"What can happen if my trauma isn't treated?" ep.180

Katie anything hey everybody welcome back to another episode of ask Katie anything I'm your host licensed marriage and family therapist Katie Morton I'm so glad that you're here today we have nine questions a lot about trauma a lot about being a therapist and whether or not you hug patients why would you why wouldn't you all sorts of questions even things about you know depression and sleepiness let's get right into it question number one says hey Katie what are the Ripple effects of trauma and PTSD being untreated for years and us being forced to quote unquote function are there any differences regarding the effects this can have on a child or a teen versus a young adult versus an adult are there both psychological and physical consequences I would love to hear your thoughts thank you so much for sharing your experience your expertise with us every week of course happy to help now when it comes to trauma a great study now there'll be some caveats but just hear me out a great study that shows the uh the long-term effects of trauma especially childhood it's called the aces study adverse childhood experiences study that's what Aces stands for Ace that shows you the physical effects of having trauma in childhood and what it can mean for our physical as well as really emotional health throughout our lives and a lot of people you know get frustrated with the aces study because they're like well are those the only traumas that count no of course not that is just a way for them to kind of easily Rank and rate and then also track a physical manifestations like things like high blood pressure or diabetes heart disease they track those kinds of things and it's connection to trauma and we find essentially that the higher level of Aces meaning that more adverse childhood experiences we have the kind of worse physical outcome in our physical health we have as we get older okay and the reason I bring that up is because even though all of those traumas it doesn't it doesn't cover all the traumas that we can sustain but it shows us a correlation between mental health and physical health which I mean I think you and I would both say like of course there's a correlation because it's connected hello this old way of thinking where we believe that our physical health is different than our mental health that's just simply not true can any person who still believes that is frankly misinformed and may be choosing to be ignorant because think of our brain as like the hard drive of our bodies right and I don't know about you but when I feel anxious my body has a response right my anxiety causes me to overheat and sweat it causes me to fidget it causes my heart rate to increase and my my breath to shorten that's a simple way of showing the direct correlation between mental health and physical health right there right and Trauma is even a more intensive version of that so that's kind of the foundation from which I want to answer this question because the Ripple effects of trauma being untreated is that if we have a adverse childhood experience we could have more intensive physical issues later on things like I said like high blood pressure diabetes um heart disease there's a huge list you can look up the aces study it was done by I was I don't know if it was the NIMH or the center if it was CDC but it was one of those like big organizations and in conjunction with um with a pharmaceutical company I don't know if it was Johnson and Johnson or all pharmaceutical companies but anyway they did it it was Kaiser Permanente that's who it was anyway you can look up that study and you can read all about I talk about it in my book traumatized um but that in and of itself shows that it being untreated or us having a trauma in childhood is going to lead to those kinds of issues now I believe also as an example of another thing like I had a patient many years ago and this is indicative of not just this patient but a lot of patients we can have things like adrenal fatigue and you think of the ways like you know they talk about uh like Britney Spears or other celebrities having going through like exhaustion I believe a lot of my trauma patients are ptsda complex PTSD patients go through something similar because essentially our bodies if we're hyper vigilant for a long period of time it exhausts not only our adrenal glands or things that would radius to take action right we probably have a super enlarged amygdala but all of that can be really really taxing and exhausting on our body overall and I find a lot of my patients with complex PTSD struggle to sleep so there's insomnia and we know if we don't sleep properly that can lead where they're finding more connections with Alzheimer's and other types of issues so all in all our mental health is going to affect our physical health and their the Ripple effects are almost endless it depends on the person right depends on your body and how it affects you and then those effects in turn can cause physical issues right if we're not sleeping that's one thing if we feel hyper Vigilant all the time that's another if both those things are happening that's its own thing right so overall those are some of the Ripple effects not to mention so that's physical manifestations you can read the Asus study you can read my book traumatized get it at your local library there's audio books all that stuff to hear about all of the ways that our trauma can affect us in physical health then we get into emotional health and relationships now my patients who have untreated trauma for much of their life tend to struggle in relationships whether it be that they prefer to not have any I have a ton of patients who kind of in the attachment based stuff go more avoidant they're like get out of here feels too unsafe to have someone know me or get close to me please get away but there are others who kind of cling to other people thinking that that will help them feel less afraid or less at risk less vulnerable and so we can be really clingy in relationships and you know also be super reactive right if we're hyper Vigilant if we think everything's kind of a threat to us we can be on edge and we can you know react to people really quickly without thinking about it because frankly we don't have the resilience to to take a beat and decide how we want to respond does that make sense so overall there are a [ __ ] ton of Ripple effects to trauma and it being untreated and us being forced to quote unquote function doesn't necessarily play into it I think being forced to function could mean that we have to be out into the world so our hyper vigilance might be a little bit more intense or something like that but overall in general just the fact that we sustained a trauma and then had to continue living our life right the fact that it didn't get treated can manifest itself in all the ways that I just mentioned and the differences regarding it versus a child teen young adult adult I don't know all of the research but what I do know is that when things happen in our childhood it has a greater impact on us not necessarily teen I'm talking children I would argue probably be like I don't know five or ten years old or younger that can affect more intensively things like our attachment um the way that we interact with other people it's it's almost like while we're trying to develop a safe foundation in our life someone takes that away from us and so it affects us very differently than if it happens and we're a teen or a young adult or adult I would argue that the older we get the less impact the trauma has on things like you know attachment based work or kind of like dysfunction in our relationships going forward it doesn't mean it can't affect it but when we're a child again we're putting together this blueprint for what life's going to look like and if the blueprint is trauma based then we're going to go out into the world with a really dysfunctional or faulty blueprint and we're going to probably find people who are also very similarly abusive or harmful in some way or dismissive right because that's what we have now if we let's say had a healthy childhood somehow ended up in some kind of situation we were traumatized as an adult that doesn't necessarily have that same effect it could but it doesn't always have that same effect it's much more impactful when things happen to us when we're children because we're still developing and growing and learning about our world and we don't really have other experiences or more resilience to pull from right our resources are pretty limited and so that can be much more severe almost in the same way that I would say when comes to mental illnesses there's a ton of research to show that the sooner we have symptoms of something the more severe or or difficult to treat the outcome is what I mean by that is like if I have a patient who is experiencing schizophrenic symptoms when they're younger like really early onset let's say they're like eight years old or 10 years old the outcome is not gonna it tends to not be as good or to get full resolution of symptoms as it would be if someone had late onset and they didn't have symptoms of schizophrenia until they're like 45 right and so things like that in general the longer we deal with something the younger we are when it happens like that has a deeper impact on our life going forward simply because we're dealing with it for less amount of time and our brain is still developing when we're younger therefore we're like more impressionable and it can affect us in much deeper ways okay I hope that makes sense now there was an add-on to this and it said is bullying always trauma it can be if we if we feel oh let me finish our questions in school most people would only talk to me when they wanted to copy an answer on a test they indirectly called me a nerd and didn't want to be around me because of my quote unquote reputation as a nerd I changed schools when I recently saw someone from that time it triggered terrible thoughts in my head about me being worthless I however don't have PTSD now couple things to unpack here bullying can definitely be trauma when it threatens like we feel threatened our Safety and Security right we worry about our um our ability or someone else's ability to stay safe in a situation right trauma really means that we fear for the life or safety of us or someone close to us so what you dealt with I don't it could have been considered emotional abuse it doesn't sound like they said it to you but indirectly I'm not sure um but you definitely felt isolated so trauma can happen to any of us we can become traumatized right if we fear for our safety or life or that of someone else that we know right however not all trauma turns into PTSD some of us are traumatized and we have enough skills and resilience to kind of work our way through it and so it never manifests itself as PTSD that's just the nature of Life some of us are better able to weather those storms and so in your case even if that was traumatizing to you which only you would know no one out there should judge that and decide you would know if you feared for your life or safety or the life and safety of someone else you felt overwhelmed by unable to manage it or process it maybe even blips of like dissociation I don't remember things for this time period all of that could have affected you you'd have to assess that for yourself but the fact that you don't have PTSD just means that even if it was trauma back then you were able to manage it you were able to process it you had enough resilience to deal um so that's kind of how that works but bullying can it's not always trauma but it definitely can be just like anything um actions in and of themselves aren't necessarily traumatizing the trauma occurs because of our ability to process and manage it in the moment okay other person said has an add-on is grief considered trauma and what effects can complicated grief have on someone if left unresolved grief can be just like bullying can be considered a trauma it's not always a trauma again it's about our ability to weather the storm it's about our ability to process what happened grief can be overwhelming trust me I've grieved a lot I've lost a lot of people in my life unfortunately and the weight of it is overwhelming and I would argue even in my from my standpoint the grief was more it's more than I can process in the moment but I don't feel traumatized by it grief is it's different depending on the person right complicated grief can mean that the relationship itself was more there was distress in it it wasn't very healthy maybe we had a strained relationship maybe the way that they passed away you know they want us to be there we couldn't get there right there can be all sorts of reasons that we can struggle with complicated grief I have an entire video about it if you want to learn more however um it's too much the grief of too much for me to process but I don't believe I was traumatized because I didn't fear for my life or safety right or or their life or safety right the grief that I experienced was over time and like my grandparents passing away there was nothing traumatic about the way that they died for me again every person is different it can definitely be traumatizing if you lose someone abruptly um I had a a friend of mine whose parent fell ill and like they died like three weeks later it was really like just crazy how fast it progressed um and that can be really overwhelming and that can be traumatizing now when grief is not processed and it isn't worked through because I feel like I use that word process a lot and it really means that when we process through something it means that we allow ourselves to experience the feelings that come up we identify them we acknowledge them we let ourselves talk about it we vent about it we Express the experience that we're having two people in our lives that could be a therapist that could be forensic be family it could be all of the above we do that until it doesn't feel emotionally charged anymore meaning that when I think about it and when it comes up or when something happens I'm not triggered I don't feel overwhelmed I'm like oh yeah that happened it's just a thing that happened it doesn't mean I can't get sad every so often about it but it means that for the most part I'm not like overcome like if somebody asked me about my grandma when she first passed away I would just cry but now if someone asks me I would say yeah she passed away it was really sad and I'm glad I got to see her before you know she passed away like a week after I left and blah blah blah and they can talk about it and I don't burst into tears and that's because I've processed it I hope that kind of helps clear that up but the thing about grief is that if it goes untreated for a long period of time we never try to work through it we keep stuffing it down just like anything else in our life that can turn into a mental illness meaning grief can be the kind of caveat not the caveat but like the the thing that creates like the the beginning of depression or anxiety or really any Mental Illness but depression and anxiety are the most common because the symptoms won't resolve because we're not moving through them and they can kind of grow like we all know if we start to feel some symptoms of anxiety or depression and we ignore it instead of reaching out to our therapist or psychiatrist or whatever doing our tools it'll get worse right you can't just ignore it or have it be untreated um and so yeah so that can definitely happen if we do not resolve our trauma or our grief sorry another add-on says is it possible to completely recover from trauma due to Childhood sexual abuse or um due to body memories flashbacks nightmares and intrusive or do those things sorry it was a typo and I missed read it um flashbacks nightmares and intrusive thoughts haunt people after they're done with trauma work and therapy will I ever feel complete again for context I've been in therapy for trauma due to Childhood sexual abuse for the past eight months and my physical symptoms and emotional flooding has only gotten worse I was living in a dissociative state for almost 15 years and even able to function well in academics and at work but never in personal relationships or connecting with humans I feel wounded and shattered and act like a scared little girl at times especially when I'm triggered and as a rational or empowered adult at other times I have developed a fear of physical intimacy and get startled even when females touch me I feel anxious to think that I might have to live this way forever okay no you will not um have to deal with this forever you can completely recover now the thing about recovering when it comes to mental illness just like it does with physical illness we all have our weakness right I've explained this before that growing up I would always not always but like if I got sick it most likely would go into my throat and I'd get strep throat it's just how my body dealt with it I don't know why it's annoying but that happened and that's kind of like my weakness almost like Sean always gets bronchitis right if he's going to get a cold it's gonna be a chest cold the same goes for our mental health if I tend to be more of a depressed person I've struggled with depression off and on then when I get maxed out or stressed out or something happens in my life I'm gonna have a tendency to go to those depressed depressive type of types of symptoms and thoughts sorry I stuttered there for a second um because that's kind of my my weakness now that's just life and that's us managing and that's just being human but the thing that keeps us out of that and doesn't keep us held in our depression or continuing for me to get strep throat right is I have tools and resources and things I know that work for me and I'm going to use them so an example of depression if I feel my depression coming on I know to call my psychiatrist I increase sessions with my therapist or call and make an appointment in general and I make sure that I get outside and get sun in my face every day because that like changes my life right I'm gonna have some of my tools maybe that means I start journaling again or I I keep I call friends more often and get more connected right there's going to be tools and resources that I use to pull myself out and that's because I know better because I've been here before so when it comes to you recovering I want you to know that trauma work is hard and it does get worse before it gets better because we've been stuffing it down for so long it's like we've opened it up finally and it's like oh all the things at once and it can feel really overwhelming but as we start to piece and parse through it make our way start processing all that comes up for us it does start to calm down I know it sucks that it gets worse before it gets better but it's because we open up those wounds and our new coping skills are still new and we're not really good at using them and we forget and we're still doing old behaviors right it just takes some time to learn a new way of coping so it will go down and get better however when anything let's say stressful things happen in your life you're not sleeping well something like you'll say lose your job or something just life gets chaotic because it's life you will find those old little like trauma kind of situations and experiences and things like flashbacks come back maybe a little bit but you know better you know where they come from and you have tools to manage them so as they kind of like start to make their way back you're like and you use your tools and it goes away so unlike how it feels now where you're like I can't do anything to make it go away and this is terrible that does not last forever but we will have this like propensity for those types of symptoms and so it's good to get to know them because then we can treat them more quickly with the tools and resources that we know help us so yes it will go away the nightmares and flashbacks and truths of thoughts will go down to the point where if they do pop back you're like oh and then you do your behaviors that are helpful you do your coping skills and you feel better that's how that really works and that's because you're living in dissociative state for so long you haven't been even able to disc or to connect because you've been disconnected for so long so screen connection is why the symptoms are worse now it's very normal I know it sucks I'm so sorry but we will get you out of that like hyper Vigilant state with all these trauma symptoms flooding back and get you to a place where you can live and Thrive not just survive okay now there's another add-on that says I experience childhood trauma as an adult um oh I experienced childhood trauma and as an adult had a run of small things happen I experienced domestic violence in my one and only relationship I had an extremely toxic workplace and experienced sexual harassment and I was reversed into into by a car and pinned between it in a big steel post I thought I was going to be killed throughout this time I was a single mom trying to keep my life in check so I could give my daughter the best possible care love and support I became so ill with an autoimmune condition which can happen unfortunately as a result of trauma and struggled with untreated anorexia which resulted in amenorrhea and heart issues trauma was absolutely connected to my eating disorder but could an autoimmune disease be related to all this I feel like I could have prevented it from happening trauma now I don't have research on this so this is my opinion and I encourage all of you to do your own research to make sure that what I'm saying is correct but I've seen this time and time again in my own practice and now in our community over and over where when we have repeated trauma so complex PTSD meaning more than one traumatic experience in our life when it goes untreated and you know we're having these things happen and we just feel like we're drowning in the symptoms it is stressful on our body like I said with the aces study we find that adverse childhood experiences can lead to health conditions I believe repeated traumas can lead to autoimmune issues now I've had patients who had an autoimmune issue before being traumatized and it got exacerbated like one of my patients had Crohn's disease and it just got incredibly worse I've had people in our community have you know fibromyalgia come out of nowhere Hashimoto's all sorts of autoimmune issues as a result of trauma now again I don't I haven't done the research to find out if they have looked at that directly but I think you could extrapolate from the aces study and say that yes this could lead to that right that kind of a situation could lead to an autoimmune response because autoimmune is really like our body fighting itself right it's overreacting and I not that again not a doctor not a researcher but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that when our body feels like it's constantly under threat and so we're hyper Vigilant so any small thing sets us off that it's not already overreacting and I don't mean overreacting as a judgment I mean as an honest thing like what's happening is not doesn't kind of warrant that intensive a response but we're giving it anyways because we are already feeling on edge so that kind of overreaction over and over and over and over I don't think it's a big jump to say that well then I think our immune system could also be overreacting because it thinks everything's a threat just like we do in our environment right so yes I believe there's a if hopefully they're doing research on this or there is research if someone finds it please link in the comments that would be incredibly helpful um but I believe that we will see more and more correlations with long-term or complex trauma and autoimmune diseases now again you know I haven't done my research so feel free to do yours but I do believe there is that correlation and then it's my belief that if we treat the trauma and we feel less reactive in our environment that our autoimmune symptoms will lessen now I don't think it would make it go away maybe I mean again talk to a doctor who specializes in autoimmune diseases and disorders but I would assume that at least those intense symptoms would kind of go down or subside as we become less reactive okay let's move on to question number two it says hey Katie I hope you're doing well my question is why do I feel sad when I'm tired I have major depressive disorder so let's say I'm having a busy day I've been running errands meeting with people and stuff like that at the end of the day I feel physically tired so I rest on the couch to watch my favorite TV show or listen to music Pleasant activities and it's at this moment that I start feeling sad or it's more realizing that I'm sad remember that statement we're going to get into this I have no reason to be sad I actually quite enjoyed the day and I'm glad I got things done to make things worse I start to dwell on that feeling and negate that it was a good day am I getting sad from being physically tired did the two go together or maybe I can't tell them apart I'm confused and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well as any advice on what I can do thank you now my initial knee-jerk reaction was when we're busy and we're doing things we're distracted that makes it harder to pay attention to how we feel we're busy doing stuff I have other things to focus on I got my to-do list I have things at work or school or whatever I need to take care of I don't have time to think about how bad I feel but then oh things quiet my day gets simpler and guess what I can all of a sudden recognize my depressive symptoms because I've been distracted all day and unfortunately that's why usually my depressed patients or even my anxious patients any of my patients with mental health issues will report that it's worse at night why is it worse at night because I think it's a two-part number one we're not distracted because there's nothing else going on the world has kind of quieted number two if we have been doing stuff all day long we can be a little bit more exhausted and our resilience is a little lower so the symptoms we might have been able to manage during the day we aren't able to keep up with at night those are two of the main reasons I think this happens so you're not like it's not uncommon you're not weird for feeling this way I think you're feeling sad in general but then when you get tired your resilience is a little lower and there's not as many distractions and then you feel that that much more intensely and so there's that but then I don't want to forget in my last little piece about this is the fact that like feeling exhausted like I think it says experiencing lethargy in the symptoms of MDD but feeling tired is kind of part of depression and so when we stop moving and we're like okay then we might feel that and we're like oh I'm so tired and it's because our depression can give us that sensation and can create that exhaustion we can feel like doing anything in our day is just like uh it's too much right so many of my depressed patients will say you know I really wanted to like clean the house or want to shower or make myself a meal but the thought of doing is just exhausting like I just don't have the energy and so depression can rob us of our energy so it could be a piece of that but I think those other things are also why we're not experiencing them during the day and why we feel like we had a good day you know we were doing all this stuff it felt good we were distracted from our depressive thoughts and feelings so those are my thoughts about it now songs as an add-on I know that people with BPD or borderline personality disorder experience feelings more intensely than others however is it normal or common that quote-unquote good feelings like Euphoria positive excitement or happiness are also becoming too intense for example looking forward to a vacation or meeting a new person you really like sometimes I am so happy about things that um that it's just too much to handle it's too intense and I can't calm down yes um in general those of us with BPD feel everything intensely um that's why we call it emotional burn victims so any little emotion feels way more intense and this isn't good emotions or bad emotions although we do tend to because we're hyper Vigilant usually when we have BPD we do tend to um take any threats to our potential like Security in a relationship because we have a huge fear of Abandonment we take any of those possible slights or threats really personally and that is I would argue the most intense reaction we're going to get an emotional reaction it all comes from that that can be very hardcore however any other emotion good or bad if you want to like you know good or bad like happy or unhappy will be felt with more intensity and I actually had a BPD patient for many years that I saw who's scariest or worst emotion was actually excitement because she felt like it meant she was looking forward to something and then she could be really let down and that felt too like vulnerable or too scary for her and so yes you can definitely experience that as a result of BPD hence why one of the main components well really there's two pieces two BPD treatment if you like dialectical behavior therapy or DBT and that is mindfulness so we can start to acknowledge these reactions before they're really intense as well as emotion regulation so we know that that's happening and then we have some tools and techniques to help us calm our system down and be okay that's why that's such a huge piece of the work that we'll do and there was a final add-on that says or actually there's two sorry it says I experienced this as well and I've often wondered the same over the last few years I go into a much in much darker places when I'm tired but I also Tire more when I'm sad and or depressed how does this relate to grief my son took his life four months ago and now I feel both sad and exhausted most of the time I'm so sorry for your loss um I have some videos about losing someone to Suicide um if you find that helpful you can check those out on YouTube um however I believe that it's a a compounded grief because you've got our compounded depression with grief you already had depression and like I said before when we feel more tired we're not as resilient we also could have been distracted so then we feel the depressive symptom more intensely but I feel like the same could apply for for your experience with grief where we have the depression and grief feels a lot like depression it's almost like you're adding like a weight to it where you're like oh and so it's making it even harder it's more exhausting for you to do the things you probably need to do today one of the best phrases or kind of quotes I learned in my therapeutic process when I lost my dad was that it was like life had thrown a 70 pound backpack on me and was like okay go about your business same way you used to and you're like trudging and it's hard right 70 pounds that's like a carrying a large child around on with you all day and that can be really exhausting so I want you to take your time with us know that it's okay to feel exhausted grief is [ __ ] heavy and exhausting and depression can be the same so make sure you're just speaking up with your therapist if you're not in therapy I'd encourage you to get into it um tell them about this experience tell them what you're feeling especially if we already suffer from depression it might be a time when we're grieving like our psychiatrist might think of increase in our medication or adding something on for a period of time to get us through if you're already on medication that's something you want to look into you can talk to your doctor about that um like for me I went I increased my sessions in therapy so maybe if you're going once a week or once every two weeks you increase that a little bit um there's a lot of ways to kind of get you through but it's very normal what you're experiencing you already had depression and then you lost your son to suicide and that's really really sad and it's really heavy and grief is just oh I'm so sorry and that's why you're feeling that way it's okay to feel that way it's also okay to get support so that it doesn't last as long and we can you know feel a little bit more not alone and like we have some tools and resources we can lean on when we need it final add-on says I've been dealing with an un with untreated depression and anxiety for some years but now it feels different it is still similar to depression but there's also a physical component I can get things done but I feel physically exhausted afterwards is it possible that I've burned out as work is really stressful and sometimes an even toxic environment it is possible you've burned out if anybody doesn't know burnout occurs when the reward for what we do meaning Financial fulfilling work feeling connected to people right whatever the reward we get from our work and it's usually more than one thing obviously the financial component is like a piece of it but there's always other stuff to it could even just be like getting accolades or being acknowledged for the work that we do that can all be part of the reward but anyway if that reward isn't at least commensurate or greater than the effort we put in and so if work has been really stressful and your reward has stayed the same you could become burned out not to mention that depression can have a physical component as part of it and if work has been really really stressful and sometimes toxic then it could have kind of triggered or exacerbated your already existing depressive symptoms and so yes that could definitely be what's going on here it's incredibly common for our depressive symptoms to manifest physically one of the most common is just body aches and exhaustion and like I've said before we'll end up at the doctor's office thinking like we have the flu or we've come down with a cold but it's really depression taking its toll um so that could be part of it as well but yes those are all reasons that it could happen um please speak up and reach out and get yourself some support okay okay let's move on to question number three this question is hi Katie happy Thursday happy Thursday it says my question is about physical touch in therapy if I'm not mistaken you've mentioned that you may touch a client if they ask it as a way to calm down but what if you don't feel like it at the moment would you rather be authentic to yourself or help the client and how would you deny it without hurting their feelings I hope this makes sense thanks a lot okay a lot to unpack here number one um when I'm when I'm like therapist Katie in my office seeing a patient that time is theirs and it's about them so if I didn't feel like putting my hand on their shoulder I still would because it's not really about me that's not my time if I'm having an issue with it then I need to bring that up my own therapy so I can figure out why I'm feeling that way because I just show up for my patients and if I can't then that might issue to deal with okay so there's that piece however a lot of therapists don't believe in physical touch as part of therapy I obviously don't agree but I respect their you know their the differences I respect people's different opinions and the reason that some therapists don't feel like it's helpful is because they want their patients to learn to self-soothe on their own without the help of the therapist um and finding ways to regulate so they can do it on their own which I respect and I totally get um so all that to be said that I think if a patient let's say I wasn't comfortable with touch and I that wasn't something I was going to offer in my practice then it'd be something I would address right away meaning that in the paperwork when we fill out like it's it's usually when you see a new patient and you take someone on in your practice there's something called informed consent and that means that the patient needs to be informed upon like what their rights are like HIPAA laws the confidentiality stuff um cancellation policies any office policies that I have the cost and when they you know all sorts of things they have to fill that out read it sign it and they get a copy that's just part of the intake process so during that I would discuss because that's when I discuss boundaries with my patients too where I'm like know that you can text or call in between sessions um it'll take me 24 hours to get back to you this isn't a way to call if you just need extra support you know if that's the case then maybe we need to see each other more than once a week you can text to change an appointment time but know that I will not respond to emails in between you know all the rules all the things all the boundaries that I have it's an emergency you can reach out you know otherwise I expect you to use your tools and if it's an emergency please call me and I'll meet at the hospital you know I walk them through all that walk them through when I'd have to report things write confidentiality um so there's all that stuff and that would be the time that I would say I want you to know that I also you know I don't hug clients I don't Place hands on you so don't worry about that it's not something I'm comfortable with with doing and here's why so that would be probably the place where you would say it you wouldn't wait until the moment and then say it because that's when things can be kind of hurtful to a patient and it could be maybe damaging to the therapeutic relationship but let's say okay it's not an ideal situation we're already seeing this person and we didn't tell them that we don't do physical touch but we don't want to then if they ask for it then that's when we could explain we could say I hear you and I'm so sorry but I don't do that in this office and here's why and we explain um obviously someone's feelings could get hurt but that's something that we should process through and talk out that's the beauty of therapy is you could say as a therapist this is when the Oneness is on the therapist always right we would say something to the effect of you know I don't do this in my practice here's why and say I understand this might be hard and I'm happy to keep talking this out or if this hurts your feelings you let me know I'm happy to you know process this through with you it has nothing to do with you it's just a policy across my entire office you know things like that so that they know that they can bring it up you can talk about it and you can move through it and that's really it I mean that's kind of how we manage it that keeps things ethical keeps things above board it means that the patient understands and there's been conversations because as therapists our goal is to show you what healthy communication and conflicts conflict resolution looks like like what can we do differently in our relationships and how as a therapist can I demonstrate that healthily with to my patients if that makes sense there's a comment on this says hi Katie I want to go become a therapist in the future and I'm not sure how to go about this like how much physical touch can I give a client or how to respond to them how do you learn how to go about it because it's just a bit scary I think or to think about because I don't want to be a bad therapist does that make sense that totally makes sense now when it comes to physical touch I keep it to a minimum I know some of you might be thinking maybe it's because I haven't been very clear but it's not like I'm going to hug a patient every session I wouldn't do that because you have to remember when you're with a therapist they're assessing everything that's happening from a therapeutic perspective so if a patient is asking me for hugs every single time that means that they don't know how to self-soothe and they require physical touch to self-soothe and they're getting it only from me or they only know how to regulate when I assist them right there's so many things to this that we're going to have to figure out some inner child work we're gonna have to find some other people in their lives that can offer some physical touch I like I said I've had a few patients who've asked for this over the years most the time I've said yeah sometimes I have said no because I feel like they're relying on it as one of my patients I encourage her to get a roommate she didn't want one she lived alone she worked from home she worked alone and she just wouldn't see anybody except for me and so our homework was to have her get out and see some you know we need to do things and so that's those are the reasons that you might like put limitations on it it's more something that I do every so often like um like one of my patients was trying to get pregnant had a miscarriage and I offered her a hug and she gladly took it um I've had patients who dissociate a lot and part of it is like me touching like their arm like specific areas right it could be their knee but if this patient was like their arm so there could be stuff like that again that's minimal though and it's something that we would talk about together so that there's no surprises no one's triggered and they're also not relying on it for their only source of calming because I want you to be able to do that on your own too so that's really what you have to consider and those are kind of the limitations and trust me as you go through school and you become a therapist you'll learn about these things and that's why we have hours we have to accrue before we take our licensing exams and that's why we also you know have to do our CEUs every two years at the State of California we had to gather 36 I want to say in Texas it's 30 maybe it is 36 but either way every two years you have to gather some continuing education units and that can be you know something that you decide to learn more about by through doing that um yeah and that's really it you're not don't worry about it you've got time to figure it out but in the end at the end of the day when it comes to therapy the goal is always for the patient to feel supported but not overly Reliant and It's Tricky and we walk this line right and sometimes we get a little closer to the more Reliant than the you know but we do our best to keep it somewhere in the middle okay let's move on to question number four this question says hi Katie I've never had a boyfriend my parents were emotionally neglectful and I tend to look up to female role models around me putting them on a pedestal while being afraid of men my dad used to scream a lot and slam doors and I was always angry however there is a problem I'm straight and I would like to have a relationship but I don't know how to work on that on my own how can I get rid of my irrational fear of men okay now arguably it's not irrational right our main man in our life our father was super abusive and scary so of course we're afraid of men because that's the main man in our life um the way to work through this unfortune I know you said you can't you don't know how to work on your own and the the truth is you shouldn't work on it on your own we should get you a trauma therapist someone who you can talk this through with you can better understand where this is coming from we can process it so that we don't have an emotional charge and then and only them the goal would be to have some skills and resources and tools we can use to calm us down and then we slowly engage with men meaning maybe it's just out casually with a group maybe we go say hi to someone at the gym or maybe our favorite coffee shop the guy who works there is cute so we kind of smile and say hi and flirt or whatever and there's going to be different levels as we kind of work our way up but we can't do that until we've processed some of the trauma we've sustained and we have tools and resources we can pull on when we start to feel ourselves get overwhelmed and go into that fear slash trauma response so it's not that you have an irrational fears you have a fear based on a trauma and yes that trauma is not currently happening but that doesn't make the experience that we had any less real or our response to it any less valid right but we need to get some therapeutic support so we can be challenged to work through it at a pace that feels okay for us because yes we can work on some things on our own but when it comes to trauma it's it's hard for us to push ourselves and to not go too far it's almost like we either can't challenge ourselves or we do too much and it's hard for us to find that middle ground because it's uncomfortable and we've trained ourselves throughout our life to like not think about it not deal with it just move forward and that's you know and also to come up with tools and resources that we get it's going to be hard it's way way better for us to find a therapist that we connect with we feel sees us hears us and they can help us work through this at a pace that feels challenging yet safe or at least neutral okay and that will help you move through this fear that you have of men and move you into a place where you can hopefully cultivate a healthy relationship with a man now does that mean you have to get married to that man no I encourage you to date people and get to know people and decide what's right for you but we can get you to a place where you can do that it just is going to take us a little time it's going to take us a little therapeutic work but you'll get there now there's an add-on that says I have this exact exact problem too the idea of being in a relationship is comforting and something that I want but my attachment issues cause me to attach to older women and to be afraid of men even though I'm straight I'm not sure if this is a matter of working through the attachment issues first before trying intimate relations with men 100 inner child work could be really helpful here um honestly for both of these people who ask these questions I have a workshop on my website katimorton.com you can go to the shop there's an inner child Workshop if you're needing some assistance there that's something you can try to do on your own there's homework worksheets all that stuff also my Amazon shop I have some inner child workbooks and other books that I like that I've utilized in the attachment Workshop or inner child Workshop sorry um but you can go to amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash katiemorton you should be able to find those things there um I also have an attachment Workshop but I believe that a lot of this it could be due to the issues that you had growing up because again our parents our relationship with our parents is like this blueprint for life and when we grow up having someone abuse us who's supposed to care for us we're like oh that's what love is that's what relationship is or that's what men are like and then we take that out into the world and even though it's not true you're right like not every man is going to treat us like our father or whoever our abuser was right not every person is going to be just like them but we don't know any different and so it can be really hard for us to feel safe around that type of person because it's going to remind us of the person who harmed us and rightfully so right it's protective it's part of PTSD is that we avoid things that remind us of the trauma so you're avoiding it and that's that's okay it makes sense but working on healing from that trauma is going to be really key and I believe inner child work could really be beneficial here as well now attachment we could work on that too but I feel like that's down the line I don't think that's necessarily something we have to do right away I had more focus on the trauma work and inner child stuff as part of that and that should help you okay now let's move on to question number five it says hi Katie is it possible that I may need to manage my mental health with coping skills for the rest of my life it is mentally exhausting trying to stay grounded use mindfulness skills check the facts opposite action Etc so much of my day will it always be this way I will be getting discharged from a partial hospitalization group treatment this week where I have been learning coping skills for the past six weeks while they help I can't imagine having to live day after day fighting these thoughts with skills I'm wondering if it gets easier thanks for all that you do of course and yes it does now you're in a PHP at partial hospitalization program and you're getting intensive treatment and that's because you needed more support which is why you're using your tools all the time to help you stay grounded use mindfulness skills check the facts all that stuff it's working for you to get you out of the need for that level of care amazing in my experience we're going to need to use coping skills and stuff pretty intensely for a few months when we're out of treatment I know you're like oh so exhausting but it's just for a few months essentially what what using it all the time does is it creates a new habit so that it doesn't feel so exhausting trying to do these they become like knee-jerk reactions now that does not mean that we're going to have to do these all day every day for the rest of our lives no but a lot of the behavioral change that we'll be doing helps us better interact and engage with our world and our life so our experiences aren't as overwhelming it might become like a knee-jerk reaction for us to check the facts I know personally I check my facts all the time does it feel exhausting and like a chore no because I kind of do it without even thinking about it and that's kind of where you'll get with some of these most helpful coping skills but overall as we become less dysregulated and better able to engage with you know life without feeling overwhelmed we won't need the tools as often either we'll have them because life gets stressful and things change and we can use them them but you won't have to do it every day day in and day out for the rest of your life no that's just not how it works but you're going to need to now just essentially because you're in kind of Crisis and now we're transitioning out of our partial hospitalization program and we want to make sure that we stay feeling good so I encourage you just like I do all of my patients please utilize your skills as much as possible even though you're out of the I know when you're out of treatment it gets harder to do it make time for it and please do it because this is going to be key for you not having to go back to that PHP program and for you to be able to stay out and do Outpatient Treatment on your own is it easy no but is it worth it 100 and like I said it's just going to be a period of time here where we do it you know day in day out day out and then we won't have to anymore so don't feel like it's going to be forever it's just a short period of time and you got this okay and I'm proud of you for going into treatment and getting more support okay let's move on to question number six this question says hey Katie do you have any advice on what to do with the thoughts that humans including me don't deserve to exist because of all the terrible things we've done to each other and this planet thank you when I read this question I was like this sounds like a depression question and I don't even mean to laugh it's just sometimes when we're so deep in our depression we can have these like what this is a passive suicidal thought like I don't deserve to exist right I've done so many terrible things to this place and this planet and we're kind of spiraling out in a negative brain space and so my advice on this is to challenge these thoughts um we have to do some Bridge statements remember Bridge statements aren't positive they're just not negative so it doesn't mean that that we're going to say like of course I deserve to exist this planet's amazing I've been I've done so many good things look at me no that's not what I mean a bridge statement would be something like um I'm open to the possibility that I'm not quite as [ __ ] of a person as I think I am or maybe possibly Katie's right maybe I don't know that all the terrible things I've done don't mean that I shouldn't exist maybe she's right I'm open to considering it right there are things like that kind of in these just like possibles maybe kind of space and the reason that this is my answer is because this type of thinking is simply depressive slash negative thoughts and it's not helpful there's nothing we can do with it it's like an existential crisis we're like oh my God the planet we've done so many terrible things we shouldn't even be you know how do you expect yourself to deal with that like what are you gonna what are you gonna do right there's no actionable thing that's healthy that we can do to make that feel better and that's why that's when you know you're caught in a negative cycle when you're like wow there's nothing healthy I can do to make this feel better it's just a [ __ ] place to be my brain is caught in a [ __ ] place and what do we do when we're caught in a [ __ ] place we use some Bridge statements to help move us out and the movements are small but you will feel them it'll feel so much better just to be like maybe maybe it's not as bad as I think it is right just possibly um that's really my advice for you okay another comment said this comment wasn't quite related but it's a it's a quick answer so we'll get through it says I am 16 and I have these thoughts too but I also don't want to be here anymore because how of how my parents will fight and argue this often happens when I'm in a different room and they don't even know that I can hear them when this happens I want to go to my room and cry why and how do I deal with this I hope this makes sense yes you want to go to room and cry because your parents are your family and your support system and even if they suck at their job we still want them to get along and we don't like conflict humans are conflict diverse just by Nature because we don't want to be at odds with each other it's better for us connection is really important right connection soothing to our system conflict is often the opposite of connection and so just hear your parents arguing causes stress and kind of um makes our home life kind of I don't want to say dysfunctional that's not the word but it's almost like it's tumultuous it's not um it's not consistent it's not calming it's not supportive it's not something we can rely on it can feel very dysregulating and so having your parents argue of course is dysregulating too that's why it's making you cry it makes you sad I would let them know you hear them I would ask them what's up parents need to learn how to talk to their children and to say you know I'm not getting along or we had a fight about X Y or Z it had nothing to do with you the fact that parents try to hide it and go in a different room we all know we can hear things in other rooms come on now people let's not be foolish don't think your children are stupid they're not they know everything they know way more than you think they know and the sooner we speak to our children and tell them hey you know um I'm sorry if you heard us shouting your mom or your dad and I were were arguing about X Y or Z but don't worry we'll figure it out has nothing to do with you you are doing everything right this is between us and us just trying to you know come to an understanding or an agreement or we're trying to figure this out talk to children that way because they know you're fighting even if you think you're hiding it and they're going to make it about themselves and they're going to internalize that and that's not healthy because most of the time it doesn't have anything to do with the kids yes kids are a stressor but it's usually about some other thing that we're going through something we're trying to figure out or decide on and one of us feels like they're winning or losing in its heart you know and maybe we're getting a divorce but if we are we need to talk to our kids about that too and explain to them you know what's going on so um I'm sorry you're going through that but you know know that your response is valid I would be crying too it would be sad we need to tell our parents hey I hear you guys fighting you know what's happening it's okay to ask it's your family you have to live there and that's why you know it feel it makes it feel unsafe and so we want to know what's happening so ask them okay moving on to question number seven says hey Katie before I ask I'd like to thank you for everything you do for us of course it says I've been having a tough few weeks and your videos have really helped yay I'm so glad I could be there for you when you needed it so my question is why do I feel like I want to be in a bad moment sometimes I feel like I just want to be depressed or to harm myself but not because it's comfortable because I simply want to I desire to it's really weird it's like I want to seek attention I've never done that actually I've always wondered why people did that and now I'm all day thinking about suicide or how to harm myself but I don't think it's necessary sorry if this is difficult to understand I don't even think I understand it myself sadly oh and sadly going to therapy is not an option okay well going to therapy is a goal for the future that's where I really think you should be headed however the reason sometimes we want to feel bad well I mean there's lots of reasons the number one that I always think of is it helps us feel like our experience or our depression is like more valid like warranted it can feel when we aren't actively feeling shitty or wanting to harm ourselves we can be like I'm just overreacting right we can easily minimize or invalidate what we're going through we're like oh I'm making this into something it's not when that's not the case it just so happens that the symptoms aren't as Intense or palpable at that moment and so we can feel that way because we want to feel like our our mental illness our experience our struggle is valid so that's a piece of it okay so there's that then we can also you know want to be in a bad moment or want to feel shitty because it is comfortable like you said um oh you said not because it's not comfortable but for some people it can be comfortable almost like we're used to feeling that way and feeling good is a little bit like we're waiting for the other shoe to draw now that's not the case for the person to ask this question but if you're out there experiencing that that's also incredibly common and then the third reason that I can think of and if something comes to mind I'll let you know but those were the top three for me the third is that attention now we've always talked about how seeking attention such a bad thing it's a human need there's a reason children act up in school they say oh they're doing it for attention oh yeah probably because their parents are neglectful or abusive they're looking for someone to care for them they don't know how to do it and so they're trying to get attention good or bad they'll take what they can get and it's the same if we grow up without addressing that and getting some support we still need to we still need attention so we go out seeking it and so you said it's like you want to seek attention maybe you need attention there's nothing wrong with that we talk about like it's a bad thing but it's a human need we all need attention and if we don't get it healthfully we'll try to find it in some other ways and so I would encourage you my actual homework and what I think will help you the most is to find some ways to get more connected now when I say connected I don't mean I mean you could be joining a group or something like that but I just mean reach out to the people that you love who love you back the people you really know that true connection do you have like one close friend or family member someone you can tell them like hey this is really how I feel I know for some people they're like I don't have that person that's when a therapist is a great substitute um but we need to get connected with someone so we can talk to them about what we're going through and they can talk to us about what they're going through and we can feel understood and soothed because that's really what we're trying to get at here and I think a nice way to reframe any of our unhealthy behavior is to recognize that it's just our urge to self-soothe we don't know how else to soothe ourselves and so we use the tools that we can to help calm us down help us feel better so give yourself like you know a little pat on the back a little understanding to say yeah I am doing it to seek attention because I need attention because I'm a human and that's part of my human needs right we need to reframe this I'm doing this because it feels soothing it's the only way I know how to feel better that's really all we're trying to do as humans we're just always trying to soothe and feel better and if we don't have good tools to do it we'll use what we've got right and so I encourage you to get that connection so that we don't feel the urge to really harm ourselves or take our own life or anything like that okay final question question number eight says hi Katie I came from a sexually dysfunctional family and was sexually abused by my brother from about five to seven however he did it through care and being the person that I look to for everything he was my go-to in the family he was eight years older can this be a trauma if there was no fear um oh if no fear was there as I didn't understand what was going on at 16 when I understood what he did I realized it was so wrong but still needed and relied on him and buried what he had done I'm 54 now diagnosed recently with BPD complex PTSD and have been in therapy for five years so far thank you for all that you do it helps so much to understand and not feel like the only one of course it is nice to not feel like the only one right yes that was still trauma and the reason that okay so I know we're using the word trauma and I would encourage you to replace this as a trauma and call it abuse and yes abuse is traumatizing but just hang with me because this might help you better acknowledge and agree okay so if our brother for about two years or more was abusing us right because that's what's happening it was sexually abusing you and you even said I was sexually abused by my brother from this so let's use that term abuse when we're abused it means that the person who should care for us right he was your go-to he was the one that you went to and needed support you needed to be taken care of he was almost like your parent right he instead of doing those things or maybe as well as doing those those things he took advantage and harmed you and abused you okay now when we're younger we don't know so we often aren't actively terrified when something is happening which can make the word trauma a little confusing but just hang with me right now the person was supposed to care for you harmed Us by abusing us and even if we didn't understand what was happening enough to be scared I guarantee you knew it wasn't right children will always even younger children will say things like it made me uncomfortable or I I wasn't sure I didn't think that was right or it's confusing or I wished they would stop right now none of those phrases are like I was terrified for my life or anything like that I honestly believe that that's because we just don't know enough we're too young we don't know enough about the world we're still learning we're like I guess maybe this is what is supposed to happen but it doesn't feel right right our gut tells us it's not right and the fact that he took advantage and abused you was a trauma because your youth was taken from you and you were taken advantage of does that make sense now you weren't old enough to understand but he was and that power he had over you made it abuse and it also makes it a trauma because you weren't old enough to even understand let alone process what was happening you could couldn't consent to that behavior you know there's so many things there where you were taken advantage of in a very harmful way and that's why you're you know diagnosed BPD complex PTSD I believe a lot of it comes from the abuse that you sustained from him now I want to make sure I answer all of the questions yes can this be trauma yes um especially because you relied on him and he said when you're 16 you realize it was so wrong but you still had to go back to him because he was the only person that could take care of you and you weren't old enough to take care of yourself yet right and that is always that complicated component to abuse like this because we think why did I go back like uh I knew it was wrong we don't have a lot of options and as we get older like you said you're 54 we often forget how few options we had as a kid and so I just encourage you to talk to a therapist and I especially since you've been diagnosed I'd assume that yeah you've been in therapy for five years I was like I'd assume you've been in therapy for a while and inner child work might be a movement we want to take like we might want to go in that direction let your therapist know you think that might be beneficial because I have a feeling a lot of the healing for you is going to come along with listening to younger you and actually acknowledging how she felt and thought at that time because we might not have even been able to be connected it could have been dissociating I'm so confused thinking that that's what like families do that that's love what feels weird I don't like it right there's so much confusion and uncertainty that we could have experienced and we need to hear her out we need to be able to to make sure that that she feels like we get her you know that whatever we were experiencing as a child is heard and understood and then acknowledged and supported by adult us and I think that work can be really healing for you okay hang in there now there were a couple comments on this it says I was abused by my dad and I am sure he never meant to hurt me that messes up my head and my sanity the nightmares and flashbacks are so intense sometimes and so debilitating but I know he never meant to hurt me he was unloved as a child and my mom was sexually unsexually unavailable most the time he slept in my bedroom he probably felt lonely and unloved I feel sorry for him but the consequences of his actions still affect me deeply I feel so guilty for even remembering it all happened at night no Witnesses how could I navigate this without losing my sanity sometimes in trauma there's these two experiences that feel like they can't co-exist but they can and that is feeling bad for our abuser because they're human and we can see all the reasons why it may be happened and the fact they did a shitty thing your dad did a really shitty thing now he could have all these reasons why he did a shitty thing I've had tons of patients who've been abused by a parent who was also abused by their parent right the cycle of abuse continues this transgenerational trauma we pass a Ride Along that can happen it happens a lot now he's not responsible for the things that happen to him right if his parents abused him if his wife was unavailable sexually if he had his own issues whatever he's not responsible for what they did but you know what he is responsible for his actions each and every one of them I don't care how lonely you are I don't care how sad you are I don't care how unloved you feel by your spouse or your parents or whatever we're all responsible for the steps we take after the fact what happened to us happened to us it's not our fault we didn't you know you didn't cause this there's nothing you did to cause this abuse but your dad was the adult and he should have taken care of you and loved you and instead he abused you and took advantage now what happened to him is shitty and that's not his fault but what he did is his fault and that's that like oh it's hard for our brain sometimes because of our trauma Bond what sounds like is happening here is your trauma Bond because he's your father right you're supposed to love them they're supposed to care for you it can be really like a mind [ __ ] that's why you feel like you're losing your sanity but these two things can coexist we can love our dad and feel bad for him and also be traumatized by their actions and just because someone doesn't mean for something to be hurtful doesn't mean that it can be hurtful either someone doesn't have to want to harm us for us to be harmed right it's like um this is a silly example but just hang with me it's like the other night my sister-in-law's visiting and Sean and her were outside and we have construction and he didn't realize he hit a board and it slid into her leg and scratched her and it's not Parable but it scratched her now he didn't mean to hurt her but does that mean that she wasn't scratched of course not she was scratched she was harmed by his actions even though his actions is no premeditation no intent to harm but it still happened it's no different I know sometimes we try to make we try to reason with we try to make sense of it that urge is part of our shame and validation minimization that kind of comes along with trauma and so navigating this I encourage you to be able to as much as possible hold both those things they can both be true but every time you want to say you know but he was lonely I want you to hear me in your head say but he is responsible for his actions and his actions were hurtful we all have [ __ ] things happen but that doesn't mean that then everybody else has to deal with me as I just run amok and abuse people no I'm responsible your dad was responsible he was also your father he was in a power position in a caretaker role and he decided instead of taking care of you it'd harm you and that's not okay I have a video about trauma bonds if you want to uh watch it that could be really helpful there might be some inner child work that you have to do um because you're seeing it a lot from an adult view where you're like he was you know unloved as a child you're trying you like see this whole picture so it might be helpful for you to get in touch with younger you a little bit and hear about what you know what she felt at that time um because I think we've kind of not hurt her for a while final add-on says how do you deal with finding out about sex through trauma as a child and does this affect your sexual relationships as an adult it definitely can I found out about sex as a child when I was reading a news article and a Blog about my papa being a well-known child abuser in my town after he had passed away I spent a lot of time alone and it could be possible he did something my uncle also prayed on me as a teenager but I never noticed and had a few other instances as a teenager with older men being sexual with me now finding out about sex through trauma as a child can definitely affect your sexual relationships as an adult because again it's like this blueprint that we get and when we're growing up children are more Curious they're not like sexual beings in the way that adults are we like hormonally and developmentally we're not out there looking to have sex we're more curiosity based we're getting to know our world we're getting to know our bodies we're curious about other people's bodies that's all normal behavior but when we're sexually abused as a child we can think we can have certain beliefs develop as a result meaning we can think like the only thing we're good for is sex we can think that sex is always about control or pain we can feel like sex is like out of control and it's always harmful and we don't get to say no we have no say in it we can think that sex is dirty is bad it makes us bad I don't know we can have any number of beliefs about it because of that it can feel unsafe um and we can even be hypersexualized as a result there's a bunch of different ways that we can deal with abuse like that and that's why it can affect our sexual relationships going forward because these old beliefs based on the abuse that we sustain follow us into adulthood if we don't process through them and understand them and choose to act differently which is hard but possible if we don't do that then we'll keep acting out of those old narratives in our current life and that can mean that we don't want people to touch us or if they do we dissociate or maybe we have to be in control maybe we're hypersexualized maybe we um you know struggle to orgasm or to enjoy sex because it feels like punishment or I don't know it can be all sorts of different things that we feel and believe and so it can totally affect our relationships and that's part of the reason why most of my clients end up coming in wanting to deal with it is because they find themselves struggling in their current relationships or struggling to get into any relationship right because that sexual intimacy can feel very scary very traumatizing very overwhelming very unknown right and so it can definitely affect it and that's why I would encourage you to you know to find a trauma specialist to start talking about it start processing it through um I think that the courage teal workbook could be helpful for you and it focuses mainly on childhood sexual abuse if you find it doesn't you're like oh I can't relate to this then there are probably other books Unfortunately they don't have a ton of books about that like for adults but my book traumatized even though it's not specific to sexual abuse does talk a lot about abuse and Trauma as a whole and that could be a resource and it's available at a lot of libraries it's also available as an audiobook um that could be helpful too those are just some of the ways that I would encourage you to kind of get some more support find ways to process it through so that it doesn't have to affect your future sexual relationships okay thank you all so much for sending in your questions thank you for your support thanks for sharing this podcast have a wonderful wonderful rest of your week do your homework and I'll see you next time bye anything

Channel: Kati Morton

Views: 52,071

Keywords: katie morton, kati morton podcast, ask kati anything podcast, therapist podcast, ask a therapist, long term effects of trauma, not getting help for trauma, mental health worse at night, why do we feel tired when we are depressed, feeling tired and depressed, depression and low energy, touch in therapy bad, touch in therapy good, feeling bad about getting attention, attention hog, effects of trauma, trauma in my path, doing things for attention, youtube therapist

Id: -9piToYQ5lU

Length: 71min 47sec (4307 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2023