0:00:03.745,0:00:13.384 So this week's video has to do with self-harm and how everyone around us responds to that 0:00:13.384,0:00:22.438 [Kati Morton - MFTI] 0:00:22.438,0:00:25.736 Now what I mean by this and what I'm kind of hoping to do this week 0:00:25.736,0:00:29.633 is just normalise your experience. 0:00:29.633,0:00:34.609 Because I know all the time, for all different veins, whether it is on my twitter account or youtube 0:00:34.609,0:00:41.484 or tumblr or on my website, I hear from everybody that, someone or something has either 0:00:41.484,0:00:46.918 made you feel like you are the only one that has this problem. They make you feel like a freak. 0:00:46.918,0:00:54.292 Or a weirdo or what you are doing is just so disgusting, 'ugh' and that just makes us feel worse 0:00:54.292,0:01:00.866 Right? Because nothing is worse than feeling like we don't fit in, what I'm experiencing is really weird, 0:01:00.866,0:01:03.197 nobodys heard of it before, nobody knows what to do 0:01:03.197,0:01:06.047 Nobody likes to feel that way, right? 0:01:06.047,0:01:10.608 And I'm here to tell you that you are not weird, that you are not alone. 0:01:10.608,0:01:14.487 This is not something that's unheard of, and you know who is saying that? 0:01:14.487,0:01:17.825 People that are uneducated and they should be ashamed of themselves. 0:01:17.825,0:01:25.492 As part of the professional world and therapy, doctors and psychiatrists, LSWS if any of you 0:01:25.492,0:01:32.696 see a social worker, part of our licensing every year we have to gather, and it depends on the licensing 0:01:32.696,0:01:39.665 how many hours, but roughly about 30-40 hours of continuing education. 0:01:39.665,0:01:45.611 You know what that says to me? I need to broaden what I know, right? 0:01:45.611,0:01:51.484 So when somebody says to you, if you are self-harming, 'woah, I don't deal with that, I don't 0:01:51.484,0:01:55.731 really know, ugh', that means they haven't broadened their knowledge. 0:01:55.731,0:01:58.020 That doesn't make you weird. 0:01:58.020,0:02:05.838 That means that they haven't learned and they are ignorant as to what is going on, okay? 0:02:05.838,0:02:11.032 But the first thing and the most important type of person that I want to talk about is our family, 0:02:11.032,0:02:15.927 and I will even lump in friends with it because it is those people that are really close to us 0:02:15.927,0:02:23.094 and kind of know us for who we are or who we were before this or maybe what happened to cause this. 0:02:23.094,0:02:25.954 They have all the information. 0:02:25.954,0:02:30.622 And in my experience, and I've been reading, I have been doing a lot of research about this, because I 0:02:30.622,0:02:37.033 want to make sure I'm gathering all the information. But, it sounds like, my experience is kind of what's 0:02:37.033,0:02:44.439 happening and what other peoples experiences are, and that is that family's first response is fright. 0:02:44.439,0:02:51.148 "Oh my gosh, I don't know what to do, oh my gosh, my kid" and they freak out, right? 0:02:51.148,0:02:56.777 But instead of just letting that happen internally and "okay, what do I need to know" and you know, 0:02:56.777,0:03:00.021 gathering that information, a lot of time that turns into anger. 0:03:00.021,0:03:03.096 So, they're scared and then they react angrily. 0:03:03.096,0:03:05.440 A lot of people say things, like parents I have heard say to some of my clients, like 0:03:05.440,0:03:11.399 "How could you do that to yourself, who would be so stupid as to hurt themselves", right? 0:03:11.399,0:03:18.234 And that is not coming from a place of love and care. That is coming from a place of misunderstanding. 0:03:18.234,0:03:22.692 They don't know, they don't understand what is going on and the worst thing to parents 0:03:22.692,0:03:29.385 and the hardest thing for me to ever get them to understand or to accept, is that one of their children 0:03:29.385,0:03:34.290 is showing signs of a mental disorder, a mental illness. 0:03:34.290,0:03:38.726 And that's kinda of why I'm even creating what I'm creating here, is to try and break through the stigma 0:03:38.726,0:03:42.808 of mental illness. It is not something to be scared about or angry about. 0:03:42.808,0:03:46.914 It is just something that needs to be understood, right? 0:03:46.914,0:03:49.863 So, if you have had that experience, if your parents have said things like 0:03:49.863,0:03:55.316 "How dare you, I can't believe you do that" and then get angry, or they even become almost narcissistic 0:03:55.316,0:03:59.119 "Like, what is this your way of making me feel guilty because I didididi..." 0:03:59.119,0:04:03.185 They might go into that kind of stream. Know that that's normal. 0:04:03.185,0:04:09.388 I know that doesn't make it okay and I know that the hurt is still there. 0:04:09.388,0:04:13.356 But know that is most common. 0:04:13.356,0:04:18.406 And that's really why we have to work together. Why I need you to share this, why I need you to comment. 0:04:18.406,0:04:23.537 Because we need to get a larger voice so that we can break through the stigma 0:04:23.537,0:04:28.382 and we can minimize that for people in the future 0:04:28.382,0:04:35.995 Because something, if I look back in history to like the 70s, when eating disorders were just becoming 0:04:35.995,0:04:40.864 more prevalent, people responded that way to them. 0:04:40.864,0:04:47.102 Anger, fright, it's like 'their weird', we don't know how to deal and although we still have a long ways to go, 0:04:47.102,0:04:53.243 with eating disorders we have come a long way. In the States, there are treatment centres all over. 0:04:53.243,0:04:58.981 This was unheard of in the 70s in the United States, this was like hospital treatment, tube fed. 0:04:58.981,0:05:04.144 That was it. There was no mental health help. They were not actually giving you any therapy or 0:05:04.144,0:05:08.497 working on the problem, they were just trying to refeed you as if that was all the problem was. 0:05:08.497,0:05:12.988 So, let's work together. Let's kind of cut this time down, right? 0:05:12.988,0:05:17.356 Because not everybody has to get that response. 0:05:17.356,0:05:23.133 So the next thing I want to talk about, so we have family and friends, and then I want to talk a little bit 0:05:23.133,0:05:29.437 about therapists and other professionals and how they might respond. 0:05:29.437,0:05:36.476 And I've had many clients come to me and say "yeah, I was referred to you from so-and-so because they 0:05:36.476,0:05:40.883 told me that they can't deal with me. They're...not in their scope of practice" 0:05:40.883,0:05:46.100 Or they'll use some type of term that therapists use to refer patients out. 0:05:46.100,0:05:50.936 And to be honest, from a therapy side, I am glad that people refer people out if they don't 0:05:50.936,0:05:54.131 have the knowledge, because nothings worse than having someone working with us, 0:05:54.131,0:05:57.049 when they don't really know what they're working on, right? 0:05:57.049,0:06:01.966 It can be kind of hard, like we are guiding our own treatment versus the opposite, right? 0:06:01.966,0:06:06.179 But, how does that make us feel? 0:06:06.179,0:06:11.386 I go into see somebody I finally got up the courage to call-in and I make an appointment, I sit there, 0:06:11.386,0:06:17.729 and then she tells me "oh I'm sorry, I don't deal with self-harm or cutting, I just don't. 0:06:17.729,0:06:20.489 I'm going to have to refer to you somebody". 0:06:20.489,0:06:25.895 It makes us feel like we are weird, like somethings wrong with us, and people don't know how to 0:06:25.895,0:06:31.878 handle and treat us. It comes along with a lot of those emotions and that's okay. 0:06:31.878,0:06:33.098 I would hate to feel that way. 0:06:33.098,0:06:40.546 It is the same thing I was just talking about with family and how people 'treat' it or not treat it, right? 0:06:40.546,0:06:45.440 And that's kind of been the experience of people. 0:06:45.440,0:06:52.195 In the media, they dramatise self-harm. They show the worst case scenario. And they make it this big deal. 0:06:52.195,0:07:01.965 "So-and-so does this everyday" (shock). People recoil and get bad, nasty faces and ugh 0:07:01.965,0:07:06.333 and they act like it's so horrible. It's not. 0:07:06.333,0:07:11.341 We watch, I mean I watch, I'll speak for myself, I watch like CSI and stuff. 0:07:11.341,0:07:17.285 I'm addicted to crime, mystery, solving the case. I love that stuff. But I watch that. 0:07:17.285,0:07:21.152 But then people are going to recoil when they see a small scratch or burn. 0:07:21.152,0:07:28.952 If I fell when I was a child I'm sure my Mum bandaged my knee. She didn't recoil and freak out, right? 0:07:28.952,0:07:35.294 So why are people doing that and I don't really like that media is dramatizing it 0:07:35.294,0:07:41.686 and turning it into this nasty thing, because there is nothing nasty about it, right? 0:07:41.686,0:07:49.359 So that's just something I want to talk about because I feel that a lot of us feel alone and you're not. 0:07:49.359,0:07:53.866 And a lot of us think we are the only ones experiencing this, the only one whose parents, 0:07:53.866,0:08:01.404 or therapist or teacher or the media, that we're the only ones that feel that. 0:08:01.404,0:08:04.618 And I'm here today to tell you that you are not. 0:08:04.618,0:08:05.853 You are not alone. 0:08:05.853,0:08:09.638 You don't have to go at this alone, okay? 0:08:09.638,0:08:15.908 So just, be prepared. Things like this may come up. 0:08:15.908,0:08:20.330 When you decide to finally tell people about it, know that there may be a bad response. 0:08:20.330,0:08:23.274 But how do we prepare, right? I always talk about preparation. 0:08:23.274,0:08:26.946 If any of you read my questions and answers, I'm always preparing people. 0:08:26.946,0:08:30.054 So, what do we do? 0:08:30.054,0:08:33.735 We need to know how we are going to respond if someone doesn't respond well. 0:08:33.735,0:08:39.333 What do we say? How do we get help anyways? How do we persevere? 0:08:39.333,0:08:45.359 We reach out, right? This whole community is filled with people struggling with the same thing. 0:08:45.359,0:08:48.204 Let's talk to one another. Let's support one another. 0:08:48.204,0:08:53.702 That is the best thing we can do right now because we are going to work together so as the years pass, 0:08:53.702,0:09:02.860 and as we keep fighting, other people coming before or dealing with this later on, don't have to go through this 0:09:02.860,0:09:07.167 You and I can make a difference and that's really what I'm here for 0:09:07.167,0:09:12.864 because we are working together towards a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Body.