 is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, except today the therapist is going to get therapized. The shrink is going to get shrunk. And here to do that job is my good friend and brilliant person, Robin Bennett. Welcome aboard, Robin. Thank you so much. OK, it's your show. OK, great. So first of all, I want to acknowledge you because I think this takes guts. And when I came in about a month ago to be interviewed by you in my thank you note, I said, how about we turn the tables? And it wasn't very long. It was like minutes. I got an email back from you saying, OK. So I acknowledge you for that. And I also thought that as I go through my life, I like to look at people. And I always think about there's a story behind every person. So we're going to try to find out your story. OK. Nothing to thank me for. I just like, I'm my own favorite subject. OK, great. Great. Well, thanks for sharing that with everybody. I just thought I'm going to start a new group. It's going to be called Narcissus Anonymous. But I'm going to be the only one in. Of course. What else do you need? So why don't we start with where were you born? I was born at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan on 17th Street in the 1st Avenue. But I grew up in Queens, Bayside, Bell Park Gardens, 73rd Avenue, and 218th Street. And then we moved around the corner. And that's where I spent my first 21 years. And then after that? I moved to this neighborhood in between, on the border, between Brooklyn and Queens. I lived there for a year or two. And then I lived in Flushing. Then I lived in Rome for three months with a girlfriend. And then Manhattan, on the Upper West Side for a bunch of years. And then I met this woman from Hawaii. And we lived in the Bronx, Riverdale, which people in Riverdale don't like to admit it's the Bronx. But it's the Bronx. OK. And then New Rochelle. And then in 1988, we moved with two kids that we had to Hawaii. That's where she was from, from Hawaii. That's what brought me here originally. And I've been living in Hawaii since then, in Kailua, since then, actually, for now 28 years. And tell me about what your parents were like. And if they influenced you, do you see them inside of you in little things you do? I see them in everything I do. Yeah. My father spent most of his life working. His family, my mother would make fun of my father because his family was poorer than her family. She grew up on the Lower East Side. He grew up in Brooklyn. Yeah, I mean, his beginnings were pretty tough. And he was trained as a cutter in the Garmin Center. He used to cut patterns for men's and women's, better suits and dressers, they called it, in the Garmin Center. I think from the time he was 19. And then he went. He was in the Army during the Second World War. And he was in France and the Philippines. And he was very glad to be out of the military. And I think my parents got married in 42 during the war. And then he came back and went back into the Garmin Center and stayed there with that same job for, well, different employers, but was a cutter in the Garmin Center for 37 years. And then he went and he bought a New York City medallion, drove a cab for, I don't know, I think it was only five years, but it seemed like a lot longer. And for him, that was freedom. He finally got out of the factory. And he was his own boss. He had his own medallion, which is now worth a lot of money. At the time, it was worth a tenth of a... No Uber and no Lyft. Right, right, right. But yeah, because he thought, hey, nobody's going to tell me what to do. I could pull over, go to a movie, go to a museum. Of course, he didn't. But the idea that he could was freedom in his mind. So what qualities about your parents do you see in yourself? Well, from my father, that is very important for a person. I was going to say a man, but that was what you would say back in the 50s. Now you would say a person. You're politically correct. To work, to pay their way through life. And now I see that as not all good. Sometimes I think that I think that that's more valuable than it is. Like, for him, that came before being happy. That came before anything. You go to work. And my mother was always sort of reinforced that. You see, your father, even during the depression, your father had a job. Your father had a car. He paid $25 for his first car, and it had four flats on their first date. And my mother played a very traditional 1950s mom. She stayed at home. She was very cushy and smushy and huggy and told me, you know, I was beautiful and wonderful and lighter, but not. Nice. How beautiful. She said all these wonderful things about me. And I got into a lot of trouble. Miner stuff. Because you believed it? I don't know why. That's one of the mysteries. You know, I was a bit of a bully when I was a little kid. I used to beat up other little kids in school. Really? Seriously? I don't believe that about you. Totally true. Really? Yeah. As a matter of fact, I talked to the other bully just this morning. He called me from LA. No, he lives in Detroit now. He used to live in LA. And I've asked him about this. I said, Elliot, what's with us? And where I became friends with him is we fought. And nobody won. So we became friends. We're talking about third, fourth grade. And I asked him. I said, you know, I've been to therapy about this. Like, what was that about? Was I angry? Was I neglected? Was I looking for attention? He said, forget about it, Steve. Just forget about it. Do you have siblings? Yeah, I have an older sister. Yeah, that's what comes to mind. Yeah, she used to terrorize me. So you were fighting back. That's what it feels like. I don't know. I don't know. Could be. I thought of that. Yeah, she would torture me. My parents would go out and she was the babysitter, right? It was like the cat babysitting the mouse. She'd take me into a dark room and she had long hair. And she would hold it up and make a giant shadow. This time, Stephen, I'm really, really, really, this time I'm really going to kill you. And you started believing her. I believed her. I totally believed her. I think she meant it. And what do you think you did to deserve that? Be born. OK, that makes sense. She was an only child before I came around, right? So like, she wanted to flush me. She told my mother, when the baby comes, I'm going to flush him down the toilet. But now, you know. So you're all the stronger of friends. I don't know. I know not to get into a fight with my sister. Right, right. Where is she now? She's where we grew up. She's on Long Island. OK. Yeah, she's been. Today is today. Yesterday was her 47th anniversary. So she has three grandchildren and she's happily married. Wow. Yeah. Wow. OK, so. And if you're watching this, Irene, she's beautiful. She's much smarter than I am. I'm sure she's nicer to you now. She's very nice to me now. Good. Yeah. So if somebody could be a doctor or somebody influential came to you and said, you have five years left to live, would you do anything different than you're doing with your life right now? Good question. Not a lot, honestly. You know, I think I live, I'm very, very lucky. I live in the most beautiful place in the world. I go to the beach every single day. I run on the ocean, you know, I mean, on the beach. And go in shin and. You walk on water, huh? Our people don't do that. The sea parts grass, I forgot. I'm in love with my wife. Beautiful. I have a good relationship with my kids. I love my job. I really do. It took me a long time to find the job that I would do for free. Don't. And I work with good people. They're really all the people that work in the other therapists in the office where I work. I could talk to any one of them about anything. They're great. And a few years ago, I, you know, I did one of the bucket list things. I went with my wife. We spent 11 months going around the world on fold up bicycles. Or at least that was how we started out. And we didn't fight. It brought us closer together. So I don't know what I would do there. You know, I'm pretty happy. That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. And along the same lines, if you knew you couldn't fail, would you take any additional risks than you're taking now? Yeah, I think I would. What would that be? Well, the first thing that came into my head, right now I have this idea. It's like a germ of an idea still. To try to do this new project for NAMI, which is National Alliance on Mental Illness. OK. Because as far as mental health services in Hawaii, we rank 49 out of the 51 states, including Washington DC, in terms of mental health services. And what I would like to do is to enable there to come about a process that establishes people with mental illness, places for people with mental illness to live in as independent and in a healthy setting. Like in homes, like anybody has, with maybe two or three or four people where everybody has their own room and everybody gets the services that they need, that there's, if necessary, service providers living on site to help out. And then maybe a nurse that comes in every day and all the services, what they call wraparound services, for those people to have meaningful work. Because there are places in other states and in Europe right now where this exists. This is not a pipe dream. And so maybe I'm going to do it anyway, right? But there's a very good chance that I won't succeed, given the history of everything. But that is crippling if you go in thinking I'm going to fail. I was just going to say I'd reframe that. Right. So I think one of the best, one of the things I'm most proud of that I've accomplished in my life is as of a couple of years ago, every single weekend, the Department of Corrections would cancel visits for all of the inmates every weekend. And they're only weekend visits for the most part, unless you live on the outer islands. So if you wanted to go visit your loved one at OCCC, which is the jail here, the big jail, right? You could go Saturday or Sunday. And every weekend they would say, we're not having visits today, because they didn't have enough staff is what they said. And I worked to change that for about a year and a half. And I considered it like Sisyphus moving the boulder up the mountain, right? I really didn't ever think it would change. And it did change. And I feel, I mean, I had help from the other people from NAMI and certain wonderful people here. But it was my own personal mission. And it happened. And I'm amazed. And now I've been trying to raise money for NAMI. They have an annual walk going on. If you go to NAMI.org, everybody, you can donate money. And it's a personal mission, because my son is working with what they call technically a severe mental illness. And he's very brave. And he's really fighting and working with this disease. And it's really hard. But I just told you I was talking to my friend, Elliot, today. And we were talking about like what? If you don't have any hope, it's hopeless. It's a good word. I mean, you need to have hope to keep to stay alive, really. You need to have hope, right? And so my son and I have made a plan to go do this pilgrimage, even though it's not a religious thing for us. If you saw the movie The Way, there's this pilgrimage that goes from southern France across the Pyrenees to the coast of Spain. And it's called the Camino de Santiago. And we plan to do that 500-mile walk together in a year. And honestly, I don't know that it's going to happen. But just the hope that it's going to happen has already made a difference for both of us, I think. And it's brought us closer together, which that's really important. That's incredible. Did I answer your question? Yes, you did. Yes, you did. And I just acknowledge you for your effort. Well, it's him. All right, I'll take a little credit. But it's mostly him. He's the brave one. Great. So talk a little bit about what you do. I have a daughter, too, by the way. Oh, make sure. You know, the squeaking wheel gets the grease. Right. My daughter, she's also a therapist in Massachusetts. And she's got another tool in her tool desk. She's a music therapist. So she could sing people to happiness. That's excellent. Yeah. I'm sorry, what was your question? No, I was just going to ask you how you sing people to happiness. Not by singing. That's my question. I sing about the door. Or maybe that would make up, wow, I can sing better than him. OK. How do I? Yeah, talk a little bit about what you do, what your specialty is, how people could get a hold of you if they would like to find their happiness? I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. So that means I'm like a psychologist or a clinical social worker. I pretty much do the same thing that those people do. People come to me with a problem. And I help them figure out how to be happier. But my frame of reference is the family that, like you were asking me before about my parents and my upbringing, right? And who I am now infuses everything I do, whether I like it or not. Right. And it has a huge influence on the partners that you choose, right? You either choose somebody that we're like or the opposite. Right, exactly. And some people say you choose your partners to win the battles that you couldn't win as a kid. Correct. So you're in this battle with your mother. So you go and choose somebody just like her or you have an alcoholic father. And you go choose an alcoholic husband. Because this time I'm going to fix it. Right. Right? Going to get it. Or you do the opposite. You know, you choose somebody as far away from that. And then you go and turn them into it. Or not. Right. I just had a little whisper in my ear that we're going to go to a break. We'll be right back with, this is your life, Steven Katz. Bye-bye. Aloha. I'm Richard Emory, host of Kondo Insider, a weekly Thursday show at 3 o'clock that goes all summer long talking about issues living in a Kondo association. Each week we bring experts to talk about the rights and obligations of owners and boards of directors to successfully run their condominium. It's a great educational show, answers a lot of questions. We hope you'll visit us sometime. Aloha. Hi, I'm Donna Blanchard. I'm the host of Center Stage, which is on Wednesdays at 2 o'clock here on Think Tech. On Center Stage, I talk with artists about not only what they do and how they do it, but the meat of the conversation for me is why they do it, why we go through this. A lot of us are not making our livings doing this. And a lot of us would do this with our last dying breath if we had that choice. And that's what I love to talk to people about. I hope you enjoy watching it. And I hope you get inspired because there's an artist inside you too. Join us on Center Stage at 2 o'clock on Wednesdays. Bye. There we go. Welcome back to Shrink Rap Hawaii. I'm with Robin Bennett and we're talking about me. Isn't that great? It is great. So if I could read your thank you cards, what would they say? Whoa, you mean my thank you to the universe? To people, to places, to what would your thank you cards read? That's a great question. I can use that. I can. Thanks to my wife. Thanks to my parents. Thanks to my sister. Gotta plug it. Thanks to my kids. Thanks for the beautiful house by the beach. Thanks for however I ended up in this job. Thank you for my health. That should have been first. Because as my mother used to say and everybody's mother used to say, if they had a good mother, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. Great accent, too. Yeah, she didn't have that as much as I was doing, I think, but it's true. When you're in pain, it's really hard not to be depressed. Right. I had back pain for a year and a half, I ended depression, I think was worse than the pain. Because you just think to yourself, I thought to myself, if this is the way my life is, I'm out of here. Right. Right? But I had a little tiny bit of hope that it could be better. Right. And that's what people need. So if you could complete the sentence what people don't know about Steve Katz, it would be... Scary. I don't know, do you think people know that Steve Katz is a little bit, maybe more than a little bit insecure? I don't think so. You don't think that you knew that? I don't think I knew that. Oh, yeah. I meet with a bunch of men every other Sunday, that's a group called the neurotic bagel and most of the time, I think the least sharp tool in the shed, that they're brilliant and I'm really lucky that they come. That's not because I'm dumb, it's just because I think they're really bright and I'm lucky to have them as friends. And there's a research that the people you hang out with, you have a 150% chance that you will rise to their level. So keep hanging out with them. That's the whole theory, like you should always play tennis with somebody a little bit better than you, right? But what about the Porsche Nook that's playing with you? He's got to climb the ladder too. He's got to find somebody else. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I was working with somebody today and a couple and she was saying one of her problems with him is that she feels like she's always teaching him, like in the tennis metaphor, she's the better player and she would like to be with somebody else who's, she could, or at least in equal. It's a great awareness actually. Yeah, and I think that's just the way she's looking at it. I think that there's probably a lot more going on, like some fear of attachment. Like this is what she's telling herself because she's afraid to be close. I could be wrong. I think you're probably accurate. Yeah. So if people want to get ahold of you to get happy and solve their issues or have a better, joyous life, they can Google me, Steven Katz, Marriage and Family, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, LMFT, they'll find me. I've got a website, www.hawaiifamilytherapist.com. They can call me, 808-220-3625. I'm very available. I'm just out there, like, you know, see how it wants to find me. It's easy. Right. Yeah, that's what they can do. So in closing, I know that I met you on the beach. Yeah, sometimes I think I should have a bumper sticker that says everything you need in life is on Cuddy Beach. Right. That's why I met my wife. They want to do that, oh. So, but I always, I'm so happy to always see you because you're always so happy. And I know that there are challenges in your life. Uh-huh. So what do you think the secret is? What could you tell people the secret? Be on Kailua Beach. That's not what I'm about. I'm right down with that, yeah. No, but it's, no, really, I mean, maybe it doesn't take Kailua Beach. It used to be what I lived in Manhattan. It was Central Park. I used to run there's a six-mile loop around the park. And that was part of my morning ritual then, even when I was a cab driver. You need to find what you need to do to make yourself happy. You know, and I always tell people that are involved in a relationship with a difficult person is whether they're trying to help somebody else. It's the old, you know, when you're in the airplane, they say put your own mask on first before you take care of your kids. You gotta do that. You know, if you're not taking care of yourself, you're no good to anybody else. And in the NAMI group that I do is like today, there's a support group that I facilitate at Castle Medical Center at 530 if anybody wants to come for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It's for the loved ones of people with a mental illness because those people are very stressful, very, very stressful. Right. And when people come to those meetings, I don't think it's ever not happened. The first time people tell the story about what they're going through with their loved one, I gotta make sure I got a big box of Kleenex because there's tears and tears and tears because if you're not in that position, you just can't get it. And when you finally open up and share that with other people that are going through the same thing, it's just so cathartic. Right. You know? And it's frustrating for the person also because the person wants to hear, so how can I fix my child? You know, whether the child is an adult or 55 years old or my husband or my sister, right? And that's not what happens there. You know, if there was a magic bullet, we wouldn't need to exist. But hopefully what they get there is they get somebody to take care of them. And it's frustrating because you say, no, I'm fine. Yeah, right. If only she would be better, my life would be perfect. Yeah, but that's not gonna happen tomorrow, right? And so you gotta take care of yourself in the meantime, in the meantime, being the rest of your life, right? Because the reality is that most of the time, I think I could say fairly, certainly. You can be in a state of recovery with a severe mental illness like schizophrenia or bipolar, but just like with an addiction, you get into a state of recovery where you're living with the illness. Just like you're living with diabetes. You gotta take your insulin, right? You might have to take medication. You should probably be in therapy to get help, but this is gonna be a part of your life, probably for the rest of your life. Which is not to say you can't have a happy, wonderful, productive life, but it's something that is not, it's not like a broken leg where the leg gets better and then you didn't even know that it got broken. It's gonna be an issue. And that's a hard reality to ingest. So how do you walk down the beach every morning so happy? Considering you're dealing with this issue, this is a big issue and you deal with it so quickly. I think part of it, for me, I can only answer the question. It's not for everybody, right? There's something about movement that makes me happy. I've always loved to run. When I was a kid, we had this game called Ringolivio where I just run for hours, right? I've been a marathon runner many times and I always feel better after I run and then I run a lot slower as people can walk faster than I run right now. But then also part of it is stretching and that was the, I don't wanna say blessing because I'm not religious, but my back pain, I went to a physical therapist and they gave me a series of stretching to do if I don't wanna have back pain anymore and they had the added benefit of putting me in a meditative state because that's the way I do it very slowly. And so I get stretching and then I also get meditation benefits of focusing on my breath. I have this little craziness that I say in my head and it makes me feel better. Why does it make me feel, I don't know why it makes me feel better. But it makes me feel, and it's, I think ritual is important. Yes. Some people have trouble getting out of bed so I solve that problem because I'm addicted to coffee. So when I'm lying there in bed at 5.45 in the morning and I don't wanna get out of bed, I said, oh, but I can have some coffee. So give yourself a positive reason to get out of bed. And once that starts, it's like this chain of events. I have my coffee, I make my scrabble move on my computer, I look at the bad news on the paper and then I go out and I think we're just about to wrap up. So thank you so much for listening to my life. Wow. Thank you, Robin, for coming on and doing such a great job today. Thanks for being open to it.