 Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm J. Fidel. This is Think Tech and it's what community matters and we're talking with Steve Katz. He used to have a show back on Think Tech a year or two ago. Steve, welcome to the show. What was the name of your show? I can't remember. Um, shrink wrap shrink wrap. Okay. Very important because actually Steve is a shrink right now right in front of you is a shrink. And he's a very important person because we need to analyze what it means to be in the abnormal country, the abnormal chapter we're in right now. So Steve, you must be thinking about that. You know, people, you know, must be thinking about it. Describe for me how things are unfolding in the world of psychology. Well, I guess it's the same as the world. Nobody has a clue what to do where there's nobody alive today that has been through anything like this. You know, you can't modify the word unique and you don't have to. We are in a unique situation right now. Nobody has ever dealt with this before. So if somebody says they know, they're lying. Hey, there's a lot of lies going on these days, you know, misinformation. Right. If you get a complex. And so the biggest thing I think, well, the first thing I'm thinking of is there's a lot of anxiety in the world because of the unknown. It's very scary to be in a place that you've never been before. I mean, you're literally, for many people, it feels like their own identity is not what it was. Somebody once said something, it's like losing your mother. You don't know who you are anymore for a while until you get used to the new normal. But the flip side of being in the unknown place is there's an enormous opportunity for growth, excitement. Like if you don't know who you are, it's possible that you can change and become something more exciting for sure. Or something different. That's, I can guarantee that that nothing is the same as it was and nothing will be even when we get back to normal having experienced this. You know, they say that facing your mortality improves you. It gives you a better perception of yourself and the world around you. And what's going on here is we are all facing our mortality is right out there. Yeah, the difference between before and now is not that we're facing our mortality. We're always facing our mortality. The difference is we're aware of it, which is very healthy. It's very healthy. It's a much more real place to live. It's like a zen moment when you're on the flying trapeze and you're in the air. And you're looking for that other bar and there's no bar. You have to learn how to fly. That's which is challenging. Well, you said the world of psychology is the world in general. And you know, you're you're structuring this world as if the individual, you and me and everyone in the world knows these things are happening. I mean, it's part of this process of humanity. But that may not be true because a lot of people, even now today, even, you know, at the end, the very end of March, which is only like a month after the things started, you know, that they're ignorant to completely and exclusively ignorant. How what kind of world do they live in? Well, I just thought of something I heard on the news today about what's going on in India. You know, Modi proclaimed that in four hours, everybody's going to be on lockdown to promote social distancing. Well, he's the head of a country of 1.3 billion people. And some of the people felt like the president of the country, Modi had no idea that they existed. Because there's this huge population that is not in their home village and they're going to be on lockdown. So the opposite of social distancing happened as they all crowded together on the roadways to walk sometimes 100 miles or more to home. So you had social compression instead of distancing. So they maybe didn't know what was going on, but they also felt like the prime minister of India, Modi, didn't know that they existed and they're about 80% of the country. So, yeah, and, you know, and most of Africa hasn't experienced this yet and they're going to and if you think it's bad here because we don't have enough ventilators. Well, there there's no, not enough beds. So it could be an enormous humanitarian disaster. And let me tell you about some of the symptoms are rather complexes that I've been thinking about. This is not necessarily personal. I'm just sort of what's the word projecting my thoughts on others here. It's all predicated. There's one is I have many to ask you about one is the little buggies syndrome, the complex that there are little buggies everywhere. They're little virus particles and they're on every surface all around you. They're even in your house because somehow they got in there. They're coming in the windows. They're coming in the doors and they're out to get you. And they're and they're fatal. So you paranoid schizophrenics were right. Right. In this time in this case, I'm glad you brought this is an excellent video that is free for you to watch put out by Dr. David Price of Cornell while Medical Center in New York. He is on the front line. He's a pulmonary doctor specializing in intensive care. He is the guy if it comes to that was going to have to choose who gets a ventilator if there's not enough ventilators. I saw Mario Cuomo on TV this morning. He's saying he hopes and he has good faith that won't happen. But he is the man Dr. Price who hooks you up to the ventilator at the biggest covid or coronavirus center in New York City, which may be in the world right now. That's all they're doing is coronavirus. And this is what he said. And he got so choked up with emotion, not because he was afraid, but the opposite because he had a lot of hope. And the reason he had hope was no, you're not going to get the virus from little buggies in the air around you or on surfaces. The way the virus is transmitted 90 over 99% of the time is by people touching their face. Now, the problem is we all can't help but touch our face probably hundreds of times a day. Except if you walk by somebody in the street, even if you're less than six feet away from them and that person coughs, you're not going to catch the virus that way. The only way you can catch it through the air like that is if you're in enclosed space for at least 15 to 30 minutes with a person who is already sick. Someone else who has the virus, you're not going to get it. They're not streaming in the windows to get you. And so whenever you've touched something that you think might have the virus is a very simple thing to do. Get some Purell or some other hand sanitizer and wash your hands with it or wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds so that if you do touch your face, there won't be any live virus on your face. What about washing your face? What about washing your face? It's a good idea, too, with soap, but make sure your hands are clean because you're going to be washing your face with your hands, yeah? Yeah, so you wash your hands first and you wash your face. Yeah, makes sense. I don't think there's enough attention paid to that because, you know, somewhere in there you might have touched your face, though your eyes or your mouth or your nose. And so you should wash that off. I mean, it's not like the virus is moving at breakneck speed. It's there. It's going to work its way in. If you can wash it off, you're better off now. Yeah, but I think that, you know, I'm really glad you asked me that question because that's a lot of the cause of anxiety that people have. A friend of mine in California said he's been thinking about it for days that he happened to walk past somebody on the street a few feet away who coughed. And now he thinks he might have the virus. No, he doesn't have the virus from that. Yeah. Okay, the next complex I want to ask you about is the, it's a complex complex. It's about the isolation complex. So there you are in your house. You're probably in your house for a week, maybe more. And it's going to be many weeks. I hate to tell you before you, you know, you can feel free to go out again. Then you get this weird feeling that outside is nothing happening. And that, you know, your house is like insecure anyway, like that somebody's pulling the rug out from under your house. Your whole society is, you know, is deteriorating. And there you are in your little, in your, in your castle, so to speak, but your castle is, is under siege. Right. And you're alone in your house. Thank goodness you have family. Other people, maybe not have family, but this is, this is a claustrophobic kind of complex. Am I right about that? And how do you deal with that? Well, I think I wanted to divide them into two separate issues. One is if you're actually alone with nobody else, you have one set of problems and there's overlap. The other, if you're alone with a spouse or kids and or kids or multiple generation, like we have here in Hawaii, of people together. There's overlap in the problems. But so let's first talk about the person who was totally alone. That can be really disoriented, especially if you're a person like most of us who goes out to work every day and sees people and, you know, hugs and kisses people and, and then comes home and, and goes about his normal life. Well, that's not happening anymore. But thank goodness, I mean, one of the differences between the isolation that we have to do now and what went on during the Spanish flu in 1918 or the bubonic plague in the 17th century is that we have all of this electronic communications. Just as I am doing right now sitting at home talking to you, you know, through a video chat thing, you can do that. And it's very helpful to do that, to reach out to people. And the other thing, one of the best ways to combat anxiety and depression and they're connected is by helping other people. So you have most of us have other people in their lives. Well, we're all in the same boat right now and they can use help from you. So call those people up on the phone or do a zoom thing with them. Contact at least one other person each day that you think could use some help. And by helping them, of course, you're helping yourself because you need the social contact, contact also. Let me just move over now and talk a little bit about people with families, especially people with little kids, because that's a big strategic problem. Kids are home, maybe they're going to start to be homeschooled via the computer or by their parents. And suddenly, you've got full time responsibility of a kid who used to go to school every day. And you also have the responsibility of seeing that kid gets educated. And if you're the person in the house, which is more often the men than the woman who has been going off to work every day, suddenly you're becoming aware of the invisible labor that the caretaker of your children, more often the mother, is doing. And that's that's a good thing. So finally, you're going to get a chance to appreciate how difficult it is, especially like if there's a child who's even younger than school age, who needs, you know, pretty much constant supervision and attention, you're going to become aware of a lot. And working with couples, I've been using the metaphor of there's been a the ship has gone down, we're all in our own separate lifeboats together. The most important thing when you're in a lifeboat with other people is to get along, because if you start fighting with each other, you're all going to fall into the big ocean. So that's a. Takes me to my question about domestic violence. You know, the cooped up syndrome, the stir crazy syndrome, there you are in often a little tiny space, you can't go out. You have to be very careful about everything. And you don't, you don't have the, you know, what I call it a psychological structure, or maybe you're just a human being person, and you get into arguments with your spouse or your family, and it winds up in domestic violence. There are a number of articles in the national press about this and how it's on the rise that you agree with that. Can you describe the process and maybe the solution? Well, let me talk about some solutions. And first of all, it's not universal. Some people actually start getting along better when they realize there's no way to run. And that's kind of what I was saying before. It the most important thing, more important than ever before is that when you're talking to other people that you're living with all the time is to be kind to think about what you're going to say and how to say it so that it doesn't escalate the problem. Think about the hardest thing in the world to do is to put yourself in the other person's shoes, but it's more important to do that now more than ever. And the other thing is, even if you're in a studio apartment with five other people, there's ways and it's very important to do it to take some time to be alone. I remember watching somewhere recently about something that reminded me of myself. I grew up in a little apartment and we could I could put on a set of headphones and be amongst people. But I'm sitting on the side of the room, curled up in a little ball with my eyes closed, listening to music, which is incredibly therapeutic. Or these days, there's unlimited amount of things you can listen to, even from your little phone, you know, you can watch movies. You could be alone while still there amongst other people and, you know, take the time to tell the other people if you're an adult, like, hey, you know what, I'm going to take a time out for a little bit, you know, I'll be back at 15 minutes, 30 minutes an hour. But right now it's like I'm going to be in another place and getting that alone time is crucial for getting along with everybody else because we need that. I want to cover one of the things, Steve. Yeah, go ahead, finish, finish. I remember listening to a talk given by an astronaut who spent a year on the International Space Station. He said he took a lot of real books, not digital books, but real paper books with him to unplug. And that's the other thing that will reduce your anxiety is limit the amount of information you're taking in about this. Somebody said to me, you know what, you should do this, gather news about this the same way you would the weather. Listen to it when you get up in the morning and maybe again later in the day. There's no need to overwhelm yourself with all of these things that you can't control. Yeah, and have a book so you don't get interrupted by electronic media like disturbing you. You can really disappear with a book. Yeah, yeah. We really need to talk about this. There is the possibility in every household and every in every home in every family that one of the people in the family will catch it. And if they're elderly or infirm or immune compromised, that could be a death sentence. And you know, you could if you're rational, you have to consider that. So here we have a person who is clearly going to be infectious living in the home. We have that that is a, you know, just a completely destructive observation by all the members of the family and very, very hard to cope with. And then with the notion that if somebody is sick and is it has to go away into a hospital into potentially a ventilator. Now that could be the last time you see your family member because you can't so easily go and comfort that family member as the family member is dying in the hospital. And so, you know, it's it's it's it's awful, awful, awful as a prospect. And so how do you cope with that? That's got to be happening right now. Well, first of all, so far in Hawaii, we're very lucky. Knockwood, nobody has died as of the last news I heard. And our website, we have a website report every day on ThinkTechWide.com, which reports that. And out of all the people who are only 12 have been hospitalized. I mean, Hawaii were real. Like if I had to choose all the places in the world to be, it's usually Hawaii, but now even more so. So we're very lucky. But I don't want to skirt around what you said, because that's a real anxiety and reality that people may face. The number one thing is always keep yourself safe. The instinct is going to be to care for this person to go in and walk in the room and check and say, are you OK? Do you need anything? Can I take your temperature? Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it because you're not going to be helping anybody else. If you get sick, too, they can take their own temperature. You can have a health professional do it. If they're running a very high fever, then they probably want to go to the emergency room because they may need to be hospitalized. But if you are in a place where it's possible to keep that person in his own room or her room or and or bathroom and that's better if the person needs to come out to eat. That's fine. Just make sure that the area that they eat at gets washed down afterwards, you know, sterilized with the hand sanitizer or just soap and water really done well. But yes, there are going to be a lot of emotions around that the same way. There always is when a family member is sick compounded by the fact that you can't gather around the bedside like we do. You know, socially, that's what we do. And one of the strongest ways of transmission throughout the world has been people going to funerals. It's a horrible thing to say when I was just reading about in Israel. There's almost riots because they're telling the ultra orthodox Jews they can't have a funeral and they can't pray. And so the police are having to monitor by helicopter to make sure that these rules get obeyed or elsewhere. You know, the death toll is going to be in the millions just in the United States. So far, we've been doing a good job. It's been getting better and better. And the curve, hopefully, you know, will not be so steep before it starts to come down. But I don't mean to escape the feelings that you're going to have. The first thing you need to do if you're anxious, if you're sad, if you're frustrated is acknowledge it. Those are feelings that you have and talk to people, your family, friends, everyone like through the digital media about the feelings that you have. And there's a lot of sadness. There's no cure for that. It's the state of being human. What about you as a psychologist? You have you have clientele, patients alike. Yeah, I talk about dealing with him on are you dealing with him on remote media? Are you dealing with him on soon? I'm not seeing anybody live anymore. I tried to push it as far as I could. But you know, I have myself and my family to consider my wife is a cancer survivor. So her immunity is compromised because she had radiation treatment. And my clients all get it. They all understand it. And it's hard because I do have some clients who are naive technologically. They can't get online. They don't know how and I can't go and haven't come into the office and teach him. You know, I try to talk him through it on the phone. But there are some people that are just not going to be able to do that. Hopefully they'll get help to do that from somebody. Yeah, but I have lost, I would say a quarter to a third of my people as soon as I went totally online, which is only a week now. So Steve, you know, there's always a dynamic in these things and we we really don't have a reliable analysis to tell us when it's going to be over. It depends on so many factors and and there will be more cases and there would be more deaths, including in Hawaii. And and so you know why my last question to you is is the dynamic going forward now all the factors and and what do you want to call it? The complexes and the pressures on people in general, all of us in one degree or another will increase over time because we'll be cooped up over time and we won't have a visible light at the end of the tunnel over time. And I wonder if you could comment on where that dynamic takes us, both individually, you know, in our personal psychology, if you will, and as a community, the community psychology and and you know how and how we can expect it to unfold in the next, say, six or eight months or in a year to follow. I don't have a crystal ball. The first thing is I don't have a clue how it's going to unfold. I want to admit, I think that, you know, there is an end to this. My hope is that we will have learned from this some really valuable lessons. And maybe the most important lesson is like it or not, we're all connected to each other. All of the things that divide us are much fewer than the things that connect us. The things that are the same about us are much greater than the things that are different. There's nobody immune to this virus right now. That's one of the big problems. But it's also one of the things that I hope will connect us that people will realize that if you let other people get sick, it's going to come back to make you sick so that taking care of other people is very directly taking care of yourself. I hope that when this is over and it will be over probably, you know, in a matter of months, hopefully not too many, hopefully one or two. But when it's over, I hope that things just don't go back to normal. Also, I'd like to add one other little bright note. I mean, this is a little bit, it's not facetious. It's true that the planet is much more than us. And every other being I can think of is not shattered by this. The air is cleaner. The fishing fleets, I feel sorry for the fishermen who are losing their livelihood, but more than half the fleet in Hawaii is not going out because they can't sell their fish to the hotels in the restaurant. So the fish are not unhappy. You know, the birds in the sky are not unhappy. There was a dolphin spotted in Kailua Bay the other day. There's good things. We're not the only beings on the planet and the planet's going to get by fine with less of us or more of us. Thank you, Steve. Steve Katz, psychologist, par excellence. So nice of you to come and share your thoughts with us. It's tonic. It's helpful. Thank you so much, Steve. Thank you so much for having me, Jay. Thank you.