and they're more apt to tell us when they're having a tough time at school or they're being bullied or they have a crush on this person or that person or whatever and we hope to build that relationship so that all of our children feel like they get some time and feel seen and heard and all of that and if things are crazy and it's hard to find a sitter or something like that like maybe this is a time when you you know they get to pick the movie and you sit next to them and you chat with them or you know what i mean you can put more attention on a child even without doing a one-on-one date but i think we if we think about it we all can find ways to do those one-on-one dates okay so that and i'm also proud of this person for finally going to see a psychologist that should help because essentially what we can encounter when it comes to things like that is we weren't felt neglected and in some ways maybe felt uh harmed or traumatized by what happened and it's important to get a chance to talk it out and heal from what we went through because a lot of our childhood right we have most of it we have like no control over and so it can be really healthy and helpful to talk through it and heal okay question number five it says hi katie my therapist and i oh this is so funny you guys these like roll right into one another it's almost like you you guys know my therapist and i both independently came to the conclusion that i was emotionally neglected as a child and teenager but almost a year later i'm still struggling to see how it could have been bad enough to cause such severe mental illness or mental health issues later in life i know thinking that it wasn't that bad is common for survivors of childhood emotional neglect but i don't know how to stop feeling like i'm just overreacting and like something is inherently wrong with me because i have quote unquote no reason to feel this bad and to have um and to have so many problems that in in pretty much every area of my life how can i bring myself to actually believe that my experiences and feelings are valid and then there's another add-on question that i'll get to after this but yes this is very very common so many people feel like emotional neglect just isn't as bad like i don't really have a reason because the the tricky part is when we're emotionally neglected everything else looks fine on paper right i always like to call it like good on paper i mean i was a huge fan of sex and city back in the day and i think it's uh is it carrie i don't know they all talked about like guys that looked good on paper that they were dating but there was no zaza zoo right no trepidation no excitement to see them no indescribable feeling that pulls you to someone and makes you want to be in a relationship with them okay and emotional neglect is that good on paper it looks good right maybe we lived in a nice home we had clothes that were trendy enough that we felt kind of cool and we got the things we needed and they took us to all the after-school things and they fed us and all the stuff that was supposed to happen happened maybe they even paid for college got us a new car fuck i don't know whatever right every parent's different but all that stuff just looks good what we really needed was i s they see you crying and instead of just continuing to work or leave the room or walk away they come over and they hug you and they say i'm so sorry what's going on do you want to talk about her do you want to just can i rub your back you want to just sit together for a little bit that parenting that love that connection that compassion that we're looking for in a caregiver and what is just so necessary for our growth as a human we really i don't think anybody recognizes or realizes just how valuable connection is not only to our nervous system and our own ability to regulate our system as a whole like to feel calm but then as emotional maturity for us to get to keep in touch with what feelings are right to even have someone prompt a conversation about how are you doing is an amazing and powerful statement and something that at a young age we should have been asked right so that we can get to know what sadness is what excitement is why can i cry and be happy at the same time you know emotions are complicated and we we have the ability to hold so many at once it can be overwhelming if no one engages in that conversation so that we could learn about our own experience and be validated in it and that lack of validation and comfort is what makes childhood emotional neglect so painful and why it leads to so many mental health issues for so many people and so i guess what i would encourage you to do is every time your brain goes into the i'm overreacting this isn't that big of a deal my parents paid for stuff i was fine i had a house i was fed like everybody has it worse than me first of all someone else's pain does not negate your own i want you to say that to yourself it's not pie there's not only so much pain to go around we all there's plenty you guys and there is no shortage unfortunately but you need to argue back we need to not allow those thoughts to be facts we need to check our facts so i want you to consider when you say i have no reason to feel this bad that's why she said i feel like you know i'll feel like i'm overreacting something's inherently wrong with me because i have no reason the shame associated with abuse like childhood emotional neglect we need to challenge that and check some facts okay we have no reason so what would it look like if i didn't have a reason like my mom always told me to stop crying or would ignore me when i was upset is that seems that sounds like a reason to me my dad used to say these horrible things to me about like how i should have tried harder and then my mom wouldn't even stop him and there was no support i know that sounds more like emotional abuse but i'm just giving you examples of like what are your reasons for this what are the things that you wanted and needed that you didn't get and therefore we spent a lot of our life trying to fill that void with other things and trying to better manage right check your facts fight back with the facts that you know and don't allow those thoughts to live in your brain do as much thought stopping and the bridge statements i'm open to the fact that maybe i don't have all the facts in this i'm open to the thought or it's possible that being emotionally neglected is actually a tough thing to to weather and it did feel pretty shitty as much as this sounds like opposite of therapy i would encourage you to think back to childhood you crying unsupported unloved not feeling any compassion or understanding from your parents how did that feel does that feeling feel insignificant i bet it doesn't it feels really significant because it was that neglect is is hard it's painful and it's it's difficult to comprehend and overcome because again it's good on paper it's the reason emotional abuse as a whole because i lump emotional neglect kind of into the emotional abuse bucket which is the second question i'll get into that in a second um but because it doesn't leave any marks doesn't mean damage wasn't done and i just want you to hear that because there weren't any marks left on your skin on your body it doesn't mean that there wasn't damage done it's just as important for us to get support for emotional abuse and emotional neglect as anything else and so just challenging that fighting back challenging those thoughts with some more balanced possibly more positive open to the fact that it was painful thoughts can be helpful and then just reminding ourselves of what it was like in the moment because we often just downplay it and and potentially forget it all together because it's hard to feel that way for too long but tapping in can be a resource to keep you validating understanding and working to feel better now the comment that was added onto this and what i was saying i want to get into next is also katie could you talk about the difference between neglect and abuse here i always hear you saying that emotional neglect is abuse but i think i disagree because it's usually unintentional can something like this not be abuse but still be traumatic something that's not abuse can still be traumatic i want to throw that out there first because that is true something is scary doesn't necessarily have to be abusive okay however unintentional or not neglect is abuse and here's why neglect can be fiscal like let's say i am a dependent adult meaning i can't take care of myself for whatever reason let's say maybe mentally i'm just not able to focus enough to really pay bills take care of myself i can't feed myself i forget um let's say i have late said alzheimer's or early onset alzheimer's and it makes difficult for me to take care of myself sean could be made you know could be in control of all of my things to take care of me and let's say he was a total dirt bag which he's not he's wonderful and loving but let's say that he wouldn't give me any money to pay anything or to do anything i wanted and i had to like beg and plead and i still wouldn't get it i don't know uh that's financial abuse he could not uh remind me to eat or feed me and i would forget right that's that's neglect and neglect is just as powerful often the removal of something that we need as just as powerful if i mean it's equal if not you know you can't really weigh and measure which abuse is worse but taking something away is just as powerful as adding something to our situation so meaning that if there's physical abuse right we're adding the physical abuse into our life and our situation by the actions that we're taking that are abusive removing loving touch and understanding and compassion from a relationship that's supposed to be built on that and a development in a child that relies on that is abuse so that's intentional or not it doesn't necessarily matter right some people don't realize i mean honestly a lot of parents who are abused their children don't even think that there's anything wrong with what they're doing it's not an intentional thing that they're they're do you know on purpose trying to do that often they don't know another way or they are too drunk or high to even recognize i'm not saying in any way this condoned behavior i'm just saying intentionality doesn't there doesn't have to be intention behind abuse for it to be abuse okay and it's okay to disagree with me but in also legally speaking as a therapist if i know a child is being neglected i can call child protective services if i feel like their basic needs aren't being met now emotional neglect would be harder to prove but you know not coming with a when a child cries and letting them always you know cry and cry and cry and cry i mean technically if they're a baby that's because they're hungry or they need to be changed and that that in and of itself is like you know abuse also but it's neglect see and i just want you to know that emotional neglect in the same way emotional abuse physical abuse sexual abuse all those are abuse there can be physical neglect you know and emotional neglect and they're both just as important and it's all part of that kind of abusive situation okay i'd love to hear you guys thoughts in the comments though because that's i mean that's what we know but if you disagree i'd like to understand why i like to hear from you guys it helps me learn helps me become a better therapist and also get better at having conversations with you about things like this okay question number six says dear katie why do i feel the need to google or research things whenever a topic or item is posed that could be relatively related to me i find myself compulsively compulsively looking it up i'll spend hours reading about a topic and get a brief sense of relief however this need will just come back again it sounds a little just off the top my head that sounds a little anxiety driven slash ocd potentially i don't know i'm not diagnosing you i'm just saying that like kind of the smells of that a little to me and so i'd be curious if you tend to lean into those types of mental illnesses been diagnosed before feel maybe you're more on the anxious side we all have an inclination right about ourselves and what we maybe are experiencing and my therapist spidey senses immediately are drawn to that and i would want to ask more questions about that so just throwing that out there is like my first gut reaction however and there was a comment on this that i loved because again it was like right up my alley about what the way that i think and how i would address this question and the person was saying that maybe googling and researching things is just seeking validation and understanding and i do really think that and i think that part of that is again to to like combat those worry thoughts that are associated with an anxiety disorder because if we don't know and we think oh my god maybe that is me then of course we want to learn more we want to read more that's just kind of part of being human that's how we learn about ourselves that's how we get better and so i think a lot of it could be part of that validation part of that understanding and also to relieve those anxious thoughts and those worry thoughts and so i guess i guess the best way to manage this would be to recognize your anxious thoughts and see if you're able to talk yourself down without doing the research because this almost feels like a compulsion and i don't know if you're seeing a therapist but i would encourage you to to see someone because it sounds you say i find myself compulsively looking it up it sounds very yeah anxiety slash ocd driven and i think getting a grapple on that and and having better tools and understanding i have tons of videos about anxiety and ocd if it's it sounds like it might be kind of uncomfortable for you so i would assume it's not ocpd which is obsessive compulsive disorder or personality disorder if you guys don't know the difference um ocd itself is what we call ego dystonic meaning we don't like it it's uncomfortable we hate that we have to do it we feel these compulsions and it's like i just i'm sick of doing this i don't want to and it just feels bad to us we don't like it it doesn't it's not in sync with who we want to be and what feels good obsessive compulsive personality disorder on the other hand is ego-syntonic we actually prefer to be able to do the things the way that we want to do them other people getting in our way drives us crazy we really uh if it not it's not that we enjoy it enjoy is a strong word but it just feels in line with who we believe we are and what we want to do and it doesn't feel bad us doing those compulsions and having to do things on our own we prefer it and so because this sounds like it's kind of uncomfortable to you i would almost rule out that personality disorder and instead think it's regular ocd not not the pd part um yeah so those are my thoughts on it i think it's probably related to that i would you know again reach out see someone get properly diagnosed i'm not diagnosing i'm offering some insights here um and hopefully i have tons of videos about those so there's resources all over youtube that i've created that can hopefully help you get a better handle on your anxiety and maybe allow you to stop this or at least lessen the compulsion to google and research things okay question number seven says dear katie how can i experience the emotional charge of trauma memories at the quote-unquote right time my brain is very protective of me it still treats the trauma as if it was happening to someone else i can always remember what happened but those episodes do not seem to bother me i can talk it over and over again without feeling triggered however the problem is i couldn't really process them while the images don't bother me i have emotional flashbacks at times like for example unexplainable intense feelings with cold sweats and heat all over my body sudden skin rashes thus i know the emotional charge is here but they just don't come at the right time like when i'm talking about the trauma in therapy katie i wonder how can i feel the emotions when i intend to process them in therapy how can i ask my protective brain to allow me to process the trauma this is a great question and there's a couple of ways so often it's very first i want you to know that what you're experiencing is very very common i've had patients who can talk about their trauma in and out up and down round around it's no big deal however they're still having flashbacks they're still feeling hyper vigilant and they're still suffering from ptsd essentially it everybody has a different way to get in some of us need to tap into the emotions like like you're saying it's these emotional flashbacks some of us need to talk you know we need to process through another way like emdr schema therapy some of us need to do some parts work because there's different parts of ourselves that seem to be you know agitated or relaxed by this conversation and we need to kind of figure them out and better understand them and i'm not obviously i'm not going to get into all these types of therapy but just know that that for like i forget the the percentage you guys i'm i'm sorry but embody keeps the score which is an amazing book highly recommend by kessel is the last name of the man who wrote it and it's wonderful he talks about how for most people with ptsd or complex ptsd just doing talk therapy just talking it through is not enough it's very common for us to still have those symptoms of ptsd and feel like even though we've talked it out we kind of made sense of it it didn't resolve it didn't process it for us it's very common for us to need a different style or an additional type of trauma-focused therapy things like emdr somatic experiencing schema therapy trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy there are a lot of different versions of trauma treatment that could be beneficial and could help you in my i mean if you were my patient i would want you to try emdr first just because my my friend dr alex allman doesn't she's wonderful at it and it's also a little bit more short term no i'm not saying it's like super short term like you're in and out but it can it just can be quicker than like okay trying to start this whole new style of therapy emdr is a whole new different style but it just can be it can we can show benefit pretty quickly for for some people and so i would just encourage you to be open to trying some different types of therapy and asking your therapist if they have any referrals or if they're willing to take a because you can actually get trained uh i was looking one of my friends was doing i want to say it was six weeks i can become an emdr therapist i should take these courses on the weekends so i you know like six weeks your therapist could get accredited and understand how to do it and have practiced it and stuff like that i'm not saying that that's the way you want to go but i'm just letting you know that if you don't want to switch therapists you could see if your therapist is opening to do you know open to doing that but i think that another another treatment would probably benefit you okay so that's my first thought but then just to answer to give you some other ways to feel emotions it's hard to allow ourselves to feel them especially in therapy because usually our defenses are up so instead of worrying so much about the emotions and getting to them quickly and allowing yourself to feel them i would be curious about these protections these defenses i would encourage you to bring this up in therapy and talk focus some of the conversation and maybe some of your journaling ahead of time on what these defenses are when they started what triggers them how do we even know they're happening one of those things just to give you an answer already that you've already told me is that you don't feel your feelings you can talk about things emotional like completely emotionally be like nothing's going on so that's one of your red flags but i would really just encourage you to unders better understand your defense mechanism what you know what because it's serving a purpose still and so the more we understand it the more we understand it's triggers the better we can like diffuse it right and we can kind of sidestep it or maybe instead of completely shutting down emotionally we're able to only shut down like 50 you know so that would be my focus and also some of the work you can do when you're at home maybe when you do feel overwhelmed and you know and to have these intense feelings is right about them what comes up for you it's okay to journal that stuff out it's actually really helpful then you can bring it into therapy and your therapist can read it and try to seek to understand where those feelings came from and and how we can process through them and so use the times that feel like it's not quote unquote the right time to feel those emotions use that to your advantage write about it seek to understand it if it's hard for you to journal i do love the fact that we can just record like audio things on our phone and i would just encourage you to record some like you know little audio clips or voice memos as they're called and save them on your phone that could be really helpful but whatever you do to get it out because that's that's really how i think we'll get in there okay i hope that helps moving on question number eight says hey katie what's the difference between social anxiety disorder and avoidant personality disorder what do you have to work on with clients with avpd versus sad it's actually uh social phobia they call it because sad is seasonal affective disorder are there differences yes there are i thought this was a great question and the truth is i had to pull out my dsm and kind of look at it because the when i think about just the diagnostic criteria off the top of my head they are very similar social anxiety disorder and avoidant personality disorder have a lot of the same characteristics so i wanted to just read a little bit so that we're all on the same page and you can see what i mean by this that they that there's not as big of a difference as maybe we would think so social anxiety disorder or social phobia has a marked fear or anxiety about one or more social situations in which an individual is exposed to possible scrutiny by others examples include social interactions like having a conversation meeting unfamiliar people being observed and performing in front of others the individual fears that he or she will act in a way or show anxiety symptoms that will be negatively evaluated and the social situations almost always provoke fear or anxiety and so they avoid these and there's there's more to that but that's that's social phobia now let me read to you avoidant personality disorder it says a pervasive pattern of social inhibition feelings of inadequacy and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation beginning by early adulthood and president and present in a variety of context contexts as indicated by four or more of the following avoids certain occupational activities is unwilling to get involved with people unless certain of being liked shows restraint with intimate relationships is preoccupied being criticized is inhibited in new interpersonal situations because the feelings of inadequacy and you know feel socially inept okay so you can see that they are very similar now there's a great thing in the dsm that i love and not again the dsm is not the end all be all it's just a reference point and the one thing that i do love about it is it has what is called these uh where is it here it is differential diagnosis meaning if i see you in my office and i think oh my god i think they have social anxiety disorder or social phobia how do i know that it's not avoidant personality disorder well then i have to read through differential diagnosis these are the things the other diagnoses that seem similar to the one that i'm considering that you know i may want to rule out because there could be something else going on and when it comes to social anxiety disorder they offer up things like you know agoraphobia where we fear and avoid social situations because escape could be really difficult right panic disorder do we have panic attacks generalized anxiety disorder you can see these are all other anxiety disorders although the interesting thing about in the dsm and this is why it's not the end albeit it does not have avoidant personality disorder on here it also has shyness like normative shyness like it's okay to be shy that doesn't mean we have social anxiety but then when i go to the back okay so let me put that there just in case my bookmark so avoidant personality disorder however in its differential diagnosis has a whole swath about anxiety disorders as a whole and it says there appears to be a great deal of overlap between avoidant personality disorder and social anxiety disorder i don't know why it doesn't have it whatever i think that's just a mistake on their end so much so that they may have alternative conceptualizations of the same or similar conditions meaning a one therapist might think it's avoiding personality or another therapist might think it's social anxiety disorder avoidance also characterizes both avoidant personality disorder and agoraphobia and they often co-occur so it's really meaning that you could have agoraphobia and avoiding personality disorder they could co-occur happen at the same time but after reading this question i thought well of course there's got to be differences right they're different diagnoses blah blah blah the the main thing that i would i would consider is and i i'm this is just now it's my interpretation right so that's what the thing about the dsms you read it i understand what they're saying and then i make kind of my own interpretation of it when it comes to personality disorders they take longer to diagnose we have to see a more pervasive pattern through our life for i don't know i like to see patients for a year before i give them a diagnosis of a personality disorder sometimes it's it's easier to see and you're like oh i think this is what it is but i still wait to make sure that we've seen all four seasons and i know it's not cyclical or it's we're not just in this one period where everything's really triggering for them you know there's all sorts of things so when it comes to personality disorders i believe it's more pervasive when we could have social anxiety disorder just for a period of our life or there should be there could be just a few situations where we find it you know the most prevalent in other situations that's not that would be the only real difference that i could find and could conceptualize and so this is an interesting question i actually learned more because like i said i assumed there was a lot of differences and there truly is not it's like they took the same criteria and kind of like wrote it out differently using different words but with the same meanings and so my guess is that for the most part people will be diagnosed with social anxiety disorder because it doesn't you know it's not a personality disorder and personality disorders come along with their own you know like it can take longer to be diagnosed some people think that we can't change personality disorders and we totally can that's bullshit don't listen to that um but anyway yeah that was a great question thanks for helping me learn more and be more more well aware of the diagnoses that are available and that that one really does not differentiate from the other wild okay question number nine says hi katie why do i miss the old times when i felt bad and can't accept that it's good that i don't self harm anymore i miss feeling bad and that's crazy it's not crazy says thanks for all you do of course i'm happy to do it it's very common and someone left a comment again you guys are wonderful left a comment pretty much saying what i was gonna say so like i've heard her talk about this before and i think this is what she would say you you heard correctly you are right um the truth about this is that we can get used to feeling like shit and that becomes our norm right and for many of my viewers and patients alike they've told me that you know i've been like this for so long i don't even remember a time when i didn't feel anxious or like self-harming or any of that i mean one of my close friends he told me that he remembered being a child like a baby having his first panic attack like gripping he said they had the shag carpet in their old house he remembers gripping and having a panic attack to me that says you know sometimes we legitimately don't know of a time when we didn't suffer from the mental illness that we're suffering from now and so when we try to do something different and we try to feel better it's super fucking uncomfortable we're like wait what is this i don't like this wait ah this is so weird why isn't this happening the way that i'm used to why you know it's just uncomfortable because it's different also i don't know if you guys have heard that kind of old adage or old phrase that's like better the devil we know than the devil we don't for a lot of people we feel so comfortable in our own dysfunction because we know what to expect you're like hey mr self-injury urge i know you and i know what you're going to do and i am totally comfortable with it and i know how to grapple with you and deal with this and manage it or whatever right that's comfortable i'm used to you that's fine but then we start a new thing and we're like but me trying to use coping skills and calling my friend to tell them about it it's a lot of work and it feels uncomfortable and i feel really vulnerable and i don't like that it just doesn't feel as good we're not used to it and so we can sometimes miss we can have nostalgia for those times because there's some comfort in it and i would encourage you to talk to your therapist and let them know that you know you're feeling this because it is very normal but then and i also sorry just forgot i want to mention one other thing about the fact that we can have urges to sabotage this time of year might be super triggering or we may have this belief that like uh good things don't happen to me like i i don't deserve those and so that is something to bring up in therapy as well if you find that to be a component of it because a lot of my patients have felt that way like i don't deserve to feel good i've been through all this shit or i did this thing or whatever it might be i should feel terrible and that's just what i'm comfortable experiencing so we have to challenge those thoughts we have to journal about it and fight back with other more balanced thoughts like it's possible that some days could be good in my life i'm open to the thought that i could have good days and you know but i might still have shit days and that's okay so being able to have those more balanced thoughts being able to recognize that there is some comfort even though we know we don't want to be back there but there is some comfort in the way things used to be and what used to be our norm and there's nothing wrong with having those thoughts it doesn't make you crazy but i do encourage you to not put energy into them do not allow them to hang around in your brain for too long don't support them with more thoughts about them challenge them thought stop and push to have more balanced thoughts about this so that we don't fall back into the trap and have urges and and act out and you know get pulled back in customize it can do that and i don't know how you really feel about it you know but um just just as a little add in there okay final question question number 10 hi katie how do you take care of your own mental health when having to be a caretaker for your parent that has a chronic illness i'm only 23 and feel completely burnt out from having to take on all of the household chores cooking cleaning and shopping for the household myself while also trying to start my career understandably so my dad should be able to function for the most part on his own but is careless and irresponsible towards his own health which leads me leaves me feeling responsible and caring for him 24 7. at what cost do i try and take a step back and get him to be responsible for himself when the result could be serious and then there's a comment and i'll ask somebody who's asking about my own journey with my dad's diagnosis and how i coped during his illness and after and i can get into that a little bit there this is gonna be hard for people to hear but i've said this quote before when it comes to other situations and it really applies here we cannot set ourselves on fire to keep others warm i just want you to hear that i don't even know who said that quote but it's wonderful and i've used it multiple times it's it's amazing and it's important and that's what's happening here is that you can only do so much you're only one person and someone an adult relying on you 24 7. it's one thing if it's your own child and it's a baby and it needs attention and you can you know we have time for that and we've we focus on that but as an adult taking care of an adult parent it's a little bit different right because it's just not it's not the same dynamic and i would encourage you to there's a couple of things first you have to fill your cup first you have to take care of yourself first i know you're like it could be serious like you said your dad should be able to function for the most part if you if if there's no way to get coverage or care to have like a nurse check in once a day or something like my grandma for instance has someone come by her house twice a week to like check her blood pressure and do her leg exercises and all this stuff if you can get that set up please do it even if your dad's like i don't want a stranger in the house well you know what dad i can't do it all i need some help i just tell him it's overwhelming dad i'm drowning in this i i'm not trying to make him feel guilty and that's not the goal but the goal is for you to be honest about where you're at and how you're feeling because you're ignoring your own self and you're setting yourself on fire to keep him warm and that's not sustainable and so find some other resources so we can get him the help that he needs maybe it's calling his doctor and saying you know he's he's super careless and irresponsible and he needs in-home care and and i know other cultures will say but it's on us and we should be taking care of them i'm going to push back even though i know it's culturally everybody's different there's limits to how much we can all handle that doesn't mean you have to put them in a home or not care for them when you can we just have to better balance so i would encourage you to kind of figure out what it is that you are able to do what how can you help your father how many hours can you give each day what are the things you're okay taking care of like maybe you can order groceries and they can be delivered and that takes that off of your plate you know you have to spend time one evening a week ordering them and setting up the schedule you know something like that like how how can we outsource the things that are overwhelming us and burning us out because even though we want to take care of people in our life that we love and our fam our friends and family and our parents if you know we want to be able to do that sometimes we just aren't capable we can't do it all and there's no there shouldn't be this expectation this like double helping of guilt when we're not able to so i give you full permission to outsource where you can and be honest with yourself and figure out where what can you do what are you able to do while you still build your career and you take you know maybe you want to date maybe you want to do more in your career and you just haven't had the time where can we make that time so that you are thriving and your dad is thriving getting the support he needs it shouldn't be one or the other don't let yourself on fire just to keep him warm okay so i i know that's hard but that's it's slowly letting yourself out of that figuring out what you're actually capable of and finding ways to to get help in the way that you know and i'd also encourage you to ask other members of your family to help out you're you can't be the only one you know if you are then we've got to find some other care from like the hospital or you know whatever kind of resources are available like visiting nurses and stuff like that i would encourage you to do that okay now the question somebody asked on top of this is like i'm curious about your own journey of your dad's diagnosis and how you coped so it was really difficult for me and i'll be honest when i say that what this person's going through is kind of similar my dad if you guys don't know was like sick for years and just deteriorated in front of our eyes and had to go on dialysis at a certain point and that was kind of it was not good and it was downhill from there and he had a heart attack so and passed away and i was 24 when my dad died it was right when i met sean i'd only been dating sean for like a year or a year a month or two um it was a lot of boundary setting i think that was probably the biggest amount of work for me was that i'm not i can't make him better i can't be that like i was flying in like trying to be there for my mom like i couldn't do that like i was in graduate school like i had a life and and the one thing my therapist harped on me forever was to to get me to the part where i can accept the fact that it's okay for me to have a life and in fact he would want that he'd be so proud of me now my i wrote a book my dad would lose his mind he was such an entrepreneur and such a gregarious loving outgoing man he'd be so stoked about this and even all the people that should talk me online because that's what happens when you're online my dad would want to murder them oh my god it's all honestly maybe better that he's not because he'd probably create his own you know things just to go after people he'd be so mad anyways um the truth about it is that it's we have to have healthy boundaries and relationships even with those we love i think we talk more about boundaries maybe this is its own video but it's like we talked about boundaries when it comes like toxic people and people who are just shitty and it's sometimes easier to just not engage with those people however when we have someone in our life that we love and we want to engage with that's when boundaries are important as well because it's hard it's hard for us to take that break and step away when we need to because the truth about this is that if you continue down this path you could build up resentment you could lose the opportunity to do the career you want you could find yourself you know waking up in 10 years and being like what did i do with my life you know but that's not worth it and your dad wouldn't want that either and so for me it was it was accepting the fact that i have my own life and i can check in on him in the way that i can i used to call him there you know it was like after his dialysis i knew he'd be in the car and i'd always call him and so it come through the speakers and i could just chat with him so i had these times every week where i knew i would be able to contact him and chat and that became what i was capable of doing and then i would fly home every like four months instead of on a whim when always in the hospital again oh hop on a plane freaking out um because that wasn't good for me either i couldn't do that panic mode anymore it was too stressful and so i think finding the balance for yourself with healthy boundaries it takes time and it's hard and i also grieved a lot i'm sure you're doing that too that's a really big part of it is just grieving but boundaries around your own life don't make you a bad person having your own life doesn't make you a bad person sometimes we have to think about what our parent would really want from us and that's not like oh we need to neglect them and just leave them no but we have to be able to live our own life and be a resource that can support them in the way that we're able and so just considering that and taking stock of it and figuring out where that is for you i think will be really healing it'll be difficult at first but stick with it i promise you it does get easier and when my dad passed away i didn't not that i didn't have any guilt but the guilt was very minimal i was just sad but i was also grateful he wasn't suffering anymore and my mom wasn't you know it was complicated but twice a week of therapy for two years baby i push through and you can too so yeah i feel for you one day at a time let yourself grieve figure out what you can do and what you can't do outsource that shit ask for other help um and know that it's okay for you to have a life okay thank you all so much for listening this week thank you for all of your questions they're always so wonderful thank you for all of your support i love all of you for sharing this podcast for giving it uh reviews online i really appreciate it we're just trying to grow the podcast so that we can finally start making some money off of it since ads are usually not on it on youtube sometimes they are sometimes they aren't it's so willy-nilly i never know if i say the you know the word self-injury or suicide oh that's not it's not monetizable um which is frustrating but thank you all so much keep sending in your questions if you don't know where i asked for them it's on the community tab of the opinions that don't matter youtube channel i love you have a wonderful week and i will see you next time ask her about your self-esteem or why your feelings hurt you can ask her why breakups suck or why you've hit a plateau inquire all those questions you've always wanted to know ask katie anything

Channel: AKA & OTDM Podcasts

Views: 24,148

Keywords: kati morton, ask kati anything, therapist, mental health, psychology, kati morton podcast, therapist podcast, therapy podcast, where my moms at, katie morton, attachment, therapist on social media, depression, anxiety, emotional neglect, trauma memories, AVPD or SAD, chronic illness

Id: jCIlXjWVot8

Length: 76min 9sec (4569 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020