 Welcome to shrink wrap Hawaii. My name is Steven Phillip Katz and today is a milestone for me because I have an incredibly special guest coming in via Skype which is pretty amazing because my guest is right at this moment in Massachusetts and she is appearing and her name is Marissa Miley Katz and full disclosure it's no coincidence that we have the same last name Marissa Miley Katz is a mental health counselor and a music therapist and she practices in Massachusetts. Are you there Marissa? I'm here. Oh welcome to shrink wrap. It's really exciting to have you on the show. I'm excited to be here. So Marissa a little biological information I'll pretend that I don't know the story for our listeners. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Kailua, Hawaii on the Woodward side. Where'd you go to school? I went to school first at Enchanted Lake Elementary and then to the Honolulu-Waldorf School for most of my grammar school high school career and then I went to Western Massachusetts for college. Wow. Where did you go to school in Western Mass? I went to Mount Holyoke College. It's a small women's college one of the seven sisters in South Hadley, Massachusetts. What was your major? I majored in music and I minored in Asian studies. Wow. Did you play an instrument or was what kind of music? So I primarily studied voice. I'm a liberal arts degree so I took a lot of different courses that were very writing heavy as well but yeah primarily voice. And so after that? After that I graduated and got a couple of jobs here and there and I went to volunteer for a music therapist in the area because I was interested in music therapy and after a couple years of that I decided I wanted to go to music therapy school so I attended Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts near Boston. Wow. So that was you ended up with a master's in music therapy? A master's in music therapy and also mental health counseling. And what are you doing right now? Right now I'm working as a mental health clinician using psychotherapy and music therapy in Medford at an outpatient clinic, a private company called DCS mental health and I see about 33 clients a week. So your typical client if there is such a thing what do they would if you could think of one they come in let's say they haven't been in therapy before do you have some clients like that? Yeah I do I definitely do. And so if they come in and let's say I come in to see you I'm your client and I say oh you know I'm really upset I don't know what to do with myself I just retired and life has lost its meaning I think I'm kind of depressed I hope you can help me. What do you say? I said I would say I hope I can help you too I'm glad you came in today and to seek services when you've never had any counseling before and I can offer help in talk therapy and also in music therapy. Music therapy what is that? So music therapy is basically using the tool of music as a way to get to therapeutic goals that you might get to with talk therapy like using the symptoms of depression or the symptoms of anxiety by just using music as the primary tool. I mean does it have to be a musician? You don't you don't definitely don't have to be a musician it's made to be accessible to any and every individual that can appreciate music or is curious about music in any way. Yeah well I like music you know I grew up with Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and those guys how can that help me feel better? I mean if you can already appreciate music you can probably think of a handful of ways how it might have helped improve your mood even without a therapist in their room. Yeah that's true. But with a therapist in their room we can sort of use music to process your thoughts and feelings and help support you through music making to hopefully get you to increase your self-expression so that you can hopefully get more more of what's maybe unconscious or subconscious brought to the brought forward. Wow so can we do that just by like singing a tune or do I need to have an instrument or bang a gong or what would we do? Anything you could use your hands you could use your voice you could use any instrument that is accessible to you in the room or bring in something. We could also listen to music that's pre-recorded on YouTube and talk about it and talk about it. So you can use my hands like what show me can you can we do something? Can we do something right now? Yeah I hope to put you on the spot. I have a song that I found through the Unitarian Universalist Society that's actually borrows from mindfulness meditation. Oh that's cool. All you have to be able to do is sing breathe in breathe out yeah yeah and then what happened? And then I could do another part and we could switch parts afterwards. Okay. And my part would go and peace out love. I can't sing so pretty. You have a beautiful voice. Thank you. It's not from your father. Like a harmonizing song. Oh let's try it let's try it. How does it go again? Sing first you're gonna say breathe and breathe out. It is very relaxing. So you mentioned mindfulness therapy or meditation. Do you use that in your practice too? Many toolboxes I can from psychotherapies, psychodynamic, you know more humanistic therapies out there or cognitive behavioral. I just try to use whatever I can to reach my client where they're at. Wow so is there a typical or predominant kind of client that you see? Predominantly the client dealing with anxiety or depression or maybe bipolar or borderline personality disorder. So do you think it's... are there special things that you have to consider working with women versus working with men? Probably it's completely different on the male or female but one thing that often comes up with therapy and sometimes with what in my experience sometimes I'll have more more transference from males and I think that's just because there's you know there's a gender difference. What do you mean when you say more transference from males? What do you mean? You know maybe they'll see me as some kind of representation of a strong female in their life whether it's their mother or ex-wife. Is that a good thing? Can be useful certainly. It can also break the therapeutic relationship depending on how difficult that transference is in processing that. So if a client you know if it's obvious that a client is say oh you know you remind me a lot of my mother right? What do you say to that? Good question. I would probably be very cured. Very open to hearing more about what they have to say about that. In what ways I remind them of their mother. Trying to understand is this something that you that comes up a lot for you with women? If there's any patterns there first probably. So you said that a lot of your clients are women. Do you find that there's a lot of focus on relationships with significant others? Definitely. There's a lot of people out there who struggle with domestic abuse or struggle with difficult sex life with their partner. Can we come right back to that? We have to take a small break and that's always a good tease. We'll be right back. Don't touch your mouse. Hi, I'm Crystal. Welcome to Think Tech, my show Quok Talk. Normally airs at 10 o'clock on Tuesdays but it's going to change to 11 o'clock. So don't miss it. It's an hour later. You can sleep in a little longer. Come with me and engage in some sensitive provocative discussions on everything. It's all good. All right? Women's issues, things that people don't dare talk about. We want it on the table. So join me. Hello, how are you doing? It's me, Angus McTech. Wishing you to welcome and join us to see us on Hibachi Talk on Think Tech Hawaii. Draw my co-hosts, go to the tech side and enter the security guy every Friday from 1300 to 1345. We look forward to see you. We'll talk tech and we'll have some weeb of fun. And remember, let your wing game free. Where are you be? Hello? Everyone, I'm Maria Mera and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show, Hibachi Hawaii on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 3 p.m. We are here to talk about news, issues and events local and around the world. Join me. Aloha. Welcome back. I'm Stephen Phillip Katz, marriage and family therapist practicing here in Hawaii and I'm talking to Marissa Miley Katz in a little town near Boston, Massachusetts. Welcome back, Marissa. So you know it's never good to tease without coming through afterwards. You mentioned something about sex lives that comes up in your practice with your clients? Yeah, I mean I think that it can be a pretty important part of people's relationships with their significant other and especially for women in the prime of their life, they're trying to maybe have children or they're trying to just have a healthy relationship with their significant other and are going through some really difficult emotional times that make that definitely can jeopardize that part of their life. So I know in my practice I also see a lot of women around that age and it's really difficult for them because they yearn for a relationship. If they're not in a relationship they yearn for a good relationship with another person and it really it's hard. I mean what do you do when they come in like depressed because you know I can't seem to find anybody. Okay yeah that specific example can't find anybody. I try to just see what strengths they have first probably what is working and try to work off of that first. You mean what when you say what is working what do you mean? Like is there are they do they have emotional intelligence already are they you know do they have good friends close friendships they have intimate relationships with other people in their life that's not sexual like family members community members that kind of thing and you know if that's really lacking already then that's maybe a place to start from just trying to have really supportive healthy friendships in their life and then seeing if they can you know open that up to a broader base of getting to know more people and more people that might be potential partners for them. So you said use the phrase emotional intelligence what is that? If we can decide that there's many kinds of intelligence out there not just learning how to read and do math then we can talk about how you know maybe we have some intelligence in being able to work out our feelings and manage them when we get very stressed out at work or by using good coping strategies and also just having some resilience to be able to withstand having to endure a difficult emotion for a period of time. So I find that some of the people I see that mean coping strategy is a 12-pack of beer. At some healthy coping strategies relatively healthy. So what do you say if that's somebody's primary coping strategy and they're not it's not working for them? Well first of all I actually don't primarily work with people with addiction so that wouldn't necessarily come up very much but if that was the case I would refer them to a place where they could get help for addiction or alcohol abuse because that that would have to kind of be their secondary and they'd have to be in some like six months of recovery before I could be working with them. Do you think there's a difference between men and women in terms of emotional intelligence? Any trouble by stating anything too opinionated in that way but I would say that there is definitely social structures out there that exist more maybe with more access for women than for men such as you know mothers being more open to having daughters talk more openly about their feelings than maybe fathers with their sons in the way that we've you know made our society as it stands now. I think it's slowly changing but we probably still have a ways to go. Yes I think it's my experience also I mean I as you know I work with a group of men and I'm surprised actually at how willing they've been to talk about their feelings and I think in my experience that it's like they're surprised that anybody is interested in listening to their feelings what they think about or what their feelings are. Yeah and I see people come in who specifically men come in saying they want a female therapist because they feel like a male therapist maybe wouldn't be sensitive enough emotionally intelligent enough to be able to feel like they can open up to them emotionally. What do you deal with the guy or woman that comes in and says well you know I really you know I don't know what I'm feeling you know I asked them what they're feeling they don't know. I'm actually especially with some of my teenagers who aren't necessarily choosing to be there a lot of it is just getting creative honestly. Ah the music stuff. Yeah music art playing games you know making lists that kind of thing. Oh I mean like what are your favorite songs those kind of lists. I'm going for a more cognitive behavioral therapy approach than I might say you know what are some you know core memories for you growing up. Can you make a list of that. Oh wow. Yeah. Core memories. Core memories what do you mean by that. Some difficult relationship that they have with their family or something like that then I might be like okay let's let's think about what is what has helped you to have the shape of the thoughts that you have today by thinking about some important memories that like helped you to figure out what you think of your dad or you think of your mom like was there that one time when you tried to ride a bike where you know your dad was very helpful or was very discouraging or whatever it was where that really stuck with you. Trying to think of like pretty big moments for you growing up that might have impacted your feelings and thoughts about that person today. So if I give you a memory oh yeah I remember when I was learning how to ride a bike and I fell down and my mother yelled at me then that could impact my current relationship like if my wife yells at me that could be a trigger and all of a sudden I get depressed or angry. Exactly. Yeah these sort of like mini traumas maybe. Mini traumas I never heard that term that's a good one. I like that maybe you can write a book on mini traumas. Your mini bike and your mini trauma. Yeah. So it's a controversial title. Yeah. Yeah people make my trauma. I get the feeling that you really love what you do. I really do. Yeah I do because I've been properly working up to figuring out that I want to do this for let's see if I for 11 years. Wow. I have more of really just an inkling 11 years ago but definitely by the time I graduated college which would have been oh goodness eight years ago maybe. Let's see. No seven years ago I guess. Seven years ago at the Paralyze. What is it you think about it. I mean I love it too but what do you love about it. Why do you think we love it. I just love being able to kind of be a fly on the wall in someone's life for a little while and kind of be able to really sit with their story and in a way that is very humbling because I just have no idea if what I'm doing is going to be helpful. I can just hope to like witness some piece of their life and sometimes that really does wonders and it's just it makes you feel really lovely to be able to just witness that and not even necessarily know if you can even take any credit just to be able to see them transform. What is it that makes the transformation do you have any idea. You know I'm gonna take this from one of the interviews that I watched on your show because I was very I very much believed in it. For me it's about believing in humans. Having a very humanistic philosophy in life of people have when it comes down to it people have the will and ability to make themselves better if they are given the space to. Wow that's I like the way you said to your job kind of is to be a witness to it that's I guess your job or your privilege and it's hard to I should ask you do you find it difficult to know when to talk and when to be quiet. Absolutely sometimes it's because I think that when clients especially come in with a lot of anxiety or depression our empathetic training and maybe our natural empathetic selves without even realizing it pick up on that energy and it's hard to be able to say okay I'm feeling this anxiety now how can I how can I help help this person by saying something right now when I just want to kind of maybe close up like they are and hope that they relax first and say something first. I don't want to cut you off Marissa but the show is coming to an end and it's been great it's gone by so quickly and thank you for being on the show with me it's really fabulous thanks a lot. Thank you for having me. Okay talk to you later bye bye.