Ask Doc Snipes Anything about Expectation Management
Dr. Dawn‑Elise Snipes leads a live YouTube Q&A on expectation management (Oct 1 livestream). She explains how realistic expectations differ across contexts—disaster recovery, addiction recovery, chronic pain, grief, and interpersonal/codependent relationships—and emphasizes pacing, setting compassionate small goals, and monitoring progress. She teaches practical coping strategies: diary/incident logs, a 30‑minute worry-envelope exercise, distress‑tolerance skills, vagus‑nerve stimulation techniques (ear rubbing, slowed breathing, bubble‑gum breathing), guided imagery, and rescue plans for panic attacks/anniversary triggers. Clinical approaches discussed include DBT, CBT, ACT (acceptance & commitment), couples/family therapy, and referral/testing for medication verification. The tone is clinician‑practical, empathetic, and skills‑focused, with frequent lived‑experience anecdotes and live audience interaction.
Chapters
Foreign. Hey there Everybody. And happy October 1st. We're just kind of meeting everybody where they're at, putting one foot in front of the other. So today I thought we might talk a little bit more about expectation management in the disaster recovery process. And even in the recovery process. Us, we can kind of branch out a little bit and not focus as much on disaster. But it's definitely important. Depending on the type of situation that you are recovering from, something that is minor may be able to resolved in. May be able to be resolved in a short period of time. Something that is major will take longer. In addiction recovery, for example, we'll just kind of go off on left field. A lot of people think that they're going to go through detox, they're going to go through 28 days of treatment, and poof, they're going to be recovered. And that ain't takes the body 18 to 24 months to fully recover. So people are going to be coping with post acute withdrawal symptoms. It takes people a while, maybe six to 12 months, maybe more, to really address their negative perceptions, their dysfunctional schema that they developed while they were in their addiction. To work on their trauma that may have led to their addiction or that they experienced during their addiction may take some additional time. So it's not something that just happens overnight. Expectation management really revolves around helping people set reasonable goals. I am not going to go through this treatment program and be fixed in 30 days or be in recovery in 30 days. I will be clean in 30 days. I won't have that substance in my system anymore in 30 days. Okay, that may be a goal. And setting those goals when we talk about disaster recovery, expectation management is also important. We, we can't expect people to wake up the next morning and just pick up and, you know, soldier on. We need to give people a break. We need to be compassionate even with those people who aren't directly impacted regarding their reactions, their feelings of hopelessness and helplessness and how that's triggering the stress response in them for a variety of reasons. But we need to be compassionate and manage expectations about, for example, what they're able to get done. They are dealing with distress and we only have so much energy. And if everything's going fine, you may have be able to devote 98 of your energy to a task. But when you are in distress, when your HPA axis, when your autonomic nervous system is triggered because of some threat, vulnerability, trauma over here, then it is diverting energy away from what you would, quote, normally be doing in order to Help you stay safe, hyper vigilance, all that other stuff that's going on. So it's important to manage your expectations for yourself. What are you actually capable of doing right now today? Being mindful of small progress. Being mindful of, hey, I got up and took a shower today. Score for me. You know, that can be a goal for some people, especially who are in the midst of extreme trauma. Getting up and actually getting dressed, that is a good goal. And managing expectations, you're not going to feel wonderful. You're not going to be back to, dare I say the word, normal in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, it's going to be a while. More than a minute. It's going to be a while. And figuring out or, or noticing those small improvements that you're starting to see and, and taking time to take stock each day of. All right, these things over here are still at a standstill. But what small improvements to, did we see today in myself, in my situation? So good morning Bra and ty. Welcome. Hello, Mr. Leslie. I'm not familiar with image transformation therapy, so I can't even speak to that. I'm sorry, that's not something that we really talk about here or we've really become aware of here. To the best of my knowledge. In, in the US. What other questions do people have about expectation management, about disaster recovery, about anything that is really causing stress right now? I know not too long ago, Iran just launched over a hundred, if the reports are correct, over 100 ballistic missiles at Israel. So there are a lot of people that are experiencing distress over that in addition to everything else that's going on. And it just feels like the hits keep coming. It feels very overwhelming. And therein can be something for expectation management. Waking up and expecting the world to be all cheery and perfect. That's not realistic. What can I expect? Focusing on being mindful, being in the present moment, focusing on my little corner of the universe, what can I expect? And that can be really important because when people feel distress, when they feel vulnerable, they want to have some, some semblance of control. Focusing on managing expectations and managing those things that you can control. I can't control what Iran's doing. I can't control the weather. I can't control a bunch of these things over here, but I can focus on those things that I can control and set reasonable goals for taking back my power, for reestablishing a sense of safety. In terms of codependency. And that's another expectation management. A lot of times people who are struggling with Codependency may expect things out of others that they're not able to provide. They may expect people to act a certain way and, and it doesn't fit. They may expect that they're going to be able to control another person's behavior or fix them. And that's not probably very realistic either. Looking at the symptoms you have of codependency and managing your expectations in your relationships, figuring out, you know, based on my symptoms of codependency, these expectations I have are unrealistic. So what would be a more realistic expectation for myself, for my partners, for my supporters in. In my relationship? So in terms of expectation management, that's a step I do have. I believe it's a 15 part series. I can't remember it's been a While on codependency, that is on the YouTube channel for the videos alone or as part of the Docsnipes.com Self Help Series which includes worksheets and reflections and resources. So you can go to either just YouTube channel, go to YouTube.comdocsnipes and search for the key term codependency, or you can go to doc snipes.com and sign up for the self help series and you'll have access to the worksheets and everything else that goes with them. Okay. Spiritual disco. Hello. Good to see you. Mr. Leslie says I'm learning to face situations, relationships with zero expectations, just to let them be what they are without my fiddling. And that is awesome. If you're able to be hands off and say, instead of trying to control this person or this situation, I'm going to live authentically and I'm going to let whatever manifests, manifests and that is ideal. But it's really hard. It is really hard. Especially if you start feeling close to somebody. It's really hard to not then try to control the situation so you don't lose them so you're not abandoned in the. In the initial stages, it may be a little easier to just let things manifest as they do. But once you start feeling that connection, the tendency to want to take control because you feel vulnerable, because you've exposed, your heart can become more palpable. And it's certainly something to strive for, but it's difficult. It's also important in my mind to have some expectations, if you will, of what is important to you in relationships. For example, you may have the expectation that an intimate partner is going to be monogamous. Or you may have an expectation that your partner is going to be open and share with you and be caring and supportive. There are certain things that we can know are important in relationships. And we have that expectation that if you're going to be in this type of relationship with me, these are the things that I need. Now, I'm not necessarily going to expect you to meet those, but just kind of. Kind of like interviewing for a job. When you interview with for a job, you may not have all the characteristics that they're looking for that they're expecting, but you may be able to meet some middle ground. But at least they know what their ideal candidate is. Can I talk about expectations we put on our partners? What's right or wrong? Right or wrong is really difficult to say. Going back to what I was just talking about, there are certain expectations, certain needs that we have, and it can be helpful to try to step back from it and think, if my best friend was in this situation with her partner, would and. And they were putting this expectation on their partner, would I think that is healthy or unhealthy instead of right or wrong. Healthy or unhealthy, productive or unproductive could be a different way of looking at it. So sometimes when we step back and we look and say, well, if somebody else was doing this, what would. I think it may give us a little bit more perspective. It's also important to recognize that when you start putting expectations on people, you may be communicating what your needs are. Now, those needs may be coming from stuff from your past. You may need constant reassurance because you've been abandoned before. You may need time to recover after you emotionally dysregulate because your HPA axis is all wonky right now. There may be some things that you're needing in the relationship that your partner may not understand. They may not understand why you need that. Once you start to understand why you need it. For example, if you need constant reassurance now because you've been abandoned in the past, that's something you can work on in therapy. And ideally, your partner is supportive and can point out, you know, your. You seem to be reacting as if I'm going to abandon you, and I'm not. You know, where is the evidence where the facts for and against your belief that I'm going to abandon you and redirect you to recognizing the impact of past trauma and differentiating the past from the present. That can be helpful for a lot of people. So again, right or wrong is. Is really difficult. What is it that you need in your relationships in order to feel safe? And what is realistic to expect in A healthy relationship. And those may be two very different questions in early recovery from trauma. Cptsd, borderline personality. A lot of times people need a lot more reassurance. They need, they. They don't feel safe and they're craving that. And is that something that your partner wants to have to do forever to constantly be reassuring you? Probably not. That's probably not healthy. Ideally, you will, through therapy, get to the point where you feel good about yourself, you know who you are, you are, you stop fearing abandonment. But that's going to take time. And in the meantime, your partner may be somebody you can lean on and say, I'm really feeling anxious right now. But it involves a lot of communication. If partners are rebelling against your expectations, saying that's not fair, that's not right, that's unreasonable. Okay, you know, write down those expectations and that's something. Again, you can talk, go to couples therapy, family therapy, and talk about with the therapist to identify where that need or expectation you have is coming from and in what, what a healthy way to meet that is, such that you feel safe and your partner does not feel completely overwhelmed by it. Or overwhelmed is a good word. My anxiety is making the relationship deteriorate, but I don't know what to do with my feelings. Okay, so that's part two. And I would say the fact that you recognize your anxiety is great. One of the things I might have people do between sessions is write down when their anxiety starts to bubble up. Write down the thoughts that are prompting that anxiety. John seemed distant tonight, which is making me anxious that he's angry with me. Okay, fine. I don't know what your your thoughts are, but trying to think about what thought am I having that's making me fear abandonment and what can I do to address it? And look at the facts for and against that belief in the present moment, my anxiety. John seems distant. So I feel anxious that he's getting ready to abandon me. What are the facts for and against that belief? How do I know he's getting ready to abandon me? What other reasons might exist for why he's being distant? Maybe he's tired. Maybe he is had a really intense day at work and he needs some, some downtime. Maybe he's really into whatever show he's watching on tv. I don't know. But it's important to examine the alternate explanations. Besides, it's me and it's the worst case scenario. That's one activity I have people do between sessions. Another activity, especially as it relates to anxiety that I have people do do between sessions is to write down what they're anxious about and put it in an envelope and you have schedule 30 minutes. I try not to go over 30 minutes. Schedule 30 minutes a day where you can go into that envelope and look at those things that you are worried about and decide based on the facts in context whether it's something you need to worry about or it's something that you were reacting from your emotional mind instead of your wise mind. Other activities for doing something with your anxiety. Remember, anxiety is part of the fight orf flight response. Anxiety comes up when your body feels. Your brain feels for some reason that you may be vulnerable or in danger in some way. So it dumps a whole bunch of excitatory chemicals in your body and blood sugar and other stuff to give you the energy to fight or flee. That's a great system. Unless you don't do anything with that energy and you're. It's just like if you drink and I'm not saying do this, please don't, but it's like if you drank 15 espressos one after the other and then just sat sat still, you'd probably vibrate out of the chair. And that's the way a lot of us feel when our anxiety gets extra triggered when we start to dysregulate. Finding something to do with that energy can also be helpful as long as you are sitting down or just being still if you will and in your own head it's going to be a lot harder to manage that anxiety. Turn it down and get into your wise mind. I have a lot of videos on distress tolerance skills and creating a distress tolerance toolbox. So there are a variety of different techniques that you can consider using. Some are designed like going out on a walk or gardening or playing with the dog. Some are designed to help burn up some of that energy and others are designed to trigger the vagus nerve and help down regulate your autonomic nervous system. But it's great that you recognize that your anxiety is pushing, maybe pushing your. Your significant other away or can causing you to react more impulsively or irritably with them when that's not really what you want to do. But you're feeling scared so you're acting out of that fear. I have chronic pain after my mom died and it just makes me cry and be stressed and turns into panic attacks. How can I manage expecting the pain and panic and being distressed. I have a great video that is on acceptance and commitment therapy by Stephen Hayes. But one of the most brilliant tools that Hayes has in actual is living in the and coming to expect I can have pain and do things that are important in my rich and meaningful life. So that is one tool that can be really helpful for chronic pain. It's important to also recognize, and it seems like you do to an extent, that stress, chronic stress and trauma can cause your autonomic nervous system to become dysregulated, can cause you to feel unsafe or continue to be in that grieving process. And when that happens over an extended period of time, it actually alters your neurotransmitters and can lead to increased pain, increased systemic inflammation. And I won't go into all the details of why that happens, but it does. And so stress increases pain. And understanding that can be important because it can also help you understand that, for example, on the anniversary of your mom's death, managing those expectations that day is going to be harder. You may be in more pain on the days you get up and you're in pain. Managing expectations is important. How bad is that pain? Is it a 2 or is it an 8? And based on that, what are your expectations, your compassionate expectations for yourself for the rest of the day? On days that it's a two, you're probably going to be able to do a whole lot more than on days when it's an 8. Being compassionate with yourself, if you get caught in that anger and guilt trap because you can't do what you think you should be doing or even you want to be doing, that's going to ramp up your stress response and actually increase your pain. One of the keys to non pharmacological pain management is reducing that stress response, triggering that vagus nerve. And there are activities. I've got videos on triggering that vagus nerve. One thing you can do well, two things you can do, not three. Sorry. Your vagus nerve is your main relaxation nerve. And it has some nerve endings that on are on your tragus, which is the little flap right in front of your ear. And then there's also some right behind your ear. So you can put your middle finger on the flap of your ear and your index finger behind your ear and rub. But you want to rub gently, just enough to move the skin, not enough to push that flap down. That is one way to manually stimulate that vagus nerve and the relaxation response. Slowing your breathing can be helpful. And I'm a big kid at heart. One of the ways I like doing it is getting some bubble gum and chewing the bubble gum and blowing bubbles because you have to slow your Breathing to blow a big bubble or it's just going to pop and that actually can trigger the relaxation response. Guided imagery can be really helpful for pain management. And I'm not saying it's going to do everything, trust me, I get it and I'm not minimizing the pain. However, we also recognize that when we focus on the pain, if I've got a toothache and I just continue thinking about my tooth hurting and focusing on my toothache, then guess what, that's probably going to continue to hurt more. If I can turn my attention to something else. It doesn't necessarily mean the pain is going to go away, but I'm giving it less attention. And in a weird way that actually helps us tolerate the distress more. It's not that it's making it hurt less, but we're able to tolerate it more if we're not focusing on it as much. There are other tools that you can use for distress management when you're feeling anxious, but those are the ones that I would encourage you to think about. When you. And, and without knowing more about your chronic pain. I'm just, I'm going to make the assumption that we're talking about something like fibromyalgia, something that is stress related. Even though fibromyalgia doesn't always have inflammation with is definitely a stress related pain condition. And when your stress goes up, your fibro pain is going to go up. And acknowledging that, I would encourage you to keep a journal of how things are going and notice what's different on days when you hurt less versus days when you hurt more. Notice I didn't say on days when you don't hurt. Sometimes we've got conditions, I've got a condition in my neck that pretty much always hurts and it's just a matter of degree. Is it a 1 or is it a 10? And I have to take steps appropriately. Like right now, you know, I'm about a six. And before I came up to the office my husband was like you really need to be making it a shorter day and get off the computer today because your neck is keeping you up all night. I know. So he's encouraged, encouraging me to manage my self expectations and it makes me angry, it makes me angry, it makes me frustrated, it makes me want to cry out of frustration and understanding whether you're crying out of pain, which is possible and in that case I would certainly be talking to your doctor because they're not meeting your, your pain needs or, and, or whether you're crying out of anxiety Frustration, anger, grief. When we start experiencing chronic pain and we can't do the things that we used to could, we're grieving. I'm grieving the fact that I don't have the body of a 20 year old anymore and I hate it. But it's a reality and I need to manage my expectations accordingly. When you notice that you're starting to have a panic attack, have a rescue plan in place, recognizing with panic attacks that they come and go generally in about 15 minutes. Now that 15 minutes is hell. I've had them. I know what I'm talking about. I know what you're talking about and I'm not trying to minimize that. But understanding like a, like a wave comes in, they talk about riding the wave and I hesitate to say that right now cuz waves are triggering for a lot of people, including myself. But the wave will come in just like the tide comes in and then it eventually goes out. The more you pay attention to it, the more energy you give to it, the more you keep it going, you keep that wave going. And if you can turn your attention to something else, I'm not saying ign, you know, totally ignore everything and fail to cope with it. But sometimes in distress tolerance we have to turn our attention to some. Well, turn it, turn our attention to something else. Why? What's the point? If we're focusing on the pain, if we're focusing on the panic, we're continuing to keep that stress response fueled. If we turn our attention to something else, the brain goes, oh, I guess I don't need to worry about that anymore. So it starts taking energy away from that stress tied and moving it toward whatever you're doing. And it could be again playing with the dog, it could be painting. Heck, it could be doing dishes if that makes you happy. But focusing, mindfully focusing on what you're doing can during that period of time can be really helpful. Do I have any book recommendations on managing expectations? No, I do not. But Lori Metz says the Expectation Hangover by Christine Hasler is really good. So awesome. I haven't read it, but it sounds like that's something I'm gonna have to pick up in short order. Would be wonderful. Thank you for sharing. Lori. How do we stop from daily experiencing chronic ptsd? And I have a lot of videos again on PTSD and complex PTSD recovery. I have a three part series on releasing trauma from your body. Part of it is going to be eliminating unnecessary stress so your HPA axis and autonomic nervous system can heal. Part of it's going to be strengthening that vagus nerve. Part of it is going to be becoming aware of the safety triggers as well as the threat triggers in your environment and addressing them. Increase the safety triggers, mitigate if you can't eliminate the stress triggers. Have a distress tolerance toolbox handy. You can go into and work with a therapist on systematic desensitization. For example, if, if there's a particular something that's triggering to you, then there are strategies that you can use to. So that particular sensory stimulus, like a smell or a sound or a place isn't doesn't trigger your stress response as much anymore. As you become more confident in your ability to manage your flashbacks and your anxiety reactions, you will experience them less. Your brain will be going, okay, I'm triggered, but I've got this. You know, I'm triggered. There's no stressor. I'm triggered. That was the past and in the present I'm safe. But it's a relearning process, a rewiring process. Miss ladybug. I have been doing these live Q&As on Mondays at 12pm Central Standard Time. But because of the disaster, I, I chose to start doing them every, every day this week just to be available in case people are in need of support during this time. And it's, it's harrowing. It's harrowing for a lot of people, even if they don't have family members affected or they weren't affected themselves. I don't think you can be a compassionate human being and not be devastated, not be heart wrenched by what we're hearing about what's coming out of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. What do I do if my doctor says the medication they prescribe is not in my system and that is impossible? I would encourage you if they're saying that and you need to prove that it is in your system for some reason, I would encourage you to have them do either a urine or a blood test and send it off to the lab so it can be evaluated using the mass spectrometer. That's what we do when we do screenings in treatment, whether it's for the presence or absence of illicit substances or for the particular presence or absence and levels of psychotropic medications that people are supposed to be on. We will regularly send stuff to the lab. It's not cheap, but we do. I expect people to do better. It gets me mad when they do bad stuff like messing up the community. And yeah, I expect people to do better too. Behaviors, communication, and I try to figure out what they're communicating and where in the world they got that message or what's prompting that. I try to understand behavior. I try to believe that people are inherently good and may have learned some bad behaviors or maybe reacting out of trauma. But sometimes it's a head scratcher, and it just. It infuriates me. But staying angry about it just steals energy from the things that are important in my rich and meaningful life. I can acknowledge it. I can make sure I can stay safe from those people, and I can direct my energy to focusing on the things that are right and doing the right things. Hang on a second. Y' all jumped for a second. Let's see. NW if you don't feel like your therapy is helping, I would encourage you to write down what your expectations are for therapy, what are your goals for therapy, and evaluate the progress that you're making. Look at your treatment plan that you should have developed with your therapist. And if you didn't develop a treatment plan with your therapist, that's a glaring warning sign right there. That's not ethical. But look at the. The treatment plan you developed with your therapist and see how you're progressing on those goals. If you're not progressing on the goals, then you may need a referral. It may not be a good fit. There are therapists like myself that are very cognitive, behavioral, very active, very practical. And then there are therapists that use different approaches, like humanistic or psychoanalytic, that are much more, much less active and directive. Can I compare the grief process at its beginning to trauma recovery? Great question. I can't. I can't really differentiate them, because when we experience trauma, we experience unsafeness and powerlessness. Said a different way. We experience a loss of safety and a loss of power, and we're going to grieve that we experience a loss of our expectations. You know, that could never happen to me. Well, oh, crap. It just did. And our brain doesn't know what to do with that. So when we talk about trauma. Well, when we talk about grief, we need to recognize that it's. When we experience a loss, it is traumatic. It may not be caused traumatic injury and ptsd, but it is traumatic, and it is a loss that needs to be grieved. The grieving process involves denial, shock, denial, anger, depression, and then eventually acceptance. And people don't go through it where they get out of denial. They get angry, they get depressed, and then they come to acceptance. That's not how it works. You're gonna jump back and forth between all of them, including Denial. I know I've shared before that when my father passed, I was not there when he passed. And so somewhere in the back of my mind, even though intellectually I knew he was dead, somewhere in the back of my mind, I. I felt like daddy was still there and I didn't want to revisit his house because that would make it real. So I was trying to avoid those reminders, avoid those traumatic reminders of my father's passing. And then I would get angry or depressed and I vacillated between all three of those. Sometimes I'd even move to a place where I thought I was at acceptance. And then I'd get triggered and I'd get angry again. And helping people understand that is so important. Grief is not a linear process. People don't grieve at the same rate or the same way. And we need to be sensitive to that fact that they are processing a something that happened that made them feel powerless and potentially unsafe. Lori, if you haven't been screened for fibro, I would encourage you to be screened for it. My daughter has fibromyalgia and suffers with a lot of pain. Now, it may be something completely different, but they are developing more treatments, both physical therapy and pharmacological, to help people with fibromyalgia and neuropathic pain. So that might be, that might be useful. If you are in or near a city with a bigger university, you can also explore whether they have any clinical trials going on that might be appropriate for chronic pain or chronic stress related pain. I'm not sure what pmo addiction is it? Do cold plunges and ice baths have effectiveness in lasting changes with mental health issues? There is a little bit of research that cold plunges may help with depression management, but that is still very early research and I'm certainly not going to recommend it because there are also potential negative side effects from it. Holding ice, putting your hands in ice baths, those are definitely excellent distress tolerance skills because it causes you to focus on, you know, the, the, the distress you're feeling because your hands are cold. And it also, for most of us, helps us train our vagus nerve. When that pain is too great, the instinct is to pull your hands out of the ice bath. And I've got carpal tunnel. So I've done my share of ice baths, but it was important that I leave my hands in the ice bath for the recommended period of time. So through slowing breathing and directing my focus to something else, I would activate that vagus nerve and strengthen the vagus nerve in the Process. One of the benefits or the, the biggest benefit they're finding with the temperature is that you do. If you're exposing yourself to something that is uncomfortable and you're forcing yourself to tolerate it, you're also likely activating that vagus nerve. So you don't, so you continue to experience it, if that makes sense. Is there value in conserving energy that can be used for later improvement or do we just avoid using it for destructive purposes for the moment? I mean, I think there's always value in pacing yourself so you don't burn out. So I'm not really, I don't, I guess I don't really quite understand the question. If you have addictions to Internet, to gaming, to something else there. I do have a couple of videos on that. But one of the things that's important is, is to identify the need that that's filling for you. Whether it is helping you distract yourself, whether you're afraid of missing out, whether you're trying to connect with other people and try to meet that need in an alternate way. Most people with gaming, Internet porn addictions are going to end up needing to put blocks and, and filters on their devices in order to help them get through the first several months. I do have several videos on recovering from pornography addiction and a couple on sex addiction. Hello, Senorita Aurora. Welcome back. I see we have a lot of people in the waiting room right now. Does anybody else have any other questions? Is the adrenaline junkie lifestyle ultimately destructive of self and others? Is there a healthy substitute? I would look at whether you're meeting the criteria, whether you're meeting the definition of addiction. Some people are adrenaline junkies and it doesn't cause them harm in one or more areas of their life. They're adrenaline junkies, but it doesn't cause them to miss work. It doesn't cause them to spend more time, energy, money on it than they had anticipated. So in that case, they just like adrenaline fueled activities. And there are some people whose nervous systems are wired as such that they need more stimulation in order to feel much of anything. But if it starts becoming an addiction, then yeah, it's destructive. Timmy, I think that dialectical behavior therapy. Well, let me, let me separate because dialectical behavior therapy is a manualized protocol. It's not just a bunch of tools. It's people who are in DBT see their therapist usually a couple times a week, and they have contact with their therapist in between coaching sessions, if you will. The therapist and the treatment team that are working with the person have Meetings once a week to discuss the person's progress and care. So there's a. There's a lot of stuff that goes into dialectical behavior therapy and as a protocol. Okay. If. When that's implemented right. I think it's wonderful. It is a great, intensive approach to helping people start healing their nervous system, start recognizing the impact of trauma, and regaining a sense of power and safety. So I think it can be really helpful. I think diary cards can be helpful or journaling. Mindfulness diaries, whatever you want to call them, are really helpful because we can look at them over time and we can look back and say, hey, yesterday was a really good day, Today wasn't. What was different yesterday from today? Or this week has been. I've been feeling kind of blah. Let me look at what happened last week and see what might be contributing to that this week. So I think that can be. I. I think there's certainly utility in it. Part of it depends on your diary cards, what kind of information you're collecting as well. If you're not collecting relevant information, then it's probably not going to be super effective. If, for example, you are. And other logs that you can keep are like your emotion logs. If you have a incident where you dysregulate and then you identify what triggered it and you identify how long it lasted and what you did to address it, that's super helpful because then you can go and look back and say what was what triggered it and why, so you can deal with that issue and was what I did helpful or not? You can also start seeing if you track the duration or the intensity or both, you can start seeing improvement in those things over time. People that I work with that have a lot of anxiety, have a lot of dysregulation issues, I do have them do a lot of logging. I won't say that it's really a diary or a journal because the more I ask people to write, the less likely they are to do it. So I keep it as short and sweet as possible. But I do like to be able to go back and look at things so we can see improvements as well as we can see, you know, early warning signs of backsliding and intervene early. Therapy for dependent personality disorder. It's really more having to do with your preferences, whether you want somebody who's more passive and reflective or somebody who's more active and directive. Cognitive behavioral therapy is much more active and directive. Either type of therapy can address the traumas and the issues that led you to develop the behaviors that you now classify as dependent personality disorder and identify alternate skills and tools to help you feel safer and more empowered. When you are comparing yourself to your peers, it is so important to remember you have no idea what resources they have or what they've been going through or what their background is. You know, walking into a college class, for example, two different people. One may have been, you know, been able to study and have had all these opportunities for internships and everything and experiential activities. The other one may have just had book learning. You're both in the same class. You don't know what that expectation is. Once you have similar experiential experiences, then you may have the same knowledge, but you don't know what training they've had. You don't know what their background is. You don't know what's going on with them. You also have to recognize or I don't like using should. People probably ought to recognize that on any given day we need to manage our own expectations. And on any given day, your colleague may be having a really bad day and they're not going to do everything they were supposed to do on a project or, or something. Or maybe they're doing great and you're distracted with these six other things that are going on at home. So you're not feeling like you're keeping up your, your, your end or maybe you're behind in your progress notes. All right? It doesn't mean you're either one of you is a better or worse therapist. It means your energy is divided six ways and their energy may be not may not be. I encourage people to compare themselves to themselves. Am I as good today as I possibly could be? And that's not even comparing myself to yesterday and saying, am I better today than I was yesterday? Because I have may have other stuff going on today that I didn't have going on yesterday. So really comparing yourself to compa. Reasonably and reasonable and compassionate expectations is important. No, we don't really have a mechanism to quickly dissipate the effects of fight or flight. Some people can downregulate more quickly than others. People who've experienced chronic trauma or chronic stress often take a lot longer to get back to baseline than others because their vagus nerve is not as reactive and their autonomic nervous system is a lot stronger. Their stress response is a lot stronger than their relaxation response. Are there any other questions? Please remember to like and share. And you can always ask my AI. If you have other questions in the interim and and it will provide you a response as well as inline citations to the specific places in the videos that I talk about that issue. Well, I'm glad you were here, tammy. Good to see you, jg. Miss Ladybug. And I think it's helpful that you're aware that this anniversary is coming up. And I would encourage you to manage your expectations, not to expect it to be okay, but also not to expect it to necessarily be a big deal. Just let it be as it is and develop a rescue plan, if you will, going into it so you eliminate as much unnecessary distress as possible leading up to it. You're kind to yourself through that in the week of that anniversary. You and you have supports that are available for you during that anniversary period. All right, everybody, I will see you tomorrow. Remember, I do class at 11 o', clock, so I may be a couple minutes late getting over here, but I will be here tomorrow.
