MO’ MONEY, DIFFERENT PROBLEMS
The top one per cent are not immune to the many challenges created by the pandemic
It was a haircut well worth US$2,000 — at least so said one of neuropsychologist Judy Ho’s patients. As California’s lockdown persists, she’s watched agog as some folks in her Los Angelesbased private practice continue to flout it.
“Because of their wealth, some of my clients have felt largely invincible for a long time, but now they feel so powerless,” says Ho, who’s also a tenured professor at Pepperdine University and whose client base is largely Angeleno oneper-centers.
“How do you take back that power? You pay someone top dollar to do your hair.” (She notes that the client didn’t consider how desperate unemployed stylists must be to break rules for a cut ’n’ colour.)
Other anxiety-stricken clients have opted to move into residential treatment centres to hunker down, only to find themselves chafing at separation from their families and the regulations under which they’re expected to live there.
Another client — who opted to self-isolate at home rather than check into one of those facilities — is proving more troublesome. She’s so high profile that she can’t be left alone, and so requires bodyguards. Yet she doesn’t socially distance from them, insists on going out regularly for drives and won’t wear a mask. Two of her security team have quit.
“She’s a bit selfish, but it’s more that she doesn’t really understand the direness of the situation. She is an on-and-off substance abuser, too, who might be high when all these people are quitting (their jobs) around her,” Ho says.
“We had a nurse who used to go and do her substance-abuse testing every morning — you know, draw her blood and take her urine. She just quit, too, because my client wouldn’t respect social distancing. Now we’re desperately trying to hire someone else to go there.”
Coping in the current pandemic is tough in many ways, including psychologically, so it’s no wonder Ho and many other therapists have seen business surge as clients turn to them for guidance amid the unknown. Doctors who specialize in high-net-worth patients are encountering problems distinctive to their clients, and so they’ve found ways to ensure their own self-care and psychic soothing.
Ginger Poag, who’s based outside Nashville and whose client roster centres on senior figures in the country music industry, estimates she’s 20 per cent busier than normal. Now she takes time to do her yoga meditation daily rather than three times a week, as previously.
Poag ’s client base felt the impact of the downturn immediately, because they’re not earning money from touring or shows. They often have the added stress of dependents such as parents, whose lives they support. Still, among those with several homes, many have adopted the same solution: Rotate among their houses by private jet.
“They will wait while the staff comes in to clean, get groceries, do all the housekeeping” at one location, Poag says. “They’ll wait a certain amount of time, maybe three days, with no one entering the house, then they’ll move there.”
Once bored with those surroundings, they’ll charge staff with teeing up another location and then repeat the process.
Sanam Hafeez’s clients are also worried about their houses — although in her case, the New Yorkbased therapist hears more about vacation rentals.
“One patient is neurotic that she won’t find a ‘great’ Hamptons rental because all the prices will be skyhigh because people in New York City have already decamped to the Hamptons. She is worried that the house she and her husband will be able to afford will be too modest to show her friends,” Hafeez says.
These sorts of anxieties also run among the less wealthy. At the root is the loss of one’s sense of normal, however that normal is defined. Money can merely allow someone the space to fixate on what may seem like a secondary concern to an outsider if there’s no primary concern — like not having a paycheque — to supersede it.
Hafeez is focusing on how the lockdown has given her unexpected bonus time with her five-year old twin boys.
“I think they might look back fondly on this time — and so will we,” she said. “We’ve never had this kind of unfettered access to our children without all the running around to class or swim lessons.”
Her motto for herself and others spending unexpected bonus time with their children is simple: “Cherish and enjoy it.”
Family therapist Resa Hayes splits her time between Aspen, Colo., and Manhattan’s Upper West Side in New York. Her clients often share children but live in different states, she says, and normally can easily shuttle between them by jet.
The pandemic has made those plans more complex: One client lives in a blended family in Los Angeles, while her former spouse and their six-year-old daughter are based in Aspen.
“So she ended up coming to Aspen on their private jet with her infant until this levels out. She left her new husband and stepchildren in L.A.,” said Hayes.
This unusual situation, and the woman opting to move temporarily to Aspen, muddies the agreement between the exes, of course, in ways that Hayes expects to hear about.
Another of her clients is the mother in a family on Park Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
“She must be 55, and this is the first time she’s ever cooked anything for her family,” Hayes says. “The biggest dilemma of her day right now is which brownie mix to buy at the grocery store. She is loving it in some ways — staying at home, acting like a domestic goddess. But I don’t think she will keep cooking once this all passes. It’s fun, but it’s vacation-style fun.”
Hayes finds solace amid the stress from the outdoors.
“Go for a walk in nature now. It’s a reminder that some things haven’t changed, no matter what happens to your portfolio or people getting sick,” she says. “I think the most dangerous part of COVID -19 is the loneliness part. So I make sure to connect with people who are beyond my work circle or my own family. It soothes me to have conversations beyond that.”
Having money may make this time pass easier, but it doesn’t protect one from tragedy. Connecticut-based Darby Fox has been helping one client through the aftermath of a 60-year-old Wall Street titan shooting himself after suffering huge losses.
“If you think of yourself as an omnipotent person with control and power, it’s unbearable when that is taken away. The only solution is to get out — it’s an all-ornothing mentality,” Fox says.
Fox’s family therapy business is up about one-third since the pandemic hit, and she’s also seeing the emotional impact of shelter-in-place on couples not used to sharing each other’s space, or even each other’s lives.
“It doesn’t matter how many square feet you have, you only have each other,” she says, citing one couple. He works in Manhattan, and effectively lives there during the week while his wife remains at the family’s main home on Long Island. They’re now living together on Long Island, and their relationship is strained.
“All of a sudden, he’s in her space and he feels like he should be her priority. They can’t get anything right. Even what they’re having for dinner is an argument.”
Fox has seized the chance during the lockdown to relax a little. Yes, she has more client appointments than ever, but she’s no longer commuting. With extra time on her hands, she posed the same question to herself as to her clients: “Where do you find joy?”
For Fox, the answer was keep it slow and simple: “I stay in bed and do a little reading. Everybody wants to feel productive during this time, but the most important thing is to figure out what you consider productive,” she pauses, “It’s OK to dial it back a little.”
If you think of yourself as an omnipotent person with control and power, it’s unbearable when that is taken away.