EPISODE 8: Coping with COVID

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:20] KK: Hey, welcome to Risky Business, with the Coverage Queens. I’m Kathy Kaehler and —

[00:00:25] BL: And I’m Bliss Landon.

[00:00:27] KK: Welcome to the episode today. We're very excited. We have a really interesting, I think both you and I are extremely, extremely, interested in this topic of mental health, stress, anxiety, whether it's from parents, but really focusing on kids.

[00:00:47] BL: And our kids. Yeah, absolutely. It's very important. I think, I wish we would have had this talk a little sooner.

[00:00:55] KK: A year ago.

[00:00:56] BL: But things keep changing, and better late than never or help us moving forward as more transitioning happening and our kids are having to establish new normal again. I think it’ll just be really great to get some information.

[00:01:15] KK: We do. We need to have, I think, looking at, we're at 12, 13 months now and seeing kind of just the effects of these changes of kids being at home and just also the overlying reality of the fear of what happened, the change of routine. And we, as moms, we both have loads of kids.

[00:01:44] BL: Between the two of us.

[00:01:45] KK: But it's really been hard to at times to navigate, like, what should we be doing? How do we respond to our kids? So, I think it's really great that we have an expert today and we'd love to welcome our guest. Randy Noblitt is a therapist, family therapist, and I can't wait to hear about his background and more of actually what his title is, and the types of folks that he works with. So Randy, you are on our Zoom today. Welcome to Risky Business.

[00:02:18] RN: Thank you, and thanks for having me.

[00:02:20] KK: Yes.

[00:02:21] BL: Thanks, Randy. For coming on in our little show.

[00:02:24] RN: Absolutely. It’s a very important topic.

[00:02:26] BL: It really is.

[00:02:28] KK: You guys have known each other?

[00:02:30] BL: Yes. So Randy, and I have a little bit of a connection. When I got his name, I said to him, I said, “Noblitt”. I only know one other Noblitt on this planet, and her name is Cindy Noblitt and she was my high school softball coach and teacher, and he goes, “Yeah, that's my sister.”

[00:02:49] RN: Yeah, it's funny how the connections.

[00:02:52] BL: I know. It's always a small world, always. So, anyway, so we have a little bit of that, history. But anyway, Randy's a wonderful therapist. So, Randy, why don’t you tell us about your background? Because you have kind of an interesting background, too. So, dive in.

[00:03:11] RN: Okay. Well, my background, for many, many years, I worked in the business world, particularly in commercial real estate. So, therapy wasn't far afield, in some ways from many of the brokers that I dealt with over the years, who could probably use my services now. But I dealt a lot with people. I was always one of those guys that everybody would come up to and go, “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” I go, “Yeah.” And they would tell me something personal, or they would ask about a problem or face some kind of an issue they were having.

I had kind of gone through the period of my life where I'd raised my family, and was looking for something was a little more meaningful. Through a series of life changes, as we sometimes go through some life events, I made a decision to go back to school, and getting my Master's in Psychology, and to launch into a different field, hoping that I could make the last part of my life count in a different way than just raising my family and going through business. I wanted to launch into something where I could help people.

[00:04:31] BL: How old were you when you made that decision?

[00:04:33] RN: I was 55 when I went back to school.

[00:04:37] BL: That's amazing.

[00:04:38] RN: It started over. But it's been extremely rewarding. I haven't regretted one minute of it. I feel like in particular, why we're sitting here today just seeing so much need. The hardest thing for me is keeping up with the number of people that want to come in, because so many people have been affected, particularly by COVID. I was busy before. But it seems that it has even gotten more busy, and some of the things that people have had been more pronounced because of COVID. It's created a lot of stressors.

[00:05:21] BL: Have you always seen children in your practice?

[00:05:27] RN: I have seen throughout my time period, probably my focus, when I started, I saw more younger people. Meaning, all the way down as low as like four or five years old. My practice now probably is 13 and up, in that range. So, it would be, middle school to high school, to early adulthood. And then I do a whole host of other things, but in the age range you're talking about, it would probably be like 13 to 20. Once in college, down to say junior high school. So, that would be the brand. I don't see a lot of elementary at this point.

[00:06:07] BL: Yeah, I wouldn't think so. Yeah. So, have you seen an increase in your patients that are in that age group lately?

[00:06:17] RN: I would say, probably, yes. I don't know that it's been a huge increase, maybe more so, some that I was seeing where the issues have shifted a bit, but some increase.

[00:06:32] BL: Okay. So, one thing that we've been hearing in the media, I think we've all heard this, is that suicide is on the rise, and especially with young adults and, and high school aged kids, which is just so tragic and awful. I don't know, do we blame it on the pandemic? I don't know exactly what you blame it on. But what do you think, why is that happening? Our kids pivoted to an at home learning environment, and with that, they lost their social part of our lives. So, that's what I think it might be, but I'm not an expert. So, wondering what your take is on that?

[00:07:17] RN: Well, first, to digress a little bit, there's sort of an overarching theme, I should say, that we've taken into account the effects of the disease, and are protecting people from the physical illness of COVID. But I don't know that anyone ever imagined what the fallout of the cure was going to be.

The isolation, the separating people from their social environment, the change in their day to day life, particularly focus on kids, the effects on the family. There were many, many unintended consequences of what has happened, because sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease. I think in so many areas, there are many, many areas that it has been. Not minimizing COVID, but how we found the right balance here, where we look at a person holistically and we say physical health is one aspect but mental health and family health is also another part of it and jobs and providing money. Parents being able to work and trying to figure out how do I do that with my kids that need to be home and helping them and more and more time together. So, that was kind of one thing just overall, is overarching for me, is that I'm not sure we've done such a great job at looking at the overall.

[00:09:13] KK: I was going to say, if people are joining us, we're speaking with family therapist Randy Noblitt. You're in Westlake –

[00:09:20] RN: I’m in Westlake Village, yes.

[00:09:21] KK: You said something in the very beginning, which struck me, is this has been a life event. I don't know if you use that in your practice as when things do take place, whether it's a marriage, a divorce, a death, a pandemic. I like how you phrase that as a life event because we can look at that positively, negatively, we can really unpack it, and figure out how we navigate through it. I was talking about this actually yesterday how we have changed as a society, in the normal things that we would do, from routine, from getting up in the morning, showering, getting dressed, going to work or school, that's changed. How we respond to certain things that have taken place, someone in your family passing away, that whole ritual has changed. But are those changes than psychologically damaging us? Is it permanent? How do we get back to that? I mean, that's what we're both wanting to know, different things like how do we manage that part of it as a parent, as just a human being?

[00:10:46] RN: Well, I would say this life events, things that happen to people are really always based we learn in trauma work. They’re always based in the interpretation of the event by an individual. So, in other words, it's not always going to be interpreted the same way. I can have an event and you can have an event and you can have an event, and we can interpret that differently. Some, it doesn't bother.

I have some kids that are thriving in their home, and they're feeling less stressed, and they're doing the best they've ever done in school. Some of that happens. I have other kids that are hating life and they're lonely, and they're depressed, and they have anxiety. So, a lot of these, this is definitely a life and death. This is definitely one of those pivotal events. Is it permanent? It can be for some, then it's going to be a problem that they're going to need to work through a lot of things, depending on how they interpret this life event.

For others, they'll just go back and they'll move into the flow again and get back into the routine, and all will be well of the world for them. So, it just depends really on the person, the individual themselves. But as a collective, there has been a tremendous effect on young people. I've actually had these conversations where I'm saying, “How is it affecting you?” You mentioned some of them earlier, when you were kind of introing, that their social circle is gone. Their motivation for many of them is gone. They're spending time more isolated than they ever have before. I have one say to me that I'm just not motivated. I'm not even calling my friends. And they call me and go. “Dude, why don't you reach out to me?” Like, I don't know. I just don't feel motivated.

[00:13:03] BL: So, what is that? What is that lack of motivation? Is it fear? That’s depression, maybe? I mean, what are the signs of depression that you see in a child? What are some of the signs?

[00:13:17] RN: One of them that will be certainly sadness. But what you'll often see where we might, being older, we might go more into the sadness, they may go into irritability. So oftentimes, apparently, my kids don’t seem sad. Was he irritable? Oh, my gosh, yes. You can't say anything until he doesn't take your head off.

Well, depression. Irritability is a sign, particularly in a teenager. Isolation. Things they used to enjoy, they don't enjoy anymore. They used to like to go out and play golf, they don't want to go anymore. They used to ride their bike a lot, they don't ride anymore. They are isolated. I see they're a lot more in their room. So, isolation. Lower energy level. Sometimes a desire that they just want to escape. They just don't want to be doing what they're doing. “I don't want to go to school. I don't want to be here.” To and including for some, as you mentioned, Bliss, earlier, the suicidality that we see in some.

So, I would say those are the kind of the major signs that you look for in depression. And of course, anxiety is a part of that and we can usually see irritability with that and the stress level raises and you can tell that they're overwhelmed with things that maybe they wouldn't ordinarily react to, but they're reacting to them. You can see the anxiety piece and the depression piece being involved. Anxiety one kind of rears its head when they start talking about going back and I know we're not talking about this yet, but the going back raises that anxiety level for for them.

[00:15:11] KK: For sure.

[00:15:13] BL: Yeah, my son's a senior this year and I said, “Tristan, are you excited about going back to school?” He goes, “I don't think I want to do it.” Because he has a choice. He goes, “I don't think I want to do it.” I said, “Why?” He goes, “I'm okay with what I have, what I've got going on, what I'm doing now and I'm okay with it.” I said, “What about your friends? Don’t you want to go see your friends?” Well, that was a week ago. And now he's decided that he does want to go back to school.

But I think, I know, from being a mom, that kids like routine, right? They love routine. They've had to develop a whole new routine of how they do everything, pretty much. Now, we're asking them to pivot yet again, and develop another routine. It's not going to be like their old routine. It might be a little similar. But it's going to be different.

[00:16:05] RN: Bliss, you have two pieces of that. There's one of the issues, which is just the change in the routine. They've gotten used to the way they're doing it.

[00:16:14] BL: Even though it’s not the best routine, but they’re used to it.

[00:16:17] RN: Yeah, we all have to adjust and we make whatever adjustments we need as human beings, whatever that is. If we're getting old, we make adjustments to a slower life, and somebody that goes into a care facility has to adjust to that. They don't get to drive everywhere. So, they adjust. We can adjust to that.

What I'm seeing, though, is a level of anxiety about social again. If you think about it, many young people, it's the exception, the real outgoing, type A person, but you have many, many people by and large that the largest percentage are have self-doubt. They may not feel great socially, they may be introverted, they may be very worried about how they're perceived. And it was a push for them to get to that place of functionality in school, where they were accepted, and had a group of friends. It was a push for them to get there.

Well, now they've been out of that. I hear from so many, “I'm concerned about going back. I don't know if I can do social again.” In that part, that's kind of where I then have to kind of talk to them, and talk them through that.

[00:17:46] BL: So, what do you tell them? What are some tools that we can give them to overcome the anxiety about going back to school?

[00:17:53] RN: Okay, well, one of the things that we're going to talk about is, what I'll talk about with them is I try to normalize their concern. So, that's the first thing. I'm going to say, “Of course, you feel that way. There’s probably something wrong with you if you didn't feel that way.” I can give you a parallel, if I'm going to go speak in front of a group of people and I haven't done it in a while, I have some nerves about it and that's normal. So, I try to normalize, make them not feel as though there's something wrong with them for feeling that way.

It makes sense that you feel that way. And they go, “Oh, that's good. I'm normal. Yeah. I'm not to freak. I'm fine. Okay, good.” I talk to them about because it's normal, you have to realize it's going to take a little time to adjust in the same way as public speaking, you're going to have nerves when you go in front to speak, you're going to have nerves and you go back to school. Because this is important to you. And by and large, I see a lot of young people when they're at school, they're very self-conscious. The last thing they want is to be noticed in a classroom. That's a fear of theirs. Like, “I don't want to do something stupid and have everyone laugh at me or something like that. Or they’re staring at me. No, they’re not.” The cheerleaders worry about how she's looking good for the game coming up, the athletes over there doing his thing. There's another person sitting there that's not even engaged, thinking about something else after school. So, no one's looking at you. You don’t need to feel that self-conscious. You’ll be fine. Give yourself a chance to acclimate again, everyone is in the same boat as you are.

[00:19:41] BL: That's a good one.

[00:19:42] RN: Realize 60%, 70% of that people probably more, have some anxiety about coming back, even the ones that would surprise you. So, I try to normalize it. Try to tell them that it's going to be a process and that they will reengage, and they will adjust, probably more quickly than they've adjusted COVID. Because they've been there before. With COVID, none of us have been here.

[00:20:10] KK: New territory.

[00:20:10] BL: That was very new. At least they know that they've been to school, they know what school looks like, and what the classroom looks like, it's just going to be a little different, and it's been a while.

[00:20:21] KK: Randy, you mentioned –

[00:20:21] RN: This was new for everyone.

[00:20:24] KK: Right. You mentioned isolation. We've seen isolation in us, staying at home. Kids are isolated in their bedrooms. They're also isolating online. And with the device that they use for so many hours now for education, then they're still on it for any type of socialization, or just downtime. What do you see in terms of any effects from long term usage of being in front of a screen?

[00:21:01] RN: Well, I will tell you that I see burnout for being in front of a screen for sure. Particularly in the educational setting, because they're sitting there, some of them were sitting there for so many hours in a day and they get to the end, and they're drained. So, I'll give you an example of something where I can support and understand what they feel.

For a while with COVID, I had to do my sessions and therapy on Zoom. What I noticed at the end of the day of how tired I was, because it was a different medium for me, and a different medium for my clients. Because it's abnormal for all of us. So, this is an abnormal way of learning for them and I think that they get tired of sitting in front of a screen, we all get tired. If we're in our computer all day long, we kind of think, “Well, why am I so tired? Well, I was on my computer all day long.” There's a different energy level. When students are in a classroom, they get energy from each other, from the teacher, and so on. In the same way as my therapy, I get energy from my client, my client gets energy from me, and for me to replicate that on a screen takes an inordinate amount of energy.

[00:22:25] KK: Right.

[00:22:27] RN: So, I have to really give in another level. I have to be able to move closer to the screen, when I'm saying something to try to connect where I would move closer in my office or be more emphatic about something. So, I think that they're experiencing all of these same kinds of things and then if you add to that, they don't have the social interaction. One person said to me, “I used to do a lot of projects in class with my fellow students, with my friends. We do projects, and we were collaborative. We don't have that.” I said, listen to a lecture and I think they kind of wear down. You could only handle so much of a teacher lecturing and then they would break it down into a project where people would break out and do certain things. That kind of got people excited and a little bit more energized.

So, it's definitely a challenge, and you definitely see burnout. But then what do you do as a parent? Do you tell your son or daughter, “You got to be off your device?” What about their social? That is their social.

[00:23:34] BL: Because that’s the way they socialize now.

[00:23:35] KK: That is their social.

[00:23:38] RN: So, you’re saying no, when you're done with school, you're not on your device. Well, okay. You just cut their social off. There has to be a limitation to that, of course, but you've got to realize that that is their lifeline, that is their connection to their friend group.

[00:23:57] KK: What's a good way for parents that you could – maybe a tip about setting a boundary of some type? I know we can't get them off the device, but is there something that you've seen that works in a family setting? Is it dinner table? Is it a board game? Is it just the talking pillow? I mean, what would you suggest to help engage that more verbal and empathetic and eyesight, look at people in their eyes.

[00:24:28] BL: And just to take a break from the screen. I mean, I would think a break is good, right?

[00:24:35] RN: Yeah. I think that parents have to be parents and they have to limit it. As much as their son or daughter is not going to want it to be limited. So, when I'm saying they need screen time. I don't mean they needed for the rest of the night after dinner. There there still needs to be some parental involvement in that. So, it can be the kind of thing where you say, “Hey, take an hour, connect up with your friends. At that point, I want you to come out of the room. I want you to put your phone up on the counter and we're going to hang out as a family. We're going to watch some watch your show, or we're going to play a board game, or we're going to do something.” In the beginning, that's not going to be super popular with their kids. You telling me what to do, and Johnny gets to do it, and Betty gets to do it. And their parents don't do that and all that. But if you're concerned about it, and limiting their screen time. They do need to have a break and maybe interact with real people too.

[00:25:38] KK: Amazing. Well, Randy –

[00:25:40] RN: Because they see social interaction as texting and that's their social interaction. They use the word “I talked to so and so.” No, they didn’t.

[00:25:49] BL: They texted, them. It means different things.

[00:25:54] RN: And 93% of meaning they say comes from nonverbal, which is your facial expressions, your body language, your tone of voice and your volume of voice, and only 7% of the words. So, that means they're only getting – texting back and forth, they're getting 7%. They're only not interacting with a human being. But they think they're talking to them.

[00:26:17] KK: That's is so amazing. I am so capturing that. Wow. Randy, thank you so much. I mean, we're beyond 20 minutes. Who knew?

[00:26:33] BL: That's great. What I would take away is just normalizing things for your kids. I think that's so important because they're feeling so different and that they're experiencing something new and and that must feel really isolating just to experience something different and knew that they haven't experienced before. So, I love the idea of normalizing things and giving examples of how – well, I feel uncomfortable when I do this and talking to them about that. So, I'm going to use that for my son, as he goes back to school on Monday. Finally.

[00:27:03] KK: I think it’s so great.

[00:27:05] BL: Yeah, that's really good. Thank you so much, Randy. I knew you would be awesome.

[00:27:07] RN: You're welcome.

[00:27:09] KK: What’s a good way for people – I mean, do you want to share any information on how people can get in touch with you? Or do you have a blog or anything like that?

[00:27:20] RN: I can be reached, I'm on Psychology Today and have a website in Psychology Today under my name, and I can be reached that way. I am in Westlake Village area. I can give my phone number if you want that, (310) 386-1100. I certainly can be a help to parents if they need to figure out in this particular area, if they need to figure out what to do with their sons or their daughters and how they can help them best, or to have them bring their children in or to do family sessions. So, I really pretty much do all of that. Sometimes it's a hybrid. So, if people have a need for that, and it can be helpful. I'm here and happy to help.

[00:28:07] BL: Awesome.

[00:28:08] KK: Randy, thank you so much. We really appreciate your advice and I think this is something that we will continue to need to learn more and share more.

[00:28:19] BL: Absolutely.

[00:28:20] RN: You’re more than welcome. Happy to be here and thank you for the opportunity.

[00:28:23] BL: Thank you.

[00:28:25] KK: Bye.

[00:28:26] BL: Bye-bye.

[00:28:26] RN: Bye.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:28:27] KK: Well, you and I knew that we needed to talk about that.

[00:28:30] BL: Yeah. I feel like weights been lifted off my shoulders. I don’t know about you, but I have some tools now from my son.

[00:28:37] KK: Well, that's the key, it's tools. It's getting tools to be able to manage just the situation that takes place. You just don't know at the moment and it happens. This happened immediately. It was just a 180, and for us to adjust. But I think just my gut feeling was to not react, so that my kids saw a scary reaction, do you know what I mean?

[00:29:07] BL: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

[00:29:09] KK: For us to not show that.

[00:29:11] BL: And who hasn't felt fear and all of this? We’ve all felt fear at many different levels. I purposely turned off the news for weeks. I just didn't want to read about it, hear about it. It's really frightening. Imagine how our kids felt, same way. But getting through that part, we've gotten through that, but now we've got these new things happening with the transitioning back to school and, just helping them with that. So, I think we're going to see more of that and hopefully we don't go backwards. We keep moving forwards with the way things are going, because that would be awful.

[00:29:47] KK: Nothing good.

[00:29:49] BL: That'd be a whole another episode. So, hopefully we just keep progressing and things get better for for everyone.

[00:29:56] KK: I agree. Very good. Very Good show. Well, I'm excited for our next episodes coming up. We've got a lot of exciting people that we're getting ready to talk to and really paying attention to the school devices that our kids are using now that they're going back to school shortly. So, if you have questions about anything in that topic, we are ready to share that information with you. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at riskybusiness@schooldevicecoverage.com. We hope you come back. Come back and be with us. The Coverage Queens.

[00:30:40] BL: Thank you so much everyone.

[00:30:41] KK: I'm Kathy and this is Bliss, and we'll see you next time.

[00:30:44] BL: Bye-bye.

[00:30:45] KK: Bye.

[END]