Western Standard - November 12, 2021


Calgary psychologist says lockdowns, mandates creating serious mental crisis


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Length

30 minutes

Words per minute

149.8688

Word count

4,512

Sentence count

59

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Angela Grace of Heart Centered Counseling about the impact of the flu pandemic. Dr. Grace talks about the role of a psychologist in dealing with a pandemic and how to deal with the stress that comes with it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 .
00:00:30.000 .
00:01:00.000 Let's get started.
00:01:30.000 Thank you.
00:02:00.000 Hello, I'm Melanie Rizdin with the Western Standard and joining me right now is Dr. Angela
00:02:07.480 Grace. She's with Heart Centered Counseling here in Calgary. And we thought it would be
00:02:13.180 kind of an interesting conversation to speak with a psychologist about the ins and outs
00:02:19.620 of a pandemic and really just wanted to get an idea what kinds of things are psychologists
00:02:28.760 dealing with through this pandemic.
00:02:31.220 I would assume that you have a lot of clients
00:02:34.440 that are dealing with struggles and stress.
00:02:37.460 And so what can you tell me?
00:02:39.180 What are people coming to you for right now?
00:02:41.640 Well, I'll tell you, first of all,
00:02:43.860 my training never trained me for dealing with a pandemic.
00:02:47.800 Yeah, let's start with your training.
00:02:49.660 Yeah, well, I've got a PhD in counseling psychology
00:02:53.560 and educational psychology.
00:02:55.000 And so I do private practice counseling and school assessment.
00:02:59.500 And then and I also do a lot of trauma work, work with first responders as well.
00:03:04.560 And so when the pandemic hit, all of us had to pivot.
00:03:09.700 All of a sudden I had my own kids home from school, trying to figure out what to do with them.
00:03:16.360 My own family, you know, in crisis of what or how we're going to manage this.
00:03:21.900 And then my own practice, I had to pivot from being in person to online. And then over time, it became a combination of both. And then, of course, looking at Alberta Health, like what are the masking guidelines? What are the cleaning guidelines? Like it just became this whole, how do I do my practice now?
00:03:42.960 And I know all psychologists needed to pivot that way.
00:03:48.040 And what I found immediately was an increase in crisis in clients.
00:03:53.740 So what was, you know, maybe a 7 out of 10 crisis before is now a 12 out of 10.
00:03:59.700 What was a client who was doing really, really well and hadn't been to counseling for a while was all of a sudden back in the chair just in complete distress.
00:04:09.300 so it's been this range of individuals worrying about the pandemic and how their how their life
00:04:17.580 was going to change to families worried about how we were going to deal with our kids and then over
00:04:23.580 time now it's become worrying about should I get the vaccine should I not get the vaccine which is
00:04:31.160 which was not in my wheelhouse I've never never once was there a discussion on how do we help
00:04:38.000 clients make a decision right and so it comes back to what is right what is right for you
00:04:44.960 and how can we reduce the stress around it um i've had clients come in in tears because they're
00:04:50.640 being bullied about getting the vaccine or not getting the vaccine and the amount of first
00:04:56.400 responders and healthcare workers that are now coming in in fear for their careers in fear for
00:05:05.520 their livelihood we're moving beyond this generalized sense of stress and
00:05:13.020 trauma from the pandemic to now moving into moral injuries where people's
00:05:19.620 livelihoods are now now at stake yeah I would imagine that would have been a
00:05:25.560 fairly big shift because even you know looking at it from the outset you know
00:05:30.420 the the stresses have have changed you know am I am I safe yeah how can I how
00:05:37.020 can I support my kids through this to I'm gonna lose everything I mean
00:05:42.900 initially we were all in survival mode right it's just what what's going on how
00:05:47.400 do we deal with this and then we could start to relax a little bit and then you
00:05:53.460 know the mandates came down even harder and then we could relax a little bit and
00:05:58.440 and then all of a sudden something else.
00:06:00.580 And now we're in this state of flux
00:06:02.680 of real fear of our healthcare system collapsing
00:06:08.900 and government mandates changing.
00:06:12.080 So it's an incredibly, incredibly stressful time.
00:06:16.720 And all of us are, well, for the lack of better word,
00:06:20.660 winging it.
00:06:22.760 Of course, I mean, I'm doing a lot of research
00:06:24.680 into how do we help deal with these moral injury stressors?
00:06:28.420 when people need to make decisions.
00:06:31.320 And they're tough decisions.
00:06:33.120 Very tough decisions.
00:06:34.580 Well, and mandated decisions.
00:06:36.580 You know, prior in, you know, prior with,
00:06:39.840 like I used to work with AHS,
00:06:41.380 there was recommendation to get a flu shot.
00:06:45.260 At one point I decided not to get the flu shot,
00:06:47.540 not that I'm vaccine, you know, not that I'm against it.
00:06:50.960 I just decided, you know, I'm not doing it this year.
00:06:54.660 And then there was a breakout
00:06:56.200 and I was off work for three days without pay because I was at risk and patients were at risk.
00:07:04.480 Well, now we've got COVID and the vaccine, and it's not just a three-day thing. It could be their
00:07:11.540 entire lives. So it's incredibly, incredibly stressful for people right now. Some of the
00:07:19.960 first responders and healthcare workers that I'm working with now are saying things like,
00:07:24.760 Like, I worked in the hospital for an entire, for more than a year, frontline exposure to COVID all the time, never got sick or did get COVID, recovered from it, now have the antibodies.
00:07:43.800 And so I've gone from being a praised hero in our province to now being vilified and basically told I'm the devil because I don't want to get the vaccine.
00:07:59.060 Yeah, and it does really ring true when you say bullying. There seems to be, you know, the interesting thing is when you look at, say, early in the year, sort of wintertime, I do recall Justin Trudeau, our PM, I recall him saying, you know, we don't want to mandate this, it's going to cause a divisiveness, it's going to cause, you know, it's going to cause issues.
00:08:25.740 you know of course the message has to be that we have to do what is best to get through the
00:08:32.280 pandemic and keep as many people safe as possible but in your experience and what you're witnessing
00:08:39.240 with your with your clients how are they dealing with that divisiveness how are they dealing are
00:08:45.780 you working through have you it's traumatic yeah so so you are dealing with with clients that are
00:08:53.160 coming and absolutely and dealing with being like you said vilified and um and you know i've heard
00:09:00.200 i've spoken with many uh in the healthcare industry as well who are dealing with that sort of um you
00:09:07.080 know it's it's kind of it's very black and white right now and and i've had many a tear-filled
00:09:15.080 conversation with healthcare workers who are struggling through that very very much so yeah
00:09:21.640 it's you know no i mean there's there's enough trauma in and and stress in their jobs to begin
00:09:28.600 with and then add on a pandemic with holidays being taken away and and needing needing to work
00:09:35.400 more and not knowing when there's going to be an influx of people having to triage like it just
00:09:41.320 becomes this what what is normal job stressors and ptsd from that now it's exaggerated so so much
00:09:52.040 more because because of the moral injuries and you mentioned you mentioned ptsd do you suspect
00:09:58.360 that this is that's going to be a massive burden massive because i can't even say we're in ptsd
00:10:06.440 right now because that's post-traumatic stress we are in traumatic stress right now like we are we
00:10:12.920 have to survive the trauma and then the healing can happen and we're we're surviving it but our
00:10:19.560 healthcare workers are are burned out and stressed and i see lots of lots of arguments and fights
00:10:29.480 with with our government um with vaccine mandates with information that's being shared or is it the
00:10:37.480 right percentages where's the information coming from so not only is there divisiveness but there's
00:10:43.000 this increasing lack of trust that they're going to be taken care of and that they're going to be
00:10:49.800 they're going to be able to do their jobs well and so there's also a lot of confusion around
00:10:56.280 that as well how can we go from being going through one two three waves being fine now all
00:11:02.360 of a sudden a fourth wave we're told you know you're not going to be able to work anymore well
00:11:09.080 when you've already worked through so much of it so it's tremendously difficult and then not
00:11:14.680 only with our health care workers but divisiveness in families um especially with families of divorce
00:11:22.600 do we send this child back to school well one parent wants this one parent wants this
00:11:27.080 they try to go go at it legally and the lawyers need to to stay out of that too because they don't
00:11:34.840 like nobody knows what the legality is around do i send my child to school do i not what if a parent
00:11:41.320 what if a parent disagrees do i get my child vaccinated to do i not what if the parents
00:11:46.920 disagree so it's this even greater greater device yeah and a lot of gray
00:11:52.140 area like you're saying there's just a lot there's so many you know so many
00:11:57.000 areas where people what we've never had to make decisions like this we've never
00:12:02.880 had to walk through anything like this so I feel like the gray area makes it
00:12:08.860 even more confusing to make those decisions when multiple shades of gray
00:12:14.100 Yeah. Now, speaking of families, you meet with children. You also counsel children. Have you had many conversations with children through this? And what are you hearing?
00:12:27.760 Well, so primarily the younger children, it's normal stressors for younger children because
00:12:36.060 they don't fully understand, like their parents are looking after them, you know, they're in and
00:12:40.700 out of school, but they're generally coping okay from what I've seen. It's the teenagers that have
00:12:47.440 really been struggling. So since the beginning of COVID, there's been a tremendous increase in
00:12:51.680 eating disorders. And eating disorders are often a result of inability to cope, inability to deal
00:12:59.120 with stress, combined with being isolated with the social isolation. Now, it's very interesting
00:13:05.820 because so March 2020, schools were shut down, we didn't really know what was going on. And then
00:13:13.100 2020-2021 school year, there was a choice of homeschooling, you know, online schooling,
00:13:19.400 going to school and those who did go to actual schools they were in and out of schools
00:13:23.840 and so now what I'm finding is kids going back to school there is a tremendous amount of social
00:13:29.580 anxiety because for those 16 months or whatever amount of time that was there was not normal
00:13:36.820 developmental socialization so now we're getting kids who started grade 10 before the pandemic
00:13:44.440 pandemic happened rest of grade 10 grade 11 now they're in grade 12 and they've got their futures
00:13:51.480 to think about and but yet they've had this 16 month gap and so that's worrisome and for the
00:13:59.200 younger kids like I was a former teacher as well and do and do assessments so for the younger
00:14:04.020 children if we think about kids in kindergarten who started prior to the pandemic which is a
00:14:10.600 formative year and then all of a sudden they're out of school they're out of kindergarten then
00:14:16.480 they're in and out of grade one so really now these little kiddos have now started grade two
00:14:22.240 without the foundation of normal schooling and that whole other topic will be teacher stress
00:14:31.220 as well right so we have this you know 16 18 month gap without normal development without
00:14:39.700 life as we knew it and then we add on the whole you know Alberta education
00:14:46.040 curriculum debacle that's happening right now there's just layer upon layer
00:14:51.040 upon layer of stressors for families for individuals for corporations for
00:14:57.340 government like we are all in this major state of crisis now when you're talking
00:15:04.000 about families I remember probably about May maybe April or May of 2020 they were
00:15:11.440 really concerned about the lockdown causing a lot of harm in families family
00:15:18.820 violence have you do you have any anything you can speak to for that did
00:15:23.820 you see an uptick what did you what was your experience with your clients well
00:15:27.220 so I don't work in the area of domestic violence so I can't speak to those
00:15:30.280 numbers or percentages but I can say in the population that I work with the
00:15:36.040 people that really really like their partner are doing okay the families the
00:15:41.620 marriages that were or you know like roommate situations that were struggling
00:15:45.640 prior to the pandemic it's exacerbated I think so my opinion is there's going to
00:15:53.320 be a lot of divorces coming up right if people didn't like their partner very 0.99
00:15:56.740 much yeah being in close quarters being in close quarters yeah well and then
00:16:01.640 there's the whole financial stressors that people have gone through as well
00:16:04.620 absolutely with with getting the CERB and now having to pay it back it's really
00:16:10.900 problematic so with the clients that you work with and as a psychologist in
00:16:15.820 general what kind of advice can you you know that we're walking into some pretty
00:16:20.620 stressful months we're going we're moving towards Christmas there is the
00:16:25.220 potential for hundreds of thousands of people to be without work and losing
00:16:31.400 their jobs within the coming months what I'm being told they're not going to get
00:16:35.040 EI right what what can you say what kinds of things can you be suggesting
00:16:41.720 for helping people well one of them one of the things I mean clearly to
00:16:47.000 acknowledge the stressors and reach out reach out for help so there's community
00:16:53.420 services for help there's canadian mental health there's a number of organizations if you can't
00:16:59.500 afford private practice so absolutely reach out for the resources and one thing i've been telling
00:17:05.580 people a lot is as much as possible shut off the news shut off social media and focus on what do
00:17:15.820 i need to do today to look after myself and my family and we all have to recognize there's this
00:17:22.300 massive pivot in society right now so for example if a person's normal stressor or normal stress
00:17:29.820 management is i'm going to go to the gym and they're not able to go to the gym because the
00:17:34.460 gym is closed or you know the vaccine mandates so they have to pivot and say okay at the end of the
00:17:42.140 day physical activity is important to me let's just pretend the gym doesn't exist what am i going to
00:17:49.980 do for physical activity to keep myself well so you know get your own get your own weight equipment
00:17:57.580 go for walks you know get an inside bike do some online yoga classes or fitness classes like
00:18:04.700 everybody's pivoted to try to to try to help right so think about what the underpinning value
00:18:12.700 is that you that you need for yourself and your family and you get to be creative on how you're
00:18:17.980 going to meet that and i know it's different i know it's not the ideal um i know it's really hard
00:18:24.780 i've missed swimming for over a year because i just it's just been really really difficult to
00:18:31.340 navigate that what about the the isolation that people are are facing and dealing with right now
00:18:37.260 this with this you know this division and in society not being able to to attend things or
00:18:43.020 participate in things what what can you suggest for people who are dealing with isolation issues
00:18:48.220 right now well i i go back to and i use the analogy of like a 1940s housewife and family
00:18:55.740 where your neighbors are miles away from you there's no social media there's no tv there's no
00:19:02.860 amenities like that think about how they did how they did so maybe it's time to pull out some art
00:19:09.820 maybe it's time to pull out you know some embroidery or knitting or cross stitching or
00:19:14.380 something maybe it's time to do some do some hobbies um play some games build some puzzles
00:19:20.460 i encourage people so there's a theory of depression recovery where we have a whole
00:19:25.500 bunch of nerve endings in our hands and so doing things with your hands can help stimulate a
00:19:30.860 creative part of your brain and get out of the worry part of the brain so get busy with your
00:19:35.980 hands in doing something that is meaningful to you even coloring like you know i had a ton of
00:19:43.340 i mean of course i wouldn't color when i'm seeing a client on zoom but if i've got a boring meeting
00:19:49.180 and i don't want to stare at a screen all day like or a screen for a couple hours i'll either
00:19:53.500 cross stitch or i'll color and i'm still paying attention but i'm not getting the blue light from
00:19:58.380 the screen so i think of you know how how do we pivot and do the things that are meaningful when
00:20:07.180 we're not we're not able to live life as we knew it and be out amongst all these activities and
00:20:14.460 all this business so there's a theory um it's called the theory of positive disintegration
00:20:21.100 and i learned it several years ago but it's actually an old theory so 1967
00:20:26.060 so the psychologist or psychiatrist can't remember which but Dabrowski he talked about how
00:20:33.100 when there is a crisis in an adult's life so kind of like a midlife crisis people can either go on
00:20:40.220 the path of negative disintegration with alcohol abuse drug abuse mental health issues you know
00:20:46.540 victimization they can negatively disintegrate or they can use that experience to get to know
00:20:53.260 themselves better and come up with new values new identity new way of being that is really authentic
00:21:01.180 that's a positive disintegration so we let everything like think about disintegrating
00:21:06.700 it's dis so it's no longer integrated so when everything falls apart how can you put things
00:21:13.740 back together as positively as you can and so i really do like all the training we've done in the
00:21:21.100 last several years about and and hearing about mindfulness um being in the present moment those
00:21:27.820 things are really really important now is i mean i got i got i personally got caught up in going
00:21:35.180 down the social media rabbit hole or you know the media online media rabbit hole and all of a sudden
00:21:41.500 it's 11 at night and i'm still on my phone reading about stuff and so we have to say
00:21:47.020 when the sun is up I'll be busy doing stuff when the sun goes down I'm going to slow down
00:21:54.660 be quiet go inside still build the relationships that you can with the people around you
00:22:01.180 you can connect by phone you can connect by video chat what is meaningful to you so this entire
00:22:08.760 situation with covid if we personally look at it how can it be a reset or what is important
00:22:17.800 what is valuable and how we truly really want to spend our time you know in in my case i used to
00:22:25.640 do a lot of coffee coffee meetings with people um you know organizations or students who wanted to
00:22:32.280 learn something from me and i've realized that's not going to happen anymore like this will happen
00:22:39.080 because this is meaningful to me and it's you know spreading information and hopefully some
00:22:44.040 best practices but if you just wanted to chat with me at a coffee shop not gonna happen right
00:22:50.440 right so i think people if they use this opportunity to realign with what's important
00:22:55.720 then I think that'll be really helpful and I think too it's it's about making
00:23:01.940 the best of it as well I know for myself you know we talked through our family
00:23:06.720 about doing zoom calls and that they're never the same as quite sitting with
00:23:10.420 somebody but if it's the option and it's going to have you connecting and it's
00:23:15.240 going to have you keeping up with family checking in with people having them sort
00:23:19.880 of check in with you then I think it becomes the the best option versus nothing yeah we have to
00:23:27.220 exactly we have to look at what the best options are and I look I call it pockets of peace so what
00:23:32.780 are the things that you do in your everyday life so every day every week every month what are the
00:23:37.700 routines that give you a sense of peace and calm you know is it going to zoom church on Sunday is
00:23:43.220 it listening to you know listening to some music is it binge watching a certain show is it playing
00:23:49.860 games with your kids is it reading a book you know what are the things that that sustain you
00:23:58.100 that you can integrate regularly you know even animals like i was just about having a pet that's
00:24:04.900 our that's our joy that's in our family if i could have brought my little kitty i totally would have
00:24:10.180 brought her with me right now this is this is the thing if you can find pets if you can get
00:24:15.700 us involved the humane society has a ton of pets available right now so absolutely absolutely and
00:24:22.180 it you know what it's it's turning to kindness right and supporting supporting and honestly
00:24:31.220 people need to get off social media with all the immediate snapping that is happening right now i
00:24:37.540 worry about going into the darker months as well right well and into the cold months where we're
00:24:43.940 we're going to be sort of buckling down even even further and i would assume for a psychologist your
00:24:50.260 those are likely your busier months with seasonal affective disorders so you know prevention for
00:24:56.580 that like look at you know look at the vitamin c vitamin d omega-3 fatty acids talk to your doctor
00:25:04.580 about what supplements can be helpful um what vitamins can be helpful during during stressful
00:25:11.140 times right and i also highly recommend that if people struggle with the darkness like i i do is
00:25:19.380 to get a seasonal affective disorder lamp and have it 15 20 minutes first thing in the morning so i
00:25:25.700 call it my meditation time i i get up i make my cup of tea i put on the lamp like as close as i
00:25:32.660 can to my face read a book for 20 set a timer read a book for a while and then i know i've got
00:25:38.180 that bright light and then i also try to get outside in the morning i'll admit last year with
00:25:42.900 you know the almost minus 40. i it was a walk around the block and then i'm done but get out
00:25:49.460 in the sunshine let nature be your healer and we have to you know that's another thing to look at
00:25:55.140 too nature get out in nature and and reflect on how our earth has survived through different
00:26:05.220 pandemics through you know different tragedies like different different issues and it heals
00:26:13.620 right so people survive people go on what's your go-to what's your main go-to that you know keeps
00:26:22.180 a smile on your face and keeps you going yoga it's yoga yeah it's yoga yoga and my dog yeah my dogs
00:26:29.060 yeah yoga my dog and of course my husband is yeah really really amazing and you know i have really
00:26:34.420 great family really great friends that's great and i also journal and reflect a lot so writing
00:26:40.660 is another thing that i do yeah and i'm also a real nutrition um nutrition person so i'm looking
00:26:50.180 at what is the most nutrient dense thing that i can that i can ingest to keep myself well well
00:26:57.620 and i imagine that's that's also a very important key going through stressful times as well well and
00:27:03.860 and none of this like the stressors that people are going through it's it's not going to be
00:27:09.700 resolved by a you know hot bubble bath and a glass of wine but right now we need those little pockets
00:27:18.020 to remind us that okay you need to calm down your nervous system and i think that's that's
00:27:23.060 the major thing with the traumatic stress that is happening like it is it is happening across
00:27:27.940 the board for the majority of people is when your nervous system gets ramped up
00:27:34.100 that's when issues are going to happen so we have to turn back to how can i calm things back down
00:27:41.460 and some days of course are harder than others but you know what it's winter let's be like the bears
00:27:47.060 let's sleep let's curl up with warm blankets and fuzzy socks and hot chocolate and you know
00:27:53.940 enjoyable movies and just sleep well thank you Angela for joining us uh one of the things I was
00:28:02.180 going to suggest to um I had somebody share with me a long time ago yeah uh when you're dealing
00:28:07.220 with a stressful situation you're trying to get through something you're trying to get to the end
00:28:11.860 you know the light at the end of the tunnel is to to kind of give yourself incremental
00:28:18.180 incremental things to look forward to oh absolutely you know put it on the calendar like
00:28:22.420 physically put it on the calendar even if it's a walk even if it's going to be a zoom call with
00:28:27.060 a family member uh whatever the case just plan and and put it so you can see it and uh i'm also
00:28:34.900 a fan of glitter happy face stickers like if you've done something for yourself give yourself
00:28:39.620 a sticker like be in kindergarten give yourself a gold star I love that you that you've done
00:28:44.480 something and it's not just oh I have a zoom call on Sunday to look forward to have your pockets
00:28:50.620 of peace every day you know my cup of tea in the morning to get my day started like don't talk to
00:28:57.380 me before I've had that right like you need set yourself first and you know what if you're really
00:29:04.240 miserable and having a really rough day and are not fit for human consumption go have a nap
00:29:09.600 right just look at how you're presenting yourself and dealing with this and and look after yourself
00:29:17.760 first and then go around you yeah and how can people get more information or connect with you
00:29:25.620 if they have questions or want to speak with someone yeah so my website is is heart centered
00:29:31.920 counseling and one resource that I would highly recommend for people is the psychologist Association
00:29:38.220 Alberta. They have a number of webinars, they have a number of tip sheets that are easily accessible,
00:29:45.260 and then they also have a referral source for working with psychologists as well. So
00:29:51.180 the PAA has put out a really an excellent number of information sheets that people can easily access.
00:29:59.020 Great. Well, thanks for joining us, Angela. Thank you for having me.
00:30:02.220 we appreciate it. And that's heartcenteredcounseling.com.