Ask Doc Snipes Live Q&A | Coping with Anger after a Disaster

Foreign. Hey there, everybody, and welcome back to yet another live and discussion. And today again, we're going to continue our discussion on coping after a disaster. I talked to a young woman this morning who is out in East Tennessee, and she's doing a lot of rescue and, and recovery work and really kind of down there in the trenches. And I asked her, how are you doing? And she said, you know, I'm, I'm doing okay. And then she kind of apologized to me for not giving me the standard response. She's like, normally I'd say I'm great and how are you? Blah, blah, blah. And I was like, you know, you don't need to apologize. Right now. A lot of people are feeling totally overwhelmed and it's better to be authentic. You're doing okay, and that is really awesome considering where you're at right now. And I don't expect you to be able to or even be interested in my stuff because you ain't got energy for that. You're barely able to handle the, the grief and the trauma that you're actually immersed in right now. And I think that's really important that we focus on that. We remember when we are dealing with something, whether it's a disaster or some other trauma, it's exhausting and it takes a lot of our energy. And a lot of people, even us extroverts, have difficulty taking on anymore. It's like, yeah, I might care about how you're feeling, but I just don't have the energy to cope with it right now. So I'm not gonna ask. And that's okay. That's okay to be authentic, to say, I really care about how you're doing, but I don't have it in me to help you right now. So that's where I am. I am glad that you have found some help. Dolly. That's awesome. Hello, Senorita Aurora. And call me Glitter. Hello, John. Now, don't everybody get too used to these, because I'm probably going to go back to my normal once a week as soon as we get past this little crisis point point here. But if we find that it's something that's helpful, I am considering creating a private daily chat that we can do. So, you know, we'll just kind of see how that goes. But at the moment, I am just glad everybody's here. I'm glad everybody is safe. One of the things that really struck me over the past few days, and it's getting worse by the moment, is the level of vitriol and anger that is out there. And that's compounded by a sense of powerlessness and not knowing, chaos. Because there's a lot of people who want to donate, who want to help, who want to reach out. And when you go online, you're getting mixed messages about what you can do, what you can't do. Sometimes you're getting flat messages. We don't want you here. Which is not. It's being misinterpreted. It was worded very poorly by Tima when they put it out. It's not that they don't want help. It's that the areas that they're working in right now, all of the hotel rooms are already filled with emergency responders. I rem. I remember after Katrina when law enforcement was being deployed from, you know, all over hither and yon, a lot of times they were being told, don't expect to have a place to sleep. You may be sleeping in your car. And that was just the reality of it. And those were emergency responders that were being invited in. So I. I believe. I believe what Tima was trying to communicate to people was, it's dangerous. The roads are crumbling. We don't know, you know, roads are still given out here, there, and everywhere. So we don't want you driving on these roads and becoming another casualty. We don't have room to put you up, so you're not going to have somewhere to stay. And what we need to do, and we talked about this a lot yesterday, we need to focus on the rescue efforts, the people that are still trapped in their houses. Now, I believe that's what they were trying to say. I hope that's what they were trying to say. Obviously, I can't read their minds. It is important, though, because there's a lot of people out there who are cut off. They still don't have electricity. They still don't have phone service. There's one county in eastern Tennessee right now that half the county is still inaccessible by anything. By car, by helicopter, by anything right now. And so we don't know what their needs are. It's not that we're not trying to get to them. It's we can't figure out how to get to them. And yes, helicopters. People keep talking about helicopters. Helicopters are great, but they got to have somewhere to land. Unless they're going to do that thing like they do on MacGyver and fly over and there's some sort of ladder or hoist or something, somebody gets on, and that's not meant for civilians. I don't even Know how that would work. But helicopters have to have somewhere to land. And that means a big, open, open, flat space. Helicopters, and I learned this from my husband over the past few days. You think because you see it in the movies, that they can come in and then they can drop straight down and come straight back up. That ain't the case. That adds a lot of torque, as he called it, on the engine. They really need like a 45 degree angle. So even if there is, you know, a hundred by 100 flat space that a helicopter could land, if they can't fly in and they can't fly out with that, you know, gentler angle, then they may not be able to do it. And obviously I'm not a helicopter pilot, but that was something that I learned. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, I can see why that might be a little bit more difficult because I've watched the shows, Hawaii 5O and those other shows on TV where they just bring these helicopters in that seem like they can land anywhere. And so there are those frustrations with people not knowing what help is available, not knowing when help will come, not not being able to figure out how to help because we know people are suffering. There's a lot of frustration. And that frustration, that anger, that sense of powerlessness is turning into a lot of projected anger, a lot of blame, a lot of. I've got to make sense of why y' all don't seem to be doing anything. And they are doing a lot of stuff. We're just not getting the play by play of it. And I don't know why we're not. I don't know why news, national news media is not covering it more than. More than they are. But there's a lot of progress being made and there's a lot of stuff being done. I saw pictures yesterday of the mule caravans. If you don't know, mules are a combination between a donkey and a horse. But the mule caravans going up the mountains, carrying water and stuff because it wasn't safe for an actual vehicle. And. And I bring all that up because anger is not meant to be nurtured. And people are taking their anger and instead of using it in a way that is helpful to move towards their goals, a lot of it is just being misdirected to vitriol on social media. And even though I, like I said yesterday, I've been trying to stay off of social media. When I go in to do a quick check here or there, I'm seeing it and I hear it from My husband, because I can't get him off social media. It's just one of those things. But recognizing that that's not productive. We need. Yes, there may be larger issues. There may not be. I don't know. But we need to focus on the task at hand. Right now, what's important is the people who are needing housing, the people who are needing water, the people who still don't have electricity. And I think that's. That's all really important. Yes, sadness does come out as anger and rage. And that's a really good point, Dolly. Sadness, depression, that's a sense of hopelessness and helplessness we get when we feel powerless, when we feel abandoned, when we feel unsafe. So we. And we're just like, there's nothing I can do. I give up. Remember, in. In our stress response, we have fight, which is anger. Flight, which is. Which is anxiety. We have freeze, which is anxiety. We have fawn, which, again, is anxiety. And then we have flop and flop. Is that depression? That's when your body just goes, screw it. There's nothing I can do. I feel sad. It hurts. It hurts to see suffering. And I feel sad, but I feel powerless to do anything. And then we start getting angry. We want somebody to pay. We want somebody to do something. Gosh darn it. And if you've been in situations like that before, if you've been traumatized and you've been hurt, you've been abandoned, you have been powerless for some reason, then this situation, even if you're not going through it, may ignite those feelings in you. And on a much, much, much smaller, lesser scale, I don't want to minimize what the people in Tennessee are going through and North Carolina are going through at all. But, for example, when I see those ASPCA commercials and I see those animals that are suffering, I get so angry. I get so sad. And then I get so angry, I'm grieving for those animals. Remember, grief is denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And a lot of people go back and forth between anger and depression. We feel depressed, and then finally we get this bolus of energy and we get angry again. And we try to do something, and it doesn't work or it doesn't seem to fix it. So we get depressed again, and then we finally recharge enough, or something prods us enough, and we get angry again. And it's this cycle until we can figure out how to make sense of it and how to address it in a way that's meaningful to us. So that's a great point to bring up that sometimes when we feel sad, we start protecting ourselves by getting angry. We start trying to protect ourselves. Others that we can empathize with by getting angry for them. You know, it's not directly. I'm not directly being hurt, but they're suffering and I'm angry that nobody's stopping their suffering. And that makes sense. That is a natural reaction. The question is, what do we do with that anger? How can we channel that anger? Because just sitting there, being angry, you know, pecking on your keyboard or just being angry and getting drunk or whatever you're doing, that's probably not going to help the issue or solve the problem. And I'm not saying that's what you're doing in particular. I'm just saying a lot of people are angry right now and they don't know what to do with it. So what is it that we can do with our anger? Anger is simply our bodies way of giving us energy to help us survive or to help those we care about survive. It's helping us fight or flee. So, all right, we have this energy now. What can we do with it? I've been using a lot of my energy to do these lives. I've been doing a lot of networking and sending out information, informational videos and stuff I've created over the years about disaster and trauma, trying to use my skills in the best way possible. Obviously, I can't go to Florida or Tennessee or North Carolina right now because it's not. There's nowhere for me to stay. And as we talked about yesterday, most people aren't really focused on their mental health right now. They're focused on their lower level basic needs of housing, clothing, food, water and medical care. And me being there going, hey, let's talk about your feelings. That's just not going to go anywhere that people don't have energy for that crap right now, to be brutally honest, until they feel safe and they're getting their basic needs met. The fawn response. Great question, Dolly. That is when, when you fawn over somebody, you're doing anything. If you're angry at me and I start fawning over you, I'm trying to do whatever I can do, just kind of spitballing to try to figure out what's going to make you not angry with me, how can I fix it? I'll do this, I'll do that, I'll do the other thing. Just tell me, tell me what you want me to do. A lot of times my dogs will fawn when they get in Trouble. They're just like, okay, you're angry with me. Here, you want my ball? Here, you want my toy? Here. What do you want to do? What will make you happy again? And that's their way of trying to reconnect and reduce their anxiety about abandonment. And I know people are like, abandonment anxiety. And dogs. Well, both of mine are rescues. Both of them literally were turned out on the street. So, yeah, I do think it's. There's some level of understanding in them, but. Great question. Anger is healthy. Anger is healthy. It protects us. And I've used the analogy before of a smoke alarm. Well, I. We'll start with the smoke alarm, because that's more politically correct. A smoke alarm does not tell you there's a fire. It tells you there might be a fire, and you need to get your butt off the couch and figure it out. The smoke alarm is like our anger. Our anger doesn't say there is a threat. Our anger says there might be a threat. Here's some energy. Get your butt off, off the couch and figure out what to do about it. Another analogy I've used that kids seem to like, because they can say the word poop a bunch is anger is like dog poop. And if you've had dogs in your house, you know that occasionally you'll be sitting there, and you're like, I smell crap. And you get angry. Right? At least I do. And so I'm thinking, I'm smelling poop Now. Does that mean there is poop somewhere in the house? Not necessarily. The dog may have just farted, but they can also say fart, which is another reason they like it. But the dog may have just farted, and. And I don't know. I don't know if there is a problem or not. I get angry, and I say, okay, I'm gonna get up and see if I can find where the poop is. And if there's no poop, then I'm like, okay. You know, I usually take the dogs out because I'm thinking they probably have got to do some business. But I let the anger go. Nothing to get angry about. It was a false alarm. If there is poop, well, then I clean it up. Holding on to anger is like carrying that poop around with you. You put it in the little bag, and you tie it up and you stick it in your purse or your backpack. And we all know those bags don't keep the smell in for very long. So everywhere I go, I'm still smelling the poop, and it's keeping Me a little bit irritable. I'm like that animal. And people around me, because I'm still irritable about the poop, and they can smell the poop. I mean, it's just emanating, you know, how stress emanates off people. Well, the smell of poop is emanating off me, and they're like, whoa, why don't you go catch a shower and we'll catch up with you later. But that's what carrying anger around is like. You're carrying it with you, and you actually have pheromones that emanate from you that say, danger, Will Robinson. But a lot of people will sense that anger coming emanating from you, and they'll back up a little bit. And recognizing that is not always what we want to have happen. Sometimes we do. The person we're angry at, we may want them to back up a step or three. But understanding that if we just carry around this anger with us all day long, people are going to back away from us, and it can be. It can be problematic. Anger itself is designed to help us determine if there is a threat and address the issue. That's it. That's it. It's not something we're supposed to carry around with us. Oh, yeah, Dolly and both of my dogs are. Are big. Let's see. I guess Lily's the only one in here now, and she's asleep. But. How do you manage when somebody's very angry with you? Great question. And a lot of people are angry. They're angry at the world right now. They're angry at each other. They're angry. Who knows? The first thing I try to do when somebody is angry at me or being angry toward me is take a breath, step back for a minute, kind of evaluate the situation. Is this person angry at me for something I did or didn't do? You know, are they actually angry at me for a reason? And if so, all right, what do I need to do to correct it? So I kind of get that in my head. Or are they angry and I'm just a convenient target or a safe target right now? They're angry about all this stuff that's going on in the world right now, but there's nobody to direct their anger at there. So they're going to get angry at me because I left my dinner dishes in the sink or something. And. And understanding that oftentimes it's a combination of both things. It's. Especially if the anger response seems excessive in comparison to what you did, and that's okay. My point being, don't take everything super personally. Second thing, recognizing that anger is a response to threat, the person feels vulnerable or threatened by you in some way. Maybe they felt betrayed. Maybe they felt like you betrayed their trust. Maybe they felt abandoned. Maybe they've. I. I don't know. I don't know what threat they perceived, but there was something coming from you or your behaviors that they perceived as being threatening in some way. So their stress response, their ang. Their response was anger. Fight or flee. They chose fight. They're angry. They're putting up this wall. They're going, you are not going to hurt me. So what do we do about it? Ideally, we give the person their space. We acknowledge their anger. I get the sense that you're really angry with me right now, or, you know, if, you know you did something wrong, you're really angry at me right now, and you have every right to be. Or I know you're really angry at me right now, and I truly am sorry. And I know you need to time, space, whatever, before you're ready to talk about how to fix this or what I need to do to earn your forgiveness. And putting the power back in that person's court is helpful. If you did something wrong, acknowledging it, I know you felt betrayed when I did this, or I didn't mean to do whatever this is that made you angry, but I did, and I am truly, truly sorry for it. And asking them sometimes, what is it that I can do to earn your trust again? Or what is it I can do to earn your forgiveness? Putting it in their court so they're not assuming that you're expecting them to just let it go because you were friends. They're angry with you. You assume they're just gonna, you know, forget about it in a day or two. That authenticity can go a really long way when somebody is angry with you. Letting them have their space is also important. When people feel vulnerable, they don't want you taking their power. They don't want you telling them to forgive them. Saying, I know you need space, or tell me what I can do, and putting it again, giving them the power to say, you need to do this, this, and this to make this right. Okay, that is helpful. Now, you may not be willing to do this, this, and this, but at least you're opening a dialogue. In addiction recovery, there's a step where people have taken a fearless moral inventory. Then they go through and they try to make amends to those whom they'd harmed, unless doing so would cause further harm. So this is a common process that a lot of people go through. Is the anger healthy to hold on to? No. A lot of people hold on to their anger and resentment at others because they feel like that's how they. They can stay safe. If I stay angry at you, if I keep this wall up, then. Or this force field, let's say a force field up, then you can't hurt me anymore. You won't hurt me anymore. The problem is it takes a lot of energy to keep that force field up. Think about the electricity required to keep some sort of force field up, and that's energy that we could be using to move toward our rich and meaningful life, that we're using to defend against something. In the past, I've said guilt and shame are turn. Anger tor. The anger turned inwards. Yeah, I. I would agree with that. Is there a healthy way to process and release this so it doesn't become toxic? Well, guilt is anger at ourselves for something that we did that we shouldn't or something that we didn't do that we should have. Okay. Writing down each thing you feel guilty for is important because then you can evaluate it, number one, based on the facts in that context at that time, did you know any better? Could you have done any better? And a lot of times, you know, how we talk about armchair quarterbacking or hindsight is 20 20. There's a lot of trite little sayings, but it's true. I can look back over things in my past and go, oh, wow, I don't know how I missed that. I should have, but I didn't. Looking back and stepping into your self at that point in time and saying, did I know any better? Could I have made other. Actually made other choices? Or was I not informed about what other choices were available? Did I make the best choice for myself based on what was going on in the moment? And we talk about this a lot in addictions. People who started using and then started using heavily, you know, we look back and we say, why did you start doing that? Well, I don't, but a lot of people do. And ultimately we go back to what that person was going through at that point in time, and that felt like their only option. They didn't know how to ask for help. It's not that there was no resources available. There probably were, but they didn't know how to ask for help or it wasn't culturally appropriate to ask for help. So they suffered in silence. And in order to survive, they ended up drinking or using because that was the only way they could numb the pain for any short period of time. Everything is very contextual and we do need to remember that. Even if we look at something that we did and we shouldn't have and we knew better right then, and we just intentionally made a bad choice because we've all done it, forgiving ourself is important. And what we can do is we can look at it, we can learn from it so we don't do it again. We can recognize how that behavior, whatever it was that we did, goes against who we really are at our core and develop a plan or make a proclamation to ourselves that we won't do that again and then let it go. Being angry at myself over something I did back in 1993 is only draining my energy and taking energy away from things that I could do for the people, things, experiences, etc that are important in my life now. All it's doing is dragging me backwards. Yes, sometimes there are things we. And you know, I don't like the word, but I'm going to say it should feel guilty for guilt, healthy guilt is part of our conscience. It says you made a really crappy choice and you knew better. You know, that's the difference. You knew better. So if I made this really crappy choice and I knew it was the wrong choice, but I made it anyway, okay, I probably should feel guilty about that. And then I need to learn how to modify my own behavior so I don't make that mistake again. Toxic guilt is when we feel guilty about things that either were out of our control or, or we actually didn't have the resources or the choice we made at that time was the best way that we knew how to survive at that point in time. So that situation in context is really important and that's toxic guilt because we can't change that. And you know, looking back, we didn't have the knowledge to do any different. So feeling guilty for it, it's like getting angry at a child for doing something that they didn't know any better and it doesn't do any good. You can correct the behavior, but continuing to make them feel guilty for it. They didn't do it to be oppositional or bad or whatever. They didn't know any better. I remember one time my dog was acting out. I don't remember exactly what he was doing. I was 10 and I ran out of my room chasing him and I exclaimed after him, you little so and so. The word that I wasn't supposed to use. And my mother was like, donna lease. And at that Point I. I knew I'd done wrong. And you know, it was impulsive. It was in the moment. It wasn't like I contemplated it. Did I feel guilty in the moment for doing it? Yeah. Did I learn how to better mind my tongue after that? Oh, yeah. Now, shame. I know I've been talking a lot about guilt. Guilt is anger at yourself over something you did or didn't do. Shame is different. Shame is feeling like you are bad. Shame is feeling like you are broken because of who you are. Shame is who you are. I'm ashamed. And we need to separate behaviors from self. Even if you've made a lot of bad behaviors that you feel guilty for, okay, you have. You can learn from those. You can change those. Does that mean that the in inherent person, you are the core of you. Does that mean you're a bad person? Or does that mean you are a person that was struggling and made bad choices? Hello, cher. It's important in. Okay, let me go back up to Call Me Glitter. I skipped over that one. I'm sorry. Taking everything personally, that is a skill. And I know you're like a skill. Seems like a curse. Well, think about when you developed it. Those of us who grew up in chaotic households, in addicted households, we developed that as a skill to learn how to survive. If mom or dad is angry, then it must be my fault or I must be responsible for fixing it. So I'm going to take it personally. Maybe I didn't do it, but I'm going to make it my personal mission to try to fix it, because that's what I'm supposed to do. You probably grew up getting a lot of those messages that when somebody's angry, it's your fault. When somebody's sad, it's your fault. When somebody's sick, it's your fault. You know. You get my drift? Write those thoughts down. And I know a lot of people hate writing things down, but there's a purpose to it. There is a purpose to it. When we say something, the words that I'm saying right now are literally going in one ear and out the other. And you may be listening, you may be remembering, and that's wonderful. However, they. They've done studies and they found that if we write something down on paper and we see doesn't go anywhere, and we are likely to focus on it longer and give it the attention that it deserves or needs until we can actually erase it off of our board or cross it off of our list. So writing it down actually helps us get it out of our head and onto paper, which is one benefit. And it also enables us to more effectively focus on it, which, you know, is an interesting little trick. That's one of the benefits they found of text based therapy. And I'm, you know, I'm not a big fan of text based therapy for a lot of reasons, but when people write things down and when I do video counseling, a lot of times I'll have a little chat window open in the video counseling session. So if there's something I think we need to make note of that we need to focus on, I'll type it up there. It's just one of those little bullet points that I don't want to get by. So anyway, you're at personalization. Knew I'd get back there somewhere. Just had to go on the little detour. Writing down when you personalize something. I feel guilty because I feel like it's my fault because I feel like so and so is angry at me, because, okay, fine, write it down. No judgment. Just write down what your thoughts are and then evaluate the facts for and against your belief. And that means the actual facts, not what you're guessing is going on. I remember I. I did have a boss at one point who. Didn't ever seem to be in a good mood. And for the longest time I personalized it and I thought, she hates me. And after some soul searching, I really realized that she was just a really unhappy person. Whenever she was around other people, unless she was doing a, you know, dog and pony show for investors or, you know, auditors or something, she almost never smiled and laughed. She. When she was not on display, she just constantly seemed to be very unhappy. And I started to realize, hey, you know, there are some things I really don't think she liked me, and that's okay. I believe that it was less about me and more about her stuff because I went through, you know, the list of things because I worked under her for a long time and I tried to figure out what was it that I did that offended her or, you know, whatever. And I couldn't find anything. I had always given 110%. I thought she was doing a great job in her position, blah, blah. So I don't know what it was. I could have reminded her from some of somebody from her past that she didn't like, but it was very icy between the two of us. Whenever she would come down to my clinics, you know, she would. It felt like she would intentionally try to avoid eye contact with me and, and intentionally try to avoid conversing. With me. Now, I don't know if that was true. I'm saying it felt like that's my emotional mind kicking in going, she was dissing you. I don't know that. That was my perception. And short of sitting down and going, hey, what kind of beef do you have with me? I won't know that answer. And I think it's important when we take things personally to start regularly evaluating things on their face value. When I would get student evaluations back when I taught at uf, it got to the point where my husband would take my evaluations and he would read them and then give me the highlights. But because I got my evaluations back a couple of times and I read them, and as he will lament, 98% of them were great. 2% or less had something critical to say. And sometimes it wasn't even appropriately critical. Like, they didn't like the way I dressed or, you know, I talk too fast. Well, sorry. And the same thing's true for YouTube comments. God bless Adriana and my husband, because the trolls on YouTube, even though they're few and far between, just feel like they cut to my core. And, yes, I let that happen, but it's hard to foreign. It's hard to not take things personally sometimes. And. And the only reason I'm telling you that is I feel where you're at. I recognize that it's something that we developed as a survival mechanism. I recognize that when we evaluate most of these things based on facts and context, we'll realize they had nothing to do with us or little to do with us. But I also realized that in the. In the moment, it hurts. And we will tend to focus on the two bad things versus the lots of good things. My son is much younger, and I was telling him the other day about one of my videos that I put out, and I said, oh, my gosh, it got lambasted. And he's like, what was the, you know, the, like ratio? Or whatever? I was like, it was like, 96.8% likes. You know, it was below 97. And he just, like, grunted and walked away from me. But I focus on that 3% that took issue with what I had to say and didn't leave any constructive feedback. I'm like, okay, you hated the video. I. I'm sorry. What did I do wrong? What can I do better? But nada. I got nothing. And that's another thing that makes personalization hard, is when we personalize things and we don't know what to do better if we Get a bad evaluation from our boss. Okay, you said that I didn't meet expectations in these six areas. How can I do that better? And that is something that we can work on. That's constructive feedback. Am I going to take it personally? Yeah, but I probably should. And that's where that healthy guilt comes in. If I didn't meet expectations, then clearly my head was somewhere else. I'm trying to think of nice ways to say things because sometimes I have a mouth like a sailor. But anyhow, In terms of people breaking boundaries, it's important to remember that behaviors, communication. If people violate your boundaries, they may be doing it because they feel threatened by you in some way. So they're trying to control you, they're trying to push you out, they're trying to do something like that. And generally when somebody violates your boundaries, that's an aggressive move. An aggression comes from a place of threat or anger. So we want to back up and think what was causing that person to feel threatened or angry. And that caused them to violate my boundaries. That caused them to tell me what to think or cause them to, you know, go through my. Read my diary and tell the whole world about it or something. I mean, that's a clear violation. Why would somebody do that? And what was the benefit to them? And I know that sounds horrible asking about the benefit, but we don't do things unless there's a benefit. If I want to make somebody feel vulnerable because they made me feel vulnerable, then I might share. I wouldn't. I'm not. I'm just giving an example. But going with that diary example, if I'm a sibling, I might share your personal information, your personal diary stuff online. Because you made me feel vulnerable. So I'm not. Now I'm going to make you feel vulnerable. Is it healthy? Of course not. But again, it's always curious to me what the motivation of the behavior is. But the behavior almost always, if not always, has meaning and communicates something that the person was not able or willing to communicate with words. You're right, Senorita Aurora, we've kind of gone off in left field, but we didn't have a lot of questions coming in today about disaster related anger. And I figured, well, since I'm here, might as well hit some of these, Hit some of these topics. What led me into becoming a therapist? Well, to be brutally honest, I was trying to fix myself. I started out as pre med, always thought I was going to be a doctor, then figured out that I didn't do calculus well. So I switched. And then at that point in time, there was a serial killer. There's no nice way to say it. There was a serial killer on the campus of the university I was at, and there was a lot of trauma and a lot of drama for obvious reasons, and I started volunteering for the crisis center after that. That was how I reached out to try to help and found that I was pretty good at it and it made a lot of sense to me. The things I was learning made a lot of sense to me, and it seemed like that was the path that I was really supposed to go down. It certainly wasn't the path my parents wanted me to take. But ultimately I hope they ended up being proud of the decisions I make. I don't know both of them. Both of them died, so I don't have the ability to really ask them. But you know, I think that's how I got here. Share I don't know if it's going on today. I know a couple of days ago Verizon was having a lot of outages, so and why that was I don't know if we ever really figured out. But it could be that as some of the towers in Florida and South Carolina and North Carolina and stuff start coming back up, I don't know how that affects the whole system. Or whether they're just like random outages going on right now, but I wouldn't assume it's necessarily your phone. I did have to reboot my phone this morning. It started acting really weird and freezing up on me, but that could be because I hadn't rebooted it in like two weeks. So I don't know. But before you assume it's your phone, I would certainly reboot that and look and see if your carrier is having any outages right now. For people who suffer with mental health conditions, is it advisable to take time to work on your mental health daily to keep it stable? I would expand that. I think everybody needs to take time out on a daily basis to be mindful of their physical and mental health, to prevent problems and prevent relapses if they've got mental health issues. Yeah, I have two videos on the YouTube channel. One's Morning Mindfulness and the other one's Evening Mindfulness. I know really creative titles, but they walk you through the beginners protocol that I use myself and I use with clients to get grounded and focused in the morning and review my day, etc. So I'm aware of any vulnerabilities that I have or I may have coming up And I can address them before they become issues. You're right. Call me Glitter. It is really confusing when somebody yells at you and you did nothing wrong. And I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying it happens and it sucks. If there's somebody that does that with regularity. It's important to figure out what you need to do to stay safe around them. It's also important to recognize. And we'll go back to that boss that I had who was notorious for when she would get mad at her direct subordinates, she would scream so loudly you could hear her through the building. And it wasn't always necessarily at. They'd be there in a group and she'd be screaming at somebody and then somebody else because she'd still be revved up and she'd still be in that yelling framework and she'd get frustrated easier with other people. And we all know when we're angry, when we've got that anger button on, it's hard to be angry at this one person or thing right here and then all of a sudden switch gears and turn it off and oh, hi. Yeah, you're doing great. It just kind of. Kind of like that dog poop smell. It just kind of comes with you recognizing what you need to do to stay safe around that person. Sometimes it may mean just acknowledging that this person has really crappy communication skills and they need to get a grip and letting it go. It's not always appropriate to address it with them, depending on whether they're your boss or somebody else. And that's important. If they are your boss and it feels like a hostile work environment, you can take it up with hr. It's an option, but you need to weigh the benefits and consequences. Is. I wish that weren't the case, but it is. Oops. Well, I am very sorry to hear you had a rough childhood, Jaden, and I'm glad you found this to be a safe place that you can come to and know that. I'm. I'm probably going to tell it like I see it, but I also recognize that we are all acting from a place of trying to survive the best we know how based on the skills that we have and through the lens of experiences that we've had. And that's the crucial point that a lot of people miss, is two people are going to experience everything differently because they both have had different experiences to shape their expectations and perceptions. Thank you, Senorita Aurora. I wish I didn't have trolls, but everybody does. And I again, am grateful that I have my buffers out there to handle the first line comments and obviously any of the clinical comments that need further addressing or whatever they pass on to me. But they are really good and Adriana answers a lot of the questions herself. She's a psychologist in Romania. But they do do me a huge service mentally, emotionally by, by buffering me from, from the nonsense. And like I said, every once in a while there is some effective constructive feedback that I can say, okay, I let me address that, let me try to alter how I'm doing this. And, and I do. But most of the time there's no feedback at all. I'm glad you're back. Share welcome back. I appreciate that, Senorita Aurora. If the channel, if our lives ever get more interactive, we may take you up on that. And please everybody here. I see we've got 26 people in the chat right now. If everybody would share the channel with one person or with one, you know, set of people that you connect with on social media, it would really help grow the channel and enable us to do these more often. And actually, I don't even think I turned on ads today, which I'd really rather not turn on ads. If we can get enough people participating and doing the super chats or whatever, I'm hoping we can make that, make a, make a go of that. I've heard and I've read in a lot of places people are having to wait six to eight weeks to get an appointment with a therapist, and that's just not tenable. If you're in distress, you're in distress. You don't want to wait two months to get it addressed. If you had an earache, you wouldn't tolerate somebody saying you've got to wait two months before you can see the doctor. So I'm trying to make some of these services available. It's not therapy. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's therapy or as good as therapy, but helping people get some skills and tools that might help them manage until they can get in to see a individual provider. How do you make someone feel safe that has anxiety around you due to the mistakes that you've made in the past? Talk to them about it. Acknowledge that you made mistakes in the past and it causes them to feel unsafe. When you sense that they're starting to feel unsafe in the present, acknowledge it. It seems like you're starting to feel anxious right now. Is there something that I can do to help you feel safer, or can you help me understand what I did that's making you feel anxious right now so I can not do it again. Share it almost sounds like you may be dealing with either emotional dysregulation or intermittent explosive disorder. I would encourage you to, I don't know when you say your oldest, I don't know if he's a still a child or if he's an adult. But if he's a child, I would certainly consider consulting with the pediatrician about getting a referral for what's going on to help him develop healthier anger management skills and skills and tools. Thank you for being here, ad skipper pro. I appreciate it. Great question, dolly. And. Of course it's back on my bookshelf. If you go on, you can go to your library and see if they have it first because obviously it's better to get it free than have to pay for it. But you can go on Amazon.com and download. There is a spiral bound book that Lina Hannah's put out all of her DBT worksheets and it's, it's thick. It's like 300 pa. And then there is another book that Linehan has done and I would stick with Linehan's works on implementing DBT therapy. Now if her book I I still think the work, the workbook is really helpful because it has all the worksheets in it. If her book is too dense and overwhelming to go through because it's, there's a lot. Not saying that you're not smart or anything, you're plenty smart. But if you're struggling emotionally, then processing everything she has to say may be overwhelming. There's a book by New Harbinger Publications that is Michelle Skeen, I believe is the one who did it. I could be wrong, but the title is DBT Made simple and that is sort of like the Cliff Notes Guide to dbt. Let me see if I can find that book real quick. This is the workbook. It's DBT skills training handouts and worksheets and it's about an inch and a half thick. And let me see. I'm sorry, I was wrong. It's 422 pages. So there's a lot of stuff in here that is really super useful. Now one of the things that is you're you're going to miss by not being part of a DBT program is the interim because people who are in a DBT program have a therapist, but then they also have a coach that they contact on the daily in between in order to help them stay safe, apply the tools they're learning and move through the program. So you will miss that unfortunately. But yeah, that the workbook is, is excellent. Alrighty everybody. I have a couple of meetings this afternoon that I've got to get to, but I really appreciate you being here today and I will see you tomorrow at 12pm CST 1pm EST. Take care. It.