Live Q&A with Doc Snipes

Foreign. Everybody, and welcome to this live stream. I am sorry I canceled yesterday's so abruptly, but I'm here now. And actually I just. Today is, like I said, not one of my a days, so I left the door open. My creatures are going to come and go a little bit in the background. I guess Brewster's going to be a little antsy and. And that's okay. So I am here to answer questions you may have. And it doesn't have to be related to trauma or grief. I try to do these periodically. I'm hoping to figure out a time every week that I can regularly do them again. But I'm still trying to kind of filter through on that. So welcome to everybody who's joining Now. I see we've got 12 people in the room. How to manage people with borderline personality. Well, what you're really asking is how to understand borderline personality symptoms. Borderline personality symptoms. Well, all of our behaviors but BPD symptoms have meaning their communication. And they indicate whether the person feels safe or they feel traumatized. They feel unsafe when they are splitting. They may be experiencing a sense of unsafeness if they have switched from loving you to hating you. And it's important to recognize that that is their stuff. Now. How to interact with a person when they're disregulating, there's no one way to deal with that when they're disregulating. It indicates that they are. They're in fear. Whether there's something going on in the present moment or whether something from their past is being triggered in the present moment, they are dysregulating. Therefore, one of the first things that can be helpful is to help them feel safe. Help them feel feel secure in the present situation. Let them know that you are there for them. I don't know if you're a counselor or a loved one or whatever, but just in general, helping people feel safe and tolerate the distress until they can downregulate. It's important to remember that people with BPD take longer to downregulate than other people. And a lot of that is because their HPA axis or their stress response system is already dysregulated. So they go from flat to having this tsunami of stress hormones. Where some people may have like a little tidal wave, they have a tsunami. So it takes longer to recover from that. Being compassionate with them and helping them identify what are the tools that they have, what are their distress tolerance tools that they can use. What do they need to feel safe in the moment? Recognizing after the fact that Recovering from that is exhausting. Disregulation is exhausting and therefore it's going to be important for them to explore what they need to do to be compassionate with with themselves. After that, as soon as they quote, calm down, they're not fine. And you know, those are two phrases that I try not to use very much. Once they re regulate they're still exhausted. It's like after somebody runs a, you know, 10K or a marathon or something. Yeah, they're done. They sit down, they catch their breath, they get their heart rate gets back down to baseline but it's going to be a bit before they get re regulated. Helping people identify their triggers when they are in their wise mind, not when they're disregulated, but when they're in their wise mind. Helping them identify their triggers for disregulation, what tends to make them feel unsafe and helping them figure out how to process those again. I don't know if you're a therapist or a concerned friend, so you may not be the one processing it with them, but those are the big issues. A lot of people with bpd, I would say the majority, but we'll stick with a lot, have experienced a lot of trauma and often have an insecure attachment style, often have extreme abandonment fears. So all of those things can and do impact the lens through which they see and interpret the world. Where you may not see or perceive a threat. They may and it's important to recognize that based on their prior experiences, a non verbal or something may have meaning to them. It may trigger a prior memory and accepting in the moment, okay, this is how you feel. You feel terrified, you feel enraged, you feel this, all right, it is how you feel and it's not time to start saying well you shouldn't feel this way. Hopefully you never use the should word. But it's time to validate that that's how you feel in the moment and why you feel that way. I may not understand and I'm going to be here to help support you and help you feel safe until you can get into your wives mind and process that. Let's see. Now. Hallucinations are not a part of borderline personality. So you may be referring to bipolar disorder in which the person is having psychotic features. Hallucinations are a whole different ball game and I'll share a story I've shared in a couple other videos. When I was a very, very young counselor and, and still in school, I volunteered at a crisis hotline and we had one regular caller who had schizophrenia. And in his perception of the world. When someone would say the T H E I think it's an article. I don't remember my grammar very well. That was their way of basically telling him that he was going to be damned to hell. And well, you and I recognize that that's not the case. In his mind that was very real where you and I recognize that people who are like newscasters on TV don't even know who he is. He felt that that was a direct attack toward him and no amount of arguing with him about it or rationalizing with him about it would make any difference. And my supervisor was, when I staffed this issue with him, my supervisor was like, you need to join him in his reality. And if he thinks the sky is purple, then it's purple because it's purple to him. What can he do to deal with the purple sky if that's what's bothering him? And instead of trying to bring him into my reality, helping him figure out how to cope and stay safe in his reality was far more productive. And yes, he needed to be stabilized on meds and everything else, but in the middle of a non lucid moment when somebody's terrified, trying to convince them of what is real and what isn't doesn't work. Preventing hallucinations, you. Part of that is medication stabilization and stress management. Stress management tends to. Or stress tends to make it harder to manage psychotic issues. So that's one thing that we can pay attention to. I guess I was going to say something else about hallucination. Sorry, my. I still have that brain fog today. Join them in their reality, address the issue. I'll think of it. I'm sorry, I can't think of the rest of that answer that I was trying to come up with. But it is interesting working with people who have had hallucinations and forcing yourself to get out of your rote zone, your reality to help them again, to help them figure out how do I feel safe. And sometimes I make the analogy of Alice in Wonderland. The reality there was very, very different than the reality above ground, if you will. And so yeah, sorry, trying to think. Thank you for joining us over here, Rookie J. Hello Dragon man. Purple Eater 17. How do you resist the mentality of learned helplessness? It's difficult. It is difficult. And it is okay to recognize that. Okay, you may go there for a minute and it feels like, you know, what the frig, you know, I. It feels like everything's out of control. And for me, okay, for me, I have to step back and identify my cognitive distortions Everything is out of control. No, not everything. There are several things that are very out of my control right now. But I do have things that are in control. Everything is not going wrong. So I step back, I address my cognitive distortions. I look at my rich and meaningful life collection, collage, whatever you want to call it, and I recognize the parts of my rich and meaningful life that I do have and that are untouched by this. And I'm grateful for that and recognizing that should bad things happen, and they will, I mean, I'm re. I'm a realist. Bad things will happen. And should bad things happen, I do have support. I do have the ability to adjust to things, and I do have the ability to plan. And if you've been watching my videos for a while, you know, I'm a planner, so I like to have a plan B and then a backup plan for that. So I've usually got a plan C. And. And that's what I did yesterday. I said, okay, what about this situation is making me feel out of control, out, powerless. And what aspects of it can I control? I can't. No matter how much my heart wants to, I can't control what my neighbors are feeling. And that is agonizing. And I deal with that through my faith, but that is me. And. And, you know, obviously, when they are ready, when they need something, all of us will be there. But I can't force them to feel better. They have to process in their own time. And all I can do is be there and be available. So recognizing the best ways to use my energy regularly, reminding myself, because it's not just the thought come. The thought of learned helplessness comes in my mind, and I say, oh, you've got power. And then I feel much better, would love it to be that way, but it's not. I feel better for a moment, and then I look out the window again. And sometimes it feels like it hits me like a ton of bricks again. I'm like, all right, crap, you know, So I get better at rehearsing, you know, what I've got, what I've got control over. And then I start feeling guilty for being grateful for what I've got. And then I've got to process that. But it's important as you peel back the layers of this onion, if you will, that you're mindful of what you're experiencing and figure out whether it's something you can address right then or whether it's something you need to table and maybe address at a different time. Somebody mentioned in the premiere that just like with grief, and there's a grieving process to this, there's a lot of grief going on. A lot of us are stuck. Well, not stuck bouncing back and forth between anger and depression today, but just like with a grieving process with trauma, there will be trauma bursts with. Where that trauma gets triggered again by reminders of some sort, or maybe not even. It just all of a sudden pops in your head, and that sucks. You know, you really wish you could totally program your brain on, okay, we're done. We process this. Nothing we can do about it. Move on. Brain doesn't work that way. Brain is. It just doesn't work that way. I don't have an analogy for it today. So that, for me, that's how I handle learned helplessness. I recognize that in a different situation at a different time, I might have been much less capable to handle the situation when I was, you know, a child or something. But I recognize, and I think it's important to recognize what resources you do have. And it may not be internal resources. Hopefully you've got some of those, but you also may have other resources, friends, colleagues, community resources that you can call on and help you feel empowered. Because the opposite of helplessness is power. And. And ultimately, in my mind, that's what it comes down to. Without knowing exactly what's going on with you that may or may not, you know, hit the spot of what you're dealing with. But. And. And you may have a different temperament than mine, so that may not be as comforting. You know, the, the cognitive stuff. Be compassionate with yourself as well. You know, if you feel like you're just done, you're exhausted, and you need time. Be compassionate. You don't want to unpack and stay there for two weeks, but be compassionate with yourself. And if you've. If you say, I ain't got any fight left in me today, all right, that's okay. That's your body saying you need to recharge because I'm. I'm overloading. So I guess that would be the other thing. But besides the cognitive. Be compassionate and guilt. Oh, I can. I have this whole loosely connected thoughts today. But you also may feel guilt for feeling helpless and feeling like you can't protect people. Or you may feel guilt for not having energy because the. Because you're exhausted from trying to fight an unwinnable fight or deal with chaos and, and recognizing that guilt is self anger. So exploring what that guilt is about and whether it is warranted and. And only you can make that decision. But sometimes we should ourselves into oblivion and, and looking at that guilt, saying, would I expect, would I hold somebody else to this standard? Would I be angry with them or disgusted with them if they did what I'm doing now, if they felt helpless, if they had a moment or a day or maybe even a weekend or something where they just said, you know what? I just can't. That's. We've talked in the past about the stress response, Fight, flee, freeze, fawn, which is kind of do anything to make it stop or just forget about it. And there's another F that works well there, but I try to watch my mouth on YouTube and, and sometimes learned helplessness is when you're in that last F stage and your brain is just going, I got nothing left. I got nothing left. And unless you recharge, we can't go forward. So it's kind of like trying to do something on your phone with a battery that's got 1%. You know, you're probably not going to be able to finish what you're doing. It's. It's an exercise in futility until you charge the battery. I think I like that analogy. Anyhow, I'm sorry, y'. All. My thoughts are all over the place today. And I'm sorry that you're going through whatever you're going through. Purple People Leader, or I'm sorry, Purple Leader. It's one of my favorite songs. How do you help a parent going through a stressful period, but likes to keep it to themselves and be as independent as possible? Respecting their boundaries is huge. And I hear that you're doing that. I hear that you recognize their boundaries. They want to be independent and deal with it on their own, and that's okay. Making sure that they know that if they need anything, you're there, that you are willing to help in any way that they want. If you have concerns about what's going on, for example, a caregiver who is struggling because they're losing their vision and they really can't drive anymore and they're having to come to terms with the fact. Fact that they're losing their independence, that can be devastating for people and they may process it themselves. In that case, if you think that they are a danger to themselves because they're driving and they really have no business doing it, then you may need to intervene. But if they're not a danger to themselves, if they are, are grieving, if they are struggling periodically, maybe increasing the frequency that you check in with them, periodically checking in and going, hey, just Wanted to let you know I love you or whatever is appropriate and seems normal in, in your relationship. Not everybody's quite that open about emotions that can be helpful, and if they need help, they will ask. But, but respecting their boundaries, that they may feel like they want to deal with it themselves is hard. It's agonizing. Whether you're a parent seeing this in a child or you're a child seeing it in a parent or just a person seeing it in somebody you care about. It's really hard to stand back, especially if you think you could help. It's really hard to stand back and go when you're ready, in my opinion. Now, there's no clinical evidence one way or the other, but in my opinion, generally the best approach is not to be invasive. So. And to process your own distress about feeling powerless, feeling helpless, feeling whatever they're going through may be devastating for you as well. I mean, recognizing that your caregiver is aging, but, but also recognizing the impact it has on you and figuring out what it you need to do to address any guilt that you may be having for not fixing it, to empower yourself and to stay charged, keep that battery charged in case they do call on you. So. What about paranoid personality disorder? Part of the challenge with a lot of the quote, personality disorders is in my opinion, in my experience, a lot of the behaviors developed as a functional response to a chaotic, traumatic situation environment when the person was a child. Most personality disorders appear early in life and, and they're ingrained behaviors. It's not, most of the time, it's not something the kid was born with, but they're behaviors that appear earlier in life and like I said, often represent a way they learn to survive in a chaotic environment. So what appears paranoid to a lot of us may not be based on their experience. Now, if they're, if they're experiencing delusions, they think the FBI is reading their mind or something that is very clear, clearly not true. Okay. And again, the person, hopefully, if they are delusional or having hallucinations, they're working with a psychiatrist who can help manage some of those symptoms. But in the moment, if they are having these thoughts, feelings, experiences, instead of trying to contradict them, most of the time, it is more productive and more helpful to again, help them figure out, okay, if this is what's going on, what do you need to do to stay safe? I would also encourage you, if you're not a therapist working on this issue, to consult with their clinician. You know, try to get permission to consult with their clinician, try to do a, you know, couple session or whatever, if it's a significant other, to find out what tools would work best or when they're lucid, if they're. When they get to a place where they may be stable on their meds or they may not have be having paranoid delusions. When they're lucid, asking them what would help them feel safe, if they start feeling dysregulated, if they start feeling persecuted. You know, if you're paranoid, that means when you start having those delusions or thoughts, you feel terrified, you feel very unsafe. So ultimately one of the first things in order to help them get out of that fight or flight state of mind is to help them feel safe. And that's where I start. I've only worked with probably a dozen people with paranoid personality disorder in the 20 some odd years I've been in practice or but when I have, that's been far more productive than trying to invalidate what they're telling me and convince them to join my reality. Not quite understanding your your comment Purple Eater the. For problem solving. I'm if you could clarify that a little, that would be helpful. Resonance Sky I'm glad you like the lectures on the endocrine system. I love neurobiology. That's one of my favorite topic areas. So cool. All right, Marie, I evidently missed your question. I'm sorry, I'll have to scroll back up in a minute. I am glad the videos are helpful tips for choosing to stay together and work through emotional infidelity. I have a video that is tangentially related. I'm not saying this has to do with porn, but it's called love. You hate the porn. And it does talk about the impact of someone engaging in a emotionally unfaithful relationship via pornography and some of the things that can be helpful for doing that. When you've experienced infidelity, whether whatever, however you want to label it, whatever type of infidelity you feel, you often may feel betrayed, powerless, scared. There's. There's a lot of anger and fear that go into that, and also a lot of grief. You're grieving. The fact that your vision of being in a perfect relationship, being in a safe relationship, that's gone. Okay? It may be able to be rebuilt and made safe, or maybe even made safer. But right now, that vision that you had, that trust that you had, that's gone. And grieving that is going to be important for the person who committed the emotional infidelity, recognizing and dealing with the guilt they may be experiencing and identifying anything that they are grieving about because, you know, they lost maybe an image of themselves as trustworthy. It's probably what they did probably went against who they thought they were. And they may have to grieve that. But. So I'm not sure where you are, whether you're the. Which party you are, and it's not relevant to this answer. But after you've experienced a trauma like that and it is traumatic, identifying what is it that I need right now at this moment in order to feel safe? What do I need to do to feel safe? What do I need in this relationship in order to start feeling safe and start building trust? What would that look like that would enable me to feel safe when I am with this person and I have those intrusive thoughts about what they did, how can I handle them so I can feel safe? Because those intrusive thoughts are just as threatening and just as problematic or maybe even more problematic in some ways because a person you can lock out of the house and you can not answer the phone when they call, but intrusive thoughts, they just pop in there anytime they gosh darn well please. And that can be exasperating. So that will be important because as you work through the forgiveness process or acceptance process of what happened, That will be something that comes up for you, probably. And. Recognizing that that's okay when we have been hurt, even if we have resolved that hurt, just like I was saying earlier, even if we've resolved a trauma, sometimes something reminds us of it or our brain just like, oh, by the way, here's this thought, really recognizing that it may come up and developing thought stopping tools, developing distress tolerance tools that you can use to cope with that when it does. So, like I talked about in the video today, you don't spend your time all of a sudden revving up a bunch of energy, getting angry over it again when you thought, when, when you'd already processed it. Now if you start feeling angry over it again, you also want to ask yourself, is there something that I haven't processed yet? Is there a threat? Is there something that I still need to address in order to feel safe? It comes down to safety and empowerment. It is a slow process. It's not going to happen, you know, in a few days or a few weeks. It's going to take some time and there will be those occasional hiccups or, or trauma bursts that you have to deal with, but you want to see those become fewer and further between, Exploring, ideally with your partner where Things started to break down. And because generally infidelity, emotional infidelity, is a symptom of something else. Now it could be something wrong in the relationship or it could be something going wrong with that person. Maybe they're having a, to coin a phrase, a midlife crisis and they're having difficulty dealing with that and grieving their recognition that they are, they are aging and they are, you know, not invincible and going to live forever. So exploring what led to the infidelity and how it can be prevented in the future and, and again, looking at what you need to do on a day to day or even moment by moment basis, what do I need right now from me to feel safe and what do I need right now from you for me to feel safe? And how can we make this work? Obviously you're not going to be able to be with that person 24 7, 365, nor is that healthy. So figuring out what that looks like will be a step in the right direction. Well, hi Jennifer, I am glad to meet somebody else who's a fellow volunteer. So, and I am glad that the, the video is helpful for you. How can you repair trust within yourself? I'm very untrusting of others and get emotionally dysregulated. I find myself avoiding lots of people. So it's kind of interesting the way you phrased that. And what I'm hearing is you've lost your belief that you can trust your own intuition. You, you've lost your belief that you can keep yourself safe. And I would explore the events that led to that. What led you to develop the belief that people are untrustworthy, that people are not safe? Are those beliefs accurate and are they over generalized or are they spot on? I don't know the experiences you've been through, but a lot of times if we've had multiple bad experiences, multiple, three, four, ten, I don't know, we may throw our hands up and go, every, everybody's dangerous. I can't trust anybody. And the reality is that that's probably not true. But the relationships and the people that are prominent in your mind are the ones that pose the threat because your brain's going, we got to pay attention to that so we don't get bit in the butt again. That's where I would start to explore and identify those, then process those. And each relationship, each loss, each betrayal probably needs to be processed to some extent in order to figure out, you know, kind of what caused it. You know, where did this come from? How did it make me feel unsafe how can I learn from it to stay safe in the future? What can I learn about myself and what can I learn about other people? And, and that sounds really simple, but it's not. It sounds, I don't, I won't say easy, but it, it's really. It is hard. And it will take some time and it will take a lot of emotional energy. However, until you can recognize what made you feel unsafe in the past, learn from it so you can feel safe in the future. It's hard. It's going to be hard to trust yourself as well as other people because you're going to constantly feel hyper vigilant, not sure where the next attack is going to come from. If you will. Okay. Somehow I jumped way forward on a lot of these, so give me just a second. Parent. I did that one. Diana is doing some deep work on trauma. Sorry you went through that, but, you know, kudos to you for having the courage and the strength to go through it. Having a hard time balancing this with the rest of your life and things you need to do every day. Yeah, it's exhausting. And recognizing that that is draining your energy and contributing to this, that's important. Exploring the things that you, quote, need to do and what you're, you are able to get done and what you're not able to get done is important. It could be that there are things that you're telling yourself you need to do that are more I would like to do and you could actually simplify a lot more. Or it could be that you've got stuff that has to be done and, and the trauma work is just is really draining you too much. In which case, if you were my patient, and I encourage you to discuss this with your therapist, if you were my patient, I would say maybe we need to slow down. Maybe we need to give you a little bit more breathing room between each episode. Maybe do every other week for a little while so you can do that intense emotional work and recover and then be able to get things done and get caught up and then do that intense and emotional work again. I would also, if you were my patient, I would explore with you. If doing this trauma processing has started impacting your sleep or your eating habits in negative ways. That might also be contributing to your difficulty getting things done. If, if it's causing brain fog, which it very well may remember. When you are processing trauma, sometimes it feels like it's right there again. And that can be exhausting. That can also keep you from getting really good quality sleep and it can contribute to brain fog and that can make it harder to get things done. Self compassion is so important. I tell people that therapy is a full time job and, and I don't mean for me, I mean for them. When you are processing stuff for a lot of people, especially if you're processing intense stuff, it's a full time job. So essentially you're working two full time jobs and whatever else you've got to do on top of that. So you can, if you can picture it that way, it might help you have more compassion for yourself and figure out if anything can go. If anybody can help you get things done. And, and, and again, talk to your therapist, see if maybe slowing down might give you a chance to recoup. I, I lift weights and when I do a really hard workout, you know, I don't go back. It keeps me from, you know, being able to move around as quickly the next day or couple of days and it takes a while before my muscles have healed and, and I can lift again. Same thing for trauma, same thing for your emotions. You need to give your body time to heal and it sounds like you're not getting enough time to heal in between. So you're just getting progressively and progressively worn down. That's my guess. Michael. I'm glad you both enjoyed the channel and again I apologize, apologize to y' all for my brain fog today and, and not being quite as on point. If your niece wants to talk anything about being a therapist, feel free to have her email me@supportocsnipes.com and they will get me that, they'll get me that email. I love talking to students, aspiring therapists. You know, it's good to have somebody who's not going to sugarcoat stuff, let you know the good, the bad and the ugly. Not that I want to scare her away, but I, I am always very candid with people who are thinking about getting into, into the profession. There are things about this profession that I just adore, adore that I love and there are things about this profession that I adore that I truly miss doing like running group. However, you know, there are downsides like medical billing and, and we can talk about that. The good thing, if you will, is you definitely have job security there. There's definitely sadly, but there is definitely job security for that. Thank you, Michael. I was trying to remember if V was an article or not, but my mother's probably rolling over in her grave right now. I'm glad you're here, random ferret. Glad you were able to catch the stream. If you have any questions, let me know. I've still got about 15, 20 minutes before I need to log out and move on to the next thing. What can I say to someone who has trust issues after betrayal? One thing that can be helpful is to keep a log or a journal. I. I'm not a journaling person, so I. I usually resist recommending journaling, but I'm a log person. I'll keep a log book. Keeping a mindfulness log each day of experiences you've had with people that. So you can start looking at the frequency of people being trustworthy versus untrustworthy, and that will help you get a more objective perspective. I have a friend who shares that mindset. And I mean, he's experienced a lot of trauma in his life. He's experienced a lot of abandonment in his life, and he also has caused a lot of trauma and abandonment in his life because at a certain point, I believe he decided that if he noticed any sign that things might be going south or if he started feeling too safe, he would sabotage the relationship that way. He was always the one in charge. He was the. The dumper, not the dumpy, if you will. So it's important to keep an eye on and evaluate your relationship so you can see. Is my belief that all people will abandon me? Is my belief that all people will fail me at some point? Is that accurate? Or are there people who are consistent? Remember, and I keep bringing this up today, our brain focuses on, remembers, gives a lot more weight or what we call emotional valence to things that are threatening, things that are scary, things that are traumatizing than things that are not. So just like when you're walking through the. The woods, you're going to remember the cotton mouth more than you're going to remember the chipmunk or the bunny rabbit, because the cotton mouth was scary. So next time you go walking in those woods, you're like, I got to keep my eyes out for that cotton mouth. And the same thing is true in relationships and everything else. We often minimize, overlook, don't notice, whatever the word you want phrase you want to use is the people who are safe and stay honed in on the people who are unsafe or the experiences that were safe versus the experiences that are unsafe. And yes, there are unsafe people in this world, unfortunately. And over the past 20 years, we've also morphed into a society where ghosting, whether it be in relationships or at work or anything else, is very, very common. So I'm not saying that it's not going to happen. What? Like I was saying earlier when I was talking, giving that other answer about trust, recognizing the people that are trustworthy, and learning from the experiences of the untrustworthy people. What can I learn from this experience that will help me stay safer in the future? And sometimes there's nothing you can do. Sometimes things are going fine, and then all of a sudden somebody disappears. Exploring that from the perspective of what was their motivation? A lot of times, I would argue most of the time, but we'll say a lot of times it was their stuff. They were unwilling to put in the work to do what they needed to do. And because of the prevalence of ghosting, I personally think it's more important to make sure that people pay attention to maintaining their. Their boundaries and remain vigilant of the fact that they could get ghosted. It is a possibility. Now, how likely it is depends on the person in the situation, but it is a reality we've got to accept now and not personalize as much as possible. Well, thank you for that awareness, Michael. I am glad your niece has been with me for so long. I'm very grateful to my OGs. It is frustrating, and if you watch the video. Oh, gosh, Adriana, help me with it. I think it's the video on releasing trauma from your nervous system. I talk about how when you experience trauma, all of the stimuli associated with that trauma, sight, smells, sounds, are encoded with it. And then when you're somewhere else, like the grocery store, and you encounter one of those sight sounds or smells, like, for example, the sound of fire engines, it triggers that memory, and it may trigger a flashback, in which case you're basically having another mini traumatic event. What do they call it with earthquakes? An aftershock? You might think of it that way, but then the stimuli in the grocery store, which is very benign, may become associated with feeling unsafe. And that's how, unfortunately, a lot of people start to develop agoraphobia and increased anxiety after a trauma because those trauma experiences start becoming generalized, and then they start feeling like nowhere they go, are they safe? How can I let go of the guilt of going no contact? If what I'm assuming is you're talking about you were in a relationship and you cut it off, and you said, nope, can't do it. No contact. And I would explore, you know, again, I'm cognitive, behavioral. I would explore, on paper, the benefits to. And drawbacks to contact with that person and the benefits and drawbacks to non contact with that person. My guess is you made that decision because you were. You needed to do that to stay safe for whatever reason, emotionally, cognitively, physically, whatever reason you needed to do that in order to stay safe. Going, no contact's not easy. Any radical change in our lives like that is not easy. So you, you didn't make it lightly. And exploring the reasons why you did that is important and validating for yourself if it is the right thing to do. And it sounds like it is so validating for yourself why you did that. Remember, guilt is anger at yourself. So I would explore why you might be angry with yourself for setting that boundary, for saying, you know what, I can't do this anymore. Who, what, what are you shoulding yourself? Good. Guilt usually comes from shoulds. So that guilt is saying I really should be there to help that person. In addiction we see this a lot where people at a certain point have to enact that tough love and they have to say, you know what, as long as you're engaging these behaviors, I can't be around you, I can't do this, it's not safe for me. But they can feel guilty because they know that person is suffering or struggling. Yes. And that person, you've has probably been provided resources that they could take advantage of or they know what they need to do. And I don't know if this is your situation, but an addiction, the, the person with the addiction knows what they need to do in order to regain this support over here. But in order to prevent enabling, sometimes people have to set really hard boundaries. You may be angry at yourself because. Well, the shoulds stay with the shoulds. Okay. I'm glad I answered your question, Purple Eater. I was a little bit confused. Earning your Ms. In addiction counseling? Woohoo. Having a problem finding a practicum? Any advice on how to convince licensed, licensed clinicians? No. The challenge with practicum is that it's a non billable service. That supervision does take a lot of time and energy and a lot of clinicians. Well, time, energy, liability stuff. A lot of clinicians are booked, you know, morning till night and they don't feel like they have the time to appropriately supervise a practicum student. That being said, most of your non profit organizations, your treatment centers welcome practicum students. Your university, here's the word I hate should have a list of approved practicum sites that you can work at. And if not, that's, that's a problem. They, it is required in a lot of situations that they're KREP accredited, for example, to make sure that there are appropriate approved practicum sites. But if that doesn't exist. I. Whatever. Looking at those non profit treatment centers here, it would be volunteer, behavioral health, mental health, co op, you know, those sorts of things. I think Bradford might be a non profit and even some of the for profits like UHS and Acadia that have the big residential treatment centers are often much more prepared and open to accepting practicum students because they have that built into their structure. They, they have people that they intentionally hired that can be practicum supervisors. So again now I told you to have your niece email me, but if you're still having trouble finding a prac site, you can email me@supportocsnipes.com and I can see, I'm not sure what state you're in, but I can see if I have any other ideas that might be more helpful. All right, I'm going to answer two more questions and then I have got to go. So YouTube says good morning. Okay, well, good morning. That's not the one I was going to answer. There we go. Alfredo 56 Relationship with a person with BPD. And I'm going to assume here that we're talking about borderline personality, not bipolar, but it may be the same answer. I'm not sure. When is it a toxic relationship? Relationships? I'll use the cookie analogy that some of you have heard before. Healthy relationships are like chocolate chip cookies. Vanilla cookie all by itself. Wonderful. Can stand alone, no problem. You can eat it. You can even eat the raw cookie dough. Chocolate all by itself, wonderful. You can eat it as chocolate bar or whatever. It doesn't need anything else. Perfect by itself, thank you very much. Put them together, they bring out the best in each other and it creates a chocolate chip cookie, which is just amazing. And that's what a healthy relationship looks like. A toxic relationship brings the other person down. It drains their energy. It brings out the worst in them. Like combining onions with sugar cookies. You wouldn't do that. It would. It'd be nasty. They don't complement each other at all. So as far as being a toxic relationship, some of the things to look at. Do they compliment you? Not like with words, but do they bring out your best qualities? Do they enhance you? Do you feel good in the relationship more often than not? Or is it regularly drink bringing you down? Is it regular, regularly draining your energy and drawing you down? Is it bringing out the worst in you? Those are the things that are usually the red flags for me when I talk to people about whether a relationship is safe or is toxic. Does it make you feel good about yourself or does it make you feel bad about yourself? And that kind of goes along with enhancing and bringing out the best versus the worst. The borderline personality often goes from loving to hating. They switch very quickly. So recognizing that as their defense mechanism and their thinking from a. From their inner child, from a ch. From a extreme point of view. And that inner child is saying, either you're safe or you're not safe. You love me or you hate me. And. And that is part of their condition that they're going to eventually process that they're working on it, but not hearing everything they say and taking it to heart. Because a lot of times it is. They take something that you may see as a molehill, but to them it looks like a mountain. And they tell you it's a mountain. And then you start questioning your own beliefs and it's like, well, maybe it's a mountain. It's important to get some validation and support from other people so you can make sure you maintain your perspective. That's where I would start. I mean, there's so much to unpack there, but, you know, we've only got about a minute and a half left. Foreign. Everybody, thank you for being here today. I think I got to most of the questions. I will be doing these more often, hopefully. My plan is to do them on Mondays after the premiere, but again, yesterday I got, you know, sidetracked, which is why we're doing it today. So look for the notifications on Mondays, probably about 9:30, for these live chats for the next, For the next few weeks. And I don't know why I always touch my nose when I think. I just do. I can tell that's one of the days I'm not having a good day if I'm walking around doing that. But. Everybody, have a. An amazing day. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being compassionate with my, my brain fog and somewhat tangential thinking today. And I will see you tomorrow.