08.10.20 COVID-19 Briefing Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
August 10, 2020
Live Stream - Briefing Live stream
10:00am PT

Lizeth Venegas Mata: Good morning everyone and thank you so much for joining us today my name is Lizeth as we know people from ages 20 to 29 years old are in the highest demographics of those coping with COVID-19 and cases continue to increase for those of 19 years of age as if wearing a face covering practicing uh physical and social distancing was already enough of adjustment to make uh for you for youth and young adults many of us are beginning to grapple with the mental tool the global pandemic is taking on our lives today Rachel Talamantez and Lorena Gonzalez is our with us to discuss how best young people can begin to deal with uncertainty about the future feelings anxiety depression and isolation and mental health concerns. As just to let you know prior to this segment we removed our face coverings so everyone including our american sign language interpreter can clearly understand and communicate the information we will be sharing today. I just want to start off with you today Rachel thank you for joining us today as well as you Lorena. Um so many of my peers and the youth are feeling emotions right now from anger and anxiety what is your advice to them you.

Rachel Talamantez: Know all Emotions are normal and okay this is a very stressful time so feelings of sadness of anger of anxiety those are to be expected and perfectly normal so whatever you're feeling is okay and that's the first thing that I would encourage you to just think about and do is just know that what you're feeling is okay. One moment you might feel perfectly fine and then in another moment you might feel overwhelmed with emotions not even sure of where they're coming from. And it can lead you to sometimes feeling a little bit out of control stress is there's stress responses in the body that help us adapt and cope and sometimes you might feel irritable or angry and that's actually called the fight response you might feel just kind of like arguing or feeling irritable or not in agreement with people and that is an adaptive response that helps us actually cope and manage our stress sometimes you might feel what's called the what's called the flight response you might want to bury your head under the covers and just kind of pull back and and move away from the world for a couple of hours or even a day the other response is the freeze response where sometimes you might feel stuck you might feel like you can't bring an action plan to your mind to be able to help and support you with the stress that you're feeling and again all of these stress mechanisms they're normal and they're adaptive but what we want to do is make sure that they're not happening for too long of a period of time and also that you have strategies to be able to support you with managing that stress one important strategy is to acknowledge your feelings and if you can to be able to name them there's an expression related to feelings called name it to tame it. And when you're able to actually say i'm angry or i'm anxious or i'm worried or i'm sad it actually moves your brain from the emotional part of the brain to the thinking part of the brain and actually serves as a calming mechanism so one of the very first things you can do is just acknowledge recognize and actually name your feelings and hopefully you can connect with somebody to be able to talk about your feelings as well.

LVM: Thank you so much for sharing that that's very important. And um Lorena um how can youth and young adults process stressful energy from emotions in a positive manner.

Lorena Gonazales: Well try to be in a positive environment I know with what's going on right now it's very difficult but if you're positive and try to be around people who bring that positive environment around you it can be helpful. Again we're making changes and it could be draining but it takes time it takes time and effort so what i would encourage you to do is some of the strategies that we could practice having awareness know about the negative feelings so that you can make changes that are may not be helpful for you. Also speaking up and talking to others may create a conversation that can bring up ideas about tools that you can use and strategies that you can implement to me make a positive change in our in our world. Practice gratitude, sometimes we forget what we have what we have in that moment whether it's simple as your pet what you ate a coffee your friends that brings joy to ourselves. Focusing on the present moment negative takes a toll on our body and being aware of what is here and now helps you manage and identify some feelings that can be helpful you know we ruminate on the past and we talk about the future and think about it and it creates some anxiety so focusing on the present moment can relieve that anxiety doing something that makes you feel happy not feeling that it's a chore when you're doing it i like gardening a lot of young adults like to see movies or write or create poems. It could be something simple as that. Physical activities, we know that moving incorporating some physical activities releases endorphins and endorphins less throughout our day and it creates that happiness in ourselves and connecting with nature connecting with nature has shown that it can bring some happiness but remember social distancing and following public health recommendation.

LVM: Thank you definitely we have to make sure that we're in tuning with ourselves and taking that breather every day as well i know sometimes many of many of the youth is they are they're working so they don't really have time for themselves so make sure to take that breather thank you. And also some some of my peers have admitted being ashamed to seek therapy. Could you share why a person should not be ashamed especially the youth and young adults

LG: Sure so research shows that mental health stigma is it creates a great barrier on why people seek or do not seek therapy also our family of origin our beliefs our norms uh shaped by our upbringings and our culture and religion um can focus on what how we view therapy and how we view when we seek support. We don't want to feel that we're weak. Sometimes we talk to others and we see how they view mental health  growing up as a latina you know when we talked about seeking therapy it was talked about that being crazy you know you're crazy if you seek therapy and i'm not saying i'm not generalizing to all latinas or latinos some latinos are open but in my family this is the way it was viewed it's for crazy people. So why seek therapy well we all want Something different we want some great things in our lives so when we do that we are able to create some strategies some tools interventions therapy gives us motivation it empowers empowers us and we collaborate with others so when you go you want to learn something about math we go to teachers to collaborate and learn. when you want to create a physical endurance you go to your coach so why not go to a therapist to help you create those strategies and learn on how to make a better choice in your life. So stress came about for a lot of young people they missed their proms they missed going out to the last game you know the championship games so therapy going to therapy can help out in managing that stressful time that you have endured.

LVM: Thank you yeah it's good to to hear that from you especially because i feel like right now therapy such a taboo thing um culturally as well for myself as well growing up it was something you don't really talk about or is like oh maybe you're just like it's just a phase. but sometimes we do need to um take that step to go to therapy so thank you so much for that um. Hi Rachel um we've been seeing uh stories of young people losing both parents also community members have lost loved ones due to COVID-19 and are dealing with grief. Could you share thoughts about grief and possibly talk to those people who are experiencing grief?

RT: Grief I think particularly for young people can be very overwhelming and shocking it's not something that we think about a lot with regards to death and so when it comes to our life if it's impacting us meaning a loved one or a friend or a family member has died it can be very very shocking. People express grief differently and sometimes you might feel anger sometimes you might want to avoid the grief and get involved and whether it's school or work activities or other sorts of things to be able to just kind of distance yourself a little bit sometimes you might feel overwhelmed with with emotion but whatever you feel is normal and connecting and talking with people about your grief and about your loss is really important connecting and sharing and talking about your experiences will actually be something that not only helps you process the grief but it also is honoring the family member or the loved one that you've lost. Grief is actually also natural and it serves a purpose it helps us process what has happened and again it helps us remember and think about the people that we've lost sometimes when somebody dies we also think about people that we've lost before. So maybe a grandmother or a friend. I recently had somebody that died two weeks ago and she reminded me so much of my grandmother and so my grandmother's memory and she died 10 years ago my grandmother's memory is so present and so with me and i feel kind of a sense of grief and loss that's been brought back up again and so that can happen when somebody dies as well. A really important resource in santa clara county is the center for living with dying they have support groups people that you can talk to their phone number is four zero eight two four three zero two two two they're a wonderful organization that can help young people as well as children and adults and older adults as well. In time difficult feelings will pass and the memory of the people that you love will stay with you and hopefully those memories will also bring comfort and a sense of warmth and connection. Thank you um um so COVID has affected all of us in different ways but some younger people feel as if it's only them could you talk about that only me feeling?

RT: Yeah so when we're experiencing um different kinds of things being isolated from being able to go to school or work or if somebody has died or our friends or a family have been impacted in different ways it impacts us as well and it can feel like nobody understands our experience or nobody has the same experience that we do so it can sometimes feel like i have it worse than anybody else or this is only happening to me or like i said nobody else understands  my experience and in some ways to a certain extent this is actually true you're a unique individual and your response is a unique and individualized response but what can really help is to be able to connect with somebody who you trust who can listen and even if they're not able to share in the same experience that you've had their ability to listen and hopefully acknowledge and validate and support your experience and feelings can often be very very helpful sometimes i think particularly for young people but really for all of us it can also feel like maybe we're a little bit on display like everybody's watching us you might even feel a little self-conscious about people watching you to see what your response might be and so that can be a little bit uncomfortable as well. And so again reaching out and connecting to your peers your friends your family a trusted teacher a mentor is really important in being able to get a sense of support for whatever it is that you're experiencing. Thank you thank you Lorena what is the best advice you can give to youth and young adults to assist them with feeling better and having a better day?

LG: I think focusing on yourself that self-nurture sometimes we're you're so busy and we start wanting to take care of others but it's important that we take care of ourselves first in order to help others connecting finding ways to connect with other members sometimes you know with this isolation we're all apart and so finding these new ways of connecting with your friends with your family with teachers with coaches that you used to connect with doing one thing at a time take it easy on yourself as well as maintain active you know creating routines on a daily basis it helps us structure our day and make it less over whelming. So those are the important things well some of the important things that I would recommend to youths.

LVM: Thank you yeah definitely i know that um i believe two weeks ago i did a social distancing picnic with my friends we chose a very isolated park and we had our own blankets and our own food so even doing that sometimes once in a while not all the time is very beneficial for us to keep ourselves grounded. Um also some of my peers and youth are feeling stressed to attend school online what strategies might be helpful to managing online studies during the COVID-19 pademic?

LG: Well we know that school will be resuming and it'll be online most of our um schools if not all will be online um teaching and so this can impact the whole family as a whole um having that uh tools having the wi-fi it can create some emotion some stressful emotions actually and so you know for the parents for the young kids the adolescents young adults i would encourage you finding resources that can help you receive these technologies these materials that you might need. Reaching out to your teachers to your administrators to other peers to your friends to see what can be helpful and remember you went through this already in this past school year we started in march with online training online training online schooling so focus on what worked what helped you during that stressful time and what didn't work and what can you do different so those are the things that i might encourage you know people to do but above all you know when you're stressed take a break take that break and listen to your body.

LVM: Thank you um and for my last question rachel um what resources are available to young people in the community to help manage stress worry sadness or other feelings and experiences?

RF: So we're very fortunate in santa clara county where we have a number of resources to support young people in our community there'll be three resources that i'd like to share the first is our suicide and crisis hotline and the phone number for the suicide and crisis hotline is 1-855-278-4200 one of the wonderful things about the suicide and crisis hotline is there's also a text number so if you prefer to text rather than talking voice to voice you can text the word renew r-e-n-e-w to 741 741 if you'd like to speak with a mental health counselor you can contact our behavioral behavioral health call center to be able to connect you with resources in our community and the phone number is 1-800-704-0900 and you can also look at our behavioral health department website at www.scc bhsd.org and finally if you're struggling with alcohol or drug use you can get support through our substance use services and their number is 1-800-488-9919

LVM: Thank you for those resources providing the community also some quick reminders um facebook live and spanish is monday and wednesday at 11 a.m and facebook live in vietnamese will be thursdays at 10 a.m thank you so much for your time today thanks for all you are doing for our community and keeping them safe for the latest information on COIVD-19 please visit the county's COVID-19 website at wwwsccgov.org coronavirus thank you for watching stay safe and i hope you have a great day