episode 215
“Am I an introvert or is it social anxiety?”
On Ask Kati Anything, your mental health podcast episode 215, Kati talks about being honest with your therapist about depression, understanding with your mind versus feeling with your heart, and introversion versus social anxiety. She also discusses appreciating our bodies, connecting with our emotions, and locating where we feel them physically.
This is a transcript of Ask Kati Anything podcast episode your mental health podcast #215 Please note that the transcript is computer generated, and may have errors.
Ask Kati Anything episode #215
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Ask Kati Anything. I'm your host. Licensed marriage and family therapist, Kati Morton. I'm so glad that you're here. In today's episode, I'm going to share some ways that we can be more honest with our therapist about our depression or whatever ails us. And if we're worried that we may be going into a depressive episode, how do we talk about that? Then I'm also going to talk about the difference between understanding something intellectually versus feeling it emotionally. And I will discuss introversion versus social anxiety. Then I'm going to offer some insight into the ways that we can appreciate our bodies and get in touch with our emotions, and how to tell when we're feeling them in our body.
And we're without further ado, let's jump into question number one. This question says Kati, I find it hard to tell my therapist that I feel like I'm slipping into another depressive episode. We've done so much work, and she's been so proud of me that I feel bad having to say that I'm slipping. I feel like she'll be disappointed in me, even though she'd never admit to it. I want to be honest. Instead of mask, but it's so hard. Why is this so hard for me? What can I do to make it easier to admit to? Thank you for absolutely everything you do for the community, Kati. I hope you realize how much you're appreciated. Oh, of course, of course I do. And thank you for saying so. Okay, this is a great question. And when it comes to working with a therapist, something that I think we all need to hear understand is the fact that our relationship with our therapist is not predicated on our ability to continually be doing well. We, as therapists, do not expect for you to just go A to B, to C to D D, poof. Recovery. Amazing. We know that it's messy, that it's two steps forward, one step back, sometimes two step forward, ten steps back. But we're still trying. And we're still working together. And we don't have full control over our depressive episodes when they come and go, when if anxiety is what you're struggling with, if your anxiety is going to peak, we can't always manage that. And so keep this in mind and hopefully this encourages you to share with your therapist about this. But we aren't going to ever be disappointed in you if your symptoms come back when you're trying. That's all that we ask of our patients in therapy. It's just that you try. It doesn't mean you're perfect, doesn't mean it's always going to work. It doesn't mean that you're going to be able to do everything each and every week, just that you're trying. And so let your therapist know that this is happening. Because here's the amazing part of it is that when I have a patient who tells me, oh, you know, my anxiety is getting worse, or, oh, I think I'm hanging out, pulling into a mania. I can feel it, right. My bipolar patients will say that I can feel myself elevating. First of all, that gives us an opportunity to do something about it. Second of all, that allows us to better understand our triggers or maybe patterns. And note when this is happening in that can in the future, help us mitigate that. Meaning that if I notice my depressive episodes get worse in the summer, this happens for a lot of people, can be very seasonal. Also, for a lot of us it happens in the winter, but many in our community have told me that they're affected most in the summer. So if our depression affects us most in the summer, we want to know that because maybe we want to make sure that we have an appointment with our psychiatrist before it gets hot out. Or maybe that means we want to increase our sessions with our therapist for a little bit leading up to it. Maybe we need to increase our medication dose. You know, there are things that we can do if we know and notice this pattern. And so it's not really about admitting defeat. You're not defeated by your depression. We have more information about it and its effects on us. And that's going to be helpful as we move forward. And that's really how I see this. There's no disappointment. We can be proud of progress and proud of you for putting in the work, but that doesn't mean that we're going to be disappointed if something comes back. Mental health is not like that. That would be akin to our doctor being proud of us. When we finally move ourselves out of our pneumonia, and then being disappointed when we catch a cold later. That doesn't happen, right? I know therapy's a little different because we can. It's a little we can feel like it takes more of our mental and physical effort than maybe going on a treatment. Taking medication can be when it comes to physical health, but they're really no different. Just because we've been working towards it doesn't mean that we're never going to have to work on it again, or that things can't happen that pull us back into it. And so it's really just helpful for you to share this so that we can mitigate it and see if there's anything to be learned from this particular situation. Now, the question that you asked about, why is it so hard for me could be a couple of pieces. My immediate like, knee jerk reaction was to assume that you possibly are a perfectionist kind of type A, maybe overachiever. You could be the oldest daughter, oldest in your family, but not always. You could be a people pleaser because when we have a tough time admitting something isn't going well, that's always my automatic thought is, oh, this must come out of like our need to be perfect. Are people pleasing all? We always have to be Type-A, overachiever. We have to be the best. And that kind of belief about who we are makes it hard for us to admit sometimes that things aren't going well, and that we could really dig into that if we wanted to. That could come from, you know, growing up in a family that was really inconsistent and we didn't want to rock the boat anymore. Or maybe we thought if we were just perfect enough that then our parent would give us the attention and love that we so desperately needed. Maybe it was part of our like, fan response. We grew up with trauma and abuse in childhood, and so we thought that if we please them as much as possible and do everything just right, then they won't hurt us again, right? It can come from a lot of different places. I'm not sure where it comes from for you, but hopefully some of those things I mentioned can, you know, trigger things in your brain and you can think about it. Maybe there's some connections to be made and I hope that that kind of answers. But we have a comment on top of this. It says, I've been slipping with alcohol when my goal has been sobriety, and I worry that my therapist is sick of me doing this and saying that I'm really ready to move on. But then I make the same mistakes again. And I worry she hates meeting with me and is disappointed. I'm worried she's going to stop seeing me. Is there something that happens? Is this something that happens often? I've been seeing her for two years for various problems, and I worry that I will be left. Recovery is not an A to be dislike. That's not a clean, forward moving, singular line type of situation, especially when it comes to addiction. It is always one step forward, two steps back, and so on. Very complicated, very messy. Because addiction isn't just that. I don't want to do this thing anymore. There are the physical symptoms of addiction and the cravings that we can get. And the, I mean, if alcohol, we could get delirium tremens or some kind of withdrawal symptoms from our stopping of drinking alcohol, not to mention the emotional component, the when we feel our feelings, nobody likes doing that. And we're used to numbing out with alcohol so things get more stressful. We can find the urge to use more and like increasingly strong, and it can be hard for us to put off. No one who works with addiction expects our recovery to be like, oh, we're sober, and that's the end of that. Relapses are incredibly common. Same goes with eating disorder self-injury. I would argue with any coping skill, any maladaptive coping skill that we take on always has relapses and slip ups. That doesn't mean that all is lost. That doesn't mean that you aren't moving forward and doing better. That simply means that there was a different trigger situation. Our resilience was down. Something happened to make us more vulnerable to those urges, and talking about it and acknowledging it allows us to be curious, not judgmental about it, so we can learn. Why this? Why did this happen this time? What was the trigger here? And are there ways that I could better prepare going forward? And so kind of going back to what I said about the first part of the question, your therapist is not sick of you struggling with your sobriety. Your therapist expected this. All of a therapist ever wants of us is for us to keep trying to get back up, to dust ourselves off, to be honest about where we're at, and try, try again. As a therapist, I can, with 100% certainty, tell you that my relationship with you has nothing to do with your ability to get better quickly. There's no timeline, there's no expectations. I'm not excited when you're doing well and disappointed in you when you're doing poorly. I am merely thrilled to have the the luxury, not even the luxury. It's like the privilege of working with you through these tough times to be in the bunker with you. As we try to figure this out, I feel so privileged and I am going to do everything I can to give you the right tools or weaponry to get you out of that bunker, to help you feel safe, and to get through the battle that we're fighting. Right. And none of that has to do with the fact that I expect you to be able to do it quickly, with perfection, and without any slip ups. It's all about the process. And we, you know, again, it's just it's so amazing that we get to be part of that process with you. So your therapist is not sick of it. I would assume they expected it. And I don't work a ton with addiction as it goes. Nuts aren't my specialty. I would refer out when I felt someone needed specifically addiction treatment, but I've worked with tons of patients over the years who do have some addiction in there. You know what I would call their different diagnoses or in their presentation, they would have addiction in there. I am never sick of the relapses. I want to learn from them so we can do better next time. And that doesn't mean that we would hate meeting with you again. I know the relationship in therapy feels weird or different than any other relationship that you've ever had, but just try to keep that in mind. That therapy is not a regular relationship. It's not a friendship. It's not a romantic relationship. It's a space where you get to be your a self as much as you can and someone can. Here you hold that space for you and work with you to guide you in a healthier direction. It's strange right? You don't know anything about the other person. It's all about you. It's your time and that time or that relationship is not contingent upon certain outcomes. It's more about your ability to show up and do your best. Okay, and I would let her know that you're worried about being left, because when I read that, there was a little flag that went up in my brain where I was like, attachment hmhm BP de hmhm complex PTSD, I have questions, where is that coming from? And they'll probably want to dig into that with you.
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Okay. Moving on to question number two. It says, hi Kati, just a little repost from last week. Of course. Feel free to ask your questions as many times as you need. I know that I don't get through them all by any stretch of the imagination every week, but I do my best to get through as many of them as possible. Okay, why is it that intellectually I can understand my adverse childhood experiences and trauma, but emotionally I'm an absolute mess. I've been reading many books about the Aces that's adverse childhood experiences and trauma, including both of yours. And I bounce back between moments and being unregulated. I can understand why learning was so hard as a child or a teenager. My teacher comments would say that I was lazy, not living up to my potential or a daydreamer. And those are not true. Or that I can tune out loud noises or someone talking right next to me, trying to feel my feelings. Yuck. I'm a wreck, my body freezes or freaks, and I have to flee those emotions faster than lightning. I know there's no bear attacking. And what happened in the past? What happened is in the past. But it doesn't help me feel any less bad. I've watched your 25 Coping Skills video. What can I do? I'm seeing a therapist, but I breakdown. Can't talk about it or talk about it in the third person. I'm grateful for your expertise and willingness to answer those questions that were too afraid to ask. Of course, I'm happy I can be here for you guys now. Intellectualizing I actually have a video that will come out soon about this because I do this too. I think it's the curse of probably being a therapist, but I love to intellectualize. I love to understand something from every view. But you know what I don't love to do? Feel it. No. Right. It's terrible. It's uncomfortable. It's dysregulated. All that stuff that comes up. Yuck. We don't like it. So why is it that we do that? Well, intellectual ization is a defense mechanism. And what I mean by that is an intellectualizing something like quote unquote seeking to understand it allows us to have distance from the issue. And that is part of our defense because like I said, feeling those feelings, oh, it's terrible. It's uncomfortable. It's dysregulated. We don't want to be dysregulated. We don't want to be uncomfortable. So we intellectualize I'm guilty as charged. I do this too. And the reason is, is because to feel the feelings, like you said, you immediately have to flee. You're like, oh, I have to get out of here. Yuck. Okay, so we can't just jump from Intellectualizing or what I would call disconnecting to complete connection, feel the feelings and sitting with it. That's going to be too much, too fast. You're going to become dysregulated. You're going to like you said, you want to, flee those emotions faster than lightning. So what I encourage you to do is a couple of pieces, okay? The first is we're going to have to find some things that are soothing to our system. I know you said you watched my 25 coping skills video. Does anything help? There? I find when I'm feeling dysregulated, feeling overwhelmed, a full body shake goes a long way. Dunking my face in cold water really helps. Also movements and I'll do some yoga or go for a walk with my dog. Those are all things that help regulate me. I don't know what that's going to look like for you, but feel free to try some things out. Even repetitive movements. Things like I know this is gonna sound silly, but vacuuming because it's like in and out and in and out, folding laundry, coloring, going for a walk, those are all things that are like repetitive. And that's really soothing to our nervous system. So just throwing that out there is a potential we're going to figure out the ways to calm our system down. And then second, we're going to have to back off of this feel or feelings goal that we have because it's too much, too fast. Instead of feeling like, oh, I have to, you know, sit in the emotions, allow it to, and move through it. We're going to want to instead learn to identify some emotions, maybe 2 or 3 a day in US. Can we use the feelings? We'll do any of those resonate? Maybe we have to start in the middle with what I would call like less context or simpler emotions. Sometimes easier to identify, sometimes not, but sometimes can we start there? And can I come up with 2 or 3 emotions every day for like a week and kind of get used to it? So once we've done that, so we've gathered 2 or 3 emotions that we felt each and every day for a week. Then I want you to go back to those emotion words, and I want you to explain it to me. Explain it to me like I'm an alien. Like I have no idea what that emotion word is. Maybe, you know, I don't even speak your language. I need you to tell me how. What does that look like? What does that feel like? Explain it. And then if that's really hard, if you're like, I can't explain it, I don't know how to identify if even what I said, you're like, know that's too much, too fast. We can watch a movie or TV show and I want you to I mean, reality television is really good for this because they're so, like erratic in their emotions. But whatever it is, after a scene finishes, I want you to pause and I want you to consider, what emotions was this main character experiencing? Why do I think that? How do I know? Right. Those are other ways to kind of get to know emotions, because if we just jump to the feel part, we're immediately going to jump right back out because I'm so dis regulated, that's too much. I want you to feel like we're kind of like, you know, in a pool is really cold instead of cannonball ING in, which is kind of what you've been trying to do. I want you instead to slowly move in. So right now we're just going to stick our feet in. Then maybe we'll step into it. It goes up to our knees, right there, up to our stomach. We're going to slowly make our way in it so that we can acclimate, so that we can get comfortable, so that we can use some of those tools, like the body shakes, the cold water on her face, the repetitive movements. We're going to use some of those to soothe so we can keep going. And that's how we slowly become more okay with our emotional experience. Is it hard? You betcha. Is it worth it 100%? And know that what you're doing is completely normal. That's why it's a defense mechanism. It's one of the ones that people talk about all the time. And it it's there for a purpose. It's because it's so dysregulated. So give yourself a moment. Give yourself the time you need to slowly be able to feel it. Okay, okay. Moving on to this, I made a comment on this. I said, adding on to this. How do I know when to dive into trauma work? I've had little several little teas and maybe a big tea over the years, and I worry that some experience will perpetuate various issues, including my avoidance in forming close relationships, friendships, and romantic interest, especially, and being dependent upon but dependent on my parents. I talked very briefly about some of my experiences with my therapist over a year ago. We were going to revisit, but never did. Is it worth opening this can of worms? Or how do I know when doing trauma work would be helpful? I am a firm believer that doing trauma work is always helpful because whether we want to admit it or not, when we've been traumatized, we are going to act out of that story or that past experience until we find a good reason not to. And the reason I say it like that is because if we have spent our whole life feeling like we're lesser, then right, in the past we were we were told we were lesser then we were probably harmed either emotionally, physically, sexually. Maybe we were told that we were so such a loser. We were always there's a story that we created, this belief system we created from our past that has caused us to still believe all of those things that were stupid, that were a loser, that if we speak up, we're going to get hit or hurt. If someone actually, because it shows us interest, that means they're going to sexually abuse us, right? We have all these beliefs and these stories from our past, and if we don't understand that they are stories from the past and that they aren't currently happening, if we don't untangle that, we're going to keep acting in that very same way. We're going to still think that if someone choses attention, they're going to abuse us. We're still going to think that if we speak up and ask for something, we're going to be hit or told we're too much. So whether we want to admit it or not, our trauma is affecting us until we understand our intent with it today. Now, that doesn't mean that we have to be in talk therapy forever and ever and ever, and we have to talk through every single detail until it loses its emotional charge. There are other modalities, if that, if talking through this does not seem to work for you. There are things like eMDR, somatic experiencing, schema therapy, there's trauma focused CBT, there's a ton of trauma based treatments that can be incredibly helpful in healing. And so in the short, I guess, to answer, how do you know when to dive into trauma work as soon as you're able? And obviously I've talked in the past, but I don't know how long it's been since I've mentioned it. But if we can't stay present, if diving into this trauma work causes us to dissociate, then we're going to want to put more emphasis or effort into building up our resilience, building up our coping skills so that we don't dissociate because we cannot process or reprocess a trauma when we aren't really present, when we are dissociated. So we want to make sure that we're able to stay in our bodies in our session while we do that work. And so I really just encourage you to start this type of work as soon as possible, if you have questions about it. I have tons of videos about trauma. I also have my book traumatized. You can check out. It's available anywhere. It's I have the audiobook. I did it myself. but it's available on Amazon. You know, Barnes and Noble, target. Wherever you purchase your books, you can look up traumatized by me. and it'll be there and you can find it. So hang in there. It's it is worth opening up this can of worms, because whether or not you want to believe it, that can of worms isn't shut anyways. It's affecting us. We just are kind of ignoring it or numbing out from it. There's another adult says, I hope it's okay to add on to this, but I've been thinking a lot lately about finding a therapist to help me get over the fear of a family member that I'm living with. I've had a number of conflicts and very negative experiences with him, and basically lived in extreme fear of him for several years. It's better now, but I still feel tense and panicked when in the same room with him, I hold a lot of anger and resentment at him. What kind of therapist should I look for? I'm not sure that talk therapy would be too helpful here. I can rationalize the situation, but it doesn't help with my fear, anger, or resentment. I mean, one thing to consider. I'll give you a couple of ideas, but one thing to consider whenever we're looking for a therapist is that time and time again, research after research. post-hoc analysis of research that's already been conducted proves that the most important factor in the success of therapy is the therapeutic alliance or the therapeutic relationship, meaning that it really doesn't matter where our therapist went to school, what they specialize in, it's all about our connection with them and our ability to feel safe and heard in the space with them. Okay, so keep that in mind, because I think a lot of times we put a ton of emphasis or focus on like what type of therapy they do. And yes, there are pieces that I'll talk about that next. But I do want you to know that study after study, you can you can Google it yourself. But research after research shows that it's more about the relationship than it is about anything else. So what you want to make sure you feel when you meet a potential new therapist? First of all, do free consultation. They all offer them. This will give you a chance to to see if there's a match. However, when we have that consultation when we first meet them, I want you to focus on whether or not you feel kind of that click. You know, when you meet someone and you're like, I like them. I don't really know why, but I like them. They seem nice. I could I could hang out with that person again. I want you to feel that way. I don't want you to. You don't have to feel like, oh my God, I love them. They're like my mom. Oh my God. No, that's actually, like, not a great sign. But I want you to feel like, you know, I could come here again. This is okay. Yeah, I feel like. I feel like she gets me or he understands or they. Listen, I want you to just feel pretty decent about it and having that kind of click or that. Yeah, I like them is going to be key in our healing. Now when it comes to the types of therapy, if we want someone specific, let's say our issue is an eating disorder. We're going to want to make sure that the therapist understands eating disorder treatment and isn't going to, you know, I don't know, think it's like, oh, diet gone awry or, you know, say things that are harmful because they're just uneducated about it. And so what you're going through, based on the fact you've had negative experiences and conflicts and extreme fear, tells me there was trauma there, tells me that there something horrible happened to you at the hands of this person emotionally, physically, whatever. And it's hard for us to be around him. Obviously. Hypervigilance. This is it's a response to PTSD, right? The fact that he reminds you of that trauma, of course, you don't want to spend any time with him or be in the same room with him. So I would encourage you to find a therapist who's trauma informed. This could be a therapist who does attachment work. a therapist who does eMDR. Like I said earlier, somatic experiencing, schema therapy parts work, or what we call with family systems. All of that can be really, really helpful in those can all be avenues. You can go down when you do your consultation. Ask them if they are trauma informed, if they stutter or like, what do you mean by trauma informed? And the answer is no. a lot of therapists, unfortunately, will say they can deal with a lot of issues, but there are specific things I believe should be specialized things like eating disorder, treatment. Those of us who work with borderline personality disorder, self-injury, and trauma. I think those all need specializations. I would also even throw in autism and ADHD into there because there are certain types of modalities and treatments, and just ways that you communicate with a patient that are going to be incredibly important. And if you haven't done the the work, if you haven't worked in a clinic or a hospital setting or really worked with patients like this and done a bunch of, you know, see, use about it, you're going to mess it up. And so I want you to find a therapist who is at least trauma informed, if not a trauma specialist. And maybe because you said you don't know if talk therapy would be too helpful. Maybe we try eMDR, maybe we try somatic experiencing. That could be helpful. Let's give those a go and then report back.
Okay. Moving on to question number three. This question says Kati, I'm very introverted. Plus I have social anxiety. How can I tell whether I actually need alone time at the moment, or I'm just avoiding it because of the anxiety? But it would be, oh, or am I just avoiding it because of the anxiety? But it would be good for me to step outside my comfort zone. Great question. Now, when it comes to anxiety versus introversion, introversion is more of a a personality trait, a way of being. It doesn't mean that we're shy. That's not what introversion is. Introversion means we feel very, very drained by social interactions with people that aren't really close to us, like what I call surface level conversations. You know, those, like. So how was your day? How's the weather? Oh, what a good day. You know, those things that we have at like parties at work or things where we don't really know people, we have kind of, you know, those surface level conversations like, we hate that. It's draining, it's exhausting. And in between those types of interactions, we need a lot of time to recharge. We like to be alone for that. Or maybe with just our partner or something, but we just like to, like, read a book, sit in the dark, maybe have a nap. I don't know all those things. Well, we have social anxiety. It is very different. Social anxiety is this concern that we're going to do something embarrassing when we're out, and we're not going to be able to, like, get out of there fast enough and someone's going to laugh about it or laugh at us, we're going to in some way, we're so worried. Remember, anxiety is uncontrollable worry. So we have so much worry about being in social situations and not being able to like, remove ourselves or or make sure that we don't say or do something stupid, that it is overwhelming and therefore we don't want to engage because of that fear or that uncontrollable worry. Okay, so introversion is, oh, I don't want to have these surface level conversations. I'm so exhausted already. That sounds draining. Anxiety is, oh my God, I can't go there are people are going to think stupid things in me. Oh my God, that's what I would do. What if I say something stupid? What if I trip? Oh my God, what if I say something in my teeth and nobody tells me like all those thoughts? That's anxiety and the other is introversion. So you're going to have to check in with yourself before situations, you know, occur. Like if you're at a moment where you're thinking, maybe I'm going to go to this event and you immediately are like, no, what's the reasoning behind it? It could be both, but I have a feeling just because I know this more with my patients and even with people of our community online, you guys have shared with me so lovely that I believe that that jerk reaction of nuh is social anxiety driven. Social anxiety has a lot more energy behind it, whereas introversion is kind of like, I don't know, it sounds kind of exhausting. I don't the desire is not there. So if you feel like this, like, oh, it feels very energized, it'd be anxiety. Okay, I hope that helps.
Now moving on to question number four. It says, hey there, Kati. My question is how can I learn to love and appreciate my body? Great question. I feel like my body is just this in convenient attachment that I have to lug around all day. I'm irritated when it needs something like food or the bathroom. Sexuality is a completely foreign concept. I've done the work to figure out how I got here, and obviously there are many reasons for this, but now I don't know how to get myself back if that makes any sense. I want to have a better relationship with it, treat it kindly, not resent it or judge it. Please help. Thank you so much. Okay. Our relationship with our body is a tricky one, and I'd be lying if I didn't mention that I've had my own issues. I think all of us have. I feel like no one is really immune to this issue. So what are the things we can do? One of the things that I try to do is I try to, in my head, kind of take time to thank my body for certain things. It's probably kind of the yoga effect because I've been practicing yoga for like 20 years now, but after I've done any kind of physical activity or even after I've had a really long day, like recently, I was on the today show and I had to fly to New York, like with not much notice, and come back all within like a 24 hour period got. I was wiped out, but I didn't catch a cold. My brain was able to focus and I was able on like 3 to 4 hours of sleep to have actual conversations on live television where I answered questions and could be present. And so when I was on the plane, I was like, oh, thank you, body, for allowing me to do this. Thank you for allowing me to sit for this long. My back didn't hurt. And thank you for my brain for working. You know, I just try to offer some appreciation for all that my body does for me. Every day we often think of bodies and we think of like thighs, stomach, fat, skinny, muscle, belly. But our bodies are our brains. It's our ability to breathe and see. It's my ability to fall asleep at night. I can get up, I can talk to you guys. I can read comments. I can communicate with others. I can pet my dog. Right? Our body allows us to live our life. And so I encourage you to try to integrate this appreciation for your body into your routine. Little by little. Maybe we have to put up some post-it notes at first to remind ourselves of it. Maybe we need to put some alarms in our phone to tell us to do it. I don't care how it starts, but I feel like that is a good first step. Because sure, I could tell you, you know, change the way you think and, you know, notice your thoughts and use bridge statements and even and stop and shut down that negative self-talk. All of that's great too. But personally, I have to tell you, that doesn't really help me because in the moment I will still judge myself. I will still shit on my body. I will still be frustrated for this roll or lump or bump or whatever here or there and whatever. I'll be mad about it. I'll talk myself and I'll feel worse. And so I know that that doesn't work for me. What works for me is these small moments of appreciation. And I have to be honest, this really changed my relationship with my body, and I hope that it can do the same for you, because we take for granted all of the times that we felt good, that we can do what we need to do. I feel like a good time to appreciate my body is honestly when I'm sick. I don't know if you're anything like me, I don't like I. Before I started doing this, I wouldn't be thanking my body for like regular shit. I just expect it to do it. How rude. Right? It's doing all these things. It's managing all this stuff. It's helping me focus. It's helping me sleep. It's helping me work out. It's helping me, you know, engage with my loved ones, fighting off bacteria, potential illnesses, doing all sorts of stuff. And I just expect it to. And then when I fall sick, for whatever reason, strep throat, a cold. When I got Covid years ago, then I'm like, oh my God, it was doing so much. I can't do any of that right now. Right. And it gives you a new appreciation. You're like, oh my God, I'm so sorry I took that for granted. I took my health for granted. And so we want to fight to not take our health for granted. And instead of thinking of loving our body as like loving all the lumps and bumps about it, let's instead focus on, like, all the things that it does that we don't have to think about, not think it for that. Like, oh, somebody asked me if I wanted to go for a walk or want to go on a hike. I can actually do that. That's pretty fucking amazing, right? Because I find when we try to focus on our body, like how it looks, the visual, that's where we can get in our own way. And that's for my eating disorder patients, is super triggering. So let's instead focus on how it operates for us and the things that it does. Let's thank it for that. And that's just our first step on our path because it is a work in progress. But trust me when I tell you it does get better. Okay, there's an add on to this as I struggle with this too, although I feel like it's part of my eating disorder to be disgusted by my body. Yes, touching, for example, my feet or shoes always triggers my OCD too. And I had to wash my hands. But do we need to appreciate our body in that way? I feel like it's similar to the thing that you said about weight in the last episode. To some degree, yes, but we don't need to love our bodies, do we? I mean to say that we have to love our bodies. I think it's healthy. I think it's better for us to love our bodies, but I think it's more important for us to appreciate them. And I would place that word in there instead and focus on that. Because yes, it is a huge piece of eating disorder behavior is that no matter what other people see or think, when we look in the mirror, we always see a disgusting blob. We hate ourselves. It doesn't matter for overweight, underweight, it doesn't matter. We're going to see it this way no matter what, because it's actually like a delusion that's part of our eating disorder. That makes it impossible for us to truly be able to see ourselves and I would argue that all of us have some percentage of that delusion where we always think that something's wrong with us, our body is deformed in some way, and it's, I would argue, part, probably part of our own, like, coping skill, kind of a distraction, right? It's a way to focus on something rather than the real issue. Could be part of our own anxiety or our own, you know, negative self-talk and lack of self-esteem. It could be any kind of thing like that. But to answer this person's question, I think the truth is we don't have to love our bodies, but we do need to appreciate them and show them love in that way. Okay, we'll get to the love part, but let's start with appreciation first.
Now let's go to question number five. It says, hi Kati. My question is about getting in touch with your emotions and working through the difficult ones. Oh, for example, my therapist told me depression is anger turned inward. But every time I try to get in touch with my anger, it doesn't want to talk to me. I try to work through it during therapy and it doesn't want to come out. How do I get in tune with my emotions that don't want to talk to me? This is so interesting. Anger is a very a very fickle, a fickle emotion. It for me, it can feel very out of control. And so I just to give you an example, would not want to actually talk to my anger because it felt scary, because I thought if I, if I interacted with anger, that then I would do and say things I didn't mean. I would hurt those that I love. And I essentially like light my world on fire. Like my anger just felt so intense and so out of control. Okay. And I bring that up because I don't think that it's your anger doesn't want to talk to you. I think it's that you aren't comfortable enough with your anger, rightfully so, to even engage with it. And so we might want to start a few steps back where instead of trying to communicate with our anger and see what it is telling us or why it's there, we try to understand anger from an outside perspective. What does anger look like? What do we think anger feels like? Do we have any idea of like how our body experiences anger? Do we even know? Maybe we don't. How would we know that someone else was angry? Let's think about that. Let's talk about this with our therapist. Let's get to know anger. Something that was really helpful for me. This was years ago. I was really mad about my dad's illness and his death, and my therapist had me collage anger and it took me a few goes. I didn't do the homework at first because who wants to do that kind of homework, right? And then the next week I kind of started, but I didn't finish. And then finally in the third week, I was able to put something together. Now I'm not going to tell you what mine looked like, because I don't want to sway yours in any way. But consider the colors that you would use. Consider what photos or images you would want to clip out of a magazine. If you even have a magazine these days, or something online that you want to like, flip out and cut and paste into your collage. We can collage on our computers, by the way. consider that stuff. Let's maybe get more in touch with anger as a whole before we try to get to know ours, because I have a feeling that this lack, like it doesn't want to talk to you, is more about the fact that you don't want to engage with your anger for whatever reason. And we have to kind of figure out what that is like. Are you like me? And your anger feels real scary and overwhelming. You don't want to, like, light your world on fire, so you withdraw. You know, we have to kind of be honest about like what it is we think about anger. And why is it so difficult to get in touch with? Remember, be curious, not judgmental, but some kind of collaging or getting to know anger as a whole can allow us to then try to get in touch with our anger, but to jump right in can feel overwhelming. So give yourself some time.
Okay. Final question. Question number six is Kati. My therapist tells me that I need to feel my emotions in my body, but I can never pinpoint where in my body I feel my emotions, especially positive emotions. We don't talk enough about the fact that positive emotions can be just as, if not more dysregulated in the negative ones. Also, I don't like calling them positive or negative, but that's how people identify them all. Emotions are fine. They're neutral. All emotions exist, should exist, and have a right in our space. None are positive or negative, but sometimes we like to list them like emotions that are more attached to positive life experiences versus emotions that are attached to negative life experiences. And I get that. But this is a great question. Now going back to what I said, there's obviously a theme this week, a lot about emotions and feeling them. To feel our emotions, we have to first start identifying and getting to know them. Kind of like this anger one. We don't want to get to know it for us, maybe just yet. Maybe we'd rather start with like the emotion word itself. What is excitement? How would we describe that to someone? Let's say someone had never felt anger or excitement or sadness or happiness. How would we tell them that? How would we explain it to them? Let's start there. Because too often we're jumping in and feeling like, oh, I need to know where this is my body. I need to identify this emotion. There's too many steps. If we haven't been doing this our whole lives, how are we going? It's hard. Right? It can feel impossible. And so I really want to encourage you to instead try to get to know emotions as a whole, especially positive ones, because those seem to be the most triggering for you. I would argue, usually for those of us who find positive emotions kind of overwhelming or dangerous, it's because growing up we were on edge. I think it's almost always a PTSD response, kind of a hypervigilance, because if I express or feel this positive emotion, this excitement, this happiness, then I'm more vulnerable to someone hurting me. It makes me more open to pain because up my guards, down right. so dive into that, figure out. We can figure out where that's coming from. But more than that, I feel like with the emotion piece, we want to get to know them first, because to feel them in our bodies is like five steps ahead. And I want you to start, like, meet yourself where you're at. We have to kind of get to know emotions well, how would we define them, how we describe them. Then we can start to identify some in our life. What did I feel today? Could I name 2 to 3 things? Let's get more comfortable with that. Then we could move into, you know, identifying our emotions in the moment and possibly noticing doing check ins with our body throughout and being like, oh, I feel stressed. And my neck got tight. Because often we can struggle to identify it in our bodies because we're disconnected from our bodies. And that's okay. It's a process. We'll get there, we'll get you reconnected. But let's start by identifying and describing emotions because that will help move us forward. Okay. Thank you all so much for listening and watching. Thank you for sharing this podcast. Thank you for sending in your questions. Have a wonderful rest of your week. Do your homework and I'll see you next time.
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Here are the loose “chapters” in this episode.
0:51: ⚖️ Struggling to communicate depressive feelings to therapist due to fear of disappointment.
3:45: ⚠️ Importance of acknowledging mental health progress and setbacks in therapy.
7:21: 💪 Resilience in coping with relapses, therapist's support, and learning from triggers.
11:22: 📚 Struggling with childhood trauma impact on learning, seeking coping skills, and difficulty expressing emotions in therapy.
15:09: 🎭 Exploring emotions through self-reflection, explanation to an alien, and analyzing TV characters' emotions.
18:56: ⚖️ Importance of addressing trauma, recognizing its impact, and utilizing various modalities for healing.
23:01: ⚠️ Importance of finding a therapist who understands your specific issue and creates a positive connection for healing.
26:27: 💬 Distinguishing between introversion and social anxiety based on fear of embarrassing situations and exhaustion from surface conversations.
30:13: 💖 Importance of appreciating our bodies to improve self-image and mental well-being.
33:59: 💭 Exploring emotions and body image issues, emphasizing appreciation over love.
37:53: 💭 Exploring the neutrality of emotions, emphasizing the importance of understanding and embracing all emotions.
Recap for https://youtu.be/MxYJI607Wy4 by Tammy AI
