Tag Archives: mental health

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Relationships

Everyone gets disregulated sometimes, and when we’re in a state of disregulation we are more likely to trigger old responses from Trauma or trauma.

When we’re in that state generally people can respond in one of three ways:

A supportive re-regulating way.

An unsupportive way that either doesn’t help or even worsens our disregulation.

They can get triggered too.

In a healthy relationship mostly the first happens.

The second can be dealt with by teaching new skills/responses.

The third one is the hardest to deal with. Both people need their own therapist and a couples therapist is needed to help re-regulate both during interactions. It’s a lot of painful work and most often is easier to end the relationship and find a less challenging pairing.

For those recovering from anything really, if someone doesn’t already have their own therapist/recovery group, that’s a huge red flag.

The two choices are they don’t need one, or they need one and don’t recognize it.

If they go to therapy for you instead of for themselves, that doesn’t really work.

The likelihood that they don’t need therapy is pretty slim, especially since we tend to be drawn to our counterparts or people who feel familiar. And if they are drawn to us, it’s probably the same for them.

So it’s pretty safe to assume that if they aren’t doing recovery work, that’s a huge red flag and we should run the other way and that we’re not passing up the magical unicorn that doesn’t need to do recovery work and is still interested in being our partner.

For more info read How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids or watch some School of Life or Heidi Priebe YouTube videos on trauma & relationships.

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Scheduling grief

I didn’t think to share this on my own, one of my wonderful friends suggested it.

I was reading a book in a waiting room and got triggered and was about to break down crying.

I took a deep breath and asked myself if I could wait until a better time. I thought through the day and figured out a time when I’d have more privacy and promised myself I would come back to this and allow myself to properly grieve and that I would do it today and not forget about it or stuff it down trying to ignore it. It was just a temporary pause for a better time.

And it worked, I was calm the rest of the day and when I sat down outside the library before my next appointment when I had about 20 minutes to spare, I asked myself what had triggered that moment originally. I remembered and was right back in it but this time I just curled over my knees and cried and let it out. I think I only cried for 5 or 10 minutes so I even had time to recover afterwards before walking to my appointment.

I’m sure this trick won’t always work, and it requires you trusting yourself (or your systems – like to do lists or alarms).

And when I say I ask myself, it’s more like I ask my inner parts. Something like “Hey gang, can we hold onto this until later today? I promise I won’t forget and just stuff it down.” That’ll be fore another post on IFS – Internal Family Systems.

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Finding a Good Therapist

Finding a therapist is pretty straightforward, for example you can use a site like:

Find a Therapist, Psychologist, Counselor – Psychology Today

Or follow instructions on who to call like these:

Finding a Mental Health Professional | NAMI

The harder part is figuring out if the therapist is actually helping you.

I only recently learned that they should be giving you homework – like something to practice or a question to think about.

You should feel safe and comfortable with them.
If you don’t feel that way with any person, then you might consider finding someone you’re willing to explore and address that with despite how you initially feel. You could also try a group setting where you can listen and learn or watch videos or read books to get started on healing.

Even there you should get actionable items to work on. For example, all the various 12 step groups have you work the steps of the program. This video mentions starting with breathwork which there a lots of different videos you can look through to find one that works for you. I try to do box breathing daily, especially while driving or other tasks like that. Books like Parenting From the Inside Out by Dan Siegel also give end of chapter activities to try.

If you’re just paying someone to listen to you vent, they aren’t doing a good job. They should listen to you vent sure, but then they should be asking good questions. How or why did you end up in that situation? What do you wish you had done and what stopped you? What do you want to do in future situations like that, and what do you need to be able to do that?

I once had a therapist cancel me as a client because “It seemed I had nothing to work on and was just venting which I should do with friends.” – I went along with it, but many years later I realized that the therapist didn’t ask if I HAD friends I felt I could talk about this stuff with or WHY I wasn’t talking about it with my friends. I knew I needed help, I just didn’t know what I needed and didn’t realize that my therapist wasn’t skilled at figuring it out either.

Another therapist I fired after realizing I was only ever venting about one topic again but not being given any actionable feedback on how to change my own behavior to affect that relationship and the venting was just bringing me down.

One I had to stop seeing because driving there after work ended up being so tiring I couldn’t think or talk about anything else by the time I got there. Thank goodness for all the remote options we have now!