 Welcome to coronavirus in our mental health. Today is April 27th and we're in this still in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. I'm Ken Burtness coming to you from Haleva on the North Shore. I don't know how many of you saw the Time Magazine latest issued, but it came to my house today and mentioned that for the first time we're at a million people who have died in this country from the coronavirus, very sobering statistic. The thing we're tracking right now is the beta-alpha-2 variant of Omicron itself very, very contagious and the percentage of positives for coronavirus due to this beta-alpha-2 variant is increasing. The one thing that scientists are really worried about is we don't yet know how effective our vaccines are gonna be against this particular variant. To talk about this and other things, I have my good friend, Steve Katz, with me today. You probably recognize him. He was the host for a number of years right here on Think Tech Hawaii on the program Shrink Wrap, which I always admired the title to that. That was always a lot of fun. Steve, like other therapists, has an overwhelming caseload since the pandemic began and he just comes to us after leaving the client and I really appreciate, Steve, you being here. I know you're very busy. Welcome to the program. Well, thank you very much, Ken. It's lovely to talk with you, whether it's just the two of us or to all six people. One of the things Steve and I talked about earlier, was I asked him about his clients and asked him what they were bringing up when he talked with them about the coronavirus. And Steve told me, he said, well, they don't talk about the coronavirus very much. He said, for them to be talking about the coronavirus would be like fish talking about water. It's an overwhelming reality, it is there all the time. And so they wind up talking about the other problems that I have that are exacerbated so much by the pandemic. Steve, I was hoping, one, I love the metaphor. I thought the metaphor was very appropriate. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your ideas on this. Well, it's not hard to remember because it seems like every time I have a session, I come up with good examples. I mean, I'm a marriage and family therapist. So my focus is about human relationships. And people always have issues, trying to get along with each other, to love each other in a kind way and to maximize that. And that's usually why they come to see me. It's about some relationship they're having in their life. And that's always the case, except now there's like, like I said, there's always people coming, but there's a lot more people coming because relationships can be stressful. And a lot of times, most of the time, people don't need to see a therapist. A certain number of people do, but a lot more do because the stress that they're starting out from when everything is okay is already quite high, it's up to here. But when regular issues come up, whether it's between a husband and a wife, between parents and children, bosses and workers, it just puts it over the top because they're already stressed out from just trying to deal with all the regulations and the dangers of the coronavirus. So it doesn't take that much, things that normally they can handle on their own, they can't because there just isn't the bandwidth for it anymore. And you have somebody in your family who's sick and in the beginning of the coronavirus, the first, I don't know, whatever it was, year, 18 months, you couldn't see them in the hospital. You know, you could have a family member who's dying and you can't see them. So it brings an already stressful situation of having a family member who's sick or dying and makes it so much worse because of the added problems or you have somebody, you know, we live here in Hawaii, you have somebody that is not doing well on the mainland and you can't go see them because it's too dangerous. And even now that they've lifted a lot of the regulations, people are still very worried, especially now because of the new variant, numbers are going up all over again. So has that answered your question? Yeah, and when we talked earlier, you described it as background noise, which I also thought was very descriptive, that normally in our life, we have all this background noise, but with the pandemic, the background noise has become so loud that it's overwhelming, which again was a very good way to describe it. My question to you is, how do we deal with people who are so overwhelmed that seems overwhelming in itself for us to deal with? How do we help them, the people who feel overwhelmed? Well, sometimes it's just helpful to reflect back what's going on because it's sort of like background noise. After a while, you don't hear it, white noise, right? And unless somebody, until it gets turned off, it's sort of like, when the refrigerator is running, you don't hear it until it shuts off. It's like that. If somebody says, oh, the refrigerator is running, it's like, oh, yeah. Or somebody comes in and they're having a lot of problems just doing their life now and you point out, well, it's not just you. There's all these new problems that everybody has right now. Everybody in the world has right now. And it's not really that surprising that you're feeling the way you do. Just naming it, calling attention to it, sometimes, you know, allow somebody to take a breath. Let's talk about breath for a second because that's where I was thinking that it was leading. You know, when the noise gets so loud for me and it's just overwhelming, and then all of a sudden it cuts off and there's this great feeling of well-being. Yeah. All of a sudden I take this and my God, I hadn't realized it was so loud. And now the quiet comes in and washes over me and I feel good. How do you feel? Well, one way that I am very, very lucky because I accidentally stumbled upon a wonderful solution. Up until the pandemic happened, I had a regular office in Kailui in a medical office building here. And at first I had to deal like everybody else, everybody moved online. And so I was doing telehealth, which I found personally exhausting. I don't know why, but it's looking at somebody on a screen. I mean, this is not everybody's like, this is me. I found that like really tiring and less effective because people were at home, they had all these distractions. People don't tend to take it as seriously if they don't have to go somewhere and be separated from their normal habitat. You know, I'm trying to do therapy and there's a kid screaming in the background or people walking back and forth or somebody deciding, oh, this is a nice time to have lunch while I do this. And so I didn't like to tell health. So then it got to the point where I was working in the office but everybody had a mask on. And to be a therapist and not be able to tell, is this person frowning or smiling or to read facial cues, I thought was impossible. So I went to the store and I bought two big tents and I put them up in my backyard and I'm very lucky because my backyard is on Kailua Beach. So somebody comes in and we've replaced the background noise of the pandemic with the sound of waves and birds and trees. And people sit down and the first time they come, it happens every single time they sit down and they go, oh, this is really nice. I don't have to say a word. Immediately the stress level comes down from being out in nature, from hearing those sounds that I just described. I'm already helpful without opening my mouth which is usually a good idea. That's terrific and I can vouch for that because I've been with Steve in his backyard many times and it is glorious, Steve. I mean, we were so lucky to live here to not take advantage of it would really be, I mean, it was an accident. I did it out of necessity and then it, all of my clients that I used to see in the office are telling me when this thing is over, don't go back to the office, just do it here. I mean, so that's one thing. I mean, and in general, being in nature is incredibly therapeutic. You know, there's a whole, there's a form of therapy, I think it's called forest bathing now. Terrific. Serious, yeah. Great. Great name. I have plenty of clients who are surfers and that's their therapy. Some of them are in the water every single day. Myself, I jog on the beach and do all my exercise and then jump in the ocean. And, you know, I feel like it would be sinful not to take advantage of it because to, you know, work on my own mental health is helping my clients so I don't feel too selfish if I can spend, you know, one to two hours a day doing that, better at my job and happier person. And I think that's true for everybody. I mean, there's no panacea. You know, I don't tell people to do exactly what I'll do. I'll share with them what I do and, you know, and say, well, maybe this will work for you. Maybe not, you know, but it's something else. One of the things that, well, this is going way back. I have to admit, but when I started off counseling, I was in a medical building like you were too. And I started off counseling adolescents. That was my first quiet load was strictly adolescents. And I had a very hard time counseling in that medical building. It was my turf. It was not their turf. They were not comfortable in that medical building. And then nature took a hold. This was, I hate to admit it, in 1970, 71 in Silmar, California, we had a big earthquake. And my medical building got split right down the middle. Oh, wow. And luckily this happened early in the morning. Nobody was there. But when I came to work that day, the building was leaning in half. And there was this big half between. And so not having anything to do, the group that I was working with, which was a group of six counselors and a director. And we moved to my little apartment, started there, but then we rented a house. But before then, when I was in that medical building, I did everything I could just to simply get out of the medical building. I took my adolescence and we went to a park. Sometimes we would shoot baskets, took them places where it was more their turf. And I think that's, I looked toward that as one of the possibilities, sort of the unexpected advantages when something terrible happens, like an earthquake or a coronavirus pandemic. There's always different ways we can do things because like you say, all the clients are different and they have different needs and they react to things differently. So it's always an interesting phenomena. And one thing as therapist, you're never bored. No, I'm never bored. And I have some clients I find are much more comfortable walking and talking. So we walk along the water's edge. And it's great because the water makes enough noise so our conversations are still private. It just looks like, you know, we're two people like all the other people walking along the beach. I remember when I first started, I had, this is probably not a good insurance thing. I don't do it anymore. Who's ever listening? I would go driving in a car with a client because they were comfortable doing that. We're just sitting in a car looking at an overlook. Something, like you say, it's more their turf. It's not my turf, you know, something more familiar. I mean, I get freaked out going to doctor's offices all the time. I don't find that comfortable. Truly, and I'm going to a lot of doctor's offices and that's no fun. Yeah, you know, it's a little white coat syndrome. Yeah, exactly. Let me go back to the family thing. You mentioned that, you know, of course, you're a licensed marriage and family therapist. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the differences and some of the things you do in when you're counseling couples, when you're counseling parents and when you're counseling kids. Could you tell us a little bit about the differences there and how that goes? Well, with couples, you mean in general, not in terms of the pandemic? Just with the pandemic being the overall reality, but with the general problems? Well, in general, I always tell couples, I have three clients. I have, you know, him, her or him, him and her, and the couple, right? So I also had to get very comfortable with listening to somebody tell me something, saying like, you know, it happened like this. We were crossing the street and, you know, there was a big pothole. And then somebody else saying, that never happened. I wasn't with you that day. And me saying, I agree with you, to both of them. Because I wasn't there, first of all, and I don't believe that either one of them is lying to me intentionally, right? Yeah. So when I'm saying that, when I agree with them, what I really mean is I want to validate that they're being as honest and as truthful as they can be from where they are at. And to, I'm not the grand arbiter of the truth. And it's not for me to fix it. And, you know, I see my role in all those situations, whether it's couples, individuals, families, as helping them figure it out. I don't come up with the answers. I try not to even give advice for two reasons. People don't take it. And I don't know. And I know I'm at my best when I know that I don't know the answers. I see my role as, you know, sort of staying behind, staying with them, listening, reflecting and helping them figure out how to make things work better. And with couples I've learned, it's not my culliana to decide who should stay together and who should break up. So people all the time will say, so do you think, you know, there's any hope for us? Should we just call this thing off? That's not my call. I don't know. I'm amazed sometimes to me, you know, I would, I think, you know, they've been yelling at each other for an hour now. This is probably the last time I'm ever gonna see them. And at the end of the yelling for an hour, they say same time next week. And with children, when I say children, I mean anyone that is under 18, still a minor legally. Sometimes I'm faced with a special problem in that I give them the same confidentiality speech that I give everybody. And with a little extra thing, because they're a minor, I tell them I will not share anything with anybody, including their parents, unless I see it as imminently dangerous to themselves or somebody else. Sometimes that's a hard call. It's not black or white, right? And it's, I don't have a hard line on that. Sometimes, you know, I've been a parent, I'm still a parent. And I think, well, if I were in their shoes, how would I feel if the therapist kept this information for me? So what I always try to do is see the problem is if I betrayed the trust of the minor child, then I'm gonna lose that, right? So what I always try to do first, and this actually works with couples also, cause sometimes one member of a couple will tell me something and say, oh, don't tell my partner. First thing to do is try to get them to tell their partner or in the case of a child to tell their parents what's going on, to try to convince them that this is really, you know, that openness and honesty in the long run is definitely a better way to go. Unless, you know, if I think that the parent is dangerous to the child, and yeah, I'm not gonna do that, then there's other issues, but that's how I deal with that. And then family dynamics is probably the trickiest, you know, when I've got the parents and multiple children all there together. And I, you know, I'm sort of like the, I don't know, what do you call the guy who runs the three ring circus, the master of aerobonics? That's tricky, you know, and sometimes you, you know, I've learned probably in one of your classes, Ken, like how sometimes you strategically side with one person or another, and you make it very obvious, you'll say, oh, you put your chair over next to this, but I think I'm gonna decide with Johnny over here this time, let's see what that feels like. And another thing that I particularly like to use because of my theater background is role play, to try to get people to see what it feels like to be the person that they're fighting with, to sit in their shoes. That is a very powerful tool that I like to use a lot, because it really can light a little light bulb in somebody's head to see what it feels like to be on the other side. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I know you also do groups and like group counseling is I do too. One of the best experiences I ever had with dealing with parents and a child is family group therapy. And I got this in my first crack out of the box, my mentor showed me how to do this and we would bring in three or four families, mother, father, child, three or four of these trios. And we would sit down and we would have them talk about things that are bothering them. And the fascinating thing to me and the most therapeutic thing that I ever saw was the fact that the parents never listened to their own kid, but they listened very closely to the other kids in the group. And the kids who never listened to their parents listened very carefully to the other parents in the group. And it opened up communication like I've never seen before since and it was a fascinating, fascinating way to do family therapy. There are many ways like you're pointing out, many ways to reach people and it depends upon our situations and certainly in our situation with the coronavirus it's very unique and very different for us. I love groups as well. And I did some of that family group stuff when I was working for Salvation Army in a drug treatment place. They would have family sessions without the person with the addiction. We would eat once, I think it was once a week at a church, all the families together, there'd be a whole bunch of families. And yeah, it's exactly what you're saying. It's like we can't hear the people that we were so tightly connected to but if it comes from the outside, so I guess our defenses drop a little bit with just somebody listening to somebody else and then this little thing goes always like, oh yeah, that's what I heard so-and-so say. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's very, group therapy is super powerful. The hardest part is getting people to join up. Groups are really hard to start. People, there's so much stigma and shame and people don't want the world to know about their particular problems. Everybody somehow thinks that nobody's got problems like we have until they get into the other room with everybody else and they go away thinking, oh boy, we're so much better off than they are. Truly. Well, we could talk about that a lot, but like you say, we're running short. I wanted one last question for you before we call it a day. What's the one thing that you've tried recently that's looked very promising? What's the one thing that you're looking forward to doing more of as far as helping people in your work? Because I think we're gonna need lots of new things, not only because of the coronavirus, but because of all the other new pressures and new things that are happening in the world today. So if you could just sort of give us a preview of what might be coming up or what looks promising? I probably should have studied your questions more carefully before I came on. One thing, I don't know, one thing, this is not a new thing, and it's something that I've done from time to time, especially when I'm working with a couple where they're really on the brink, they can't talk to each other at all. I'll have them sit facing each other, looking each other in the eyes for three minutes without speaking. And there's something about that that softens people. Very often tears start to flow or laughter will happen. And it's a nice little tool because sometimes words just make everything worse. People get defensive, but when you're just looking in someone's eyes, you can't hide and you open up. I agree, I think that's a very powerful technique. One of the things that when we're looking at each other and arguing, we tend to be saying the same things over and over and over again. And just sitting there like you're saying, looking at each other, you're not saying those things over and over again. You're not opening old wounds. You're just looking into that face, which can bring you back to when you first began looking at that face across from you. Some of those good feelings. The other thing I'll do sometimes, people, one of the problems with the pandemic is you can't touch people, but if they're a couple, they're still touching each other, thank goodness, hopefully. And I asked them to hold each other and to synchronize their breathing together. And to do that for a couple of minutes, again, without talking, just holding each other and feeling their body against the other person's body and getting their breath in time with each other. I see it says one minute now. Steve, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. It's just always such a pleasure talking to you and trading ideas because the field that we're in is so difficult with so few answers, especially with the new things that are happening with the coronavirus and how to deal with grief, for instance, with the war in the Ukraine and just everything that is happening that seems to be, like we said before, overwhelming. So thank you so much for being here. I also wanted to thank the Think Tech of Hawaii people. I wanted to thank Jay and Haley and Mike and Eric and all the people who make this show possible and again. Thank you, Ken. Thank you for having me. It's always a delight to talk to you. Absolutely. And thanks again, Steve. Bye-bye. Bye-bye, everybody.