Join us for a discuss with Dr. Kasi Howard. We dive into how to distract, cope and be mindful with the financial, health, and personal stressors associated with the coronavirus pandemic and ensuring shutdown. We also discusses with us some of the non-profits she is most passionate about and why.

Transcript:

Recording: Hello and bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Justin Hill: All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Dr. Kasi Howard. Dr. Howard's one of my close friends and has been for a long time. She's a clinical psychologist who owns and runs the Nova Recovery Center. She's an author of Strength for the Journey: Helping you bulk up emotionally, mentally and spiritually for the journey of life. She's a mom, she's a volunteer, she raises money, blah blah. She's everything. She's joining us today. I think no time is better than now to talk about handling the mental stress and strain of what's going on now. Thank you for being here, Dr. Howard.

Kasi Howard: Thank you.

Justin: We're going to start, give a little background to who you are, a little color on who you are. Do you have any pets?

Kasi: I do. I have a three-legged dog named Lucy.

Justin: Okay. I'm going to leave that there, but did you name it Lucy?

Kasi: I did. She's Lucy Lihua. Lihua is a flower in the garden.

[laughter]

Justin: Okay.

Kasi: I could tell you about the little flower, it's okay, yes--

Justin: I like that you didn't name her something calling out her issue.

Kasi: No. We're all about acceptance in our household.

Justin: All right. Favorite restaurant to eat at right now, currently?

Kasi: Oh. I've actually been cooking a lot. I stocked up on food and now I feel like I need to eat a lot.

Justin: You have your food handlers license?

Kasi: [laughs] No.

Justin: You don't run a restaurant. What's your favorite place in town currently?

Kasi: Oh my gosh. I love sushi, so I'm a big fan of Sushima [crosstalk]. They have half-price sushi Monday through Wednesday 4:00 to 6:00. Their entire menu half off, including sake and wine.

Justin: It's a little far for me, but I have been, it's great.

Kasi: Yes, worth the drive.

Justin: Hidden gem in San Antonio? I always say that you got your visitor who's never been here, Alamo and all those things, but you've got the guy and they're like, tell me what the PhD visitor tour is? What is your hidden gem in San Antonio that you tell your friends, "You all got to go see this."

Kasi: I actually love the mission trail, biking the mission trial, in the Blue Star, have a beer. Super fun [crosstalk].

Justin: Have you done a kayak version of it?

Kasi: I have not.

Justin: I haven't either, so it's embarrassing. We're going to get into it more but quick one-o-one on your job and what you're most involved with outside of your professional career.

Kasi: I am a psychologist. I own a trauma and PTSD treatment center. I'm most involved with the Alzheimer's Association, and I recently started my own charity as well.

Justin: Currently are you the chair?

Kasi: I'm the chair of-- Well, the chair of the 2020 Alzheimer's Gala which sadly COVID 19 has cancelled out, so we're currently regrouping.

Justin: Well, that doesn't take away from your commitment.

Kasi: It does not, no, definitely still devoted to the cause.

Justin: Any odd hobbies? The one thing I think is most odd about you is you like to go take a seven-mile run when it's 110 degrees outside and you find that refreshing.

Kasi: I love running in the heat. I'm a huge fan. I'm also really crafty. My goal for this quarantine season, I bought a wine bottle candle-making kit, and so I'm going to take all those wine bottles I've been drinking and turn them into candles.

Justin: Where you like shave the top off of them?

Kasi: Yes.

Justin: How do you do that? Do you do the string that you see on Facebook?

Kasi: No. Well, I bought this thing that you put it on a razor blade and it cuts the bottle around, but I haven't quite been able to get that to work yet, so I may go for the acetone string.

Justin: Well, tell me if it works like Facebook says. That brings to the next, what is your best or favorite shelter-in-place activity? You're currently living almost in a commune, so I assume you'll have some good ideas.

Kasi: I am. The other night we had a karaoke and dance party in the kitchen, so I would say that's definitely my way to shelter-in-place.

Justin: You're living in a commune because somehow or another you and another family are having your homes renovated and so you all decided to cohabitate?

Kasi: We have, yes.

Justin: Bunch of kids?

Kasi: Yes, lots of kids.

Justin: You better have a good answer to this because I've had some poor answers so far, some good but some poor. I had a mullet as a kid, it was a stupid trend we did. I was a kid. What was the dumb trend you followed when you were younger?

Kasi: Oh my gosh. I had a perm which I have super thick hair, that was a big big big mistake. My favorite thing as a kid was to bring out "colors". I remember I had this shirt that was neon pink and it had six little crayons across the top and I decided I should take one of those crayon colors and wear like leggings to bring out the purple in the shirt.

Justin: So you looked like a crayon?

Kasi: Yes, basically that was--

Justin: You know who also said the terrible trend they followed was a perm? Tim Maloni.

Kasi: [laughs] Tim and I share the same hairdresser, so--

Justin: Tim has no hair now.

Kasi: That's why you shouldn't give perms.

Justin: Do you all actually have the same hairdresser?

Kasi: No.

Justin: Because he goes I think every week to get his hair done.

Kasi: The one hair that's left?

Justin: I don't know. I think he just enjoys like the relaxation of it.

Kasi: My 12-year-old son is like, "Mom, can I go back and let them shampoo and massage my head?"

Justin: Because it feels great.

Kasi: It does.

Justin: What year did you move to San Antonio?

Kasi: 2010.

Justin: What's your favorite fiesta event?

Kasi: I love the Pooch Parade.

Justin: That's a good one. Morning, early.

Kasi: Yes.

Justin: If you've been fiesting too hard, it's sometimes hard to make it.

Kasi: That's right, but it's all for the love of the game, you got to get up and do it.

Justin: I got the game for fiesta. I think we all know that. In the world of psychology, every one of us who took psychology in college realized there's all these different branches and arms and even from the perspective of how you treat, there's multiple different-- What is the specific area or focus of psychology would you consider yourself to either be a disciple or that is the type of treatment you like to provide, what's your area?

Kasi: PTSD and trauma.

Justin: When you and I met, you worked with an eating disorder clinic and since then you still do a lot of that but you also do a lot of PTSD as it relates to military veterans.

Kasi: I do, and females who have had abuse. My previous training, I had about 10 years of training and eating disorders and then over the last six years, I've regrouped and respecialized in PTSD and trauma.

Justin: We've talked off the record obviously, but I think you said that a lot of the eating disorder clients were people that were there really for trauma-related issues usually.

Kasi: That was what honestly led me to respecialize, is, as I worked in an eating disorder clinic, we would say to people, "Okay. Well, when you leave here, you're going to go home into your trauma work in outpatient world, in the community." Then I left working there and I started my own practice and I was in the community and I went, "Oh my gosh, there's no one to help these people do trauma work." That really led me to respecialize in trauma so that I could provide that.

Justin: Well, good for you.

Kasi: Thank you.

Justin: I can't tell you how many clients I've had come in who tell me how hard it is to find either the specialist that they need or just anybody with capacity to see them. To have somebody more out there who's got a broader range of treatment, it's great for the city.

Kasi: Absolutely. I will tell you, I do see a lot of veterans, I do a lot of evaluations. As I meet them, a lot of people have no idea that there's actually really good treatments for PTSD, and it just hurts my heart because as I start to explain that, "Look, we have known therapies, like EMDR, CBTDs, different types of things that actually work so we can get rid of your nightmares, we can stop your flashbacks." Some of them will start to cry in my office and say, "Why hasn't anybody ever told me this?"

Justin: It strikes me in our world nobody took concussion seriously and then there was really nothing to do but because of the NFL, that science is moving quickly, diagnostics have changed, treatments have changed. I think they said in Vietnam the signature injury was, I think, amputations and the signature injury maybe in the most recent complex has really been a lot of psychological as well as traumatic brain injuries, and that seems to be moving the science forward and really opening up a lot of therapeutic advances that we didn't have before, they're testing LSD and all kinds of things to treat PTSD that all seem pretty promising.

Kasi: Absolutely. I had one veteran, he was a Vietnam veteran, and he said when he got back he would scream in the night in his sleep and his dad was a World War 1 veteran. He just came in one night, handed him his pistol and said, "Sleep with us under your pillow, it makes you feel better," and that was our approach. I feel like until recent years when people have really started doing research and really looking at what these guys are going through whenever they come back.

Justin: I had a surrogate grandpa who is a neighbor who caught me taking apples off his-- It sounds stupid, but really became a the closest thing to me as a grandpa figure as a young kid and they called it the demons. He had the demons. He was in World War II as a belly gunner, those are one of the first people to die. I never knew until I became an adult that he had a massive alcohol problem and he'd picked me up Saturday and we'd cleaned his car and Sunday, we'd go run errands and I was like is grandzie, he didn't have one.

As he got older and got sicker, his wife told me that's why I had to go home at five o'clock because five o'clock is when he started drinking. It was just the eye-opening. As a kid, he was the nicest man but he had these real demons he was dealing with and back then, that's how they dealt, they drank.

Kasi: He didn't have-- Well, unfortunately, it's still a lot of how people deal with because they just don't have another way to cope.

Justin: Sure, and they definitely wish they did.

Kasi: Absolutely, they want a better way.

Justin: We're going to talk about COVID, it's the elephant in the room, it's what is literally just consuming everybody now and rightfully so. My perspective, Lindsay, the other day walked out to talk to Juan who helps me around the house on occasion and she said hello and then just started sobbing. She said it was because it was really the first time she had talked to another human in six days and you don't really think about that but it starts this stir-crazy and cabin fever really starts to take its toll on you.

I was looking at some data before we got started today and China who dealt with this first did some research and it said almost half of the population is dealing with real serious anxiety issues as what could result from COVID specifically financially, whether they'll get sick, whether their family will get sick, whether they'll lose their job. Talk to me about how these environmental or societal anxieties can come to really overtake our day to day lives.

Kasi: Absolutely. I think the best way to look at anxiety is to really look at your bandwidth. If you can just pretend that your brain, your human capacity as an individual it's sort of like a computer, right? We'll say it's more like a 1995 computer that has a little less hard drive space on it actively functioning than maybe a modern-day computer. We have a certain amount of things that we've filled our life with that probably max out our capacity at the moment.

We can deal with our children, we could deal with or spouse, we can deal with maybe our aging parents, whatever we're at with that. We can deal with work, we can deal with someday today's the water heater breaks. We've got this average baseline capacity to deal with things. Then now, we've taken this pandemic which is unlike anything that our generation has ever had to deal with and we've added that on top of the bandwidth.

Now in addition to remembering that you need to put the dishes in the dishwasher and all of the things you need to do on a daily basis, if you go out in public, now you need to remember things you never had to think about before like, "Hey, don't touch your face, remember to wipe down the car before-- Use hand sanitizer when you get in the car."

Justin: Keep six feet distance between you and everybody else.

Kasi: Exactly. Don't go down a crowded aisle if you have to go somewhere. Meal planning. I personally am a fairly intelligent person, I think and yet my general habit I buy groceries several times a week because I'm not good at planning ahead with meals. Then going to the store a couple of weeks ago and going, "Okay, I'm going to forecast if I was going to stock up for a few weeks, what would I need?" I couldn't even-- I came home with Rotel tomatoes and tomato paste.

Justin: Because that's all that was left.

Kasi: Some quinoa, well, that too, right? I was like, I guess I'll do something with this. Now we've had to deal with that, right? In addition to all of that and then plus you add the financial stressors and the how long is this going to end and now if you have children, now you're a homeschool teacher. The average person's bandwidth has now been multiplied two, three, four times depending on how many kids and their financial situation and all of that.

Justin: Yes. I was looking at NAMI, NAMI is the mental health main group. It's fair to say the main nonprofit trade association in America. They talked about they have, all of them have resources for COVID right now because they know and they walked through and said the anxiety associated with what's next. The people that are prone to obsession, the obsessive hand-washing or avoidance, loneliness. That's what we're dealing with at our house. Lindsay's pregnant and she does not want to get exposed which I get.

The last thing which I hadn't even thought about is they talk about the stress or traumatic stress that would be associated with if you're quarantined. Maybe you don't have it but you know somebody that did, all of a sudden you're stuck on a 14-day quarantine where you're in your house and not...