Do You Feel Like a Hot Mess?
Posted: August 5, 2020
Do you feel like you’re on the struggle bus in every area of your life?
Are you angry every moment of every day? With everyone (including yourself)?
Work. Relationships. Random strangers. Everyone is your nemesis.
And you have dreams. But you feel stuck.
When you are able to rise out of the funk you realize what you want more than anything is to escape from the Hot Mess Express and start living the life you want—and deserve.
I see you.
I work with women who are just like you.
I Know Better, So I Do Better
When I was growing up, my dad was a hot mess before anyone ever used the term.
He served two tours in Vietnam and had PTSD, but I didn’t realize there was a name for what caused his erratic behavior.
One day when I was about 8 years old, we were driving down the road together side by side in his Suzuki truck. Then, without warning, he pulled into a ditch and pulled me out of the truck.
He pressed my head into the dirt and said, “Get down and shut up.”
That day as we were driving down the road, he had a flashback to the war zone in Vietnam. He thought he had seen a threat out of the corner of his eye. “Get down and shut up” and pressing me down into the earth was his way of protecting me from a non-existent enemy.
After a few moments when he realized we were next to the cornfields in a ditch in my hometown, he allowed me to get back in the truck. He got back behind the wheel and kept driving.
“Dad, can we stop at McDonald’s and get an apple pie?” I asked as if what just happened was perfectly normal. I guess to me, it was.
Over time, I became my dad’s therapist. He began to confide in me.
When I was getting my master’s degree in social work I learned about PTSD. If only I had known earlier what my dad was dealing with, I could have helped my dad more in those earlier years.
But now that I know better, I do better. As a therapist since 1996 and the owner of Betty Eastman, LCSW, and Associates, Inc. I’m dedicated to helping young women with the struggles they face as they enter into adulthood and when they feel like a hot mess themselves.
When I work with patients, I feel the emotion and I understand the desperation just like I did with my dad. But today, I also have the education, experience and skills to help my patients develop strategies that make their life worth living.
Being a Hot Mess Isn’t a Life Sentence
If you find yourself saying you’re pretty sure real adults aren’t supposed to have lives like yours, you might be ready to change it. You can exchange your HOT MESS LIFE for happiness and hope!
All you need is to learn new skills. And everybody can learn those skills if they want to. Skills such as:
- Coping strategies to deal effectively with life’s curveballs
- How to stay in the moment and control your triggers
- Regulation of your emotions (you have emotions because you’re human, but you don’t have to act emotional)
- Problem-solving to build your distress tolerance
- Establishing boundaries and communicating them effectively in relationships