 and welcome. I'm James Milan and you've come to Talk of the Town. Today we're going to be talking with clinical social worker Anne Westcott who has been at her practice for decades and who I have to say has also been my good friend for a number of decades. Anne, thanks so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to be here James. I wanted to say that you know in talking to a number of people over the last couple of weeks it has come clear to us here at Talk of the Town that there are a number of what could be called front lines in the in what we're dealing with at the moment these extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic and I see you as somebody who provides therapy who provides who instruction both to fellow people fellows who are also practicing therapy themselves as well as your own clients and patients etc. I see you as being on one of those front lines so what I'd like to do today is have you as best you can provide open the window a little bit on what your own experience has been and therefore kind of shine a little bit more light into what is happening behind a lot of closed doors like like I have right here in my house and you and yours. And I in mine yeah definitely. So to begin with give us a sense of like what your work is like generally who what kinds of folks are you in contact with what are the different aspects of what you do so then we know you know where you're speaking from. Well my clinical practice has predominantly been focused on supporting families and children. I had as I have a specialty in working with children impacted by trauma and severe psychological stress so ironically that's a kind of something we're all experiencing right now unusual conditions isolation. So right now I actually do a mix of things I do direct practice to children and adults and then I also do a lot of consultation and training of therapists so I feel like in some ways I'm trying to support the frontline clinicians who are really working all day every day trying to support people as they can and then I'll slip over and be one of the frontline clinicians during part of my day meeting a lot on phone and telehealth. So yeah you know it's you're another example of something that we again have discovered which is that we are all familiar because you hear it all the time the drumbeat from the from the the media etc is how many people have been idled in this country. We however here talk to the town happen to be talking to people who are as busy or busier than they usually are and it's just an interesting thing to point out so I'm sure that you also are that that is also the case for you. I was wondering to start with what you can tell us about now that you're having to do everything you do remotely so with your own direct the direct services you're providing to to clients how has that been impacted by the fact that you have to do it in some other way at this point. Yeah when I think about what's happened for me and when I listen to other people I think the thing that's surprising us the most is how many people want to continue meeting. How many people you know are reaching for it finding it really important creating the most amazing ways to meet. I have clients that will get in their car and put their phone on the dash because that's the only place they have any privacy. People going for walks during their therapy session holding the phone next to them because that's again a place where they feel like they can get a little bit of space to themselves. I think that's a kind of surprised all of us that when there was no option besides you know zoom or telehealth or internet people were good have been so amazing about making it work. Yeah clearly the the need is hasn't dissipated at all and in fact it is probably increased from their end yeah and so therefore people are it's unsurprising in some ways although kind of heartening to hear that people just figure out you know use the ingenuity just to figure out how to do that. Adaptive and resourceful and I do think the needs are changing rapidly too. What we were addressing you know for me when I was working with clients in the room that's really helped us think about how to support people in these new conditions with a whole new set of worries and they're all over the map. And I feel like there's like either the quadrant of people who are working super like a lot with heavy stuff frontline hospital medical but also you know I have a few people I work with where teachers and here they are some of them are trying to run a class online with their students while their own kids are home trying to study and then we'll have other people who have nothing to do and are really you know in that kind of almost on pause and so really different experiences. Yeah and how much of what you are doing in terms of seeing the clients that you have seen for a while now how much of what you're doing feels like okay a natural progression and just moving forward with what you've been working on throughout you know some period of time how much of versus how much is really just almost completely dominated by the current conditions and the effects of COVID you know COVID-19 concerns. I think you know it's a really valuable question because in some ways I think the crisis actually like magnifies those places that people have had struggles prior so the themes that we might be working with like with you know some kids I have you know if there's conflict like in the family this is a really hard time for separated or divorced families to negotiate child transfers back and forth. I mean that's always a little tough time for kids and families and that's when it's blended but now with COVID it's at this whole another layer and around safety and who's in the home and the tension there and just trying to help people talk it through and think it through and and not take kind of boundaries for health as as you know hurt by it or feeling pushed away or rejected or not getting what they need. So and also in another way like I have a wonderful people that I work with who are worrying about their elder parents in a way that prior to this it had been kind of managing aging parents and how do I cope with you know should they be driving I've got to get them to doctor's appointment in their own stress it's a whole another level of worrying but not even being able to go go to them or meet with them and so it feels like it magnifies the previous things we were working on and then for some people it brings whole new things up. Do you you know if and it certainly makes a lot of sense to me just hearing that the things that you already work on would be magnified would be exacerbated as so many things have been so many kind of low level kind of things that fester constantly within relationships or in larger contexts have just been you know exacerbated by by what we are all dealing with. How does that affect you by which I mean um are you able just to to address so now folks are are even more anxious or concerned or fearful or or all the things that you deal with. Do you find that you need different techniques for yourself to be able to address those things or are you just kind of doubling down on what you've always known and done and how do you deal with that? I'd love to hear how other people what I can really share I know what I do is what I have been reaching for is things that are extremely useful right now in the moment that can help people you know calm something if they're starting to really blow up or actually find some energy if they're finding themselves super tired and depleted and frankly the very things I use with my clients I'm using with therapists I support and then I'm trying to practice them myself. Give us examples of that kind of thing. So one of the things I did um really the first week of COVID I said okay and in a morning I had a few minutes before everyone else was up and I said what is it that I do in a day that helps me like be my best self like bring my best self forward you know just not about COVID just like in general and I made a list of like 10 things and it turned out it was crazy it was simple things like go outside get some exercise spend a little alone time for me I really enjoy yoga so that was something I thought okay do that make a good meal go to bed and get up at the same time uh something get dressed in the morning shower and get dressed like there were these really simple things very concrete very doable right not some pie in the sky thing like I'm gonna meditate every day for half an hour and I just committed to try to do those and have been stunned at one I should do them without COVID because they're really good um but two I could feel and I could look at a day when I hadn't done them and I could see how much more stressed I was at the end of the day seeing people um and over time the other pieces I realized and I don't know what people are doing for work but zoom is incredibly fatiguing the screen is really rough on our nervous systems hmm and I think teachers and therapists and maybe people like you um but kids are ending up spending a lot of time in front of the screen and um right we were already worried about the amount of time that children spend in front of screens or all of us but for all human beings like I realized wow it makes me irritable when I get off it it makes me kind of tired and a little foggy um and it's really easy to spend a lot of time on it and not realize I haven't moved from my chair I had that experience we are speaking in the afternoon and this morning I had an interview and it was a very compelling one and talked to the person for a little while afterwards talked to my producing colleague yes found out when I was getting up oh my god I've been sitting here for an hour and a half and that's not a good thing yeah um so if I like take that to like working with clients like in the moment right now like if we weren't a little constrained by the camera I'd be getting up and showing people some things they could do to make their bodies feel better and um even with clients they might be stressed or emotional and sometimes I'll just say well just cross your arms and just rhythm back and forth or do it on your legs or just move your feet back and forth um and these simple little things can actually start to make our bodies feel better so there's there can be like a a clear line going from body back to mind in the same way as we are familiar with trying to get our you know starting with our mind and trying to get our body to do things yeah that's enormously helpful too it is and and I teach this a lot when I teach um people parents trainers whatever basically one of the neuro thoughts is that for about every one you know a telephone line down from our thinking brain to our deeper brain our body and our emotions there's like one line down for 10 lines up but turns out if we can get our bodies moving we can much more quickly get ourselves in better headspace and usually calm down a kid or it's like I I have a my mother-in-law here or a stressed out anxious um senior if you have them living in your home so I'm so glad that you've mentioned that because of course your own focus as you said is generally working with children and their families um but yeah there are a lot of us I myself included and yourself included now who have uh you know older members of our family here in the house and they I have found through my own experience that um you know my mom who's here just cannot get enough stimulation uh she can't supply it for herself in general it would happen from being able to go outdoors and engage in different kinds of communal activities and those are simply lacking and then of course you have that add on for the older population that so many of them are not comfortable uh with this the very technology that the rest of us are using kind of to survive in a lot of ways and especially to connect yeah so uh I don't know what what what what do you have to offer for me and those of us uh similarly situated good suggestions for what we can do uh in in the situation to mitigate things um if you're any place where you can go for a walk with them go for a walk um it just the human contact the other piece for us that's really regulating for kids and parent and grandparents and all of us um as long as we kind of check out and have permission is touch contact um hugs um little massages even walking arm in arm a lot of elders would feel better if they could hook in with you and kind of use you as a support um and just that warmth and that touch contact is really good for our immune systems and regulates us and um one of the things I've been hearing from people who are alone in their apartments or homes who that don't share is that it's now like week three for people and they're starting to really describe this kind of depressed anxious feeling from lack of human contact yeah literal contact right literal touch contact not just social contact like where we can get through a screen but that yes that touch contact as you were saying and yeah that has seemed to me right from the get go here as wow we are going to be as a society paying quite as a globe I guess really paying quite the price for that physical isolation that is so vitally necessary to get through this but it's so bad for us in every other way it seems like yeah we're we're social animals we thrive in connection maybe not too much I think that's another piece that's been really important is encouraging people even in their cramped places like and I do this with myself and parents like talk a lot about can you find like a safe place or a little bubble that can just be your child can they create a little space somewhere and kids like oftentimes like tunnels or forts or cozy spots but this idea that at this point when we're all on top of each other it's like we all need our own little sanctuary then have to be big but one place where we know it's just us um and you know if you're lucky enough to be able to fashion that for yourself you are lucky because we have in previous conversations we've had um recently we have spoken to people who either themselves or who study those um or in some way are in contact with the many many many millions of people who do not have the luxury of having a room to themselves as I do right now in my own house yeah but instead have to find some way to carve out what you're talking about I think within a situation in which already four people are crowded and now they have eight because they've brought their family members back in with them back in yeah are there I mean does it need to be fit are there techniques to try and do that that aren't necessarily physical uh you know a big piece of a big piece of it is reducing sensory input so sight and sound and for children they for kids particularly they like little nooks you know it could be I had one kid make a nook between the wall and the um couch I mean so it was like a four or three foot square it wasn't a big space but it was their little space and they you know put up things and put pillows in it and it was just this little cozy spot they could go to that was they knew you know that's my nook when I need a little away space and it was still in the family living room you know that's I'm just a little aside that that's so it's just kind of resonates for me because um I don't know if you have much viewers are going to be able to relate to this very popular series been on tv the last few years stranger things in that series uh one of the main characters and spends a lot of the first season in this kind of fashioned little den this little cave uh underneath a table and uh we had in our house that was on at one point and we had a couple of kids between five and ten who were just walking through they weren't watching it or anything and they looked at that and they said whoa that is so cool and they just they weren't paying attention to any other aspect of it just this little thing that this little home den that had been uh that had been kind of fashioned and they just were so drawn to that yeah yeah and we found that even prior to covid that was one of our real tools for helping kids with um trauma and severe stress because there's a sense that we all feel better when we're kind of in a safe space when we feel you know protected and and right now a lot of us are finding our homes to feel a little it feels a little safe once we get in them and for kids who are creating that space again yet another level for them um so how about uh you know how much do you deal I think again primarily you're looking at supporting children and then also the there those who are supporting them how how much of what you are um how much of your own energy and how much of of what you're thinking about and and doing is kind of addressing the adults in that situation how it is that they can both best support their child who clearly has certain needs and then and then themselves as well yeah I would say curiously that um about half of my practice is working with adults because one of the ways we really help kids is helping their parents and um a lot of times for my adult work um a big piece of it has been helping them just normalizing what's going on around them and their responses is so familiar and universal and so many other people experiencing the same levels of stress, fatigue, worry, tiredness, hopelessness at times and and then also like the tension that's springing up in families there's I mean I had a little girl yesterday said yeah mom and dad had a big fight you know as we were talking over zoom and I'm like yeah there's a lot of parents who are really kind of getting snappy with each other and grumpy and just normalizing that yeah it's not personal it's what happens when we're all you know pushed up against each other and we're all um nervous and worried and um so a big thing for me is having parents want to have me and their therapist be able to process someone share some of the emotion and have somebody able to listen where they don't have to worry about its impact on them a lot of us some um can hold back our own worries because we don't want to make our partners or our spouses or somebody more worried so we kind of sit with that ourselves sometimes in an effort to help but also leaving us a little isolated and and sometimes then our partners don't know why we seem preoccupied or or why we're short-tempered and there's this wonderful doctor from LA Dan Siegel who's just amazing has a lot of resources and his website would be good to look at but he has this lingo he says name it to tame it that if you can name what's getting wild in you enough to name it to someone next to you all by itself it'll quiet a little bit well so uh because you've you've you've opened the door to something else we want to make sure viewers leave here with and that is some resources uh that they can follow up on things with um you just mentioned uh Dr Siegel did you say yes and do you know his uh website um i do at dansegel.com is i mean just his name and he has a wonderful um parenting book out called the whole um whole brain parenting um and you can just google him and he has a ton of mindfulness and parent um exercises things people can do that can help regulate them and their kids and i'll have a list of um materials that we can make sure to have available in print great great and we will we will get make sure that we uh include those graphically that that information graphically when this interview goes out into the world um let me ask you about something that you mentioned uh earlier and that is the particular um difficulties and uh yeah just the difficulties of dealing with custodial shared custodial arrangements and children right now um have you found i i know anecdotally of some situations in which one of the parents does not have access to their child um for because it's been decided that it's best and safest for the child just to stay with the parent that they happen to be with yeah that is that a very common thing that you are finding a common situation that you're finding is that the best um you know is that is that what is often best or safest for the child do you do you have anything um that you can help help that can help illuminate that for us that situation yeah i think um what's the crucial part is being able to have a dialogue um a collaborative conversation with your co-parent really about the multiple risk factors ironically the child's you know right now we're learning from the scientists at least the doctors that children are less at risk um younger children particularly i mean i think young adults are definitely at risk but one of the questions is the risk that it poses going back and forth to everybody in each family and i think that's a place where people's nervousness can really get high not knowing who's in one house that might have exposed the child that could then bring it to the other house and back and forth and not knowing you know being there it's hard for people to evaluate the level of safety each house is doing and that's all members in the house not just the partner so maybe you know if you and i were co-parenting maybe i have confidence in you but maybe you have teenagers in the house that you can't really speak for and so i think recognizing that this is short to medium term it well loosen up and trying to find alternatives if it does happen that when kind of the shelter in place happened the child was in one home for visits that can happen virtually for regular times that the child can be in touch and the other parent and child can connect um i think that can help go a long ways i have sometimes there's active covid in one family and then the quarantining has to happen and that can go on for a long time yeah and i'm i don't know that you that there's any way of knowing this kind of thing in any definitive sense i suspect there isn't but um do you do you feel like uh whatever is lost for the parent and the child who are not in contact with each other for however long this goes on as you said it could be short to medium term it could be weeks into you know longer than that um is is is your assumption that that's that's a recover you know whatever pain is inherent in that happening is something that you you know you people both parties will get over so to speak um i actually feel like the way it unfolds for the child the least amount of conflict and stress that the care that the parents have coming up with the solution is the best for the child which often means as adults we have to deal with our distress over it not going the way we need and want and put our needs second to what's best for the child that sounds like parenthood to me yeah and you know parenthood sometimes stinks it's sometimes really hard work and it hurts and yet you know that's part of the part of the responsibility of parents is to make decisions best for all not just our own desires i still think no contact is different than regular contact that's not as rewarding like i said you know i was really surprised my clients have really valued meeting with me in a way that i did not know it would be so important and i think a child really values meeting with their parent they can't physically be with on a regular basis right so it may not touch that egg in that empty place but it's going to mean a lot and it may go somewhere you know it may get ease it a little bit soften it a little bit yeah so if you happen to be the parent who is fortunate enough one would assume although not for every minute of the day are you going to feel this way but if you're in the parent fortunate enough to be in you know to have the child your child physically with you um perhaps you need to stay mindful and make some some real you know selfless moves for the benefit both of your co-parent and and and your child themselves to create as you said you know more opportunities for for your child to be in touch with their co-parent and i do want people to know that the parent who has the child with them all the time is not having an easy go of it either that's right and there are parents with kids and they're working full time trying to work while the kids are in the house and it's you know it's trying to help the kids get to school work if there's you know if that's happening yeah there's internet crashing for everyone at the same time who's in school and working and so it's it it isn't a walk in the park the other way either yeah so and this has been a fantastic conversation um i think that people listening in are going to be leaving with um a bunch of you know stuff they might not have thought about but also some really good strategies for addressing different things that are coming up because of our weird weird weird living uh conditions and working conditions yeah moment really appreciate it um let's talk just as a last uh topic and i'll i'll want to invite you to mention anything we haven't covered you think is important but as a last topic how about yourself and others uh similarly situated the caregivers in many ways those who are caring for others and giving of themselves in that way who's who's caring for you how are you how are you doing that for yourself but you've talked about it a little bit but uh you know what can we say for those who are in that caregiving position for what resources they they can access or what techniques or or things they can do for themselves um one is connecting with colleagues letting people know um hearing how people are doing um and sharing stories getting support that way is big um i think for me i think we're all still figuring it out people everybody i talked to was unbelievably tired at the end of every day and unsure now that it's past the crisis point and it's turning into kind of more this can be a long-term um process and we're realizing that i think everyone's trying to figure it out mini breaks movement um giving yourself like a screen free day if you can on one day of the week friday or saturday or sunday um making sure you do a few things that really bring you joy yeah some really basic ideas but so important to reiterate one that's been really good if you walk right from your office into the home um one tip i got was to go for a walk as if you were commuting home to build in time to decompress because the transition from one door to the next and then all of a sudden you're in the family is really jarring right you need to take the long way around yeah no that's great again i think i think for a certain number of people who aren't exactly that situation who have carved out some kind of workspace within their homes and to which they retire to get their work done every day um that's that's great advice because i do think that if they can then walk downstairs and walk out the front door you know and and go around the block and come back in uh they might find that that that that really has a beneficial effect i can imagine that i think one piece that probably all of us are dealing with is a sense of lack of uh lack of feeling like we're able to do enough whether it's you know the medical people in the front lines or therapists trying to tell health or parents and all of us it's like there's a sense that it's taken away some of people's feeling of agency and ability to help or make a difference and so i really have been trying to think about small things that make you feel like okay i'm i've contributed something yeah it's a great thing too i mean great thing to remind ourselves of what you just said because i started off the interview saying that i see you as operating on one of the front lines of this place it's not really of this time it's not really an acknowledged front line in the same way as um you know everybody is aware of the kind of sacrifices being made by large segments of our medical community and first responders of different sorts etc but there are an awful lot of people like just like yourself engaged in dealing directly with the effects of this new environment and new these new circumstances and it's important as i said to to understand not only that that's happening but the kinds of things that you have to deal with that that in that sense like you were just saying that hey you can't do enough um even as you're working your butt off i'm sure and falling into bed exhausted every night yeah yeah and anything else before we sign off anything that strikes you that oh boy we we we should have mentioned that or any other resources you'd like to share at this time obviously we mentioned we'll be we'll be posting resources we get from you um you know one thing that i thought would be really helpful that we haven't touched on is the importance of putting together a daily routine um for yourself and your family especially kids do so much better with routine and knowing when things are coming and what's coming and things that repeat um so if the family has any way of if you know a work schedule or a kid's schedule if there's any way to create some kind of calendar that everyone can see um so that people don't have to keep one of the things we have a lot of is you know a kid just comes in and wants something there's a lot of just no sense of where the boundary is and when you can be interrupted and not and that can i mean i'm finding that true for elder parents too they're lonely they have a question and um you know here in my house we've been kind of talking in either the night before usually we'll say what our days look like and when we have windows to be available and when not and for kids like what the schedule is so that even before so you as a parent aren't trying to come up with something off the cuff when you're stressed and you've got a call coming and it's it really has been helpful a lot of my a couple of my parents i've talked about okay well let's make like a activity list for the for the week like let's come up with five things you can plan to do um so you don't have to come up with them and then find yourself you know playing uno again for the 150th time um and uh so that can really calm people down even uh like we just started this week we're going for actually knowing when dinner's on the table you know instead of just whenever the person wanted to cook you know and and everyone was like wow this was really helpful like i knew when i needed to be here i could decide how much to snack you know and and you could just hear people organize them it was something they could count on right yeah the importance of structure you know which we've essentially lost in right and so recreating it somehow has been really is really helpful for kids because they've lost all their structure um and the predictability thing really helps our nervous system calm down so lots of um great uh advice and um good ideas for calming which is awesome wondering as a very last question any kind of light funny any things that anything that's that's happened kind of coming out of this or that you've noted or anything like that that would be more on the lighter side um if there isn't that's understandable but i figured you know what one of the things i noticed is a lot of people say oh my god i'm so glad i don't have to run from here to there to this soccer game and that practice or this they're like oh it's so nice just to hang out with my family you know in between biting each other's head off and yelling at each other they're like wow we just get a like wake up together you know one kid looks so happy to have both their parents home for the day you know it's like little simple things like oh i can help with dinner like a kid ended up cooking something with their parents and they had all afternoon so they made dinner together they would have never done that i'm getting a lot of really cute stories of like yeah we did this together was so much fun and i know that if this they weren't quarantined you know the kid would have said no i don't want to i want to play with my friends and right so like these little moments are coming up we're doing it in my house what do we do we're we've been baking bread and trying different kinds and improving it and everyone weighs in and we would never do that well yeah there's just right there are too many other things to do when you're out there and do them right so yeah seeing i guess uh one of one of the things i take from what you just said is just looking for recognizing and taking advantage of opportunities that are here that wouldn't other you know that are along with this and embracing and celebrating those because they will go away again that's right as soon as we can go back to playing with our friends etc that's most probably what we'll do whether we're kids or otherwise and it'll be so hard to find each other again you know like oh my god they're not responding etc stuff your kids in your like not worth the time of day when their friends are around good thank you so much um really really do appreciate it and i think that it's gonna it's going to uh be a real benefit to our audience good i hope so i hope people are find something useful in there and um also people just people have the most creative ideas it's amazing just to ask each other what would you come up with well we will do that and uh and uh we will wish you the best in your continued work i hope that you fall asleep a little less exhausted every day every night going forward from here well thanks so much for having me you bet we will talk to you again um i have been talking to and westcott uh clinical social worker and um source of excellent ideas and resources so we'll share all of those with you we appreciate you being here i'm james melanne this is talk of the town we'll see you later