 Good afternoon. Welcome to Coronavirus in our mental health. Today is the first day of February 2000 and 23. I'm Ken Burtness and I'm coming to you from Haleiva out on the North Shore. And we've got a very special program for you today. We've got a program that takes us back to being ourselves, getting out of that Coronavirus lockdown. And my special guest is Nanette Orman and I will introduce her in one second. Nanette is a very special friend of mine and I should be calling her Dr. Orman because she's an MD and a psychiatrist. But since I've known her for, and I won't tell you how long, but it's a long time, we're just gonna stick to first names. Nanette, when we first talked about doing this show, I love the way you said that, it's hard being a hermit in the lockdown. And sometimes, a lot of people go out and the lockdown eases up, the mask requirements are put aside and everybody goes out and celebrates, but not everybody. Some people, it's a very difficult time to get back into normal time. And I thought the idea of the hermit was really catching. So for those people who are out there who are having trouble giving up being a hermit, let's talk about some of the things that they might do and we might help with and what's going on with all that. So I'm gonna turn it over to you. Okay, well, nice to be here. And let me just say that I think that what happens when restraints are lifted and we can go out in the world again, that there could be a hesitation as to when, like today, tomorrow, and what is that gonna look like if you are used to hunkering down in your home and ordering groceries online and having them delivered to your front door by someone who you don't even see, who just brings the doorbell scammers away. And after a while, that becomes the new normal. So when the new normal is no longer appropriate because restrictions have been lifted, masks have come off, et cetera, you have to rejigger your daily routine and also your thinking and figure out what you're gonna do with this new reality. It's kind of like going into hermithood if there is such a word in rebirth because I recall distinctly that at the time we had to shelter in place, so to speak, that there was some thinking that went on about how that was gonna look. And I remember actually taking pen and paper because I'm in a whole passion, Lassie. And writing down what my new schedule was gonna be like and after a while, that schedule became my new reality. And now all of a sudden one is asked to give up that silly schedule that, well, it was not silly really because it made sense at a certain point until we knew what the danger was and who the enemy was. But now we have to find a new routine. I didn't get out of pen and paper when it came time to let things open up, but I didn't basically was just take off my mask some of the time. Yeah, now the problem is for me, and I think a lot of people is not only do you have to give up that paper, but you procrastinate. I procrastinate a lot, so I think to myself, well, this makes sense. I need to get out and go out and give up being a hermit. I'll do it tomorrow, and tomorrow comes around and I say to myself, well, I'm looking at the paper again and I'm saying, well, I'll do it the next day. We'll get to it. And it never quite seems to come around because I'm always sort of putting it off for other things. How do we help people with that or how do we help ourselves with that? It took some pondering on my part about what was going on, actually, and eventually I realized that the concept of time had changed for me, that it had become kind of elastic and squishy, and you could take as much time as you wanted. And nobody cared because nobody was looking over your shoulder. So night and day got blurry, and it just had a different feeling to life. So what I did was basically to ask myself what was going on, that I was getting so slow and that's what I finally came up with. How about you? Well, I procrastinated a lot with a lot of things, but I didn't procrastinate with other things, and I sort of made a priority thing about something that I needed to do right away, and one of them was this program. This program was of great help, and that this program had to happen. Other things I could put off. And I was into a lot of joy. I was into a lot of listening to music, which not only is an escape, but it's a joyful one and it made me feel a lot better about what was going on and a lot of negativity is going on. So that's one of the things I really enjoyed doing. So I sort of tried to make a, you know, have both of them, have my cake and eat it too, be able to do the things I needed to do, but also give myself more time to feel good about the world and about myself. One of the things that I did also was to recognize how fearful I had become. And that was something that fear, it comes up in your life now and then when life circumstances demand it. But generally in our day to day living, we don't think every moment about how something is going to come out of the sky or out of the air and strike us down because it's pretty hard to live your life if that's your attitude. So I became more aware of my fear and decided to actually give myself some suggestion when I went bed at night to drink about my fear so that it would have some kind of a shape because COVID really had no shape, it was a fluffy something. And the bigger and fluffier something scary is the less you can get your arms around it and figure out how to deal with it. It's like the monsters head to your bed when you're four and you imagine they're as big as the room or as big as the underside of the bed. And it's one of the things that little kids have a hard time figuring out. Yeah. Well, mine was sort of, I didn't go to the dreams, you know, because my dreams are, well, I've kept a dream log for many years so they're pretty interesting. So I didn't even think of that to be honest with you but where I saw fear for me was in panic attacks. I never had a panic attack before. And all of a sudden during COVID I was having these panic attacks and I said, no, this is not me, you know, let's, you know, it better get over this but that's a hard thing to do. And when you're trying to help somebody else with that fear, just telling them, oh, you shouldn't be afraid, not very effective. And it makes you feel a little powerless because not only are you having fearful thoughts but other people are and you're having trouble with your own fearful thoughts and they're having trouble with theirs. So that's something that, you know, I still struggle with today but mostly for me personally, I just sort of try to time it. I just sort of give myself, okay, you're fearful of this, you're going panicky. You got five minutes, you know, then you've got to get up and do something about it. Something analogous to that. Oh, good, good. Which was because I'm a retired newspaper reporter and journalist as well as a retired psychiatrist. I was watching the news 24 seven at first and trying to parse what I heard, which was confusing and sometimes completely contradictory. And I realized that I was just harming myself by watching that much confusing data. So I decided to just turn off the TV, turn off the radio, wrote the newspaper away or put it in the corner or use it to wrap fish and find something that brought me comfort and peace. I learned many years ago the art of hypnosis. So I'm also a hypnotist. And what I did was start to pay attention to my unconscious thoughts, which you can learn to capture if you know what to listen for. And then I did what one does actually to induce a trance, which is to breathe in a kind of a uniform way, image something pleasant, which in my case, a funny thing is a beach in Hawaii. And then speak to myself with positively framed thought, such as this right now is a safe place for me and a safe time. And I don't need to go to dark thoughts, to scary thoughts, but instead I want to remember times in my life when I faced adversity and did something positive to get my arms around my fear and shape it so that it was manageable. What is it? Go ahead. No, no, I was just thinking that was terrific. And I'm glad you had a joyful moment of the memory back to Hawaii. And I'm hoping to talk to Nanette to coming back and doing another show because Nanette is a wonder at hula. She's been doing hula for many, many years and is with the hula group on the mainland. And she would come out to Hawaii and join the hula competitions here with her allow. It's been a wonderful part of her life. And it's the times when I got to see her again when she returned to the island for those competitions. And I don't think a lot of people think about hula on the mainland, but I hope we can come back and you can come back and tell us about that because that's wonderful. But I really like the idea of memories, those good memories that can come back and chase away the gloom because all of us have bad memories and good memories. And we need to sort of be able to make that transition from when the gloominess starts coming in to sort of brush away those dark clouds and look at those good memories. Any other good memories that help you besides being on the beach in Hawaii that have been closer to return to? Actually, I remembered a time when I was in medical school in my third year when I felt totally inadequate to do what I was being asked to do, to remember what I was being asked to remember. And I had something probably worse than a panic attack. I had like a total mental meltdown where I felt helpless to do anything. So I went to the student health service which had therapists for medical students who were falling apart. And one session with the therapist took care of me and what she said to me was, you know, you've gotten a long way in your life to be where you are right now. And yet all of a sudden you've lost all your confidence and feel like a little baby or like a helpless kitten. And you must have had times like this in your life before. What helped you to get over that? So I didn't recall the earlier times when I did something difficult and prevailed, did at least a good enough job. And that changed something in me. It was like flipping switch. And all of a sudden I was a helpless four-year-old kitten anymore. But I became an adult again. And it was quite remarkable and I've never forgotten it. So I think that experience of being able to turn off fear and panic was kind of waiting there in my memory bank for me to use again. And when I was coming out of my little hermit crab shell, if you'll excuse the metaphor, and coming back out into the world again, that was something that I remembered. Another thing that I remembered was my hula sisters and how much fun we all had. And we were doing hula and zoom at that point, which is not nearly as satisfying as being in the same room as someone. But it certainly is better than nothing. And you remember all the good times and all the sharing that you've had with your hula sisters. And it's a thought that gives you hope, Ken. We had talked earlier about this, about the memory, creating this sensation again. And I found that fascinating because that's really the way I feel as well. When I go back to memories, for instance, I no longer can bicycle. And I used to love to do that. I and my friends would bicycle around the various islands in the chain and take three or four days. I no longer can do that because of physical problems. Because at my age, I certainly don't want to fall down. Too many of my friends have fallen down and had a problem. But if I go back to that memory or if I write about that memory, I actually physically can sort of feel that again. And with that feeling, in addition to the thoughts, it becomes joy and comes that good memory. And that really helped me a lot. I wish I could find the switch like you did. The switch sounds, I want to reach up and go quick. Get me out of this thing quick. But sometimes it takes a while. That was very unusual to just have a sudden aha moment when something changes in you. But they're rare and precious. And when you do have that kind of a moment, remember it and save it like a little jewel in your heart that you can pull out and touch again when you need to. I also remembered how much I enjoyed being out in the fresh air and actually I never gave up hiking on the coast where I live during all of COVID. Because even though most of us were very mass anyway, we really didn't need it because the wind blows so much that any virus particles would just be blown away. But to get out and do that and see the ocean and the clouds and the sand and the birds brings a kind of peace in your heart and a kind of flow that connects you with nature and the steady, ongoing nature of life. And it's not so much a cerebral memory. I think it's an emotional memory that it just sticks there. And again, it's something that you can pull out and use when you're ready. Absolutely. And Nanette and I grew up in Southern California and she moved north to a very beautiful part of California, which I've been in many times along the coast there. And it is so beautiful hiking in that. And well, I can't go hiking up to my favorite spots. Like every time I get out, I look at Mount Kahala and think, gee, I wish I could go up there again. But the remembrance of it and what I did was during the COVID thing is I drove, I got in my car, which I still can do quite easily. And being on the North Shore, I took off for, I'm actually by Sharks Cove near Pupakaya. And so I drove toward Haleiva, which put Mount Kahala right in my visual sights and all the beauty that's along that north coast and the ocean and the mountains. And I wrote a story about it called Driving Without Destination. And I think that that really helped me during COVID too. Yeah, I was cut off from a lot of things, including teaching and things like that. But I could still get out and I could still feel that stuff. And I think in my previous life, I was a dog. So I love the wind and I love, you know, I want to stick my head out the window as I'm driving and feel that fresh air come flowing in. And it's really a treat and a joy. Very interesting. I don't know what I was in my previous life, but I'm going to guess a cat. Because I like to watch cats. I like to sleep. I like to groom myself. Do my nails. So perhaps that's what it was. The other thing that occurred to me when we were discussing how one comes back into the world is that thinking of how attractive the world is and the places, the things, the enjoyable experiences like concerts, competitions, which I love and which are fascinating to watch. It draws you through the door, the front door out to your car so you can get out there and do things. One of the things my who's sisters did was to set up an event at a restaurant, actually a bowling alley restaurant down in San Jose where my group danced for many years because our hollow had closed due to COVID. And four times a year we went to this place, gathered as a group, put our masks on and just danced with each other. And that was such an inspiring thing. One of my who's sisters actually imagined doing this and it worked so well that this is, I think, our third year gathering every quarter. We have actually moved on, many of us, but we still gather all 15 or so of us every quarter and it's just like no toning pass. We're all sisters again. That's a fantastic thing because that's, when you get older, there's a lot of negatives about getting older, but there's a lot of positives. And one of the positives is gathering of friends and I've been in many groups during my life here in Hawaii and we still gather together. One of my book clubs has been going since 1975, so that makes it 40, seven years. No, 42. Yeah, 40, whatever. And we still gather together and we gather outside. That's one of the wonderful things about being in Hawaii is that we can be outside a lot. Yes. And like Nanette is saying, with the breeze coming in, the trade winds blowing on us and just the sheer beauty. 51 years, I've been fortunate enough to live here and yet the beauty still stuns me when I'm driving around or when I'm walking around, whether it be in, you know, with the gardens or with the mountains or with the ocean, it's incredible. And, you know, the problem, you know, the thing that I worry about is that, you know, going back to the news and reporting in that, the news that's negative is the one that really sells. Somehow we always focus in on that. It's more dramatic. And our joy comes in very restful, oftentimes peaceful joy, a moment of joy, or many moments of joy. But what we're attracted to is all the tragedies that are going on. And Nanette, I think you're so right in saying that there's wonderful and joyful things happening. It's just that we keep focusing. And the social media sort of guides us to that because that's what gets people turning on their television. That's what get people looking at their news media and things like that. And we have to make an effort to look for the good things because there is plenty of good things. And I appreciate you sharing that. Yes, in my journalism school days, we were taught if it bleeds, it bleeds. So the headlines were always the most horrible thing that you could possibly imagine that day. And that was what caught people's eyes. But one has the ability to turn that stuff off or repetition it or decide that that way of doing things is not what's going to rule one's personal psyche. But I think it has to be a conscious decision. And I have a book for your book club. It's called A Good Life. I am reading it right now. It is a recent revisiting of a group of Harvard sophomores who were originally men who were interviewed by sociologists and psychiatrists and others in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And actually several books have been written about them. But the important thing about the current book, which is now interviewing the children of the original Harvard men, which the study was originally done by George Dalyant, who was a Harvard psychiatrist. But anyway, the bottom line in the book is what makes a good life is relationship. It's more important than money, more important than experiences of finite sorts. And so if you are really seeking joy, I think your social connections and your social life are where the real meat and potatoes lie. That's where you can be. And that's where not just your body is nourished, but your soul and your mind as well. It really is important. I totally agree. And I hate to say it, but we've run out of time. And we've got to get started. Yes, absolutely. And we'll have to do this again. And I really appreciate you being on the show. And I really appreciate you sharing that. And I think you put it so well at the end about finding that joy and making a conscious decision to do it. So let me thank you for joining us. And I also want to thank all the people who are watching us today and the Think Tech Hawaii staff, Jay and Michael and Taley and everybody. And best of all, thank you for you and the audience for joining us. And I want to say have a great day here and aloha. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.