Matthew speaks with Peter Biava, a therapist in Arizona. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor that works with adults and adolescents in areas of stress, anxiety, and coping. Peter discusses what the current pandemic has done to society and his client base in regards to the collective stress we are all experiencing. Plus, he describes how his practice has changed because of social distancing, stay at home orders, and quarantine. Finally, he gives some insights into how to cope with this difficult time.
Check back often for more episodes pertaining to health and wellness and issues concerning the COVID-19 pandemic.
Please send your questions to goingviralpodcast@gmail.com
Website: goingviral.buzzsprout.com
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Hello, and welcome to the going viral podcast. I'm Matthew Zinder, a certified registered nurse anesthetist. I'm an advanced practice nurse that specializes in the practice of anesthesia. The scope of this podcast will explore health and wellness from the broad to the specific. My aim is to educate while offering a unique perspective. Thank you for joining me today and let's get right to the show. So today I talked to a licensed therapist about the current COVID-19 crisis and how it is affecting both his client base and society in general. What are the effects of this extreme societal stress on possibly an individual and maybe some strategies for coping? His name is Peter Bianca and his practice is in Arizona and he is found that even his practice
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As changed because of the advent of the required telehealth, and he talks also a little bit about the challenges surrounding that. Please stay tuned for future episodes. I've got some great ones planned, including a couple frontline workers, and they will describe what their experiences have been like working in COVID-19 hospitals. And also I will be talking to another therapist who specializes in addictions and how he helps impaired healthcare providers. So check back often for those episodes. And as usual, if you have any constructive feedback or suggestions please email me at going viral podcast@gmail.com and if you wish to share this, you can recommend the website that carries all of the episodes in one place plus a player which is going viral.buzzsprout.com. So without further delay, here is my talk with
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Peter Bianco
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Okay, well Peter, thank you very much for joining me today. I appreciate your time and your expertise on what we're about to talk about. And what I usually do at the beginning of all these episodes is to ask my guest to give a background on your educational life and anything else you might want to add.
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Okay, so I'm a licensed professional counselor in the state of Arizona. I was licensed to three years after I came out of grad school in 1996. And I've been in full time private practice for the last six years. Prior to that I was a primary counselor at Cottonwood of Tucson, which is a residential inpatient treatment behavioral health disorder treatment center. And I did 15 years there full time. And while I was there, I started my private practice part time so I sort of was blending both sides of the
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inpatient and the outpatient there. I did, really three, five years since I was a primary therapist on an adolescent unit for five years. The last four years of those five years was just female adolescence. So it was 12 to 18 years old for a variety of addiction, behavioral and emotional mental health disorders. I then help form a young adult program that was 18 to 23. Again, the same facility, but just different focus on helping young adults manage their behavioral issues. And then the last five years, I did a hybrid where I was essentially working with any adult. I had clients in my group from 19 1819, all the way up to 75. And that's the gist of my work. prior to going to grad school. I was an undergrad coming out of undergrad at Old Dominion. I worked in a variety of different community mental health organizations. I worked at a wilderness school I worked at a psychiatric hospital. I was kind of finding my way
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in the, in the mental health world trying to figure out where I want to land it and I went back and got my master's. So can you can you give a little bit of explanation on what the different types of psychological licensure is because I've heard of licensed clinical social worker, I've heard you know yours. There's a another individual I met recently who will be on the podcast, hopefully in the future, who is a licensed addictions counselor. He counsels health care providers that became impaired. And then of course, my wife who is a PhD counseling psychologist, can you kind of give a synopsis on the different avenues that one might go through when if they want to enter the world of helping people psychologically? Yeah, I mean, the, the, our sort of from the top down so psychologists of the world the PhD psychology
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Psychologists, trained for years dissertation, usually research oriented, although clinically, they'll see a lot of patients and they tend to specialize. I have a niece right now who's getting her PhD in psychology in Oklahoma, and she's specializing in eating disorders. So she'll do a resident, she's actually going to San Diego right now do a residency, hospital based residency. So that that I would sort of put up at the highest level most education, most supervision, so a PhD is and in psychology, and you get licensed at that per state, and can do a variety of different things with that. My level is sort of equivalent of the equivalent with Masters of social work. So you get clinical social workers and it's a master's level, usually 360 credit hours, three or three years after undergrad and Master's in counseling is the same. That's what I got. I got a four year undergrad degree in psychology and then I got a master's in counseling, and that's equivalent to social work, social work.
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tends to have the orientation towards being more broader base doing community based casework type things, but also very good clinicians as well. One of my best friends is 25 years, clinical social workers, he sees a lot of couples and families.
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And then an addictions therapist is typically just trained in, in addiction substance to substance abuse and addictions. We have those in Arizona as well. I think the only caveat for them is that they can't see anybody unless they have a specific addiction diagnosis so that the addiction diagnosis, they can work with them. If there's other things that are coming off of that they can work with them as as well too. But they might be working in conjunction with somebody who's more specialty in anxiety disorders and things like that, and I don't want to forget, also the marriage and family therapists, they're on the equivalent level where they do a lot of specialized training and doing couples work and family work out in the cold mfds in Arizona and in most states. And that's another
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Again, typically a 60 credit hour post, undergraduate master's degree. So you can really specialize if, if you have a certain interest, that's for sure. Right? Yeah, come back. Like I had a good friend of mine. He was literally deciding coming out of undergrad, which one do I want to do? And it essentially was what what are you interested in doing? If you think you want to do a lot of couples work or family work, go get an MFT. If you want a very broad based degree, you can do a master's in counseling or social work. social workers, actually, in some way, I have a little bit of a better angle on employment overall, because they just been around a lot longer. Their national organizations are very well organized. They do very well in the federal and state job systems. For some reason, I think, again, it's a matter of structure and bureaucratic organization. And they're also you know, they do very good training. So yeah, that would, that would be it. You know, I mentioned this a lot in a lot of my lectures because many of my lectures are kind of a little bit more unique for the anesthesia community or conferences, but
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I tend to get into more of the psychological aspects of what we do. And one of the things that I'll say is well, you know, I don't get on a soapbox is that I'll never understand the stigma that is attached to seeking psychological assistance. Because then I you know, and then I say it to my captive audience is, you know, if you fall down and you break your arm, you're not going to stand up and say, I'm gonna suck this up, because, you know, I'm too tough for this or I, I can handle it. No, you're gonna go to an orthopedic surgeon, you're gonna get your arm set, it's going to heal properly, and you'll move about, you know, you'll go on with your life. But when it comes to psychological assistance, or psychological help, for some reason, there is this stigma attached to it where I can suck it up, I'm weak, if I get it, I shouldn't be getting it. There is definitive evidence based practice that treats psychological problems definitively. And I just, you know, obviously it's the most important organ
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In the body, why would Why does so many people have such a hard time with seeking help? yet? My sense of that is it's a very historical answer that you look back at the practice of medicine and mental health medicine, they would even call back then. I don't know what what they would call back then. But into the 19th century to the early 20th century, there was a lot of moralizing about people's struggles and coming from either from a religious standpoint or a character standpoint.
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And that's really, I think the vestiges of that are still flowing through. I can remember my father told me he's 86 years old now. And he went to his first therapist after my parents divorced in the in the late 80s, early 90s. And he was he said, it was the most awkward thing for me, but I knew I needed to talk to somebody. And then when I did it, I was like, Oh, this is really helpful. I'm talking to somebody to help me put things in perspective. My depressions going down. I feel like somebody's really there to help me bounce things.
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Offer how I take care of myself. And he said, I, you know, he grew up in South America in the 1930s and 40s, he would have never done that just wasn't a thing. So I think the short answer is it's it's a lot of old messaging about, there must be something wrong with you.
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And you're in your character and your morality. When the reality is it's we know about brain chemistry, we know about neuroscience, we know about neuroplasticity, all these things. Now we understand like, it's, it's chemical, behavioral. And that's the journey. And there's many, many ways now that we know that it's actually stuff works very, very well.
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I am a huge proponent of it, you know, even just for general wellness, I mean, you don't have to have a horrible clinical diagnosis diagnosis out of the DSM five to go and seek some assistance, and I highly recommend it for anyone to even just go and go for a wellness
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Visit, to have someone to talk to that was trained to respond in a proper way as opposed to going and talking to a friend about a problem, who might make it about them or whatever, you know. But if you go and speak to someone about it, who is trained to respond appropriately, it could actually greatly assist your general wellness. And I know you really blended that in your work because you have the hypnotherapy training. And you do that with the hard science of anesthesia net attorneys. I mean, a really a gift to your patients because they're able to actually go Okay, I'm getting a person's person interaction, skillful little techniques that is going to make this very hard science thing of getting anesthesia go that much more smoothly. And I, you know, I completely agree. It's very useful. We're really all practitioners. Right? And I that's one of the lectures I do. I actually just did an online conference this morning and did that very lecture on the effects of expectation on patient outcomes and pain pathways because
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Depending on how we communicate with a patient that can create certain outcomes, whether it be positive or negative, as an example, of us going up to a patient and saying this is gonna hurt before you do something, you're changing their pain pathways, you know. So yeah, I kind of use that I do use that training in a conversational way to try to create more positive outcomes just through communication. So yeah, I've become, as this whole podcast is hopefully conveying I've become very interested in general health and wellness, not just for patients, but through the world of self care as well. So with all of the interesting times that we are going through right now, how has that changed your practice?
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Well, dramatically. where I'm sitting right now is my office in my home, you know, computer room, and I went fully telehealth five weeks ago, five and a half. I think now, it's all blending together.
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We had to stay at home water right?
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The end of March. And that began at all. So it's been, it's been quite a shift. Initially, a lot of patients didn't want to do it. And I probably lost about 35% of my clients that first week. And some have drifted back in some economy come and gone. But it's really different doing it. Like we're talking to each other over Skype, you can see the person but it has a whole different flavor than sitting in the room, watching body language and feeling the energy and just tracking you know, I actually have read a few things and seen a few videos online of clinicians talking about why is zoom sessions so tiring, and it seems to be that really concentrating on a six inch window in front of you is really different than being sitting in a room. And you know, the work is it and tracking it just tracking sort of the flow of what somebody is talking about that
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going where where the patient is and try and stay with them and be very present with them. It's much, much harder. So I look forward to the day when I can get back in the office here, hopefully in the next in the next month or so. But it's very different. Oh, I can imagine and, and that was one thing I was going to ask you about because with all of my studies and and interests and lectures and things like that, I have become a student of body language. And I can see how incredibly important that would be in the clinical setting when you are counseling someone and to, to change that or be forced to change that from the live assessment that you are constantly doing while talking to them to that six inch little box on the zoom. I mean, how are how are you dealing with that specifically?
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Mostly, the big pieces to do less I've noticed, I just can't do five or six sessions in a day that energetically my
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ability to concentrate, I could do that in, in the office, you know, two hours, take a break another two hours, take a break, or three and a break. But with zoom sessions, I just noticed my ability to stay directly present with what a client is struggling with, is really compromised by that. So I've talked to him in a case consultation group, we need by zoom as well. And everybody's saying the same thing. They just can't hang in there as long. And that's what I've heard from a forum standpoint, as well as clinicians around the country say this is much, much harder, and it's the energy train. So that's going to mean just just try to do a little bit less. So say maybe in some ways that might 35% loss.
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You know, so help that, right.
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So, I mean, but do you find that you are still able to get the information that you need through the zoom as at least close as close as possible to the live? Yes, and I mean, I say you
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enough because most of the clients that I have, I've only had maybe three or four new clients since I went telehealth. And those are I'm actually having a hard time getting them getting the sense of who they are what they're about. And sometimes that's because you know, somebody has the camera right up to their face. Yeah, sometimes it's it's back. And it's just, it's blurry. I mean, there's a lot of variables and just trying to track nonverbal verbal, what's really going on. I see a lot of young adults and teenagers. So that's actually made it tricky too, because they're sitting on their bed, hanging out eating, you know, eating snacks. there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of things that I typically could could control for in my office that I can't control for now. And it just makes it that much harder to get it that I think it's enough to sort of, in some ways I see is sort of a big placeholder. I think if people had to do telehealth all the time, especially in the mental health world to be it'd be a real diminishment in quality.
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But it's it for me with clients, I know, I'm able to sort of keep it rolling along and continue to make some progress. But again, these two really stressful time. So they're like just the mount of things that people are doing it heavier depression, higher levels of anxiety, no sense of normalcy, or add tremendous amounts of uncertainty. These are really frightening and, and tragic, you know, taxing times for my clients, I'm sure and that's actually was where I was gonna lead was.
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there there's actually been a lot of literature out there and a lot of news stories and things like that about how this situation has exacerbated any type of
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psychological issues that people may have had, even if they weren't seeking therapy before. This has exacerbated anything that may have been underlying or existing and now, there is this whole population out there now. That is really
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struggling. Yeah. And that was one of the other questions I was gonna ask you is, have you seen an uptick in the amount of people seeking therapy?
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I mean, for me in terms of amount, not so much, right? Because I've just seen a few people come along.
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Other in my case consultation group that I talked to you, they're seeing you no one actually runs a business and has a number of therapists and she's starting to see a lot more phone calls. I think the bigger pieces like you're talking in terms of severity, and I've certainly seen people with underlying depression, issues get more depressed, being socially isolated, not being able to work, not being able to literally hang out with your friends, just physical contact of like going out and sitting next to your, your loved ones or co sitting next to your friends. That all of that has really intensified people's struggles for just well being am I okay, am I going to be okay of course any uncertainty do the general news is Well, welcome.
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Normal comeback, but what will normal look like? And nobody really knows, right? Slowly inching things back. And we can see that in different ways in different parts of the country.
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But that that level of uncertainty and particularly laid on top of it all the economic struggles that many people are having, having it really, it's a lot of stress on on individuals, families, adolescents in particular who are like, well, I'm supposed to go to college is that am I gonna go to college in the fall? I have two graduating seniors and they're like, Whoa, like, what's it gonna look like? Does that change their plans? Do they stay home, go to community college, if it's all good to be online? lots of lots of fear based orientation because you just can't get a straight answer because there is no answer yet. Yeah. Now what, just from that experience that you're having with also your typical clients. For anyone who might be listening, what kind of symptoms might they look out for in either themselves or others that
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might lead them to either recommend or seek assistance for themselves.
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Well, really, any of your your normal symptomology around depression and anxiety and functioning, I'm a big believer in our people behaving in a way that's in their best interest. So a lot of what I've, I've talked to a mother recently, and she said, Well, her son spending a bit, you know, anywhere between six and nine hours playing video games. I said, Well, what are you noticing that you said, Well, he's grumpy and he's really not getting any exercise and he's not eating well. So I said to her, I said, like, Well, look, you still got to parent your kid, even though they're stuck at home doing their online schooling. And the online schooling was actually quite easy for this guy whose variety was on top of it, he would knock it out really quick, and then he get on. Now it served a good function for him. He was able to actually connect with his friends while playing video games, but nine hours for any kid, six to nine hours, that's a lot of time and so you
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Just symptoms were kid not eating well, kids sleep patterns all over the place and really disrupted a lot of these teenagers are going to bed wee hours of the morning, early am waking up in the early afternoon. So there would little exercise eating a lot of junk. That kind of stuff is you know, the kind of thing that if you were normal, normal circumstances kid going to school, the structure of the day would would mitigate some of that. But now with this kind of openness and everybody stopped. So I was I really say to any individual, oh, you're finding yourself feeling feeling stronger feelings, your behaviors are changing. You're not doing the standard things that you would normally do that you know are going to keep you well exercise, eat, sleep, connect with friends, and even the connections with friends are going to not feel as fulfilling right because a zoom call is not the same as sitting having coffee at a cafe right now from from because I also know
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That there are different schools of thought when when practicing psychology, whether it be I mean, now would you consider yourself a psychotherapist? Would you consider yourself a person that practices positive psychology? What What school do you come from? I mean, I come from a developmental school where I it's an interesting one because I was a generally trained master's level therapist. So when I came out, I do all the different theories and different practices, but I wasn't immersed in any single one. So my education really came after. But once I started doing work, my first job was actually doing
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a family therapy job where I would do in home family therapy with referrals that were from Child Protective Services and the juvenile court. So for there, I actually wasn't even a trained family therapist, but I had a very good supervisor who said, Look, it's really about establishing a relationship a day
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defining what the family wants from themselves and from others, and then working to get to that goal. So to me, that led me into real developmental psychology, what? How do we want to grow as a person to be the best version of ourselves? And that's what I've been studying really ever since. And in my case consultation group, we work on those pieces. And I really think it think of it in terms of three aspects. I have relationship with somebody else, like my primary partner, in my case, it's my wife or your, your wife, you have your family of origin, which really has is the framework for how you know how to do relationships. And then most critically, it's really about what kind of relationship Are you going to have with yourself. And this, this is the place where people don't really think about this because it's so it's so obvious, but in some ways, you're always having a relationship with yourself. And from a mental standpoint inside you from an emotional standpoint of what you're feeling, how you're processing your emotions, and of course, from your behavior.
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And when you can integrate all three of those inside you and also your family of origin, your primary relationship and your relationship with yourself, then you can grow into the person you want to be. And my belief is we're always growing. We're growing as adults. We're growing as teenagers is why I like working with teenagers and young adults. They're on the front end of this. But I always look at psychology as what's the next piece of my own personal growth and development. Now I'm trying to figure out so I can be the better version of who I want to do. And that shows up all over the place. So here we are in Coronavirus, like, we didn't see this coming. How do I meet this with the best ending? And so I'll use that phrase a lot with clients like, Are you are you reaching for the best in you? Are you looking for that? So in some ways that has positive psychology in it, right? But but it's really mostly about looking at the places where you get stuck, and then try to grow yourself up to be a person that men isn't
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struck by that because now you've grown through at past the thing you got stuck with. And again, that that could manifest as depression, addictions, you know, I, I'm not direct enough, I'm not assertive enough whatever, it can be a lot of different ways. So that's, that's the developmental framework I have in mind, in my mind as I work with people. So it sounds like and I've heard a lot of the research that's come out that they say, you know, the, the the key to happiness is about your level of relationships with others. And so it sounds like that's kind of that basis where you you'd look at your personal relationships, your your, your outlying relationships, and then that's, and then where the key comes in, I think is where people don't think about it is that relationship with yourself? And just like you said, that's where that positive psychology can start to come in where you start to think about, what are you grateful for, and what how can we reframe this into a different thought process, that sort of thing.
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That's kind of where I go to where I'm talking to people about stress management is, how do you reframe this? What are we grateful for? What are the good things in our lives? And that you know, things like that? I mean, is that does that sound valid? Because again, I yeah, I am not a trained psychologist, I just try to study it as best as I can and help people where I can, but I certainly have not
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obtained any formal training myself even though I have thought about it. But, but, but that's kind of where I go when I'm talking to people about things like stress management, that sort of thing. Yeah, no, I think I think you're, you're on to it. The main piece for me is
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when when a client comes into my office, I'm always scanning for what do you want to work on about yourself here coming to session. I know that like we'll do something here that hopefully will help challenge them, too.
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Get something inside them like, Oh, I want to change that about me or I want to
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just take something simple, like I want to be more assertive and less passive, right? I find other people are always taking advantage of me. I'm saying yes to too many things as an example. So now I know that's the piece they're looking for every single time they come into session, I've got that as the framework of theirs the standard they're trying to hold themselves to, to grow through it. And the and the positivity would be, Hey, have you done it? What happened when you did it? How did you feel when you did it? Can you reinforce that feeling? So some people get very stuck with this because they get afraid or they have a blowback from their family and we don't do that, you know, you need to be quiet, follow along, or, or whatever that is. I'm a big fan of, yes. But are you proud of who you want to be? Are you willing to stand for yourself and be the person you want to be even though you might not get the validation of other people you're learning to validate?
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yourself. And there's many, many ways to do that. And it's a very useful construct, to build the kind of life and grow that to be the kind of person you want. I'm also a big believer in mindfulness based therapy and mindfulness based techniques. Because when you're doing that, you're bringing yourself into the present, you're more self aware of how you are at moment to moment. And then you can actually then begin to counteract some of the stuff that might be coming from your unconscious coming from your family of origin, built into your patterns of how you've had relationships with others built into how you had your relationship with yourself. And you could start to be like, Well, wait a minute, I am afraid I don't, things are really uncertain. But I'm also really grateful. I have many, many things to be grateful for, and I'm still able to do the things I want to do. And I can meet my new task of growing into whatever I want to grow into. So that's that's the general framework on how I try to approach all my clients it gets trickier when you have couples because they have different agendas and they're working couples as much
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Much harder I'm sure families too, because there's power differentials you know kids parent, a child or whatever. Well, I mean the the mindfulness thing, I am a huge proponent of doing a daily mindfulness meditation. I teach it all the time it you know, I think I mentioned this in the previous episode of The when I spoke to the hypnotherapist, but I am part of a program where I talk to students who are trying to study for the boards, some who have been unsuccessful, and any profession that spends years in an intense program. And it all comes down to one day. And that's the board test. And it can be anything, it could be the bar exam, it could be the CPA exam, it could be anything where you spend all this time training, to, to do a profession or be licensed in a profession and all those years of intense training come down to one day, you're gonna be stressed that day. So I discovered
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Many things with them. I teach them mindfulness meditation, I talk to them about hypnosis and breathing exercises. But I am a huge proponent of a daily meditation practice for everyone, because it and I speak from personal experience that I started doing it from a stance of self preservation. While it's really why I started looking into stress management the first place but I, I felt it results the first time I ever did a guided meditation from an app. And I've been I've been pushing it ever since. But, and is that is that specifically what you talk about is meditation, or do you even get into that? I can, if the if the client leads me there, I really don't try to be very prescriptive for our client because I want to meet the client where they are coming through the door, and then really be given permission to sort of challenge them and push them out certainly offer them ideas around mindfulness and meditation in particular, if I sent it, there's an
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openness to it.
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I mean, I agree with you there's there's certain places in people's lives where the stakes are so high those, you know, certification, exams, etc. I work with some doctors getting ready to do boards, and it's stunning, the level of stress and anxiety, their sleep is going terrible and they're not eating. I mean, I mean, granted, you have to study a lot when you're going to do something like that. But the other pieces I really try to emphasize and are you in touch with you, the person you the human being you the man woman, as you're doing that, because there's the immediacy of the experience, and then there's all the self talk and all the anxiety of like, what if and
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all the fears that are future based, or what is going to need if you Joe, you know, if you don't pass and, and to try to drop out of that and keep their best, clearest mind because clearly, they're bright and they're studying and they're doing what they can and stay grounded in Am I the person that I want to be as I need this super, super hard task.
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Finding a million ways to settle into Yes, I believe in myself and why and really thoroughly fleshing that out. There's the work, and most people can do it. And that and that's so true. I mean, I am such a huge proponent in Yes, they have to spend time studying. But if they don't spend time in self care, then First of all, they're not going to be effective in learning what they're trying to study. That's number one. And second, if you don't want a chronic basis, or a long term basis, engaged in self care, you're going to become a patient that someone else has to take care of, as opposed to you taking care of someone else. So that's why I'm just I push it so much. So now from these current affairs or current experiences, you had said that you are you know, you did have a few extra or new clients come in but even from the ones that you are or have been seeing
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Have you actually seen an exacerbation of symptoms or, or more severity and what they're going through because of this crazy time we're going through? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the piece that so many people, especially in the early weeks of shutdown, was struggling with his, this sense of fear about not only Where are we going, but also then the heavy, the heavy, I would call it depressive symptoms about what just happened and what we're collectively experiencing. And and the best thing that really helped me frame it as I was, you know, scanning the literature and actually came across Esther parral, who I recommend anybody's to her podcast.
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And she said, she said, Look, we're all going through grief. And once she said that, I didn't even have to hear what she said after and I'm like, Oh, yeah, of course. That's what's happening. We just lost normalcy. We just lost the sense of safety like that.
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I can go to the store and everything's fine. The anxiety level of, Oh, I'm going to go to the store and have to put gloves on or put a mask on or who's just getting sick? Where when, how, what is this thing that's happened? And the way aren't we collectively as a country, and not in local, local communities, we lost normalcy. You know, we can't sit in a restaurant, I can't go to a bar, I can't watch sports on TV. That's all loss. And everybody's got to deal with loss in different ways. And what typically happens is anxiety goes up, depression cup goes up, and you're trying them to cope the best way you can. But if you have a framework of loss, now you can actually then start to go like, Okay, how do you deal with grief, and there's many, many ways to deal with grieving, but with the framework of being like, let's then talk about how you can best bear the loss that you have. And also knowing that you don't know when it's going to be over and what the full extent of the loss even is, right. It's it's
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It's not like it's a defined loss like my dogs died. My dog is never coming back. I lost. Oh, this sense of here's what my life was. And I don't know where it's going. But a friend of mine who's actually excellent grief therapist who specialized in Greece, their therapy, he, he shared with me years ago, this concept called the assumptive world. We all have an assumptive world about where we're going, we assume life is going to be this way in X number of years. Well, when your assumptive world changes and for everybody it just did with Coronavirus. Now you have to you have to relate to yourself in the world differently. Because it's not going to happen the way you thought it's gonna happen. And the two teenagers that I saw that were both seniors in high school, they went Wow, I I never got a chance to like, go to that last class and no, I was going through the last class there was certain things they were doing in high school. They like Oh, I got I can do that.
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for another two months, bam, it's gone. And you know, graduation is a defining thing. Okay, you could wrap your head around doing a weird zoom graduation or whatever. But literally like, Oh, I, I don't get to go to the cafeteria to hang out with my buddies, like I've been doing for four years, that kind of assumptive world really powerful thing to process come to come to some kind of peace with and that I really recommend to anybody that you've got, we've all are trying to adjust. How are we grieving the assumptions of what we thought was going to be? Yeah, I mean, that is a really interesting way to look at it is that we now have to think about the grief and loss of what our lives were like and, and how do we deal with it? Yes, I guess yeah. From the psychological standpoint, there are different ways to do that. And And again, that's why I highly recommend seeking out that assistance if you need it. What could you recommend to people in
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General to stay psychologically healthy and during this time.
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Yeah, so really, it's grounding in the stuff that creates good well being right. So in general, even when anybody comes into my office, I start with, okay, there's a story behind why you're there to see me. But it all starts with what are the basics we all need in order to be okay. So I always ask how is your sleeping? And and are you getting enough? Sleep is critical. You and I've talked about this in the past about the research on sleep is rock solid now everybody needs it, and needs more than we thought we needed and we're chronically sleep deprived. Are you eating well? Are you exercising? Well, so look, I'm going to your nuts and bolts biology, like you're all those three things are really about are you feeding your biological cell from an emotional social side? How are you connecting with other people now of course, this is very difficult. We used to connect in many ways person to person being in our work environments.
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going out with friends, all that sort of stuff, it's still a big need to know that you're connected, cared for understood, heard, affirmed, all that sort of stuff. So these are the things that people want to keep continuing to do and finding the way that works for you, under the restrictions that are now in place and maybe in place for a while. Exercise, of course, the same thing, right? Yeah. The good news is, you know, we're coming into summer and we're and there's a lot of opportunities to be out and about and be pretty safe and get get the, you know, socially appropriate distance,
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exercising connection with other people that you need. The other part too is I'm a big believer in like, are you doing things that are meaningful and easy under conditions where we're restricted right, stay home avoid to start to do repetitive patterns and habits that are maybe not as good for you over eating too much screen time.
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Too much video gaming.
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Isolation people that are like metabo, Tennessee, isolate a way to isolate even more. And if you're concerned about your loved ones to really reach out to them and check in on them, and also do meaningful activities that are that are valuable to you, connecting with your local community organizations, church group, whatever is important to you, so that you're giving and doing. Again, if you're, if you're working, and now you can't work or you've lost your job, to find a way to secure your basic needs, and start trying to tackle that in the best way you can, of course, or millions of people. It's very, very frightening. That's such a great point. Because if people especially if they're out of work and have a lot of time on their hands, that alone is difficult, and that alone is psychologically difficult, in many ways. But then add to that being isolated and not being able to connect as usual. I mean, 25 years ago, maybe actually probably more than that. Unfortunately. I lived alone in an apartment.
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My first roommate from the time, the from the time that I moved out of my parents house, I lived alone. My wife was my first ever roommate. Wow. So I lived alone for my whole college career. Right out of almost right, probably a year after I graduated high school, I was in an apartment by myself, I would have struggled during this time in that apartment. And because I would have been out of work.
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