Unveiling Self-Help's Dark Side: Live Q&A with Doc Snipes

Good morning everyone and good morning coconut cocoa. I'm glad to see that you are in line and in queue. That's wonderful. One of the things that I said we were going to talk about in this live Q and A is toxic self help. You know a lot, I know a lot of people are here for self help. So what is toxic self help and toxic self help is when you are constantly striving to change who you are and you're not appreciating, you're not accepting what is in the moment. At a certain point we need to look and say hey, I've come a long way, let me enjoy this, let me respect myself instead of saying I'll be happy when I'll be happy when I achieve this self help goal. I'll be happy when I'm happy all the time. I'll be happy when I never lose my temper. Etc. So self help can be somewhat self defeating, especially if you set extreme goals. You set goals that are too hard to achieve or too far from where you're at right now. You may feel defeated and it may actually negatively impact your self esteem. So it's important when you engage in self help to acknowledge the things that you want to improve on because we all have room for improvement, but also to acknowledge the things that are going really really well. To acknowledge the things that you're good at, to acknowledge what you are doing right and embrace the dialectics. Embrace both things that you can have things going well in your life and have some things that you want to improve on. To take time out to nurture and nourish the things that are going well instead of only focusing on fixing what's you don't think is going right. Because if you focus all your attention over there and you don't give any attention to all the stuff that's going well. Just like a plant that gets neglected, it's there, those things are going to wither away. So self help can be toxic when it becomes all consuming, when you set goals that are too hard to achieve so it actually negatively impacts your self esteem. And sometimes there are things that are just not designed for self help. There are things that you need others assistance with and trying to do it on your own, it's like trying to give your own self open heart surgery. You wouldn't do that. So it's also important to know the limits of of your abilities and know when it's important to ask for help. So that's my little diatribe on the toxicity of self help or the dark Side of self help. Let's move on to questions. I am so close to finishing an important project, but there's some back and forth at the end. Then I don't know why I just can't bring myself to really finish it. People say it's because I'm afraid of failure, but I don't sense anything like that in my head. What's this about? Ultimately, I. I can't read your head and you say that other people think it's about fear of failure. You say that's not it. So, okay. It would be important to look back at what does that mean? If, for example, if you're getting ready to turn in your master's thesis or your doctoral dissertation, once you do that, then that chapter of your life closes. And you know, that's wonderful you've been working towards that goal. But it's also bittersweet in some ways because there are aspects of that that you may miss. So I would look at whether you're not ready to move to that next chapter. I would look at prior experiences with turning in projects and what happened, you know, and not only are you leaving, are you ending that chapter, whatever that project is, but that also may mean that you're having the secondary losses. You're not interfacing with the same people every single day. Or maybe you're closing that chapter. Maybe it's something like when I used to work in community behavioral health. I would write a grant, I would get the grant, we would implement the grant, and then I would move on to the next thing. But as I finished the implementation, I never knew what my next assignment would be because Richard would move me around where he needed me as I finished each task or each project. And for me that was good because I get bored doing the same thing for too terribly long. But for other people it may be a little bit nerve wracking if you don't exactly know where you're going to go. For a lot of people graduating college, it's the same way you're getting ready to turn in that final project for school so you can graduate, but you don't have a job lined up yet, or you don't know, you know exactly what the next step is. And you may be weighing different options between graduate school, school and getting a job and hiking across Europe or whatever. I don't know. So ultimately behavior has meaning and it's not a fear based thing with you. I hear that. So my. I would back up and I would explore what is it that's holding me back what am I holding on to here that's keeping me from moving forward and maybe explore it that way? Great question, though, because you're right. A lot of times we default to you're afraid of failure, but that's not always it. The boxcard child. Yes. That. That was Mojo. I'm assuming that's who you saw. I am one of those crazy cat people, so you may see a few of them grace my presence today. Good morning, Roller girl. I hope you're doing well. Good morning. Share. Welcome back. Hey, Adriana. All right, Jen. So what I would encourage you to look at Jen. Jen says that she is only able to afford self help right now and she's been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and cptsd. And I've gone off on diatribes before about how a lot of times in the American psychiatric realm, people with CPTSD are diagnosed with borderline personality because of our diagnostic manual does not recognize CPTSD as a reimbursable or legit diagnosis. The World Health organization in the ICD11 does recognize CPTSD as a legit legitimate diagnosis, but we're a little bit slow to get on the bandwagon there. So I would encourage you to watch the videos that I have on what CPTSD is to see if that explains your symptoms. Ultimately, what I'm hearing is your borderline symptoms or your emotional dysregulation and splitting. And whatever your symptoms are, are underscored, are caused by a persistent sense of feeling unsafe and powerless. And that came from a history of trauma, a history of being unsafe and powerless. So in the present, when you are reminded of those prior traumatic events, when you are reminded of times when you are not safe or when you start to feel unsafe for some reason, then you may drop back into those fight or flight behaviors. And because with CPTSD that one of the criteria is a perception of inability to escape. And that could be a very real perception. But that means when you go into fight or flee, you're all in. It's not a. All right. I'm a little anxious about this. It's like, crap, I'm terrified or I'm really enraged. And. And that's where we start seeing the emotional dysregulation. We see the HPA axis becoming dysregulated in its responses. So healing. The HPA axis is going to be your. Your nervous system, your stress response system system, which is what we call the HPA axis, is going to be really important in order to help you start having more ability to Regulate your emotions. Emotional dysregulation is not just a cognitive or an emotional thing, it's a neurochemical thing. People who emotionally disregulate have a flood of stress hormones whenever they get triggered, which is why it takes them longer to get back to baseline. It's like trying to dry out a a basement when it's had a little bit of rain or a little bit of water trickle in versus when it's been flooded six feet high. Takes a lot longer after a flood to get back to baseline to re regulate oneself. So those are all issues that will be important in healing yourself. And yes, Linehan's work with distress tolerance and interpersonal skills and mindfulness, those are all super helpful, super important for addressing some of the cognitions. Trauma processing will also be important eventually down the road. Don't get into it before you've got the support and the resources to deal with it. But also healing your body, healing your physical, the physical impact of the trauma. Because we do store trauma in our bodies, we do have, when we've experienced chronic trauma or even a significant major trauma, it can have lasting impacts on our nervous system. In order to help us be prepared for the next time, which is what we call hyper vigilance. I have several videos on borderline personality. I have several videos on complex post traumatic stress. I would strongly encourage you to start there and combine those with what you have for from the DBT workbook. Remembering vulnerabilities. I know I'm kind of all over the place here today, Sorry. Remembering vulnerabilities are also physical, like poor nutrition, disregulated circadian rhythms in inadequate sleep. There are a lot of physical things that add stress that are going to contribute to your stress response system. That HPA axis, staying dysregulated. So minimizing as much physical, interpersonal, emotional and mental stress as you can is going to be important. And it's not possible to eliminate it all. But reducing as many of those unnecessary stressors as possible will be important. Keep a journal or a log of your symptoms so you can see progress, so you can see the small victories that you have. You may not go from dysregulating three times a day to not dysregulating at all. No, but if when you dysregulate it lasts less time or it's less intense or it's a little bit less frequent, that's progress, that success and keep building on that. Just like when you go to the gym, you don't start out by curling 50 pound dumbbells you start out with a five pound and then when that gets easy you do an eight pound. And the same thing is true for coping skills and dealing with stress. All right, welcome to everybody who's joined since I started on my little diet tribe. I hope that was helpful, Jen. Please feel free to come back next Monday when we do this all over again to see if and you can ask more follow up questions if if you don't have any others to ask today or obviously if you have others to ask today, please feel free to do so. But welcome. I'm glad to see you here. Good morning, Marian. Hello Pratt. I had traumatic experiences with a neighbor when I was a child that affected my self esteem. Now when I see this person around me, I'm anxious. Tips to Improve the Anxiety is a response to a threat that reminds you of that time where you were unsafe and powerless in some way. Okay, One of the things that you can do is remind yourself in this context at this time, am I safe? Am I empowered? Acknowledge that. Yeah, this is reminding me of a really awful time in the past. Acknowledge that. Acknowledge your inner child who experienced that. Acknowledge those memories as yeah, that that was awful and I was unsafe. Now in the present am I safe and what can I do in order to feel more empowered in this particular situation as you are exposed to this person, if you have to be exposed to them on a regular basis, then practicing that will often help you. It's basically like exposure therapy will help you desensitize to that person's presence. However, if you only have to or you only occasionally interact with this person, then I would find a couple of tools to help you tolerate that distress and again recognize your level of safety and empowerment in the present context. So when you do encounter them, you can take adequate steps. There are people from my past when I used to live in Gainesville, which was a surprisingly small town for some such such a large population, I would occasionally run into a person that was very triggering from my past and it wasn't worth me in my my choice. In my estimation, it wasn't worth me doing a whole lot of work to process the traumatic event because it wasn't that traumatic. But whenever I saw them it was very anxiety provoking and triggered a lot of grief. And so when I did occasionally encounter them, I would just use those skills and tools and move forward instead of staying stuck in the moment. Is caffeine a decent substitute for jump starting the part of your brain affected by adhd? I drink a lot of coffee and it seems to help. Caffeine is a stimulant. And we know that people who actually have ADHD and it's not anxiety or bipolar disorder disorder or something else, their attentiveness is actually caused by adhd. We know that stimulants do increase focus. So I have read, and I'm not making the recommendation, but I have read that caffeine can help people. I would encourage you to talk about it with your treating physician next time you go in because you can become tolerant to caffeine and need increasing levels just like you become tolerant to any drug. And, and that could lead to problems. But if it's helping, I would certainly consider that a win. And then like I said, next time you see your provider, talk with them about are there any concerns if your blood pressure is fine, if your blood sugar's fine, if you don't have diabetes, you know, there's a lot of things that could be impacted by caffeine use. But if you don't have any risk factors or your doctor's not concerned about it, then it sounds like that's help. Caffeine right now is helping you live a higher quality of life. Coconut Coco says, I experience the toxic self help mindset that I talked about in the introduction. I've always overlooked achievement and put overweight in the goal otherwise and then I don't do it. What habits can we build to cope with that? Great question. Recognizing our achievements and it sounds trite. So I almost. Well, I almost hate to say it, but I'm going to say it anyway. Having an attitude of gratitude or embracing the dialectics, which is less trite. Recognizing that you can have good things going on in your life and have some things that aren't so good. I do, I have have several videos on a concept called hardiness, which revolves around the same thing. And also my video on having a rich and meaningful life, which can be really helpful here. When you lay out all of the things people experiences that are important in your rich and meaningful life, from your pets to your siblings to your parents to your friends to your vacation next year, whatever it is that's important to you, that's what you want to devote your energy to and it's important to look at that. And even when we are trying to improve some aspect of ourself which a lot of us, that's kind of an ongoing thing. We're trying to be better today than we were yesterday. Well, that's cool. But periodically stepping back and looking and saying am I nurturing? Am I using my Energy to make sure I'm nurturing the things that are important, not just trying to attain this goal that may or may not actually make me happy. Trying to be and, and recognizing how you're better today than you were yesterday. How you're closer to living your rich and meaningful life today than you were yesterday. Baby steps. And I got my minor in, in college in, in behavior modification. Applied Behavior Modification. So I am a big proponent of logging or charting. I'm not a huge proponent of journaling because I wouldn't do it. If you want to do it, great. That's just kind of long form charting in my mind. But managing your or keeping a log of your overall happiness can be important. Instead of how well am I doing on this goal? Well, what's the purpose of that goal? Why are you trying to work on that? My guess is so you can be happier or so you can. Well, so you can be happier or healthier. If you are working towards this goal to get a better job, well, why do you want a better job? What does that do? How does that help you move toward the things that are important in your rich and meaningful life? Maybe that's it. Maybe being a preeminent resource in your field is one of the things that's important in your rich and meaningful life. Okay, great. So you're working towards that. And how is what you are doing today or what you did yesterday helping you move to. Toward that? Baby steps? Recognizing the impact of, I guess, single minded focus. And in your journaling, in your charting, whatever you're going to call it, identifying. If you notice that you're backsliding, you're not moving toward things in your rich and meaningful life, then asking yourself why? And you may switch gears sometimes, and it's important to be compassionate with yourself. For example, as a parent, there were times, you know, I wanted to move forward in my career, but my kids were really important and I decided to switch my energy, put my career on the sideburner for a little while and focus on being a parent and being a full time mother and wife and that sort of person. Because that was important in my life. That was important to me in my rich and meaningful life. And then when they got older and they were more independent, I switched gears back into my career because those are kind of two of the main important things in my life. Not the only ones. But so I would encourage you to also be compassionate with yourself. If you're not making progress toward a goal to say, all right, am I at a good solid place right now? Here. And am I making a choice to divert my energy to something else that's important? If you're diverting yourself to something that's draining your energy, like being angry or sleeping all the time or playing video games all the time or whatever it is, then you really want to consider what that's about. But if you are not making as much progress as quickly as you had hoped, and I'm guilty of that one, it's important to step back and go, all right, why is that? Is it because I'm nurturing something else for me, I. Oh, gosh, I think it's been about five weeks now since I hurt my neck. And so that's really slowed me down on making a lot of progress on videos and curriculum for the addiction counselor certification tracks and stuff. And I started getting really frustrated. However, I also recognized that I was having to put energy into healing in instead of being on the computer 8, 10, 12 hours a day, because that was important. Healing my body, using my energy for that was important at that point in time. And that also meant not doing some other things that I found to be important in my rich and meaningful life. Like, y' all have heard me talk before about baseboards. I'm a freak about baseboards. So I had to compromise in some places, and I had to say, all right, well, I can't do this, and I can't do this right now because I need to devote energy to healing. What can I do? And so I found other things that were in my rich and meaningful life that I was able to redirect my energy to. So I didn't feel like I was wasting time, but I recognized that I needed to switch gears for a bit. So I hope that makes sense. How can I work on my fawn and freeze responses? It's almost always been this way. I feel scared during, but very angry afterwards. It's gotten me hurt. And I think fawning kept me in an abusive relationship. Fawning often does, unfortunately, keep us in abusive situations or dysfunctional at best or at worst. So let's talk about fawn and freeze. These are both fear responses, half of the fight or flight. So when you're in that situation, there's a part of you that feels unsafe and powerless. Well, if you feel powerless, you're not going to fight. That totally makes sense. And then when that threat is sufficiently far away that it can't hurt you, then the anger comes out and you're like, I don't want to feel this way anymore. All right. Keeping a log. I Know you all get tired of hearing me say that. When you have a fawn or freeze response, all right, instead of trying to get rid of it, recognize it as an innate or ingrained response that you developed to help you stay safe in the past. Okay, so it happens after it happens when you have a chance to get into your wise mind and to down regulate and get into your wise mind. Then looking back and evaluating the situation and saying, okay, I started fawning or freezing in this particular situation. What was causing me to feel threatened? What was causing me to feel unsafe and disempowered? Was that actually what was going on in this context at this time? If so, all right, then you need to look backwards and say, how did I get into that situation and how can I prevent it in the future? So start learning from those episodes instead of getting angry about them, recognize them as learning opportunities. Now, if you go through that in your head and you say, was I unsafe and powerless in this context at this time, and the answer is no, then you want to say, all right, well, it sounds like that was triggering memories from the past that I still need to process. So how is this situation that I was just in similar to a time that I felt that way in the past and different from? How am I different from the past situation? How is. How are. How is the situation similar to and different from that situation? So you can start recognizing that it's not the same. Yes, it reminds you of the same thing. Just like when somebody's been through a house fire, when they smell smoke in the future, it may trigger those same feelings because our. Our sensory stimuli are very potent memory triggers, but they're able to say, okay, this reminds me of this time in the past that was really horrible. Acknowledge it. Validate it. Don't say, oh, I need to forget it. Acknowledge that it happened, and have compassion for yourself, for that wound, for that scar, and recognize what's going on. Now, if you find that by evaluating your freeze and fawn episodes that, yes, you truly are in a position where you are emotionally, mentally, physically, environmentally unsafe in some way or feeling threatened in some way, then it's going to be important to look at again how you got to that place. If you keep getting into abusive relationships, it's going to be important to step back and say, what. What does this behavior mean? I'm keep getting into relationships with people who are like X person from my past, for example, all right, why do I keep doing that? What am I trying to get this time? And sometimes we find that whether it's good or bad that we connect with people in our future that are similar to people in our past. And that can be strong, loving, caring, nurturing figures. And you find somebody in your future that reminds you of that and it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. You know, there are a few actors that I will see occasionally on TV that have facial expressions and features that are similar to my daddy's. And when I see them, I have that warm, fuzzy feeling. Now, obviously I'm never going to meet those actors, but if I were to meet somebody like that in real life, I might project that positivity onto them. Likewise, you know, if I run into somebody who reminds me of a traumatic event, I might project negativity or that that stress response onto them. Or I might recognize that as something known, unpleasant, but known. And a lot of times the known is less scary than the unknown. So if I get into this kind of relationship, at least I can predict what's going to happen. From a psychodynamic perspective. Those would be the initial things that I might encourage you to consider what that behavior is saying and if you're getting into unhealthy relationships repeatedly what that behavior is saying. When you recognize after you've fond or frozen and you've processed it again, learn from that experience and say, okay, in the future when this happens, this is what I want to do. If you are still in a relationship with that person, if it's not like a one off, like a customer service manager or something, when you are in your wise mind talking with that person, when you're not in fight or flight or fawn or splitting or whatever phase you're in, talking with that person and saying, when this happened, this is how it made me feel and it triggered my stress response. For this reason, in the future when this happens, this is how I hope to respond. And a lot of times people can be there to support you and recognize, okay, I see that you're starting to get upset, you're starting to freeze, and that's not what you want to do right now. So the we'll call them the aggressor. The aggressor can say, I am going to back off to give you space to feel safe and then we can talk about this. Oops. All right, we jumped a little bit here. Drizilla welcome says, I'm adopted into a family where the loss that is was fear of abandonment was used rather than understood. I was told to be grateful. My adopted mother hid her treatment of me from dad, also alcoholic. I'M a little confused by the question. It is important for people who, for most people who are adopted, regardless of whether they're adopted at 2 days old or 12 years old, to have the ability to process and grieve the loss of that biological parent. Because the way we're wired, that's not really how it was supposed to go. So there's something in our wiring that causes us to grieve that loss. Even if you never knew your biological parents. And that certainly can, if left unchecked, if not processed, can lead to that fear of abandonment. Because it's like, if this person who literally gave me life, gave me up, what's going to happen if I irritate or disappoint the people who adopted me? And again, not everybody has that reaction, but a lot of people who are adopted do. And there's a voice somewhere inside their little heads that, that tells them that when they're children, for. Well, yes, so let me just stop there and say that that's true. Now, you also identified that. Sounds like your adoptive mother was abusive in some way, emotionally abusive, I'm not sure. And there was an alcoholic granddad in there, so there's a lot of chaos in your family. And looking back at our adverse childhood experiences, abandonment, which includes adoption or being put up for adoption, having somebody in the household with a mental health issue, rejection, neglect, and potentially abuse, I don't know how bad the treatment was. All of those are adverse childhood experiences and cause a child to feel unsafe and powerless, which causes the development of abandonment anxiety, maybe complex post traumatic stress issues that will continue to manifest themselves as long as they go unchecked. So it's going to be important to address and process the grief issues, the trauma issues that you experienced as a child, in order to start really feeling safe and empowered in relationships. Now, there are other tools you can use in the meantime. My favorite one, as I was mentioning earlier, is recognizing facts in context. So when you start feeling a fear of abandonment, asking yourself, with this person in this context at this time, are they really, do I know for a fact that they are getting ready to abandon me or they are rejecting me, or am I assuming, am I jumping to conclusions? Am I mind reading? And if you're doing any of the latter, those are what we call cognitive distortions or unhelpful thoughts. And it's important to address those and act based on the facts of the current situation in the current context. Acknowledge the past, acknowledge how it reminds you of being hurt before, acknowledge your fear of being hurt like that again, you know, you can process all those things, but in the present moment, identify how this situation and this person in this context at this time is similar to, but also different from the people or situations that hurt you in the past. I'm not sure which puppy you saw, but yeah, I have the door open so the, the dogs may come in and out. That was probably Lily. Good morning, David. That's a good question. Coconut Coco. I don't know if you could do EMDR in a second language, but I would think so. I wouldn't. I don't think there would be a problem with it. I would talk to a certified EMDR practitioner. That's a really excellent point, Drusilla. Sometimes communicating your thoughts and feelings in a different language in, in your secondary language helps you get some distance from it. So that's an excellent, excellent perspective on doing that, which I hadn't really thought of, probably because I only speak one language. But that's similar to one of the things we do in inner child work where we have the inner child right with implements that they would have used at that age, whether it was crayon or one of the big fat pencils or, or what was it that they used to write with and communicate with at that age. Good morning, IM Law. Good morning. Intuitive Times Insights. Is there a main difference between CPTSD and Borderline? In my opinion, no. There is some research that is trying to identify a difference between the two. But even reading that research, I have been very unclear on the lines that they are drawing. From a neurobiological perspective and definitely from a symptomatic perspective, they're very, very similar. What are my thoughts on chronic fatigue? Yet blood tests are normal. Again, remember, I'm not a medical doctor. However, chronic fatigue is what they call a diagnosis of exclusion. And that means everything else has been tested for and come up empty. And so they can't find a reason for your symptoms, which is when the chronic fatigue diagnosis is actually applied. So it actually is not surprising to me that your blood tests are normal, but you're experiencing some chronic fatigue. I haven't. I did a video on it about two years ago and I haven't looked at the research since. But as I understand it, even today that's still the case. I have read. I've heard nothing about any new groundbreaking blood tests or evaluative procedures to identify at chronic fatigue. Without ruling out everything else first, I have trust issues, sharing my PTSD and traumas. It's been very hard to get back to my old therapist So I keep more to myself. Sorry to hear that. Share. And it is difficult to share information about traumas and PTSD with people because that makes you vulnerable. It not only are you telling somebody about something that is. Is really painful for you, but when you are talking about it, sometimes you may feel like you're actually back there and in that place where you were unsafe and powerless. So if you don't totally trust the person that you're with, it can be really, really hard to. To share with them the things that are truly important in your healing journey. I wish I could say there was a easy solution for that, but there's not. Your behavior, your reticence to share makes total sense to me. And I would encourage you to, if you're seeing a different therapist, maybe talk with them about ways to start establishing more trust so you can feel safe to go there. Oh, hey, boo. Come here, boo. Come here. Say hi to the people. Yes, yes, yes. I'm a good boy. All right, now get down. Thank you. Alrighty. And Lily's jealous, so she's gonna come in here too. Everybody's jealous this morning. Let's see. How do I stay focused on life goals with chronic pain taking up my mind space? It is hard. And I can only empathize with you a small amount because I've only had this neck pain for about five weeks. But it is exasperating sometimes. I encourage you to set. I know there's another one you get. Y' all get tired of hearing me say, set small goals instead of saying, I need to get this entire project done today, setting a smaller goal than taking a break and doing something else. In physical therapy, they talk about rehabilitation from the perspective of instead of saying, I need to today, I'm going to clean out the entire garage. Say, today I am going to work on cleaning the garage for 30 minutes tomorrow. If I feel good after doing that, then maybe I'll do it for an hour and work to identify your level of tolerance for whatever activity that triggers the pain. That's one. Two. Acknowledge the pain. Acknowledge how you feel and recognize where you're at on your scale from no pain to excruciating pain. Where are you today? Where are you at this minute? And then what can you do at this minute in this circumstance? You can't change the pain. And the more you try to fight with it, the more you're going to get angry, trigger that stress response, trigger tension, and reduce serotonin and reduce your pain tolerance. So you don't want to do that. I Also have a couple videos on guided imagery that can be really helpful when you focus on your pain. So if I'm focusing on how my neck feels, I'm going to notice it a lot more. If you intentionally switch your focus to something else, then that can help, whether it's a smell or a sensation. For example, holding on to ice cubes, that's not the most pleasant thing to do in the world. But you're going to focus on that instead of whatever pain you're feeling somewhere else. And that can help you break that distress loop and relax a little bit. Trigger the vagus nerve. And we've talked about the vagus nerve a lot. I know you're familiar with a lot of those things, but the vagus nerve is also one of your relaxation responses. And as you relax, your body's going to release gaba, which is A and endorphins, which both can serve as relaxants, anti inflammatories and painkillers. So sort of hacking your own neurotransmitters, if you will, by triggering that relaxation response. Now, I don't know what kind of pain you have, if it is tension related pain or if it's musculoskeletal pain that gets worse with tension. Progressive muscular relaxation can also be helpful. Massage can be helpful, especially if you can access it on a regular basis. Have, and I think I already said this, having compassion for yourself. Okay, Sally over here at work can do XYZ in a day, but you can only do X and Y. Well, you and Sally are not starting from the same place on the playing field. You're starting from 60 yards back and trying to make the touchdown where she's starting from the 30 yard line. And it's important to recognize that. Don't compare yourself to other people. It's hard. It's really hard. Compare yourself to yourself and compare yourself to yourself in a similar context. So don't compare yourself today. If you're a 5 on your scale, you know you're in a lot of pain to what you can do on a day when you're a two. Compare yourself to. All right, how did I do on other days when I was at a 5? And you know, what is it that I could do and how can I be compassionate with myself so I don't make it worse? I hope those are some suggestions that you haven't heard before. I'm sure you've heard. If you've got chronic pain, you've heard a lot of other suggestions and maybe a lot of those too. But I hope I gave you a couple of new nuggets. Roller girl, nsdr. I'm not familiar with the acronym. If you could help me out on that. Oh, Non sleep deep rest. Yes, relaxation and non sleep deep rest. Deep relaxation can be really helpful. Now if you've got a trauma history that, that might be triggering when you are quite that relaxed, it can trigger a dissociative episode. But if it doesn't for you, then that's great, that's awesome because you are really getting that vagus nerve to go full bore and releasing all of those good relaxation, pain management sort of chemicals. I'm addicted to pornography and social media for about eight years now. I feel helpless and don't know what I should do. And this question comes up a lot. So you are not alone. Pornography and I'm not bashing pornography for everybody all the time. You know, just like alcohol, some people can use it and not develop problems. Other people not so lucky. But excessive pornography use does alter the neuro. Neurochemistry in your brain just like other addictions like gambling, like Internet gaming, and even like some substances of abuse. So it's important to recognize that that is going on. Social media is in my mind a lot like Internet gaming because it's never ending. You can keep scrolling. You have the fear of missing out. You are squelching anxieties when you're scrolling through social media. Social media can be triggering. It can trigger anger that keeps you engaged, it can trigger happiness that keeps you engaged. You never know what you're going to get. Which kind of reminds me of Forrest Gump, But I digress. So it makes sense that people can get sucked into social media, that people, when they're not on social media, that fear of missing out can really become prominent. Recognizing that you've got a problem, obviously that's the first step you've done that. The next step is recognizing the functions of these behaviors. And if your neurochemistry has changed part of them, part of the function at this point may be to help you feel and I don't like the word but normal, whatever normal is for you because your brain chemistry's changed. So without that being infused into your system, your neurochemicals get out of balance. So that's the first thing I'm assuming you've tried to wean down and you've tried to quit and it's been unsuccessful. So detox would be where I would go next. And setting up a scenario, a situation where, where you cannot access pornography or social media and There are ways to do that. There are nanny apps that you can install, there are firewalls that you can install and stuff on your mobile devices as well as your, your PCs and things. It's important to have some sort of app on any of your mobile devices that will tell a trusted friend if you're going to an unapproved website on some public network. That'll prevent the temptation of going to a coffee shop or a library or somewhere else where you can get on the Internet where there aren't the firewalls. So if you have that app on your phone, on your tablets, and you don't have the master password so you can't get in there and disable it or turn it off, that'll make it a lot harder. Yes, there are still ways around it, but short of entering treatment for that particular issue, you're going to need to figure out ways to start to stay safe. Recognize that in the immediate aftermath of this, and I'm, I'm talking a couple of weeks at least, you may feel irritable, you may feel edgy, you may feel depressed, you may have mood swings that are the result of your neurochemicals, you know, trying to get back into balance. We call this post acute withdrawal syndrome, totally normal. But again, you need to be prepared for it and figure out before you get there how you're going to deal with it. This is not the time to take on new projects or get married or something. How is it that you're going to be able to let your neuro neurological system heal from the toxin that you've been ingesting? Okay, some people choose to go on sort of a retreat or a vacation or whatever you want to call it for a couple of weeks in order to balance out a little bit. The next step is to start understanding the function of these behaviors for you. Why did you start using them in the first place and what purpose did they serve? Did they help you feel happy? Did they help you feel safe? Did they help you get your needs met when you couldn't in real life because of fear of rejection? There's a lot of reasons because people are on social media and, or view pornography. And it'll be important to explore those reasons and address those issues. And finally, you're probably going to have to address some of the consequences of these addictions that you've had because they've taken a lot of your time and your energy, and it's probably at best kept you from nurturing the important things in your life and at worst started Causing problems with the important things and people in your rich and meaningful life. It is a process. It's not something that's going to happen overnight. It's not something that's going to completely resolve itself even in 30 days. It's going to take some time and ideally some insight from either a recovery coach or a therapist or a physician who can help you identify some of those underlying issues that were motivating that behavior. But that is a great question and it does come up a lot. I'm hoping as soon as our electronic medical record provider gets it set up, I'm hoping to be able to start running some skills groups. Right now we don't have the ability to create groups and book groups online, but I'm hoping that we will be able to do that in the near future. And pornography addiction is certainly going to be at the top of the list because that is a very frequent question that I get. People say when you don't know how to love yourself, there's a hole that prevents you from receiving love from others. But self worth or love first builds from the care and love from a caregiver in childhood. So it's more about external. Right? How can I build the self love without caregivers care when it's what I need to get external love? Excellent question and excuse me, it's actually the last question I'll answer today. But it's one of those that's near and dear to my heart and that's developing self love by basically splitting yourself. You, you become the parent adult, you becomes the parent for the inner child, for the child that's inside you, who craves that love, who craves that nurturance, who craves that respect and consistency and validation and all those things. And I do have videos on reconnecting with your inner child and reparenting your inner child. That can be very helpful because you're right. That initial secure attachment with a caregiver is what helps us develop self esteem and emotional intelligence and self confidence and self confidence. So you're right. That is all very important. And you may not be able to get it from the people who were supposed to give it to you because either they're not here or they're just not capable. They're too broken. And. And that's okay. You can get it starting with reparenting yourself. Starting by telling yourself when you start to feel upset. What would you have wanted a caregiver to say to you? How would you have wanted a parent to help you, to treat you, to nurture you when you feel this way. And maybe at the same time or maybe a little later, depending on you, starting to recognize those people in your life who might be able to provide nurturance and really stepping back and looking and saying, hey, this person is consistently there for me and responds when I need their help. This person validates how I'm feeling. Adult attachment theory says that as once we become independent of our primary caregivers, our major attachment needs are no longer met by just one person. They are often met by multiple people. So we have an array of people we can call on. When you were an infant, you relied on that one person. When you were a toddler, you relied on that one person to do it. You couldn't, you know, pick up the phone and call Auntie Jane or grandma or somebody else and go, hey, mom's not getting the job done. Can you come help me out here? But as an adult, you actually can do that. You have more power. You have more ability to reach out to people who can be supportive of you. However, because you grew up in an environment that was chaotic and rejecting, you may not have really realized the people that are in your life that are able to provide some level, maybe not totally healthy 100%, because a lot of us, you know, aren't there, but can provide some level of a safe and nurturing relationship and then start building from there. Everybody have an amazing rest of your week and I will see you next Monday. Same bat times, same bat station.