#metoo campaign

You are not alone:

If you have been affected by the #metoo campaign, well, you already know,  you are not alone.

As a psychotherapist and counsellor in the Sydney, Australia area I have personally witnessed the campaign effects as nearly every client in my practice has brought an uncomfortable story, an anxious response, and even a first disclosure of being sexually harassed and assaulted.

There are significant shifts taking place as our recognition of rape culture increases. With this awakening comes increased responsibility to our victims as well as increased culpability to those who have quieted, betrayed, stigmatized and shamed them. As we begin to sort the damage done to our children, friends and families we first need to offer our assistance to those seeking help today.

If you know of somebody who has been victimized and is having some difficulty during this campaign you may have some questions about how best to support them.

3 Ways to Support Somebody During The #metoo Campaign:

1-    Let them talk/ Encourage them to talk

Let your friends and family know they are safe sharing their story with you.  Don’t judge circumstances and please recognize your own bias on this issue.

It’s important to be patient and compassionate.  Some people have never told their story. Having a witness to internal pain is an enormous healing experience and they may need some time to organize what’s going on for them. Giving support and providing the platform to tell their story makes their traumatic memories less ‘messy’. Talking can start the process of helping them organize their memories around the trauma, thus assisting them in making sense of the memories; the secrecy starts to fade, they may blame themselves less, and they may even feel a little bit more in control of the experience.  Allow them this privilege. Just listen while they talk.

2-    Be comfortable with messy emotions

There is no right way to disclose trauma. Just go with wherever they are. Be careful about the subtle ways you manage or shut off other people’s emotions.  If they are crying just hold their hand or support them in any way that doesn’t shut them down. Instead of saying “It’s alright,” (because it obviously is not,) maybe you say “I’m right here.”

Be comfortable in whatever way they tell their story. If they use humor, let it be. If they cry the entire way through, manage your fears around hot emotions. They have been told their entire lives to keep a secret. Don’t be one more person who is unable or unwilling to see or hear their story.

3-    Be the support person, not the problem solver

Before anybody was paying attention to the #metoo campaign, your friend or family member probably devised a million scenarios of how they can solve the situation.  They may well need some advice, but today your job is to just support them in whatever way they ask.

When confronted with hot emotions it’s often our default to problem solve instead. Problem solving is of course done with love, but can also act as a subtle cue to stop people from telling their story or experiencing the uncomfortable feelings. Remember, first and foremost, we are here to witness and to listen. You will know when the time comes to problem solve because they will specifically ask this of you.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

If you or somebody you love has experienced sexual trauma currently being brought up by the #metoo campaign, you are not alone. And you don’t have to be alone.

Look for help. Confide in a trusted friend or family member. Think about addressing your painful experience with a professional counsellor or psychologist. If you decide to search out a counselor or psychologist, search for one who is trauma informed and who specializes in dealing with the aftermath of trauma. Look for a therapist who has experience working with PTSD, anxiety, and hopefully provides EMDR (a type of treatment for trauma.)

Thousands of women and men are sharing their experiences of being harassed or abused. You are not alone. And there are many people who want to help.

Tips For Finding and Selecting a Therapist (in the United States)

Finding yourself at the bottom of your game is insulting enough without the hassle of deciphering the mysterious language of therapy licensing, therapy models, specialties, and  how to find one that suits your particular issue. Below is a small tutorial in finding and selecting a therapist that matches your needs.

What’s with all the alphabet letters?  Mental health therapists have letters after their names that denote their licensing.  Example:  Jennifer Perkins LMFT, LPCC denotes I have two licenses; Marriage and Family Therapy plus Professional Clinical Counselor.  Below is a list of common state licenses for mental health therapists:

• LCSW -Licensed Clinical Social Worker

• LMFT -Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

• LPCC -Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor

• PsyD -Doctorate in Psychology, clinical focus

• PhD -Doctorate (probably in psychology)

• MD -Medical Doctor (may be psychiatrist- usually not a therapist)

All licensed mental health therapists essentially do the same work with remarkably similar training.  They need to have at least a masters degree in their field and a minimum of 3000 hours of supervised therapy with clients.  They must also pass the state exam(s).

Three of these licenses require a doctorate degree.  Three do not. The education requirements for the three licenses that do not require a doctorate have a great deal of overlap.  The license to perform therapy on specific populations and specific issues is called “Scope of Practice.”  Scope of Practice varies slightly based on education and training (licensing), but is probably not visible to the general public.

Quick and Dirty:

• LCSWs – great with social and community issues

• LMFTs – great with relationships, as well as families and couples

• LPCC’s – great with empowering clients to deal with stress and make well-informed decisions

All three allow the therapist to diagnose and treat the same wide variety of mental health issues.  There are limitations for treating children, couples and families but most therapists have obtained the additional training.

The licenses requiring Doctorates (not Medical Doctor/ MD) are called psychologists and require additional education above the masters level.  They also have training in psychological testing and interpreting tests.  It is possible they may charge more per session since they have advanced degrees.

M.D.s are medical doctors and may be psychiatrists.  Psychiatrists do not usually perform talk therapy and are primarily used for medication management.  It is not uncommon to work with a psychiatrist as well as a therapist.  Usually both will get you to sign a release in order to consult with each other on your case.

What are all these types of therapy and what is it that I want?  Therapists vary widely on the types of therapy they provide.  Most therapy models will be based in talk therapy techniques, however therapy can rely on other interesting modalities as well.  Some of these models are:

• Art Therapy

• Drama Therapy

• Sand Tray Therapy

• Music Therapy

• Somatic Therapy

If you are interested in a particular therapy model, do a little investigation to learn about it as well as the regulatory boards. Your therapist should have specific training and possibly certification in that specialty.  Remember, there is no defining evidence that one type of therapy is better than another, however, specific therapy issues often have what are called Best Practices.  Therapists will incorporate Best Practices into whatever type of therapy model they subscribe too.

Where do I find a list of therapists?  With the use of the internet this question is really limitless.  Most therapists have websites, but of course, you will need to find their URL. If you have clarity about the kind of therapy you are looking for, type in a few keywords and google will spit out matches for you.  However, if you are unclear about search terms, there are many clearinghouses for clients seeking therapists.  You can google your geographic area and search “therapist.”  This will give you the clearinghouses for your area.  A list of some of California’s top sites:

• Psychology Today

• Counseling California

• Therapy Tribe

• Good Therapy

These sites will allow you to enter your geographic area as well as some basic information about your issue and then provide you 4-5 pages of therapists meeting your requirements.  You simply need to click and read the profiles to see who might be a good fit.   These clearinghouses are paid-for marketing tools used by therapists, so not all therapists are represented on every site.

One last note:  Be aware that judging a therapist based on Yelp or other social networking sites may not benefit you.  Due to confidentiality, it is very difficult for therapists to manage social networking pages and many do not even attempt. 

What are therapist specialties? / Do all therapists work with every issue? The many years of education and internships have trained therapists to be very good at most things.  However, therapists usually have a niche or ‘area of competency’ they especially enjoy working with.  Competency can be a special population such as LGBT, or it can be an area of treatment such as Trauma and Abuse. Therapists usually have additional education, training and experience for these niches they also call ‘area of expertise’.  They can even have additional certifications for these areas. Niches can be broad such as:

• Relationship breakups

• Personal Growth

• Trauma and abuse

• LGBT population

• Stress and Anxiety

Or as specifically defined such as:

• LGBT in the Mormon/ LDS culture

• Stress and Anxiety in the high-tech/ biotech industry

Bottom line?  Licensure dictates the education required, but not necessarily the expertise of the therapist. Check with the therapist to get more information on the type of issues they work with and the type of client populations they have experience with.  And remember, therapists are very good at treating most things, so don’t exclude a therapist simply because they are not advertising a specific expertise. 

OK.  I’ve found a few I like.  Where to now?  Get a feel for the therapist by reading their site.  If it looks like a good fit make a phone call. Most therapists will offer a 20-30 minute free phone consultation.  This consultation is your chance to ask your questions and see what it’s like to work with them.

Before making the call:  Be sure you are in a quiet space where you won’t be interrupted and where you can have privacy. You may want to write down your questions beforehand. Some potential questions:

• Do you feel comfortable working with (insert issue)

• Do you have experience working with (insert issue)

• Do you have specific certification and training to work with this?

• What are your hours of operation?

Making the call:  It is important to be specific and concise about why you are seeking therapy, as well as what you hope to accomplish.  Answer questions truthfully.  Chances are the therapist is trying to gauge her competency with your issue.  If they feel it is beyond their scope of competency, they will probably offer you the names of therapists who will be able to work with you.  Don’t take it personally.  Not every therapist is a specialist for every issue.

The therapist is going to have some questions for you as well:

• Who referred you/ how did you find me?

• What is going on right now that you are seeking therapy?

• Do you have a history of _____? (depending on your issue)

• Are you currently in crisis?

She will gently guide you through the interview.  If you have specific questions, don’t hesitate to ask. She’s more than happy to share the information about her services with you.

Discussing Fees:  You will most likely talk about fees on the first telephone conversation.  If you are having trouble financially, many therapists offer a sliding scale.

Setting up an Appointment:  If during the conversation you feel comfortable this is somebody you could work with, let her know so she can arrange a first appointment.

See, it wasn’t really that difficult after all.

Stress Management 101

At times, life can be overwhelming, unexpected, and full of high stress.   We often refer to these times as crisis.  This can take the form a relationship breakup, the death of a loved one, unexpected unemployment, a fast approaching work deadline, or even something positive such as the birth of a child.  Below are some first steps for making it through tough stress.

Focus on your health:  During the early stages of stress, it’s easy to get derailed.  This happens as cortisol, a stress hormone, courses through our bodies signaling the flight or fight response. Our thinking becomes fuzzy, we have difficulty concentrating and performing daily activities.  Our appetites disappear, we become sleep deprived, our minds and reflexes become slowed or over stimulated. Being aware of how to care for our bodies during a crisis can help increase our overall management of the situation.

1-    Eat healthy meals.  We can’t think and make good decisions if we don’t have adequate nutrition.  Your job is to make sure that healthy foods get into your body. If this means you start eating food that taste like cardboard because all of your taste has mysteriously disappeared, then so be it.  Eat a healthy cardboard sandwich.  The same goes for adequate water intake.

2-    Get some sleep.  During high stress, our internal clocks forget our normal rhythms as our bodies get stuck in fight or flight.  During sleep is when our bodies eliminate the stress hormones.  If you find you are having sleep trouble you may have to do a little work.  The Sleep Foundation has some excellent tips on sleep hygiene HERE.

3-    You may also want to try some mindfulness breathing practices to fall asleep. The 4-7-8 pranayama method will help.  While you are in your bed waiting to fall asleep, consciously relax your body and breathe in through your nose for four seconds, hold your breath for seven seconds, and exhale through your mouth for eight seconds.  Repeat a few times.  The studied combination of numbers has a chemical-like effect on our brains and slows the heart rate to soothe you to sleep.  This 4-7-8 breathing technique is great to use during the day to calm yourself as well.  Watch a video about the technique HERE:

4-    Exercise. Implement a recovery based exercise, such as walking, yoga, Pilates and stretching as these exercises help to regulate optimal cortisol output.

• Do a walking meditation, preferably outside in the sunlight. Sunshine has the added effect of balancing your natural circadian rhythms to help you sleep. Put your ear buds on with your most soothing and inspiring music.  Pandora is free and has some awesome stations for this. May I suggest this HERE. You may need to earnestly and often re-direct your perseverating or negative thoughts.
• Yoga is a perfect exercise for stress reduction. There are many community yoga classes that are donation based as well as on-line yoga HERE: 

Focus on your employment. Be proactive in your place of employment.  Now is not the time to get laid off or fired:

1-    Get out of bed and be on time.  Nothing says Reduction In Force like the person who wanders in 15-30 minutes late every day with teary eyes or worse, reeking of alcohol from last nights cry fest.

2-    Recognize you’re attention to detail is a little fragile right now: Be conscious of your daily work activities, and be aware that your autopilot isn’t at peak performance.

3-    Be discreet with your story:  Be delicate in sharing details with your place of employment. There are times when it’s a good idea to share with your boss what’s really happening; health issues, as well as family deaths are appropriate crisis sharing with your boss as your employment may have company resources in the form of bereavement leave, and EAP.   Breakup stories, your DUI or your brother’s jail time are generally not appropriate boss sharing material.

4-    Crying during work hours is strictly a private activity:  It’s happened to all of us.  Just keep it contained to your car, or the private bathroom.  If you have a close friend at work, ask them to help cover for you. 

Form a plan:  Don’t be fooled into thinking you are paralyzed.  You have the strength and wherewithal to get a plan together, you just don’t know it yet.

1- Fight the urge to isolate, instead enlist your friends and family for support. The more you reach out appropriately, the sooner you will be able to get back to normal.  Let them know what is going on, and seek not only their support, but their advice on next steps.

2- Start a plan of Next Steps.  This can be a simple task list of pivotal things that must get accomplished. It’s a plan of action for the coming week(s).  Make sure your Next Steps are actions that are measurable and can be accomplished. 

Give yourself a break:  You can’t expect your peak performance right now. You’re going to forget things.  You’re going to make mistakes.  You might even lose your temper and have a fight with your beloved. Solve it, and let it go.  There are more important ways to use your energy.  Remind your relationships to give you a break as well. When you are feeling better about the immediate crisis, you may want to consider THIS: Sometimes when things are falling apart, they may actually be falling into place.

If you find yourself too overwhelmed and making unhealthy decisions, or being bogged down with negative thoughts, you may want to ask for professional help.  Make an appointment with a therapist.  Sometimes an objective, non-judgmental sounding board can help bring things back into perspective.  Remember, it’s not about living life perfect, it’s about living life better.