i feel so matching today! ahh~
hi Puzzles & Pieces, it's Jessica from
multiplicityandme, ending that pesky old stigma of
d.i.d
today's video has been chosen and voted
for by our amazing patrons
with the title: how to stop feeling
guilty about the self
or angry about abuses - i felt like there
would have to be more than one video
made on a topic like this because you've
both got the subject of guilt and anger
so i felt that focusing on the
overarching theme of blame would tie
things up really nicely
today is essentially another self-help
or self-therapy video very similar
i guess to the grounding box one that
you guys may have seen before
i'm really happy to hear that so many
people really enjoyed
being so proactive i guess about
managing mental health and obviously
finding those little tool kits and hacks
and things that we can do to help
ourselves
because of course not everyone has
access to therapy so i hope today's
video
helps just as much as our grounding box
video - fingers crossed
okay so a brief background, i was about
to start my final year in postgraduate
psychotherapy and then i had my baby
um you know also hindsight i think it
made me step back and realize that i had
to kind of go through my own trauma
before i helped other people with their
trauma, but in those couple of years that
i was a trainee psychotherapist
i found what i learned was so helpful
not only just for my clients but for me
too
in fact when you learn techniques that's
how you started you had to
try and apply the technique to yourself,
first you'd then role play with your
peers in the class
and then you would take that out into
the field to actually do that on a
client, so i suppose the bottom line
is it's really empowering to learn these
techniques and essentially be kind of
your own therapist
obviously is as much as possible and an
obvious disclaimer is that not
every technique will work for everyone
or every situation
it's also only advised to be your own
therapist really for low level
ongoing maintenance support so if you
are struggling with bigger problems
please make sure to reach out to a
certified mental health professional
or someone who's very supportive who can
help you and of course please do take
everything
that we say with a pinch of salt as we
do not proclaim to be professionals [online]
only someone who has had professional
experiences
anyway let's get started, okay so this is
genuinely one of my
favorite tools i remember using this on
a client
and witnessing this incredible light
bulb moment
and then a year later in group therapy
for trauma i ended up using it again on
myself
as part of the class, i have the same
strong reactions as some of the clients
that i worked with
and of course the experience that we had
learning that technique as
psychotherapists, it was really
really interesting, so please before you
try this on yourself
make sure that you have a safe person
who can support you through this
and have of course plan some self-care
afterwards as this may stir up some
reactions, so here is a pre warning
and of course you do not have to try
this at all if you do not feel
comfortable
your comfortability matters the most and
like i said please take
everything that we say or do with a
pinch of salt okay?
okay i have lost my white board i don't
know where it is...
paper instead good old paper and pen
meet
the responsibility pie! responsible~
sadly it's not edible but hopefully
it'll be just as satisfying
this delicious mind pie was created by
Greenberger and Padeski
who are some are kind of the leading
experts i guess within the counselling
field
and this pie encourages people to think
about
who or what else may have contributed to
a negative situation
sometimes those who've experienced a
difficult situation
may assume that they are predominantly
at fault
and then of course they feel ashamed
they feel guilt they carry
anger and shame is a binding emotion
that basically latches on to other
emotions
and really stirs them up it makes things
worse so
if we can kind of entangle some of that
shame in the background
hopefully then it'll be able to allow
somebody to
recover a little bit better or let go of
things that were holding them back
and that's what this amazing pie is all
about
so to stop this harbouring um this pie
essentially can be a really handy tool
to self-reflect on those difficult
circumstances
and give us a far more analytical view
of who's ultimately responsible
hopefully then shifting the blame from
us and helping us let go of some of the
anger
the shame and the guilt that follows of
course for confidentiality purposes i
will certainly be not
using any of my previous clients
examples but neither do we feel
particularly comfortable given an
example of our own because obviously
that's very personal
it ties in people in our life who aren't
necessarily involved in this channel
so instead we're going to take the
example from one of my old textbooks
if you're curious about these as well
all the links will be in the description
below
as to what books and references i'm
using so the example they've given in
the book is actually weight related
so please bear this in mind as this
obviously may be an upsetting subject
for some people and i
hope that you'll see how this pie can be
used in a lot of different situations
not just about things like weight it can
be used for trauma it can be used for
any situation that you feel guilt or
blame or shame for
many survivors often say well you know
if i hadn't done this
or if i hadn't done that what would have
happened to me wouldn't have happened to
me
maybe if i didn't do this stuff wouldn't
have happened
it's my fault and this aims to kind of
put that into perspective, so i'm going
to go through this example with you guys
step by step if you
feel comfortable you can follow along
too make sure you pause when you need to
is in a real life therapy session
obviously your therapist would give you
time to come up with ideas plans and
thoughts and to make amendments but
again please stay alert
and aware of your triggers practice
self-care and have someone supportive
near you or
around you or at the end of the phone if
you need it
okay so it says "rosie first draws a pie
she feels blame and shame for the fact
that she's overweight
which has fueled self-loathing and
depression the therapist
initially asks her on a percentage how
much of this is her fault
and she tells a therapist that it is a
hundred percent
her fault it is a hundred percent her
fault that she's overweight
the therapist then prompts rosie
to think about what else may have
contributed
towards her current weight and although
rosie struggled at first she began then
to generate a list
so at this stage if you're following
along think of a situation that you
feel responsible for right on a
percentage scale to 100
how much of that what happened is your
fault
just first number that comes to mind
just pop it down okay so after you've
written that then and you can put it
inside the circle if you like you can
mark it 100
90 whatever you figure that you're
around and after you've
written that think about what else may
have contributed to your event
make a bullet point list next to the pie
this may take some time and evoke some
difficult
thoughts and emotions so obviously
please take your time so
rosie managed to come up with an eight
bullet point list if you're struggling
for ideas or wondering how this is laid
out
this is how rosie does it, she said the
food industry which packages and
advertises food to make it so appealing,
my depression which leads me to comfort
eat, my parents who were unsupportive so
that i turned to comfort eating
my mother who was always dieting but fed
me the food she craved which made me an
overweight child
the children who teased me for being fat
which triggered my obsession with weight,
my dance school which indoctrinated us
with the idea that only thin is
acceptable and contributed to my
obsession with weight
my obsession with weight: i am
preoccupied with food
and my aunt, although i love her dearly
who tried to cheer me up with chocolate
treats
which is probably why i find chocolate
particularly tempting and comforting"
sometimes for people just stopping here
may be enough if it's already proving
too difficult this is a stage you can
already stop, you've made your list and
you can see that you are not the only
person at fault, but if you feel ready
you can draw another pie next to your
first pie
where you wrote down whatever percentage
you felt to blame for
and then add a percentage next to each
of those bullet points that you made
rosie's ratings were the following, so
she gave the food industry five percent
which her depression was 10% her parents
40%
her mother 10% the children 10%
her dance school 5% her weight obsession
15% her aunt 1% and
herself 4% so the pie
looks very very different before and
after, so this was rosie's self-blame
at the beginning of the session and by
the end of the session
she only attributed actually four
percent, she realized
it is not all her fault, there are so
many things that contribute to difficult
situations
and it's really empowering to realize
actually you know what
it's not all my fault, the aim is of
course to try and do a little bit of
math to total it up to a hundred percent
but don't worry particularly if this
doesn't equate
fully, if you get the picture by simply
filling in the lines, so totalling it up
you can see the before and after -
see my great craft of pie - this is how
rosie felt to begin with and here's how
she ended
after she realized that is more than
just her
that contributed to her problem, what
often happens with clients who come in
with a lot of self-blame it's how much
blame they put on themselves
initially is significantly higher than
how it ends up
because they live in a world where
they're told actually you know what it
did happen to you
and it was you and that's going to make
it feel like it's totally somebody's fault
but then they realize as they go on
is that there's far more contributing to
the situation than just them and if you
have any self-doubt with your answers
you are more than welcome to go back and change
them until you feel it's right but
hopefully what you'll find
is that the ending percentage is
significantly lower than the percentage
you originally estimated for yourself
so when rosie compared her
responsibility pie from
how it started versus how it ended she
realized only four percent really was
personal blame hopefully some of it
you'll also find a similar
result for your initial expectations to
the reality of the situation
and hopefully that'll help relieve some
of the blame and guilt
fear and anger that you may feel and the
hope is is that
realization will help support you
in letting go of some of those emotions
and help you to recover and move on and
if you're attributing this specifically
to DID
you can of course do this with as many
parts as you like, any parts that feel
comfortable to
of course, as they may all have different
perspectives on what
factors contributed to a situation, they
may come up with some things that you
haven't thought of
and this may also help uncover the parts
who particularly feel responsible
about the event, which then gives the
system that foresight on who to support
and who to help
and who to kind of try and get through
this
because obviously it's really really
difficult holding on to those emotions
for so so long
and that is another puzzle pieced
together... or i suppose, pied together!
i really hope this has been helpful for
you guys, please do let us know if you
feel comfortable to
if you attempted this and kind of what
your before and afters
were, did it help? did this exercise help?
and how do you feel now that you've
completed the task? and of course
my hope is that the end result will help
you displace
some of those emotions that you may feel
to yourself or to say
one particular person and remember
remember remember
please treat yourself to some self-care
and seek a professional perspective
wherever possible.
okay that's everything for now, thank you guys!
bye
