182 – Doing, Being, Becoming Collective ft Brad Williams
Nov 06, 2025
In this episode, Brock sits down with Brad from The Becoming Collective to unpack what it really means to come into alignment with the profession of occupational therapy — and what happens when we drift away from it.
Brad opens up about the origins of The Becoming Collective, how it started as a space for meaningful connection and reflection, and how the group evolved (and sometimes dissolved) as members navigated burnout, personal growth, and the realities of professional life.
Together, Brock and Brad explore:
🌊 The natural ebb and flow of professional identity — and how OTs can lose (and rediscover) their sense of purpose.
🔥 Burnout, disillusionment, and the courage it takes to pause and realign.
🧩 Why models and frameworks aren’t just academic tools, but anchors for reasoning, reflection, and reconnection with occupation.
🤝 The importance of community, vulnerability, and staying curious about who we are becoming as practitioners.
This episode is a grounded, honest reflection on growth, drift, and renewal — reminding us that returning to the core of our profession often starts with reconnecting to ourselves.
Host: Brock Cook Subscribe now and never miss an episode!
181 – Leading Change and Shaping the Future of Occupational Therapy with Professor Elspeth Froude
Nov 02, 2025
In this episode of Occupied, Dr Jessica Levick chats with Professor Elspeth Froude — Professor of Occupational Therapy and National Head of the School of Allied Health at the Australian Catholic University. Elspeth shares insights from her leadership journey in academia, her passion for advancing the profession globally, and her role as Chair of the WFOT World Congress to be held in Thailand in 2026.
Together, Jess and Elspeth explore the evolving landscape of occupational therapy education, research, and international collaboration, and discuss how occupational therapists can stay grounded in occupation while responding to global challenges.
A thoughtful and inspiring conversation for anyone passionate about the future of occupational therapy and the power of leadership to create meaningful change.
💥 Exclusive Listener Offer! Listeners of Occupied can receive 10% off full registration for the WFOT World Congress 2026 in Thailand using the code Occupied@10 at checkout. Don’t miss this chance to connect, learn, and celebrate occupational therapy on the global stage!
Host: Dr Jessica Levick Subscribe now and never miss an episode!
180 – Knowledge Translation and Lifelong Learning with Dr Kieran Broome
Oct 17, 2025
In this episode of Occupied, Dr Jessica Levick is joined by Dr Kieran Broome — occupational therapist, educator, and researcher, to explore how we can bridge the gap between what we know and what we do. We unpack the concept of knowledge translation and why it’s essential for meaningful, evidence-informed occupational therapy practice. Kieran shares insights into how OTs can stay curious, reflective, and engaged in lifelong learning, no matter where they are in their career journey.
Whether you’re a student, clinician, or academic, this conversation will leave you inspired to think critically, learn continuously, and translate knowledge into everyday action.
Host: Dr Jessica Levick Subscribe now and never miss an episode!
179 – Private Practice with a Recovering People Pleaser ft Joey Peppas
Sep 20, 2025
In this episode, I’m joined by Joey Peppas, an occupational therapist running her own private practice. Together, we dig deep into the less-talked-about realities of our profession—being a people pleaser, battling imposter syndrome, and the unique personality traits that often draw us into OT in the first place.
Joey shares her experiences of navigating private practice, from the practical challenges of running a business to the personal growth that comes with stepping outside the comfort zone. We also reflect on the ways our personalities shape how we show up as therapists, colleagues, and leaders.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re giving too much, doubted whether you’re “enough,” or wondered what it really takes to thrive in private practice, this conversation is for you.
178 – Life and Leadership with the new AOTA President – Dr Arameh Anvarizadeh
Sep 03, 2025
In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Arameh Anvarizadeh, the newly elected president of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA). We dive into her journey into occupational therapy, the experiences that shaped her leadership, and the values guiding her work at the highest level of the profession.
Dr. Anvarizadeh shares candid insights into her personal story, the challenges she’s faced, and the vision she has for advancing occupational therapy during her presidential term. From equity and inclusion, to professional advocacy, to building stronger connections across our diverse OT community, her priorities highlight the future direction of the profession.
Whether you’re a student, clinician, educator, or leader, this conversation will inspire you to reflect on what leadership means in occupational therapy—and how each of us can contribute to shaping the future of our field.
177 – A New Clinical Reasoning Model with Dr Craig Greber
Jul 16, 2025
Join Brock and Jess as they chat with Dr Craig Greber about an exciting new model of clinical reasoning he’s helped to develop. Craig shares insights into the origins of this innovative approach, how it can enhance occupational therapy practice, and why clinical reasoning remains critical to the profession. An essential listen for anyone interested in pushing the boundaries of OT thinking!
176 – Reflections from the 2025 Occupational Therapy Australia National Conference
Jul 09, 2025
Brock and Jess chat and explore her firsthand experiences attending the 2025 Occupational Therapy Australia National Conference. She explores the highlights, key insights, and areas for improvement from her perspective. Adding depth to the conversation, you’ll also hear reflections from a diverse range of attendees, capturing the varied impressions and standout moments from this year’s event. Whether you attended or missed out, join us as we unpack the takeaways and discuss what it means for the future of occupational therapy practice.
In this candid conversation, Brock and Jess dive into the rewarding yet challenging world of academia within occupational therapy. They discuss the genuine highs, the unexpected lows, and share personal insights about navigating life as educators, researchers, and clinicians. Expect reflections on balance, burnout, triumphs, and the ongoing journey of growth in academia.
Tune in for honest perspectives, helpful takeaways, and a relatable chat for anyone connected to or curious about the academic side of occupational therapy.
174 – Recovery-Oriented Practice in Mental Health with Martin Staines
Jun 09, 2025
In Episode 174 of Occupied, host Dr Jessica Levick speaks with Martin Staines, an Advanced Occupational Therapist with a deep commitment to recovery-oriented practice in mental health.
Martin shares reflections from his extensive clinical experience, exploring how occupational therapists can work authentically alongside people experiencing mental health challenges. The conversation dives into what recovery-oriented practice truly looks like in action—from fostering hope and autonomy to navigating risk, documentation, and systemic constraints.
Jessica and Martin discuss the tensions clinicians face between policy-driven models of care and person-centred, values-based practice. They unpack the importance of relationships, everyday occupations, and creating space for meaning-making in mental health recovery.
This episode is a rich and grounded exploration of how occupational therapists can challenge the status quo, advocate for human rights, and honour the lived experiences of those they support.
Whether you’re working in mental health or passionate about recovery-oriented care, this episode offers wisdom, inspiration, and practical strategies from the frontline.
173 – OT Australia’s Chief Occupational Therapist Michelle Oliver
May 23, 2025
In this episode of Occupied, I sit down with Michelle Oliver, Australia’s first-ever Chief Occupational Therapist, for an inspiring and insightful conversation about her journey, her vision for the profession, and the evolving landscape of occupational therapy in Australia.
We dive into:
Michelle’s personal career path—from clinical practice to national leadership
What the role of Chief Occupational Therapist entails and how it came to be
The pivotal work being led by Occupational Therapy Australia to advance our profession
Key themes and what to expect from the upcoming OT National Conference in Adelaide
The importance of representation, policy influence, and strategic leadership for OTs at every level
Whether you’re a student, clinician, or leader in health, this episode will leave you reflecting on how we care—for others and ourselves—in complex systems.
If you are considering going to the 31st NATIONAL CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2025 in Adelaide next month than let me save you some $$$. OTA have kindly provided a link especially for listeners of the pod! Register for the conference using this link and save yourself up to $265 on your registration PLUS go into the draw to win two tickets to the conference Gala Dinner!
172 – Navigating Complex Clinical Environments with Dr Theo Theodoros
May 18, 2025
In Episode 172 of Occupied, co-host Dr Jessica Levick speaks with consultant psychiatrist Dr Theo Theodoros to explore the realities of working in challenging, complex and high-pressure healthcare environments.
Drawing from his extensive experience in mental health settings including High Dependency Units (HDU) and Emergency Departments, Dr Theodoros reflects on the emotional, ethical, and systemic challenges that clinicians face across disciplines. The conversation unpacks what it means to work collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams, challenging risks and the importance of compassion—for both clients and practitioners.
Together, Jessica and Theo discuss strategies for navigating burnout, maintaining professional integrity, and fostering supportive, reflective environments in the face of adversity. This honest and thoughtful dialogue offers a rare insight into the shared struggles and strengths that unite occupational therapists, psychiatrists, and other allied health professionals working in demanding contexts.
Whether you’re a student, clinician, or leader in health, this episode will leave you reflecting on how we care—for others and ourselves—in complex systems.
Welcome back to the Occupied Podcast! After a significant hiatus, we’re rebooting with fresh perspectives, exciting content, and most importantly, a brand-new co-host—Jessica Levick.
In this special reboot episode: Meet Jessica Levick: Get to know Jessica, her professional background in Occupational Therapy, and her vision for the future of Occupied. What’s Changing: Brock and Jessica discuss why the podcast took a break, what’s been happening behind the scenes, and what listeners can expect moving forward. New Directions & Fresh Ideas: Explore exciting new topics, formats, and features coming your way. From in-depth conversations and expert interviews to addressing critical issues in Occupational Therapy.
Join us as we kick off a new chapter filled with enthusiasm, insight, and community engagement. Subscribe and stay occupied with the conversations that matter!
170 – Digital Identity Influencers and Mental Health ft Dr Jessica Levick
Nov 20, 2024
In this episode I sit down with Dr. Jessica Levick to explore the intersection of identity, social media, and the commercialisation of mental health. Together, we unpack the growing influence of social media personalities on mental health narratives, discussing both the opportunities and the challenges this creates for individuals seeking support. We delve into how this trend impacts perceptions of identity and mental well-being and consider the role Occupational Therapy can play in promoting authentic, inclusive, and ethical approaches to mental health care in this evolving digital landscape. Whether you’re an OT, a student, or simply curious about the impact of social media on health, this episode will leave you with plenty to think about. Tune in for an insightful and thought-provoking conversation!
And hey, if you enjoyed today’s chat, we’d love it if you could leave us a review and share the episode with your network.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
In this inspiring episode of Occupied, I sit down with the multi-talented Lindsay DeLong, an occupational therapist and online content creator known for her innovative videos on assistive technologies.
Lindsay shares her journey of merging her passion for occupational therapy with her creative flair, offering listeners a unique perspective on how assistive technologies can enhance lives. She delves into the challenges and rewards of being a creator in this niche, providing valuable insights for both aspiring content creators and occupational therapy professionals. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of healthcare, technology, and creativity, as Lindsay’s story is a testament to the impact one can make by combining their professional expertise with their personal interests.
And hey, if you enjoyed today’s chat, we’d love it if you could leave us a review and share the episode with your network.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
In the latest episode of our podcast, we delve into the fascinating topic of Critical Thinking and its significance in our daily lives. We aim to unravel the mysteries of this crucial skill set, often overlooked yet essential for personal growth and informed decision-making. We’ll discuss practical strategies for nurturing a critical mindset, share insights from experts in the field, and provide listeners with actionable tips to apply critical thinking in various aspects of their lives. Whether you’re a seasoned critical thinker or just beginning to explore this area, this episode promises to be an enlightening journey into the world of rational thought and reasoned analysis. Join us as we embark on this adventure to enhance our cognitive abilities and enrich our understanding of the world around us.
And hey, if you enjoyed today’s chat, we’d love it if you could leave us a review and share the episode with your network.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
167 – How to improve your Interviewing
Feb 05, 2024
Today’s episode is all about mastering interviews, whether you’re sitting in the hot seat or the one steering the conversation. We’re unpacking everything from breaking down interview myths to post-interview protocols in a way that’s easy to digest and even easier to put into action.
First off, we’re tackling what really happens in an interview, shining a light on the realities versus the common myths. Making a stellar first impression is more than just dressing sharp; it’s about presenting the best version of yourself, from your body language to your choice of words. And speaking of words, we’ll dive into how to keep the conversation flowing naturally, with tips on active listening and expressing yourself clearly without getting tangled in jargon. Feeling jittery just thinking about interviews? No stress! We’ve got some straightforward strategies to help you stay cool and collected. Plus, once the interview’s over, we’re not leaving you hanging. We’ll chat about the art of the follow-up and why reflecting on your interview experience is a hidden gem for personal growth. Wrapping up Episode 167, remember, it’s all about being prepared, staying authentic, and communicating clearly. Tune in next time for more real talk and pro tips in the world of occupational therapy.
And hey, if you enjoyed today’s chat, we’d love it if you could leave us a review and share the episode with your network.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
166 – Call out your Whiteness ft Helen Harrington and Marielle Turner
Dec 12, 2023
Welcome to the latest episode where we explore the intricate dynamics of racial identity, privilege, and the role of white individuals in addressing systemic racism. In this episode, I’m joined by Helen Harrington and Marielle Turner and we embark on a journey of self-reflection and understanding. We delve into the concept of white privilege, and its impact on healthcare today. We confront uncomfortable truths and share personal stories, aiming to foster a deeper comprehension of our own roles in perpetuating or dismantling racial inequalities. This conversation is an essential step for anyone committed to the path of anti-racism and inclusivity. Tune in, listen with an open heart, and join us in this vital dialogue.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
Never in my wildest dreams did I see us getting here. Last night we clocked over….half a million downloads!! That’s right…500,000 🫣
164 episodes 500,000+ downloads 98 amazing guests 174+hours of original content released 225+hrs of recording 556gig of raw audio files 160 countries reached 58 different podcast apps 2.5 websites 2 MacBook Pro’s 4 Microphones Still only 1 tech issue (touch wood) 1 fan photo Many hrs of disrupted sleep Some absolutely amazing networking. A huge amount of emails and DM’s from people who resonated with episodes.
Now I know that things have slowed greatly in the last year and I’m sorry about that but I want you to know I’m still here plodding along and putting content out when I can for you to learn and grow from.
You are the reason I’ve done this for so long. And your messages and questions and taps on the shoulder at conferences mean the absolute world to me.
I can’t thank each and every one of you enough for your time, support and kind words. You are Occupied.
Brock
164 – OTAus2023 Reflections
Jul 21, 2023
1 Month on from the OT Australia National Conference in Cairns and these are some reflections from the event!
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
163 – Do we all need to be Occupational Scientists?
Jul 19, 2023
Was listening to OT & Chill recently and something from this episode triggered my brain into thought! Occupational Scientists are important but do we all need to be qualified occupational scientists?
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
162 – Trauma Informed Occupational Therapy ft Marie Bell
Jul 14, 2023
I explore my friend, Marie’s, journey into working with kids with trauma and some of the considerations that need to be made by clinicians when working in this kind of area.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
161 – ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION ft Assoc Prof Genevieve Pepin
Jul 04, 2023
Genevieve Pepin Associate Professor Higher Degree Research Director Deakin University, Australia
Session title Occupational Therapy and Eating Disorders…. Seriously, it is that hard to understand?
Session details (CW & TW // eating disorders) The main aim of this presentation is to share the evolution of the role of occupational therapists in the field of eating disorders. Through the journey of the presenter as a mental health and eating disorder clinician, links will be made with evidence-based treatment for people with eating disorders, the functional impact of eating disorders, engagement with families and carers of people with an eating disorder, and some uniquely occupational therapy perspectives and actions. Hurdles and successes will also be discussed. Case studies will illustrate the work of occupational therapists in this field as well as how our collaborative, client-centered, family-focus, and strength-based approach supports occupational participation and recovery. This presentation will hopefully demonstrate that it is possible to remain occupation-focused and keep our occupational therapy unique contribution to the field of eating disorders while facilitating non-occupational therapy evidence-based interventions.
160 – Catching Up with Ms OT Flourish ft Mandy Chamberlain
Jun 29, 2023
If you’re on social media and don’t know Mandy then are you really on social media? Mandy is not only a beautiful person but has been in the online space helping therapists and students grow and learn into the profession.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CsAJU7lOA9L/
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
What does being Independent mean? why does it always seem to be an OT’s goal for their clients? Is it even possible? A long time bug bear that I decided to have a deeper look into. Part of this ep looks at info from the included article.
Tamaru, A., McColl, M, A., & Yamasaki, S. (2007) Understanding ‘Independence’: Perspectives of occupational therapists. Disability and Rehabilitation, 29(13), 1021-1033, DOI: 10.1080/09638280600929110
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
158 – ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION ft Karina Sanson-Fisher
Jun 08, 2023
Karina Sanson-Fisher Occupational therapist in Mulubinba (Newcastle), Australia Instagram @doing.therapy
Session title Doing Drugs: Occupational therapy and alcohol and other drugs
Session details This session explores an occupational therapy role working with people who use alcohol and other drugs, and provides my own experiences of finding and maintaining occupationally focussed practice in this space.
157 – Lessons I’ve Learned Pushing OT Into The Digital World
May 26, 2023
Absolutely honoured to be asked to deliver the keynote for the Wisconsin OT Association virtual conference. This is that presentation as well as the Q&A at the end of it for your consumption.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
Hi, and welcome to another episode I got asked, and still can’t believe that I got asked to give the keynote presentation at the Wisconsin State ot conference a couple of weeks ago. And they asked me to give some lessons that I’ve learned in Korea that has involved a lot of empowering OTS to use online technology and an online space. So this is the presentation that I gave you guys also get the discussion towards the end of it, as well as the actual PowerPoint from the presentation and everything. So you’ll have everything as if you were there. So I hope you get something out of it. I hope you enjoy it. Please do let me know either way. And let’s roll it. Welcome to occupy plus the Patreon exclusive podcast for those supporters looking to inject some extra value into their practice. Thank you for your support, and enjoy.
Host 1:11
Good morning and welcome to our 2021 Virtual World Conference. My name is Laura souls today and I am the VP of professional development in honor to kick off a two day agenda of expert speakers to set the tone and celebration of our professions. 100 years of resilience. today’s keynote speaker comes to us all the way from Australia. Brock Cook is a seasoned occupational therapist with experience in working in acute mental health rehabilitation, delivering his expertise through innovating, approaches of podcasts and webinars. Currently, Brock is an associate lecturer for James Cook University, and will be presenting on the topics of lessons I’ve learned pushing ot into a digital world. Welcome, Brock.
Brock Cook 1:59
Thank you very much very kind. Just give me one second while I work this shared screen thingamajigger me out. There we go. Hopefully people can see that. Cool. So yeah, hi, thank you for asking me to come and speak to you today. I’m flattered, honored. And hopefully, I can bring something that is of interest to a range of people I was asked to I’ve been involved in this world of OT and how its uses online technologies and social medias and that kind of thing for a very long time now. So I’m gonna go through a bit of my history with, I guess, technology in general, and how that led me into that space of being able to try and adapt it and use it for how I’ve used it within OT. And I’m hoping at the end, if we can, if there’s questions, and I’m very much more of an interactive kind of person than just me speak to people through a screen kind of person. So I’d like to field some questions and try and explore I guess the future where to from here in that sort of question time towards the end of it, if we can so. So if I press the right button, that’ll help. So having a look at my technological journey, so that not there we go. All right, I’ll just do it this way. Sorry. where it started. So I was born in 1985. I my family we got our very first home computer. So one thing I will preface because I know this people have a whole wide range of ages in this room is I am of the generation that saw the start of pretty much all of the internet, that type of thing. So I remember a time before the internet, I remember a time before social media. And I was here when all of them started so I was kind of on the ground level learning all these things as they developed, which I think put me in a good position to start supporting other people and therapists to to actually use them and how to use them safely and effectively. So it started in 1990 When my my family bought the very first computer I remember dad bringing it home and it was absolutely enormous came in boxes that I don’t even think I could fit in my car nowadays. It was heavy. I was five at the time. I remember it not having a clue what it was other than it looked like a big TV with another box under it. It cost a fortune. So back then I actually looked this up. The, it cost us about two and a half $1,000 Australian. Back then which equivalent today was over five grand, which is a very expensive computer had a whopping 12 megahertz processor, VGA screen and 40 megabyte hard drive. Which, if you know much about computers, it did make me laugh because my iPhone, which I have sitting right here in front of me, is 9,000% faster than that computer has more than 10 times the screen resolution and six and a half 1000 times more storage and cost a fraction of the amount. So we’ve come a long way since 1990. But this is where it began. So I learned the very basics of how a computer works and the different parts of it. And for me as a kid, I was the kid that liked to pull things apart and put them back together, which I don’t know how my parents felt about that all the time. But I was very sort of enamored with this computer and how it worked. And I’d never seen anything like it. Fast forward a few years. So around 1996, we got our first internet connection, it was dial up many people probably remember the the weird dial up noise that used to make and you couldn’t make phone calls while you were using it. That kind of thing. A whopping 56 kilobytes a second of internet, which is an I did this test yesterday is 5,000% slower than my internet that I’m currently talking to you on. So again, another leap forward in the last 25 years.
But where it started to make a bit more sense about what we could actually do with this technology, for me anyway, was the birth of social media. Now MySpace wasn’t the first social media it was, I think it was the second but it was definitely the largest and most, I guess, key to shaping what the internet was going to look like. So 2013 or 2003, sorry, which was the year before I started my ot degree, my undergrad, I joined this weird website called MySpace on the recommendation of a friend of mine. And sort of start didn’t really know what to do with it. But then slowly realized that there were developing communities and you could connect with other people. And I actually that I still to this day have a friend that I met through MySpace, all those many moons ago. But it was the beginning of what we look at as web 2.0. So Web 2.0, if you haven’t heard of that term, was the shift in internet websites and tools online to be more interactive. So all of your social medias, like versions of web 2.0. Back in the day, we used to have forums and messengers, like I CQ, and AOL that kind of stuff. Before that, when the internet was really a place that you just went to get information. So look up a website, you go to that website, you find the information you need. And that was pretty much it. It was very one way traffic, web 2.0 allowed for configuration and interaction with the content on the web. So this is where things like wikis were born, where you could actually create content and put yourself out there without having to know like coding languages. MySpace, what MySpace did that was unique to everything else on the web was it allowed you to configure your own little space, so you’d actually have your own room or last one sort of felt like you had your own space, you can make your page look like what you want. You could put your top five, like songs that you were currently into on there, you could highlight who your best friends were and prioritize them into groups and all sorts of stuff. You could configure the colors on the page, what pictures you wanted to share on the page. It was the first really easily accessible and free space on the internet that people could configure to make their own. And that’s a really powerful that’s one of the reasons why it was so big, why it was so massive. The origins of it were very much trying to replicate our social interactions that we were having in person. So back in that day I was probably your typical teenager, before MySpace came out posters on the wall of cars and all that sort of stuff, and bookshelves full of magazines of, you know, rock music and rap music, and probably not a lot of highly what would be deemed highly educational content. But that’s the kind of personalization that kids in my era or in my area where I lived, just what you did with your space, it was a way to personalize your space. And my space offered you that in a virtual forum. The chats were all private, it was like messaging. Same as if you were having a one on one conversation with people. The music would be a few like recommending it. Like these are my favorite songs. Everyone at school knew who whose favorite songs were what it was very much replicating. In life interactions there was at this stage, and I’ll get to this a bit later, there was no algorithm that was changing anything, if you posted something, everyone in your list could see it, all of your friends, etc. It was very basic, in a way. So when did ot come into this, obviously, all that up until that point, it happened before I even started my degree, started my IT degree in 2004. During that time, we had the lovely Facebook, enter the realm
and swallow was I had the time period during my undergrad. So we did a four year undergrad here in Australia. So I have a Bachelor of occupational therapy. I was using all of these social medias and tools. I hadn’t heard of anyone using it for any professional purpose. It was literally as it says on the box, it was just a social media. So you connect with your friends. So I kind of had three or four years with these tools to just play with them, I guess and learn what they could do and learn who you connect with and how they worked and their positives and negatives and all that sort of stuff. So I graduated at the end of 2008. So started working to those nine. And in 2010 is the earliest time I’ve been able to find of, I guess, a professional purpose, particularly for Facebook. So around 2010, there was I think it was the world the Prophet conference in 2010, there was a group of ladies that had all had similar ideas around trying to find a way to use these tools in a professional purpose mainly for CPD for clinicians. They got together and they started ot 480, which at the time was online technology for OT and just a group of women who started a Facebook group. It was open to anyone, anyone could join, ask questions, interact, network, etc. But on top of that, they also started what they what at the time was called the OT 24. Exchange, I think it wasn’t originally and then it got changed to the VX. So every year on world ot day, which is 25th of October, a couple of days time, they would do a 24 hour conference, a virtual conference similar to what we’re doing here. So every hour on the hour for 24 hours. These women were from all over the world. There’s couple from Australia, one from Australia, one from New Zealand couple from the UK, a couple from America, your own Karen Jacobs was was part of that group. They would organize this conference get invited speakers every hour on the hour for 24 hours. And it would run those presentations would be recorded. It was completely free. People could come and go to whichever whichever sessions they wanted, they could watch the recordings afterwards, etc. That was one of the very end that all stemmed from this group that they set up. I got involved with them the following year. So 2011 seen the conference in 2010. Attended again in 2011. And then I at the time, there was this Facebook group, the OT for ot group, and I had this idea that maybe we could expand that because like online technology for it. That’s cool. But I only knew a handful of OTS that were even remotely interested in online technology. But what I did know was a lot of OTS that were interested in mental health, which is where I was working. So I pitched to the ladies to start or to let me start a satellite group. So I started a Mental Health Forum Tea group. And that was the start of, I guess, this period of time where different OTS started engaging with Facebook and are some of them were there to start their own satellite groups, I think there’s about 50 of them now. And some of them were there to engage with the groups that were based on their interest area, whether it was assistive technology or learning disorders, or there’s an oncology one, there’s obviously the original it for 80 MH for at the mental health one that I started. And as a moderator of that group, I treated it like, kind of like a breakout room at a conference, I guess, where I would pose questions and facilitate conversations and people would share resources, too, my goal was to one get people to network, you meet people from all over the world, this was a unique opportunity that we’d never really had before. Because we didn’t have the tools for it. It was also to get people to learn. My experience in mental health was that it seemed at that point in time seemed very disjointed in the knowledge that clinicians actually had. There wasn’t any sort of consistency even around what an OT his role was in mental health. Now, I know, I will preface that. Mental health is a fairly prevalent practice area in Australia. I know it’s not quite as prevalent for a variety of reasons in the States. But it’s quite common over here, I’d say probably 30, to maybe even higher percentage of our all of our OTS work in mental health.
But there still wasn’t sort of any consistency. So my, one of my goals with that group was to try and wrangle some of that in around that same time. Twitter was was starting, I think, because of some of the stuff that I highlighted earlier around. Me being around when you know, home PCs became a thing being around when the internet started being around when social media started, I was always had this sort of like, how does it work mentality. And I, again, that probably stemmed from me being a kid that like to pull things apart and see how they worked. So when Twitter started, I was on it. I’m pretty sure my Twitter account is like 16 years old now or something. It tells me every now and then, but initially, it I couldn’t see any sort of way to use it. for professional purposes, a group of ladies in the UK did find a way however, so they started having a weekly, initially CPD chat for an hour using the hashtag Oh talk ot talk, depending on how you pronounce it, where they would have an invited guest on a certain topic who would come in and facilitate discussion around whoever wanted to join via that hashtag. And they would do that for an hour each week. That then stems or I guess a US version was born from that, which is the ote talk to us, us. Your own Tina champagne was involved in starting that one back in the day, that would have been 2013 ish, it was very quite a while ago. And that was auto successful. They used to do it monthly. And then every week during April, which I believe is your ot month. And the other big professional purpose for Twitter was live conference tweeting. They’re even now it’s probably still the biggest use of it within OT, which I’ve never been able to work out exactly why because the number of people that I know that have a Twitter account and will only ever use it whenever they’re at a conference fascinates me. But when it first started, it was really interesting to me to be able to obviously I’m on the other side of the world. If you can’t tell by the accent, to be able to engage in like your conference, your national conference with the people that are actually there and be able to interact with them live. While talks are happening while keynotes are happening. Them tweeting out content or their thoughts or their reflections about it. People outside the conference from all around the world being able to also engage with that content. It made for a really connected feeling profession in that online space. Some of the stuff from that I as I said earlier, like started, I did a lot of workshops with people ran a lot of webinars, essentially COURAGING people to engage in these. First, these online facilities that were already started the groups, the discussions, the online conferences, etc. The early focus back then the main concern for most people was about privacy. A lot of people wondering whether they needed to start up a separate account for all of their ot staff and then keep that separate from their privacy staff back then privacy settings were non existent. So it probably wasn’t a bad idea. The interesting thing on reflection, too, was that each of those different platforms had a very different community on it. So OTS that were you on engaging really heavily in the Facebook community weren’t necessarily using Twitter weren’t necessarily using back then Pinterest was a big thing as well. They weren’t necessarily using any other platforms, everyone kind of stuck to their own thing. So it was back then we were encouraging people to like, if you want to engage in a wider breadth of community, try these different platforms, a lot of these platforms back then when you to people so it was a matter of try it, you might like it, see how you go engage with the community, if it’s your community, that sweet, look what you found them, you can utilize their, their knowledge. And if not, then you just close your account or don’t use it completely up to you. But it was very different. And the reason it was very different was each platform was designed very uniquely. And I remember
something that really highlighted this was this is the real, tech geeky person in me, I was reading a book by the founder of Twitter, who explained that Facebook, their key question back in the day used to pop up in the little share status thing was What are you? What are you doing? Or know how are you? How are you feeling? How are you doing or something? Whereas Twitter was, what are you doing? Like just that simple reframe, completely shifted the whole focus of the platform. So there are very separate, whereas nowadays, every platform seems to be pirating things from every platform, you can use? Well, Instagram seems to be just collecting everything. So you can do stories, you can essentially do tick tock, you can essentially do Snapchat, you can essentially do what Facebook does all of this on Instagram, Facebook now has stories as well. Yeah, the trying each platform isn’t trying to be unique. They’re trying to garner market share. So it’s very different to it was back in the day. So the community often overlaps nowadays, because you can get the same thing from multiple platforms. The most common purpose for the online stuff back then CPD, and networking. So people are looking to learn people looking to find resources, people looking to network with people in other parts of the world. Where are we equipped? So one of the questions from that, like the next I guess, trying to think about where to from there was were we as OTS actually equipped to support the people that we worked with, in using these tools? I actually posted this out to my Instagram account this week or yesterday. And the response was interesting, because a lot of people thought majority of people, I think 70% of people thought, Yes, we are completely equipped to do that. But then when I asked a simple question like how do you safely use social media of the 500, and whatever people that viewed that particular thing, I got one answer. So I think our default reaction needs to have a look at there. But anyway, that’s a completely another story. So were we equipped, I personally didn’t think we were a lot of 80s Even now, lack tech, tech literacy, and lack tech literacy from a point of view, even if you use some of these things in a personal capacity, might lack some tech literacy on terms of how to educate people on safe use, or sustainable use, etc. We’ll have a look at that in a bit to the next evolution of this usage, sort of that 2014 up to 2019 period was, I guess the a large period of growth for that web 2.0 portion of it in that what we found is that people stopped using it just to get information. And we saw a boom and absolute boom in content creators which is one place where I sort of shifted my interest as I started my podcast in 2018, as did Sarah, who I believe was in the audience here. But you’ll hear from her a bit later in the conference too. So you saw a whole range of different reasons that people started using these platforms, people were still using for CPD, they were still using them for networking. But I’ve seen a lot of people around this period start to use it looking for productivity and workflow, I guess guidance. So trying to use technology to improve their workflow or increase their workflow, especially with the implementation of things like iPads, in the workplaces, people were trying to work out how this how can this help me be a better or more efficient therapist? How can this help me get my work done better, etc. For the first time, during this period, we actually saw or I saw on mass, OTs looking to try and find apps and tools and platforms that they could use with clients not just for themselves and for their own benefit. So that was probably the biggest shift in the OT within an online world was that shift of, okay, I’ve got all these tools now, how would I be able to use these with my clients, and not just for growing myself or learning myself, etc. And as I said before, the there was also a premium content creators during this period.
Then the world ended. So as we all know, some of us are still, some of us may still be in the throes of what happened at the start of last year, some of us are faring better than others. But we’re all aware that last year, a rather large change happened, which had not all negatives, especially when it came to digital literacy for our profession, if I am honest, and a lot of it was born of necessity, a lot of people were forced into this online space, and it was a matter of getting in the deep end and learning how to swim. So I have a look at that, just quickly. So when we’re looking at, look at this in a very odd way, we’re gonna look at the PA. So when we look at the environment, our homes, the least for an initial period, some much longer than others, our homes became absolutely everything. In our environment, we didn’t have many environmental changes throughout our days throughout our weeks. Because everything we did started happening from home, at least for our period, zoom, the program that we are using now increased by 2,900%. In six months of 2020, that was from January to June 2,900% of our home became our place of work, our place of leisure, relaxation, learning social connection, literally everything we did, we had to adjust and find a way to do that, engage with that and fill those needs from this environment, which previously may have just served as a purpose to sleep and eat. For some people. Like I said before, this occupational disruption lasted at sort of minimum a few weeks maximum, it might still be going for some people. But there was also a genuine recognition through from the a lot of the therapists that I saw and interacted with online, there was a genuine recognition that this was impacting our clients and their engagement with the world as well as our own for the first time I saw a lot of therapists recognize that us as well as their clients were in this together and not just that sort of client patient separation type relationship.
When we’re looking at person, so CDC reported that there was a 400% increase in persons reporting anxiety or depression symptoms between January 2020 Compared to all of 2019 which is a huge increase. The interesting thing, which I haven’t put in here for a mental health perspective, if anyone has mental health interest is that didn’t correlate to an interest. Sorry, an increase in suicide, which was kind of fascinating. Digital literacy was, again, we were thrown into it we’ll put to the test overnight was sink or swim Whether some people could continue working or not, was up to how quickly they could learn how to use these tools. Parents with some of you can probably relate to this parents became teachers to students in online environments, quite often instantly overnight, which is a very different role than some people had been used to. So you weren’t just trying to navigate these waters for yourself, but often for other people as well. This is the first time in my career that I’d ever seen mental health really put as a frontline topic. And I’ll, I bring that up for a very deliberate purpose. And I’ll get to that again, in a in a little sec, I’ll make that connection. But it was interesting to see that all of a sudden, it took some event like this, in order for us to actually recognize that we all have mental health. And we should all look after finding ways to do that. Some of this technology maybe can help us maybe it was having the opposite effect. And our use of social media because of this forced if evolution definitely changed. On terms of occupation, we had to change how we worked, we had to change how we socialized, we had to change how we engage in our hobbies, maybe we actually had to change our hobbies, if we couldn’t access them from different environments. socialization, I ran a number of throughout the initial lockdown, which was when I was mostly impacted. So around March ish last year, for probably couple months. I ran a number of sessions on zoom on a Friday afternoon, where I got 30 to 40 OTS together for people that I’ve met online. And we got together and just talked and maybe had a couple of adult beverages. But that was a way of just trying to check in with people and making sure people were right. And something that obviously not a very usual method of socializing. But we use the tools that we had access to which zoom was definitely a tool that got used, as I highlighted before, we used it to fill those gaps.
We saw two distinct growth areas with this. So therapists using technology to engage clinically with their clients, a lot of people were thrown into telehealth or finding other methods to reduce physical contact with clients. And using technology and a lot of instances for that. And we also saw therapists engaging in professional networks for learning and for a lot more for support. Then then learning during that period, I want to highlight a couple of these for you. So there’s a couple of people, again, full disclosure, these are friends of mine, ran and Chris, who’s really one of the ladies in that picture on the left, pivoted her business and started supporting OCS to actually make that transition into the online world. She made the she held events like this ot telehealth Summit, where again, similar to this kind of conference where it was a online speakers that were specifically targeted at different aspects of pivoting people’s businesses on to telehealth so that people could adjust and keep making a living. Throughout that same time period, Laura on the right there, started her business DuraTrac, which essentially she developed an app that clients and clinicians could connect over and share. It’s mainly designed initially for like pediatric clients where there might have been some exercises or activities that the therapist one of the parents to support the child with after like outside of therapy. But the therapist could interact with them through the app, change the program, adjust the program accordingly. That kind of thing. So that’s another way like she pivoted she’s found a niche using online technology and creating online technology to support clinicians, alternative creators. We saw our wins or at Mary I’m sure most of you probably may have heard of it. Marie is a of probably the biggest ot content creator on YouTube. It’s as far as I’m concerned, still a very untapped resource if anyone out there listening designs or has an interest in making videos, that might be an idea for you. And also, we saw a boom in podcasts. Obviously, that’s my shameless plug 2018 When I started occupied and when Sarah started ot for life, I think there was maybe three podcasts when I first started occupied 2020, we saw a massive increase in that, particularly from students, students have a real interest in the use of this technology. And I saw a lot of student led podcasts out there to try and consolidate their own learnings. I, a lot of them were learning from home, as a lot of my students where I’m working in education now. And my students, I was teaching them all online. And it was almost this tool, this all created, the use of this tool created a podcast in order to consolidate their learning like a study group, but using an online technology. And I found that really fascinating because it wasn’t something that I had spoken to a few of them, it wasn’t something that they were like, directed to do. It was almost this natural, like, Okay, what tools of regard? How can we make sure that we’re getting the most out of our learning, because we’re not obviously, if you’ve never learned in an online environment, I can tell you, it’s generally not usually as free and easy as an in person environment, especially when it comes to engagement. So they were wanting more, so they created it, which was amazing. 2021, we’ve seen that trend continue. But we’ve seen a lot more therapists, I feel get into the podcasting space. But we’re seeing a lot more podcasts from a variety of countries, which is amazing. There’s podcasts now from South Africa from India. Previously, it was pretty much I think I was the only one from Australia, I think I may still be I’m not 100%. Sure, as a couple now, majority of them are from the States. And there’s a few from the UK. But we’ve seen a lot more breadth of podcasts, from OTS all over the world, which for me is amazing because you get a wider variety of experiences a wider variety of perspectives. And it’s a valuable valuable learning tool. I’m very much a person that learns from experience, and or hearing people’s stories. I’m a narrative learner.
So one thing I would encourage people is it’s not all sunshine and rainbows and unicorns, there is not it not every aspect of this is a positive one, I personally have experienced the other side of it as well. It’s important that we look at both sides of a coin. Social media nowadays, I spoke about earlier how originally social media was very simple. It was just designed to replicate real life interactions. Social media nowadays is a commodity, it is a business and your attention is the commodity. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m not saying you have to shut down all your accounts and go back to lighting kerosene lamps and living in the woods. But being aware of what the social media platform wants you to do, compared to what you want to do with it is an important self awareness to have when using these things. As with anything that we do, whether it’s learning a new skill, or playing a sport, like informed decision making is a really key thing. And I think being aware that some of these social media platforms, their whole goal is to get you to stay on the platform and engage on the platform. And they have these algorithms that essentially will show your content to whoever they want to show it to unless you play the game unless you engage with their platform more and give them more of your attention is an important component to actually look at, especially if you’re looking at safely educating people that you work with around this. I didn’t. Yeah, I was. There’s a lot of research around social media addiction in air quotes, being a genuine medical diagnoseable condition, displaying similar traits and similar brain chemistry to gambling, addiction, drugs, any kind of addictive behavior. So if you’re working with someone who has a tendency to lean towards those sort of addictive behaviors, especially knowing that can have an impact on how and the kinds of things that you’re going to be educating them on. With regards to safe use and sustainable use of these platforms, it seems harmless, but it can do a lot of damage if if it’s not yours, right, same as anything. Just realized the time. So I’m like rushing through takeaways, key points. And I want to go in a bit of detail where we might leave it for questions on this, but essentially ever a lot changed in 30 years, and it’s not slowing down, things are going to change rapidly, not just with the tech. But if you know, world events like this may happen again, it’s gonna force us to be adaptable. I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with being adaptable. I’ve often looked at adaptability type training with my clients when I’ve been working with them. It’s not always the person who’s the strongest who survives, it’s generally the most adaptable. So being adaptable isn’t a bad thing. And I think it’s something that OTS definitely need to improve on. Because I, as much as we like to pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves, we’re amazing, there are a lot of things that we can improve on as a profession. That is one of them. occupations and occupational performance evolves with these changes, whether the changes in the platform, the changes in the environment, or the changes in the people see what I did, they’re funny that all of this stuff is very OT and I think, if nothing else, this pandemic has highlighted the importance of this profession. But that is a side note. Creativity is one thing I didn’t go into in a huge amount in this presentation, but it is one of the big reasons I feel like people actually start going down the realm of content creation. And I firmly encourage it, I have a lot of opinions and theories around creativity and the benefit that can be taken from creative occupations for the people that are engaging in.
Self awareness, as I just explained, really, really important. And the the biggest tip I can give anyone is to explore these things with genuine curiosity. And don’t just take things on face value, explore how they work, pull it apart, see how it works, see how it can work for you see how it can work for your clients. But be aware of all aspects of it, don’t just cherry pick the positives. Because it’s important that we’re making informed life decisions. And unfortunately, that includes looking at the not so positive stuff as well. Overall, I feel like the profession is growing rapidly. It wasn’t an early adopter to this technology. But I feel like it’s finally finding its feet with it. And I feel like we’re finding some really innovative ways to improve the profession overall. I didn’t go into like, advocacy and all of that sort of stuff, which is a massive part of especially the podcast landscape. Definitely go and check. I know Sarah is talking about that Sarah pipe is talking about that. Later on in the conference, maybe tomorrow. Definitely go along and check out her presentation. For that information. I am very keen to hear that if I’m able to as well. So I’ll stop talking now because I realize I’m running out of time. But I really would like to have some questions or discussion or ideas or queries, complaints. Anything from anyone? I am open to any feedback or ideas, discussions, anything at all, either chat or actually, I’ll might say that I’ll let whoever’s moderating say whether it can be chat or
Host 44:02
Thank you Brad. Yes, the chat room is open. Please put in your comments your questions. Anything that you might have for Brian to elaborate on his presentation Oh,
Brock Cook 44:15
hold that thought I realize what’s happening. Someone might be speaking but my zoom settings have changed and ah try that I might be able to actually hear you now. Oh, no, not that one. All right, hold that thought I was oh, what time it is. It is three minutes to midnight. Hold that thought because my bigger isn’t working.
Host 44:48
Quite as my speaker Brock, they’re beginning to thank you for reaching out to us so late in your day or morning or where you are on your side of the world.
Brock Cook 44:57
Alright, sorry about that. Ah, it’s okay. Uh, one thing you do get used to regards to when you’re doing podcasting is being up at all hours, a lot of the guests and that kind of stuff that I do talk to are quite often in the state. So I’m and I’m not an early morning person say staying up past midnight is usually pretty pretty alright for me.
Host 45:29
I would like to share with everyone that Brock information will be provided with his contact as well. We do have one from Laura Nagel, her question for you, Brock is what is your favorite tech related therapy tool or game?
Brock Cook 45:48
As in for professional purposes, or just for me,
Host 45:53
I think it’s professional, but you can answer it.
Brock Cook 45:58
I’m not. Well, actually, that’s a lie. Because I’m not big into games. But the pandemic, I kind of go to the games, but that was alternative therapy wise, I liked it. I liked the basics. I feel like a lot of the and this isn’t just tech related. I feel like a lot of stuff that OTS do isn’t sustainable, because we’re putting in these things that most people don’t have access to at home. What I like to do is, if people have access to say, a smartphone, which a lot of people do nowadays, even things like teaching them how to use the calendar app, teaching them how to use reminders, how to set alarms, use the timers, all of the tools that they have ready access to, that can integrate into their lives into their routines, etc. To improve their occupational performance or help them remember things, get them to appointments, that kind of stuff. I feel like that real basic level stuff is usually the key stuff where I start focusing. But then if there’s any specific needs that the person comes up with, throughout the thing, like I’ve used, so for sensory modulation. Spotify is brilliant for that, or Apple Music, any kind of streaming service where we all know that you can listen to different kinds of music to adjust your mood. And actually having pretty much all music on tap, at any point in time is a really valuable tool to have when you’re working with someone and you don’t have to carry around 1000 CDs, just in case. So tools like that just the real basic things, and being able to implement them for therapeutic purposes is what I usually promote to therapists.
Host 47:48
Thank you. We have another question from Holly and she’s asking what does a typical day look like in your mental health setting.
Brock Cook 47:58
I’m actually a lecturer now. But back in the day, I don’t know if that is a typical day every day is kind of difficult, difficult, different Freudian slip. What you will find is it depends where you’re working in an acute setting. So in like a mental health hospital, you’re generally going to check the wards who has been admitted, go and have a conversation with them, see if there’s any needs, that you might be able to support them in. Like filling during that period, anything that you can help with to make their discharge sustainable, and improve things on the outside. And for when they do get discharged. The job I was in before I went into academia, I was in Community Mental Health intensive rehab. Essentially what that means is we would carry a really low caseload. So generally, sort of five to eight people. And we would see them into they were living at home, we would see them in home pretty much as often as they required. So some people I would have on my caseload would need intensive support. So I was seeing them every day, twice a day sometimes. And then the idea was that we were supporting them to be able to maintain lives sustainably, manage their own lives, that sort of thing. And gradually, essentially win them off our service so that we could step back or discharge them to a different team that didn’t have or like they could see them once a fortnight or once a week that they need our intensive support. So, but those days, you know, you might schedule a couple of home visits, but what you actually do on those home visits can be very individual to to the person so there’s not really a typical day. Unfortunately, that’s always been a tricky question for me to answer.
Host 49:52
Matt is asking, Are there any great mental health tool available through a smartphone that you recommend? Your clients,
Brock Cook 50:03
the I have to have a double check, there used to be a few. The main ones I use, even nowadays, kind of your mindfulness type apps. Many people probably heard of apps like calm, obviously calm can be quite expensive. If you’re going to pay for the premium version, there was one called Headspace that I don’t again, I haven’t used it in a little while, but used to be able to get like a 10, free meditation sessions through the headspace app. So I used to recommend that to my clients, because that would just generic session. So yeah, it was 10 sessions, but they could just cycle them for 10. And start again, start from number one. And they always found that very useful. There’s some obviously, actually third track, which I mentioned before, I haven’t technically use their track. But like I’ve interviewed Laura, and I’ve had a look through it, I could see it being of huge value to the right, clinician, depending on how you work and what your workflow is. But I can definitely I have talked with her about including some mental health content into the app, which is completely open to. But then again, like, again, like I was saying before, just the basic stuff, stuff like Spotify apps, I’ve used the calendar as a mood diary. So they can just, you know, put a little note in the calendar or in the reminders or just even in the Notes app, as a mood diary. There are so there used to be some like actual mood diary apps, but I never found them to be like exactly what I wanted, or exactly what the client wanted or was easy to use. I’ve always worked on the theory that simplest is best. So
Host 51:54
Mariana is asking, I would like to use more apps. But I find that there’s so many it’s hard to know what’s available, and how best to use it. Do you have any recommendations for learning what’s out there?
Brock Cook 52:06
Yeah, that that’s always been an issue. I’ve back in the day, I’ve written some stuff. I’ve read something for a US Publication with Tina champagne one time about a whole range of different apps, I guess kinda like touch parking. I used to just download them, check them out myself. See what I like to see what I didn’t. It’s not the most efficient of methods. But I’ve not found if anyone was really keen and wanted to make like a repository of information about our like therapeutic apps, that would be amazing. It may exist. I don’t know, I haven’t checked. But yeah, I I’m very much a hands on learner. So I used to get the app tested out. I’m also a person that doesn’t believe in recommending anything to my clients that I haven’t tried myself. So it kind of killed two birds with one stone. But by doing it that way, even though it was a lot of time and effort.
Host 53:03
Let’s wrap up with one more question. This is from Philip, how do you keep an eye on your own mental health? Why working in a sometimes challenging mental health setting, especially during these trying times of a pandemic?
Brock Cook 53:15
That is an excellent question. And I’d love to say that I was amazing at it. But that would be a lie. I think I’ve had my own mental health issues with depression. Those of you if you’ve ever listened the podcast, I’ve done an episode about explaining my situation. It’s one of those things where I don’t feel like I was amazing at it. But with each time something happens on reflection, reflection is a really powerful tool. Being able to pick up triggers or being able to pick up things that really affect you is a really important thing. Also having a really good support system. I’ve got an amazing support system now that I know I can call on wherever I need. I was having a conversation with a really good friend today about something that I’d been reflecting on with regards to my mental health and made a few like sort of breakthrough connections with Hey, when this happens, it kind of affects me like this. So I think being open and honest having those conversations with your support network, being able to reflect and the benefit of the reflection as well is you don’t end up just stuck in a loop repeating the same problem and triggering yourself and setting yourself off again and again and again. The basics again, though basics, healthy lifestyle. Get outside get some sun, read a book that is completely unrelated to work if work is the thing that’s triggering you trying to work out what is stressing you what is impacting your mental health can take a long time. Depending on you know what’s going on in your life, obviously Everyone’s got a lot going on. But I also think being just a little bit kind to yourself, like you mentioned, these are difficult times, and even if things are floating on air, and you’re 10, out of 10, at the moment, just really the fact that you’re living in a world that is going through a lot right now, and there’s a lot of tension, whether it’s political, or whatever else it is, whatever the reason is that this sort of these global or national tensions, that’s gonna have an impact for me, knowing that, taking a break from actually looking at the news, really valuable tool for me. I personally have had breaks from things like social media, essentially, to distance myself from being out from having to take on, you know, everything that’s going on in the world at the moment. That’s the thing that I found works for me. And it’s, it’s gonna be a matter of experimenting, I guess in a lot of ways and finding a handful of things. Let’s say five things that work for you, someone’s preventative, some as when you’re already feeling a bit down are a bit burnt out that you can do to sort of pep yourself back up or help yourself recover a bit. So yeah, there’s no A plus B equals C kind of answer for it. But a lot of it is common sense is find out what’s essentially hurting you and either avoid it or you have it in moderation so that you can cope with it better, basically.
Host 56:40
Thank you, Brock, we’re going to go ahead and wrap up. But thank you so much we value you and the input that you have provided us today. Very honored to have you with our virtual conference this year. So thank you so much.
Brock Cook 56:54
Firstly, I want you to know that your support with this project is massively appreciated. I’d love to hear, drop me an email or DM on the socials and talk to me about how I can add even more value for you. If you know any other OTS who also get value from occupied or occupied last let them know and send them occupied podcast.com And remember, keep occupied
156 – The Memory OT ft Allison Brush
May 22, 2023
If you’re like me you are aware that memory is a thing. You may even know there are different types etc but for many this is the extent of it. Allison Brush IS the Memory OT. I came across her page on Insta where she puts out awesome content around the OT’s role when working with people whose memory has been impacted. It seemed like something that I definitely had to find out more about and brought you along for the ride!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CsZ-mmnsWL2/
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
So I’ve been asked a fair bit about where I think the profession is at right now and where I think it’s going. So here is a short and sweet exploration of that exact topic…..or is it….
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep OccupiedBrock @brockcookOT brock.cook@me.com
153 – How To/Not to Enact Change in the Profession ft Clarice Grote
Mar 21, 2023
Clarice and I connected online after a little social media break when I arrived to a bunch of online controversy regarding a movement being pushed to change the profession in a variety of ways. We decided that we would get together and have a chat and break down some of the points logically and see if there was any merit behind the movement.
We explore OT’s role in politics and how Clarice’s background makes her the perfect therapist to break this down for me. We look at various practice areas and the impact the medical model is having on them as well as our opinions on the positive or negative aspects of this impact. Lastly we leave it open for the facilitators of the FullScopeOT movement to come on and discuss their ideas with us for you all.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
152 – ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION ft Jaime Leite Junior
Mar 08, 2023
Session Title: Dissident Genders and Sexualities and Life Possibilities
Session Details This seminar aims to create a dialogue about the possibilities of life faced by the population who experience dissidence of genders and sexualities. Taking the Brazilian reality as a central example, the proposal is that we can understand how the vulnerability and subalternization processes of these people create and maintain situations of social injustice, demanding actions from every society engaged in social transformation.
Leadership is a topic that everyone has come across during their studies, career, sports engagement or just general life but how’s your knowledge about what it actually is? This episode we decided to bounce around the idea of leadership and pick it apart in order to fully understand what’s involved.
Who better to bring on board for this one than the AMAZING Dr. Arameh Anvarizadeh! AOTA Vice President, Director of Admissions and Associate Professor of Clinical OT at USC, Founding member and chair -elect of the Coalition of OT Advocates for Diversity, Youngest women of color to be inducted into the Roster of Fellows (FAOTA), among many many other accolades, Dr Anvarizadeh’s leadership CV is second to none.
In This Episode – Can Anyone be a Dope Leader? – we cover:
What is leadership? Why do we need leadership? Can leadership skills be developed? What are the essential leadership skills? And more!
What do you think? Do you consider yourself a leader? Do you want to be a leader?
As always, if you enjoyed the episode please like, share, and subscribe.
Have you ever thought about starting your own business? What is stopping you?
150 – Why do we need to talk about Occupational Therapy?
Feb 23, 2023
Welcome to Occupied 3.0. Some of you may have noticed a lack of episodes recently, and for that unannounced break I apologised. But I’m back and I’m inspired to continue bringing you more regular eps and interviews again!
A hot topic every April during OT month. Why does no-one know what we do? I want to look deeper into how this became a problem and what can we do to fix it.
Occupational Therapy Practice Framework: Domain and Process (3rd Edition)”. American Journal of Occupational Therapy. 68 (Suppl. 1): S1–S48. March–April 2014. doi:10.5014/ajot.2014.682006
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
So many moons ago, I did an episode on occupied about how to talk about occupational therapy. And it remains, to this day, one of the most popular episodes that are out there. There’s been a lot of talk recently, around a similar topic. And it tends to be something that comes up pretty much every April every 18 months, surprisingly, in the States. So I thought I’d revisit this topic and try and delve into a little bit more detail so that we have a better understanding of why it’s important that we do gain a good professional identity, we do gain confidence in what we do, and we are speaking about the profession in a more consistent manner. Why? Or how do we know this is an issue, I only have to look into a number of ot Facebook groups or Instagram accounts, or particularly my favorite meme pages to see that the complaint of no one knows what we do is still prevalent within the profession. There’s been some talk recently about blaming the individual or blaming the profession. And I do want to assure you, I’m not here to blame anyone. But I am here to hopefully get you to see that although it’s not an individual’s fault, or it’s not the professions fault, it is also our responsibility to fix it because no one else is going to fix it for us. So I think it’s important that we have a look back at sort of how we got here. And to do that, because we’re such a young profession, we have to go right back to the very start. So it’s important to know if you don’t already that ot was birthed from a group of people from a number of different professions, there were psychologists, or psychiatrists, nurses, and a lot of other professions, I can’t read all of them off the top of my head, but other professions are weren’t even health related, who all saw this sort of gap in the medical model at the time, there were people slipping through the cracks, and there was things not being done because it didn’t fit within that medical model.
2:47
The overall sort of consensus was that occupational therapy could be a profession that looked more at the complex interrelation of social, economic, and biological reasons for a person’s dysfunction, rather than just the medical reason. So it was looking outside the medical model to improve health and well being, even if they weren’t exactly the terms used back in the early 1900s. There was early on, and I believe he was one of the founding people of IoT, I can’t remember his name off the top of my head. But they came up with four sort of core points for what would become occupational therapy. And those points were that occupation has a positive effect on health and well being. That occupation creates structure and organizers. I’m that occupation brings meaning to life, culturally, and personally. occupations or individual people value different occupations. The weird thing about that thing, the thing that I actually really like about that, as even though that was written many moons ago, and the profession has through a number of different phases, the phase that we’re coming back to for the last 1520 years. This fits perfectly. I can’t think of a really good sort of occupation based practice or that that doesn’t fit within these four points. But since that was written before or like after that was written, we went through a phase around World War Two, were based on the huge number of injured vets and some criticism From the medical model professions, the medical model health system, OTS adopted more of a reductionist philosophy, we kind of merged, we assimilated more with that medical model. And I think it was more to do with just needing more hands to do what they were doing. OSI at that point in time, very small, a very small percentage. And we’re thinking sort of David and Goliath type sort of odds. But we were essentially it was mob mentality, in a way we, the dominant culture was the medical model culture. And after looking for validation and looking to, I guess, kind of cement our identity, even though we’re still kind of forming our own identity, and didn’t really know what that was, we still are to a degree, we tended to, or the profession itself tended to move into that reductionist philosophy, where a lot of practical skills were adopted, and grown, especially around the areas of physical rehab, and assistive technology, etc. But we tended to drift away from our core philosophy, which was the use of occupation as a therapy. This way, there’s a number in in in different clinical settings, there is still a number of different phases, but the main sort of ones we’re we’re that were started off being very occupation based, we moved into a more reductionist role, a more reductionist framework around the sort of late 40s 50s. And it really wasn’t any really wasn’t until occupational science was coined, and was was formally formed in 1989, and then rolled out through the early 90s, that the profession had a good hard look at itself and started to move back towards its roots. Now, I can’t imagine how big a shift that would have been, and the the time and effort that it would have taken to shift our whole profession, even that, yes, in the 90s, to get the profession would have been much smaller population wise than it was than it is right now.
7:48
But you’re really trying to steer a huge ship with what essentially was a handful of therapists that we’re driving that movement. So whether you are in care, occupational science or not our ridiculously impressive feat. Either way, the underlying philosophy of at evolve from being more of a diversion from illness, which it kind of had evolved into during that reductionist period, it became more of a diversion or thing as opposed to looking at enablement through the use of occupation. So that’s how we kind of got here, we’re still in that transition phase, we’ve still got therapists that qualified and worked. We’ve still got, like during that reductionists period, yes, there. They may be in the academic roles. They may be retired, they’re still the one thing I’ve learned about OTS is even in retirement, they still seem to they love the professional enough that they still are usually quite involved, which I think is says amazing things about the profession itself, which is, which is wicked. But there’s still that influence. A lot of the theories and the textbooks that we don’t even think twice about using were develops during that reductionist time period. And yes, some of the newer ones may have been developed through the sort of transition period of the 90s. But there’s still that flavor. I’ve talked a lot on occupied about cultural transitions. And I’m thinking and again, completely unrelated to the topic, but the idea of ongoing cultural influence in my episode, interpret and God around the colonization of Australian healthcare system. And yes, in that example, yes, like, I’m not trying to colonize the work that I’m doing. But I’m working in a system that has been influenced for many, many years, quite often without me really putting any thought into the fact that hey, wait a minute, maybe this isn’t working for everyone involved, that the the profession is the same, we are enculturated into the workplace that we go into. And if that workplace is heavily influenced by a well now very old reductionist paradigm, then you’re going to be as a new grad enculturated into that. One of the reasons that I believe that we need to talk about ot more or better is, in order to change this. Now we need to try and complete this transition over to our very occupation based back to our roots, our core assumptions. Back to those four points that I spoke about earlier, that occupation has a positive effect on health and well being it creates structure and organizes time brings meaning to life, culturally and personally. And it’s individual people value different occupations. The reason we need to get back to that we need to complete the transition back to that is at the present, if we pictured on I don’t have the exact numbers, but if we picture that there’s 50% of the profession, and that’s probably a bit overkill, but 50% of the profession working in a very sort of reductionist paradigm still and 50% working from the more widely promoted occupation based paradigm. How are those two kind of diametrically opposing philosophies going to form one single, cohesive, professional identity?
12:23
You think about the recent US elections, like there was so much turmoil, because there was two parties that had such an opposing view on opposing philosophy on one what it was to be an American, and to the what the system does, pretty much everything wasn’t really on, it was pretty much everything. And that kind of you saw the turmoil, that that created of not being able to form this cohesive identity of Hey, this is America, this is our system, this is etc, etc. Same thing, any any opposing views, people struggle to be able to negotiate that middle ground for an identity. I can’t remember who said it, but the one of my favorite quotes, I think there might have been Einstein actually talked about the true measure of intelligence being able to hold two opposing views without reacting. That’s a side note. But anyway, so why do we want to talk about it? So, I come from a very socially social constructionist lens, in that. I believe that words, form meaning. Words, create relationship, words, creates. our beliefs and shapes are lenses that we look through. One of the issues with not having a cohesive, a strong professional identity is that we’re kind of all doing our own thing. And when someone goes, Oh, what’s it everyone’s got their own idea? everyone’s working from their own little silo, everyone’s looking at their profession through their own little lens. And we’re looking when we when we get asked that question, it’s us as professionals as OTS looking in inward at the professional going, Hey, well, what exactly are you and through my lens, you’re this and through Joe blows lens, you might look slightly different and they’re gonna explain it differently. There’s no there’s no way to really change that from the inside so that when everyone looks in, we’re all reading off the same page, what we need to do is sort of get a groundswell of people who are confident and understand what the profession is. And the only way that we’re going to know that people understand what the profession is, is if they’re talking about it. So we can go, Hey, that person there is describing the professional exactly the same as I do. One interesting thing that I did find today, actually, while I was doing a little prep work for this episode was for many moons. I’ve used an elevator talk. For the for describing the professional when someone asked me what is OT, I start by setting the expectation of what occupation is, is one of the biggest complaints I see from therapists is was no point because people don’t understand occupation, or people think occupation means something else. And my argument has always been well, it means what we think it means, or has meant that for a lot longer than it’s meant to be, like our job or employment. So and people understand. When we describe it, the way we look at it pretty easily, I’ve never had anyone get it, that doesn’t make any sense. So the definition that I’ve used quite often is, when as OTS, when we’re looking at what we call occupation, we’re looking at anything, any activity that you do anything that you’re engaged in, that occupies your time. And for different age groups, that’s going to be different things for kids, it’s going to be playing for elderly people that might be reminiscing and family time for middle aged people. It could be work holidays, growing a family, whatever it is. And then we would then look at anything that then stops you from engaging in those things. We work with you to come up with creative and sustainable ways to get back to occupying your time with the things that you want to do,
17:12
and need to do. So my focus when I when I talk about occupation has always been very much on the time. And it always shocked me when I put out that that first episode mail probably two years ago now that a lot of people were like, Oh, that’s really novel that’s new. And I was just like, I don’t really know if it is. This thing that I found today is that the American ot Association has the occupational therapy practice framework, which I know, I’ve heard many American therapists or Mac students mainly talk about having to study the OT pf in the textbook associated with that, which according to this references, the OT pf, or occupational therapy framework, domain and process a third edition from 2014, I believe. There’s a sentence in there that struck me, and it was talking about occupations. And it says an occupation is defined as defined as any type of meaningful activity in which one engages in order to occupy in quotes, one’s time. So I don’t fully understand why the time aspect of my definition was sort of novel. But it also supports that, that the eo ta is trying to change that consistent message from the inside using our metaphor from before. So that if we, if if you are using the occupational therapy practice framework, that’s your consistent, that’s what you should be looking at, for your whole process. But right from the point of defining what occupation is, now, if we’re all defining occupation the same way doesn’t matter what practice area in if you think about your practice area, and you read over that definition, an occupation is defined as any type of meaningful activity in which one engages in order to occupy one’s time. Any practice area, think of your practice area, that definition fits. If that definition doesn’t fit to your practice area or one that you’re thinking of slightly different issue and we may need to have a look at that. But that’s that’s what the profession is. That’s the the core assumption is that that anything that fits under that definition has a positive effect on health and well being creates structure and organizers Time brings meaning to life culturally and personally, and is individual. So people value different, different things, different ones, to any type of meaningful activity for an individual. Again, this sets us up just this definition sets us up perfectly and how we should be looking at ourselves within a clinical practice. We’re looking at the individuals, what they find what occupies their time, for starters. And the meaningful activity. The occupation is what brings that meaning to their life culturally and personally. So it sets us up as very much the E almost in a consultative role, we’re not in the center of this, it puts the person right at the center of our practice, just by definition, how it’s worded. It’s perfect. I mean, it’s obviously not perfect, perfect, but it’s a really, really good starting point for us to start considering where we fit how we define occupation, if everyone starts talking about occupation, and defining it in a fairly simple, I’m not saying you have to use this, you can use that exact definition if you like, or any variation of it, or you can use your own as long as it’s sort of highlighting the same points. If everyone is relatively consistent, that language then starts forming, or it starts shaping your lens, your view, looking back at the profession, it starts shaping your lens, when everyone is shaping their lens, and those lenses start to be semi consistent, we start reshaping the culture of the profession, because that’s what culture is. Culture is those shared values and beliefs. So if we are using our own language, and that language is spreading, people are resonating with it, people are using it.
22:09
Clients start defining occupational therapy to other people, in the same way that we have that almost I guess you describe it nowadays as going viral. That word of mouth, that spread of information that helps shape our culture. And once that sort of groundswell happens, it’s kind of like a snowball effect in that the more people doing it sort of exponentially means that even more people are going to start doing it, we do will, we will get that mob mentality. effect, so to speak. But that’s how we can groundswell from the from the grassroots from you guys, the people on the ground working directly with clients. That’s how you can help change the profession. When everyone’s thinking the same, that’d be a culture and that becomes a consistent professional identity. With that professional identity comes confidence in being able to stand up for what we are, who we are, what we do, and where we work. Now, yes, there are systems in place that do not align with all of that those things that I just listed. But we as individuals don’t have a lot of control over the external factors of the system. We have been described as a very transactional model. But we are actually a part of this profession. We are a part of the culture, you are part of the system of occupational therapy that makes up occupational therapy. You and your influence over the therapists and the surround you have the power to start that snowball. We have that power to start changing minds, changing opinions. And bringing the profession closer and tighter than it has been in 100 years. Bringing ot back to its roots bringing ot back to being a very tight knit consistent, but still very broad in where we work. I think that’s the other thing is that by doing this, we’re not losing anything. We’re not losing any opportunities for places that we work, we are simply taking back our power and our identity as therapists. And I think that’s really important. The other aspect of language is obviously that there are a lot of occupational therapy specific terminologies and words, you know, we look at occupational deprivation, occupational apartheid, occupational justice, etc. I would see little branching out into some of those as almost secondary to being able to define the profession itself. A lot of those terminologies help bolster confidence in the profession from within the profession. But there’s not a lot of times that I’ve seen that those terminologies are used outside of the profession, which is an interesting point in itself, and probably the topic for a whole nother podcast about whether or not we should be using those terms when there are equivalent terms outside of the profession that we might be able to tap into and use anyway. But we’ll leave that for another time. For now, I challenge you to come up with your elevator speech. Let me know you can message me through Patreon. You can tag me on Instagram. I know ot for life is running a little campaign throughout ot month this year in 2021. asking people what the elevator speech is, and I’m gonna send her mine. I’m gonna put mine up on Instagram, I will
26:44
tag it, feel free to have a look at it. I encourage you to tag yours tag me and tag OT4lyfe and let’s start trying to build a more cohesive culture within occupational therapy. So yes, it’s no one individual or no profession to blame, but it 100% is still our responsibility to fix it, because if we don’t no-one else is gonna do it for us.
149 – Rural Practice as a Newgrad ft Holly Gawthorne
Jan 04, 2023
You may have heard her on the Holly the OT podcast and if not then definitely get on that! Holly works in a super remote Australian town called Lightening Ridge. Her experience of the newgrad transition on top of working super remote is unique and one that everyone can take lessons from.
148 – ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION ft Sakshi Tickoo
Oct 25, 2022
Session Title Sexuality as an Occupation
Session Details Human sexuality is an ongoing occupation that develops at each stage of an individual’s life. This session will focus on understanding the basics of sexuality and the various ways it translates into human occupations. It will also explore how therapists can practically integrate sexuality within their occupational therapy education, practice, and clinical settings.
147 – Should Therapy be Conducted Outdoors
Oct 18, 2022
Our Roundtable Brad:
Brad Williams is an occupational therapist based in Adelaide, Australia and enjoys thinking deeply about why we do things the way we do and shaking things up or trying new things when there might be better ways of doing things.
Brad created Naturally Gathered with the mission of changing children’s lives through connection, belonging and occupations in nature. They do this by delivering engaging, strength-focussed and nature-based therapy services to support children to reach their goals, discover their potential and know what they can contribute to the communities and the world.
Talking Points
Benefits and drawbacks of outdoor learning and therapy
Impact of Covid 19 on indoor vs outdoor therapy
The future of learning
Occupation based practice
Are OT practitioners more benefited from practicing outdoors?
146 – Eating Disorders Program Followup ft Carissa Gualano
Oct 11, 2022
Carissa returns to the podcast! During her last episode (OCCUPIED 123) she discussed her personal experience with eating disorders and was about to embark on her doctoral project. She has now completed that project and has come back to talk about how it went.
https://youtu.be/X2pLe_F8Xgk
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
If you want even more valuable content join <<Occupied Plus+ on Patreon>> for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship and much much more!
145 – ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION – ft John Knight
Sep 19, 2022
Session Title
Digitally Occupied: Alienation, Autonomy and Resilience
Session Details This session will cover the learnings from a number of years research into digital workers’ occupational experience. Findings from a four-week diary study, using online data collection and a variety of elicitation methods will be presented in detail. The data points to a need to extend Wilcock’s framework in order to account for the knowledge component, implicit to this type of work. Lastly, a number of tools and frameworks developed in the course of the overall research project to help build autonomy and resilience are presented. These tools were developed with the research cohort over a number of collaborative workshops but have never been presented or published so far.
144 – THE OT ROUNDTABLE – Should Every OT Practitioner Be A Fieldwork Educator?
Aug 12, 2022
Our Roundtable Guest:
Nancy is an occupational therapist in Maryland who has worked in a skilled nursing facility for 3 years, the first year as a new grad traveler. Nancy loves helping people as cliche as it may seem, that’s her passion in life. Helping people in all/any capacity, and OT especially allows her to do that everyday. Nancy has a YouTube channel, where she teaches students and clinicians about OT and healthcare in general. She also has a psychology background so she functions from a place of understanding, offering spiritual help and providing counseling to people as they navigate their lives. She loves entrepreneurship, having so many business ideas; especially when it comes to therapy and outside of therapy. Advocacy of OT and inclusion is also one of her many passions, as she was born in Ghana, and would love to have a rehab center there one day to help people unable to access quality rehab/habilitation.
Talking Points
Is being a fieldwork educator a skill?
What are traits that make a good educator?
Importance of communication
Navigating safety and expectations
Educators knowing their roles in fieldwork education
When do you know that you are ready to take students?
143 – An Exploration of Creativity ft Moo Smith
Aug 05, 2022
I am a fan of Moo Smith. A YouTube creative who’s style and attitudes towards creativity align quite closely with my own. I’ve observed Moo’s development and growth in her field for a couple years now. I’m wanting to put together some episodes exploring aspects of everyday occupations and the things people get out of it, why they choose to do certain things etc. In this episode Moo and I explore creativity and where the mental and physical benefits of creativity might lay as well as how Moo manages the balance between using creativity for self expression as well as a business.
142 – THE OT ROUNDTABLE – Do Occupational Therapy Practitioners Make Good Entrepreneurs?
Jun 29, 2022
Our Roundtable Guest:
Tomeico is an occupational therapist in North Carolina and entrepreneur extraordinaire. She is the host of the Therapy Entrepreneurs and Leaders of Color podcast, owner of Fasion Consulting (a business coaching and consulting company for therapy entrepreneurs), an author of 3 books on entrepreneurship, and a business owner with over 17 years experience.
Talking Points
What makes OT practitioners good (and bad) as entrepreneurs
Navigating the ins and outs of business without a business degree
141 – ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION ft Dr Allison Sullivan
Jun 20, 2022
Session Title
“How Did I Get Here? One Occupational Therapist’s Search for Meaning”
Session Details (TW // sexual violence) The purpose of this session is to provide my personal perspective as a practitioner, educator, and researcher on the topics identified as the focus of this seminar series. In these roles, I have attempted to understand people as occupational beings. This quest has led me to explore and promote people’s engagement in activities, and in learning in particular, and appreciate the high degree of trauma many people have experienced or are experiencing whenever they attempt something new or challenging. This recognition has shaped my teaching and intervention practices and has me now focused on the legacy of occupational therapy in mental health, so I would like to share some resources that have resonated with me on this journey, in hopes that they may inspire others, cause discussion, and engage lively debate.
In 2006, as I was first shifting from a clinical to educational focus, I was hopeful; the community-engaged scholar is a role that has held significance for me. In the aftermath of a personally chaotic period of my life. I met Tina Champagne, and she inspired me then and has continued to be a source of motivation, persistence, and determination in my contribution to OT.
It has always been my hope that I could contribute to improving the health and well-being of the people I encounter in life. The chance to teach holds a special potential and obligation in achieving my goals. I became very interested in studying how students learn, and how to maximize significant learning. I examined the meaning of my students’ and my own engagement in activities in many very diverse contexts, and the relationship between occupation, identity, trauma, recovery and self-discovery https://research.aota.org/ajot/articl… https://clairecunnington.com/ https://articlegateway.com/index.php/…
Natalie has an amazing breadth of experience for such a young clinician. This ep we have a look at that experience and then funnel down into her interest and experience living and working with chronic pain.
Brock Cook 0:00 G’day, and welcome to episode 140. I have the absolute pleasure today of bringing in the lovely Natalie Khan to talk about her interest in pain and occupational therapy, how that actually works, exploring her how that interest came about her experience with it, and making some correlations with the ideal sort of occupation based practice model, and what’s currently happening in pain because, from my perspective, it’s extremely, extremely fascinating. And I think we can all learn quite a bit from how it’s happening. So enjoy G’day, my name is Brock Cook, and welcome to occupied. In this podcast we’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy, we explore the people, topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources at occupied podcast.com. But for now, let’s roll the episode.
Natalie Khan 1:08 Well, it’s true. To be fair, I don’t know that I’ve met a lot of people who have just become OTS because they wanted to be in it. Funny enough. My mom’s actually an OT.
Brock Cook 1:18 Oh, really? Yeah, you probably the first thing
Natalie Khan 1:21 you know, but it wasn’t like that. I think you probably actually have met her because my mom studied overseas. And so her degree wasn’t recognized. And so she’s only recently gone through JCU to get that she was one of the students who to get that, I guess recognized. But growing up I love but like, I was interested in what my mom did, but I was also kind of like, just don’t want to do what my mom does. And so, I don’t know, it’s probably a combination of there was a moment of I think I’ll finish school and didn’t want to do any further studies. I just wanted a gap here. My parents forced me to go to uni. So stallion Yep. Out of rebellion. I studied science to prove a point that uni is not for me, because I’m really bad at something.
Brock Cook 2:20 Seems like a logical way to go. Yeah, look,
Natalie Khan 2:22 look, it was obviously not not that. But it made sense. At the time. I was like, I’m here. I’m, you know, doing science. I failed, you know, as expected, because I’m not well, at the time, I think probably become better at those sciences. But at the time, it wasn’t really important to me. I was just kind of there for the uni experience can relate. Then I had some subjects. I think it was some of the healthcare subjects I had with OTs and kind of liked it. And I thought no, actually, I like what these guys do. But I’m not I don’t want to be like my mom. But I could be an OT. But I don’t want to be like my mom.
Brock Cook 3:08 And then I’m entitled struggle. Yeah,
Natalie Khan 3:11 put into it and was like, Yeah, I love what he does. So here I am I at now.
Brock Cook 3:19 Yeah, just like your mom. Just like.
Natalie Khan 3:24 Yeah. That wasn’t what I expected it to be. But that’s alright. Have you regretted it? So that’s,
Brock Cook 3:31 that’s all anyone could ask, hopefully. So once you finished becoming your mother, where did you move into? Like, what was your practice area? What was your passion?
Natalie Khan 3:44 Yeah, um, I guess through uni, you know, going through JCU one of the big things that we learn about is rural health and group practice. And that was something that really aligned with my values and what I wanted to do I, I, you know, had the plans prior to COVID I don’t know if you remember, because we talked about this a long time ago when you just started occupied? Probably not. But I had plans of going overseas and doing like some refugee pipe work.
Brock Cook 4:14 I do recall that actually.
Natalie Khan 4:16 I obviously, it was all planned out pre COVID You know, so
Brock Cook 4:22 COVID changed a lot of plans. Yeah.
Natalie Khan 4:25 But anyway, so I ended up I’ve prior to that. So I got into real work basically is what I was trying to get to I really enjoyed real work and I thought that was a good transition to you know, doing something like refugee type of work. And I seemed logical at the time I really enjoyed rural work and I think you know, the things that we learned at uni, I probably have a bit of a complex feeling like everything is my responsibility and I’m there to fix the world. And so you know, Remember, lecturers would say things like, oh, you know, not enough health professionals go out there and they need health professionals. And I was like, wow, they need me.
Brock Cook 5:09 Like, wait, I’m a health professional, I can do this
Natalie Khan 5:12 exam. Yeah, I’m gonna be a health professional and I can go. So I went out there and I stayed out there for two years. I did my Allied Health row generalist training, actually through JCU. I was out there. I loved it had the best time. Really, I don’t think I would have left if it wasn’t for the fact that I realized how isolated we were when COVID started.
Brock Cook 5:40 So just just for those that probably aren’t so familiar with the rural world, what’s the what would be the main differences between say what you were doing in a rural setting and what someone might do in a more Metro setting?
Natalie Khan 5:51 Yeah, so really, every day was very different. I guess there’s a combination of inpatient and outpatient work. We do anything from you know, your general older person presentations in hospital, you’ve got your, you know, your ortho surgical rehab presentations. We did hand therapy outpatient pediatrics, outpatient, your general community outpatient, palliative caseload, which was quite a big part of my caseload Actually, I didn’t expect it to, but turned out being that way. So it was really just very different every day, you know, you do outreach to different towns, and you know, overnight trips and going out into communities saw some interesting things. But it was, yeah, it was good. I think I like that no day was like the previous day. But I think, you know, towards the end of the two years, I kind of felt that I was just plateauing a little bit in my learning, because you see so much, you know, you see so many different things that, uh, you know, really different to the things that you usually seen. So you’d never really, I guess, you become really good at kind of knowing how to solve the problem, but never really good at actually knowing what, how to do something
Brock Cook 7:24 become that jack of all trades, but you don’t really have the time and the exposure to become the master of any particular area.
Natalie Khan 7:32 No, no. So you know, like, some conditions, you know, like, I guess you could have maybe two, two amputations or three amputations in a year. And that’s, that’s a busy year of amputations, you know, and so, and then you’ve got your hand conditions that you might see, you know, and you probably see the same condition to two or three times a year. So it’s just really tricky trying to, I guess, be really good at anything. And so I decided that that was probably, it was time to move on
Brock Cook 8:08 time for a change. I think for many people, I probably wouldn’t have heard that term rural generalist, I feel like it’s a very Australian thing. It is what it says on the box is invalid, it’s when you’re working in a rural area, and you become generally good at a whole range of different things so that you can meet the needs of a wider population without having essentially multiple, like in a metro, you’d have a therapist for hands, and you’d have a therapist in Powell care. And you’d have a different therapist, like you’d have a whole handful of therapists for the different areas, whereas in a rural area, I can’t remember what the population definition of rural I think it’s like under 20,000 In a town or something like that.
Natalie Khan 8:46 Oh, yeah, I think it’s something like that. We were definitely well below I think we had 1000 People in this some of the areas I was seven, I think 1800 people, so
Brock Cook 8:58 yeah, so generally, service, whatever it needs came up in the population, as opposed to being especially like a specialist, kind of having a specialist knowledge base in one particular area. Yeah, yeah. And what’s sort of the other sort of relatively unique thing with rural general stuff is just the area that you cover as well. Like, do you have any idea like how many like, what sort of how many kilometers How will the like, how are big an area you are?
Natalie Khan 9:29 I don’t probably don’t know the exact area. But oh, I mean, I could probably you could probably drive about two hours into most directions, I guess. And that was the area. I don’t know if that makes sense. But kind of the area that we covered and then that it was you know, someone else’s Dix district would start and that’s the area and you know, you I think you become really good at, you know, as a real general unless you become really good at just collaborating with those specialists, clinicians, so you know, you’ve got those major people at the metropolitan areas and call them you say, Hey, I’ve got another pediatric patient here. This is what’s going on. And I think to them a lot of times, it’s pretty straightforward stuff. And they’re like, oh, yeah, we see 100 of these a day, but it was a bit different.
Brock Cook 10:26 For us. Yeah. In those areas to you also in that was like rural generals and other professions as well as you. Yeah,
Natalie Khan 10:33 yeah. Sorry, everyone. Well, all of the Allied Health, actually even medical nursing, everyone’s everyone’s a real generalist. So it’s kind of the
Brock Cook 10:45 big family.
Natalie Khan 10:47 It is it is, but it was really nice. It was, it was great. I had the best time, you know, you get to know everyone really well, you get to work with all the team members really closely. And everyone knows exactly what everyone’s roles are. And so it’s makes it makes a really nice place to work.
Brock Cook 11:06 Yeah. And you mentioned earlier that you originally were planning to go and do refugee work. Where did that interest come from?
Natalie Khan 11:13 Oh, I think again, it’s probably, like goes back to me thinking that I can save the world. On my own. I, when I’ve honestly wanted to do that, I think since I was about seven years old. At the time, I thought I was going to be a doctor. And you know, that makes sense. That’s how you, you know, save people. I don’t know, I think it’s probably a combination of I think my heritage and my background and that my growing up in Brazil. For times, you know, mom used to take us, you know, just little things used to take us to the favelas, and we have to give all of our all of our toys away that we didn’t, you know, so that we didn’t use so just I guess, even though it’s probably in the grand scheme of things, a little thing, but I think it just started to instill some of those things. And that, you know, there’s other people out there who are less fortunate than us who need support. And, you know, my dad, he’s of Iraqi Kurdish descent. So he, he was a refugee himself. So I think, you know, probably all of those things just kind of came together and the need to help people out there. And, you know, I guess helping your people, you know, I guess, have your same background. And that doesn’t have to be, but I think it’s just
Brock Cook 12:44 it’s crazy, the thing you end up being sort of drawn to, I guess, yeah,
Natalie Khan 12:47 I think it’s just it’s to created a bit of a passion for me and working with minority groups, probably, you know, which is one of the reasons why also like rural health, and you know, like indigenous Aboriginal health, it just kind of all fits under that same bubble of people who are disadvantage, for most of the time reasons that are out of their control. And, again, me thinking that I can save the world.
Brock Cook 13:17 But I feel like that’s, that’s, like fairly common, not necessarily save the world, but like wanting to help people is, is a pretty common value held by people. Like I think that’s just one of those things that you’d be hard pressed to find someone that isn’t attracted to the profession that doesn’t have that value in some way or form. Like it’s just one of those things that’s very much associated with not even just OT, but like a lot of health related professions. It attracts people that want to help other people.
Natalie Khan 13:47 Yeah, yeah. I think probably, sometimes I think I’ve gotten better at it. It’s there’s been times where I think it was unhealthy. The levels of
Brock Cook 13:57 Well, the first part is admitting you’ve got a problem. Oh, yeah.
Natalie Khan 14:01 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I think it’s a lot healthier. Now. I realize I can’t save everyone. But you know, it’s led me to where I am now. I think I just probably been a higher achiever for a while, not necessarily always academically, but you know, just from a I don’t know. Yeah, providing value to people’s lives is
Brock Cook 14:27 enough. I’ve still stand by the fact that I still think some of the best OTS aren’t necessarily the ones that are best in the books.
Natalie Khan 14:34 Yeah,
Brock Cook 14:35 I wouldn’t agree. i Well, I’m not saying that I was a good OT or emigrant it but I definitely was not good at the books. Yeah. I was much more practical person still am, but didn’t really even find my feet until I started placement and was actually doing things because that’s where I learned the most and that’s where I sort of went oh, wait, everything just clicked on one. I understand how some of this stuff works now, I can actually put it into practice.
Natalie Khan 15:05 I think it was pretty similar. I feel like after placement marks just like, yeah, I rocketed and I was like, Oh, wow, this is, you know, it’s all falling into place. And it makes sense.
Brock Cook 15:16 I did have, I did not enough have ever told the story on here. But I did have a ran into one of my old lectures, she’s not there anymore. So no one can look her up, did have one of my old lectures that I ran into at a conference once. It was the very end of the conference, everyone was having a few like adult beverages. And I remember talking to her, and I asked her I’m like, you know, what was your perception of me as a student? Because I didn’t, I knew I wasn’t a very good student. And she was just blunt. She was like, up until you went to placement. We didn’t even really know why you were there. And then you came back like this completely different person. And everyone was like, Oh, my God, what happened to me? And I just absolutely cracked up. And I’m like, well let the least I was on the right track. And I was aware enough to realize that was what was going on as well. Yeah, yeah. But it’s
Natalie Khan 16:07 funny. I think even when I was a student, I remember seeing a lot of people coming back from placement and just kind of going, Oh, well, yeah, really a different person to what I remember.
Brock Cook 16:18 It’s amazing how much people grow later on. In our course, it’s pretty much 12 months where the placement and like the difference that people can change, although the amount that people can change in that 12 month period is massive. Now obviously, for other courses, it’s it’s laid out differently. But I mean, everyone does the essential, essentially the same amount of placement. And I’m assuming everyone goes through some sort of similar transformation, as we slowly indoctrinate you into the profession. Yep, yep.
Natalie Khan 16:50 No, I grabbed Remember, it’s was? Yeah, interesting to see the differences that we saw.
Brock Cook 16:59 So then you’ve started another Instagram account, which is where I found I was like, wait a minute, is this the same person? The gram, yes. Talk me through it. Does that slit aesthetically, as I was saying, started, it’s amazing. And it’s super creative, and I love it. But
Natalie Khan 17:20 look, again, I think there’s there’s room for improvement. I’m trying still trying to figure out the aesthetics. But, basically, so I did a rotation and persistent pain. It was a bit of a journey of how I got there. But I think in my time there, I really realized how much misinformation is out there. About health in general, really, to, you know, just put it simply but persistent pain, I noticed that, you know, really a big, biggest part of my job was actually just trying to bring down those barriers of this is what you think painters, this is what it actually is kind of meeting them halfway. And so I just thought, you know? Well, you know, it’s probably it’s a combination of things. And then I thought, you know, I want to share those things with clinicians, I want to share those things, with anyone really who’s interested in those topics. And then it’s kind of just evolved into me sharing really short snippets of like evidence based articles and the findings of those that feel like the other thing with health professionals, you know, I think reasonably so you know, we spend all day at work, the last thing we want to do is come home and read a journal article, it’s boring, it’s usually not a really nice read. So I’ve been trying to, you know, really summarize things as best as I can, and then link the article at the bottom to anyone who’s interested in looking into things. And sometimes I’ve commented on, you know, the quality of the article, again, anyone who’s interested, but just trying to stay transparent and sharing those things. So that hopefully somewhere in the world, someone’s scrolling down their feed and going, oh, you know, that was 20 seconds of learning that I’ve just done. And that wasn’t a lot of effort and, you know, might make a difference to my practice, and then
Brock Cook 19:29 the seconds more than they had before.
Natalie Khan 19:31 Yeah, yeah. Hopefully open some thoughts about things and
Brock Cook 19:37 to how do you how do you make the jump from rural generalists wanting to work with minorities and then pain? Yeah, seems like a big stretch.
Natalie Khan 19:50 To be honest. I actually, it was a very logical next step. For me. It made a lot of sense, I think, you know, in a way, I guess you You could argue that people in pain, even though I think of stats is about one in four people in Australia have persistent pain. So it’s not exactly a minority group. But it’s a misunderstood group. It’s a very misunderstood group of people, I think, you know, really, it probably started. And I don’t, I don’t know if you know, this, or if other people listening know about this, but when I, in the rural world, you know, you’ve got your normal patients, your, you know, your pretty straightforward patients. And then you’ve got this other group of patients that’s kind of considered the big, they call them the forgotten. So they’re kind of those people that have really complex health needs, potentially would be doing a lot better if they were closer to a big city. But they’re just kind of got, they just seem like they’ve just been forgotten by the health system. And, you know, there’s just, there’s so much going on. And a lot of times, there’s huge barriers and getting people access, you know, you know, maybe they’re too unwell to drive to two hours to go to the next town, and was actually where I would have been about an eight hour return trip for some of the places where I was working. So it’s just too far to go, you know, to
Brock Cook 21:26 more complex, Elsa, yeah,
Natalie Khan 21:29 yeah, to, you know, go and see the specialists that you need to see, to get the care that you need, and the care that you, I guess deserve. And so, again, keeps coming back to the same to the complex of me thinking that I’m alone. And I wasn’t going to save the world. There was a few patients in particular that I had where they had complex, very complex health conditions. And part of that was persistent pain, which at the time, I probably didn’t really look at as a condition in itself, I just looked
Brock Cook 22:14 at it as it was, like a symptom of something. Yeah, it’s
Natalie Khan 22:17 a symptom of something else. And, really, it’s not related to me, that’s the doctors responsibility, but you know, they’re struggling with their occupational performance. So that’s, that’s my focus. So I didn’t really consider pain all that much. But, you know, we had a few doctors who, you know, a few patients in particular, they would present to hospital. And, again, the doctors didn’t really know those conditions. And so they would say things like, oh, you know, they’re just here, but they’re actually fine. They don’t, they’re not really, they don’t really have this in and they don’t really have pain, because I saw them do this, you know, I turned around, and then they said they have pain, but then they scratch their head with their arm, and they were able to do it fine, you know, that type of stuff. So it’s obviously they’re making it up, or it’s in their head. And, you know, initially again, that was, you know, a new ground, I didn’t really know that much about those things, the doctors, they were people that are generally respected. And so, okay, well, they came up there, right, I saw them, I saw the patient, they were doing those things, and they didn’t look like they’re in pain was when the doctor comes in, they’re in a lot of pain. And so led down to a bit of a, you know, okay, probably complacency of those things. But, you know, I think the really nice thing about being an OT is that you spend a lot of time with people compared to maybe some of those medical professions. You know, again, being an RA generalist, I saw this patient, this One patient in particular as an inpatient, and he’d be an outpatient, and he would come in as an inpatient again and see him as an outpatient. So I got to know him very well. And, you know, after a while, I was like, I don’t I really don’t think he he’s making this up. Why would anyone make anything like this up, you know, just kind of started really questioning? What those doctors and health professionals had told me why would anyone be making these things up? You know, like, you know, this person, particularly quite young, like, you know, what, why, you know, like, the just the there was, it didn’t make any sense to me why a young person would just choose to kind of give their life up and just pretend to be in pain. So, lead down a big bit of a very extensive rabbit hole of research and professional development and Looking at things differently, and joining interest groups, and all of a sudden I was the person that was kind of coordinating the multidisciplinary team, which is very questionable, given that I was a new grad. But anyway, that’s
Brock Cook 25:14 your the expertise you got.
Natalie Khan 25:18 In a very sad way, at that moment, pretend I had a lot more expertise in that than other people, because they hadn’t looked into it. Which, you know, arguably, I still didn’t know anything at all. But yeah, so it just really led to an interest in pain and learning about those things. So you know, when I came across pain, and I just, it really, it just made sense. To me, I think there was a lot of areas of OT that are obviously enjoyed being a real generalist, I was quite happy to do all the different areas of work and all the scopes of OT, yep. But nothing just made as much sense as pain did. I don’t know that.
Brock Cook 26:03 Completely. And then it’s, you said that you then did a like, off, you left the rural practice, you did a rotation through pain clinic or pain team? Yeah. Yeah. Was that did you find like, was that a an opportunity to I guess, learn even more? Or was more just to see how a dedicated painting like, what did you sort of learn going through that experience?
Natalie Khan 26:27 Um, I think probably all of those things, you know, it was, I thought it was the best thing ever. I think, my, my supervisor, actually, we were talking about it just before I left, he said, I really creeped him out. Because I was I was, you know, when I was doing my training,
Brock Cook 26:44 we think for simple, so to say, I know, like,
Natalie Khan 26:48 we, we have a good working relationship. So it’s fine. But he said that, you know, I used to, because I used to sit in the in the room when I was doing my training. And I would just write quotes of what the other clinician said. Because I just, you know, and I explained to him, I guess, you know, English is my second language. And so wording things sometimes is a bit hard, you know, trying to find the best ways of saying things. And so just everything these people were saying, I was like, Wow, that’s amazing. And so I just write this quote, zap, it’s like, running, you know, chapter, sorry, in my notebook that just had all of the people in the room. Yeah. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. This is amazing. And then I’d go back over them and try and think about how I can, you know, use those sentences and put those things together. I mean, you know, that’s how I learned might have seemed a bit
Brock Cook 27:44 might have seemed a bit odd to them. But I have obviously worked.
Natalie Khan 27:49 Yeah, he said he did say he understands that why I did it. But I think at the time, he was probably just a bit worried that I was just going to randomly whip up quotes.
Brock Cook 28:00 Just randomly start recycling what someone said the day before.
Natalie Khan 28:03 Yeah, yeah. Obviously, I didn’t do that. I think it was just, you know, I didn’t have that context. When I was learning about pain. I was just kind of, were learning whatever I saw on the internet, and like, you know,
Brock Cook 28:18 I think it’s, it’s still a rel for OT, it’s still a relatively new sort of area. Like, I know, there probably wouldn’t have been much at all in the course, when you went through on on pain specifically. And even now, I’m not sure if there’s too much more than that.
Natalie Khan 28:37 I think there’s there’s one subject, I think, a haitch, who like to double Oh, to
Brock Cook 28:45 cover some of it.
Natalie Khan 28:46 I think it’s got a lecture on pain. Which it’s hard. I think it’s really hard, because I don’t think one lecture can really do it any justice. You know, I had a actually had a student that came through, spent a week with us. And they had just gone through that lecture. And they didn’t realize that it was the same thing. That what we were doing, and it’s not, you know, criticizing the lecture or anything like that at all. You know, I looked at it and it was exactly what we were doing. But I think it’s just it’s really hard to bring to really give the topic justice.
Brock Cook 29:27 Especially seeing it’s like I said, it’s relatively new, like I know, the pain team in Townsville, like it started because of a guy I graduated with was with the OT on the team when it started. So that was I want to say 1110 years ago, 11 years ago, like that’s when it began. And like even talking to him now he doesn’t work in that team now obviously, but even talking to him because he still has contact with a lot of people that still work in that area. He’s In a completely different state now, but still sort of stays in touch with, I guess, pain practice. He’s like the stuff that we were looking at back then like, it’s completely different now. Like, it’s just such an emerging areas still, like being so, so young for our profession, obviously, pain treatment has been around since. Yeah, medicine. But on terms of OTS involvement and what ot does in that field, it’s, it’s just the baby.
Natalie Khan 30:29 It’s really, I think that’s really quite sad. And to be honest, that that’s, that’s the case. Like, I understand, I think just in general, painters are really new, like, No, I would argue that a lot of health professionals no matter what degree they’re going through going necessarily, you know, they’re not up to date with the newest paint contemporary pain neuroscience. But I think it’s really sad that OT is not often seen as a role that should work in that era. Because, you know, to be honest, I think it, it, it just makes so much sense to me, that ot should be working in pain, you know, the really the basic model of care that they look at in pain is basically to say, okay, is new at first, but it’s basically a recycled Pio. But looking at people’s environments, or looking at all these different aspects and how it impacts their pain experience and their life and their ability to do things,
Brock Cook 31:37 but I feel like that might be more to do with how pain and how that people, how they look at pain has changed. Like, I feel like like you said before, I feel like for most of human history, it was looked at as just a symptom of, you know, an injury or something else. And if there was no injury that sort of could be connected with it, then like you said, people just thought you’re making it up, or I know in fields that I’ve worked in, I’m working in pain, but people who have complained of pain without any obvious, visible trigger for it, it’s often seen as either they’re drug seeking, or they’re just trying to get medication out of out of Doctor pharmacist case manager, whoever it is that they’re talking to. So there’s always been this sort of belief that pain is not necessarily like it’s a it’s a bio, biological, biomechanical, I guess, symptom, as opposed to a neurological condition? In some cases?
Natalie Khan 32:40 Yeah. Yeah. It’s, again, it’s a misunderstood condition. I think, you know, there’s that, you know, if it’s not biological, it’s psychological. And for, it means they’re making it up, you know, there’s just no in between, in a lot of people’s perceptions with pain would you know, and you mentioned the, you know, people going and being treated as drug seekers. And it’s really, again, it’s really interesting, I’m sure, you know, there’s always going to be people out there that that are potentially, you know, but most of the people that I saw in the clinic, they’re really frustrated. And, you know, I was, I would say humiliated about the fact that they’re being treated as drug seekers, you know, really looking at it as I don’t have another option. I don’t think, you know, like, the medical teams not really realizing, I don’t know how else to manage this. This is where I’m at. Yeah, yep. And I’m desperate, because I’ve got pain. But yeah, you treat me like I’m drug seeking. Yeah. I’m just trying to live a functional life and, you know, not be in so much pain that, you know, so I can go to work and do the things that I need to do.
Brock Cook 33:53 So within those, like you mentioned, that being sort of a recycled Pio how they’re looking at it. Can you explain, I guess, in layman’s terms, how that view, like, obviously, we talked about how pain used to be, like looked at as like a symptom? How is it looked at amongst those sort of people that work in that area? Because that might give us some insight into I guess how its treated differently.
Natalie Khan 34:17 Yeah, so they call it a biopsychosocial model. So I think they it’s used a lot in mental health as well. Supposed to be used in mental health. But although they’re looking at changing it for pain, and that it’s supposed I think they’re looking at calling it the psycho, psycho socio bio model, and that bio is being put at the back. That’s the you know, like, Guess it’s trying to really highlight that bio shouldn’t be at the front. Yeah. Really? Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. I just don’t know that. I like how it sounds.
Brock Cook 34:53 It doesn’t roll off the tongue as easy. Not gonna argue
Natalie Khan 34:57 that just do this for work. Um, but it’s, you know, basically looking at, I guess, the fact that there are a lot of contributors to pain. So looking at, you know, what, what’s biologically going on to this person? Are they, you know, is there anything sinister, I guess it’s you know, as soon as the pathology anything that we need to be aware of. And then they just been looking at, you know, what other contributors if we got to this, you know, pain experience. You know, we know that people who have had difficult upbringings and difficult life experiences, they can be more likely to develop what what they call a nervous system over sensitivity or nervous system dysfunction, which can make someone more prone to developing persistent pain later, what mental health is another one of those big things, different sexual experiences, how do we feel about a pain? What does this patient think about their pain? You know, do they think it’s this really horrible thing? And it’s gonna kill them one day? Because if they do, that’s probably, you know, not a really great headspace to be in, I guess, we, I say we, but I’m not working there anymore. So yeah, we’ve done two different rotations. But, you know, the the team really, a, they look at what are the helpful and unhelpful things that this person is currently doing to manage their pain? And a lot of times, and, you know, I think part of that is because it’s so misunderstood. A lot of people have mostly unhelpful ways of how they manage their pain. So people will develop, you know, on their own, they’ll do some trial and error, and they’ll find some really helpful ways of managing their pain. But a lot of people, I guess, especially people that end up coming through pain clinics, or managing it often really unhelpful in. I’ve got the word but
Brock Cook 37:08 now we just made it. Okay. Yeah. That reminds me of I remember watching a I think it was a TED Talk years and years ago, probably a decade ago. And I from memory, it was a lady named Kelly McGonigal. I think it was either her or her sister. They both did TED talks, and are very different TED talks, but she did one about stress. And the fact that there was at the time, she was involved in research that was looking at the fact that it wasn’t stress that was killing people. It was stressing about stress that was killing people was just sort of, I don’t know why that just triggered with what you were saying about, like being in that headspace. And it’s one of those things that even like in working in mental health, it was always tricky. That was always a hard part of working with someone depending on role electronics, support them to change their headspace was usually like, you know, step one. But it’s one of those things, it’s usually easier said than done. Because it’s like, if you don’t see any hope, or you’ve been trying to fix this, or manage it, whatever it is, for however many years and you haven’t made any progress. It’s very hard for me to then come in who you’ve never seen before. Okay, yep, no, that’s cool. I know exactly how this is gonna work. And we’re gonna try something different. And it’s gonna be awesome. And then again, I’ve had that before.
Natalie Khan 38:41 Yeah, yeah, it’s hard. It is hard. And I think, you know, a big part of it is, you know, how do they how does this person feel about change? And are they ready to consider change? And if they’re not, then, you know, there’s so I spend a lot of sessions just validating people’s experience. And the fact that it must suck to, you know, to have those experiences that that they’re having, and I think, sometimes it was interesting, actually, sometimes people would just come back the next time and just go, You know what, I feel so much better already. Because you’re the first person that believed me. And I was in pain. Yeah. chuckles really confronting, actually.
Brock Cook 39:23 That in that, like, no one else does it?
Natalie Khan 39:25 Yeah. Yep. And that that made such a big difference for this person. When really, you know, we just we spoke for an hour, that’s all we did. They told me their story. And I just
Brock Cook 39:38 that’s pretty common though. I’ve I’ve heard that similar kind of thing and from many different OTAs in many different practice areas. And I feel like in reflecting on it a few times that it’s possibly something to do with like we were speaking about earlier about, you know, a certain type of person is drawn to the profession and they want to help people they want to you individually save the world in your case. But so when people come late, we’re almost cast into these roles as fixes. And that’s not necessary. I mean, previously, yes, in a very medical model health profession, or very medical model health service, that’s kind of what you are you people come to you, they don’t have the answers, you have the answers, you give them the answers, they get better. Whereas I think more and more we’re working, or the professional ot in particular, is pushing towards a more sociology, sociological basing of what we do. And that doesn’t fit. That’s, that’s the bit that I’ve always well, I’ve never been able to come consolidate, with ot being a medical profession, quote, unquote, is because we’re moving away from that sort of direct, prescriptive type medical model. And I feel like areas like pain, like as an a practice area of pain, are really highlighting that benefit of our profession, and what we can do. And the fact that the pain clinicians that I’ve spoken to their models, their practices, their even the way they view health is so aligned with mental health, yet they practice so differently. I’m like, That’s what everyone needs to be doing.
Natalie Khan 41:36 Yeah, yeah. It’s yeah, I don’t disagree. It’s, it’s definitely it’s exactly that I think we have a No, I think OTAs. You know, I think I posted about this recently, as well, you know, there was a survey done in the US. And they looked at how many OTAs worked with an A biomedical model. And it was like, a ridiculously high number, I don’t know, I want to say 70 or 80%. of people that they serve, they basically they looked at who uses a bottom up and who uses a top down approach. And most OTS actually use, you know, bottom up approaches. So, you know, very medical approaches, I think part of that is just that, you know, it’s sad, because I think we have so much to contribute by looking at things differently than other other professions, but at the same time, because we look at things differently. And I think we’re always taking us seriously. And so we almost have to compete, and kind of knowing what I know, things to you know, and I know, I know, all this lingo, and I know this stuff, and I’m an expert in something. And so I think, you know, that really leads to OTS then moving away from really what should be at the core?
Brock Cook 43:04 Yeah, I feel like those systemic pressures, even speaking with people from other countries, and completely different health systems, they’re all there. They’re all feeling that same pressure, especially as new grads. I, I feel for new grads, it’s it’s hard, especially when you you don’t have experience, or you don’t even have, like a strong experience in being able to, I guess, hold your own when it comes to try to maintain sort of your occupational role. Yeah, I mean, I was I was exactly the same when I was a new grad, I just sort of conformed with what was going on. Because I’m like, What do you want to do when you’re new grad, you want to impress whoever you’re working with, because I want to do a good job. And I want people to say, Hey, that guy is a really good at or that goes really good it. That’s what you want. You don’t want to like start rocking the boat and pushing boundaries, whereas nowadays, that’s exactly what I want to do.
Natalie Khan 44:03 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I agree. It’s exactly that. And I think sometimes, you know, the, the problem is, then I think so is that sometimes OTS can be looked at a little bit negatively by teams, because they’re like, Oh, I asked them? And they said, No. And those OTS are so unhelpful, but I think it’s because OTS are starting to push back, I just don’t know that we really know how how to push back yet in a way that other disciplines understand. I’m pushing back because there’s a better way of doing this.
Brock Cook 44:35 I’ve had that conversation a few times recently with a couple people that I do supervision mentorship with around, not just flat refusing to do like, because that’s a very common thing is someone will send a referral to an OT with what they want as indoor walker or do a functional Hill do or whatever. And I’m like, how about you? Refer to me and I use my tertiary degree that’s equivalent to your tertiary degree. And I use my clinical reasoning and I work out what that person needs. You just refer to me for like, why is it? Do you think that this person needs it, I’ve noticed that, you know, not coding at home, or they’re not doing this or whatever it is. And then I’ll work out what assessments and stuff needs to be done. But I feel like that’s a medical model, it’s a similar, like we’re talking about, like that clash between how ot really wants to practice and a system that really wants to do it the other way around. So it’s, I can kind of understand why it’s happened because like you were explaining before, with the top down, bottom up, like we want to, we want to start at the top and sort of work our way down, they want to start at the bottom, find the problem work our way up. In that way you meet in the middle is generally where that assessment stuff takes that takes hold. So I think that’s why you’re getting referrals or why OTS are often getting referrals for specific assessments is because it kind of is a bit confusing. If you’re a profession that’s always looked at, assess, assess, assess, find what’s wrong, and then you know, eliminate the problem kind of thing, then having a profession that kind of does it in their eyes sort of asks about would be confusing. It’s like, oh, okay, if they’re not going to look at the problem, then maybe that’s they just start with the assessment. They don’t. Not many other professions that I’ve ever worked with, understand that we don’t start, we don’t go from like problem to assessment, like, we’ve got this whole other thing of like occupation and roles and all that sort of stuff above that. And I think that’s where OTS need to be really confident in one owning that that’s us, like, that’s where we fall, it’s that that’s our bread and butter, but also being out confident enough to explain it to someone that doesn’t like hey, like, understand you, like there’s something going on with this person. Here’s what I see, I know, you referred for a mock of say, for example, but here’s why I don’t think that might suit based on what I’ve seen from my lens. But instead of that, I’m gonna do this and go from there. Like, it’s, I feel like we come out of uni sometimes, and we’re a little bit precious. We just expect that, you know, I’ve done for years, people should know what I do.
Natalie Khan 47:33 But at the same time, it gets old having to, you know, what you’re doing having to warrant your presence in the room, almost, you know, like, there’s both sides to it,
Brock Cook 47:44 you know, and again, like, the specifics of that are going to be dependent on like, your, the team you’re actually talking to is because you’re gonna get some teams that you might have to explain it a couple times, and they just get it. Yeah, and then you’re off to the races, whereas you’re gonna get some that just no matter how many times they hear, they’re just not gonna get their head around it. In those cases, you might have to find like, a different sort of worker, and you might have to go, Okay, I’ll just tag this referral for a mock up, and then I’ll go on to my assessment, or whatever it is. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s definitely a tricky workaround. It’s something I’ve, I’ve been in enough support for quite a few people that are going through similar type things. It’s, it’s a very common trait, or key experience. Yeah, it’s a very, it’s a shared experience that many of us have shared. Yeah. So what’s the ultimate goal was piety, aiming to eventually work in a pain team or cure the world of pain or
Natalie Khan 48:48 cure the world of pain? Look? What don’t, I don’t I don’t have an exact goal at the moment, I guess, you know, leaving the pain service, I was really keen to, I guess, keep a foot in the pain world. So I’ve started doing my postgraduate in pain at the moment, clients. So it’s only just started so I don’t know that I that I know too much just yet.
Brock Cook 49:20 First up, but
Natalie Khan 49:23 yeah, I don’t I don’t necessarily think that, you know, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with working in a painting. I don’t think I think that’s awesome. But I don’t necessarily think that you have to be based in a pain team to provide good pain care, you know, I think it’s a really nice area and that you know, you can really apply it to a lot of areas of OT you know, you could guess, currently working on inpatient wards. What I’m doing at the moment. Use it all the time. You know, you can use it in any department department. Again, you can use it in hands, you can use it in, you know, you can use it in pediatric, even.
Brock Cook 50:13 Like you said, wonderful.
Natalie Khan 50:15 Yeah, yeah, I think it’s, you know, there’s, it’s, it applies to a lot of areas, I think I’ll probably, you know, either go, depending on what the world is doing, I’ll you know, might go back rural and look at doing some of that work over there. You know, pain is one of those things that’s really quite poorly managed, again, in those groups that are disadvantaged, especially people of color, Aboriginal people, even African Americans. There’s a lot of research around how those people are generally provided a lot poorer pain, service seven years, just the general stuff like medication from doctors, I think they’re more often seem to be drug seeking or non compliant and things like that. So love to, you know, do something in that area. Or, or maybe I’ll end up going overseas and doing the refugee stuff, maybe I’ll get to apply, you know, apply some of those things out. I don’t really know exactly what that will look like, but I guess I’ll see where see where life takes me.
Brock Cook 51:28 I love that. A free. I’m gonna have to live vicariously through you.
Natalie Khan 51:34 Um, well, well, yeah, I live vicariously through other people all the time. I think, I don’t know, you know, I probably, you know, with my background, and having moved around a lot. I don’t know that I could ever imagined myself just being in the one place forever. It’s just wherever life takes me, you know, Googled pain clinics overseas. And I found a whole bunch of countries where they’ve got planned clinical work, I guess, you know, I could do that. I don’t again, I don’t really know what it will be yet.
Brock Cook 52:09 We’ll just see what happens. See where the wind takes you?
Natalie Khan 52:13 Yeah, yeah. See what happens? What opportunities come up and
Brock Cook 52:21 they kind of start becoming the IT world expert in pain? Oh, look, I
Natalie Khan 52:25 don’t think so. There has to be. I can see it now. Now, if if it happened,
it would only be because there’s not that many. Okay, isn’t?
Brock Cook 52:35 It got to start somewhere?
Natalie Khan 52:37 And look, I’m definitely by no means an expert in anything related to pain. You know, I think it’s something that I’m interested in. But I’m definitely 100% would not consider myself an expert. Even once I complete it. Once I complete my postgraduate study, I’ll still probably be like, oh, yeah, I know, something’s about pain.
Brock Cook 53:02 Do you find it’s one of those things? I think I already know the answer to this. But I feel like it’s possibly similar to mental health in the way that you can learn all you can about it, like all you want to out of books and that sort of stuff, but then working with the individual in their experience is like I could work with the same people with the same diagnosis for the rest of my life. And every single person would be different and present differently and experience it differently. And I would have to do different things with them. I suspect it’s very similar to that.
Natalie Khan 53:39 Yeah. 100%. And I think, you know, really, from a clinical perspective, a lot of times, I would spend so much time just talking to people exactly about, you know, what those things look like for them, and just really exploring things. And sometimes it’s really hard, I guess, you know, when we’re looking at that biopsychosocial model, and you identify all these factors that make them more prone to having persistent pain, or, you know, some of those unhelpful links and behaviors and, you know, just trying to figure out which ones of these are potentially causing more harm than the others and then you just start exploring those and you know, looking at, you know, obviously, sometimes you look at exploring those and sometimes you just go straight into let’s just, you know, not even focus on these, let’s just actually shift focus and look at what are your goals and as we work through the goals, we might come back and explore some of these things. But yeah, I can show
Brock Cook 54:43 on to how I like to practice in mental health. I love it.
Natalie Khan 54:47 I think but you know, like, you definitely you could not say, you know, Oh, yep, you’ve got arthritis. Let’s do this. Yeah, you need to do five minutes of this every day. And then I After two weeks, we do 10 minutes of this, you know, it just it would never work like that. Because, you know, and one of those quotes that I used to write down. But I just again, I just thought it was great was that, you know, when when people came through, and they said things like, I’ve got arthritis or you know, I’ve got fibromyalgia or whatever their diagnosis might be actually spending time with them and going, you know, oh, you know, I That’s really interesting. I’ve worked with a lot of people who have fibromyalgia in the past, I know that it usually can look quite different for different people, and it can really impact people very differently in their lives. I’m really interested to know how your fibromyalgia has impacted your life and tell me more about that. Or, you know, even just acknowledging the fact that a lot of people have very different symptoms of fibromyalgia, can you tell me about what those are, like? Just don’t think those were things that I would ever, especially when I was doing hands, you know, I’d go, Oh, yep, you’ve got arthritis, I know everything about arthritis. I’m a new grad who has been working for two years. I know exactly what we can and can’t do. And this is a process of you know, and I think it’s working and pain is really making me realize that that is not how I should be practicing at all, but again, what you know, what contexts do we kind of have to know? To do better? We don’t know, you kind of know whether that should be something that you learn at uni, but there’s so much that you’re supposed to learn at uni? Or that we just hope that clinicians eventually find that out? And, you know, a lot of people wouldn’t so then are you just, you know, was it perpetuating that cycle of unhelpful pain things? I think, you know, if anyone who who I’ve worked with in the pain clinic would listen to this, they’ll probably laugh about what I’m gonna say next. But there’s a there’s a video we would often watch with, with our clients, which was by Peter O’Sullivan, he’s a big physio in the pain world. And, you know, they, there’s a lot of studies that have found that, you know, lower back pain is actually an I Can can’t get this word, right. I think it’s isogenic. Conditioning. So I think that’s the word. Hope I haven’t got it wrong, because that’s, that’s embarrassing. But basically, it’s a it’s a condition that’s generally like, it’s caused by healthcare institutions and health professionals. Because of how we treat people, because of how we look at scans before because of how we describe people’s backs, as you know, like not we as OTs, but you know, doctors, they don’t want to point fingers, but
Brock Cook 58:07 the healthcare system,
Natalie Khan 58:10 people that the people that look at scans, will, you know, sometimes just say, really unhelpful things to people. Again, again, I can put my hand up and say, I’ve done that. And I’ve had, you know, people come to me again, within the handset and who had arthritis in their hands. And I was like, Oh, yes, I know about arthritis. It’s a wear and tear condition. What that means is, it’s the generative and it’s just gonna get worse over time. And looking back, I feel so bad that I ever said that, but that’s kind of what I took from uni. That’s what I learned. Which is completely not what arthritis is, at all. Because that’s what I took away from it. And so that was the information that I probably passed on, you know,
Brock Cook 59:02 that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. And you
Natalie Khan 59:05 know, if I don’t tell people that then it’s gonna they would have heard it from their neighbor or from someone else who I had free will Yeah, I had a grandma one. She had arthritis. And this is what happened to her and yeah, it just becomes this thing of Yeah. self self fulfilling prophecy. As you put it, that’s that’s exactly what it becomes sometimes. Sad.
Brock Cook 59:32 Do you think that because I have this sort of inkling that pain, like obviously, it’s it seems like a very good fit for it. Do you feel like it’s an area that OTS can be really occupation based in working with that population?
Natalie Khan 59:50 Yeah, yeah. 100% I think that’s what I really enjoyed about it. It’s so holistic, and you know, I think especially having I work in areas where even though I was a real generalist, there was still some restrictions, you know, I wouldn’t, you know, I wouldn’t necessarily have an outpatient, because it’s up hospital outpatient. In your, so your role is preventing hospital admission. So I wouldn’t necessarily go and help them with that, and I, that gardening, that’s not really my job. Whereas I feel like the really nice thing with pain has been that really, what it’s whatever the patient’s goals are. And so, you know, sometimes sometimes that was actually interestingly, there was a lot of people who just wanted to walk. And that was not a physio referral, you know, not necessarily could be a physio referral, but it was really, you know, because we worked in a really good interdisciplinary team, sometimes I would work with people on their, you know, just their goal of walking, obviously, if they, you know, if there was problems with their gait or other complications, then physio would get involved. But it was, you know, whatever they want to do, I want to be able to cook, I want to be able to make my own breakfast, I want to be able to be intimate with, you know, my partner. Yep. So, very different, you know, people wanting to be able to engage in their schoolwork, and, you know, I guess, from younger patients, but yeah, very, whatever their goals are, I want to be able to do work and get home and, you know, have enjoy my afternoon rather than being in so much pain that my days kind of come to an end I want, you know, work life balance.
Brock Cook 1:01:45 I guess it’s one of those. It’s one of those sort of areas where it literally impedes or works its way into affecting absolutely every little tiny part of your life. It’s not like, you know, if you break a leg or something like yeah, okay, that’s gonna affect some things, and it’s not going to affect other things. Whereas pain, it doesn’t see, I mean, I don’t know a huge amount about it, but it doesn’t even seem to discriminate with regards to where the pain is felt, it still seems to have an impact on, like, everything, everything people do.
Natalie Khan 1:02:26 It’s interesting, actually, because I don’t, I don’t often share this. I’ve kind of hinted at it on my Instagram, but I haven’t really shared too much about it. But when I actually when I was at uni, I started developing persistent pain. And then looking back, I don’t really have to try to figure out what started it, but it was, there was, you know, last year of uni, there was a lot, a lot going on, and a lot going on for me outside of uni. And I think potentially, I had an overuse injury initially, and kind of went away and then came back went away. And so I didn’t really couldn’t really, you know, I was like, oh, yeah, I’ve got an overuse injury. And me being really smart. I’ve done a placement where I did some hand stuff, it was my hands. And I was like, Oh, yes, this certainly this. And this symptom means this, I think, you know, this is what I have diagnosed myself, I had carpal tunnel. And then my other hand started hurting. You know, it was like, oh, like, trying to focus on what are the symptoms, and then, you know, after a while, I was like, I think I’ve got carpal tunnel my other hand too. So I’m obviously you know, getting quite frustrated at this. And then I diagnosed myself with something else, I was getting cubital tunnel symptoms when I you know, rest of my elbows on tables and things like that. And I’ll talk to clinicians, you know, like, I didn’t just self diagnosed, I should probably add that to next that’s probably not very, like a very healthy, good path. You know, I spoke to other health professionals spoke to him therapists. I was like, these are the symptoms I’m having, I think this is what I have. What do you think? And, you know, have a look at my hands and they’ll go yep, that’s definitely what you’ve got. And then a fluctuated went on, went away for a bit. And when I was working, really, it came back. And I was just got so bad, you know, I was just trying to get to, you know, your point in terms of impacted everything in life. I literally, I got to the point where I honestly didn’t feel like I could do anything with my hands at all. And it was so frustrating. And so, you know, I’ve always been a very independent person and there were a lot of things that I had to you know, like go got I got really bad actually. It’s probably not even that long ago now, heading about a year and a half, two years now. So not even that long ago. Yep. But it got, it got very bad. You know, like I would, if I did groceries, sometimes I would leave things in my car, because I just physically did not feel like I could carry those inside the house. And so things would stay in my car for ages that I didn’t feel I could take out. And there was a lot of, you know, housework that needed to get done, you know, lucky or, you know, with my partner, so he he took care of a lot of things for me. Not that I wanted him to but anyway, it was it was that was just kind of how things were at the time, and it just, it impacts everything. It was, yeah, I don’t think I had ever, I think that’s probably, you know, I would be lying if I said that. That didn’t also contribute to me, you know, really being drawn towards persistent pain. I mean, I started learning about it. And all of those things before all of this before, you know, before we got really bad. But I just yeah, anyway, long story short, I was still very convinced that it was a biomedical problem that needed a biomedical fix, because I know about persistent pain, I’ve been researching it. And that’s just not me. And I’ve got a biomedical problem, and it needs, you know, a fix, and I didn’t really want surgery, you know, got carpal tunnel releases, because I had a few patients that had those releases. And they weren’t, they didn’t always say that their symptoms were better. So I’m like, does that, you know, does it really helped? splints tried all of those things?
Eventually, I went and got a nerve conduction study done. And it came back, fine. There’s nothing wrong at all. And it was it just kind of clicked. But you know, I think I was I was very lucky. In that, that was one experience. And that the fact that, you know, when it came back negative, it just clicked because I learned all this other stuff about pain. I was like, oh, okay, I know what this is. You know, my partner was really eager. And he was like, you know, it’s Don’t Don’t worry that we’ll explore other options. It could be other conditions, I found out about these rare diseases that people can have. I was like, no, actually, I don’t think we need to look into any of those things. I think. I think I know what this is. But I think it ultimately came down to stress. You know, came back to too many stresses at the same time. And you know, my body just kind of went, you need to stop doing things. And I didn’t want to stop doing things, and I kept pushing myself. And so it would go, let’s make your dominant hand hurt. Because that’s where you’ve had your previous overuse injury, you know? And then it would, you know, and then I’ll go, oh, no, I can’t do things. I’ll use the other hand. And so and well, we’ll make both of you. And it’s how I was forced to rest, basically. But then it was really hard to then get back into into doing things then because I kind of felt that you know, can’t do anything with both ends. But anyway, we got there. We got there eventually. I didn’t probably sell Sarah pies. I don’t know if you’re supposed to do that. But you know, it worked.
Brock Cook 1:08:52 Every therapist does.
Natalie Khan 1:08:54 Yeah, look like my hands are fine. Now. Again, I was very lucky. I think in that it would probably be you know, looking back, it would be what they call neuro plastic pain. I think in that, you know, you’re looking at pain that has no specific physical origins. Yep. But yeah, it just, yeah, I
Brock Cook 1:09:23 got to hear your opinion because I have a similar thing, not necessarily with pain. With depression, like your story, you’re the part of your story where you’re like it just clicked I very much relate to in that I was experiencing these symptoms for so long. And then it was just all of a sudden I can’t even remember at the time like what happened but all of a sudden, it was like, oh shit, this is depression. Like how did I not see this? But one of the processes that I went through immediately after that was like, I work in this area. How the hell did I not see this? I had all this guilt. isn’t like I must be a shit clinician, like if I can’t even see this like in myself. Yeah. Is there any not necessarily like that same process? But was Was there any? I guess almost like I guess impostor syndrome type thing that you went through? Once you’ve sort of realized like, oh, wait, this is something that even something that I’ve been looking at for a number of years.
Natalie Khan 1:10:27 I don’t think it was quite bad. But um, you know, I think it would have made me realize it was a big slap in the face of the fact that I did not believe what I was preaching to my patients. You know, in that this was before I was worked in persistent pain, it was rural generalist, but, you know, I had those patients, and I was kind of trying to explain to them these different things that can happen. Somewhere deep down, I think I was still like, okay, but you know, it’s not that bad. Just like, it’s fine. Just that I think that was a big slap in the face when I kind of realized, actually, their pain is real, you know, I, you know, I think before then I my perception of pain. I don’t know, maybe this is what I took from uni, and not a bad reflection on uni at all. But you know, there’s that there’s that thing that you learn, I think when they teach you about pain, that pain is always true. It’s a personal experience. It’s always true to the individual. And it’s always true to the individual. And what I took from that was
Brock Cook 1:11:41 just in their head.
Natalie Khan 1:11:42 If they say it’s true, we pretend it’s true. The customer kind of thing. Always right. That’s what I took from.
Brock Cook 1:11:51 Yeah. Sure, yeah. Anyone that took that message? I was definitely see how you would Yeah.
Natalie Khan 1:11:58 Yeah. Like, I didn’t take from that, that everyone. If they say they’ve got pain, they probably actually. Yeah, yeah. What I took from it was, okay, we pretend that we believe them. They say they’ve got it, and we can’t prove that they don’t have it. Yeah. And so when I, when it clicked, I went, Oh, it is real. It is real, and it sucks. And it’s debilitating. And it’s frustrating. And, yeah, I don’t know, maybe my ego is too high, and that I didn’t think I was a bad clinician.
Brock Cook 1:12:39 It’s, it’s interesting, because I went through that as well, sort of, after I’d got over myself and gone, I, you know, everyone, no one would see it coming. And when you’re that close to it, you don’t see it. And then I went through that slow what’s pretty similar to what you just described, then of, I now feel having experienced it, or having recognized that this is what the experience is, I can now understand better what the people I’m working with are going through and what they’re actually experiencing, even though you might be different presentations and different experiences. I just feel like I can now be a more effective voice for these people, because I understand more what they’re going through. Which I know it sounds stupid, but no, it sounds sort of cliche, but I feel like I’ve been there so I can be a better clinician, I can be a better service to people. I agree. realm.
Natalie Khan 1:13:40 Yeah. 100%. I agree. I think it made a huge difference on the type of clinician that I was able to be. Because Funny enough, I don’t Yeah, anyway, it’s not my only, you know, that hasn’t actually looking back hasn’t actually been my only pain experience. But I just the other things just didn’t impact me as much. It was only once it came to the hands that I was like, Oh, I can’t do anything at all, you know. That’s when it you know, became frustrating. But as with the other stuff, I didn’t know, there was medical, I came up with the you know, doctors came up with medical diagnosis, which now I know aren’t really that much of a thing. But at the time was I Googled it. Google says it’s real. So it’s real.
Brock Cook 1:14:30 Go. Yeah, yeah.
Natalie Khan 1:14:34 Sorry, I forgot where I was going with that. But it’s yes.
Brock Cook 1:14:39 No, that’s right. Yeah, it’s, um, I don’t want people to think that. Like I’m saying that you need to have experience something to be a good No, no, but I think what the message should be is that like, you need to listen to the people you’re working with more about their experience than whatever they’re referral says, yep. Yeah, that’s a much more important aspect of working with people is the people funnily enough, then whatever some other health condition is written on a piece of paper.
Natalie Khan 1:15:13 Yeah, no, I 100% agree, I think. Yeah, I don’t think we listen to people well enough, you know, especially, you know, within certain settings or voted or specific settings, I would argue it applies to every setting I’ve worked in except for pain. I don’t actually think we listen to people, you know, probably mental health would be one way you would as well, because you’ve got that ability, I think,
Brock Cook 1:15:40 Well, I think it’s getting there. I still don’t think it’s good enough. Yeah.
Natalie Khan 1:15:43 Okay. I think pain was that was the, that’s been the first time that I’ve worked somewhere where I actually, you know, work within a team, first of all, that listen to two people, when I felt that I had the capacity of listening to someone because there was a, I think that’s probably what it comes down to. Because there was a therapeutic benefit to listening to people in the fact that maybe there’s a reason why they’re telling me this random story again, and again. And there’s a reason they’re telling me about that one time their grandchild did this, maybe it’s because they’re actually lonely, you know, there’s reading in between the lines, whereas I think in a lot of other roles of OT, I didn’t really get to do that. I never really listened to people. I’ve, you know, I listened I listens to the home environment, and they’ll start talking about the neighbor, and I’ll go, okay, but remember, what about your shower? Or your shower?
Brock Cook 1:16:39 How many steps do you go down to visit the neighbor?
Natalie Khan 1:16:43 really riveting stuff? Like your home environment? Let’s talk about that. Or your goal is to do gardening, or you mean toileting? Yes, yes. You know. So it was very, it’s hard. And it’s hard within those areas. Because, you know, there’s, there’s a clinical need of why you’re in that role, because you’re serving a purpose of, you know, the flow of guests, the hospital and those things, that I think that’s been the one thing that I’ve really taken away from, you know, pain is just listening to people, no matter what it is about, and, you know, sometimes, you know, you’ve got patients, sometimes people like to talk, and they probably like to chat a little bit too much. But, um, I mean, I just, I give them more of a chance to talk
Brock Cook 1:17:31 sometimes even that, not what they’re saying. But the fact that they’re saying that kind of stuff, like sometimes even that gives you information or insight into what’s going on.
Natalie Khan 1:17:40 Yeah, yeah. And I don’t think I realized that previously, I was like, Oh, they’re getting distracted. Yeah. Whereas now, I look at those things very differently. But certainly, you know, if they told me they’ve got pain, if they told me they’ve got whatever symptom they’re experiencing, I’m, I feel like, I’m probably I’m the number one advocate now. You know, I go to the doctors, and I’m like this, you know, their cast is on too tight. And they’re like, we thought we fixed it up too many times or anything like, I don’t care. They say it’s too tight. You know, we need to do something about this. Because at the end of the day, if they say it’s too tight,
Brock Cook 1:18:18 it’s too tight. It’s too tight. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like, like I was saying before, like our pain seems to be practicing in a way I wish mental health was, I think, OTs and mental health like getting there. But just the overall perspective of mental health is still very much similar to where pain started in that mental health conditions are looked at as this kind of modular thing that then just kind of attacks a person and our job is to get rid of it. Whereas instead of looking at, like the person as a whole and their experience, which is I think I t’s are slowly moving in that way, especially with more, I guess the popularization of more sort of narrative exploration tools like car wire and that kind of stuff. I do feel like OT is is definitely making progress forward with regards to that in mental health. With regards to the tools, are they similar tools for OTS would use in pain like do you use those sort of narrative exploration tools? And similar sort of I just ot type models, like you said, talked about PIO, or is it just like a very specific pain toolkit?
Natalie Khan 1:19:30 It’s probably a bit of a combination of things. There’s definitely a lot of it is a probably what you’d call a more of a pain toolkit. That’s actually what we call it. That there’s obviously you know, I’ve done collars with people before and things like that, which I was so excited. I was like, I can do a cow. It was great. But yeah, it’s a bit of a combination. I think, again, you know, at the end of the day, It comes back to that. What’s What’s the main, what are the main, you know, unhelpful things are the main things contributing to this person’s experience at the moment, if that’s going to be, actually, we’re just going to work on your communication skills with your partner, so that you can reduce to improve that relationship, and then we’ll go out the other stuff, then that’s where we start. So that’s, yeah, that’s, it’s been a really nice thing, being able to work like that, I’ve really appreciated that. But what I was going to say, I think, you know, one thing with, with my painting experience, that I was really, that I really, you know, grew so much from probably more in the, in the aftermath of it all, but learning about mindfulness and meditation, you know, looking at, or watched a few different things of, you know, Buddhist monks, that spiels about things. And I, you know, I guess, you know, you said that in mental health, sometimes you guys would look at, you know, mental health as this thing, and it’s our job to remove it. And I think, you know, really sounds cliche, and I’m definitely not saying everyone’s pain experience works like that, you know, obviously, I’ve had a very different experience, given that, biologically, there was actually nothing wrong with, you know, with my anatomy, or nothing that I’m aware of anyway. And it’s, I believe, and again, I’ve come to these conclusions myself, that it was just a, you know, but no, see plastic pain. But looking at living with pain as my old friend, that sounds very cliche, but you know, I think, really, that’s my relationship to my pain experience. Now, I very, you know, lucky in that, in the grand scheme of things, I didn’t have time for as many years as other people had. And because I had that background and understanding and knowledge was, once it clicked, I was able to do the right things, which, if I didn’t have that knowledge, it probably, I would probably be still going through the same thing and not getting the care that I need, because there’s a lot of unhelpful things out there. But because I think, you know, all the I don’t know if you want to call it early intervention, but because I was able to do those things sooner, yes. Thinking about you know, things in terms of neuroplasticity, I think I just, there was a better prognosis from that, like for me, so I basically don’t really have pain at all anymore. But there are moments when they will I went, I’ll get pain in my hand
Brock Cook 1:23:00 old friend comes back to visit the old prints comes back.
Natalie Khan 1:23:03 Yeah. And that’s, that’s how I look at it now. Because I’ve come to realize I am not good at good at realizing when I’m stressed. And I’m not good at realizing when I’ve taken on too much
Brock Cook 1:23:14 consciously. But apparently, your body is very,
Natalie Khan 1:23:17 my body is aware, but I’m not I just you know, I’m so good at pushing those things away. And, you know, having, you know, just handling the life’s things, and you know, just moving on with Lifeline and never really acknowledging feelings and emotions are nice things. And my body just tells me and so you know, I’ll get pain. And then I’ll kind of look at my hand usually for a few segments and go, Oh, why is that hurting now? And then I’ll realize and like, actually, I’m really stressed right now. And I didn’t realize that I was as stressed as I was. And usually it doesn’t take long of me acknowledging this, and then thinking of it, then it’s like, do I really need to be stressed about this? Probably not, you know, maybe can I look at it differently, doesn’t take one the pain goes away, and then it comes back next time? Over dumpings it’s been interesting, but I think you know, it’s cliche looking at it as an old friend, but that’s,
Brock Cook 1:24:18 again, that’s something that very much relates with mental health practice.
Natalie Khan 1:24:21 That’s It’s been exactly how it’s how it’s been. It’s just you know,
Brock Cook 1:24:26 I think a lot of with a lot of health issues for lack of a better term. It people have found it really helpful to and this is something I talked about with students not enough I talked about you guys but nowadays is being able to externalize things helps people process them. So being able to, you know, call your your pain, essentially another person like being able to externalize it, being able to refer it to refer to it as something other than you part of you Yep, helps some people, not everyone, but for quite a lot of people in my experience that helps people process it. Same thing happens with with mental health. That’s why, you know, there’s nicknames, like the blackdog, for depression and stuff like that is because it allows people to refer to the experience they’re having. But not, I guess not cemented as part of their identity. And that, like we were talking about earlier with that sort of positive mindset that helps with that, if you’re not identify like, I’m not a depressed person, I’m a person who has depression kind of thing, you’re able to separate it. That helps the mindset very, like massively and like, like, we it’s common knowledge, hopefully, by now that,
you know, the
mind is a very powerful muscle. And if it’s pointing in one direction, it’s hard to change it. It’s interesting, yeah, to be positive, even better.
Natalie Khan 1:25:59 Because I think a lot of times in the pain setting. Pain clinicians don’t actually like people referring to things as different things. Because sometimes it can, I guess, it can, you know, people D associate with those parts of their body, and sometimes that can cause further pain problems, and that they no longer actually see that hand as belonging to them or that foot. It’s just something that’s just dangling. And it’s not part of you. So we don’t actually recommend people interesting, separated from themselves. When I, which is I think, why, for me, and I don’t know, probably someone else would argue against that. But I think that’s why for me, you know, looking at it as my old friend, I know that it’s part of my body. You know, I think that’s it’s just important that Yeah, to make that differentiation,
Brock Cook 1:27:01 rather than doesn’t sound like you’re separated the body part, though. More just the experience.
Natalie Khan 1:27:07 Yeah, I’m not but someone else could go. Oh, it’s that friend again. That’s coming to you know, yeah. Again, stupid risks are it’s that stupid thing. And it’s actually quite unhelpful. Looking at things like that. Yeah, from it’s to me, it’s from like a neuroplasticity and like, nociception. perspective? And I guess, yeah, it’s cool. Without the ins and outs of it.
Brock Cook 1:27:41 in mental health. It’s, that’s not usually a concern, I guess. People if people are just sort of dissociating. They’ve already disassociated by the time I see them.
Natalie Khan 1:27:52 Yeah, yeah, I think it’s trying to think of mindful, I’m not gonna say the wrong thing. But when when people have cast on, you know, like, you break your arm. And I don’t know that it’s the right word. But I think it’s the neural pathways, they actually find that there’s a weakening in the strength of neural pathways, if you’ve got a cast on for multiple weeks and weeks on it, in the fact that you know, your proprioception and that restoring that arm on that foot is going to be a lot worse, because you haven’t used it for a while. And so, you know, basically, the body stops communicating as effectively with that part of your body. And so I think, you know, a big part of this associating that part and going, Oh, that’s that thing. I don’t want that thing that can contribute to neuropathy. Yeah, that well, that’s, that’s the that’s the thought process and
Brock Cook 1:28:46 make sense. Of
Natalie Khan 1:28:49 those. Yeah, I don’t know that. That’s the that’s really simplified. And that’s probably not really the best way of putting it. But anyway, for the purposes of this,
Brock Cook 1:28:58 I mean, it makes sense. The brain controls everything, like pain, something a lot of people don’t understand, you can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is, I’ve heard multiple people say like, you might feel pain, like in your wrist, but that’s not actually where it is. You’re feeling it in your brain, essentially.
Natalie Khan 1:29:21 Yeah, we, you know, I even now, not working in pain I often talk to people is, you know, really painters is a protective mechanism. It’s your body’s you know, it’s your brain law. You usually say your body because people don’t like hearing brain because then they think I’m telling them it’s all in their head. It’s a very, it’s a very touchy topic, actually talking about pain to people because there’s so many preconceived ideas. You know, but I would often say things like, you know, it’s your body’s trying to make accents of the situation and deciding if this is threatening or not. And if there’s credible evidence that may be threatening, usually pain is produced. And, you know, often very often use the example that, you know, for example, right now, you know, I’m sitting here looking at you, this is probably more of an example for you, because you’re the person that usually interviews people. So, you know, I’d say things like, you know, I’m always in this clinic room, I feel pretty safe here. I’ve met you before, and you seem like a pretty, pretty nice guy, you know, I’m not I don’t feel threatened. But otherwise, you know, I’ve got a door behind me, if I really needed to escape, I feel pretty safe. You know, my body’s probably more on a, you know, rest and digest state rather than, you know, fight or flight. Like, in theory, I would hope that that’s how you’re feeling as well. But you know, and then then, you know, I say, you know, I’m probably making very generalized assumptions here, because I don’t know exactly what it’s like for you. But potentially, you might be sitting here right now going, what? Who the hell is this girl is talking to me about pain? You know, how does she know she has no idea what it’s like, this chairs really uncomfortable. The drive here was really annoying. I had to park on the other side of the road, there’s really bad parking here.
Brock Cook 1:31:22 You’re describing my day?
Natalie Khan 1:31:25 You know, how much longer am I going to have to sit here for? Is she going to tell me it’s all in my head? You know, those things unusually, at that stage? People kind of start nodding, and you’re like, yep. So even just with something as simple as you sitting in this appointment with me, your I guess, fight or flight system is activated a lot more than than mine is. And so that’s, that’s an indication that, you know, things are probably just overdrive a little bit. That’s kind of how how we
Brock Cook 1:31:55 have a really good example.
Natalie Khan 1:32:00 Yeah, again, actually, that was not a quote, I came up with,
Brock Cook 1:32:03 um, I write that down, I’ll quote you.
Natalie Khan 1:32:07 That was, that was, but you know, you come up with a lot of different ways of explaining things. And sometimes you explain something and you think, you know, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. Explain pain, it’s like,
Brock Cook 1:32:21 I don’t know much about it.
Natalie Khan 1:32:22 There. It’s by the, without advertising too much. The neuro institutional noise group, I don’t know what it stands for, keep forgetting your something group. Basically, they provide professional development opportunities to teach people about pain and how to explain pain. But, you know, you find, you know, you learn all the stuff, and then you try and explain that to someone. And sometimes it works really well. And you go, yeah, we’re gonna use that exact example again, and then sometimes, it just does on almost seems to have made things worse. We’ll try that one. Again. It’s a bit of a juggling act, I think sometimes, you know, providing the right information at the right time when they’re ready to receive it in the right, tailored in the right way. But it’s going to work for that person, you know, if it’s an older gentleman, who likes Carl motors talking about motors, or if it’s, you know, an electrician talking about, you know, both, you know, using kind of some of those examples.
Brock Cook 1:33:33 Yeah, yeah, I think that, that the point of them being in the right place to receive it is something that is fairly ot universal. I don’t think it’s something OTS think about very often, or not even just OTs, just health professionals in general, don’t think about where the person is, at that point in time on terms of the like, obviously, there’s some situations like probably palliative care, where sometimes it’s a little harder to you know, find the right moment. But for most clinicians, there are some times where you’re like, oh, this might not be the right time to explore this or venture down this road. We might wait until the next session and see how that’s going kind of thing. So
Natalie Khan 1:34:21 I definitely again, before working in pain, never something I considered. Like my goal for today’s session is ABC. No, that’s what we’re going through. If you have anything added, that’s what we’ll work through as well. But my these are my goals. This is what I want to get out of, you know, great, great clients since it really when you think about it.
Brock Cook 1:34:44 I think it’s a very familiar new grad experience. I think most new grads will like resonated with that and then going through that growth. I mean, that’s you only preps you so much before you get it out. And then honestly, that’s why there’s like a two year yearly in Australia. And so we classify that the first two years as new grad quote unquote. And then that’s what we usually see is my experience, you’ll see, after two years, a person will be a different person. And then after seven years, that person will be a different person. They’re the two big, I guess, Game Changing milestones that I would generally see in in New clinicians.
Natalie Khan 1:35:25 Yeah. Well, I’ll have to wait for my seven year transformation.
Brock Cook 1:35:32 I got a just yet. I just
Natalie Khan 1:35:35 wonder how what I’ll be saying by then
Brock Cook 1:35:38 fix the world or save the world by then.
Natalie Khan 1:35:41 Yeah, yeah, probably not. And I’ll probably be on the other side of it and going, Oh, I can never fixed.
Brock Cook 1:35:50 That’s growth as enthusiastic. One more thing I want to bring up. Because I’ve found it the other day. Your shop?
Natalie Khan 1:36:01 Oh, yeah. Yeah,
Brock Cook 1:36:03 it’s amazing.
Natalie Khan 1:36:04 Oh, look, it’s very small. I’m just kind of doing it
Brock Cook 1:36:09 for fun. So explain what is it? What’s the fall?
Natalie Khan 1:36:13 So it’s what did the summary of it Yes, is that it’s aesthetically pleasing? clinic posters for clinicians?
Brock Cook 1:36:25 They definitely, I can vouch I’m looking at them right now. They are very aesthetically pleasing. Oh,
Natalie Khan 1:36:31 thank you. Thanks, I try, I’ve probably, you know, have been a little bit have not been creating that many new things as I’ve wanted to, I’ve got to, actually online, I’ve got a whole bunch of things saved on my computer, haven’t uploaded them yet. I need to do that. But really, though, I think, again, you know, coming back to trying to save the world. I realize there’s a lot of, there’s not a lot of good posters out there. You know, crap. Versus a really bad and, you know, sometimes I’m not saying my posters are amazing, or anything like that at all. But most of them are really bad. You know, you can’t even I guess, if you had a private clinic, and you want a new clinic to look nice. Pretty hard to do that. Because I think, you know, usually the public world, we don’t really care too much, we have all of that which is on the wall unhealthy.
Brock Cook 1:37:31 The aim is to get a message across, and that’s where it stops. Yeah, we don’t care. These I would akin more to a piece of art that also some some of them. Others are just thought, but some of them also have a message, but it’s probably more like it’s art first, and then it has a message.
Natalie Khan 1:37:50 Yeah, yeah, well, that’s what I’ve tried to do. Anyway, really, the aim is that over time, and I’ll probably say, you know, take me a while to actually get to do that. I’d like to have a lot more pain posters and pain related things up there. Maybe some resources for clinicians, and you know, like, just, I don’t know, initial assessment and things like that. But people can just, they’re all you know, electronic documents, so you just, you know, go on there. And it’s an instant download,
Brock Cook 1:38:20 downloadable, and there’s some things that are also not in English, by the look of it. Your status, Spanish stages, stages of change and
Natalie Khan 1:38:30 stages of changes foundation, I think I did see a mindfulness one in German, just exploring, again, nothing, none of it. It’s just, it’s just a creative outlet. You know, again, realizing that there is no, there’s a lot of gaps, you know, things and sometimes, you know, I’ll message people that buy from me, and I’m just kind of like, what do you want to see, you know, but there’s actually, I don’t know, maybe I’m not looking at the right places, but I could not actually find any clinic room resources that are not in English, you know, in, in in, you know, Spanish and Portuguese and looked at German, I guess, you know, those
Brock Cook 1:39:11 notches. Seems odd, because I know, I like talking to some friends that work in the States. Like, for some, especially like, California and stuff, like Spanish speaking people are a huge percentage of the
Natalie Khan 1:39:28 things out there like I’m not, that’s not not completely right. But there’s nothing in this area, I guess, in the you know, there was there’s a lot of kids, children resources that are translated in Spanish because I was thinking about, you know, kids pediatric stuff for a while, but I think that looks like you know, people, a lot of people have done that. But yeah, it’s just, it’s just not the same quantity of things available. It’s probably all it is just I’m adding the things that I’ve created out there into the world. And if it helps one person, that’s great, you know, the other one has been, which, you know, I still have very weird feelings about how I feel about it. But I’ve, you know, had a few acknowledgement of country posters that I’ve put up. And I feel really funny about it, because I don’t feel like I should be, you know, putting those things out there because I’m not Aboriginal myself. And I’ve chatted to my partner about it. He’s hates Aboriginal. And he was like, no, no, and it’s fine. And I’m like, Okay, well, I guess if you say it’s fine, and maybe it’s fine, but, you know. So the way I kind of worked around that for myself is that I’ve just, you know, sent some of the proceedings have gone to charity, and, you know, kind of looking at some of those Aboriginal. Probably, you know, like, to try it trying to think of the word.
Brock Cook 1:40:57 I see this thing at the top that says, some some of the promises donated to the indigenous literacy fund foundation. Yeah, they go
Natalie Khan 1:41:05 charities, that was the right word. charities that that was sending things. Yeah. So we did the indigenous literacy foundation for a few months. And now we’re really I think I’m trying to remember, I think we’re doing a sleeping bags to the homeless.
Brock Cook 1:41:24 That’s the current high. Yeah, I think it’s a lot of thinking. I think I’ve seen that. Yeah, so that’s the one sleeping backpack. Yeah, yeah. It’s an Australian invention. Yeah. Yeah. I think they’re trying to roll it out in the States as well. But it’s yeah, there was actually an ad on TV for it the other day. That thing is amazing. And it like folds up into a backpack, and it folds down into a safe, comfortable sleeping. Like a kind of like a little swag, I guess for for people who are living on the streets. It was really cool.
Natalie Khan 1:42:00 Yeah, so that’s the one that we’re currently looking at donating money to. But you know, it’s a, again, it’s nothing huge or anything like that. So, you know, probably I’m not very good at selling myself and my but it’s, you know, I’m just, every few months when there’s a significant enough amount of that, again, still not that significant. donate the money over?
Brock Cook 1:42:27 Well, I think I’m gonna have to order some things for my office, because I’ve just moved office and there’s not much on the wall. Anyway, definitely see some of these things on my office wall.
Natalie Khan 1:42:38 Maybe you can tell me what things would be relevant. And then I can think of it from, from that perspective.
Brock Cook 1:42:44 We can we can brainstorm. That’ll be. You put some of your quotes on there. And put yourself yeah, Natalie.
Natalie Khan 1:42:57 We don’t know if anyone would want that. Maybe if I was, you know, famous.
Brock Cook 1:43:05 That’s the first step. First step to being famous.
Natalie Khan 1:43:09 Creating posters with my quotes, right. That
Brock Cook 1:43:12 works work. I’m sure it’s worked for all the people can work.
Natalie Khan 1:43:16 I guess, you know, people will be sitting in someone’s clinic room grandkid. And Natalie.
Brock Cook 1:43:20 This is Natalie person that I keep seeing in every clinic. Yep. So yeah. So where can people go to find all your stuff on your shop? Your Instagram? Where’s the best? Where can we send people?
Natalie Khan 1:43:33 Probably my Instagram, I think so. It’s the arc dot gram still gram. And then the shop is called the arc shop. So if you go on to the Grammys, you find the link in the bio there.
Brock Cook 1:43:47 Yeah, the links in the in the top and I’ll throw links in the show notes for all of this stuff. So if you’re looking for posters, definitely go and grab some go and have a look. They’re really cool. I’m definitely gonna autosol
Natalie Khan 1:44:00 otherwise, feel free to send me a message and let me know if there’s anything in particular that people would like I’m very open to ideas. Yeah,
Brock Cook 1:44:09 and then go and check out the amazingly flowing aesthetic of her whole Instagram page, which I’m very jealous of, because it just,
Natalie Khan 1:44:16 I feel like that’s really setting the bar very high.
Brock Cook 1:44:19 It is exactly what you’ve set the bar very high, because I’ve never seen an Instagram page where if you look at it as a whole, all the posts look like they’re just part of one massive picture. I think that’s I think that’s awesome.
Natalie Khan 1:44:36 Thank you. I didn’t come up with it myself. I just I don’t think I saw something similar somewhere. It wasn’t it wasn’t. It was like, you know, the following pictures. I was like, let’s just make it a
it’s funky.
Brock Cook 1:44:47 I love it. I’m a very visual person. I like that sort of minimalistic aesthetic. So I’m very drawn to things like that.
Natalie Khan 1:44:56 Thank you. Make sure I keep working on the estate So when people look at it actually looks,
Brock Cook 1:45:03 catches their eye and then they get those little 22nd snippets of learning and you’ve hooked them in then, yeah,
Natalie Khan 1:45:09 20 seconds of learning and if that makes any difference to their clinic clinical life. I think that’s really that’s all all that kind of hopeful.
Brock Cook 1:45:20 Perfect. Thanks so much for coming and having a chat.
Natalie Khan 1:45:24 Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s been good.
Brock Cook 1:45:28 Good to catch up.
If you liked this episode, and want to check out more, head over to occupied podcast.com or search occupied podcast in your favorite podcasting app. If you have thoughts or reflections on the topics discussed today, please do get in contact. We’d love to hear from you. And lastly, if you got some value from this and you want to help us out, like, subscribe, share it with a friend. Remember, be good to yourself, be good to others and always keep occupied
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
139 – WFOT Congress with WFOT President Samantha Shann
May 16, 2022
Today is a VERY special episode! Firstly I got the opportunity to talk with our WFOT President Samantha Shann. We explored her journey through the profession, How she got involved with WFOT, how she made it to the position of President and then we explore the upcoming WFOT Congress in Paris.
The upcoming congress in Paris is looking towards to being an amazing, unique celebration of diversity within the profession. If you want to go, and save yourself some $$$ get in and register before 23rd of June to get the early-bird registration price.
All of the congress information can be found here: https://wfotcongress2022.org
Secondly today is Occupied 4th birthday so what better way to celebrate than with an episode with the President! So celebrate all things OT with me, have a listen and share this ep with an OT friend.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
Brock Cook 0:00 G’day and welcome to a very very special episode of occupied this episode being proudly brought to you by the W fo ti Congress. Today we have the amazing pleasure of being able to bring to you your W fo ti President Samantha Shan to discuss her journey into the profession, her journey into being involved with the profession at literally the highest possible level as well as her go to tips, tricks, experiences, and things you need to know about the upcoming wfh e Congress in France. You guys are gonna love this. I absolutely love having a chat with Samantha. And an absolutely phenomenal story about coming into the profession of OT. So enjoy. G’day, my name is Brock cook and welcome to occupied. In this podcast we’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy, we explore the people topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources at occupied podcast.com. But for now, let’s roll the episode.
Samantha Shann 1:25 I think I would probably agree with your theory there. And so while I was doing my A levels and live in the UK, and at that time in the late late 80s, they were really pushing women to go into science. So I was really exploring chemistry and had places at university to do chemistry had a little bit of an inkling about physiotherapy, but nothing really. And then at the same time, I was a young leader, Brownie Girl Guide pack. And there was a brownie that joined that had Down syndrome. And we had an occupational therapist come to one of our rowdy meetings to talk to us about how to help this brown me integrate how we might need to adapt some of the things that we did, but genuinely just to, you know, talk to us and, and show us how to enable her to be part of the brownie pack. And it was suddenly like this. Wow. And that was probably so it’s certainly not the end of the journey. It was it got me thinking I applied and obviously got a place at university. But it wasn’t an easy journey. So although occupational therapy found me, I will probably be very honest and sort of say, I struggled throughout my three years of my ot course. And not because I wasn’t having a fantastic time, I made some wonderful friends that are friends now. And, and I enjoyed the course. And I was stretched by my lectures and made to think differently. I was the last year of what was the Diploma in the UK. So there was lots of art based things Monday morning was in the crafts, room photography, pottery arts work, it was, it was it was a really, really good cause it was nothing there. But equally, in the late 80s. It was that sort of time of when theory was probably starting to come in a little bit more. Yep. So Moho starting to appear. And there was theories and models starting to be talked about. And then also where occupational therapy was positioned in the UK at the time, very much discharge focused hospital based. So there was this real sort of thing for me of like, what I was hearing and learning at university, and then what I was seeing in practice, and somehow they just didn’t meet. I couldn’t I couldn’t see where they were meeting at all. And I had a wonderful program lead Margaret Robinson, who’s been with me throughout my career actually. And, you know, Sutton spent many hours in her office and you know, she would say there Well, if there’s something else um, I was like, no, no, I’ve enjoyed it. But I just don’t see where this all fits together.
Brock Cook 4:26 Put the picture together.
Samantha Shann 4:29 Yeah, just nothing. Nothing matched. It was. Yeah. So anyway, I stuck with it. I stayed stayed with the course. And then again, in my first job because because we were the late 80s We wouldn’t really 90s By that point. It was still very medical model, very discharge equipment processed, getting people home from hospital. Again, that Just didn’t match with, with everything that I was learning about sort of like choice about participation, enabling people. And actually what we were what we were discharging people home to. And I also then at the same time was working in quite a rural community in the north of England, and move to erode. I was on a rotation post, so moved into mental health. And it was a community mental health, but we would spend ages waiting for patients to arrive. And these patients and clients would like have to drive like hours on country roads to come to occupational therapy or come to anything. Yeah. And I can remember sitting there thinking, wow, this is not right. And then therefore, probably then start challenging that thing. I’ve probably been qualified about sort of six, seven months at that point, and I thought, okay, if this is gonna work for me, I need to make some changes. And so very adamantly decided that we were going to have a community group out in the middle of nowhere.
Brock Cook 6:09 That’s kind of like the outreach. kind of position. Yeah.
Samantha Shann 6:13 Yeah. And it was really hard to justify to start with because it was like, Oh, so you’re gonna spend four hours in the car for an hour’s group with five clients? Yeah. Well, what do you justify that master’s, because we can look back over their records. And those five clients have maybe attended once or twice in the last six months. And I’ve sat around waiting for them. And you know, in all honesty, when you’re sat waiting for clients to arrive, you might do a little bit of work, but you’re not. You’re not fully engrossed in anything else. So yeah, we set up this outreach group. And it was my first time I think, and actually this is, this is more about what I learned. This is more about what I thought at the time occupational therapy was about was about engaging with people, listening to them, and trying to help them solve their problems as much as anything. So that was that, but equally at the same time, I’d reapplied to go back to university. I was gonna go back into chemistry.
Brock Cook 7:20 That’s right. You just hedging your bets, just in case?
Samantha Shann 7:24 Yeah, just don’t give up. That’s the good, okay. Yeah. Got a place but decided, no, I’ll just give it one last shot and reapplied for another job. And that was in mental health. And it was like, again, it was early 90s, mid going into mid 90s. But it was probably one of the last big occupational therapy departments around was lots of technical instructors, pottery, computers, would work the gym. And you know, it was the technical, technical instructors were absolutely fantastic in that department. And it was, it was a breath of fresh air, really, I got some excellent supervision, again, was allowed to develop things. We set up some work with GP surgeries, and out of hours work, which again, was, you know, we talked about that now is like, you know,
Brock Cook 8:26 just common practice. Yeah, that’s what we do. Yeah. But
Samantha Shann 8:29 back then it was really sort of quite groundbreaking to be talking with the GPS, and giving people opportunity to attend sessions outside of their working hours. And that was really, really engaging. So I think that was probably at the point where I thought, okay, yeah, I can stay I am an Occupational Therapist, I, that’s where I started to feel it. But at the same time, personally, I’d been doing a lot of traveling, loved travel, loved that whole sort of thing, but again, felt that I wanted to spend a bit more time outside of the UK, and worked in the States for a little bit not not as an occupational therapist as an activity coordinator on a disability camp for children with disabilities.
Brock Cook 9:22 I know a couple people from the UK that have done that in the States, it seems to be like a popular thing.
Samantha Shann 9:28 Yeah, well, during university, there’s a whole camp America sort of thing. So you can go and do it for sort of for a few weeks, and I’m, I did it, I did it a bit more permanent than that. And, and it was interesting, because probably that was the first time that my job title was an occupational therapist. But actually, it was probably the time where I use my occupational therapy skills to learn Yeah, even now. It was, you know, there was nobody else prompting me there was nobody else there it was, you know, every day you were that camp coordinator for children with with very severe disabilities, as it turned out the brief wasn’t quite what it was.
Brock Cook 10:14 They didn’t want to scare you off before you got there.
Samantha Shann 10:17 As is often the case with those sort of things, yeah. Yeah. And that’s sort of, I think it showed me the different cultures as well. And, you know, we sometimes think, you know, the UK, the US lots of similarities. I would probably say there’s more differences than similarities, really. And certainly within the health systems, and where occupational therapy sets and, and how people access services just drastically different.
Brock Cook 10:48 Yeah, I think through this podcast, speaking with quite a few Americans and people who’ve worked in the American system, it’s, it’s, well, it’s definitely drastically different to Australia, I think Australia is probably more similar to the UK than than the states is. It’s definitely a very unique system. But I still haven’t quite got my head around. I’ve never worked there. Not sure how I’d go, I’d probably struggle a bit.
Samantha Shann 11:13 Even silly things like language, Amanda was working with children and like every day, they would sort of say to me, speak to me in your own language.
Brock Cook 11:25 What do you think the language came from?
Samantha Shann 11:27 Yeah. But it was it was that real sort of like an awakening, I guess, on that sort of like cultural thing, because although we learned about culture, within the Occupational Therapy Program, and whilst that initial job that I worked in was a real culture shock for me, I’ve always lived in towns and cities, and then that my first job qualified was in a rural farming communities. There were cultural differences. And you know, I’m from West Yorkshire and that first job was in North Yorkshire and they always called me Southerner, despite the fact that it’s probably 30 minutes between where we came from. Yeah, so I but other than that, I’ve been hidden from culture, but the sort of cultures that you understand a little bit more, and we don’t certainly at that time, in the north of England, we didn’t have masses of sort of like and people from other countries, it’s sort of like it was quite close, sort of, like, part of the UK at the time. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s, that gave me the thing. And then I was interested in going to India, but the project that I was going to India didn’t work out for lots of reasons and got an opportunity to go to Uganda, UK in the late 90s.
Brock Cook 12:46 I did see that. I think it was on the W fit website, that you’re the liaison for Africa as well. And I was wondering about how that came about. And then I saw that you’ve got a couple of publications relating to practices in in Africa. Is that where that sort of interest in that part of the world came from?
Samantha Shann 13:06 Yes, yes, it was to bits with that, within who to the executive health responsibilities for regions just to try to make sure that we keep on top of things that I wish to. But yeah, my, my involvement in occupational therapy in Africa started from Uganda. So I originally went for a year and stayed just the short five years. And that was the time the Occupational Therapy Program was just establishing. And the first graduates were just going out to sell occupational therapy services. So Uganda had a history of back in the 60s and 70s, they’d sent occupational therapists to the US and the UK to do their therapy, education. Some of them did return. But as we see time and time again, when people leave, very often, they don’t come back. And that in itself was a valuable lesson for me. And probably my real passion, when I get around to wfh OT is, you know, helping countries to establish their education program. Not only does that make sure that it’s culturally appropriate for where those occupational therapists need to work and to meet the nation needs, but hopefully we’re gonna keep people to retention as well. And that’s not so like tracking people that’s like looking at like, Where, where, where the need is. Yeah, yeah.
Brock Cook 14:44 So So what was the what was the project in Uganda was like at that university style project, or was it just like a work project or what was your Why were you there?
Samantha Shann 14:56 It was with a very small UK charity at the time. But part of my remit for that first 12 months was to get my position established within the Ministry of Health. As it turned out, during that first 12 months, the occupational therapy training school in Kampala got moved to education, I ended up becoming the first occupational therapist in Uganda to be employed by the Ministry of Education. Quite quite an achievement into that. So my remit was teaching on the new program, and also helping the new graduates to set up services, particularly in mental health, because that’s where my skills were at that point.
Brock Cook 15:48 So did you so you said like when you first came out of uni, and then you sort of moved into mental health? Did you kind of stay there? Like, would you say that mental health was your? I don’t know, most people sort of find their sort of passion area, would you say mental health was yours? Or did you sort of chop and change a bit? Or where did you find stuff?
Samantha Shann 16:08 wasn’t changed in that first job? Sort of like stroke, rehab, orthopedic surgery? But yes, predominantly, sort of like mental health? Yeah. And I would say, still, although we’ve sort of like a lot of my international work and sort of stuff that I do, whether it’s mental health, my other real sort of like failing is community based practice, and community based rehabilitation.
Brock Cook 16:35 So like, the specific modalities are like community development,
Samantha Shann 16:42 community development, and sort of like really was very much through some wfh at work as well. And also some of the work that was done in Uganda very involved in the World Health Organization, and their CBR guidelines. And that’s where my real sort of like passion is around that community development and real grassroots community based rehabilitation. So in really taking, who is definition of that, and, you know, everything coming from the community, and then have been those sort of decision making, sort of like skills now that
Brock Cook 17:20 this is something that’s kind of always interests me when like you find people like yourself in in the positions that you’re in, obviously, you’re president of W fit now. And I talked to a lot of people, and they’re like, oh, it’s almost like there’s a gap of lack that those people and then there’s us, but in talking with, you know, people like yourself in hearing your story, it’s very much like a story that anyone could sort of go through in terms of therapy and progression. But how how did you get first get involved? Because obviously, you’ve been in volved with W fit for quite a while now in other positions. How did you first sort of get involved with the World Federation?
Samantha Shann 18:03 Literally my first week in Uganda, I attended my first Ugandan Association meeting. And there was about five of us in the room and suddenly found myself the treasurer got a properly unpacked my suitcase. There, I was treasurer of the Ugandan Association. And one of the first tasks within that was helping right there the code of ethics. Because Uganda at the time, when I was working towards WF ot membership, and I will be perfectly honest, I had not really heard about the World Federation of occupational therapists. Up until that point, it was not something I’d been taught on my program. And I’ve always been a member of the British Association, the Royal College of OT, but never really thought about WF OT. So yeah, helped write the constitution and that that year, Uganda became a full member of WSI OT. And it was also at that point where discussions and the formation of Otago, the Occupational Therapy Africa regional group was forming. And in 1999, we had the first Otago Congress in Mauritius and the WF O T executive held their executive meeting at the same time. So that was my first contact. You know, in person with WF OT and meeting the executive with Otago, again, was very involved in helping to write the constitution. That first Congress did the scientific program with the Ugandan occupational therapists and became very involved Often Otago, the second otol Congress was in Kampala in 2001. At that point, I was the president of the Ugandan Association. And it was probably that time when we really saw the Ugandan Association really coming together, I think it gave us as an association, a real focus to be able to host and bring these occupational therapists, not just from Africa, we have many delegates from your in the states come to that Congress in Kampala. And think, you know, it was, it was a very special time to be part of occupational therapy in Uganda as that professional identity started to really embed people were getting employed in the Ministry of Health, there were positions opening up. And then they were presenting about their work international congresses, and starting to talk and network with occupational therapists across the Africa region, predominantly. But those links really starting to establish and, and also people started to question as well as like, Okay, well, yeah, this is great. But actually, how do we want to develop occupational therapy in Uganda moving forward? What is a standardized assessment in rural Uganda? What sort of outcome measures do we want to do? And it was, it was some, yeah, very excited to be part of those discussions and and see, see the graduates developing the confidence to start questioning their own practice, and push those boundaries that little bit further still
Brock Cook 21:49 trying to get graduates to do that. One thing I’ve I don’t know a whole lot about the development of the profession, in other African countries, but was so you You’re obviously very involved in the development in Uganda was the development of the profession in other African countries sort of around the same stage? or were there other countries that were sort of already established and Uganda was catching up? Or like, how was it developing sort of, I guess, in the rest of the continent?
Samantha Shann 22:23 Yeah. There’s always been a big difference. I mean, South Africa was one of the founding members of the World Federation of occupational therapists and occupational therapy in South Africa. I won’t even guess what date that started. well established, it was certainly around in 1952, when wfh It was established. So if you take sort of like South Africa, out of quite different, I think then actually, your next pocket of development was East Africa. So Kenya, they started with occupational therapy in the 1960s. So a very colonial health system, obviously enough in Kenya with that history. And yet that they that long, and then Uganda and Tanzania, started back quickly, together, sort of those late 80s, early 90s. Zimbabwe has a long, long history, as well by one of the association’s West Africa. Quite interesting. As I came back from Uganda, to the UK, I got a teaching post in the UK. And one of the students on the program was from Ghana, and he’d been got funding from his government to come in education. And there was at the university that I was teaching at so he turned I developed a relationship and supported that. And that was sort of like the start. Occupational therapy has been around in Nigeria for many, many years. They don’t have to be fit approved education programs, or many of their education programs. Still arts assistant level or diploma level. And there’s lots of work still going on there in Nigeria. Ghana was first WF O T approved degree program in West Africa. And then, yes, then Zambia, Malawi, so it’s been pocket. So I think really, the most development has probably been in the last 20 years across the African region.
Brock Cook 24:50 Yep. So you spent you I think you said just under five years over there, and then you went back to the UK where did you go You went back into a teaching position.
Samantha Shann 25:02 Yeah. Didn’t really expect it. That was never probably part of the plan
Brock Cook 25:07 seems to be the pattern here is all these opportunities presented, you’re not expecting? No, I like it.
Samantha Shann 25:12 I do. And it’s funny, like you say about occupational therapy find. And when I talk to students, and whatever I talked, I’ve talked about my career pathway, a little bit like the London tube map, yep. You know, when I first started out, people say, oh, you know, you’ll have a career and you’ll go up the career ladder, well, that’s either not happened or that I don’t think that actually exists anymore. So I sort of see my career as I sort of get on this train. And I’ve made a decision to get on the train. But then I’ll go, and sometimes I’m going along, because I’m quite happy on that train. I don’t like to a station, and I’m given some other choices. And I might decide to get off for a bit, or I might decide to stay up. And sometimes I find myself coming back in a full loop or on a different trail with various things. But it’s that sort of I think it’s like always keeping moving forward. There’s always something and sometimes you sometimes you make a very conscious decision to to make a change in your career. And other times opportunities arrive. And you think actually, yes, that’s worth trying. And, yeah, I guess I’m, I’m always open to opportunities. And I like to try new things. So I had literally come back from Uganda just for a couple of weeks holiday, and went to see my old program leader was associate she’d been very helpful while I was in Uganda sending lots of resources. It wasn’t really the end of an email or the phone, it was lots of letters that she would send stuff and sat in her office. And I’d actually come back to discuss about doing my master’s, and thinking about what to do it. And then during that course of the conversation, it was like, we’ve got an opening at the moment. Who wants to be interviewed next week? Okay, I returned, yeah, I returned to Uganda with a new job, which, which was hard. It was hard. Telling people. What was leaving, it was hard, sort of like leaving, because I’m really thought about it. Lots of things had happened personally. But my heart was very much in Uganda, at that point, very much part of my local community, part of the local school. But at the same time, this job opportunity felt right. Yeah. And it felt right. And I and I knew that there were people in Uganda, that were already doing what I was doing, and they could take it forward. You know, it wasn’t that I was walking away and nothing was there. They were occupied. Ugandan occupational therapists working in the occupational therapy education program. There were very well established occupational therapy departments. At that point, the association was strong, they were a strong member of to be fit a strong member of Otago. So I knew that they had the skills to do that. I think a lot of we had a lot of conversations about that. And and I guess, then that’s when I realized that you know, how you support people, and how you enable people doesn’t have to be from the same room or the same country. And then, at that point, I was sort of like, an internet wasn’t great. At that point. I still spent a lot of time in Uganda and internet cafes and not to download anything. So we had to talk through how that continued support would happen. Yeah. And I was very lucky when I head back to the UK that I was able to go back to Uganda quite regularly. Okay, person, continue some sort of like development workshops through Otago as well. So yeah, that it was at that point there. But meeting Peter, when I came back to the UK then got involved, involve me in Garner, West Africa.
So Peter, dear, Dr. Peter, dear now has gone on and helped us to well established the first occupational therapy education program in Ghana. And I think I was the first external examiner for that program. And again, I’ve had the real pleasure to watch the first number of cohorts. I think we’re up to six cohorts. Now when Garner graduated, and really see them come through We’ve seen them take hold of the guard, Ghanian Occupational Therapy Association and, and again, help form their own professional identity. And I think that’s one of the things I talked earlier about education programs, and they’ve been established in country has been so important about the legacy of the profession. And I strongly believe that is to get a strong education program within the country, gives that country a really good grounding, for developing occupational therapy, and the sustainability of the profession. Because there has to be ownership from the government around the education program. For professional identity, and for the real development of the protection, it’s national associations that really do that, from, from what I’ve seen, witnessed and being part of that belonging to an association, being able to come together, having a shared vision of what you want, and being able to impact and equally through having a recognised Association. It gets people different invites to implement things. So it’s easier to get to the tables and the meetings where you need to be having those discussions. So yes, I’ve Yeah, and the gun, the gun I, Occupational Therapy Association. Now, you know, they’re running regular webinars, doing conferences that talk in other people’s events, they’re out there and yeah, again, have developed occupational therapy, as it needs to be in Ghana, not without challenges. Oh, now
Brock Cook 31:51 can imagine. Yeah. So when you when you came back to the UK, did you, like continue with your involvement with WF ot directly, then? Or was that something you sort of came back to after a bit?
Samantha Shann 32:04 No, kind of probably another lucky break at the time. Yeah. The UK position for the WF ot delegate. So College of occupational therapists, that delegate position was very like I say lucky, because I think for the first time in history, there was five of us that applied for it. And it was suddenly like this big sort of like election thing. But yeah, I got elected, thank you to the members. I think Sheila Richards, who was the chief executive at the time, she told me like she had a little bit of a heart attack, because she saw that I was living in Uganda as I applied, and there was nothing in their room articles at that point about travel. And she was thinking, do we have to pay for it to come from Uganda? I think that probably got changed quite quickly. Somewhere in the articles. Yeah.
Brock Cook 32:57 Yep. Small freakout just immediately. Yeah.
Samantha Shann 33:01 So no, I was I was lucky. And then yes, I spent four years as the UK delegate to W fo TI. But in that time, so halfway through that position, I got elected on to be executed tense. So within W fo TI, there are sort of like the main executive positions, as we would see in most organizations of the president, vice president, treasurer, Vice President, finance, Executive Director. But then what, what we also have is the program coordinators, to they are part of the exec, the bigger executive management team. So that part of decision making they’re part of all of that. But maybe not quite so much responsibility. I think when they were first brought in, it was sort of like that bit of a stepping stone, it was tried to like look at how you structure because quite a big going from being a country delegate to them sort of being on the executive. So I got elected in what year it was now, but yet to international court, cooperation, international cooperation. And I think again, that that fed into my skills that I’ve been developing over the last sort of like six years around sort of like developing occupational therapy in countries where the professional was still relatively new. And through that, start to tap a lot more contact with occupational therapists that were in similar positions to what had been in
Brock Cook 34:50 like in sort of developing areas or countries trying to get it off the ground.
Samantha Shann 34:57 Yeah, and I think, you know, One of the things that’s really helped me over the years is actually having lived through that as well. So, you know, I can still remember, you know, spending days sat in government corridors, just waiting to speak to someone. So like, when I go to the countries now and people say, oh, you know, we’re gonna go and have this meeting with whoever the meeting is at 10 o’clock. But it could be whenever it’s like, that’s fine. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, that, that sort of understanding and recognizing, and, you know, when I start to think about it, you know, although it’s sort of, like 20, odd years back those those years in Uganda and working with my Ugandan colleagues, were really where I, I really feel I became an occupational therapist. I learned so much from my Ugandan colleagues in those years that I still use on a day to day basis.
Brock Cook 36:11 Do you? Do you ever feel because I wonder this probably more on a smaller scale with some of the people that I’ve spoken to. But do you ever wonder whether or do you ever feel like, you’re because obviously, it sounds like you’ve always been kind of, for lack of a better term, like a natural born leader of sorts. But do you ever feel like you’ve ever sort of flicked the switch from being that on the ground lead, by example, clinician to now looking at it sort of from the policy, national association, international association level? Do you ever feel like there was like a time when you just made that switch? Or is it still sort of the same skill set, I guess?
Samantha Shann 36:55 It’s interesting, because I would never sort of like put myself as a natural born leader, I don’t often think of myself as a leader in that sort of term. And I did a course actually about and about sort of leadership, so long back and, and one of the things that we spent a lot of time discussing, it was an interesting concept was about sort of like where you spend your time as a leader. Is it on the dance floor? And dancing for want of a better word and integrating? And I’m doing Yeah, I do you spend time on the balcony? watching and observing? Yeah, can you change and making those decisions of where your time is best spent? And it was really quite eye opening for me, because I think you’re right. I am very much an activist. It’s probably my it’s my real strength, I think, but probably equally, why I haven’t gone into sort of more research because I will do something but then the thought of writing it off, just, I’m on to the next thing, I can understand that. And I think we all have different skills, and I absolutely admire or have people that can sit and do different things. And I think my policy change probably came in because equally when I was the delegate to the UK, so when I was on the board of the Royal College of occupational therapists, I was also for two years, the Vice Chair, Council. Yep. So at that point, got more into policy and some of the corporate things within the Royal College that you see. So you start to see that and then equally come in on the wfh at executive and the involvement at the World Health Organization and the policy levels in there. And again, what we’ve seen in the last sort of like 15 years within the World Health Organization, is a shift in how they focus on disability as shifting their focus on rehabilitation, so much more involvement in policy levels there. I think also that, that understanding, and the more that you speak with governments, the more that you interact with them is sort of understanding where they have to come from sometimes as well, and where those policies are really important to them, and establishing sort of like that more formal part of the profession. But I think I’m still much to do, I’m still an occupational therapist, I still practice as an occupational therapist. Day to day. So yeah, because it colourful,
Brock Cook 39:38 because you you have a private practice now, is that right? Yeah, yep. Do you find or have you found taking on literally probably the, someone say the biggest role in OT in the world? Has that had an impact on your ability to do what you want within that practice? So Here’s sort of, like while you’re in this president position, have you sort of had to put that on hold? Or how have you managed to balance? I guess, keeping your foot in the door in that clinical sense as well as, I guess leading from the top down as well?
Samantha Shann 40:14 Yeah. Well, I guess this is probably a nice time I don’t I can do shoutouts to phonecard. Kate, my fellow directors, because honestly, without Adam and Kate, no, I couldn’t. I couldn’t do both. So very lucky that within the OTT service, there’s actually now four of us, because Lucy has just joined us. But as directors, there’s three of us and Adam and Kate are extremely supportive of my W. F. O T work. I guess it’s been woven into our business plan and our business expectations over a number of years, whilst this role is an opportunity. So yes, I don’t work full time into
Brock Cook 41:01 the practice.
Samantha Shann 41:04 But I think that equally raises other challenges as well about equity. You know, the World Federation of occupational therapists, in my eyes is a fantastic organization, and just so much work. Probably does an awful lot more than what people know. Because yeah, one of the things we’re not so good about is is telling all the minut details. But we are a volunteer. We’re a volunteer organization,
Brock Cook 41:32 you just start a podcast.
Samantha Shann 41:35 Yeah. You sometimes think, okay, occupational balance. What’s that? A good? Yeah. Never heard of it. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so we have some, we have an operational management team, and we have some paid support and some occupational therapists within that. But we’re talking, you know, small hours, the executive director has a small secondment, but again, does much more volunteer hours. The wfh at the president and all the other positions or volunteer positions, which, you know, is very much what I know other organizations alike. But we don’t have the office, we don’t have the backup staff.
Brock Cook 42:24 Yeah, support staff and admin.
Samantha Shann 42:27 I think people sometimes assume that we do. I think people sometimes assume that we’re the size of OT Australia or TA.
Brock Cook 42:36 I think that may be why because I know OTA has an office. And like they have admin staff I’ve done I’ve done a fair bit of work with them over the over the years. And I think most people just kind of assume that well, who to the next level up? So it must be sort of this but even bigger kind of thing.
Samantha Shann 42:52 Yeah. And we’re not. It is volunteers. And as I say that, I think that that for me that there is a challenge within that I’m very lucky that my business partners and my colleagues support me. And I’m very lucky, then that I can put many hours into WF IoT, and I do that, because I enjoy it as well. I get an awful lot out of the work that I do. I enjoy meeting with people I enjoy mentoring, sort of like our new leaders come in through the profession. I enjoy helping establish those associations. Absolutely. I enjoy it. But the amount of hours that I put in is not necessarily what future volunteer. Yeah. Yeah. There is a real challenge there about how can we get w fo ti to the point that it is a realistic volunteer position for people?
Brock Cook 43:53 Yeah, more of a sort of a sustainable model, I guess.
Samantha Shann 43:57 Yeah. And it always comes back down to that wonderful word of finances. And
Brock Cook 44:04 unfortunately, that’s seems to be what runs the world nowadays.
Samantha Shann 44:08 Absolutely. Yeah.
Brock Cook 44:10 So So why
Samantha Shann 44:12 are very dependent on our member organizations were like,
Brock Cook 44:15 yeah, yeah. Even one thing that speaking about like the American situation, I one thing I’ve noticed with them is just the differences in how membership works in different countries. It’s probably not so much a W fit thing, but more an individual country thing, but I know like with Australia, when I’m a member of Ota, it comes with, like, automatic membership to wfh T whereas in the states, if you want membership to wfh, t you have to get that separately. Is is that I guess which one’s the more common model would you say sort of around the world because I, I can’t obviously, like you were saying before, and I want to get into this a little bit in a sec, but people don’t really really fully understand I don’t think the amount of stuff that W fit does for the profession. So I wonder like, you know, OTA, I guess it’s almost, you’re supporting OTA, therefore you’re supporting W fit. But if you’re not sure what w fit does for you, and it’s sort of, I guess a an extra step that you need to go to, I would imagine that there would that’s a pretty big barrier for people to actually join W fit.
Samantha Shann 45:28 Yeah, so there’s this two membership models within who T, there is what we call the premium pricing model, which is what OTA Australia has signed up to. And a quarter of our member organizations have now signed up to that. We brought that back in in 2008, just as I became vice president finance, and that is very much like you said, is that the member organization, so ot Australia, the Swedish Association was the first one to sign up. They pay a block amount of money as number of dollars per, per member, and then all their members are members of who tea as well. Yep. And the traditional way that would always happened prior to was bringing in the premium pricing. And we had to bring the premium pricing in as a separate model, because some member organizations were not so sure about it. Yeah. So we kept the old model where people have to be a member of their national association. But they can do an add on of that. But yes, it does, it does mean that they have to make an active decision. I think the other thing around that is then Wi Fi T is very reliant on its member organizations, promoting Wi Fi T for us and making that easy for people to join. I think it’s also about people’s understanding, I think, sometimes people say, Oh, well, I’m not a member of Wi Fi t because I don’t want to go and work overseas. Yeah, it’s like, well, that’s it, that’s not really why you need to be a member of WF OT, you need to be a member to be fit to support your profession. And there are sort of people say, Well, what do I get from my membership? Well, there are a few membership benefits, there’s things like the who to call it, those reduced Congress registration fees. But I always sort of say as it’s not about an external thing, membership to the reality, it’s I try to think about little bit more internally, of that, it’s your opportunity to support support your profession, and enable WF ot to represent occupational therapy at very high level stakeholder meetings. So who T has a collaborative partnership with who the World Health Organization, we’ve been in official collaborations for just over 50 years, one of only eight health professions to have such a long relationship. And that’s not an easy relationship. We have to do a collaboration plan every two, three years, and show how we’re working together. But it’s that representation at that high level meeting that gets occupational therapy recognized if occupational therapy is an act, who meetings we don’t appear it who documents it’s about then how it trickles down into regional policies, regional documents, regional workforces, then from regions down into countries and localities. So WF O T membership is not the same as your membership to your national associate. One, even if you’re opting in, you’re paying 25 US dollars. That’s not it’s not, you know, you’re gonna get things coming to you. But it is about how you support your profession. And feeling it does then give you that access to occupational therapists around the world as well as network opportunities. But I think it’s more about how we envision being part of the profession, how we can influence health and well being around the world really.
Brock Cook 49:32 I think that’s always been the biggest thing for me. It’s obviously with my OT, Australian membership. It’s included in that but it’s always been promoted in Australia to be more of, I think, speaking without a president a few years ago, like she described it as it’s an investment in the profession, as opposed to like when you sign up to your local one, you know, you get a discount on CPD like that’s more of an investment in your or learning and whatnot, whereas the W fit is an investment in the profession. And like you said, it allows the the organization to represent and which amazes me because I speak to so many OTS around the world nowadays through this podcast, and just through networking in general. And one of the biggest complaints that people have about the profession is that it’s not marketed or it’s not, you know, promoted. And we need more people in these positions of policymaking, and I’m like, we’ve got the people, we need the support the people, it’s, we have these mechanisms already in place, we just we need to support Well, in this case, W fit in order to, to make that happen more often, or or sustain that, that representation because without it, like it, I could see, especially with now that say who everyone can recognize that models, like the ICD are fairly sort of representative of what we think of health with regards to OT, but without us sort of having a seat at that table, I could very easily see other professions sort of just seeping in and no tea fading into the background quite easily.
Samantha Shann 51:19 And having that full spectrum as well, you know, sometimes, you know, that, you know, the big push at the moment within who is rehabilitation 2030. And the member states of the World Health Organization sign in up to you know, developing rehabilitation services by 2030, which actually feels very close now. Yeah, you know, for occupational therapist, that’s a bit mind blowing. You think, what, we’re only just focusing on rehabilitation. And it’s that recognition of, you know, well, where does occupational therapy play its role in rehabilitation, you know, and I’m really putting forward that there is no rehabilitation without occupational therapists, yeah. But equally, being very realistic. And that’s where the policies, that’s where the politics come in. That’s where the negotiation skills come in. And that’s where it’s really important that W OT, has this collaboration with the World Health Organization, because whilst we can say that occupational therapy is key in rehabilitation, we have to be also very aware that in many countries, there are so few occupational therapists that, that there’s not enough to go around to set up Rehabilitative Services we want to find in that match between, you know, where we see ourselves, hopefully, in sort of 1020 5060 years, and making sure part of occupational therapy, that occupational therapy is part of that vision and plan. So there is rehabilitation services are developed, is making sure that occupational therapist developed along with that. That’s really important because we can’t, we can’t raise people’s expectations. But equally, we can’t afford for occupational therapy not to be part of the conversations because we don’t quite have the workforce yet.
Brock Cook 53:19 Yeah, definitely. So one of the big things I think that everyone would recognize wfh Wofford for is the Congress. It’s yeah. You easily would say it’s probably the largest ot related event. Every time that it’s on. It’s It’s massive. When was your sort of, I guess, introduction to the Congress? When did you first go and what was it that drew you to such a massive event?
Samantha Shann 53:55 My first of the fit Congress was in 2002, in Stockholm, in Sweden, and just become the UK delegate. And, but equally had just left Uganda. So had loads of Ugandan occupational therapists come over, we’d worked hard to get them to get their papers accepted. So for me, I think I’d left Uganda a few weeks before and then suddenly was with all my friends and colleagues. It was absolutely fantastic. A union. Yeah, it was I was sort of like a week in Stockholm with my colleagues from Kenya and Uganda. And that’s really, because that’s that’s 2002 was the last time who to Congress was in Europe. So it’s 20. Yes, because we we move the Congress around. And we recognize it’s not easy for people to get to all of the time for travel for expenses for lots and lots of different reasons. But one of the reasons then is therefore we move it around the world to try and win Make it a little bit more accessible. And in those last 20 years, you know, we’ve had the first one in Latin America, we went to Chile in 2010. And the last one was in South Africa, the first W hoti, Congress on the African continent. So really, you know, tried to make it as easy and accessible as it can be. And I think part of that is then recognizing that we have the grants program for the Congress. So helping to support occupational therapists from low and middle income countries to present at the W H O T. Congress, and anybody can donate to that Congress. So even if you can’t actually come to the Wi Fi at Congress, whether virtually this time, because this will be the first time that we’re going to have virtual attendance as well. But you can still be part of the Congress and you can still enable that by helping to support maybe somebody else just even a small donation makes quite a difference.
Brock Cook 56:04 So what is it I guess? What would you say would be the biggest draw card of a W fit Congress compared to say, a national conference that someone might have in their own country, like what would be the big difference?
Samantha Shann 56:20 Diversity, and that real opportunity to meet occupational therapists from around the world to learn about occupational therapy, Practice Research and Education in the different global context. But I think, for me, it’s beyond that cultural diversity as well. The bit that I really, really enjoy about WF ot congresses is the diversity in the presentations. So you can have a very well, renowned occupational therapist presented. And then the next presenter can be a new graduate who’s presenting their groundbreaking work with a new community or a new practice in their country. And I think that real, real difference in experiences, not just an experiences of like the cultural country context, but that different lens of like being a new graduate coming into the profession, to having some really experienced things. And then the rest of us in the middle where we’re, yeah, we’ve got some experience, still developing it, still learning it. And I think for me that that’s where the real strength and the real beauty, not just of WF ot Congress, but WF ot lies is like really bringing the profession together on all those different levels.
Brock Cook 57:47 Because I think I see, and even from my personal experience, I feel like people operating sort of in their little silo or like their country, their health system, you kind of very much get just, I guess, stuck with the status quo of that. And as much as you might be trying to learn and diversify your knowledge and that kind of thing. It’s hard when you’re still in that system. And I think one of the benefits I could see of a W fit Congress is, like we’ve already explored today, like the difference in health systems around the world, like how the profession started differently, and how it operates differently in different countries and being able to be exposed to that and to network with people in from all over the world, I would imagine would just be the most I could already foresee myself just being utterly exhausted at the end of it just from trying to like, soak in all the information.
Samantha Shann 58:47 It is it’s absolutely exhausting. absolutely mind blowing. Yeah. And it’s that, yeah, it’s opening your eyes and opening your ears and actually, you know, what does it mean to be, you know, an occupational therapist working in rural Kenya? What does it mean working as an occupational therapist in a city centre of Singapore? I mean, the, the differences are vast, but equally with every sort of presentation, there’s always something that you can pull out because we’re occupational therapists, and there’s always this deep, rich conversations of sharing ideas and sharing practices and developing links. And I think, you know, I’ve had the real privilege to be able to go to a number of who T congresses now, but seeing people make connections and watching those connections grow, you know, I, I’ve seen people connect and then come back to the next wfh at Congress doing joint papers together because they’ve gone on and developed this work in relationship that, you know, developed over coffee or who tea Congress and I think it’s really interesting because with the last Two years and the pandemic and virtual and things have become a little bit more accessible. And we, we, we’ve had the opportunity to connect in different ways. Yes, I know what got us through the pandemic. But there’s such a different richness in having that conversation with somebody, because it’s that conversation, it’s an occupational therapy conversation, isn’t it? It starts maybe around that presentation that you both heard and what that made you think about your own practice, but then it goes on and you, you learn about people’s lives, and you learn about their stories, and you can make those connections and, and for me, that’s what occupational therapy is about. It’s about learning about people’s stories and engaging in those stories and developing those stories together. And I think those face to face connections are where those real relationships really develop. I was talking to somebody yesterday who I’ve met via zoom a number of times over the last couple of years, and we’ve we’ve developed a good working relationship, can’t wait to just meet them. Yeah, and just have that, that conversation. And
Brock Cook 1:01:13 I think that’s something that a lot of people have experienced, like you said, like, during the pandemic, like this zoom became the thing. And it was a way, like you said, to get us through and I know a lot of people pivoted to telehealth and that kind of stuff. But I’ve still never met anyone that’s considers telehealth to be a complete and total package replacement of face to face therapy. I think it’s the same for these kinds of events, like even before pandemic, like even some of the CPD stuff I used to do through ot Australia, like I could do a webinar, but I’ve never got as much out of it as I would sort of an in person training. And I’ve been to quite a number of conferences, state and national conferences here. And I just can’t even imagine the the richness of the learning and the connection that I usually get from those events being available. Obviously, the direct knowledge from the presentations and stuff, you can probably get over a virtual platform. But for me, personally, the value from conferences was always sort of those conversations in between sessions and the people that you meet and the people that you run into, or you go out for dinner after after the day’s conference and converse and have those ot really rich, deep conversations with people that you’ve, like you said, either met online, because I’ve done this a number of times now and then finally met in person, or people you’ve just met during the day. And that, to me was always where I got the most value out of any of those kinds of events. So I could definitely think that yeah, you could do the the online version. And that’s great that that’s an option, especially obviously, with everything that’s going on in the world today, it does make that aspect of it more accessible. But I can imagine that just the rich richness of the experience of being there in person would be exponentially more valuable to a lot of people.
Samantha Shann 1:03:18 Yeah, yes, the online versions there, and I agree with you, it’s great to be able to look back on things and do that learning, and that real sort of like professional sort of like development stuff, but that richness, connections and never quite knowing which connections are going to lead to something else. And even small connection, you know, you always remember those conversations, as you’re going up an escalator or, you know, finding a seat in an auditorium and just hearing, you know, somebody’s story. It’s just, it’s just wonderful. And I think, you know, this year as well, we’re going to be in Paris. And, you know, we were talking about the differences of occupational therapy around the world. And sometimes we can make real assumptions. And you know, we can look at France and, you know, power strength within you’re in a really strong history, a very strong sort of French history. But the development of occupational therapy or logo therapy in France, is really something we need to be learning about. It’s very, very different to lots of European countries, lots of other countries. They’ve got very different struggles to other places, they’re making great achievements in different areas. So, you know, there’s the beauty of Paris itself and the excitement of being in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, which I think, you know, we would all enjoy being enjoying that, but really starting to understand what occupational therapy is in France, and seeing what they’re doing, I think is a great opportunity as well.
Brock Cook 1:04:54 Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t. Unlike I don’t know why and I may because it’s sort of A long established sort of group of countries in that area of the world. But earlier, I’m very aware that African countries are very different and very unique to themselves. And I think a lot of people just grew up in countries altogether. And just think that, you know, Europe is Europe, and that all came up together. And it’s all the same, they speak different languages in some countries, but everything else is the same. So it’s fascinating that even I hadn’t even considered that France may have even had like a different developmental timeline for the profession, compared to say, the UK or, you know, other areas in Europe.
Samantha Shann 1:05:35 They’re very, very different, and a very, very different health system that they’re working in and trying to influence as well. And I think, you know, that’s the beauty sort of, like, we’ll get to see that through some of the conquest program as well. But you know, it’s one of the keynote sessions is focusing on occupational therapy in France, because it’s, you know, where we are, and there’s so much to learn, because it is, it is very, very different. It’s very different to what I’m used to in the UK a lot to learn and move up, you know, other international sort of keynote speakers to give us that more broader aspect around that. But I think that opportunity to come together and be able to ask questions, and and I think that’s yes, who at Congress is always a large Congress, but it’s actually also quite intimate. Yeah, there’s always lots of opportunities to have those small conversations, and our keynote speakers are always there for the Congress, they’re going to be there in coffee, that there’s always that opportunity to have a conversation with people.
Brock Cook 1:06:41 Yeah. speaking earlier about, like projects and stuff that have started, like, I know, there’ll be a number of people listening to this, this podcast now that we’ll probably discover this podcast through some of the 480 groups. And I know that the, the ladies that started that four ot network on Facebook, that that whole thing started from the Congress in Chile. And you know, they’re from all corners all at the time, were from all corners of the globe, and came together started this project, which, like, I got involved with that a couple of years into it. And, but that’s the kind of sort of thing I mean, I think, for OTS got, like 30,000 members or something in it now, but that’s the kind of project that started from just coffee and catching up and meeting new people at WF ot Congress. Yeah. So it’s not always it’s not always just the research side of it. I guess. There’s like, there’s this, there’s something for, you know, the academically minded as well as the probably more practically minded OTs, there’s something for everyone at these events.
Samantha Shann 1:07:46 Absolutely. And I think, again, you were saying the difference between national and international, you know, that the program is, you know, very well evaluated, you know, we have a strong system of review in abstracts submitted, you know, so congratulations to everybody that’s had their abstracts submitted, because there was a lot of competition, again, this Congress, but we are different in that it’s not just research focused, there are so many practice, and education sort of things that and real practice sort of things of day to day practice within occupational therapy. All the things that probably brought us into the profession to start with,
Brock Cook 1:08:30 yep, one query I’ve I’ve had myself, and I’ve heard from another people, other people sort of, I guess one sort of concern around, let’s say, a WF ot conference, compared to a national conferences is how people might manage with the language barrier. How does how does that generally work within the Congress?
Samantha Shann 1:08:54 I get I think that’s part of the beauty of it as well, you see lots of hands flying around in conversations and conversations becoming quite animated, as people try to get their points across. I think as occupational therapists, we’re good communicators, so we tend to enjoy that as well. And within the Congress program, that we it’s predominantly English, but within France, we do the translation into sort of like the predominant local language. So there will be French translations. We are also looking into other translation things as well, because, you know, again, with the pandemic over two years, some of that’s become more accessible. Yeah, the difficulty always is cost. Yeah, translation is extremely expensive. But there are more online translation tools now. I think we have to recognize that online translation tools are brilliant, but they’re not perfect. Yeah. And especially When it comes to something like occupational therapy, because we have our own professional language, and our own professional intent, sometimes that Yeah, isn’t always picked up by them electronic translations or even translation full stop. Yeah. And so whilst we, we are working very hard to make it accessible with various translation options, I guess I do ask people that they’re realistic and that there are limitations,
Brock Cook 1:10:30 I guess that’s one of the benefits to of being able to attend in person is that if you’re able to find a particular presentation or topic that you may not be able to get a very accurate translation on, but it’s something that interests you, you could find the speaker in person and try and have that conversation. And same as we would do in practice. If you’re working with someone that spoke a different language, like you find ways of doing it, there might be someone with you, that can translate for you, etc. So
Samantha Shann 1:10:59 absolutely. And I think absolutely, some of my Congress discussions, I’ve been more enriched by those language conversations, because the different use of words in different languages are what you described it this way, and I didn’t quite fully understand it. Because for us, in my culture, that would mean this, but you seem to be implying something else. And suddenly, the worlds opened up, and you’ve you’ve gone into a totally different path of what you were originally thinking about. So I think absolutely, that those conversations and exploring language is really, really important.
Brock Cook 1:11:37 And I think yeah, like you said, just add to the diversity and the experience that you can really only get from a WF ot Congress compared to say, a national one where you would assume in most countries, the dominant language of the country is going to be that at your at a national level conference, whereas Yeah, a lot more diversity at IWF. At Congress.
Samantha Shann 1:12:00 Yeah, absolutely. And I think you know, the other thing with wi petition, many Congress’s, as we’ll talk about being international congresses, but generally that means that they’re based in a country, and the vast majority of their delegates are from that country, because it’s aimed at that country. And then they open it up to international delegates, you might get 100 or so from different places depends on the size, the difference with a WF O T Congress, okay, we’re based in France, but actually, it’s a WF ot Congress. So it is fully International, there is no one culture, there is no one country that that Congress is working around, it is working around a fully international sort of delegate base.
Brock Cook 1:12:54 Yeah, I remember many, many moons ago presenting at an international mental health nurses conference. And then this is on the Gold Coast in Queensland and Australia, and then realized that it was in the same place every two years. It didn’t move. The next one was on the Gold Coast, the one after that was on the Gold Coast. So I’m like, okay, so it’s not really international, is it? I guess you can come if you’re from overseas, but other than that, it was just mostly Australian OTs and Australian nurses and Australia and other like other allied health professions, it was a very odd realization that I hadn’t really come across up until that point, but yeah, you’re you’re right, it’s the WF ad Congress is W fit in it’s, it travels, it moves.
Samantha Shann 1:13:35 And I think that that, again, you know, when we’re looking at, I mean, to Paris, in the logistics of it, I can understand people’s anxiety over travel, certainly with, you know, the last couple of years, but we’ve done a lot of work and in our Congress organizing, teams are working really hard. Looking at that recognizing the, you know, people come into our Congress will be, you know, from many different countries and what that actually means, you know, with vaccinations with access, what are COVID rules and things like that. So, I do sort of encourage people to keep looking at the website, look for those updates. And, you know, we’re trying to make that as smooth as possible. Try not to get too far into the future. Yeah. But feel now that you know, right now, just feel the right time to come together in person.
Brock Cook 1:14:28 Definitely. I’m gonna assume that similar to Australia, like the Organising Committee for a WF at Congress is also all volunteers same as the rest of the the organization. So yeah, like you said it, especially in this current climate in the world. It’s almost like an added workload for those people. So kudos to them.
Samantha Shann 1:14:50 Yeah, now we’ve got the scientific programs, volunteers and then different groups the French Association looking at social programs as well, because let’s not forget, you know, Congress is about coming together and learning. But as we’ve already talked, it’s those connections. So they will be Congress parties as well. Also, before Congress, there’s education day. So Education Day is a dedicated day for educators to come together and discuss very pertinent issues around education now, and looking into the future. We’ve got a group of volunteers developing that program at the moment. And they’ll also be pre Congress workshops as well, to be able to look at some, some topics in more detail. So there’s the four day Congress, but there’s also lots of things happening outside of that problem as well.
Brock Cook 1:15:44 And from talking with other people, it does sound like the social aspect of a WF at Congress is a lot more expensive than any national like, conference I’ve ever been to it does seem to be more of a priority. And I guess you’re, you’re traveling overseas, it’s kind of a big deal. So you want to make the most of it as well.
Samantha Shann 1:16:08 Yeah. You know, there will be there’ll be the official sort of like social programs. But also, like we said, is, you meet people and the amount of people that you meet, and then say, Oh, well, you know, we’re going out for dinner tonight, or should we go for coffee, and there’s always something and I think, we’re very aware as occupational therapists. So if we see people on their own as well, they’re not on their own for very long. You get to make you get to meet new colleagues, but you get to meet new friends as well.
Brock Cook 1:16:45 Fantastic. Just having a look for the website, if people wanted to go and check out the program and see what what might be of interest in interest is W fit Congress 2020 two.org. And I’m assuming that for registration, everything all in that site? Yep.
Samantha Shann 1:17:03 Registration there, there’s how to donate to the Congress grants program. If you want to support occupational therapists from low middle income countries, there’s the program on there at the moment. There’s some ideas for what to do in Paris. And we’ll keep adding to that, this early bird registration. And the program I think, is really exciting as well, because like we’ve already talked about that diversity of new graduates, experienced therapists, the diversity from around the globe. But there’s also some symposium sessions where we’ll be able to explore topics in some more depth, and there will be some WF IoT lead sessions. So learning a little bit more about what w fo Ti is actually doing and how people can get involved in some of that work as well.
Brock Cook 1:17:52 Excellent. So if you’re considering going earlybird is up until the ninth of May 2022. So hi, everyone. postprocessing Brock here. Just a quick note to say that since we recorded this episode, WF o t have extended the earlybird till June 23. Everything else still stays exactly the same is all accurate. But you now have until June 23, to get that early bird price and sign up for the Congress. Let’s get back to the episode. Get on that and save yourself a little bit of coin as well, which is awesome. Thank you so much for for coming and having a chat. It’s been fantastic. I’ve really very much enjoyed it.
Samantha Shann 1:18:41 It’s been great. My first podcast
Brock Cook 1:18:43 podcast, too.
Samantha Shann 1:18:45 Yeah. Wow. New opportunities you
Brock Cook 1:18:49 see that you. If anything, if you can take anything from your story, it’s that you just jump on these opportunities when they come up. So I’m glad I could present another one that you haven’t had the pleasure of doing up until now.
Samantha Shann 1:19:05 No, thank you very much. It’s been a real pleasure.
Brock Cook 1:19:12 If you liked this episode and want to check out more, head over to occupied podcast.com or search occupied podcast in your favorite podcasting app. If you have thoughts or reflections on the topics discussed today, please do get in contact. We’d love to hear from you. And lastly, if you got some value from this and you want to help us out, like, subscribe, share it with a friend. Remember, be good to yourself, be good to others and always keep occupied
THE OT ROUNDTABLE – 138 -Who is the Imposter?
May 12, 2022
Our Roundtable Guest: Alondra is an occupational therapist in Bay Area California and currently, she provides services via Hippotherapy, which entails incorporating horses And utilizing the movement of the horse Within the treatment sessions. She has a keen interest in imposter syndrome given her own personal experience of it.
Talking Points
What is imposter syndrome?
How does it manifest?
Physical and mental
Impact of comparison
Can lead to increased stress and anxiety
Why are some people more affected by imposter syndrome and others not?
You may know Tailor best as @BecomingOT on instagram, an account she started to share the transition from “anxious OT student to growing practitioner”. Her passion for improving those around her and assisting people to learn from her experiences is infectious. But how did it get to this stage? How did she get to share her content with thousands of OT’s? How does she cope with modern day stressors of being a content creator? These are just a couple of the things we explored.
I can’t thank Tailor enough for her time. I thoroughly enjoyed ever moment of our conversation and I know you will too!
136 – ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION ft Dr Daniela Castro De Jong & Dr Georgia Pike-Rowney
Apr 20, 2022
Daniela Castro de Jong, Lecturer in Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Health, University of Canberra (Australia) & Georgia Pike-Rowney, Practitioner and researcher in the transdisciplinary space of music, community, education, health and wellbeing, Centre for Mental Health Research, The Australian National University
Session Title Doing music together as a shared occupation: a socio-altruistic music program as a collective occupation and a learning opportunity for occupational therapy students
Session Details Music and singing are complex occupations, considering their known effects on health, occupational performance, collaboration, and socialisation for people of all ages and with all levels of abilities. This session will introduce the participants to the community-based Music Engagement Program, which aims to create opportunities for social interaction and wellbeing for all of those who are involved through sharing songs. The program is based in Canberra, Australia, and since 2014 has been a part of a local occupational therapy program to teach students about the nature of occupation. The students learn through engaging in community music sessions with residents in aged care facilities and local schools.
The collaboration has been recently published as a discussion paper:
Castro de Jong, D., Pike, G., West, S., Valerius, H., Kay, A., & Ellis, S. (2020). Shared music, shared occupation: Embedding music as a socio-altruistic collective- and co-occupation in occupational therapy education. Journal of Occupational Science, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2020…
I’m the first to admit that I never used the MOHO much in clinical practice for a number of reasons. Conversations with Ruth started to get me to revisit some of the thoughts I’d had for a long while.
We started with the basics exploring the model and then moved into a bit more of a critical analysis.
OCCUPIED PLUS+ CLIP – Essentialism and Productivity
Mar 14, 2022
An exclusive sample clip of one of the Occupied Plus+ Patreon episodes. If you like it and want to get access to the rest of this episode and many more go to patreon.com/occupiedplus and sign up today!
This is a model that I have used for many years with a massive variety of clients, friends, family and myself to help explain how a variety of concepts interrelate and can impact on our ability to cope with life.
There are many many published versions of this model but they all follow this basic structure.
134 – ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION ft Dr Danielle Hitch
Mar 07, 2022
Outcome measurement in Occupational Therapy – What are we scared of?
Dr. Danielle Hitch, Senior Lecturer in Occupational Therapy, Deakin University, Australia & Allied Health Research & Translation Lead, Western Health, Australia
Session Details:
Outcome measurement is crucial to proving the effectiveness of occupational therapy, but remains scarce in many areas of practice. So what’s holding us back? And what does / should ‘outcome measurement’ look like in occupational therapy?
133 – An OT’s Perspective of His Own Traumatic Injury ft Collin Hernandez
Mar 04, 2022
Collin Hernandez loved working with his hands. Building things was a job that continued as a hobby. That was until he had a traumatic accident that severely compromised his ability to engage in the things he loves most. In this episode we explore the injury and his rehabilitation up to this point from an occupational perspective.
THE OT ROUNDTABLE – 132 – What Impact is Isolation Having on People’s Habits, Routines and Health
Feb 21, 2022
Our Roundtable Guest: Tegan McKay is a provisional psychologist who owns The Mindful Hub and is also one half of the Strong Minds Club podcast. Her psychology background adds an important dynamic to the occupational therapy perspective of the rest of the roundtable.
This episode we are diving into the effects we have been experiencing recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic and “safer-at-home” restrictions. We looked at how it has impacted our habits and routines and also what we can do to adjust to these changes to maintain a sense of positivity and mental wellbeing.
Talking Points
Telehealth in mental health services
Managing routines in our daily lives
Influence of pandemic on the limbic system
Limiting intake of information
Being mindful when in the community
Physical activity and it’s positive influence on brain and body
Mindfulness
Realization that this situation is a trauma
Unhealthy coping mechanisms
Decreased capacity and increased fatigue with new roles
Changing scenery for different tasks
Delineating work from home
Impact on kids and their connection
Letting go of control during
Be patient with ourselves
Being okay with not being okay
Join us in the challenge
Reflective Journaling: writing out 3 struggles and 3 good things every day
OCCUPIED PLUS+ CLIP – The Stress-Vulnerability Model
Feb 14, 2022
An exclusive sample clip of one of the Occupied Plus+ Patreon episodes. If you like it and want to get access to the rest of this episode and many more go to patreon.com/occupiedplus and sign up today!
This is a model that I have used for many years with a massive variety of clients, friends, family and myself to help explain how a variety of concepts interrelate and can impact on our ability to cope with life.
There are many many published versions of this model but they all follow this basic structure.
131 – Political Competency in OT ft Dr Nick Pollard
Feb 10, 2022
Dr Nick Pollard is a senior lecturer in occupational therapy at Sheffield Hallam University, teaching occupational therapy students at undergraduate and post graduate level, and course leader of the MSc pre-registration programme. He was previously professional lead in occupational therapy, vocational rehabilitation and dietetics on an interim basis for 23 months, and before that team leader and research co-ordinator for occupational therapy also at senior lecturer grade.
His MA explored internal migration and mental health; His MSc explored occupations in creative writing groups, and his PhD the political implied in occupational therapy. Dr Pollard has written and presented extensively on community based rehabilitation and on critical explorations of occupational therapy.
You may know Dr Pollard for having coedited several landmark occupational therapy texts, notably the Occupational Therapy without Borders books, with a new edition published in 2016.
This episode we explore the need for OT’s to understand and take a more active role in being political within the spaces that we work.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
130 – ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION ft Moses N Ikiugu
Feb 04, 2022
Understanding Meaningful Occupation and its Healing Qualities
Moses N Ikiugu, PhD, OTR/L, Professor and Director of Research, Occupational Therapy Department, University of South Dakota
Session Details In this seminar, we will discuss the following: – The nature of meaningful occupations – The difference between meaningful and psychologically rewarding occupations – The postulated healing properties of meaningful and psychologically rewarding occupations – Future research to clarify the nature of meaningful and psychologically rewarding occupations
Suggested readings: Ikiugu, M. N. (2019). Meaningful and psychologically rewarding occupations: Characteristics and implications for occupational therapy practice. Occupational Therapy in Mental Health, 35(1), 40-58. DOI: 10.1080/0164212X.2018.1486768 Ikiugu, M. N., Lucas-Molitor, W., Feldhacker, D., Gebhart, C., Spier, M., Kapels, L…Gaikowski, R. (2019). Guidelines for occupational therapy interventions based on meaningful and psychologically rewarding occupations. Journal of Happiness Studies, 20, 2027-2053. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-00… Ikiugu, M. N., & Pollard, N. (2015). Meaningful living across the lifespan: Occupation-based intervention strategies for occupational therapists and scientists. Forest Hill, London: Whiting & Birch.
129 – The Occupational Narratives Project ft Dr. Gail Whiteford
Jan 24, 2022
You know her. You love her. I’m honored to have the phenomenal Professor Gail Whiteford back on the podcast. This time we got to talk about a project thats very close to her heart and we lay out a challenge to you all to get involved!
When you’ve uploaded your “Occupational Narrative” I want you to tag Occupied Podcast on social media so we can share it with the OT community!
If you want even more valuable content join <<Occupied Plus+ on Patreon>> for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship and much much more!
128 – THE OT ROUNDTABLE – What are the Occupational Implications of COVID-19?
Jan 12, 2022
Our Roundtable Guest: Dr. Jesse Wilson is an Assistant Professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada. She has extensive experience in supporting youth with autism and The Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) approach to therapeutic intervention. Jessie also brings a Canadian perspective on the current COVID-19 situation.
As occupational therapists, we are innately adaptable, but these are especially unpredictable times, there is no question.
Our occupations, both on a personal and professional level, are being impacted on a global scale.
We have invited Dr. Jessie Wilson, an Assistant Professor at Western University in Ontario Canada to discuss this complex issue with us. Listen as we dive into how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted each of us from a professional standpoint, the lives of our patients, as well as students, and OT practitioners in all areas of practice.
As occupational therapy practitioners, we know the importance of community; so please reach out and let us know how you are navigating this challenging time. We here at the OT RoundTable want to support you and band together as an OT community. Regardless of where you are in the world, we are in this together! Be well, friends!
If you want even more valuable content join <<Occupied Plus+ on Patreon>> for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship, and much much more!
126 – The Neurodivergent Experience in a Neurotypical World ft Jacklyn Googins & Greg Boheler
Nov 29, 2021
Jacklyn and Greg are OT’s, cofounders of social enterprise B3 coffee, and both identify as neurodivergent. This discussion was fascinating being able to discuss this very common and often misunderstood experience.
We discuss the wider societal acceptance of neurodivergence, their personal experiences, and how B3 is pushing the way forward for an all-inclusive future.
If you want even more valuable content join <<Occupied Plus+ on Patreon>> for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship, and much much more!
125 – ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION ft Dr Paula Kramer
Nov 22, 2021
Occupational Disruption in the Pandemic: A Window into the Better Understanding of our Clients
Dr. Paula Kramer PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, Professor Emeritus, University of the Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, USA
COVID has drastically changed the critically important occupations of many and has enhanced our understanding of occupational disruption experienced by clients with disabilities. Occupational therapists profess to understand disruption, but now have a personal experience of disruption. The pandemic provides a unique perspective on our clients’ experience.
Objectives: – Understanding clients’ occupational disruption through a personal experience lens – Acknowledge parallels between occupational disruption due to pandemic and the occupational disruption of illness/disability.
OCCUPIED Plus+ clip – What do I Need in a Contract
Oct 28, 2021
An exclusive sample clip of one of the Occupied Plus+ Patreon episodes. If you like it and want to get access to the rest of this episode and many more go to patreon.com/occupiedplus and sign up today!
Been asked a few times recently for tips on the kinds of things new graduates should think about when going in to negotiate their first contract. This is NOT LEGAL ADVICE but rather some points to keep in mind. Should you need legal advice for your contract most definitely see a professional.
Keep Occupied
Brock
124 – Lessons from a Career in Occupational Therapy
Oct 20, 2021
On October 15th 2021 I was honoured to be asked to give a short guest talk to the graduating class from Central Queensland University. The topic was left up to me and so I thought about what I would want to know if I was back in their shoes, about to step into the world as an OT for the very first time. So here it is, my lessons from a career in OT.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
If you want even more valuable content join <<Occupied Plus+ on Patreon>> for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship and much much more!
Transcript
Brock Cook 0:02 G’day all and welcome to another episode of occupied this episode I absolutely love I was honored to be asked to give a short presentation for the graduating class of Central Queensland University. Today, actually, and they left the topic up to me and after a bit of thought bit of what should I talk about a bit of freaking out, I developed this presentation of lessons from a career in occupational therapy. G’day, my name is Brock Cook, and welcome to occupied. In this podcast we’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy, we explore the people, topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources at occupied podcast.com. But for now, let’s roll the episode. Alright, so yeah. Hi, thank you, I was absolutely flattered to be asked to come and talk to you guys. This morning. When I was first asked, the topic was left really broad, which is fine with me. But I started thinking about what I would have liked to hear when I was graduating many, many moons ago. And I started thinking about well, what if I was able to sort of, I guess, restart my career, but keep all of the the knowledge and stuff that I’ve gathered over these many years? What if I could do it again, but with my current learnings intact, and I think that’s where I’m going to try and distill some of that down for you guys today. And hopefully, there’s something that that you guys can can take out of it. So I’m going to try and present at least some of the major lessons that I’ve taken from a career in occupational therapy, which is still the best career option, in my opinion. So that’s excellent. So one of the first lessons commonly referred to as outcomes razor, for those of you into a bit of philosophy is generally that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. And there’s a little bit more to it than that. One thing not to get confused is that the easiest solution is the best one. But what I would like to really highlight is that the the main component of outcomes razor is to try and make sure that more you’re making choices and decisions that using as fewer assumptions as you possibly can. And when I’m referring to this, I’m thinking about with the clients that you guys are going to work with. This key concept to me, was really important with regards to interviewing and analyzing interviews. So it taught me that I need to be continually working on my own self awareness that I’m not consciously or subconsciously filling in gaps of the person’s story of their experience, that I’m not passing any judgment on their situations that I’m being able to come to a conclusion with as minimal assumptions as I possibly can. And I’ll give you an example of this from earlier in my career. I was working with a lady on an acute inpatient Ward, mental health ward. And she just come in we were sitting in ward round. And she was telling us her story. And she told us that she back in the day used to date, Peter Andre. Now I understand that many of you are quite young, and may not get that reference that Peter Andre, and I can guarantee you that in the 90s. He was viewed as cheesy as that photo is now the default reaction from the whole team, including myself at the time was she must be psychotic. She must be delusional because you wouldn’t make a story up like that. You wouldn’t want a story up like that. Well, it turns out it was true and her she was also the father of her child, which again, no one had believed until she had brought in newspaper articles and photos and
enough proof that the whole trading team was rather embarrassed. So that was an example of our bias, filling in the gaps to her story. to come out with what turned out to be the wrong outcome in the end. And I’ve never forgotten that story, mainly because it’s Peter Andre. And it’s super awkward still, either way. Another lesson that I’ve learned throughout my career is around this concept of the dark side of occupation. And this some semantic controversy around this one. But the understanding of the concept is that it’s looking at those occupations that we are commonly ignoring, or not really viewing as occupations, because they’re illegal, they’re not really health promoting, they’re awkward for us to talk about. So things like drug use, things like general delinquent behavior, graffiti, all of those things that we commonly don’t view as occupations, per se, we might view them as something else. But we don’t often consider them as persons occupations. I’ve worked with people, for many, many years who have used substance misuse, as a form of meeting a social need. It’s not necessarily a chemical dependence that keeps them going, but more a method for them to connect with peers. Try and make friends, try and keep friends, that kind of thing. So if you’re working with someone in that instance, and you’re trying to or even if they want to, and you’re encouraging them to either reduce their use or stop using using in the ideal situation, then just taking that away, because it’s bad, isn’t going to work, because there’s still this need that needs to be filled. So I’d encourage you to Don’t forget about those occupations that aren’t commonly viewed aren’t commonly discussed or might be somewhat awkward, including sex and sexuality, which is a big hot topic at the moment, within the profession about it being discussed more openly, without the people that we work with. One of the biggest lessons I learned was seemingly the most obvious and that was don’t forget the people. Don’t forget that. We are working with people. We live or we were part of a profession that prides itself on being science base prides itself on being unique, and being able to assist people in a very structured way at times. And I know that throughout most university courses, if not all university courses, those various structures, things like assessments, interventions, frameworks, models, all of those kinds of things are really heavily leaned on to get across to you, how Oaties operate, and how we think and that sort of thing. And that’s 100% valid. I think that myself, in my career, when you first graduate, there’s this inkling to try and impress and be the best ot that you can be when you first get your first job. And a lot of that seems to revolve in all I did in my head revolve around, trying to get my head around the assessments used and all of that sort of stuff as quickly as possible and be the most efficient or the best at administering them and that kind of thing. And I think, although that is a very, very important aspect to the profession. For me. It was a while later, maybe a couple of years after I graduated, when I realized that in focusing on that I was focusing not as much as I should have been on the fact that I’m working with a human being and their experience. I’m trying to make them fit into the interventions and the assessments that I had, rather than the other way around. So just a reminder that don’t forget that we are humans working with human beings and that’s sometimes more complex than just administering assessments and looking for the outcomes that we’re hoping to find anyway.
One of the biggest, this is probably one of the biggest revelations I had. So hopefully at this side at this stage, we’re all aware of the P O we all know that the internet action between that person, the environment and the occupation where they intersect is representative of occupational performance. And we all know that on a basic level, what OTS do is we can modify, adjust, support each of those individual components. So we can help change the person, the environment or the occupation, in order to improve or increase that person’s occupational performance. One of the biggest revelations I had, however, was that when you’re engaging with the person that you’re working with, you then become part of their environment. So for the longest time, in my head, conceptually, I would look at the person’s environment, the person’s occupation, and the person themselves. And me as this kind of outsider that was enacting an influence over these three things for the individual, without realizing that I’m part of that person’s environment, the other health professionals working with that person, they’re also part of their environment during that period that you’re working with them. So anything that you bring to that table, whether subconsciously or consciously is going to have an impact on that person. Now, some of you may have heard of phenomenon like transparence. This is exactly what this is talking about. If I go into a room, and I’ve just had a really crappy day, it’s nothing’s going right, I’m feeling really down, I can’t even bring myself to throw on a smile, that’s going to have an impact on the people that we work with, because I’m part of their environment. And me walking into that room with a negative outcome, or sorry, a negative. Or, for lack of a better term, it’s going to have an impact, because I’m going to have an impact on their occupational performance, because all of a sudden, their environment has taken a on average, sort of dip towards the negative. So being really self aware about what you’re bringing to the table, in every interaction is super, super important, because you are a part of that person’s environment. Following on from that, the ability to be able to work out where you’re at before those interactions is probably one of the biggest and most important skills that you will have learnt at university, whether you know it or not, I for one can say that during university, we did a lot of reflection and a lot of reflective assignments and reflective exercises. And it probably wasn’t until, I reckon 18 months to two years out of uni, that it finally clicked for me like, hey, this stuff actually works. And it’s kind of important. Being able to reflect on interventions you do. Being able to reflect during interventions and adjust and change your skill set. Even your communication skill set on the fly is taking steps towards your own growth, and improving yourself as not to be the best therapist that you could possibly be. It’s something that I feel every uni does really well in terms of teaching you how to do it. But making sure that you’re aware that this is a really valuable tool, whether you see that yet or not. Keep it in the back of your mind. Because one day, if you don’t yet see its value, you’ll think and you’ll be like I remember when Brock said that he said this would happen. It’ll just click.
In saying that, to flowing on from this, again, communication is key. Now I’m coming from this, I’ve worked my whole career in mental health where if you don’t have good communication, you don’t really have anything. It really is key in the fields that I’ve worked in, but it goes for all fields of OT. And what I mean by that is there’s a growing level of evidence out there that states that if you’re able to or sorry that your ability to develop a really good therapeutic relationship with that person is arguably the biggest factor in ending up having a positive health outcome with that individual. Not saying that all the other stuff isn’t important as well. But like I was saying earlier, when you tend to come out of uni and you’re focused on that really structured stuff. Don’t forget that the basics are essentially where your big impact is coming from as well. So really on terms of learning all your assessments and learning your interventions, keep learning and keep developing your communication skills as well. It’s something that even now I am still improving. Still learning still reflecting on so that I can improve myself. It really is a lifelong pursuit to improve your communication. Something that’s near and dear to my heart, and I’ve done a number projects and presentations and all sorts of stuff around this particular concept is occupation is means the only thing that separates occupational therapy from every other health profession is occupation as means being able to do anything you want and justify it as ot because it’s got an occupational outcome isn’t really good enough nowadays, using occupation as the therapy is the difference. That’s what we do. I’ve had people discuss this with me on a number of well with with a number of very different opinions. And my argument always is, Will cold and flu tablets technically have an occupation as ns, they’re designed to get you back doing what you want need to do. So are they OT, I don’t know. But they don’t have occupation as means a tablet isn’t an occupation that’s engaged in to help improve you. That is the difference that we provide, that is the difference we bring in our unique contribution to that health space. So something to keep in mind, and to, even in my career would be constantly reflecting on and am I doing the most to promote occupation as means within my practice.
The last thing I wanted to bring up before I am happy to take any questions is, and this is something I get asked from the graduates at the university I work at and students from all over the world through the podcast asked me or I hear frequently from them is I don’t really know if I know enough, I don’t really know if I’m ready. I can sum that up really, really quickly, you are ready, you know more than you actually believe that you do. And I can guarantee you that there’s going to be situations when you first start working, you may have already experienced this, when you went on placement, that you’re going to get there and you go, Oh, wait, I do know how to do this, or I do know how to work out how to do this. These are the skills that you’ve you’ve gained through this university course these are the skills that make you a good OT is being able to not just know everything, but being able to work out how to work it out. We’re not generally we’re not an overly prescriptive profession, we’re a profession that aims to team up with the people that we work with, we’re not a hierarchical, have all the answers type profession, we’re not you don’t no one generally should be coming to an OT, because they just want to be told what to do and then go home. Were a profession that works with the experts in those people and that is the people themselves to troubleshoot the answers and support them to come up with the fixes themselves in a lot of cases. So all of those skill sets as obscures they might be you will have and that is the beauty of this profession. And that is why this profession is also so broad is because that, that ot skill set, like I said, I’ve worked my whole career and mental health side from now. But if I decided one day, I’m going to go and work in geriatrics. I have the skill set to do that. Yes, there’s gonna be some basic, like assessment modality process type learning that I’ll get on the job, but from an OT perspective, I have the skill set to be able to work with any population. It should be the same skill set across any practice areas and at the core skill set. I mean, so and you’ve got that. So back yourself. I know a lot of people say fake it till you make it. I don’t necessarily like that but back yourself because you’ve got this. And yeah, welcome to the profession, the greatest profession on Earth, and best of luck.
If you liked this episode and want to check out more, head over to occupied podcast.com or search occupied podcast and your favorite podcasting app. If you have thoughts or reflections on the topics discussed Today, please do get in contact. We’d love to hear from you. And lastly, if you got some value from this and you want to help us out, like, subscribe, share it with a friend. Remember, be good to yourself, be good to others and always keep occupied
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
123 – The Real Life Impact of Eating Disorders ft Carissa Dyer
Oct 13, 2021
Through her teenage years Carissa experienced the pressure of managing her eating disorder on top of all of life’s stressors. How does this hyper focus on food, eating, comparison, judgement and hiding all of the above from your closest people impact your life? Carissa was amazing enough to come in and share her first hand experience.
This experience has shaped her journey into OT and where she is wanting to take her career.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
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Transcript
Brock Cook 0:00 Hi, and welcome to another episode of occupied. Today I had the absolute pleasure to speak with the lovely Clarissa Daya around her experience of an evening having an eating disorder going right through and into a recovery program for that right through to now studying occupational therapies impact, or potential impact for people with eating disorders through her doctoral Capstone, so just a trigger warning, but gonna be talking about eating disorders and the impact that it has on people’s lives. If there’s a trigger for you feel free to skip ahead or not listen to this one. It’s definitely an amazing episode was just so open and honest, and I can’t thank her enough. So strap in, get ready and roll the episode. Get a My name is Brock Cook and welcome to occupied. In this podcast we’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy. We explore the people, topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources that occupied podcast.com. But for now, let’s roll the episode.
Carissa Dyer 1:30 Oh, yeah, yeah, um, well, originally when I went to undergrad, I was going in as a physical therapy major. And in the States, we don’t have like, this is my physical therapy like bachelor degree, or at least at my university, we did it. So I was exercise science with a concentration in physical therapy. But my family and I went on vacation in Florida, like down a little further south in Florida. And we were on the beach and I heard this baby just like wailing crying, I think I was about I was a spouse be a sophomore in college. And I was like, Mom, that dad back there who looked so stressed out. He added like a little kind of toddler on the sand. And then somewhere was a baby wailing. And he just looked really stressed. His wife had just walked away with their other child to go into the ocean. And I’m like, I’m gonna go ask him if he needs help. And she goes, Okay. Um, so yeah, I went out and like, sir, you look really stressed. Like, are you okay? Like, I hear crying? What’s going What’s wrong? And he’s like, Oh, my gosh, you’re a lifesaver. So I started talking to this family, who, such a small world lives, 30 minutes away from where I grew up in Kentucky, and the mom comes back and her little boy has Down syndrome. And I love kids. I’ve always, you know, worked with kids growing up babysitting kids. And he has Down syndrome, and I’m just, you know, talking to her about her kid and, you know, services that he gets, because I tell her I’m a physical therapy, Exercise Science, pre PT. And she goes, Oh, well, we really got a lot out of occupational therapy. I’m like, Oh, what’s that? And that kind of just started this spiral of me, really researching OT and I just really like how it’s more holistic, and really client centered, where we make our goals based off of what the client wants, not just moving your body, which physical therapy is important. Um, I just feel like they have a different important aspect into someone’s plan of care than what we do.
Brock Cook 4:02 Yeah, definitely. On the there’s a spot for the professions that we have. It’s just yeah, it just yeah, we we’ve, we’re unique, and we just need to do that as well. So yeah, so random. action from the beach.
Carissa Dyer 4:19 Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I still keep in contact with that family. I’m still friends. Yeah, yeah. And I’m 25 now and I met them when I was, I think I was about to turn 19. So I’ve kept in contact with them for a really long time. I was gonna do, they do the buddy walk. Every year. It’s a walk for people with Down syndrome in the States. And there are different locations all throughout the US and pretty major cities. And I was going to go to that one, that they have a team every year for their son, but circumstances just didn’t line up for me to go But I’ve still always like wanted to go. Yeah, yeah.
Brock Cook 5:06 So did you like change immediately like after that experience like Yep, now I’m doing it.
Carissa Dyer 5:14 I’m pretty much yeah. Yeah, once I cuz I was still on summer break at that point but once I got back on campus for the start of my sophomore year, which that’s our second year in undergrad in the States. That’s so weird to say that because talking to someone that’s not us.
Brock Cook 5:35 I’ve watched enough movies I know thing.
Carissa Dyer 5:37 Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, pretty much as soon as I got back, I changed my major to, which is not that much different. It’s really like once you get more into like, your senior year where the classes start to really vary. Yeah. On the prereqs for grad school, so but then I decided to pick up a health administration minor, and a psychology minor.
Brock Cook 6:04 Interesting. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. They were Where are you finished now? Are you still got
Carissa Dyer 6:17 my undergrad? Yeah. Yeah, I graduated my undergrad in 2018. And then I started graduate school for to get my doctorate degree and ot last January and 2020. So we were about a month and a half into school, and we went on spring break, and our professors are like, we’re not sure if you’re gonna come back and then we never came back. Oh, so that was great. I had to do cadaver and anatomy and physiology online. Which was terrible.
Brock Cook 6:52 That probably was in my personal preference. I hated doing those. Yeah, yeah. I was the smell. I couldn’t do it. So online. Oh, suited me?
Carissa Dyer 7:02 Yeah. Yeah. I, I didn’t really care about the smell. I just wanted like the hands on learning because I’m paying so much money, even though it’s loans right now. But I was like, wow, this really sucks. Yeah, their pictures. were like, what are we looking at? Yeah, that doesn’t even look like a femur.
Brock Cook 7:19 Yeah, yeah, that aspect of it. I can understand. Yeah. So how long have you got to go for your doctorate?
Carissa Dyer 7:27 Um, I graduated in August actually graduate on my birthday. Winning August. Yeah, yeah. August 13. So I have until the end of that month to get on my own insurance. That’s great. That’s how I’m looking at that. But uh, no, I’ll be married by that time. So that’ll be hopefully good. I can just hop on my future husband’s insurance so yeah, in the states you get kicked off of your parent’s insurance when you turn 26
Brock Cook 7:59 I don’t even though Yeah, we don’t have that system so I don’t have to worry about
Carissa Dyer 8:03 Yeah, yeah.
Brock Cook 8:06 Very American type of problem I think.
Carissa Dyer 8:09 Oh yes, it is.
Brock Cook 8:11 So what’s at the moment obviously going through you Will you do like projects? And that’s what like thesis projects and stuff for your doctoral program. what’s what’s your sort of current interest area? What area of practice you’re leaning towards?
Carissa Dyer 8:27 Yeah, so mental health? Um, I have had my proof Yes. Considering your podcasts very concentrated around that. Um, yeah, mental health I didn’t even know that ot you could do mental health I kind of had a very basic understanding of what ot can do going into grad school. And now I love it even more than when I told you that I met that family on the beach and decided to change my major. I’m just yeah, I look at like everything now through an OT lens. And I’m like, wow, this is pretty cool. Um, yeah, I, when was it? fall of last year was when we came back in the classes. And I started with a girl in the class ahead of me, the mental health specialty pathway. So at my school, we have we’re allowed to do small difference, kind of like specialty clubs. We have a hand club, an older adult club, nikkyo pedes Club, an ergonomics and technology club, and now mental health club that myself and a girl in the cohort above me founded and it’s still going strong. I’m proud of the people that took it over it. I check in on him every now and then just Make sure that they’re doing okay. But it? I mean, yeah, cuz it’s in its second semester of running. So I had no idea what I was doing, but I was just like, I hope this works. And people like it’s
Brock Cook 10:13 usually the best idea stop. Yeah, yeah. So pretty much everything I’ve ever done started. I have no
Carissa Dyer 10:21 idea correct? Yeah, yeah.
Brock Cook 10:24 So it was so you said earlier that you did a site subject was that sort of where the passion for mental health came from or does that why you enrolled in that subject you already had an interest in it?
Carissa Dyer 10:37 Yeah. So I already had an interest in that subject because of my own personal experiences with mental health. And I just don’t want anyone to ever feel the way that I have. Because it’s a really crappy feeling. And no one should ever have to feel that
Brock Cook 10:58 way. That was a very loaded question, because I do know why you’re here. Yes, you do. Yeah, so let’s dive into it. So your experience with mental health? What was it when to start?
Carissa Dyer 11:15 Yeah, yeah. So um, I’ve struggled with body image issues pretty much my whole life. But from like, what I can really remember around the age of 10 was and I really remember struggling like hardcore with body image, what I ate, how I looked at other girls, how I compared to other girls, and how I wanted boys to see me and what I thought boys liked. In growing up, you know, where I grew up in. I grew up in a very southern, Southern, very conservative, Christian Catholic town in Kentucky. And a lot of the time, you know, mental mental health wasn’t talked about. I mean, I feel like recently Yeah, yeah, I feel like recently. Within the past, like five years, mental health has been more and more present. And I feel like it’s now been the most present it has ever been. But yeah, I, I developed. I want to say I developed mild anorexia when I was about 10 or 11 years old. And then at the age of 16, I developed blumea. And at age 23, I finally decided I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I got myself into a partial hospitalization program. And I’ve been in recovery ever since. And I’m 25.
Brock Cook 12:58 So the, I guess, start with the I said you had mild anorexia to start with?
Carissa Dyer 13:07 Yeah, yeah. Just kind of mild.
Brock Cook 13:08 What did that? What did that look like? Like I added that present? Yeah,
Carissa Dyer 13:12 yeah. So um, I also have played soccer for also pretty much my whole life. Around the age of four was when I, I think join my first team. It just started by you know, really kind of had a lot of body dysmorphia restricting more than I should have at the age of 10. But I knew that I couldn’t restrict to the point where it would raise concern with my parents
Brock Cook 13:46 aware of that,
Carissa Dyer 13:49 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. 100% 100% because I saw how the other girls at my school ate, how they looked. And I’m like, I want to look like that. My thighs. I was so self conscious about my thighs because I have soccer thighs. I played soccer since I was four. So I’m like my thighs are bigger than any other girls thighs there that I hate them. And I thought that by eating the way that Claire not the name of a girl in my class, but Claire eating eating how she did, I would get to look like her. Which was not the case. Because if we all ate the same thing every single damn day, am I allowed to curse on this podcast? Okay. If I did the same thing every damn day and as everyone else and we all did the same exact workout we would all still looks so different. Yeah, which I didn’t know at the time for your information. We were not taught feelings. That’s kind of how it is in the south in the US. Is you the only emotions you’re allowed to show our happiness and anger and pissed off occasionally. so different from anger. I mean, I feel like we’re evolving in America a little bit with feelings, at least on the side of social media that I’m on now. Because I completely did like a clean, clean sweep of all my social media once I got into recovery. Um, yeah, but that really, I feel like that really shaped how I then coped with everything that I was feeling as a kid. Because cuz, I mean, I didn’t have a way to say I feel self conscious about my body. Because of this, this this and this. And this is why how do I deal with this?
Brock Cook 15:49 So this would have been just for context? Probably late 90s ish when you would tend mid 90s late
Carissa Dyer 15:59 it was actually early 2000s Okay. Yeah, yeah, I was born in 96
Brock Cook 16:05 that makes me feel old
Yeah, cuz I’m just trying to like say my generation was the first generation or probably the last generation that remembers the time before the internet I’m assuming you died. It’s always been there.
Carissa Dyer 16:25 I don’t know I really wasn’t no. I don’t remember being on the internet until I was like, around 10 or 11. Okay. So I mean, it could have been there but I just wasn’t allowed to be on it.
Brock Cook 16:42 So obviously, social media sort of came in that mid 2000s ish era which is you know, probably a fairly high developmental time for someone who Well yeah, age, you feel like that. Play obviously you you talked about comparing yourself to just the girls at school and what they ate and that sort of stuff. Do you feel like something like social media or were there other influences? That also like I know there’s been talk about you know, those magazines that that girls really cosmopolitan, and stuff like comparing and creating unrealistic? like yeah, and isn’t that sort of stuff do you feel like there was any other influences? Other than just seeing the girls at school?
Carissa Dyer 17:30 Oh, yeah. Yeah, because I did I was always on a competitive soccer team with other girls and I felt like my body looked so drastically different than there is I’m like I want to look like them too. So not only the girls at school in grade school, but also the girls on my soccer team. And I I not that I think I do know that because I looked at those girls at my school with such highest admiration I was bullied a lot in grade school I came in in second grade at at my school so I was eight and I was the only girl in my class with braces and glasses. Then like I needed those because if not I would have talked very strangely I had braces for four and a half years so like two sets to two sets of braces and four and a half years
Brock Cook 18:27 so excuse you take a look lovely.
Carissa Dyer 18:30 Thank you Yes I do know that they worked very lovely and but yeah I just I got made fun of I was brace face in four eyes and I also my hair looked like it was I was a boy boy cut because my hair My mom wanted my hair short because it was less to take care of.
Brock Cook 18:51 I remember yes I remember my mom telling my sister that as well when we will get
Carissa Dyer 18:55 yeah yeah. Yeah easy to get me out the door easy to manage. There. I just know that there were a lot of things and I was seeking that approval from them. Because I wanted to be friends with them. I was I was the newest kid in school. Every one of my grade at that point went to preschool daycare kindergarten like they went through it all together because that’s just the kind of you know, area that I lived in. Everybody knew everybody
Brock Cook 19:24 it’s probably an odd question. But given this is completely not scientific. Given the two people that I have spoken to on this podcast around body dysmorphia have both played soccer for the majority of their lives. And that’s where again, the like like you call them soccer thighs was a bad thing. Do you feel like sports, in particular soccer, at least in the like where you grew up? There’s a culture of that or you just feel like that might just be coincidence.
Carissa Dyer 20:00 There’s a culture. Um, there definitely is. I mean, there was research done when I was doing my literature review for my capstone, which I’m sure we’ll get into. But I found an article, I didn’t end up using it, but I just found it really fascinating. There was an article that was done and it was like dance, volleyball, gymnastics, and swimming are the sports that have the highest numbers for body dysmorphia, eating disorders. And like major health issues based on body image, because it’s mainly heavily female focused, and it’s very much concentrated on how your body looks. I do think that soccer there is a big part in it, though, because, I mean, you’re in a locker room with girls like you’re, you’re changing your your jerseys, you’re taking showers, like you’re gonna see what each other’s bodies look like. And that comparison is gonna happen, which happened a lot in undergrad because I also played soccer for my university. And that happened a lot. to the point to where like, I would, I don’t know if this is too much information, but to where to the point to where I would have an hour long binge and purge, two to three times a day in college. And I would make sure like I would plan my day around when that was going to happen. And when I had soccer practice, and when I had a class, I mean, I seriously I don’t know how I survived undergrad.
Brock Cook 21:50 Yeah. Yeah. Just that added stress would have just planning that would be
Carissa Dyer 21:58 ridiculous. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. deal with. Yeah, it really started to get bad when I was a senior in high school I around this time of year, so this time of year is always a really hard time of year. For me. Everything was like just going down the shitter at that point. Yeah, everything was just going down the shitter. At that, at that point, my senior year, even though I was committed to play at an undergrad University, and that was my dream for college. I got really I got the sickest I’ve ever been. And I still didn’t feel like I looked good enough. My grandpa ended up passing away, which really sent me down a dark spiral. Yeah, and it was just really, really bad. And the guy that I ended up dating a little bit before I went to my university. He, he could tell that, like, something was off with me. He couldn’t, he couldn’t exactly pick up what. But he then figure it out, because he’s just a very intuitive guy. He’s like, you need to get help, like, you eating and then going into the bathroom, and purging. Like, that’s not normal. I knew that it wasn’t normal. But that was my that was my secret. That was the one thing that I could control at that point, because so much had gone out of my control at that point in my life. Because my grandpa was the one thing besides my aunt who is also now passed away. He was the one thing like, that really held the glue to my dad’s side of the family together, and he was the only grandpa that I had left remaining on this earth. So it was it took a lot out of my family and myself. Yeah,
Brock Cook 24:01 that’s happened in a short period of time to know Yeah,
Carissa Dyer 24:05 yeah. But yeah, getting into recovery. Um, it really was my fiance like he. He saved my life.
100% saved my life. And now I’m gonna start crying because he’s so awesome.
Carissa Dyer 24:26 yeah, they are happy tears. And he knows that too. He really does. Yeah, he does. We’ve been engaged for two years. We’ve been together for almost five. There’ll be five next month that we’ve been together for five years. I met him playing college soccer.
Brock Cook 24:47 soccer players. Oh boy. Just watching soccer.
Carissa Dyer 24:51 No, he also played right. Yes, yeah. You like watching me play soccer. He also played for my universe. City. Yep. That’s kind of how we knew of each other and then. But he thinks that like, I don’t know, His story is a little bit different than mine, but I always think that it was. Yeah. Um, but I met him because I actually needed help with a class that I was taking. And I tutored anatomy and physiology for my university at this like little tutoring center that we have on campus and he tutored like a computer class, I have an apple, and it was for Microsoft, and I don’t use Microsoft. So I’m like, I don’t know what I’m doing. And we also didn’t, we also didn’t work the same hours. So like, I never ran into a really, and had asked, exhausted all of my options of people that I knew that possibly helped me and I’m like, Well, I know this guy. Hopefully he doesn’t think I’m too stupid. And so I went in and I’m like, Oh, yeah, you’re on the soccer team. Whatever. I thought he was really cute. kept going to see him. I almost gave up. Cuz I’m like, Are you seriously not picking up? What I’m putting down dude? No, he’s just stupid.
Brock Cook 26:10 Well, that didn’t take long to turn around. No, he’s amazing. 30 seconds later, he’s stupid.
Carissa Dyer 26:18 He just did not pick up on my hints that I was dropping because I apparently Yeah, yeah. He didn’t pick up on the signals that I was giving him. And he says I wasn’t being obvious enough. But I know I was anyway. Yeah,
Brock Cook 26:34 I’m not getting into that too. But
Brock Cook 26:41 So just before, I guess you met him with regards to your then what would was believe me? And by that stage? Yeah. What was how was that impacting your sort of day to day life? What was it? What was it?
Carissa Dyer 26:58 I mean, like, kinda like I said before it I planned besides like, soccer practice and classes, which were, like, the times are set up when I had practice. And when I had class, and I, outside of that I would plan my entire day around when I could binge and purge. And the bad thing was was when I first my first few months of being a new grad school, I lived with soccer girls, and I had a direct roommate who I lived in the same room as so that meant that we shared a bathroom. So I’m like, Well, shit, how am I going to keep doing what I’m doing? But in my mind, I’m like, Okay, well, maybe this is a chance for me to get better. Because I thought that I could fix myself. I can stop at any point that I want. I was That was my mindset.
Brock Cook 27:48 No, but up until that point the like you wanted to keep it quiet like a secret. Oh,
Carissa Dyer 27:52 yeah. Yeah, that was that was like my dirty little secret kind of like the American honor can reject song.
Brock Cook 27:59 Well, that’s a throwback.
Carissa Dyer 28:02 Yeah, yeah. No, but it really it really was. And I didn’t that was that was my that was one thing that I could control and college soccer was so uncontrollable to because I am i was i wasn’t playing as much as I wanted to. I was gaining weight because I wasn’t able to binge and purge. I didn’t have a lot of friends on the team because of a lot of inner teammate drama that was happening. So much was out of my control that that was the also the only thing that I could control. Yeah, again, I don’t know how I survived undergrad,
Brock Cook 28:41 really just for those that might be very new to this sort of area. When you talk about binge and purge, what is that?
Carissa Dyer 28:49 Yeah, so a binge? Is it eating an excessive amount of food that you would not normally eat and purging is then getting rid of that food and any sort of way that gets it out of your system, either by vomiting, making yourself poop, basically, by taking laxatives or excessive exercise? Which I would do all of the above. Which,
Brock Cook 29:21 with the excessive food you’re talking about, like, essentially just eating until you’re absolutely stuffed. Oh, yeah. Yep. And then, like immediately trying to get it out. Yep. And what was I guess, obviously, you look at it very differently nowadays. But back then, do you recall what you obviously the purpose was to like control your weight or lose weight, etc. But can you sort of, do you remember what the basic theory was that you were thinking of? Like, what is it that what is it about that cycle that you felt was going to help? Wait.
Carissa Dyer 30:03 Honestly, I don’t know. I mean to myself, it’s still kind of a mystery. Like, I know that I did that because that was the only thing that I could control at that time. It was also my only way of coping with a lot of emotional pain that I was in that I didn’t know how to deal with because I didn’t have a coping skills to deal with all of it. All of the weight that I was carrying on my shoulders, from my childhood, from soccer, trauma from relationship trauma in the past, it was just a big heavy weight.
Brock Cook 30:46 Do you think? Because I guess. So when you’re actually going through the binge aspect of it? Was it because um, I’m working on a theory here my head trying to work. Okay. So, obviously, most people, like, you know, I guess what you call happy hormones are released when they’re eating that kind of stuff. Would you when you’re doing the binge? Was it trying to sort of, I guess, for lack of a better term, like chase that high of that sort of this makes me feel good. And then the binge purge was more like, what have I done to myself? Like, the more that sort of guilty thing, or was it while you’re eating, you’re like, I’m gonna have to get rid of this. This is terrible. This is like we beating yourself up while you were doing the the binge aspect, and then purging or was it chasing the high and then getting rid of the, I guess, to also say the evidence, but yeah, no. undo the
Carissa Dyer 31:43 damage? Yes. Well, sometimes it was getting evidence. It was, it was a little bit of both. I mean, it would really depend on the day that I had, if I had had a really shitty day, it was to get to feel something. Yeah. At all costs. Yeah.
Brock Cook 32:04 I’m good, bad or otherwise, yeah.
Carissa Dyer 32:06 But then other days when I had felt too much, and it was a shitty day, it was to numb out. So that that was kind of part of the purpose to chasing that high, or numbing out from everything that I had experienced that day.
Brock Cook 32:27 So it’s kind of I think, a lot and we’ve spoken about this on the podcast before. People that might use illicit substances to kind of like self medicate.
Carissa Dyer 32:36 Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. I wasn’t 100%. Self medic socially self medicating
Brock Cook 32:39 with? Yeah, well, I guess, not necessarily the food, but I would assume it’d be more the hormones released during the actual food process.
Carissa Dyer 32:49 Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it’s, it’s an addiction, just like anything else. Um, I mean, there are withdrawal symptoms that I went through when I was going through PHP. That’s what we call partial hospitalization. Here, we just abbreviated PHP, which actually, I left out this part to my mom. So I had told my mom when I was 18, that I had an eating disorder. She also kind of figured it out on her own, too, because she could tell that something’s off with me. And so she tried to get me in. She tried to get me in therapy, she tried to get me to an inpatient Children’s Hospital in my area. But I didn’t, I didn’t want to, like watch it now that that means that I could give this thing up. Yeah, that I’ve been that that’s the only thing I could control. And I don’t remember any of this at all, because at this point, I mean, from probably the age of 18 till 22 I dissociated from my body. I don’t remember a lot of college because I wasn’t present. Yeah. Which, I mean, I remember a lot of like my relationship with my fiance at that time, but like, my day to day soccer, specifically, training for soccer, and then when I would be home alone at my apartment. I don’t remember a lot of that the only thing I really remember from college is time spent with him because he literally saved my life. But I didn’t want to go to that because that meant that I would have to give something up. So I’m like, I’ll go see a dietitian.
Brock Cook 34:42 So what was the what was the or what did you see the purpose of towel and you might like if you weren’t necessarily keen on giving that up, what was your thinking with regards to telling it, he just wanted to vent and talk to someone about it, or you just wanted to not hold the whole burden yourself, or
Carissa Dyer 35:05 I think it was not holding the whole burden. This has been something that I haven’t explored in therapy just yet. Because I still am in therapy? And I, I don’t know, that’s a really good question that I can’t fully answer for you right now. I think it was, I didn’t want to hold that big weight, and keep it on myself, I wanted someone else to have to carry that too.
Brock Cook 35:33 Because I think for a lot of people, like the types of reasons someone might reach out to someone else. And it’s not necessarily, I think, being the, the person that someone reaches out to, quite often people just automatically assume that if someone’s reached out to you, they want help, they want to change, they want to fix, they want you to help fix that kind of thing. And that’s, yeah, it’s not even that it’s not really often the case, it’s it’s probably majority, not the case that that’s happening where some people just want to share that load, they need to get it off their chest, like we were talking about earlier, like having that kind of, I guess, secret, for lack of a better term, that alone, without the actual physical effects of what you were doing to yourself, just holding that, and not wanting anyone to find out the effort goes, that goes into actually trying to hide that from people can be a huge burden. So having someone that you can talk to that you can share, that you can spread that load a little bit can be a huge help. And in my experience working with many people, not just eating disorders, but people with a whole range of different diagnosis quite often, that’s what they’re looking for, when they first reach out, they may not be in a place to want to change yet. But I’ve always looked at that as well. Even if you’re not wanting to change like that, that’s a good step forward, at least you’ve recognized that you can’t do it on your own. But no matter what it is, whether it’s giving up or just holding that secret, at least you’ve sort of come to that realization to start with.
Carissa Dyer 37:25 And I don’t I don’t blame my mom for trying to give me the therapy at that point. Because I mean, I’m, I’m her little girl, like she’s gonna want to do whatever she can to protect me. And I just wasn’t, I also didn’t know at the time how to tell her. I just want you to hold this with me. But also my mom, mom, mom, being my mom and a mother being a mother, they’re not going to hold on to that because that’s their child, like they’re gonna want to make sure that their child is healthy. Especially before I move three and a half hours away from her.
Brock Cook 37:58 Yeah, definitely. And it’s like I said, that’s it’s most people’s natural reaction is to want to help to, like, how can we fix this, like most people are fixes and that’s, oh, yeah, it comes from a good place. And it’s a really, I mean, I’m the same I I’ve trained, and I’ve worked in this area for however long and I still struggle to, you know, switch that aspect off sometimes. But it’s a hard I guess, habit to break that your initial reaction is wanting to fix and help when that’s not always what they the person needs or wants. And sometimes they just, were just taking a step back and just listening can be a good first step. So if anyone does approach you then just take a step back and and listen to start with. And I’ll tell you if they want help. Like if they want to quit if they want to whatever it is, if they want help. They want support. Generally they’ll tell you.
Carissa Dyer 38:59 Yeah, yeah. And that’s something that I’m like now, I’m really good at communicating that like, I’ll just say to my mom, dad, my younger brother, or even my fiance, like, I don’t want you to say anything. I just want you to listen. I don’t need you to say anything. I don’t want advice. I just need you to listen. And don’t typically do that. Most of the time. I would say they’ve gotten a lot better at just listening now then. Yeah, when I first got into therapy, they’re like, but I’m like no, just listen. Yeah,
Brock Cook 39:39 that’s awesome. So from I guess, as bad as it got, and then you met your fiance.
Carissa Dyer 39:51 Yeah, I met him at the age of 20. Okay, so I just turned 20 at that point and then we started dating in November. of 2016 I look behind me, the sign behind me has our anniversary date on it.
Brock Cook 40:04 My God, You don’t remember? Oh, I know. That’s right. I will probably forget mine as well. So he was a couple of years before you got into the rehab, like after meeting him, was that relationship with him? we obviously want that, obviously. But I’m assuming you were still trying to keep it secret at that
Carissa Dyer 40:33 point. And I was. And I was good at it, too. Yeah, at that point, I had been within three years. When I told him what was going on. And he’s, at first he was just in disbelief. Like, it’s like, no, no. I’m, I’m like, yeah, it’s been going on. Like, I told him the whole shebang. And he’s like, Okay, well, we need you to get help. Like, we can do this together. Like we, him being a fixer. He’s very much a fixer and wants to help. And he was like, we can fix this together. We can read all the books, we can fix this together. You don’t need to go to somewhere professional yet. We can try and do this together. Because at that point, I didn’t want to tell my parents I was too ashamed. Because there’s a lot of shame. Around Yeah. Around addiction in general. I’m admitting you need help is one thing that I am working on. I’m not very good at asking for help. And healing, we don’t have to tell your parents Yeah, like it’s gonna be okay. I ended up having to go get professional help. And anyone who is struggling with an eating disorder, listening, please go get professional help. They’re trained to, that’s what they’re trained to do is to help you get better, and they have science behind it to help you. So around, I think, and late November, December was when I got into rehab, and I started getting sober and then so it’ll be two years coming up in this November, that’ll be two years sober.
Brock Cook 42:29 When you’re, when you’re talking about servers that server from being Yeah,
Carissa Dyer 42:36 yes. from, from the from, from the initial start, I have had, you know, minor relapses, which are to be expected when you get into recovery from anything. I would hope not like hard drugs, really, but trust me, yeah,
Brock Cook 42:58 I know. I know. Multiple Lumia process.
Carissa Dyer 43:01 Oh, it is not. Um, yeah. And I mean, now, I think my last relapse was like three months ago. So but the process of me being in recovery has been almost two years and every day gets, you know, a little bit better. I have a lot of podcasts that I listened to when I’m not in therapy. I’m Glennon Doyle. We can do hard things as one of them. If you have not listened to her podcast, we can do her things. You need to this is not free advertisement. But yeah, yeah. This is free advertisement for her. But she’s married to Abby Wambach. Who is like a Golden Boot winner, women’s national team, women’s national US national team soccer player. She’s phenomenal. Yeah, they talk about a lot of hard things on their podcast, and it’s pretty awesome.
Brock Cook 44:02 That’s cool. I like it. Yeah,
Carissa Dyer 44:04 yeah. Yeah. But yeah, because of my experience. That’s why I want to help people now and mental health with being naughty. Doing my cat. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Brock Cook 44:21 So with, I guess, prior to going into rehab and getting help, I’m assuming that the planning and you discuss a little bit before the planning and just the thinking about food, and like planning you binge and purge and that sort of stuff would take up, like a huge amount of time and energy during your day.
Carissa Dyer 44:44 Yeah, and I really started thinking about the process of recovery and like, trying to fix myself first before asking for help. I’m probably in April. of 2019 because in 2019, was when I started going through rehab in November of 2019. I’m like picturing a calendar in my head right now. Yeah, in May of 2019. I ran a half marathon, thought that like, running, eating clean, which, there’s no such thing as eating clean. Doing doing that was gonna be my fix. And being a fitness junkie, which I already kind of was, because I was college athlete, but even diving more into that was going to fix that. And it didn’t it only made it worse. Um, and within a year’s time span, I ran two half marathons, which destroyed my body.
Brock Cook 45:53 By running marathons isn’t healthy?
Carissa Dyer 45:56 No, especially the way that I was doing it. In general, is it? Yeah, no, yeah. Um,
Brock Cook 46:03 any sport, any sport that puts you your body through extremes. It’s not like, I love talking about this again, multiple times, like I’ve been powerlifting. And Coach powerlifting for quite a while. powerlifting is not a healthy sport. Your body is not designed to squat bench or deadlift, that much weight, like the things you’re putting your body through.
Carissa Dyer 46:30 Yeah, yeah. Yeah,
Brock Cook 46:32 sometimes it might be worth the risk, but it’s not healthy.
Carissa Dyer 46:35 No, it’s not. And like, just what I was doing to my body at that time was so bad. But when he proposed, Lee proposed to me in 2019, August of 2019, also around my birthday, um,
Brock Cook 46:54 yeah, you’re gonna have to get married on your bed. Like, it seems to be the only date you remember?
Carissa Dyer 46:58 Yeah. Unfortunately, we’re not getting married on my birthday. We’re getting married in May. But may is also like one of my favorite months. So that makes me happy. But yeah, I’m like, What if you know, I want to have kids and I want to have be healthy and start a family like, this has got to go. And by this, I mean, my eating disorder, my messed up intrusive thought thinking needs to go. And it was actually my chiropractor at the time, who caught that I was not eating very well sat me down how to heart to heart and said, We need to get you better, because you’re about to go to grad school and grad school is no joke. You need to make sure that you are healthy, so that you can take care of other people. And at first, I mean, I was a ABA therapist, I was working with kids with autism, and running around and doing all the things and I’m like, you need to take care of yourself before you can take care of other people. Like that’s a load of crap. It’s not a load of crap. Like it’s so true. Because Looking back, I could have taken care of my kids so much better than I was initially. Yep. And I read, I go through some days where I regret that so much, but I also wasn’t in the mental space to be able to say that to myself yet. So yeah, yes, passion and grace with having to learn how to deal with everything in therapy. It’s interesting.
Brock Cook 48:45 Again, something I’ve taught to the students that I work with and spoken about with a lot of people is the the concept of behavior being language. And, yeah, I think that a lot of people when they sort of when you start opening that discussion up automatically think kids, but my, like, I’ve never worked with kids. And I still have that theory, because it holds firm for adults as well. And adults, usually just either too proud or stubborn to actually admit that everything that they are doing every decision they are making, is telling people, something about them. Yeah. And I can probably almost guarantee you that yes, you were very good at hiding it. But I think it’s one of those things in hindsight, I guarantee you there were signs that someone if they had been experienced in that area and actually knowing what signs to look for. would have been able to pick up that kind of
Carissa Dyer 49:57 a 100% What have I mean I’ll tell you I’ll tell you right when I would be in the lunchroom either at undergrad even especially in high school when I was at my lowest my fingernails would turn purple because I would be so cold because now I’m have chronic anemia because of that because of my millenia but my iron levels would be so low and I would be so tired all the time. my fingernails would turn purple my lip the outside of my lips would get a little purpley blue I would disappear for 10 to 15 minutes after I would eat which I also would not eat very much at lunch I’m disappear for 10 to 15 minutes to go purge my skirt for my uniform because I went to all girls Catholic High School and we had to wear uniforms my skirt for my uniform I could almost wrap it around my waist twice because of how much weight I had lost at that point. Um my hair I could take it like this it would my hair now is so healthy healthy is it has ever been I could take it and break it in half. Because it was that brittle and weak in my fingernails if I like tried to bend it just a little bit it would snap off
Brock Cook 51:33 all pretty good signs that something’s not quite Oh, yeah.
Carissa Dyer 51:35 And I also I also lost my menstrual cycle for five years.
Brock Cook 51:44 Yeah, that part doesn’t surprise me.
Carissa Dyer 51:46 No, no. And I mean, I’m not I’m not going to tell anybody like my fingernails are purple book. I’m so cold. I have no energy. I’m not going to tell you well not really go to the doctor.
Brock Cook 52:02 Yeah, and I but I think for most people, they’re not things that people would automatically go Oh, in disorder.
Carissa Dyer 52:12 No, they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t know like, Oh, you’re so cool. You’re always cold.
Brock Cook 52:17 Yeah, just cuz you’re thin or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The cold more than most people something like that.
Carissa Dyer 52:24 Yeah. I still am always cold. Because I have chronic anemia now. Yeah.
Brock Cook 52:31 Yeah, it’s. So one times, obviously back then it was, I guess, controlling everything and had an influence on everything you do. How do you find Have you found that aspect of it changed? Like right now, like now that you’ve done a couple of years of therapy? Do you find that you still thinking about it all the time, but the thinking is different? Or there’s times when you’ve not been not had to think about it? Like how’s How does it present nowadays?
Carissa Dyer 53:06 Yeah, um, I will say I call I call my eating disorder voice in my head. I call it Ed. It’s from a book by Jenny Schaefer. Um, life before life. Before at I think I read it when I first got into recovery. And she was bulimic called her eating disorder voice ad. So I naturally adopted that. You probably have, yeah, you probably have. She’s incredible. Um, I aspire to meet her one day. But I, there are lots of days when it is not even in my head at all. He’s very quiet, he’s asleep. There are other days where he is. It’s a bullhorn in my ear. And I can’t get him to shut up. Those days are normally the loudest days are normally when I’m about to start my menstrual cycle, or I have not been taking my medication, my anxiety medication regularly. Yeah. Or I’ve either had like a fight with my parents, or my fianc e
Brock Cook 54:27 some kind of stressor.
Carissa Dyer 54:29 Yeah, some kind of stressor.
Brock Cook 54:32 So suddenly, I again, this is something I’ve spoken about with my students, I think I’ve ever spoken it too much on the podcast or spoken about it with my students. a fair bit around. Something that’s really helpful with a lot of different issues within mental health is externalizing it so being able to separate yourself from the issue, and I was gonna ask you about that before, but obviously you’ve just described exactly that. Yeah, yeah, giving it its own name.
Carissa Dyer 55:05 Oh, yeah.
Brock Cook 55:06 Is that something that? Is that something that came from like during being in therapy? Or is this something that you start to do like back in the throes of it a few years ago?
Carissa Dyer 55:18 Um, I kind of I would say, I would kind of start back in the throes of it like, a little bit. Like when I was really, really struggling, like would be on the bathroom floor crying. I would be like, why is this happening? Why am I so F sharp and messed up in the head? I felt like I was going absolutely insane. And since I’ve experienced, you know, mild anorexia, not, you know, very severe. And then severe bulimia? I would, I would say that blumea out of the spectrum of all of the eating disorders, in my opinion, is the health most hellish of the two.
Brock Cook 56:05 So you’ve just thought, Steve, talks about there about it being an impact on you, why is it happening to you? So obviously, we’re separating? It’s from not it was Yeah, and your issue and
Carissa Dyer 56:20 yeah, but I would I could feel that it was putting it was literally almost like a weight, or dumbbell on my mind on my head. Like, why am I am the one boy, yeah, what is this thing going through me and inside of me? Um, but externalizing? It has helped it a lot.
Brock Cook 56:42 Yeah, I think the discussions I’ve had with people, and even in clinical situations, when I’ve talked about that externalization of an issue helps people process it. Because yes, kind of like, when you’re too close to an issue to actually be able to think correctly about it or make a correct decision. Getting almost like getting a second opinion can sort of help you sort stuff out. So externalizing it. And that’s why I really like on terms of ot like some of the more visual models like kawara, and that sort of stuff, because it helps people externalize what’s going on in their head, then they can see it on paper. And using a range of senses to process it, as opposed to just sitting on your own thoughts and trying to ruminate and trying to work it out like that, which doesn’t work. Oh, yeah. difficult to do.
Carissa Dyer 57:38 Yeah. And at the time, like I was my own worst enemy. A lot of the time this silly, I’m cuz I’m my hardest critic.
Brock Cook 57:46 That’s not Yeah,
Carissa Dyer 57:48 it’s, yeah. And it’s not uncommon. So.
Brock Cook 57:52 So do you still get I guess, urges or like, obviously, it’s being looked at as an addiction. And that’s most other addictions? It’s sort of habit versus hormone kind of triggers? Do you still get? I don’t know, I guess you’d call it a craving or something. Yeah. And purge.
Carissa Dyer 58:20 I’m not so much binge anymore. That pretty much the been part of it is pretty much wiped out of my system, because now I do have other coping mechanisms to where when I do feel anxious, or something has gone on, either externally that I can’t control. Or I’m, you know, feeling some sort of way internally. I have those coping mechanisms now to where I nip it in the bud before it even starts. Or before those thoughts even come come about the purging it’s, I would say, if that does happen at all, which is not frequently anymore, really. And if that does happen, I mean, I let my fiance know I talk about it with my therapist, we get to the bottom of why did I feel that way? XYZ Yeah. Um, it’s typically because I have fried chicken sandwich and I felt like shit about myself afterwards. And I feel like a grease ball and all these other things that I’m feeling.
Brock Cook 59:29 I even for people that may not really, I guess, identify as having a an eating disorder or fried chicken salmon probably would still make them feel like shit, too. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just makes you feel heavy.
Carissa Dyer 59:45 Yeah, yeah. So I mean, that’s really, a lot of the times when it’s when it’s triggered. It’s by something that I ate. I think it I think really Like only one time it was a purge was it wasn’t even like a Yeah, a purge was triggered by something external that happened.
Brock Cook 1:00:12 Okay, so it’s more about nowadays like recognizing those feelings first come up as opposed to like letting them get to that sort of crisis point and then just Oh yeah. Yeah,
Carissa Dyer 1:00:25 yeah, yeah. And building up to that point yeah.
Brock Cook 1:00:30 Knowing what you know now and studying what you’re studying now? Yes. How do you see? Or do you see any place for ot in the I guess rehab slash of rehab of eating disorders? I guess practice area?
Carissa Dyer 1:00:53 I’m glad that you asked. Yes, because that’s why I’m here. Um, yes, I do. So that is what my whole Capstone is about I am doing. I’m doing an occupation based life skills program development, for individuals with eating disorders in an inpatient behavioral health hospital.
Brock Cook 1:01:21 Which I’ve already found,
Carissa Dyer 1:01:24 yeah, I’m about to sign the contract with the hospital and a couple days, just have to, like, cross all the T’s dot all the i’s, all that stuff. But yeah, I, I’m really excited about the opportunity that I was able to find for myself. And it’s in the area where my fiance, and I will be living once we’re married. So that’s even better hope I get hired by them, you know, after I’m done, because that’s the goal, to pay off all the student debt. And I’m also going to Colorado for a week to shadow my expert mentor where she works. So I am so grateful for that experience to that’s happening, like right in the beginning of my capstone in April of next year, yep.
Brock Cook 1:02:19 I don’t even know month by month is October.
Carissa Dyer 1:02:24 Yeah. April. Yeah, it has been a long year, in April of 22. Yeah, that’s, that’s when everything starts for for our capstone. So I’m really excited to be in Colorado, because it’s so beautiful, and to have that experience, and to be by the mountains and all the things.
Brock Cook 1:02:44 So in terms of your journey, I assuming because you didn’t mention it, you didn’t actually have any contact with an IT during your?
Carissa Dyer 1:02:53 No, I didn’t ask this. I feel like, I’ve
Brock Cook 1:02:57 helped you feel like you are not necessarily missing out on something. But do you feel like there was a place in your journey that an OT may have been of assistance? or?
Carissa Dyer 1:03:08 Yeah, Yeah, I do. Um, I do feel I mean, in the partial hospitalization, um, I would have to be a little more seasoned to know what my role would be in that particular setting. But I’m coming as, as a student and a new grad, in August next year, I definitely see a place for ot because it affects your whole day. Everything you do, and I mean, their food rules, their food, rituals, their food routines, like, without, I mean, my literature review that I have pulled up right now just to like, kind of help me. Think about all this stuff. All of that ot lingo is peppered in, throughout my literature review, because it does take up, you know, every occupation
Brock Cook 1:04:12 much out there already, like in the evidence base directly from OT, or is this a relatively sort of new space on terms of the evidence base anyway, for moving into?
Carissa Dyer 1:04:24 There’s very little research out there and the research that I did find is very recent. And there’s current research being done right now. I actually, I was a participant in a study over at the states, an anonymous study for like genealogy and disorders, and how it makes up your genetic makeup which I my family does have a history of addiction. So it doesn’t surprise me that I ended up with that gene. Just because of my family history. Because it was either me or my younger brother. So
Brock Cook 1:05:06 do you think in your research and what you found from the literature, it sounds like the treatment, the current treatment, the current best practice treatment is more around, or probably more similar to, like addiction treatment that would go ahead for other things. Yeah. Or is it like a completely different set up?
Carissa Dyer 1:05:28 So from what I experienced, we it was similar to addiction, like, addiction for alcohol, we follow the a model, and which helps me a lot in recovery.
Brock Cook 1:05:45 Like sobriety term came from because it’s not something I’ve heard used in associate.
Carissa Dyer 1:05:49 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I, yeah, and I mean, I use that because of, you know, where I did my therapy. Yep. Because we use that as that was the motto. That’s just the billing that everyone use. Um, but yeah, I mean, like, with meal time, like, it would have been really helpful to have like an OT there, especially. Like in an inpatient setting, you’re gonna have a lot more, hopefully, a lot more tools at your fingertips. Like with a full kitchen, we didn’t have a full kitchen where I went, it would have been really nice to have like a full kitchen with the stove, so that I could focus on like preparing pasta, which was a huge trigger food for me. And like, taking in all those senses, and smells, because I’m a very sensory seeking person. Which also explains why I then did seek out blumea because it is a very sensory addiction. So now my coping mechanisms are very sensory as well, but having that sensory input to help and cope with that stuff. Because having an OT there would have been really helpful. I love weighted blankets, and we didn’t have any of those there. I yeah, sorry. Good. Yeah, I know.
Brock Cook 1:07:14 But so yeah, for those that that, yeah, do relate to them?
Carissa Dyer 1:07:18 Uh huh. Yeah, I am very sensory seeking my really on the other hand, will run in the complete opposite direction of a weighted blanket. She hates sensory input. But that, like shopping for clothes, that’s another intervention that can be done for individuals with eating disorders and should be done because I didn’t find any research. And I did a lot to try and, you know, break that separation of someone’s appearance in the mirror. Yep. And I mean, if you see a size, whatever, is that going to trigger something else? I want to fit into a size extra small, not a small, because that’s not small enough? Yep. I don’t look good enough to fit in the whatever. And just the intrusive thoughts that come with that. And then, like eating at restaurants like I would have. And when I wrote my literature of YouTube, I tried to think of what it what did I struggle with? And how would that apply to this? Yeah. How did it impact my everyday going to restaurants couldn’t do it. Could not enough I did, it was Bad News Bears. So having that exposure, having outings and being in that social setting, because it also impacts your socialization skills.
Brock Cook 1:08:54 Especially, especially like, if you’ve developed that, or any condition really, from such a young age, like they’re the years that most people engage with friends and you know, lose friends, when friends, that’s where they develop those coping mechanisms and those skills, develop those relationships and all that sort of stuff. And if your primary occupation, for lack of a better term is looking after your eating disorder, then you’re not putting the time in to develop those skills. So yeah, that makes sense that that’s something that people are going to struggle with.
Carissa Dyer 1:09:31 Yeah, and I mean, my social skills in high school and in college, like, I would try to turn to alcohol as a different way to cope. I just hated hangovers, and
Brock Cook 1:09:47 particularly likes them. No,
Carissa Dyer 1:09:49 but it was just it was so much different, though, than what I would experience through Ed. And that was a different type of socialization to that I tried to use to cope with everything to numb out sometimes
Brock Cook 1:10:07 i think that’s that’s probably especially yes college students of that age like that’s the social behavior. So yeah, it’d be if you can’t engage in that or don’t want to engage in that or don’t enjoy that, because that’s another thing that sort of isolates you from your peer group.
Carissa Dyer 1:10:28 Oh, yeah, yeah. And I’m another like intervention that I’m hoping to develop into this program development for this hospital is self care and leisure exploration. My self care skills were non existent. Now, and I didn’t even I thought that self care was going to get your nails done, getting your hair done and doing a facial, and I would do those things. And I still, my cup would still be empty. I wouldn’t feel like I had recharged my battery at all. Yep. And that’s not good to have any form of my self care was binging and purging?
Brock Cook 1:11:13 Well, I think Yeah. Well, with regards to what you’ve described so far, like you, obviously everyone does need some kind of restorative occupations do like you said, Yeah. But those things, I would imagine, based on what you’ve said, so far, would just be not necessarily restorative. But just like, here’s something I can do to help hide, you know, what I’m going through? Again, yeah, get my head on and get my nails done. So that I sort of, don’t stand out as having, you know, crappy nails and crappy hair, like, yeah, less attention to draw to those kinds of things, the easier it is to hide, ed.
Carissa Dyer 1:11:54 Mm hmm. Yeah. And I’m also just like, educating. Because I know that my, when I told my parents that I was still sick, and that I wanted to do therapy for real this time. They were in shock, and rightfully so. They were also very upset. And like, why didn’t she tell us? You know, why don’t we do this the first time, all this stuff, and I felt so much shame and they’re like, we’re gonna get you better. Like, it’s gonna be okay. And just having, I just wish that I also had someone to educate them a lot. And to help them as a parent, guide them through that process, because I was trying to educate myself through therapy. Yeah, learn how I cope, deal with all my prior trauma, while also trying to educate my fiance who I lived with. And now I have to educate my parents too, who are a lot, a lot more, but by the way, the five and a half hours away because I lived with my fiance and we did not my parents and I did not live in the same state.
Brock Cook 1:13:19 Yep. Yeah, so
Carissa Dyer 1:13:23 And also, I was going to grab also Brock, I was also going to grad school,
Brock Cook 1:13:29 and like something else on top, some little thing
Carissa Dyer 1:13:32 I was about, I was about to enter a whole new phase of my life, and I knew that I had to do do the thing. To be able to go to grad school to be in the right headspace. So yeah, I mean, I made it out now. And like that, just that portion. I mean, it was it was a lot. So yeah, I mean, just like throughout my literature review, like I just talked about kind of what I told you like the self care, leisure exploration, going and eating at restaurants. I’m having
Brock Cook 1:14:15 aging in those usual age appropriate. Yeah.
Carissa Dyer 1:14:19 yells Yeah, yeah. And having exposure challenges that technical term that I found for it is vivo exposure challenges. And it can be a weekly intervention for individualized therapy or group therapy that people can do, to also have a community like outing and stuff so because it can be overwhelming and overstimulating in a restaurant environment,
Brock Cook 1:14:48 that something that you still do, like, challenge yourself to, I guess, do things that you previously couldn’t or are working on being able to Do excetera
Carissa Dyer 1:15:01 Yeah, yeah, so my therapist and I, we used to do it when I was first with her and outpatient therapy. But now it’s kind of, you know, the exposure challenges have kind of dropped a little bit because I’ve been doing them just on my own without her prompting me to do them. But yeah, one of my biggest triggers was eating a burrito. I could not for the life of me get through an entire Chipotle a burrito. without feeling triggered. And feeling like I needed my fiance to physically lay on top of me until my anxiety attack be your way sounds like it. Yeah, to be my way to blanket. And I mean, he’s a little bit taller than I am. He’s not that much taller than I am. But having just that other heartbeat on mine, too, is very regulating when your heart is going a million miles an hour. Yeah.
Brock Cook 1:16:07 I can only Yeah, what he thought the first time you asked him to try that.
Carissa Dyer 1:16:13 Yeah, he was like, You want me to do what? I’m gonna, I’m gonna crush you. I’m like, No, you’re not. It’s okay. And if you do I stop breathing. Just get off me and slap me awake. It’s fine. I’ll be okay. I’ll start breathing eventually.
Brock Cook 1:16:33 Not sure that’s a good first day, but no, it’s
Carissa Dyer 1:16:36 it’s not. But I would recommend that to be your first cup. Yeah, um, yeah, but those very sensory seeking things like I would, I would seek and I had a fidget ring for for a little while when I first started, you know, managing my anxiety without my eating disorder. And turning to trying to figure out medications to help manage my anxiety symptoms. Because it took me about a year to figure out which medication worked best for myself. It’s like when I would go shopping like I would per separate on just this one thing that I felt just didn’t look right in a dress or pants. And I first like I didn’t know how to cope with it. And now I’m just like, oh, that’s there. Okay. Move on. On to the next. So, yeah.
Brock Cook 1:17:44 Fascinating.
Carissa Dyer 1:17:47 I know.
Brock Cook 1:17:48 It’s I find this sort of stuff really interesting. Because it’s one of those conditions where most people like are you just, you know, starving yourself because you want to be skinny. Like that’s most people’s opinion on eating disorders. Where they don’t, until they actually like know someone or work with someone who has experienced it. It’s like, a completely it’s like speaking another language, it’s a completely other way that your brain actually processes information and the outcomes when it comes to that information provided. Yeah, so two people one with the eating disorder, one without can look at the same situation, taking the same information and come out with two completely different outcomes from whatever that is just because it’s a completely different way of thinking. Real Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s not an overly productive one. In most cases.
Carissa Dyer 1:18:44 Yeah, yeah. And, you know, when I started to educate my family on a lot of what was going on, you know, inside because they would just ask the why quite like, why did you do this yourself? And, you know, at the time, I didn’t know myself well enough to know why I did that to myself. But like, now I can tell them like it’s because I felt like I had no control over my life. And everything was spiraling out of control. And that was the one thing that I could white knuckle through. Yeah. Basically.
Brock Cook 1:19:21 Yeah, control control and giving people or ensuring people have control but, you know, healthy way is, is a massive part of any mental health practice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No matter what the condition, especially in an acute setting, like a hospital, people go in there, they often don’t have choice over anything. They don’t know they get brought food, they get told what time that’s happening. They can’t go in or out of the hospital. Sometimes. They can’t have visitors and certain times like a lot of their everyday choices that we take for granted, taken away,
Carissa Dyer 1:20:03 they can’t go to the bathroom when they want it. Yeah. And if they want to, they have to call, I’m in an acute care setting right now for my first level two, rotation. And every time like we tell patients, especially if they’re high fall risk, don’t get up without nursing to do anything, because we don’t want you to fall, which, rightfully so. But also, it’s like that feels so crappy for those people. Because like,
Brock Cook 1:20:34 exactly what my last episode was about.
Carissa Dyer 1:20:36 Yeah, I haven’t had a chance to listen to that one yet, because it just came out. I’m catching up on a lot of my podcasts.
Brock Cook 1:20:44 So get away from me Stop finding you like and all of a sudden you’ve got like,
Carissa Dyer 1:20:49 yeah, I follow that. Yeah, I follow that six. So that’s a lot of
Brock Cook 1:20:56 listening to catch up on. Oh, yeah, I do. That’s, there’s only a couple occupied. So you’ll be fine. You’ll catch that I’m nighttime. Just a couple. It’s fine. You said you you’re looking at running a program in the hospital Like what? What’s the program? Whatever you have you plan yet to design or like, what are you actually going to do?
Carissa Dyer 1:21:17 Yeah, so they the hospital that I’m going to be working with, they already do have an adolescent and young adult eating disorder inpatient program. Um, but there is, I’m not going to say but because it very is. It’s very good that they have an OT on staff, but that one ot has to cover everyone in the hospital and they don’t just treat eating disorders, they treat all mental health. Okay, it’s not a it’s not a very big mental health hospital. But it’s still a mental health
Brock Cook 1:21:52 hospital. And the workload
Carissa Dyer 1:21:54 for one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And in my research that I did 1.8% of OTS in America, work in a mental health setting,
Brock Cook 1:22:09 how many
Carissa Dyer 1:22:11 1.8%?
Brock Cook 1:22:13 That’s, I would almost put money that probably at least a third, if not more in Australia work in mental health.
Carissa Dyer 1:22:24 Yeah,
Brock Cook 1:22:25 one point eight?
Carissa Dyer 1:22:27 out of, and there are a lot of OTS in America. And 1.8.
Brock Cook 1:22:36 That’s not I’ve Well, I knew it was low. I didn’t know it was that low? Mm hmm.
Carissa Dyer 1:22:41 Yeah. And I’m like, this is not okay. Because we deal so much with that psycho social piece. Yeah. And so what I plan on doing is providing the behavioral health technicians, they’re training on an education on how they can best help their patients who are struggling with eating disorders, providing nursing with education. therapists, like, counselors there, and I would probably do a lot of interprofessional work together. And the OT that’s on staff. I’m so excited to work with him. He seems phenomenal. He’s been there for quite a while now. And has worked in mental health for a really long time. Excuse me, and he’s like, Oh, yeah, bring it on. We love her. We love like the, I don’t know what this woman does. But someone who is very high up and important in that hospital, when I was presenting my project, like, this is what I want to do for you. She was like, I’m here for five minutes. But I just want to say, I love this project. I love OT, I want you to come here and I’m like, okay, so like, I have my I have my site now. Great. But yeah, so just kind of providing that education to and hopefully enhancing what is already built at that behavioral health hospital by going to Colorado observing my expert mentor for a week, because I didn’t have a psychosocial rotation. Yep. I feel birth one because of COVID. Yeah. My first fieldwork that I’m in right now is my first fieldwork that I’ve ever been on because COVID shut. I didn’t have any fieldwork because of COVID it was all online. That’s odd. Yeah. And also, I didn’t really have a ot based psychosocial course at my school, because we were taught by a psychologist, not an OT. So it was basically like retaking psych 101 Just like learning about the diagnosis, symptoms, locations, that’s it because legally she can’t teach us interventions to do. Because she’s not she’s not no d. So, we are very blessed at my school to have a mental health ot at our school. That’s a professor. She’s my expert mentor. She’s my faculty mentor for my project. And she is teaching psychosocial for the first time this semester,
Brock Cook 1:25:28 please.
Carissa Dyer 1:25:31 Yeah, yeah. So she’s starting, like brand new. And she is going to try to give me like a crash course two week Crash Course before I even go to Colorado. On here’s everything that I think is important that you need to know.
Brock Cook 1:25:49 Yeah, that’s, that’s my job at our university. That’s what I do. I teach that Oh, sorry. Second, sexual. Yep. So the I’ve heard many other universities, not just in the States, but around the world that just don’t have. It’s not that they don’t want to, it’s just that they don’t have the staff that have the experience in order to do now, like hearing that there’s only 1.8 like, that’s the I understand why cuz that’s, yeah, you know, if you take 1.8, and you’re supposed to take at least one staff member for every university in order to cover that aspect of content, then there’s gonna be even less people actually working in the field. Let’s Oh, yeah.
Carissa Dyer 1:26:36 Yeah, because all of nearly all of my professors have either part time or PRN jobs at acute care, hospitals, clinic, outpatient clinics, whatever they choose, wherever they choose to work that they’re passionate about. And there, they get one clinic day a week. So most, because they have to teach the rest of the time in my school, the more like now we have two seasons of enrollment. We have a spring enrollment, which that’s the cohort that I’m in. I’m a spring cohort and we have a fall cohort. Yep. So I started in January of 2020. And we also have a fall cohort that starts in August. Yeah. So you have double students double the work to grade the subjects of all the rotations. And when it’s year round, we also have summer classes too. So
Brock Cook 1:27:38 go, they don’t want to make it easy. No, they
Carissa Dyer 1:27:41 don’t. I mean, they also want to get us out in a good amount of time, because it’s a lot. But yeah, I mean, we’re really lucky to have to have her on staff, because she already has taught me so much and she hasn’t even really taught me psychosocial yet. So I’m really excited for when that time comes to have that crash course.
Brock Cook 1:28:04 That’s awesome. Well, I’m excited to see how it all guys.
Carissa Dyer 1:28:07 I know. Yeah. And I’m taking a couple continuing ed courses to during my capstone to have those as deliverables, which I will also be creating an Instagram too. As a deliverable. For the project. I really wanted to start it like when I reached out to you to record this, but I’m like, I really want to count it as a deliverable. Because if I start it before my capstone can’t out. Yeah, yeah, just wait. Ah, yeah, yeah. But I have like a lot of stuff already that I’ve prepped, that I’m going to be posting and stuff.
Brock Cook 1:28:47 But I can we can let everybody know what it is. Once you start it. There’s no rush. Oh, yeah. Make sure it counts. That’s kind of important.
Carissa Dyer 1:28:55 Yeah, yeah. But um, yeah, I’m going to be taking the embodied recovery, continuing education course. It’s an eating disorder focused continuing education course that’s trauma based for mental health professionals. So any profession can do it, working with someone with an eating disorder. And then the American Occupational Therapy Association actually has a continuing education course on ot practice in eating disorders to Okay, so I think it’s free. I want to say it’s free. Yeah, I don’t I don’t want to hold my breath, though. Because I am an LTI. member. So I think for myself, it would be free then. Yep. Free is good. Yeah. Especially when you’re in debt. Yes.
Brock Cook 1:29:57 Wow. Yeah, that’s a whole nother I’ll pick that one. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, we’ll have to get you back on once you’ve done the project. And
Carissa Dyer 1:30:07 yeah, thank you so much. This was awesome. It was so nice to put a face to your voice. And
Brock Cook 1:30:14 if it wasn’t the face, you’re expected,
Carissa Dyer 1:30:15 even if it wasn’t at all right, that’s okay.
Brock Cook 1:30:20 For those obviously that wouldn’t have heard our pre recorded conversation she was expecting a long haired surfer apparently imagined her disappointment with a short head not surfer person. even remotely close to anywhere that you could serve. So
Carissa Dyer 1:30:41 that’s just what I pictured for everyone that lives in Australia. When I hear the accent. I’m like long hair and surfer boy.
Brock Cook 1:30:49 never even been surfing in my life. Sorry to disappoint. That’s all right. So we’ll let everyone know Instagram wants you. Once the project starts. We’ll Yeah, Instagram. Yeah. And people can check that out.
Carissa Dyer 1:31:06 Yeah. Thanks so much for your time. This was awesome.
Brock Cook 1:31:10 Thank you for coming out and being open and honest and sharing so much of yourself. Yeah, it’s been really interesting. I’ve very much enjoyed it.
Carissa Dyer 1:31:21 Yeah, you’re welcome.
Brock Cook 1:31:27 If you liked this episode, and want to check out more, head over to occupied podcast.com or search occupied podcast on your favorite podcasting app. If you have thoughts or reflections on the topics discussed today, please do get in contact. We’d love to hear from you. And lastly, if you got some value from this and you want to help us out, like, subscribe, share it with a friend. Remember, be good to yourself, be good to others, and always keep occupied
122 – You Are Not Client Centred
Oct 05, 2021
Are you client-centered? Are you sure? Does your initial reaction to a situation indicate that you are too? After coming across a little video of a man learning to use his new prosthesis with no supports outside on the grass. He falls multiples times but gets back up and keeps trying. Unfortunately, the original video has been removed so I can’t show you all but I still wanted to share with you my reflections on the reaction to this video.
Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied
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Transcript
Brock Cook 0:00 Good day and welcome to another episode. Before we get started, I just want to say a massive thanks to all of the the patrons that are supporting occupied on occupied plus over@patreon.com, forward slash occupied. Plus, you guys are amazing. I’ve had a couple of supervision slash mentorship sessions that I’ve jumped into in the last couple of days. And I’m just overwhelmed by the quality of clinician that is out there at the moment, this profession I can safely say is in very safe hands, going forward so warms my heart and makes me so happy to get to know you guys, and even happier that you are open and willing to support this podcast this projects, get the extra resources not always stoked when I get your reflections on those extra resources be that episodes or assessments or reflections that I put out. Yeah, it’s overwhelming. If you are interested in joining those amazing people pop on over to patreon.com forward slash occupied plus there is a tier for your budget for your wants for your needs. There is something there for you. pop on over and have a look and just see what you might be able to get out of it. That always amazes me when you come across things that make you reflect on your own practice, no matter how small the things usually are. This episode is about one of those things so I’m very keen to hear your opinions, whether or not you have reflected and can relate, etc. So hit me up in the comments send me a DM send me an email, let me know. Get a My name is Brock Cook and welcome to occupied. In this podcast we’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy. We explore the people topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources at occupied podcast.com. But for now, let’s roll the episode. So, picture this if you will. You rock up to Starbucks and order your favorite pumpkin spice macchiato. Chai whatever drink and the person behind the counter guys. Oh, that’s a lot of sugar. I’m gonna give you an Americano instead. Because it’s better for you. Would you be super stoked about that? Either they right? Does that matter? Let’s level look at it. So technically, is an Americano, better than one of your super sugary pumpkin spice whatever’s they’re not wrong? Does that make it better for you? Well, objectively on paper with nothing else taking into account. It is a healthier drink than the other one. Taking into account the context of your diet being eaten around that how you exercise your current physical status. Yeah, it gets a little bit more complex. But for the most part, on average, most people would probably agree much lower in galleries like 10 calories versus 2000. Probably a relatively easy decision as to which drink was healthy physically. Now, mentally, on that day, you are just really fighting to get your teeth around some pumpkin spice. Because apparently at this time of year, that’s the thing to do. That person has made the decision for you that no, this is going to be better for you. You’re not having that you’re having this instead. How does that make you feel? You’re thinking about this drink all day, hanging for it. You’ve planned out a time where you can go and get it you’re going to sit down you’re going to enjoy it. How does it make you feel having someone else tell you not gonna do it this way. I want you to
have a reflect on that. Positive if you need I’ll get to the point behind in a second, but I really want you to work out how you would feel in that situation. For me, I am quite consciously aware that I am not the best one being told what to do. I’ve always been that way. I don’t know whether it was growing up listening to punk rock, or captaining sports teams or, you know, just always wanting to be in some kind of leadership position as a kid. I don’t know what it is. But I’ve never been particularly fond of just being told flat what to do. Now if I’m told what to do and I get a good explanation and then I kind of agree with it. Or for it, no worries at all too easy let’s go ahead let’s do that plan. But just being told not I know what’s better that for you than you know what’s better for you. The that doesn’t fly. I suspect that there’s probably quite a few of you listening to this that may lean towards that maybe not to that extreme. But being able to make your own decisions and not have the made by someone else for you, is probably something that a lot of you find quite important. I would imagine I would love to hear from you if you disagree, or if you agree with this. But here’s the point that I want to get to. I was scrolling through Facebook as you do one of my not so favorite pastimes but something I definitely still do. And I came across this video this video was posted in a Facebook group. It was a video of a sort of, from what look like a middle aged man who had lost part of his leg and seem to be learning again, there was no context to this video. It was just the video seems to be learning how to walk again with a prosthesis. He was walking on like a grassy area there seemed to be some kind of therapist or doctor or someone with him someone in scrubs in the sort of background, but he was trying to independently mobilize using this prosthesis. He was for the first few clips anyway like making it one or two steps and then falling over on the grass. And the video was in continually like it was short clips of him continually trying to walk independently without any aids other than the prosthesis obviously without any support from other people without any walking rails treadmills, any of that stuff. To me initially the video was kind of nonchalant it wasn’t anything that I was like oh wow, look at that. That’s amazing. I’m like okay, that’s cool. I’ve seen similar videos in the past. I’ve seen videos of pulled together people may or may not know of him if you haven’t definitely look him up. He is an ex Navy Diver clearance diver from Australia who was attacked by a shark in Sydney Harbour lost one leg and one arm and yeah, and I’ve read his books and followed his story for a long time but I’ve seen him do a very similar video about himself when he got a new prosthesis I think it was a running processes as opposed to just his everyday walking what he calls his walking leg and him trying to get used to that and doing a very similar thing trying failing trying failing trying failing trying failing trying failing until eventually he got it the thing so like I said that video to me when I first watched it I’m like cool. Yep, that’s pretty cool. But it wasn’t anything dramatic. And then I found the comments. Again, this is in an OT group so I am presuming majority of these comments are coming from either OTS or ot students the comments for the vast majority of them were trashing the the health service whatever service that may have been that that person was involved in for not implementing all of these supports walking rails Why was there no one hanging on to him? You know, why are we letting him fall over what if he gets hurts all of these
kinds of things which on face value, again, objectively without any other context. Potentially valid arguments. But there was one thing missing from all of these replies. So I being me, couldn’t help myself but point out this one thing that was missing. And that was the fact that what if that was that person’s preferred way of learning? What if that was how they wanted to do it? What if they didn’t want to be that person who relied on grading things right down to walking hanging onto two rails which don’t know about you, but I’ve never done that in my life. in everyday life, I’ve never gone all of two rails and grabbed onto them and walked hanging onto two rails. Understand completely, I’m not saying that they don’t have their place. But I need people to be a little bit more open minded when they’re looking at these things. Here’s the reply that I put into the group. So I write honestly, if you’re thinking of the operational issues before thinking of the client, you’re doing it wrong. If I was in the situation, and the therapist wanted to put all of those restrictions on how I learned how to use my prosthetics, I’d probably tell them to get effort as well. I don’t think therapists recognize how disenfranchising it is having your choices and wishes ignored, because a process of processing quotes. Now, this is assuming that it is his choice, and he wants to learn on the grass with minimal supports. I’m not saying it’s the safest or most efficient method, but it’s his method. Don’t shut down every idea just because your initial reaction is in quotes. That’s not how I do it. Because you’re not right, there is no absolute truth. Now, I want to unpack that a little bit. And I did a little Episode A while ago, I had a hospital stay of my own towards the start of this year. And I had one simple interaction that made me feel completely useless. And that was I was in there for a saliva stone in my throat, like essentially, in my saliva gland, which is an underside of my mouth. They would not let me walk between wards, due to the process due to the risk, apparently, of falls, etc. I had completed their fourth assessment, I am obviously qualified and well aware of what goes into a false assessment. And I was extremely low on that scale. I wasn’t on any medication, I hadn’t had previous falls, I was stable and steady on my feet. I wasn’t dizzy, I was fine. being forced to sit in a wheelchair against your will to be pushed by a small nurse, probably half to a third of my size around the ward was so embarrassing and disenfranchising. And I just absolutely hated it. Why? Why did I hate that so much. Because being in a wheelchair, when I have the capacity and the capability to walk has never been part of my identity. You’re taking away something that I’ve taken for granted in my own life. You’re taking away something I didn’t even realize was something that I had to choose. I choose to walk around, I choose to get up Yeah, I could technically go and buy a wheelchair if I wanted to and, and wheel myself around. But I’m choosing to use the gifts that I have the skill set that I have the capacities that I have. I’m choosing to exercise them. Having that taken away, even though it’s something I didn’t even know was something that I was choosing just effected me more than I could ever have predicted. And it was a probably a 15 minute period and it tainted like my day and had me thinking about it for hours. Because why did I feel like that? Why did this simple thing arc me up so bad that I argued with the nurse?
Why does anything where we take away someone’s right to choose affect them so much? Because we are essentially attacking their identity when we are taking away things that they believe or they want to try and see if they are correct As of now, there are a whole other side to this argument that I am by far not an expert in that is the legal side of it. There are obviously in the states anyway, I Hi. Culture of you know, you need to do like people potentially could sue you if you do the wrong thing essentially. Yes, that is definitely something that you may need to take into account 100%. But is there a least restrictive way. Now, having a look at that video alone, people were worried about or what if we break something else if he falls if he hurts himself, etc, having a look at that video, and no other contextual information, his upper body strength, you see him lifting himself up, you see him bracing himself, he’s not falling far he’s not running at speed, he’s just trying to walk. He’s a relatively fit looking individual. He doesn’t appear to have any upper body limitations See, his strength and everything seems to be there, his range of motion seems to be there. His balance seems to be there you can see his arms moving to try and balance himself while getting used to this new limb. Everything except the fact that he’s not using his leg he’s using a prosthesis seems to be working as intended. So is taking him all the way back when he validly wants to, let’s assume that he actually is requesting to and wants to learn how to walk try to walk on a soft surface, like the grass outside, it does look very lush, in the video, very lush, really grass is taking him all the way back inside. And having two people maybe three people hang on to him while he’s hanging on this walk rails. Is that going to do anything for him physically? Well, the argument could be made everyone know what everyone in that field will be able to go. Yeah, best practices this that and that. Okay, fair. Physically, there might be a more effective way of learning or a more efficient way not necessarily effective, but a more efficient way of learning. People were talking about all you need to scale it back and do this and that and this and I’m like, yep, okay, cool. That’s all well and good, you may be able to do that, mentally, is that gonna be the best way for him. And if he is wanting to go outside, just the fact that he’s outside after being in hospital, potentially, you know, no one goes in for day surgery for an amputation. So potentially, he’s probably spent a fair bit of time in a hospital. Just the fact that he’s being outside might be a big thing. The fact that he’s actually in nature was nature’s you can be on a hospital campus, while he’s doing his rehab might be a massive thing for this guy. The fact that he is enacting his own locus of control over the way his therapy is going. Now, again, we’re assuming that it’s his choice to want to learn how this how to use this prosthesis outside in his own way, is there anything wrong with what he’s doing? Well, yeah, that’s the risk of injury etc. I would argue that the risk of injury from falling around all of that equipment and other people and being pulled in different directions due to falling with a walk belt, potentially, there’s risk there too. And there’s probably risk of things going much worse, if all the stars align in a bad way.
There is risk in those risking getting out of bed, there’s risk in staying in bed, there’s risk in sleeping too little there’s risk and sleeping too long. There is a huge risk in driving to work. There’s also a huge risk in not driving to work. We need to understand that there is risk in absolutely everything we do. Every single thing we do is a risk vulnerability compromise. And we make that decision with absolutely every choice we make. Me choosing whether to have chicken or ham on my sandwich for lunch is a risk. How old’s the chicken? How’s the hand? Where did it come from? Has it been stored correctly, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, there is risk in every single decision. No one overcomes anything without balancing or taking on some of that risk. Whether that’s in a walk, belt and With rails, or whether that’s learning to use your nuber thesis, outside, in the sun on the grass. That person to me looking at that video looking at his upper body strength is coordination is balanced, everything is mitigating so many of those risks that there’s probably not a lot else that you could do on your own. Like there’s nonetheless he could do to improve his individual risk management. There was staff on hand in case something did happen. And if something did happen, that is also a choice he made, he made that choice, acknowledging the risk that may happen. People that play sports, any sports, you are putting your body at risk of injury. And you know that people that dance people that sing, people that I don’t know, play jigsaw puzzles, you are putting your body at risk, but you are acknowledging that the benefits of completing that activity outweigh the risks for you know, I played rugby for a number of number of years now anyone who knows rugby, YouTube, but if you don’t know, it can be a pretty rough sport. It’s heavy contact tackling, it’s kind of like NFL without the pads. There is risk of injury. And yeah, I did get some injuries, minor ones, nothing major, luckily. But there is a risk of injury. But to me, that risk was far outweighed by the benefits I got from participating in that particular occupation. I guarantee you will be able to find something in your life right now that you can observably see that the risks are being outweighed by the benefits. What am I getting at? It’s the same situation with this person trying to learn how to walk with their prosthesis and someone else coming in and saying, Nope, that’s not the way we’re gonna do it. Because this is safer. It is the same thing as my little Starbucks question to you at the very start. You are taking away someone’s choice. Now, again, context is everything. Had this person being physically compromised in other ways his body strength is balanced cognitive abilities, etc, then that changes things. But I don’t think people should be automatically writing off the fact that this might be the best way for this person, purely based on the diagnosis, which is exactly what was happening. In the comments of that video. People were assuming that this person needs support, they need all of these assistive texts, they need this best practice of best practice in quotes rehab process because they’re an amputee. And that was it. That was the only information they had. And that was the only information I had. Get. My reaction was slightly different to everyone else’s, because I was like, no good on him. The dude’s trying to do what the dude wants to do. And until told, otherwise, I can’t see how you could be a therapist. It’s kind of like innocent until proven guilty. The person you shouldn’t be trying to wait for the burden of proof to be on the person to prove to you that they’re capable of walking outside on the grass. You’re not the gatekeeper.
You’re there to support people, not to gate keep their progress. And I think that’s a really powerful message for all therapists. Well, no matter what area that you’re working in, we are not the gatekeepers of progress. Doing that isn’t going to keep us in a job. Doing that isn’t going to make us more effective therapists. It’s not going to make us even feel good compared to supporting a person to do something the way they want to do it. That’s gold standard right there. If you’re thinking about the legalities, am I gonna get sued Am I allowed to do this before you think about the person their wishes, their choices and their locus of control There’s something there that you need to look at in your therapy process. Again, I’m not saying that they’re things that you need to ignore. But I’m saying that if you’re thinking about that stuff first, you’re not thinking about the client as the center of your therapy that is not quite centered practice. That is systemic process centered practice, because everything then is going to be based around the limitations put by that system. And you’re only allowing that person to operate within the limitations of our system that somebody else wrote. You’re not allowing them to operate to their potential. And yes, if there are some barriers that the system creates that maybe you can’t go, it can’t overcome. hate to tell you, but maybe it’s time to put your advocacy hat on. Maybe it’s time to do some research and see, well, is this actually best practice? Is this actually getting the best outcomes? Because until that is the default mindset for our therapists, we’re not paying client centered. We’re doing this for the job, or for some people, possibly the prestige of being a health professional, although many people nowadays would probably question how much prestige there is in being a health professional, but you’re doing it for reasons other than the client. And that doesn’t sit well with me. And I know many, many other therapists that I’ve spoken to about this doesn’t sit well with me either. So I challenge you have a think, have a reflects, reflect on my little Starbucks example, reflect on any instances when you’ve been working with clients where maybe you did or didn’t think of them before you thought of processes and rules and guidelines and all that sort of stuff. Again, I don’t want to get a Hebrew reply. So are you telling us to ignore that because I’m definitely not definitely not telling you to ignore your processes and your best practices. But if you want to be truly client centered, it needs to be centered around the client. So have a think about that.
If you liked this episode, and want to check out more, head over to occupied podcast.com or search occupied podcast and your favorite podcasting app. If you have thoughts or reflections on the topics discussed today, please do get in contact, we’d love to hear from you. And lastly, if you got some value from this and you want to help us out, like, subscribe, share it with a friend. Remember, be good to yourself, be good to others, and always keep occupied
121 – All About Occupation ft Michael Sy & Pauline Gail Martinez
Sep 15, 2021
About Michael
Michael Sy, University of the Philippines Manila
I am a Filipino occupational therapist and currently designated as Associate Professor at the National Teacher Training Centre for the Health Professions, University of the Philippines Manila. I did my Ph.D. in occupational therapy where I studied about bridging the concept and practice of occupational justice among occupational therapists and justice workers in the field of substance addiction. My exposure to drugs and addiction scholarship led me to further explore what else is (un)known about the dark side of occupations. This allowed me to work on a recent study, with Pauline and Bex, that examined a group of people whose aim is to engage in hidden doings to become “beautiful”.
About Pauline
Pauline Gail Martinez, Angeles University Foundation
I am a Filipino occupational therapist and a lecturer in the Department of Occupational Therapy at Angeles University Foundation. Currently, I am a Diploma/Master of International Health graduate student in the University of the Philippines Open University. My research interests include occupational therapy education, occupational science, interprofessional collaboration, and global health.
Session Title
The doings and occupations of those who desire to be “beautiful”
Session Details
Learning aims:
Describe the group culture of people who desire to be “beautiful” through the world of beauty pageants
Discuss the different perspective on pageantry work
Discuss essential and hidden occupations performed within the context of beauty pageants
The presentation will be largely drawn from the following work:
OCCUPIED Plus+ clip – Why do we need to talk about Occupational Therapy
Sep 02, 2021
An exclusive sample clip of one of the Occupied Plus+ Patreon episodes. If you like it and want to get access to the rest of this episode and many more go to patreon.com/occupiedplus and sign up today!
A hot topic every April during OT month. Why does no-one know what we do? I want to look deeper into how this became a problem and what can we do to fix it.
Occupational Therapy Practice Framework: Domain and Process (3rd Edition)”. American Journal of Occupational Therapy. 68 (Suppl. 1): S1–S48. March–April 2014. doi:10.5014/ajot.2014.682006
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Brock
120 – Body Image and its impact on Occupation ft Emily Roberts
Aug 24, 2021
Emily Roberts has really begun to champion the niche of body image within the OT community. She has @thebodyimageOT on Instagram where she posts excellent information and resources all about healthy body image. I wanted to have a conversation with her and find out more about OT’s role in this space and what drew her to this area of practice and passion.
After you’ve listened definitely give her a follow if you’re not already 🙂
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Transcript
Brock Cook 0:01 Hi, and welcome to yet another episode of occupied. Just a quick note, if you are enjoying these, please do share them with friends, colleagues, people you know who might be interested in whichever topics they are. Also, if you’re looking to get even more value out of your podcasting experience, pop on over to patreon.com for slash occupied plus, where you can get exclusive episodes as well as a ton of other resources to enhance your practice and your knowledge. Without further ado, let’s get on with this episode. Today we are speaking with the one the only Emily Roberts you may know her as the body image ot on Instagram, we talk about everything with regards to body image identity and how that impacts on a person’s occupations. And what OTS might be able to actually do for people who are experiencing this. So please do grab a drink, sit down, relax, and enjoy. Get a My name is Brock Cook and welcome to occupied. In this podcast we’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy. We explore the people topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources at occupied podcast calm. But for now, let’s roll the episode.
Emily Roberts 1:34 So I actually would want it to be a dietician. And my whole family was turning me away from dietetics for whatever reason. And so then my sister in law’s a nurse and I never heard of occupational therapy, but she knew an occupational therapist was like, I think you would really like occupational therapy, I think it like really fits your personality well. And so, I went and I shadowed one. And, um, and honestly, it’s not even, it’s not that like, pretty have a story, I just kind of just went along with it. Um, I mean, I enjoyed the shadowing experience, but I just kind of chose it. And then I really fell in love with it when I was in ot school was when like the whole, I really, truly felt like I understood what occupational therapy was. And I was like, Yes, this is exactly what I want to do.
Brock Cook 2:34 So you guys have to do like it’s a post grad. Course over that. What was your undergrad in
Emily Roberts 2:40 kinesiology? and Spanish
Brock Cook 2:43 seems to be a fairly popular option over there. I remember talking not long ago about the fact that you know, a lot of Americans seem to use kinesiology as access to the profession, and it’s not really a thing here. Really? Not well, not a university course anyway. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s interesting. I don’t know any universities you can study kinesiology specifically. It’s mainly if you’re going to do that kind of thing. It’d be like exercise science or sports science. But yeah, nothing. I’m actually pretty sure I even had a look one day and I couldn’t find a kinesiology uni degree. You could do like, little like TAFE certificates, which I don’t know what the equivalent of TAFE would be over there. I’ve never even heard of that. What’s that? tapes, kind of like if you’re gonna do a trade? Like the theory aspect of your trade would be run through the tape. I don’t know what it stands for. But it’s kind of like it’s not a bachelor’s degree, but it’s like a certificate level qualifications under that.
Emily Roberts 4:02 equivalent of what we call an associate’s degree. Do you guys have one of those? Where are you? Right, but
Brock Cook 4:07 it’s probably sounds like it’ll be similar to that. So yeah, I think I found a couple places where you could study Kinesiology and get some sort of cert for that, but not there was no like University Level qualification. Which is interesting, because yeah, it’s like a whole field that doesn’t exist in another country.
Emily Roberts 4:32 Yeah, well, honestly, there’s nothing you can really do directly with kinesiology like you have to go on to do something else or get other certifications. So that makes sense.
Brock Cook 4:43 Yeah. I don’t know what I mean. We don’t have masters entry. Oh, we do. You can do masters entry, but it’s not a requirement here. So most of the courses in Australia are bachelors. Yeah. Oh, man. It’s Direct like mine is a Bachelor of occupational therapy. So it’s, it’s seems like less stuffing around. It’s a lot easier to process over here.
Emily Roberts 5:12 It’s just that the US is education education system is just a whole mess. It’s just
Brock Cook 5:18 It’s very, it’s very unique. Very unique and very expensive. But yeah, very. Yes, very expensive. So, you I mean, I followed you for a while now on Instagram, and we’ve chatted a few times. Just wait for that. That’s my dog. Okay, I have to it’ll happen. I don’t know what he’s barking yet. But hopefully he shuts up. He’s barking dogs walking past.
All right.
Yeah, so I followed you for quite a while now. And we’ve connected over Instagram. And the thing that really grabs me about your your content is it’s I don’t I don’t know any other ot that’s posting at the information you’re posting, but your Instagram handle is the body image ot how did how did that come about?
Emily Roberts 6:23 Yes. So I used to be empower something empower ot or something like that, when I first started my ot kind of Instagram, and then I changed it to my name. And then eventually I changed it to the body image it because that I just that’s where most of my content was going. Like, that’s what I enjoyed posting about. And what I got a lot of engagement out of, and kind of where I wanted to go further in my career, passion, whatever you want to call it with it. So I just nobody else had it. And I was like, I better grab this Well, last. But that’s why I chose to be the body image ot on Instagram. But, um, but really, it is something that I don’t feel like a lot of OTS talk about, but it’s something that is super relevant to OT and to what we do, because our body image and the way we feel about ourselves directly impacts how we show up in the world, and how we participate in our occupations or don’t participate. So.
Brock Cook 7:35 So what was it? Was it a personal experience? Or what Where did your interest in looking at body image through an occupational lens come from?
Emily Roberts 7:47 Yes, definitely my personal experience, and then after that more, so just seeing the world in a totally different way, and seeing how much it impacts everybody else. But, um, definitely a personal experience. Do you want me to get into my show? So I’ll try to keep it somewhat concise, because I can go off on a million tangents here.
Brock Cook 8:12 I like tangent. It’s okay.
Emily Roberts 8:15 Okay, so growing up, I have two older brothers, and we are great friends. And we’ve always been decently great friends, but they’re brothers. And so they teased me all the time growing up. And I guess first I should probably say, I’ve never been in a non marginalized body, like I am average size. I’m like, I’m heterosexual. And I have never actually gotten a lot of stigma on my body from the outside world. But I think that it doesn’t really matter. I mean, it matters, but it doesn’t matter for people individually, when they’re getting things. I mean, you get it from all different directions. So my family was probably the first that really started focusing on my body more so than just me. And my brothers would make fun of me and they would call me chubby and always like asked me like, what is Emily gonna lose her baby fat. And I’m like, this sounds horrible. I hope my brother doesn’t listen to this because he’s gonna feel horrible. But he would like show up my fat rolls to his friends and be like, look at all of her roles. And at the time, I would just laugh about it because like, he’s my older brother I want to fit in I want to hang out with his friends. But looking back I think that just that over and over and over again. kind of shaped how I felt about my body and made me think okay, well, whatever fat I do have on my body is not okay to have to
Brock Cook 9:54 be around like when that was happening.
Emily Roberts 9:57 Um, I remember it probably like seven or eight years old, okay. So I don’t know if it happened before then. But if I do if it did, I don’t really have much memory of it. Um, and then my best friend growing up who is still my best friend to this day, she is just like, as a totally different build than I do just like very thin, tall with long legs. And all of the boys had crushes on her. And all of the girls wanted to be friends with her, not me. And there was really like we grew up together. So there was really no difference in my mind, at least of how how I was seeing versus how she was seen in terms of personality. It only was the body, I guess, that I felt like was different. And so that was like another thing that it’s like, Okay, well, my brothers always say like, they always comment on my back fat on my body made chubbiness or whatever. And then everybody wants to be friends with my friend who is of a smaller body. So that must be how you get liked is to have a smaller body. And then our other friend, there’s just a couple of times that I’m not friends with her anymore, but there’s just a couple of times where she would make comments like, we would make up dances and choreograph dances. And she told me one time that I couldn’t participate in the dance because my thighs were too big. And this was at like, age 10. And she’s a year younger than I am. So I remember thinking, like, that doesn’t make any sense. But obviously, that still hurt my feelings. Yeah. Um, yeah. And so I just kind of, I think it was a combination of a bunch of different things. And also my mom, she, she never really like, commented directly on my body. And like said, anything negative about my body, except for like, when we would go to the doctor’s appointment, and then they would weigh me. And I remember, I don’t know if it was in high school, or middle school or something like that. But I had to go for I was very, I played a lot of sports. And so for our sports here, we have to get a physical and that proves like our vaccinations and all that stuff and says, we’re healthy, too. And so I went for that. And my mom commented on my weight, and she was like, Wow, you’re really like, you’re almost as much as I wait, at whatever age that she was when she got married. And I just remember thinking, like, why does that matter? But thinking also, like, oh, shoot, like, I shouldn’t wait as much. Now. If my mom with as much Wi Fi, I’m married, and I’m like, 15, or whatever I was, um, then she would comment on my eating habits a lot. She would say like things like, if you keep eating that you’re going to be as big as a house, or she would comment on her own body and be like, I can’t wear shorts because my thighs are too big. Or she has Bunyan’s and i don’t i also got Bunyan’s, unfortunately, but she comments all the time about how ugly her feet are. And I’m not really self conscious about my feet, because I know like, I’m just like, I don’t like that either. It’s whatever, like there might be. But I always just, I personally always just got the fatness, the body shape. All of that was not okay, I had to be as small as possible, the least amount of weight as possible. And so, in high school, I started controlling my food a lot and trying to become the least amount, like take up the least amount of space as possible. And so without like, I never actually got diagnosed with an eating disorder. Because I never went to the doctor because nobody thought that I had a problem. Yeah, but, um, or if they did, they never spoke up about it. But I would do things like skip meals, I would skip lunches in the summer. I would drink only like energy drinks. And then eventually, I was just eating like a small amount of food like a small, little small amount, but also a small different types of food. I guess. I’ll say like a small variety. That’s what I was trying to say. It of food. And I would go to school and my friends would be getting lunch and they’d be like, Emily, aren’t you going to get something? I’m like, No, I don’t feel well. That was always my thing is like, I just don’t feel good. I think I have a cold like, I’m just going to eat the little thing that I did bring for lunch. And it always be like, Yeah, whatever. Okay.
And then eventually, it got to the point where I was over exercising as well. So I think I mentioned that I played sports, I played soccer, competitively. And we would have soccer practice. I probably played club soccer. And then I also played school soccer. They were in different seasons, but club soccer, I would come home from school and I would go to the gym, I would run for an hour, and then I’d come home and I’d eat like a Lean Cuisine, just like 300 calories for dinner. And then I’d go to soccer practice again, for two hours, and then I’d come home and I drink chocolate milk. That was the only thing I would allow myself to drink was chocolate milk. And, and then I would do crunches, like 120 crunches, and then I would go to bed. And that was like my routine every single day. And so I was drastically under eating and over exercising. And that kind of rolled over into like my schoolwork. So this is kind of where I’m seeing like some of the different areas kind of come into play. So and then at school, I was trying to my brothers were pretty smart. And I felt like I had to live up to this expectation that all the teachers that they had before that I also had had of me because I had the same last name. And so I strove to get straight A’s and I didn’t do very well I don’t remember if I got straight A’s or not that was so long ago. But I did do super well. And I was like on honor roll and all the things that Intel the colleges I want to get into. Easy peasy. didn’t have to worry at all about that. And just was this. I remember the lady that did the yearbook. She came up to me randomly and interviewed me as a perfectionist. And I was like, kind of taken aback I was like, I’m not a perfectionist. But I definitely was had a lot of perfectionistic tendencies. Trying to control my body trying to control control my grades trying to make varsity soccer, which I ended up doing. And it was just one thing after another and my life had to be perfect because that’s where I put my worth was all of these accomplishments and the way that I looked and all of that I felt like that was going to give me better sex satisfaction in life, and I was going to get more friends. So then goes to college, I go to college. And I have the normal college experience. Where I go out partying, all this stuff, I kind of let myself go for lack of a better word, the first year and gained a little bit of weight. And but I didn’t like I was just kind of like whatever about it, which was so weird. Um, I guess I should back up a little bit. So before I went to college, I was sexually assaulted by one of my friends. And so now that like I look back and I connect all the things that drastic change from going to like the perfectionist to going and being like, I don’t care I just whatever about that makes a lot of sense when I look back at that, but that lasted for only a year because then I went back into the overeating or under eating over exercising regimen that I did in college because I realized I don’t like myself. Like I don’t like the way I look. I don’t like the way that I feel. So the only answer is to control my food and control my exercise again. And so that lasted I don’t know Gosh, through grad school, maybe not all of grad school at least a year of grad school and and I moved across the country for grad school. So when I look back, it’s like all these life transitions kind of Spark. The trigger it for me Yeah. And then I started learning about intuitive eating and I had never heard of that before I was actually trying to learn more about about nutrition and exercise. So I was listening to a podcast and I thought I was going to be learning like nutrition tips for like holistic Integrative Health kind of tips. And I listened to it on my runs my daily runs and
and they started talking about intuitive eating and how all of the benefits of intuitive eating and all the harmful effects of over exercising and under eating and controlling everything and these perfectionistic tendencies then I was like they are talking directly to me. And so little by little I stopped like counting calories, counting my macros weighing all my food. I’m exercising twice a day. I just kind of slowly brought that back and slowly started Trying to trust myself again, trying to incorporate some of the intuitive eating things. And looking more into that. And it was just like this drastic change in all areas of my life. My relationship with my boyfriend, who’s now now as my husband is, was like, so much better. I didn’t even realize that I was withholding so much from that time. And then just like different intimacy kind of things to just withhold so much because of the way that I felt about my body, even though I was at my most fit, or my smallest that I had ever been. I had so much more time to do whatever, because I wasn’t worrying about and like scheduling things around my food and my meal prep and my exercise. And I was way more focused. And I just felt like I had more energy. And now I just feel like I dream more, if that makes sense. Like my dreams were always
Brock Cook 21:12 at night or just like, yeah, like, yeah, like life dreams. Yes, because we have side effect
Emily Roberts 21:24 that is awakened, that would be weird. I do dream a lot. So maybe that’s true, do. But, um, but No, I meant like life dreams, because I felt like the only thing I ever focused on was how I can be the most fit person that I can be not like, show up as my best self or show up and take up space and whatever that may look like. So when I look back at my own story, I see how it affected like my relationships, it affected the way I take care of myself, it affected the way that I eat, it affected the way that I spend my leisure time. It just affected so many areas of my life, it affected my school, it affected my wrist because I never wanted to rest or I never allowed myself to dress which goes along with the perfectionist part. I still have a hard time with that. But I do prioritize sleep now I just have a hard time like sitting and doing nothing. But we’re getting there.
Brock Cook 22:23 So basically, how did you feel when you were sort of in the midst of that? Because you’re like, with the overexercise and the very limited food, your hormone profile would have been shot to shit.
Emily Roberts 22:37 Yeah, so that’s another thing I didn’t even mention. Um, I thought I felt good. Like, I thought I felt great, even because of like, the high I would get from running and that kind of stuff. But I was always tired. Like, I was always super sore. I was always just like, exhausted, and mentally exhausted. And my, like, emotional regulation was just like, no, like, I did not regulate my emotions well at all. I think that also comes with just not really being in tune with your body, though. But um, but I actually it my hormones were shot, like my cycle, my menstrual cycle was completely off. I would skip months I because I at the at some point, I got off of hormonal birth control, kind of around the time that I found intuitive eating. So I was on that which like, if people that are listening, don’t know that’s not a regular period. So that’s not your body creating the hormones that do so it’s not telling me. Yeah, so I got off of that. And it took me a year and a half to get my period back every month, and then it took me even longer to be like competent that I was oscillating. So I definitely think that that because that doesn’t happen with everybody. I definitely think that the way that I was living my lifestyle that I was that I had with barely ever resting and not eating whatever. I’m definitely affected that. So I’m glad that I decided to do all that at that time. Because eventually I would like to have kids and that could be an issue for some people.
Brock Cook 24:29 Yeah, I just know like my involvement with powerlifting and coaching women through powerlifting. I’ve heard from some of the women that I’ve coached in the past like when they got to essentially cutting weight for competition when they started to get to that sort of really lower body fat and white taking in many dietary fats like menstrual cycle C’s and like moods when all over the place and Like I know, for most people, like dietary fat has a big impact on hormones like this. Well, yeah, even even for guys, like, I know, for if I was cutting for competition or something, and for whatever reason that particular cut was low fat diet, like, I know that I was gonna be moody and cranky and all over the place, because that’s just what my body did. And that seems to be a very common thing for everyone. But then actual body fat, I think is in part helps regulate that sort of hormone cycle. So yeah, I’m not surprised that you are all over the place. That’s usually one of the first things I look for nowadays, with with athletes.
Emily Roberts 25:50 Yeah, definitely. And carbs are super important for women to which I didn’t, I was, at the beginning, I was cutting fat. And then at the, like, of course, I was trying to eat all the protein, but then I was cutting carbs for a really long time. And when I started adding carbs back in is really when I started feeling a lot better. But I think everybody’s different. Of course, we know, um, my gi system was all messed up to which makes sense, because your gut creates a lot of the hormones in your body. So especially if
Brock Cook 26:24 you’re not eating it, not eating many carbs, and you’re eating a ton of protein, it’s not going to be a happy place down. Not at all, for those of you who don’t know, that will essentially limit the fiber and probably block you up a fair bit. If you’re just on a protein and no, no fiber, no carbs, that kind of thing.
Emily Roberts 26:45 That’s exactly what happened. And I had no idea what was going on. No idea because on the outside, you look like this healthy person like you look, you look fit you look, you act normal. Like it’s not, you don’t look like a sick person. I think that’s where a lot of the I don’t know, I guess the culture praises that. And so I think that that’s what really perpetuates a lot of the issues that we see with women and their body image is people praise, trying to change your body and doing all of those behaviors. It’s like the best thing that you can do, but it’s not can be one of the worst things that you can do for your body.
Brock Cook 27:28 Yeah, it’s interesting. I feel like the the public perception on what is fit and what is healthy is so skewed, and I can’t like I saw that through powerlifting. Like, like, I will even before I got into that, like people would hold like bodybuilders and be like, are these people are like, ribbed and they’re jacked, and they’re so healthy. And then you look at what they actually have to do to get there. And you’re like, Dude, this isn’t, this isn’t good at all. But even through powerlifting, like powerlifting is not a healthy sport, like you can be fit and as healthy as you can be. But you’re putting your body through something. It’s not designed to do. Like, it’s not normal. Like the human body isn’t designed to say like squat 800 pounds, like that’s not normal. And you’re doing damage, whether you like it or not, you’re doing damage and like I’ve been there, I’ve done that it. It’s not normal, and you don’t feel amazing, after every session, and it takes a psychological drain as well. Because you’re essentially pushing your body to do things it doesn’t want to do. Or it’s not designed to do. Yeah, but people look at that and go oh my god, like that’s, that’s amazing. I’m like, yeah, it’s amazing. I just did something that my body didn’t want to do. Yeah, definition of amazing is slightly different, I feel.
Emily Roberts 28:57 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s performance, right people, people are, are trying to say that you’re amazing by the way that you’re performing. And that’s just I don’t know, it gets me in my feelings. Because the way that we perform is not always the way that we feel are always the way that’s best for us. And it’s not always what our bodies are telling us to do.
Brock Cook 29:23 But I feel like that’s where it comes is that there’s no objective measure of fitness or health. It’s always a comparison. So like, I’ve squatted that much before but to me that was an amazing because I can see someone who can do it more. You know, I’ve seen Yeah, you see bodybuilders get like ridiculously lane like not human. But I’ll get second place because there’s someone else that did more kind of thing. Yeah, I feel like the the measure is always like The goalposts are always shifting because it’s always a comparison. There’s no i Yep. Okay, like I’ve arrived, I’m fit, I’m healthy. This is, this is what I was picturing the whole time kind of thing it was, it’s always like, I need to do this, or even if you get there, and you see that a lot with people who have disordered eating is that how, you know, I need to be skinny? And then, you know, however long later, like, dude, you’re really skinny, or not, but I need to be skinnier. Like, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a comparison, like a constant comparison. So it’s one of those things like, it’s a goal you’re never ever gonna meet.
Emily Roberts 30:37 Exactly, you’re never gonna be satisfied, because you’re reaching for something that is unattainable. Which is, because when you think about it, like when we’re, when you’re, well, I don’t know about powerlifting. Because you probably are trying to get to like a certain number, I guess, or, I don’t know, like, what is your actual goal, when you’re, when anybody is trying to, I guess, like, get smaller or whatever, you have this goal of a number, but then your actual goal, you hit that number, and you’re still not satisfied, I feel like your actual goal is to be more confident, or to feel better about yourself or to in my instance, it was at some point to get guys to notice me or to get into a relationship or to feel like I was just better or a better person, or more successful, or whatever it is this, it’s never about the number. It’s about something deeper. And I think people miss that. It’s like, Oh, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna get back to my size for jeans, it’s like, Okay, well, once we get to that size four, you’re gonna want the size to or you’re gonna want, that’s not going to be good enough, you’re gonna want a bigger budget, or whatever it may be.
Brock Cook 31:53 Nowadays,
Emily Roberts 31:54 yeah, right. So I don’t know, it’s just, that’s what I’m trying to educate people on too, is that it’s not about the weight. It’s not about the number, it’s not about a rarely about what you actually think it’s about, it’s about something much, much deeper that can’t be met by these behaviors that you’re doing. Do you
Brock Cook 32:17 feel like it’s because I was just thinking as you were talking, then that it’s rather than a number on the on a scale or on a bar, or whatever it is, that it’s more about, people are missing, I guess, fulfillment of some kind. Because I’m just thinking like, new And usually, like, I’m not sure about powerlifting. But it really is like that, like, you know, you set a goal, usually, to whatever weight you want to lift, and then you lift that and it’s like, Alright, now I’m going to lift like, what’s the next number? What’s the next thing I’m going to do? Like, you might celebrate that for 30 seconds or an hour maybe. And then you know, the next year of your trainings laid out, because you need to hit this next number. And it’s, it’s something that I feel like a lot of people, it’s almost like an addictive behavior or a mal patterned behavior, in that. There’s no fulfillment in chasing those numbers, like Yeah, and I still, I still love the sport, like, don’t get me wrong, I love the sport, and I love everything that you can get from the sport. But I feel like there’s a lot of people that get into it, looking for fulfillment, from the achievements that you may get from it. When Yeah, I’ve tried to educate a lot of my lifters as well, that if you don’t love the process, that’s not the sport for you. Because you’re never going to get that fulfillment from the outcome. You’re never going to, you know, hit that number on the bar and go, yep, sweet, awesome. I’m done. Like I’ve done what I wanted to do. Like, it’s never, it’s a never ending thing. And I feel like the same thing often is when you start objectively measuring something, in the hope of it bringing happiness, you know, we see it all the time with people shopping, like, Ah, I’m gonna buy this next thing and then I’ll be happy and then I buy that and they might like it for 30 seconds. And but, you know, maybe if I get this other thing, then I’ll be happy. And what can I do? Like, yeah, and it’s the same thing with bodyweight, like, I’m gonna get to this weight or I’m gonna, you know, if it’s another exercise, I’m gonna run this far, or whatever it is, and you get there and it’s like, okay, so like, I’m here. Why am I happy? So I love
Emily Roberts 34:37 I love how you said that. It’s, it’s not about the outcome. It’s about the process. You have to love the process. I think that goes for all that goes for everything that you do, right? It’s not of course you have to do things that you don’t like, like I have to go to work in order to make money. I wish I could just make money yeah, Exactly I wish I could sleep as long as I wanted and do whatever I wanted all day and still make money. But I think for the grand majority of like, I guess for the conversation, what we’re talking about, like wellness behaviors, right? So eating healthy and exercising, and sleeping, and whatever, you have to love the process of what you’re doing, you can’t just bank on the outcome, like you have to be feeling good while you’re doing something, you have to actually be enjoying what you’re doing. Or else, it’s never going to be good enough. And I think that it comes from an identity issue. I think it comes from a lot of these. I guess my therapists and I would call them core beliefs, like one of my core beliefs is that I’m not good enough. And so I searched to be good enough in all these other areas. And I’ve never good enough, because that’s not going to make me feel good enough, because I’m searching for earthly things that are not, they’re not capable of fulfilling my soul in that way. And, and I think it’s just a never ending battle for people who struggle with their body image to try to, to find a way to feel either good enough, or whatever their core belief may be, through these things. And so what I really want people to understand is that they can find it’s not like that eating nutritious foods is bad for you. It’s not It’s not that exercising is bad for you, because it’s not both of those things are really great things. Lifting weights is really, really good for you, probably not to the extent where you’re lifting that much weight on your joints, but it shows that it like decreases osteoporosis, and decreases falls later in life and stuff. And that is all amazing things. But if you It just depends on where your focus lies. Are you focused on changing your body? Are you focused on getting to this goal? Or are you focused on like helping your body? And in doing this, because it’s actually benefiting you? And it’s actually benefiting your health? And not just what you think it might be benefiting of your health? If that makes sense?
Brock Cook 37:18 Yeah, no, that makes that makes perfect sense. And I wonder whether you feel that, getting people to that stage where they realize pretty much exactly what you’ve just said, is something that people can pick up along the way? Or do you think that people kind of almost have to hit a rock bottom before they go, Oh, wait, this isn’t working for me, I need to do something different.
Emily Roberts 37:50 I think it depends on the person. And I hate to say it this way, but I almost feel like just from talking to people that they have to at least have these little seeds maybe planted like over and over and over again. But they have to get to a point themselves where they’re just fed up. Like they’re fed up with losing weight and gaining it back. They’re fed up with always trying to reach for something and never feeling like it’s enough, I’m just fed up with, with that whole process. And they don’t want to do that for the rest of their life. Or maybe they see it passed on to their children, or they see it in somebody else that’s reflecting onto them. And they think Ooh, that’s, I need to do something about it. But I do think that they need to have kind of that moment where they don’t they just can’t do it anymore. Whether that’s rock bottom for them or not, I don’t know. But just from talking to people. Like there are some people who are just not ready to give up the lifestyle they’re living and that’s okay, like, we’ve all been there. But I don’t know, I guess I just I hope that I can be that little seed that even if they’re not ready, they see something that I post and it makes them think and then they can scroll past or whatever that they do or challenge me or whatever. But they’ll think about it maybe later and be like, ooh, I think that she was onto something there and just little things here and there may help them come back and be like, Alright, I’m ready now to really come home to myself and to start fighting against myself. Because
Brock Cook 39:41 the other side of it, obviously we will talk about like the fear Hey physically feel Yeah, yeah, mess up hormone profile and all that sort of stuff. But there’s, there’s a psychological aspect to it as well. And I feel like it’s probably most equivalent to almost like anxiety in that it takes up a lot of your focus. You’re constantly thinking about, you know, food or macros or exercise or when you can you know how you can like you were describing before, like, what excuse Can you come up with so you don’t have to have a meal with the people and you can just eat whatever you prep like it’s, it almost becomes like an all encompassing. It’s like a full time job just trying to navigate your way through the food aspect of life, or the nutrition aspect of life. Yeah, did you find it to be like, anxiety? Or was it something like something it did feel like something else?
Emily Roberts 40:46 So yes, I think it I think it felt like anxiety, but I didn’t realize it. I didn’t realize that I was ever an anxious person, because I don’t get like I see anxiety. And I see people with panic disorder. And I think I don’t get panic attacks like, but they’re even growing up. I could tell I was super anxious kid and it just never was like, called anxiety. But I do think that it is because you if people haven’t been through this, they may not know the feeling. But if you are so encompassed with eating a certain way, and I can think of one particular time, I guess this was kind of my rock bottom, where I was counting my macros even like to the gram into like spices, which essentially have nothing shows you.
Brock Cook 41:41 Anyone that’s done that that’s extreme.
Emily Roberts 41:44 Yeah. Oh, yeah, it was extreme. And the funny thing, I mean, this is kind of a tangent. And it’s not funny, but I like didn’t lose that much weight, which is I was of a normal weight. I was never like somebody who you would picture in your head to have an eating disorder. Like that wasn’t, that wasn’t how it looked. People never really thought what I was doing was unhealthy. They always thought what I was doing was was healthy, which was problematic. But that was a tangent. Now I’m coming back. So my rock bottom time was when I was I live in Georgia right now. And my family, I grew up in Illinois. So that is like a 14 hour road trip. And we make that every Yeah, we make that every holiday season. So we were coming back from Illinois to Georgia during the holidays. And we had it was after Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving meal, we’re traveling, I can’t meal prep and bring my food. I don’t want to be rude. So I don’t ask like people to make certain foods for me. Because that’s another thing too is like people will start like my husband’s family would start making just vegetables for me and know that I wasn’t going to eat the potato or whatever. And which made me already feel bad because I was like, you don’t have to do that. But then in my head, I’m like, you don’t have to do that. So we were coming back from Thanksgiving eating all the fit Thanksgiving stuff. And it was dinner time. And of course where do you stop on a road trip but fast food places. And I just remember breaking down and being like I don’t deserve to eat I ate so bad. I feel like a blob I don’t deserve to eat. And I got a salad with like no dressing. And my boyfriend was like, eat something like eat food you do eat. And I just remember that being like, my rock out and be like something needs to change. Like this is not okay, this is not healthy, because I am so anxious about eating fast food with one meal. And we have other options. I’m so anxious about this that I feel like I shouldn’t eat at all. When I haven’t eaten all day probably. So yes, it definitely shows up like anxiety. Whether that is to that extreme or just the little things like being like oh no, like you can’t, you can’t have a burger. Or if you have the burger. You can’t have the button or you can’t have manager you don’t get the fries. But that get the broccoli like you always have to get the healthy choice or whatever the locale option is on the menu. Yeah. Looking up all the menu options before you go to the restaurant and knowing exactly what you’re going to get because you have to hit your macros perfectly or whatever it is. It is anxiety it it overwhelms your life without really realizing it because you feel empowered because you feel like you’re in control of something. Really you are. It’s controlling you like you are so out of control. You have no control over it, it is controlling you.
Brock Cook 44:44 Yeah, and I think the control is a big part of it as well. That feeling of even if you’re not technically in control, that just the perception of control is what will seem to be to be changed. I wonder I just had a thought then to I wonder whether you feel like, I mean, it’s it’s obvious that a lot of the sort of public attitudes around eating body image and that sort of stuff is the general public has a very limited understanding of like, what good nutrition actually is. And because of that, I feel like in a lot of instances, people who are athletes are often like you described and like our people thought it was healthy, like what I was doing, and I wonder whether that, in my experience, and I’m keen to hear your opinion, whether you think that more common with athletes, because athletes generally do eat different to the general public, because they expend energy differently. And whether or not people like obviously, yours is almost the opposite way that most athletes would eat, most athletes would eat more, given that they expend more energy doing what they’re doing, or they’re trying to build muscle or whatever it is that their particular goal is. But I feel like due to the general public’s limited knowledge around nutrition and that kind of thing. It’s almost like either an athlete what they’re doing must be fine. Like, it’s almost like forgiven because of the athletic status. Did you find that at all?
Emily Roberts 46:31 Um, yes, kind of. So I think, I think if I hear what you’re saying correctly, like, you see, people would see me like running half marathons and lifting weights and doing all these athletic things like playing soccer, and be like, Oh, well, what she’s doing, she is not dead. So like, obviously, what she’s doing is okay, and it’s probably healthy, because that’s the way that she’s feeling herself or playing or whatever. Yeah, so I think yes, but then I also think that people will take because I had this experience and my disordered eating, where I would follow a lot of people on social media, who were doing the bodybuilding and the bikini competitions. And like, you were saying, when they were cutting down to be your super lean, I would, I would follow that, like, I just as my normal person, I didn’t want to be a competing bikini competitor, we that wasn’t my goal. I just wanted to look like that. Because I thought that that is the way that you that was healthy, that was the way that you’re supposed to eat that was like the ultimate health. So I think that there is this view of have people who are like in the gym all the time, for whatever reason, that may be whatever sport they must they play or whatever, whatever they eat, like the protein shakes the meal, prepping the counting macros, the lifting weights, the whatever, whatever they’re doing needs to be the regimen for everybody, even when that’s not your goal, like your goal isn’t to be lean down as little as possible. It’s to just live your life. It’s not a healthy way to live life that people think that that’s how they should live their life.
Brock Cook 48:18 It’s a lot of this reminds me I can’t even remember someone told me once to aim for mediocrity. And I remember the time I was just like, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Throughout my life since then, there’s been a number of times when that comes up. And I’m like, this is what they meant in that. Aiming for those extremes is usually not where you actually should be or want to be. In reality, even though you know short time you’re like, Oh, yeah, Wow, that looks amazing. I’m going to try and be like that. But you’re better off aiming for that sort of middle ground. I wasn’t necessarily saying be mediocre, but aiming for that middle ground because that’s generally, you know, the old saying about the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I feel like it’s like that where you know, yeah, there’s extreme and you know, you got lots of muscle, but you’ve got no fat your hormones are shot. And then there’s the other end of the extreme, you know, overweight your hormones, again, will be shot. And the truth is somewhere in the middle and that’s where you kind of want to be and that’s, I feel like in this instance it’s gonna be individual for every end of for every individual, ironically. Do you think? Because I wonder like body body image. Again, even the concept of body image for me, evokes thoughts of comparison with other people. Is that the way you look at it, are you looking at it more of I feel like you might I’d be looking at it more in a lack of self love kind of way, or are you looking at when you say body image Are you looking specifically about, like what the body looks like?
Emily Roberts 50:12 I think both. So, on the outside, like, on the surface level, it is what the body looks like. And we tend to see ourselves in comparison to other people and develop our self image compared to the person next to us. But because I know that it goes deeper than that, I think that the healing lies in coming back to yourself and kind of, it has nothing to do with the comparison. Like, even if you were to be like, I’m going to stop comparing myself to the person next to me, and feel good about who like what you look like and whatever, there’s still going to be wounded parts of you that you’re not going to like, and that’s going to be portrayed in certain ways. So yes, body image, but also, I think maybe I say body image, because there’s a disconnect in my mind, between the mind and the body, when we’re, when we’re seeing or the way that we feel, the way that we see ourselves, whether that’s inside or outside, it’s a disconnect between the mind and the body. So really understanding our body and understanding, like enveloping our, our self awareness and our interoceptive cues, helps us to have a better body image, because of the way that we are treating ourselves is completely different than when we are just trying to be like the person next to us or trying not to be like the person next to us. We treat ourselves differently when we’re really when we understand ourselves at a deep level. And that comes out to the world as a better body image. But it doesn’t even matter what other people see. Because you’re so focused on how you’re feeling and what, what just feels good. Intuitively to you. Yeah. Versus rather what is expected of you. in society.
Brock Cook 52:23 Yeah, I feel this is a this is one of the reasons why I want to bring you on because this is a topic that I’m definitely I feel close to, but almost for the exact opposite reason as you like, like, I’m a big guy. And I feel like through when I got into powerlifting full better. And for worse, it’s a very empowering sport. But I feel like in my instance, it was almost the opposite in that it was like, I don’t care what happens to my body like I’m, whatever it takes to get stronger. So like, if I had to get bigger than that helped me move more weight on the bar, then so be it, it was almost like the opposite. I’m like, I don’t care. Like I’m doing this for the sport. Which, again, not a healthy outlook, like you’re sacrificing your health for what like to lift some weights. And it’s okay, cool. Like, whoop dee doo. Yeah, they’re gonna put that on your tombstone. Like, your stats on there or something like, it’s, it’s ridiculous. But yeah, that’s, that’s I think the mindset aspect of it is very similar, even if it was simply like, the opposite ends of the scale for the two of us. And it was, it almost was an excuse, I guess, like you could justify anything like I’m going to eat for my name is like, eat all of this stuff. And it’s cool, because, you know, that’s going to help, like, I’m going to build more muscle. And it did, it did work. But it’s still it’s still doing things that your body isn’t designed to do. And in a lot of cases doesn’t want to do very obviously, by the way it reacts. So yeah, it’s I find it really interesting the mindsets that people can get into. Or how how people get into those mindsets without even realizing it, I think is probably the biggest thing because it’s a lot of people think, Oh, you know, why don’t you just straight sort itself out like, you don’t need to be doing that or, like, I’m sure there would have been someone that either thought it or probably even may have said it to you at some point. Like you said, Your boyfriend at the time said like, just eat like, you know, waste, just eat like even like if it was that easy. I would just eat like I think I don’t think people realize how and the part of people’s stories that really fascinates me is this kind of thinking doesn’t just have Here, like it’s a slow grind, like he said, like you can trace aspects of that thinking pattern right back to when you were 878, like really little. And it’s great. It’s a gradual thing, you don’t just all of a sudden end up there, which is why I feel like in a lot of instances, it takes people hitting that rock bottom point to actually realize it, because it’s been such a slow burn to get to that point where they’re thinking that if they don’t notice the change, it’s like when you like, for me when I have a couple of little nieces and nephews, and if I don’t see them for a while, when I see them on, like, holy crap, you’ve grown so much. When I see them really regularly, you don’t notice it. Because you’re always exposed. So I feel like it’s the same thing in that, because you’re always in that experience, you’re always in that thinking pattern, and it’s gradually getting worse or it’s gradually developing. You don’t notice it, until it’s really pointed out by something like someone else telling you or, you know, like you seeing something online and going oh, wait up. That’s a bit weird or hitting rock bottom? Yeah, like, I don’t know what needs to change. I don’t know, in a lot of cases, I don’t know what’s happening. But I know that this doesn’t feel right. And something needs to happen.
Emily Roberts 56:22 Yeah, and I think, on the flip side of that the healing process from all of those years of thinking that way, doesn’t just happen overnight, either. And I think that’s one of the big reasons why people kind of ignore the issue. Because we’re so used to a quick fix, and we want something to happen overnight, or we want just the right advice, that’s going to change our whole world. Like I’m on year, I don’t know three or four now of abandoning or trying to abandon those mindset issues and stuff. And I’m now just coming to the point where I feel like I can help people with it. Because it took me that long to heal from that. And I think that that’s the hard part of this. All right. I mean, everybody has their issues and the issues that we need to heal or the our inner child and our wounds and everything, it takes a long time to heal that. And if we don’t heal it, it’s short, it’s only going to continue to get worse. But people don’t want to because it takes a long time. And it takes a lot of effort.
Brock Cook 57:27 Yeah, I’ve seen that too. People are always looking for that magic bullet or magic potion, or whatever it is, that’s gonna fix it not even just eating disordered eating, like any issue, people always anything that can make a shortcut or you know, but in the end, like he said, like it took, say, 10 years to get here, it’s not gonna be changed overnight. And I feel like that’s where a lot of people’s expectations around it. Where it becomes too difficult, where, especially when you have things like oh, you know, it takes 28 days to form a new habit. I’m like, yeah, that’s the former habit that’s not good that fix the issue, why 28 days to get in a routine, but then it might take four or five years for that routine to sort of reverse whatever you’re trying to do. And I feel like a lot of people don’t go into like Iran, so they’ve hit rock bottom, and then that became, you need to make a change, this is what I’m going to do or they’re getting help. A lot of people don’t go into that process with the expectation that it’s gonna take a long time. And you see that and I think that’s where like, you see a lot of fad diets and that sort of stuff coming from is because, again, one people are looking for that magic bullet, but then they’re only going to stick with that for a month or so anyway, because they’re going to do it for a while and go, Oh, this isn’t working fast enough, or this isn’t. That’s why I see people that do like lemon juice cleanses and shit like that. And it’s like, well, you haven’t eaten anything in a week. And it doesn’t matter what diet you’re on the first week, you’re just gonna drop water anyway. So yeah, you’re like, Oh, my God, I dropped 10 pounds in this week. Like, that’s not surprising, but not fat.
Emily Roberts 59:09 And you’re going to be quite calm next week when you gain five pounds.
Brock Cook 59:13 Yeah, when it all went even when it plateaus like or even. I’ve seen people that have still lost like I lost 10 pounds last week, I lost two this week. I’m like, yeah, that’s normal. Get used to that for the next four years and you’re gonna be good, you’ll be fine. I feel like we, and again, I feel like it comes back to our very rudimentary, understand what the general public’s rudimentary understanding of how the body works, like with regards to weight and hormones and all of that kind of stuff like for women in particular, again, I only know this through coaching in powerlifting women in particular, you are going to gain more weight at certain times of the month and don’t stress it’s not good. Be fat, generally, it’s just water. But if you’re basing everything off the number on the scale, it might go up once a month. If you know that, and you know why, hopefully that helps. But the other thing is don’t focus on the number on the scale and won’t be an issue. Like, yes on, I don’t know, if your clothes fit or how you’re feeling that day, or whatever it is. But these are the these little things that people don’t understand how it works. And then they give up, too, like before, and I know it’s not as easy as just giving up. There’s a lot more to it. But in general, people are stopping the process or the more healthy process, because it’s not happening fast enough.
Emily Roberts 1:00:48 Yeah. And they’re doing it for the wrong reason, right? Like if you’re, if you’re eating for performance in a sport, why are you doing that sport? Are you doing it? Because it really is fulfilling to you? Are you doing it so that you look a certain way? Or are you doing it to please somebody else or to be accepted socially or like what is the reason that you’re doing it for that reason is sound and that reason is good, and your heart and your soul, then no matter what it looks like, if the progress is like this, it’s not gonna matter, because you’re enjoying the process, like you said, and but if we’re doing it for the wrong reasons, if you’re, if you’re just trying to lose weight to look a certain way. And you’re focusing on the way you’re not focusing on, I don’t know, like improving your blood pressure or improving whatever it may be, whatever health issue that you may have, or not have, maybe you’re just trying to prevent getting high blood pressure you’re trying to prevent. like not being able to play with your kids, or whatever it may be, you’re your grandkids, if your weight is going like this, it’s not gonna matter if you’re focusing on something other than the weight, but if you’re focusing on the weight, it’s gonna just crush you, it’s gonna like, it’s like, oh, I lost weight, I’m on this high. And now I gain weight. Now I’m on this low, and now I lost weight. So now I’m on this thread, and then I gain weight. Now I’m on the slow, and there’s research out there that shows that actually that weight Cycling is worse for you than just staying overweight. And, and not to mention the stress that you come under just trying to go like from all over places, trying to figure out what’s best for you. And what’s healthiest. I mean, I definitely agree that the, like health information that we have, as a society is totally like, I don’t know, skewed. It’s confusing, because we have so much health information being thrown at us, there’s not like a lack of health information. It’s like, what actually is healthy, because this diet is telling me to only eat fats. And this diet is telling me to only eat vegan, and then this why it’s telling me to eat three times a week. Yeah, three times a week and drink celery juice and lemon water, whatever it is, every moment that I wake up, like what is gonna make me healthy. And the truth is, is you only know what’s gonna make you healthy. Like if you were to listen to your body, you were to listen to like, what your body is telling you when you do certain things and not do certain things like if you don’t move as occupational therapists, and especially me in the hospital setting like, I can tell if somebody does not move, I can tell by the way that they recover from certain things. Your body was made to move. So if you were just listened to your body and move, but moving away, that felt good for you, it wouldn’t feel like exercise, it wouldn’t feel like miserable. So when people tell me like, Oh, I don’t like to exercise, so cool, you have found something that you enjoy them because your body was made to move and our bodies were made to eat things that are going to nourish us. But if we just don’t listen to our body and listen to all these outside voices, telling us what we should eat, and how much we should move and how much we should eat, of course, it’s going to be miserable. It’s going to be confusing, it’s going to be overwhelming and crazy. And we’re gonna go like this because we have no idea what we’re doing.
Brock Cook 1:04:19 So you’ve spoken a few times about people being or needing to be more in touch with their bodies and stuff is the like a first step like how do you how do you even begin to do that?
Emily Roberts 1:04:35 So I think it depends on like, what, I guess it depends on the person, right? So like, I guess I’ll talk a lot about the intuitive eating part of it. Because I’m studying to be an intuitive eating counselor. So if we’re talking about food, being in touch with your body around food, instead of figuring out what you’re going to eat for lunch, per se by What exactly the food is maybe you know that an apple is healthy, but you think that a pb&j is not or something like that I’m gonna choose the Apple is it’s healthy for me. So instead of doing that, you decide, okay, so what do I feel like eating today? Like, what sounds good? Can you sit with that for a little bit and like, okay, like, I really want something crunchy, or I really want something sweet, or I want something, maybe a mixed texture or I want something warm, like maybe it’s cold outside, you’re coming up to winter, like, ooh, I really just want something like warm and hearty. And I don’t want it to be sweet. I want it to be savory. Okay, so now you’re maybe like a soup, versus like a bowl of oatmeal, or something like that. So that’s part of it. So it’s like the satisfaction factor of it. And then the other part is how hungry Am I so they have in the intuitive eating world, we have a scale, the hunger and fullness scale. use it a lot with people who have silenced their hunger and fullness cues for a really long time. So they don’t know when they’re truly hungry, because they eat on a regimented schedule. Or they don’t know when they’re full, because they’re, they only eat to like hit macros or something. So they’re always based off of that. So you check in with your within yourself and you say, Okay, I’m on like a three, which is like in between starving and like, kind of hungry. And then or when you’re done eating, it’s like, okay, I’ll check in with myself halfway through the meal. And Matt, like a seven, okay, I’m going to stop because I know if I go to a nine, or if I go to a 10, and it feels sick, not gonna. And it’s different for everybody, like I like to eat when I’m at between like a two and a three. And I like to stop between like a six and a seven. And sometimes I go all over the place. But most of the time, if I’m checking in with myself, that’s where I like to be at, I like to eat when I’m there. And I like to stop when I’m there. And so the other parts of like, the time of the day, like the kind of food that I eat, or whatever, like, of course, you just can’t stop doing whatever you’re doing if you’re at work, but you’re at home, like on the weekend for today. like okay, like I’m I wasn’t hungry at 6am. But I wasn’t nine. And I wasn’t really hungry for a snack, but I was hungry to eat dinner early. So it was just stuff like that, that you can check in with your body and really eat based off of what you’re feeling versus what you think you should do.
Brock Cook 1:07:41 I like it. I like it a lot. That’s something I in from a personal point of view, like the whole, like hunger cues and stuff. I’ve noticed minor, totally skewed nowadays, especially like, pretty much exactly what he said, like I speeding for macros. I’m like, I don’t care what it takes like a half to get this amount of protein and a half to get this amount of carbs. And especially if it was like before training, like I have to get this in other words, I’m not going to be able to train which is legit. But yeah, you get into that mindset of like these other things like you, I think because also like my training programs are so structured. It’s like everything needs to be like that. Otherwise, I’m underperforming, like my nutrition, everything that eating times, everything needs to be super structured. caffeine intake, everything. And now it’s like, well, I find myself now like, I’ll eat and I’ll be like, That was too much. Or, you know, either I’ll eat and then half an hour later, I’m like, Dude, that wasn’t obviously wasn’t enough because I’m hungry again. Like it’s ridiculous. Like, that’s definitely something I can relate to with the the cues being very much all over the place, which I think physiologically is hormonal anyway, isn’t it? The Hunger cues?
Emily Roberts 1:09:06 Yeah, so, leptin and ghrelin, and, um, I think it’s neuropeptide y or something will release leptin, which is the hunger hormone. And I’m curious with like, when you were so regimented with your eating and structure, but that did you ever find that you were kind of rebelling in a way like, sometimes you would just be like, I just have to eat this and eat a lot of it. Or no, you just always stuck to it.
Brock Cook 1:09:36 Um, so I like cheat meals or like, yeah, like yeah, like a cheat meal. I definitely did. I didn’t look at as as rebelling though. I would, I would usually try and fit it within the macros that are sitting any of the macros I was hitting was huge. So what it really was Unless you’re trying to, like, I think when I was paid competing, like, up around four and a half 1000 calories a day, like it’s like two full days for most people kind of thing. So yeah, so fitting fitting things into my macros really wasn’t an issue. Okay. But I definitely od guarantee there definitely was times when just knowing that, like I go to a burger place with mates and be like, dude, like, I got four and a half 1000 calories to play with I can eat whatever I want, it doesn’t matter. Yeah. So there was definitely times when I’m guaranteed, even then I would have blown that out sometimes just because I’m like, Yeah, like, what’s it gonna do? Like, my aim is to be eating more and putting on more muscle anyway. So like, if I have a day where I blow that out of the water than the next day? J. Usually if I did do that the next day, I wouldn’t be as hungry. So that would be a bigger struggle than actually trying to force it down your mouth. Yeah. So I was like, Oh, you know, now I’ve got to try and hit 4000 or whatever. And I’m like, I’m just not feeling it. So those were the probably the hotter days with it. Yeah, were the days after kind of thing. But yeah, I never I don’t think I ever looked at it as rebelling. I think I looked at it as more I’ve got all this freedom. And I can do what I want. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I could probably I probably would have looked at it more like that. When I was cutting. So when I was on in even then like, my, my cutting was, I think I was dropping weight at like three to 3200 calories or something like it was still a lot more than much people would eat normally. But yeah.
Emily Roberts 1:11:54 Yeah, I think it’s when you’re restricting food, your body actually releases more neuropeptide y. So like, if you’re trying to control how much you eat, and I guess in your way, and I guess I’m talking about more restricting. So you’re controlling it so that it’s less, and your body is telling you to eat more. So then you end up actually just binge eating. Like I know, for me, when I was doing my macros, I would hit it perfectly in the morning, I would hit it perfectly in the afternoon. I’ve had it perfectly at dinner. But then after dinner when I had a little bit left of macros. And I was just like, I didn’t feel super hungry. But I wanted everything like I wanted chocolate, I wanted cereal I wanted, I wanted everything, I wanted popcorn, and I wanted a lot of it. And I couldn’t stop myself like I would try to substitute, like ice cream for a rice cake with peanut butter on it or something. And then that wasn’t satisfying. So then I would eat that, and I would eat the next thing I was trying to substitute in. And it was just crazy. And ever since I actually started eating more earlier in the day, I don’t crave really anything after dinner most times, if it’s due I can satisfy it with like a little dark chocolate versus like another whole meal and a half.
Brock Cook 1:13:17 Yeah, I used to find that. What I used to call like the swing week where I would change from normal, like comp diet to cutting. It was usually about three days that were like that, like really bad. Like, I’m like, I’m gonna die. I’m only eating calories, I’m gonna die. I just want to eat everything. But then I think it’ll like it always amazed me like if I could tolerate those three days, which I used to try and make sure it was a weekend because trying to do that at work was just a nightmare. Yeah, if I could tolerate that, then my body kind of got used to the lower intake and it was usually fine for most of it after that, but like doing it so many times. I just like i’d know exactly that. Like I knew that. This is gonna take three days, so I can plan it out. Like everything was so regimented. It was Yeah, everything was so planned, and then anything that fell outside of the plan, then I would get like anxious like my girlfriend again. Now my wife would be like, oh, let’s go out for dinner and be like, I can’t do that this doesn’t fit like you should have told me earlier like I would have planned this in kind of thing. It starts Yeah, it starts impacting everything in your life like it starts to you. Your life revolves it gets to a point where your life revolves around food, which is ridiculous. Yeah, because it’s such a in the grand scheme of experiences. It’s such a minor, minor thing in life. When you’re in that mindset is It’s everything.
Emily Roberts 1:15:01 It’s the only thing that matters, yeah.
Brock Cook 1:15:04 Like, this is what I need to do to be able to do this action, perform whatever. And that’s gonna make me happy. And this is what I’m, you know, I’m dedicated to this, and at the time you justify it with all sorts of reasons. But in the in the end, it really is an anxiety of sorts.
Emily Roberts 1:15:30 Definitely, for me, it was health anxiety, which I still have, to some extent, but it was just, I will not be healthy, I will get all these diseases if I don’t do this, which is just crazy, because I didn’t, at least to my knowledge, get any diseases from doing it, but I didn’t. I don’t know. I just even now I don’t have any diseases. It’s great. But that’s what everybody says, like, you have to do this to be healthy. This is the ultimate form of self care. And no,
it’s not.
Brock Cook 1:16:05 Yeah, I feel people need to start taking less notice of, or stop taking their health advice from like, athletes and bodybuilders and that kind of thing and seek professionals talk. People that don’t really know what they’re talking about. Just 99% of people with regards to nutrition, which is unfortunate. And I think most people even like what is healthy food and what is not people have this sort of distorted view of and everyone has their view based on their thing, like, you know, if you talk to someone who’s really into paleo, then they’re gonna I you know, breads bad for you, it’s gonna kill you and cavemen didn’t eat bread and all that sort of stuff. Or if you miss, the carnival diet is this new thing at the moment that’s floating around, it’s like, you can live off just meat. I’m like, Yeah, but why would you want to? I’m sure you could survive for a little while. You could survive. And I think it’d be real pleasant when we spoke about before just eating protein and not much carbs. And what that does the body just eating just meat would be horrendous. I can’t even imagine. It it just thinking about it. Yeah. But then I mean, this and there is 1000 different diets, but I don’t think you need to follow like, Oh, this is, you know, Atkins, or this is whatever, like, I don’t think you need that. You just need to find what’s healthy for you. And yeah, that might work. But it might not do its work. I’ve always I sort of after powerlifting got to the mindset of like the best diet is the one you can stick to. Like, and when I say diet, I’m not meaning like dropping weight diet. I’m just meeting like nutrition. Yeah. What Yeah.
Emily Roberts 1:18:01 Yeah. And really, I mean, the way that I heard it the best is like eat a variety of foods. Not too little, not too much. And what do what satisfies you?
Brock Cook 1:18:11 And that’s gonna aim for mediocrity? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, somewhere in the middle. Yeah.
Emily Roberts 1:18:17 You don’t want to eat all these play foods that aren’t Thai nutrition. You don’t want to only eat nutritious foods and never allow yourself to eat something that you enjoy. somewhere in the middle.
Brock Cook 1:18:29 That’s it. That’s a sweet, sweet spot. No pun intended. Right? That’s awesome. Where can people find you if they want more information? If they want to check out your your content? Where can they check that out?
Emily Roberts 1:18:45 Yes, I’m at the body image ot on Instagram. And that’s where I show up most.
Brock Cook 1:18:52 And yeah, a lot of your content, a lot of the stories that you post, you do get on there and have chats and drop a lot of knowledge around intuitive eating body image, and particularly the mental health side of it, which is, which is awesome. That’s the stuff that I really enjoy. So keep doing that, because it’s really good. It’s important.
Emily Roberts 1:19:15 Yes, thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. Let me come on and talk about it. Some fun,
Brock Cook 1:19:21 absolute pleasure. Easy as that.
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119 – Trauma and Healthcare Practice ft Dr Allie Watkins
Aug 09, 2021
Connecting with Allie has been an absolute blessing. You may know her better as @patchesofot and the host of the Patches of OT podcast. Her content is super unique and deeply personally engrained. This engrained passion is what initially drew me to her. We discuss all things trauma and her experience she had through researching it through her doctorate.
If you don’t already, jump on and follow Allie on insta and also give her podcast a listen!
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
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Transcript
Brock Cook 0:01 Hi, and welcome to a brand new episode. This episode, I sat down with the wonderful Allie Watkins, you may know her on Instagram as patches of OT, her Capstone for her doctorate program was around looking at essentially the the vicarious trauma caused in a forensic nursing setting in an emergency department. And so we delve into that, and what lessons may be learned for Occupational Therapists from that as well. I will preface this by saying that we do talk broadly about a variety of different traumas that we’re seeing through that emergency department. If that is something that triggers you, then please feel free to skip this one and hang out for the next episode. But it is a very valuable learning experience. And I thank Ollie a ton for coming on and having the conversation with me. So let’s roll the intro. Get a My name is Brock Cook, and welcome to occupied. In this podcast, we’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy. We explore the people topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources at occupied podcast.com. But for now, let’s roll the episode.
Allie Watkins 1:33 That’s a great question. I started out at my bachelor’s degree studying Science Technology and Society, which is a degree pretty much for the unknown. And I was going to be a it is very, very broad. And so my goal and undergrad was to become a pediatric oncologist, a doctor. But I went through a lot of life events that made me reconsider. One was in high school. I helped a victim drown, and it was a friend of mine. And I thought it was a sign of that I need to get into the health field. And I developed PTSD. from that situation, I didn’t know that I developed PTSD. And so I went years having these symptoms and thinking that there was something wrong with me. And I was like, How can I be a medical doctor if I am triggered by saving someone’s life. And so I started reconsidering, you know, what I’m going to do for my career. And my aunt currently at the time was working at an OT program, and she’s like, you should do occupational therapy. And he said, I have no idea what that is. I am not interested.
Brock Cook 2:56 No, not like PT,
Allie Watkins 2:57 like I was the no one knows. And she said, You know, they work with kids, they work with adults. They even can work with cancer patients. And I was so interested in that. And I was like, Huh, so I started researching it my senior year of college. And, you know, I was like, wow, this is sounds exactly what I wanted to do. You can, you know, then I was considering at the time PT versus OT, and I really liked how ot looked at the mind. And, you know, mental health part of it. And so, you know, having PTSD and depression and anxiety, and going through all that I was like, oh T is more my route. And I can probably help people more with those mental health issues than their physical bodies in general. And so I applied for ot school, I had to take one year break to take like anatomy courses that I never took at my undergrad school because it was pa and pharmacy driven where I went to school and so I had never had the opportunity to take the anatomy courses. And so that’s where my ot journey kind of begins.
Brock Cook 4:09 So what was the Why would you find it? I’ve not heard of someone so young having such an interesting cancer was their experience that sort of drove you to that?
Allie Watkins 4:27 Yes, when I was really young, I have a younger brother and we went to daycare. And our friend My brother’s best friend developed leukemia. And that was the first time we’ve heard what they call the C word which is cancer. And, you know, we would go to his house and play with him and he would get sick and then we would go to the Children’s Hospital here in Indianapolis called Riley’s and we would make treats for all the families who were in the oncology department. And so, the weekend before he passed, we went and visited him. And I went to the room next to him what was a cancer patient and his sister, the, the child’s sister asked me if you want to play a board game, and I said, Okay, why not. And she looked really sad when I entered the room. And then once we started playing, I think it was Candyland. a board game. She was so happy, it changed her whole outlook of the day, just to have three little girls all in one room in her hospital bed playing a board game. And from there, I said, I want to make kids happy when they’re going through such a toll of cancer. And so that moment on I knew that that’s kind of what I wanted to do.
Brock Cook 5:56 That’s beautiful.
Allie Watkins 5:59 Thank you.
Brock Cook 6:02 This Yeah, thinking about it. I’m sorry. Yeah.
Allie Watkins 6:07 I said, Just thinking about it right now. I’m like, wow, I forgot about that, like story. You know, I don’t get to talk about it that often. But it’s like, oh, you know, it does, like, bring, it’s emotional. But definitely wasn’t one of the one of the most rewarding things in my life at a young age, especially to learn and develop empathy as a child.
Brock Cook 6:31 Yeah. And that’s, that’s a, that’s a pretty heavy experience for for any kid to sort of go through. That’s why I was, it’s, I’ve not heard of anyone straight out of the gate going, like, I want to work in oncology. I’m like, that spot didn’t even know what oncology meant when I was a kid. So I would assume there was some history there. But it sounds like it was a fairly pivotal moment in your development, if even if it wasn’t to do with your career, but
Allie Watkins 7:03 Oh, definitely, I would, you know, everybody asked when you’re growing up, what do you want be when you would be an IV, like pediatric oncologist and be like, what?
Brock Cook 7:13 fireman or Superman and you want a pediatric? Yeah.
Allie Watkins 7:21 And, you know, I’m, I’m very lucky that with OT, you can work with patients, it’s, it’s hard to get into, I will say, and, but you can work with people that have an oncology department, and I hope one day that I could do that.
Brock Cook 7:37 So that’s still the goal is to work in that field.
Allie Watkins 7:44 I think so, um, you know, now that I’ve been on rotations there, like I worked a lot in outpatient pedes. And so you see, I’ve worked with a couple kids that have survived cancer. And, you know, I still am very rewarded with that I feel when you are so compassionate or passionate about population, and then you get to work with them. And then your kind of cup is filled, and you’re not as burnt out. And so, I’m working with them. I’m like, okay, like this, I also had a placement in Hippotherapy, and I loved it, there was so magical to see the kids get on the horses, and with all different diagnosis, and they felt like they were included for the first time that they could do something that other people could do. That was hard and challenging. And so I think that is also something I could see myself doing.
Brock Cook 8:40 I’m sure there’s probably even areas we can bind to. I’d be surprised there wasn’t given the just how those caper theory how hypnotherapy works, etc.
Allie Watkins 8:57 Oh, sure, I was going to do my capstone on service animals and cancer. There’s a big research on how kids with cancer develop a high a score due to medical trauma that they are going through in all the mental health issues that they will continue to have if they survived cancer, because if you develop cancer at a young age, you’re always going to have that fear once they’re going to come back. Yep. And so being, you know, an OT, to help kind of work through that trauma. And usually when people are impacted at such a young age with trauma, they are they like lack social skills, they lack the ability to just have those developmental milestones meet. And so I think it would be super, super interesting to have an OT who specializes in animal assisted therapy and then oncology to help with that gap.
Brock Cook 9:58 So with the Just thinking about all what you just said then about how kids who develop cancer, when they, when they, when they’re kids, obviously, when they’re younger, tend to have this sort of constant fear about when it’s coming back. Was there any sort of, I guess, similar fear but vicariously for you going through the experience you had with your brother’s friend? Did you sort of develop this, like all it could happen to me kind of, I guess fear at a young age. Oh,
Allie Watkins 10:31 oh, totally. I like I constantly I actually have found cancer on my body. And so I’m a freckly girl. And so I have to get like my moles and freckles checked. And so I actually a couple years ago, they found cancer. It was like the first level. And so I was very lucky that they were able to remove it. But every time going, like, being involved in such a heavy case, at a young age, and seeing how the family grieved and dealt with their child having cancer, I always was concerned that, you know, I was going to get cancer or, you know, I guess I was traumatized by, you know, if I would ever get it myself or my brother. But then, you know, I still have the fear of like, Okay, I need to get my moles checked. It’s been about a year, and I’ve already had, you know, one incident. So I definitely, and I have severe stomach issues. And so my family has a history of stomach cancer and IBS. And so I. So I yeah, I guess I’ve never even thought about that, I guess I am a warrior that I will, you know, one day also get cancer.
Brock Cook 11:48 Because I get so many great questions. What I do. Now, I guess, like what what we’re planning to talk about, I’m kind of, I’m always curious about if there’s any sort of, or what the roots of those kinds of ideas are. And we want to have a look at your your Capstone, which is around sort of, essentially vicarious trauma of people in in emergency departments. Obviously, we can sort of have a look and see where you’re interested in oncology sort of stems from, but I also wondered whether there was some kind of root of interest in sort of vicarious trauma. And it sounds like that possibly might be a couple of instances where that may have stemmed from,
Allie Watkins 12:41 oh, yes, I have a very high a score. And if you’re not familiar with a scores, I’m sure you are, it’s adverse childhood experiences. And so if you have a higher a score for you are more likely to develop cancer, you know, chronic illnesses as you get older, or just unable to emotionally regulate. And so, I, Alli cannot emotionally regulate that well, when I come in tact with stimuli that I think is defensive. Or that, you know, my fight or flight system goes into action, which it happens frequently, due to my high a score in the past. And so I have to constantly be working on Take a deep breath in and out before I react to a situation because sometimes I react and it’s kind of overreacting. And so I have to really work on my social awareness and emotional regulation. And, you know, that’s taken a lot of time. But that’s just how my brain was wired as a child, and you know, it was going to my flight or fight system, my central nervous system, rather than my prefrontal cortex as a child. And so I’m still working on it.
Brock Cook 13:54 Did you do is this all stuff that you’ve like, taught yourself, or did you see any other profession during your childhood or more recently to help develop those sort of regulation skills?
Allie Watkins 14:14 Oh, yeah, um, I, you know, I feel like trauma, if you have a high a score, it usually, I don’t know, I feel like trauma follows you everywhere it goes, or you’re more sensitive to the world, or maybe you have a low resilience score. And, you know, I feel like I’m building I’m constantly rebuilding my resilience, because I started off very low. And so, around college, I didn’t really have a social support system, meaning like my family, we did not have a close relationship at all. I just felt really alone in the world. And so I started listening to Renee Brown, and on her research on connection, empathy and vulnerability, and I will tell you, her work was Life Changing, I would listen and re listen to her TED Talks into her audio books, I even ran a marathon. Just listening to all her work, and I would start to practice those things. And now I’m starting to listen to her podcast and every person that she has on there, I’m like buying their books and doing all the self help situations. But when it comes to neuro, I’ve definitely felt like I taught myself with like, the neural pathways and why I am the way I am. And with my capstone, now, I, you know, wanted to learn about trauma informed care. So honestly, I could about myself and how I deal with things. And so yeah, I guess that’s kind of why I went that way. Now that I think about it,
Brock Cook 15:53 thinking it’s good. That’s what we’re all about here. Looking is great. So let’s dive into it. So what what, what is your Capstone about?
Allie Watkins 16:09 So, I originally was supposed to do a capstone on pediatric oncology, working with kids and service dogs in working on social participation, that did not happen due to COVID. Um, this participation piece kind of knocked that out. So I had to kind of dig around last minute in order to graduate on time. And so I was between racial injustice, since that is a huge problem, especially here in America. And I was going to maybe go to a police academies and talk to the police officers about implicit bias, how to work with kids or adults that have sensory issues, or that may have autism. Then I was going to do a more love on the spectrum kind of thing on that. It’s a series on Netflix, on like, bits with disability dating. That was already taken, though, and I was like, dang it, I want to be original, and then go to the place of I’m like, oh, OTS really do a lot of work in human trafficking, or that’s a new spike that’s coming up, I guess you could say trend. And so I was really interested in that. So I looked at the hospitals around me. And I saw that there was a hospital that had an organization that helped victims or patients who, with domestic violence, sexual abuse, or if they their child was going through something, and they suspect something, and so they are called forensic nurses. Now, ooh, I could do something that, you know, could help me learn more about this population, and bring something to them. So I talked to the site mentor, and she says we are burnt out with the COVID pandemic, and the rise in quarantine, domestic violence cases, because people are stuck at home. We are experiencing tremendous turnover. We’re mentally fatigue, we’re seeing somewhat reading these cases, multiple cases over and over again, we’re seeing deaths, adults and kids, and we need help. And so it’s like, well, let me try. So I am currently creating a educational series on burnout, vicarious trauma and occupational balance to help with burnout in the with the forensic nurses in the emergency room.
Brock Cook 18:44 Your interest areas, just shock me this. So out there. So while a little bit human trafficking, where did you get that interest area?
Allie Watkins 18:59 I know. Um, so I think it kind of all stems back from, you know, I created patches of ot because as I was learning about OT, I was learning that there’s all these different out there, populations that we could work with. And so as I was doing my capstone, I was like, oh, my goodness, Human trafficking is a big issue. Like, I have a couple friends that are police officers. And they were like, oh, my goodness, like this is a huge issue. Like one of them had to, you know, bring a patient to the hospital and she was being human trafficked. And it’s more of an issue than we think of it is and it’s not, Human trafficking is not exactly what we think of it is, you know, we think of the movie taken. I think that’s the movie called where you go
Brock Cook 19:50 all my knowledge around human trafficking come from.
Allie Watkins 19:55 Exactly, but it could be more It’s so subtle, like, someone is learning you, and then they may be paying you or giving you nice things just to make you feel well, or, you know, there’s called recruiters and they be, you know, other females or males that trying to pay you more money and you’re being human trafficked, and you don’t really know it. You can think of the Epstein cases, those females are being human trafficked, not knowing it. So it gets really deep. And when we have patients come in, you don’t want to say, Hey, we think you’re being human trafficked, because people will take that really offensively. And so we have to kind of like go around the corner and tell them that you know, what we think it might be happening to them. So I think it’s fascinating, I just think, I don’t know, like, maybe like, when I see problems in the world, I want to jump in and try to help out. And so I’m like, oh, human trafficking, what can I do to help? And what can I do to learn? And
Brock Cook 21:09 so yeah, I think one of those like, can be included. If your relationship with the concept is from, say, movies like taken, and there’s a couple other ones, but I feel like some people would be shocked to hear that that’s actually a big problem in the States. Because that, like if you if you think that it is solely and again, like I said, I’m included, thought that it was solely people being stolen from an airport and drugged and sold in an auction. You probably I couldn’t picture that sort of really happening in America, or like in the country. It’s something that yes, would happen overseas or while you’re traveling again, probably just because of the movie. Yeah.
Allie Watkins 22:00 They say so fun fact about Indianapolis. Um, fun fact is when a super
Brock Cook 22:08 fun fact.
Allie Watkins 22:11 Yeah. So when the Super Bowl happens here in United States, it is the biggest form of sex trafficking because everybody’s coming together and that that’s where it happens the most. And so when Indianapolis hosted the Super Bowl a couple years ago, people Airbnb was started becoming a new thing. And so that’s where you can rent out houses for really cheap, and these were turning into houses for human trafficking. And so that’s why they’ve stopped in the future, less renting out houses, and during the Superbowl because of what happened in Indianapolis, and I just like, wow, like, they had to stop something in the system because of a huge issue that wasn’t even being talked about.
Brock Cook 22:56 I’ve never even seen.
Allie Watkins 23:00 Hmm, I didn’t either until I went to my fieldwork. And they had like such a rise in cases around the Superbowl. And so I guess it’s actually very common, but that’s not fun fact that people don’t know. Yeah.
Brock Cook 23:14 Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about human trafficking. But I’ve heard sports events I carry, it was a sport event here. Well, we like a grand final of some code of football academy, which one was the there was a massive spike in domestic violence during the game. And they were saying that it’s essentially because people were locked down. And we’re drinking a lot more than, you know, normal and that kind of stuff. But yeah, I have not heard of it being like set up as a would have to be like a deliberate, like you couldn’t accidentally human traffic someone I’m assuming it would have to be like, especially Airbnb stuff and planning, it would have to be a very deliberate sort of action.
Allie Watkins 24:03 Very much. So. Yeah, it’s I think it’s increasing, too. I haven’t looked at the full stats on human trafficking here in the States. But you know, it’s becoming more of a hot topic and a movement. And so that’s great to hear about, but when the problems come up from higher authorities or people with money, how do we defeat that? Yeah, the bottom up.
Brock Cook 24:31 Yeah, I’ve seen a few people discussing it recently. And again, I’ve just gone on they’re just they care about what’s going on in what even I don’t even know what country that movie was in. But yeah, never actually considered that it was something that might be happening in the States. But I guess when you broaden the definition and highlight sort of what else that includes, now I can picture Okay, yeah, that I can see that happening.
Allie Watkins 25:02 Oh yes, or, you know, we have many cases where females are being drugged. And, you know, they’re being drugged by other females to, you know, create the human trafficking, they’re all part of a system. And so we see that a lot, and they just don’t know, you know, because they don’t remember. And then it just keeps happening. So it’s just, it’s so unfortunate it is. So I learned so much at my capstone and seeing so much I realized now why these nurses are experiencing, you know, so much trauma, and it’s heavy.
Brock Cook 25:40 Yeah. So you were looking at sort of very traumatic cases coming in through an emergency department, and the impact of that was having on the nursing staff there. What, I guess, Ben, yeah, we’ll give a trigger warning to people, but what sorts of things were they seeing come through the doors,
Allie Watkins 26:07 you can see about anything. And so I guess the most cases that they see are sexually sexual assault. And so that could be in adults and pediatrics. And we see, unfortunately, a lot of those cases, especially in pediatrics. And so that’s our number one. The second is domestic violence, it’s rising due to quarantine and people being locked down. And that is what they’re calling the silent pandemic, of the increase of domestic violence, and whether that’s partners hitting each other, or just random. And then we also see gunshot wounds, we see stabbings, we see vehicle accidents. And you know, any kind of accident that could have been done by someone else, whether that was intentional, or by accident. So what the forensic nurses do is when they get a case, so we call it a trauma code one, and they’ll ring over the emergency department, and we’ll get buzzed. And we’ll give a little case of what’s going on. And, for instance, we had a gunshot wound come in. And so we would run down there Wait for the person to be delivered in the trauma room. And then the forensic nurse would take pictures as they’re doing the medical assessment to make sure that this person is still surviving and is going to be alive. And so they like have special cameras and a ruler to kind of measure where the, you know where the wounds are at. And then we would collect? Yeah, yeah. And then we would take their clothing and take pictures of that, and measure the, you know, wound size or bloodstains, and then we would bag it up in an evidence bag and then seal it up with their initials to make sure that no one breaks the seal, we would take the bullet, and we wouldn’t call it a bullet. They would call it something medical. So we couldn’t be taken to court by it for. So once the O r got to the bullet. Yes, a foreign metallic object. And they would put it in a box and do the same thing. And then we bag that all up and give it to the legal team from there. And so the nurses can go to court and be subpoenaed. And so they have to be really careful and their documentation and say exactly what the patient says. And so it’s really interesting. We’ve had multiple cases come in and it’s just so eye opening. And, you know, we’ve seen everything that you can see with gunshot wounds, stabby eggs, people that have been stabbed, but don’t want to come in. So it’s like four day old stab and we’re like, oh, I’m really bad cases to where you see. Yeah, patients pass away. Little kid that’s the hardest is little kids passing away. Yeah, those those days are heavy. And we’ve had I’ve been, I’ve been there and seen it. And that’s really unfortunate. But yeah, so they see about anything.
Brock Cook 29:16 So with the obviously the the forensic nurses a different position to have the regular, like nurses in the DEA, obviously something like a gunshot wound, there’s a fair chance that that’s gonna be something that requires forensic involvement, but how do they decipher like, obviously, some dv cases, the injuries or the wounds, especially if the person’s not, I guess, coming forth and telling staff how it happened. Some of them could look very similar to you know, when you get in other instances that aren’t dv. How do they know like when or to get involved?
Allie Watkins 30:01 Yes, that’s a great question. So since there’s such a rise in domestic violence cases, there’s so many times your nurse that’s working on a patient. And if they slip something out and say, Oh, you know, I didn’t really fall, I was pushed out a window, which has happened, and then they’re like, ringing us up on the buzzer and saying, Hey, we possibly have this going on, and can you talk to them, and if they consent, we could, you know, provide our services. And so that’s a huge part of it, too, is that, you know, they could tell their story to us or refuse to, but they also have the right to either go, like, if they want pictures to be taken, we can help them out legally, in that sense, but they don’t want to, then we step away. And usually, that’s what we also see, too, is people who are in domestic violence cases, they go through the same, like, they’re in the cycle of trauma, and they go back to, you know, their abuser. And a lot of the times we’re educating our patients, you know, hey, this is a vicious cycle that you’re in. And, you know, if you think this is bad, it can be worse. And but using a lot of trauma informed care, we’re here for you. We believe you, we are really concerned for you Do you have a safe place to go? And so, unfortunately, you just see that a lot. It’s like, you know, I can take care of myself, I can do this. And and and it’s sad, because the cycle is so real. And it happens all the time.
Brock Cook 31:46 As you like you spoke about earlier, like someone who has a higher score has experienced different kinds of trauma and that sort of stuff through our own life. How did coming into contact? Or obviously, you mean, you volunteered for that position? So you knew what, I assume you assume you knew what was involved? How did that? Did? What did what you thought beforehand would be involved? Was it the same? Or was it better or worse? How did it play out when you actually started?
Allie Watkins 33:06 So it’s definitely glamorized being a forensic nurse. And people were like, ooh, like NCIS. Or, you know, want to take photos and be super cool. But I knew what I was getting into, because I, in the back of my head, also had to think about my PTSD. And you know, I haven’t been triggered lately. But my PTSD is saving someone or when something really traumatic comes usually in the back of my head is like, how can I save them? How can I save them? Because that’s what I had to do for a child that was completely purple. And so, you know, I was mentally preparing myself, am I going to be able to be resilient? And, you know, be able to do this? Or is my PTSD gonna limit me? And my abilities to be even at this site? And so I’ve been kind of pushing myself when we have someone come in, and the emergency room and they are, they lost both legs because of a vehicle accident and you see mangled body parts, it’s I instead of being scared or having what, what usually is PTSD side effects, which is like racing, heart sweating, you feel like you’re going to pass out. I’m at the window, looking at this. Oh, where’s that body pottery go and are they going to amputate is going to be a lower or upper party? Is it good, you know, and so I am so proud of myself that it’s been such a long journey for me to overcome and get my body regulated to this environment that I’m now stable and because I was terrified, I would never be able to be in this highly intensive medical practice because of my past trauma. And so, you know, I wasn’t prepared to see you know, children being the way they’re treated. Now. I didn’t expect to see that a lot. But it’s an Every day occurrence, and it’s, that’s where it gets me because, you know, you people choose to be in a relationship, you know, whether it’s violent or you know, not in the end, I know, mentally, it’s hard to get out of those relationships, I totally get that a child is, you know, they don’t have any safety net. And so that that is hard to see very, very hard to see.
Brock Cook 35:30 The suffering I just saw a lot and experienced a lot within, like mental health practice is there were things that say at the start of my career that you’ve seen, you be like, oh, shocked, bit sort of caught off guard, and then after a while you kind of get desensitized to it is the I’m assuming there would be a similar phenomenon, probably, to a much more extreme degree within the staff that work in these these trauma centers in these emergency departments. Is that something you’ve noticed?
Allie Watkins 36:06 I think, two point, because in the research, there is a lot about how EDI nurses, or forensic nurses can develop very bad vicarious trauma from just reading a case on a piece of paper, and my site mentor, that’s all she does, if she’s not seeing patients is she’s reading these stories. And there’s a difference between seeing something a patient come in and like, kind of seeing what they’re what’s on their body, but to physically sit down and read their whole story is another has another effect, like your reading, like, their emotions and what they went through and how they survived and what they might go back to. And then the biggest part is with the emergency room is you don’t see the outcome. So this patient may go home, and then you’re now worried about them because like, oh, shoot, are they going back to that bad environment? Did they survive? If it’s a, you know, we really hope that child’s you know, services took them out that situation, but we we never find that out? And so, or did the police take action? Are they going to, you know, put the boyfriend in jail for beating the crap out of this kid? You don’t hear any of that. And so, you often see the nurses do a lot of digging, like, you know, like if they, you know, if a police officer comes in, they may say, hey, you worked on this case, this person got locked up, we just wanted to let you know that. And they’re like, yes, it’s a full circle. Experience, which is what they’re lacking. They’re not getting that full circle. confirmation that that patient is safe. They’re constantly worrying, even if it’s subconsciously, they’re worried about that. And then you stack on the you get so many patients in a day that you’re like worrying about all these people. So think that’s the hard part. I feel like they will never, the nurses will never just become immune to it. They might be immune to like doing the pelvic exams and going through the motions of that. But to know, the backstories are hard,
Brock Cook 38:12 more desensitized to the, I guess the, the clinical aspect, more than the experience of Yeah. And that’s that, yeah, cuz that feedback loop is something that I have. Again, I’ve also and I’ve said to many people, the experience of working in an acute mental health unit is you only ever see people are at their worst, and you’ll never see, you know, the other 90% of their life kind of thing. And you do get kind of caught up in that. I was gonna say drama bubble, but it’s not it’s you get sort of not desensitized, but you get kind of in this mindset that this is it. This is mental health, when you really only seeing that sort of, you know, top 5% of people at their worst and you never see anything else. And I suspect again, to a much more extreme degree that working in an EDI would be that no one ever comes into EDI to go Hey, I’m feeling Awesome. Thanks, guys. If they’re in there, generally because something’s really bad. Yes, yes, that’s 100% true. So what, how long we are, how long have you been in for?
Allie Watkins 39:41 I am there. I’m there for 14 weeks. So pretty pretty long. And so I definitely had to consider my own mental health because even though I’ve become resilient, and with my PTSD, you know, I do. Go to a counselor and I do checkups You know, whether it’s with my husband or social support or with the forensic nurses there, they’ve even said having someone else there, because usually it’s one nurse, per like shift, and they work 24 hours. Just having someone there to kind of vent to, is nice. And so they do three twelves. So that the place I’m working at right now is constantly open 24 hours. And so usually they’re just by themselves working. And they can kind of been in kind of get out what they’re feeling in their emotions. Even be interesting, too, it’s
Brock Cook 40:34 like, I’d be interested to see what the effect is of just working solo shifts, because I think I’ve, I have done that in one role. But it was only like, there was some overlaps. I think it was like, there was a couple of hours in each shift where you are on your own, but that was it. And even then you hated those hours. Well, I can’t imagine constantly working like other people around but like you said, there’s, there’s no one that you can sort of like vent to or is in the same position as you are. Yeah, I can’t even imagine just the stress of doing that little out everything else on top of it would not be that would that would count me out anyway.
Allie Watkins 41:21 Oh, yes. And that’s like, one of the biggest complaints, you know, is with burnout. It’s like, man, we can’t even talk to anybody about these cases, or what we just witness or you know, them, they can talk to me, cuz they’re like, this is what I’m doing. And this is how I’ve been, you know, technically, it’s just them going through their emotions and talking about it out loud. And I’m like, Okay, cool. Even if they like repeat themselves, I’m like, get it all out.
Brock Cook 41:42 Yeah, but then just just having someone else there can be a massive support. And that goes for anyone, like anyone who’s looking at burnout, no matter what field they’re in, one of the big things that I’ve seen with people that are getting burned out is their lack of connection, or the lack of social support, or like professional support, or like, clinical support. Yeah, that’s that even just on paper, this is a recipe for burning people out. Let’s put them in probably the most dramatic. Let’s put them in there on their own.
Allie Watkins 42:19 Yeah, exactly. It is. So I can’t even imagine, you know them doing this. And so they did just hire someone else to kind of work image ship. This is the first time they’ve done it. And so she started last week. And so, you know, that’s going to be helpful, because she’ll be there with someone. And so that will kind of help with that loneliness piece. And so that’s new. So I’m really excited to see how that turns out. So, but usually, they have such a high turnover.
Brock Cook 42:54 I was gonna say, so they’ve had such a high turnover. Have you know, have you witnessed that in your time there already.
Allie Watkins 43:03 I have not witnessed that. I when I first started, they were they had a new nurse starting as well. And so I was watching her observe and learn. And as I was watching her observe and learn, I was told this is the third nurse in the last year. So I was like, oh, okay, so this is the issues we’re having now. And usually, it’s because the nurses just can’t handle what they’re seeing, you know, they think, Oh, I’m going to go. I’m scenes and I’m going to take pictures. No, you’re actually going to stay in the hospital. And you’re going to be taking pictures of body parts all day and seeing all this stuff. And they’re like, Oh, this is not the field I want to be in. Yeah. And then they figure out that they’re alone. And then you know they’re going through, and especially in the research shows that forensic nurses who have past trauma high scores, they are more likely to get burnout faster, because they are going to think about their past drama, when they’re dealing with a patient and so they don’t have that much resilience when it comes to this field. And so my capstone, I’ve been collecting their Ace scores and kind of seeing Okay, where it Where are you and do you feel this way, which is really interesting in itself.
Brock Cook 44:18 So are they are they screened before they go into the job?
Allie Watkins 44:24 They are not. Their site mentor is so awesome. She’s, you know, super personable. But I don’t think they are which I think that would be a great thing to add to that position. So with my capstone, I do have them do a burnout scale and I do have them do a resilience skill to see if they have high Ace with or high burnout with a low resilience, which is a recipe for burnout or, you know, vice versa. And then then we do an ACE score during the educational series. And then near the end of the educational series, we’ll do a retake of those burnout scale and the resilience score to see if they differ. But who knows?
Brock Cook 45:13 So the ice, although I’m not familiar, I mean, I know what it is, but I’m not familiar with it. It’s not something I’ve ever done or had any involvement with. So when is that? Like, obviously not in this situation? But when would that normally be administered to people like people like you’ve had your a school done, obviously, but when is it a pediatric thing? Something you do later in life? Or what? Like, when is it actually usually rolled it out?
Allie Watkins 45:40 That’s a great question. Because I don’t feel like a lot of hospitals here. Maybe in the US, don’t utilize it that much. I know when I went, and I had to seek it out. So I learned about it. And I was like, oh, what’s my score? Google? Okay, oh, here’s my a score. That’s not so good. That explains a lot of things. But when I recently went to my mental health, I got a new mental health doctor, they did an ACE score screen. And I was like, Ooh, that’s cool. I know, that is without telling me. And then when I went to my new primary doctor, year ago, they had me fill out a score. And they didn’t tell me it was an a score, but I knew the question. Okay, that’s interesting. So I feel like people are implementing more, but I think OTS, especially like pediatrics, you know, or mental health settings, they should, you know, that would be a good, it’s a free resource that you could see what the a score is. And, you know, the questions are like, have you seen parents hit each other at home? That’s like, one of the questions yes or no? Have you witnessed a loved one passed away? Yes or no. And so, those add up? And then you know, you’ll find if you’re before, which a lot of people are over four, then you’re you have a lot of trauma suppressing your Yeah, most people, most people are more?
Brock Cook 47:03 No. So is it? Is it looking at a specific timeframe? So like, if I was to fill mine out now, am I thinking about when I was under 10? Or am I What? When is the what’s the timeframe? It is zero to 18? Okay.
Allie Watkins 47:25 Yeah, anything that happened? Like around before under your 18? And so I think that usually set at the top too. So it’s really easy to fill out. I hope you point out after just googling,
Brock Cook 47:40 for one, I don’t think there’s gonna be too much in it. But I’ll, I’m curious. I’ll definitely feel one out. I am curious about the age of 18. Though, that seems rather arbitrary.
Allie Watkins 47:55 I don’t know. I think it’s because like your teenager? I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know why 18. Cuz I would have thought that the person who study?
Brock Cook 48:03 Yeah, I would have thought sort of early 20s given that our sort of values and that sort of stuff are continuing to be shaped up until that point, and any kind of trauma is gonna have a big impact on, you know, how you see the world, how you shape your lens up until sort of that, I mean, it’s still gonna have an impact afterwards, but it’s gonna have a bigger impact, because you’re still forming those values. That value system up until that point, it doesn’t sort of go ad. Yep. And there’s not like in the States, I don’t think there’s any sort of big thing that does happen after 18. Like, I’m thinking like, legally. So like, in Australia, the drinking age is 18. Like, that’s probably the biggest thing that happens at ID. Other than that, other than that, like, there’s nothing else that really happens, I’m still an immature brat at 19. Like, that didn’t change overnight.
Allie Watkins 49:05 That’s true. That’s a great question. I don’t know why the cutoff is 18. But now I’m gonna have to look it up when I’m down here.
Brock Cook 49:13 I just wonder whether you like if you ran it, even though it’s standardized to 18. A lot of the time, those kinds of things are just because this is who we had access to. But I wonder whether like if I ran it with someone who was or like if I ran it on myself thinking about up until sort of, for me, it’s probably later because I’m immature. But so 24 ish, 23 ish. Whether or not like the results would be invalidated. I mean, obviously, they wouldn’t be as standardized as if I just filled it out based on my first 18 years. But yeah, it’s interesting. Yes. Very interesting. Because Yeah, I’m not I’m not I’m not fully up on the trauma thing. Obviously. I know. I’ve been about sort of trauma informed care and would hardly not even remotely say that I’m an expert in it. I’ve worked with a lot of people who’ve experienced trauma and that kind of thing. But sort of the very few things that I do know that trauma is one of the only things that will change your value system after us sort of concreted in. And to me, I’m like, that’s, that’s a pretty big thing, you can literally come out of something with a completely different perspective on life, which previously wasn’t even possible. Which is why I just find that at the age of eight, that’s why I sort of went 18 why it like, it’s not like we just all of a sudden become super resilient after 18 or anything.
Allie Watkins 50:49 So true, and a lot of the hard things come in our 20s, whether that’s, you know, grandparents passing way or odd relationship or domestic violence within our own relationships. Yeah.
Brock Cook 50:59 Moving especially, especially people that are like people are living at home later. You know, previously, it might have been that, you know, at 18 was when people finished high school and moved out of home. Like that might have been a big transition period. But people aren’t doing that so much nowadays, they’re living at home until sort of after university, so I might be living in home at all 2530 some cases. So I think I wonder whether, I mean, again, I’m basing this off not knowing anything about this assessment, but just those sort of those like very concrete stipulations always flag for me in my head. I’m like, I wonder why that is. Because some cases, in some of them, I have found what I have learned that, you know, are this is done that this to this age, because this is what we found. I’m like, Oh, that’s interesting. Whereas Yeah, this I’m like, I wonder why it’s 18 and not. Why not? 16? Like, why? Interesting. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. I thought about that. My God goes to 18. How long does it take to do?
Allie Watkins 52:09 It literally takes like, probably two minutes. You should take it.
Brock Cook 52:13 Alright, let’s do it. Now then. To find it, did I score anything? Nice. I was trying to Wow, nothing. I’m like, that’s great. I was a flop. I didn’t get anything. That’s amazing. This thing whether it explained why the ad because it actually doesn’t say, I don’t even know what this website is aces too high. Sounds like a blog post thing. But it’s got all the questions in here. But it doesn’t actually say like, refer to I prior to your 18th birthday. There it is. Yeah, I scored zero. Which I guess I probably should be happy about.
Allie Watkins 53:03 Wow, that’s amazing. Yes, you should. It’s amazing. I like taking it again. Right now. There’s 10 questions or two questions for you?
Brock Cook 53:14 Yes. Okay, good. That’s it. Researchers came with the ACE score to explain person’s risk of chronic disease. Think of it as cholesterol score for children childhoods toxic stress. It’s a very layman’s way of explaining it. I like that. Hmm. With an Acer score of four or more things start to get serious the likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease increases 390% hepatitis 240% depression 460% attempted suicide 12 120%. Okay, so just a slight increase, then. Fire. Wow. That’s a big increase. So you finding some of you finding the nurses that you work with any d? Are they scoring high? Oh, yeah. They’re scoring. Yeah, all of them have a very high score. What do you reckon the average would be? If you had to, like guess obviously not looking at the data right now, but if you had to guess what would you say the average would be? Let me see. Huh. I would probably say like a seven. Well, okay. That’s very hard. I only say that because my my score is a seven. Like, dang.
Allie Watkins 54:49 It’s very common. It’s so unfortunate.
Brock Cook 54:54 I wonder if this is the resilience questionnaire you’re using. I just found it similar questions, but it’s like a Likert scale instead. Like, definitely, probably not not sure. Probably not true. Definitely not true. There’s 14 questions. Yeah. Yep. Interesting.
Allie Watkins 55:24 I’m sorry, if you have a high a score and a high millions, then you are going to have a better outcome.
Brock Cook 55:31 What if I have no a score? Which is makes it a high resilience? I probably don’t have a new rising. I’ll probably get nervous.
Allie Watkins 55:42 Writing well, till your 18th birthday, that is Yeah, trauma Have you had after,
Brock Cook 55:48 then, my life took over. No, I myself to have had a look, compared to a lot of people that I’ve met and spoken to you through work and out of work I, I consider my life to have been fairly easy by comparison. So I’m definitely privileged in that way. What’s amazing. So the nurses that you were that you’re working with, are scoring very high. Are you seeing like, are you looking at the like, because this sounds like it was sort of aimed at chronic disease, are you aligning that with any experiences they’ve had of chronic disease, or mainly just looking at burnout? Or is burnout classes are
Allie Watkins 56:32 mostly just looking at birth? That’s right. And that is, that’s what I already say, like, these nurses do have a lot of health problems. Um, you know, they, but they’re very proactive, which I think I find that fascinating, these nurses that I’m talking to, they are seeking out not just like, Western medicine, they’re also looking at like functional medicine doctors, they are seeing counselors that are like specialized in trauma. But this is all that they have to pay for out of pocket, you know, just in order to function and thrive at work. But they also have high high score. So they got to talk about, you know, those traumas that they’re, you know, suppressing. When you look at burnout, we often suppress, and when we continue to suppress, we get stuck in the burnout cycle. And it’s not until the action plan, whether that’s exercising, which is the biggest thing that you can do, or move your body, if you don’t like to exercise. Breathing, is working on your central nervous system to get it back in and track. You know, then, you know, you see chronic illness happen. In fact, our you know, one of my, the forensic nurses that I work with, she has extreme hormone imbalance. And when you look at people who have a lot of trauma, or experienced a lot of trauma, what’s happening is when you’re going to flight or fight response, you’re developing a lot of cortisol, which is your stress hormone. And that’s pumping through your body continuously until you resolve that trauma. So if you’re suppressing it, it’s continuing to go and it goes to your adrenal glands, which is your thyroid. So you often see a lot of females especially have thyroid issues. And so right now she’s talking to her doctor right now to figure out how to balance those hormones out. But you can cause a lot of function to like your kidneys in your liver, if you are always going through cortisol. And then if you’re always stressed out, your body’s also trying to pump, you know, adrenaline that you’re going through. So you’re just so wired up in your body’s not being able to function. Yes, constantly. So I often see that like, people are like, yeah, my hormones are so out of whack. Just like wow, your cortisol levels I better super high. They’re like, Yeah, actually just saw my functional medicine doctor, and they are.
Brock Cook 58:59 Yeah, cuz I think that’s something that really interesting. A lot of people don’t really think about when it comes to burn out. And that sort of stuff and, and trauma in general to like, especially a sort of long term trauma, not sort of acute trauma. Is that that one of the bigger issues and the reason that some interventions like mindfulness meditation stuff work is that your body is constantly on. Like there’s no downtime, there’s no recovery time. And that’s why you also get these feelings of fatigue and brain fog is because your body’s been just on and I feel like that’s, that’s one of the things that people don’t like, they start trying to treat the individual sort of symptoms, like I’m tired, so I’ll sleep more. Like Yeah, okay, that’s gonna help a little bit but it’s not sort of helping the root cause. So it needs to be not just that you need to actually do something that’s going to, you know, stop you from being over Teague. So you need to address that always on aspect, which is hormonal based. But I think that’s a that’s a way and correct me if I’m wrong, I’m assuming this is probably where you were sort of looking with your, your Capstone, but that’s a place that I think OTS can really have a big impact.
Allie Watkins 1:00:25 Oh, 100%. And that’s what I’m learning a lot with this Capstone is that these nurses, of course, they’d have medical issues, because they’re suppressing all their trauma. So what I’m going in is I’m going in and saying, Okay, look at all this trauma that you’re suppressing, and look how it’s affecting your body. That’s the first series, and it shows how your body can be affected by trauma. Using the body keep score, book, I can’t remember the author, it’s like van bezel, and then the second educational series about burnout in how your body keeps score and how you get stuck in the burnout cycle. And the health effects that happen with that. And then the last part, which I think OTS can have a huge impact in impact in is occupational balance, and what we’re need to do versus what we want to do and making sure that we are fully balanced in order to, you know, be the best practitioners we can be or best forensic nurses we can be. And I think we as OTS often even forget about our own occupational balance, and I know for sure I have and so learning through this, it’s like, Okay, I need to make for myself, I need eight hours of sleep in order to function as a human being, I move my body even though I don’t want to move my body and not for appearance reasons, I need to do it for my own mental health. I need to know, I’ve been taking a lot of deep breaths lately. I’m overwhelmed around, I don’t know what to say something. And that has helped out so much deep breathing has helped me out personally. What else I’ve been doing. I know, I guess just like, if I’m super overwhelmed, I go for a walk. If you have stomach issues, if you are triggered by stress, or a stressful situation, you often get I don’t know if you ever had this, like when you’re like heart drops, and maybe your stomach feels upset and you you just feel
Brock Cook 1:02:23 a bit of a noise. No. Have you ever experienced that? Yeah.
Allie Watkins 1:02:27 Yes. And I learned that’s part of our vagus nerve, and it’s called the dorsal vagus nerve. And it goes down to our stomach and affects like all of our organs, donor. And so I like if you like are super traumatized, or just have, everything stresses you out, that’s constantly being flared. And so I’m like, man, I got to figure that out. So I need to start deep breathing, like, every day, at a certain time to just come my SNS system.
Brock Cook 1:03:00 Yeah. And there’s certain techniques that I’ve heard, I’m not sort of fully ofay with the techniques, but there are certain techniques that I’ve heard, that, you know, are able to tap into, or I think one I saw the other day or heard on a podcast actually was like, it was something to do with diaphragmatic breathing, and how that may even be tapping into that that particular nerve is able to help suppress those sorts of feelings and that sort of thing. I could be I could be wrong, but I’ve heard of techniques, specific breathing techniques to essentially help different things. Yeah.
Allie Watkins 1:03:41 Yeah, I learned through my capstone because we teach about, you know, the breathing and with our patients. But when we actually do that, when we breathe in, we are activating all of our muscle. And then, so we activate our SNS system or sympathetic, sympathetic nervous system. And then when we take a deep breath out, we activate our PNS system, our peripheral nervous system, which will regulate and then that’s the PNS kind of calms our body after a stressor release. So we’re activating or, you know, response to stress, and then deactivating it so we’re learning how to change our heart rate variable was what I’ve learned, which I thought was super interesting, like knowing the science behind it, in order to kind of teach the patient or the nurses like, this is why this is I feel like my brains always thinking that way. Like, why am I doing deep breathing, because deep breathing sounds like a waste of time to me. And then when I learned about it, I was like, oh, wow, because this system works this and that system works that and so, you know, if I have a patient that’s curious, I can kind of explain that to them, which the nurses are
Brock Cook 1:04:51 not just hyperventilating and getting a head spin. That’s right. So you said at the start You’re I think you said you’re putting together like a training thing for the nurses. So what they’re doing what are you actually gonna teach them what’s what’s what’s involved in your, your training course thing for them
Allie Watkins 1:05:16 my training, my boot camp works out as a. The first one is about how trauma, trauma works out in our body. And so they like did an educational so I want them to learn what it is. And then they do a therapeutic activity. So like the first one, I believe they identified, we’re in her body feels tight, we’re in their body feels foggy by like coloring. So using that self awareness and mindfulness of where our body actually hurts, they also had to write a word that describes their journey. And then they pinned it up on the wall to kind of build community so people know what their word is. And you know, maybe their journey was a lot harder than others. We did another activity, but I’m, I can’t remember what that activity was. And then the second series is all about education on burnout. And then I made like a visual reference representation of a burnout cycle. And their activity was a creating a burnout scale from one to 10, one being your absolute worst. And like, for example, the worst time of my life, when I was super burnt out, I went to the ER, not knowing that I was actually suffering from a panic attack, or an anxiety attack, I thought I was having a stroke, and my anxiety is just so bad. My anxiety is just so bad that, you know, I will lose my vision, or I’ll lose sensation in my hands. And I didn’t know that was even a thing. Yeah, it was super scary. I had to like crawl into the emergency room. So for knowing that that’s my lowest of my low that I you know, could go or thinking thoughts. That’s number one were 10 is like, I’m feeling really happy. And you know, super duper. So that’s been, you know, that was helpful for me in creating awareness for them. And then the last one is about occupational balance. And so I taught them what occupational balances. And then I made a kind of timeline of their day to kind of fill out, are we resting? Are we doing what we need to do? Are we doing what we want to do? So they’re like kind of scheduling. And then the last part of the project is creating a video for them. So I’m going to make them, not make them but I’m going to have them. They’re going to get a list of questions about COVID and the silent pandemic and their thoughts. And this is a therapeutic like reflection piece. And so they’re going to write down what they think or what they’ve experienced. And then I’m going to video, record them with their consent, then I’m going to edit the video and they’re going to, for my dissemination plan is that they’re going to all watch it together and kind of learn and kind of build resilience and be like, wow, we can do hard things. We got through this insane year of Yeah, crazy cases of domestic violence, the pandemic And so yeah, that’s
Brock Cook 1:08:23 awesome. And these, I’m assuming these are resources that will sort of exclusively before that particular department, they’re not something that you’re going to release to everyone else.
Allie Watkins 1:08:38 I don’t know, I was thinking about that. Um, I think it’d be helpful for a lot of people, but I have a lot of imposter syndrome. It took me a while to get it out my skilled nursing facility guide that I just recently put out, but I was like, Man, this would be really good for people of all professions going through this, you know, to create awareness and stuff, I would definitely have to revamp it and make it look a little bit better and in terms and use maybe a different program to write out what I have, but I think it would be useful for people, but who knows. Yeah, I
Brock Cook 1:09:16 think it’d be awesome. Be a great resource. Especially for especially for like students going into placement where they haven’t, especially if they are having lower aces scores that probably haven’t sort of seen a lot of the stuff that they may come across on placement. Like I know if I’d seen some of the stuff that I’ve seen since on placement. I probably wouldn’t be in it like that factors. But again, that was again, yeah, there’s there’s times where I was sheltered, I don’t know. But since then, fine, like I can I’ve worked I’ve got have the skill set to work through it. And I understand like, I think understanding behavior is a big part of some of the stuff that I’ve seen. So if you can understand why it’s happening and realize that, you know, sometimes it’s not a logical OR conscious decision that that tends to help in processing it. Oh, yes, I totally agree. But yeah, I think that kind of resource, you could almost tailor to different populations. And it’d be it’d be super valuable. Just Well, thank you.
Allie Watkins 1:10:39 He will thank you. You’ll have to get a 5% royalty on it.
Brock Cook 1:10:43 No, I’m good. I’m okay. It’s all yours.
Allie Watkins 1:10:48 Okay, wow. Thank you.
Brock Cook 1:10:51 Gift of my random ideas.
Allie Watkins 1:10:52 Thank you so much.
Brock Cook 1:10:57 That’s awesome. So yeah, I’ve, I’ve learned a ton. That’s really, really interesting. So how are you hoping to? So when you’re finished and you start working? Is this a field that you’re now interested in? This sort of burnout and I guess, almost change, team culture kind of thing? Or are you still looking at the the oncology side of thing, specifically,
Allie Watkins 1:11:28 I think if I were to get in the oncology field, I would definitely whatever I’m learning right now, or whatever I the material that I’ll have, at the end, I hope to bring to whatever job that I’m in and help my future colleagues. Because let’s be honest, we all go through burnout. And especially if we ever go through pandemic again, which I hope we never do. And I think this would be super useful to help to our co workers into, you know, family members who are going through caregiver burnout. Goodness, gracious, they go through a lot. And so I think this information would be helpful, and I hope to, you know, give it to anybody who needs it, and also practice it myself. Because I’d be, you know, a hypocrite if I didn’t. So, I’ve learned a lot through the process. And I changed my habits, and definitely created more occupational balance in my life, that’s for sure.
Brock Cook 1:12:24 So if people are looking for you on social media, where can they track you down? Where can they find you? And find out when you’re going to release all these amazing resources.
Allie Watkins 1:12:38 That’s right, you can find me at patches of OT, on Instagram. And I also have a page for my service dog and training. If you’d like to see her in action. It’s called this’ll in training on Instagram as well. And that’s the so like the weed.
Brock Cook 1:12:56 Very cute. So nothing like a we
Allie Watkins 1:13:00 see, so. No, I know. She is not like anything like, Louis but yes, she’s very cute.
Brock Cook 1:13:08 Awesome. I’m glad other people think she’s cute. Um, I was half expecting you to bring her along today. Okay, that’s fine. I know. She’s actually sleeping. Outside somewhere. Yeah, nice. Yeah, she’s probably tearing up our car. So probably just so yeah, thanks so much for coming on today. It’s been it’s been really good to chat in general and tap into your your experience. It’s been really fun.
Allie Watkins 1:13:40 Thank you so much, Brock for having me. I’m so honored to be on here. I like listen to your podcast all the time. And, you know, see you doing your great work. So I’m like, wow, you wouldn’t have me. That’s amazing.
Brock Cook 1:13:57 If you liked this episode, and want to check out more, head over to occupied podcast.com or search occupied podcast and your favorite podcasting app. If you have thoughts or reflections on the topics discussed today, please do get in contact. We’d love to hear from you. And lastly, if you got some value from this and you want to help us out, like, subscribe, share it with a friend. Remember, be good to yourself, be good to others and always keep occupied
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
118 – All About Occupation Series ft Dr Nedra Peter
Jul 09, 2021
OCCUPIED is proud to continue our partnership with the All About Occupation series of seminars being hosted by Rebecca Twinley from the University of Brighton. In the 2nd seminar we present to you the amazing Dr Nedra Peter!
About Nedra
Dr. Nedra Peter, PhD, Adjunct Professor and Research Associate at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Toronto, Canada
I completed my doctorate in the field of Occupational Science at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. My PhD thesis explored the occupational possibilities of people receiving social assistance in Ontario. I also have experience in Disability Studies, Child and Youth Health and research methods.
My research interests include: understanding how health systems, policies and programs do or do not address the diverse needs of marginalised youth, Fostering partnerships through integrated knowledge translation between academic institutions and third sector organisations to directly support marginalised populations, advancing the interdisciplinary field of Occupational Science by conducting empirical research focusing on conceptualizing and studying occupation in racial and ethnic minorities living in Western contexts and addressing equity, diversity and inclusion in access to social support, employment and education.
Session Title
Considering the impact of social assistance on Occupation
Session Details
The aim of this session is to show how social assistance recipients experience lack of opportunity and resources to make everyday choices and to have decision-making power as they participate in occupations. This presentation will also consider my research from a lens that moves away from individualised Western epistemologies and discuss how race/culture has a significant influence on occupation.
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
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117 – Creativity Vs Science- The Juxtaposition of Occupational Therapy
Jul 01, 2021
So recently I was given the opportunity to present to the Royal College of Occupational Therapists Specialist Section for Children, Young People and Families. At the time I was toying around with the concept of the “Art & Science of OT” so as part of my looking into that I built this presentation that looks at where that came from and what it means for modern occupational therapists.
If you would like to hear the discussion/questions, as well as the full webinar and the slides, are available over on Occupied Plus+ I will say this was an exploratory topic for me based on an idea that has bugged me for a long time. I’m not asking anyone to agree with me, but I do hope it stimulates you to question things.
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
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116 – The ever expanding world of OT with Professor Liz Townsend
Jun 20, 2021
Professor Liz Townsend is a name that almost every OT around the world would know and have learned about some of her work. I wanted to learn how a person could get to the point that they could even conceptualise ideas as MASSIVE as the ones she has had through her career. Her story is amazing and really does show someone who has not only made opportunities but made the most of those opportunities.
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
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115 – Student to Podcaster to OTR ft Amy Tippol
Jun 14, 2021
Amy Tippol cohosts The Occupation Station podcast with her friend Ana Milanese. Today we explored Amy’s journey though OT school, starting a podcast and now transitioning into the profession. We explore different learning styles, sensory preferences, and overcoming challenges. Stoked to be able too call Amy a friend and to bring you this super chilled conversation.
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
If you want even more valuable content join Occupied Plus+ on Patreon at patreon.com/occupiedplus for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship and much much more!
114 – All About Occupation Series ft Karen Whalley Hammell
Jun 07, 2021
OCCUPIED is proud to announce a partnership with the All About Occupation series of seminars being hosted by Rebecca Twinley from the University of Brighton. We will be bringing these seminars to you on the podcast and am SUPER stoked to have the very first one of the series with the phenomenal Karen Whalley Hammell!
About Karen
Karen Whalley Hammell is Honorary Professor, Department of Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
I am a graduate of the Liverpool occupational therapy programme, the Rehabilitation Studies MSc programme at Southampton, and the Interdisciplinary PhD programme at UBC in Vancouver. My work has addressed themes that include spinal cord injury, qualitative research, critical disability studies, client-centred practice, the Capabilities Approach, justice, injustices and occupational rights. My most recent book – Engagement in living: Critical perspectives on occupation, rights and wellbeing (2020; CAOT) – explored occupation as a determinant of human health and wellbeing, and as a human right. Ardently opposed to credulity – the disposition to believe on insufficient evidence – all my work reflects my desire to foster critical thinking, challenge taken-for-granted assumptions and ideologies, and promote the justice and equity required for all people to have equitable opportunities to use their abilities and to attain the occupational rights to which all are equally entitled.
Session Title
The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing occupational disruption: Exposing the lie that “we’re all in this together”
Session Details
Karen will reflect on her report entitled ‘Engagement in living during the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing occupational disruption’. This essay, about occupation and wellbeing, was written in March 2020 during the uncertainties of the first weeks of the pandemic. Looking back on the intervening year, Karen will explore the deeply rooted social inequities and structural injustices that have been exposed by the pandemic; inequities that impacted occupational rights, wellbeing and the likelihood of survival itself.
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
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113 – Lived Experience of Suicidality ft Ellie Frith
Jun 01, 2021
DURING THIS PODCAST TOPICS SUCH AS SUICIDE AND MENTAL ILLNESS ARE DISCUSSED. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.
DURING THIS PODCAST PERSONAL OPINIONS AND EXPERIENCES WITH MENTAL HEALTH CARE AND MEDICATIONS ARE DISCUSSED. THESE ARE OUR PERSONAL OPINIONS AND EXPERIENCES ONLY AND YOU SHOULD DISCUSS YOURS WITH YOUR DOCTOR.
Ellie Frith found herself in an acute mental health ward after experiencing some issues with her mental health. This is her story.
From this experience she started the Chewy Head podcast to explore and reflect on her experience. In the two seasons released so far she has explored some of the narrative around her admission and mental state as well as interviewing a variety of health professionals about mental health care.
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
If you want even more valuable content join <<Occupied Plus+ on Patreon>> for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship and much much more!
112 – Integrated Womens Health ft Taryn Gaudin
May 21, 2021
Taryn is Occupied’s first physiotherapist! I’ve known Taryn since university and since that time she has developed a unique perspective on her practice which has grown into a business that offers integrated woman’s pelvic floor health services. We explore the journey she took in getting to this place in her career, and how she navigates some of the common queries such as scope of practice and evidence based practice.
Some of the techniques Taryn uses to help women to explore & expand their relationship with their body & self include:
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111 – Happy Birthday Occupied
May 17, 2021
A nice, short and sweet episode reflecting on the last 3 years of this podcast. So much work but for me personally its resulted in so much growth. Thankyou to everyone who’s been involved in the podcast in any and every small way. Heres to the next 3 years
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
If you want even more valuable content join <<Occupied Plus+ on Patreon>> for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship and much much more!
110 – Taking OT into the Digital World ft Laura Simmons
May 13, 2021
Laura brought her business to my attention via LinkedIn and right from our first conversation I was completely intrigued with what she was trying to do. As the CEO and founder of Theratrak Laura is walking a line not commonly travelled by those in the OT profession. She is not only a private business owner, an entrepreneur but she is developing a product that aims to bring OT into the digital age.
We delve deep into what Theratrak is, why she started it, and where she hopes to take it.
If you are interested, sign up for a 30day free trial of Theratak and see if it can help you and your practice.
If you want even more valuable content join <<Occupied Plus+ on Patreon>> for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship and much much more!
109 – Kwaku and Brock Do Communication Good
May 01, 2021
Been a big fan of Kwaku Agyemang since he started his podcast, OT & Chill. The cool laid back vibe, amazing guests and epic conversations really connected with me and my learning style. As I got to know him through the podcasting community I realised, “hey this dude is really quite unique”. His ever positive perspective, impecable clinical reasoning and passion for the profession drew and instant connection. Getting him on Occupied was a must! But what would we talk about? His work in prisons? His passion for movement, sport and exercise? The various transitions he’s been through during his life? Nope. This conversation is 100% naturally developed. We barely even said hello, we just started talking and let the convo go where it naturally wanted. In this case it eventually drifted towards communication skills and the nuance involved in being an excellent clinical communicator.
There truly is something for everyone in this episode so please do enjoy.
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Transcription
coming soon
108 – Creativity V Depression ft Erik Johnson
Apr 20, 2021
DURING THIS PODCAST TOPICS SUCH AS SUICIDE, SELF HARM AND MENTAL ILLNESS ARE DISCUSSED. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.
In episode 098 I put out an episode about my personal experience with depression. Not long after that Erik (you will remember him from episode 039) messaged me expressing how much he related to the episode. Erik explained that he was currently going through something similar and wanted to come on and have a conversation with me about it. Erik is by far one of my favourite OT’s on the planet and his honestly and vulnerability in this conversation simply confirmed that for me.
This conversation was one of those ones that I can genuinely say wasn’t an interview, it was just two mates catching up and having a deep and meaningful conversation. Thankyou Erik.
If you don’t already follow him then definitely check him out here:
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Transcription
Brock Cook 0:00 Hi, and welcome. My friend, Eric Johnson approached me or shoot me a message after I released the episode, where I explained about my journey with depression and said, Dude, I want to come back on the show. I’m having my own experience of pretty much what you described in that episode. And I don’t want to have a chat about it. So here we are, I will tell you that there are definite trigger warnings during this conversation, we talk about suicide, we talk about depression, there is some mention of some traumatic incidences that Eric experienced while overseas in Afghanistan. So those things make you uncomfortable, then please don’t feel like you have to listen. This is by far and away one of the most vulnerable and connected interviews I’ve ever had the pleasure of doing. And I got so much out of it. So I really hope that you can get equally as much out of it. So without further ado, let’s roll the intro and get this episode going. Get a My name is Brock Cook, and welcome to occupied. In this podcast, we’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy, we explore the people, topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources at occupied podcast.com. But for now, let’s roll the episode. How you been?
Erik Johnson 1:48 You know, I’m okay. I’ve been in a pretty rough spot, you know, have? Probably, I mean, you know, no question, that pandemic has certainly put a damper on a lot of things in life and, you know, you get kind of starts to get in your head and you, you know, start thinking like, will this ever end, you know, and then you start thinking about all the other things that are negative in your life, and so it just kind of starts to fester. And, and so I’m kind of, you know, in this place where I just can’t kind of dig out of a pole, you know, and so, I’m gonna, okay, you know, like, I actually told my boss the other day, just, I broke down to her just said, I’m not doing well, you know, and I started crying, just like, I know, that I probably have this happy face on. And I certainly am going to be a professional for the students, but I’m not doing so hot, you know. And, and she totally gets it. So I’m thankful that I have, you know, somebody that understands that, you know, there’s these depths that are hard to dig out of, you know,
Brock Cook 3:00 yeah. And I think that it was interesting, like, after I put out that because I put out that like a like a Facebook post, whenever that was like December. And that got like, a really massive reception from people I knew and people I didn’t know. And I had a few people that were like, Oh, you need to like, you should do an episode like you need to, but you should do like an episode and sort of go into more depth. I’d already kind of thought about it. And I’m like, Oh, yeah, okay, I’ll get around to it. And then, yeah, when I put that out, the other day, it I was getting messages from so many people, like people I know, like you and then random people I’d never heard of, like sharing sharing their stories, or those people that, you know, we’re going through it sort of right now. And hadn’t really was kind of in a similar place to me when I started where I hadn’t really, I guess put a name to it and kind of thing and they sort of knew that I was wrong, but hadn’t really clicked on what it might be. So it’s, it’s interesting, like, I always hear the stats, especially around like the pandemic stuff, like, you know, just comments for now, probably not common sense, but like our ot training, we know that that kind of stuff is gonna have an impact. Right? But I think for a lot of people that kind of like Yep, I can’t know that’s having an impact on other people. And then that’s it they just sort of block it out and don’t think about it for themselves. I don’t think it’s kind of like the the old theory that you know, plumbers have leaky taps. Like I just think we’re just not very good at focusing and looking after ourselves. We’re very, we’re very good at, you know, putting our own crap aside to help other people or to do the job that we’re therefore we just need I think of ourselves. Yeah, I think that that becomes a struggle and You know, it’s like the old airline adage, you got to put your own mask on before you can help other people. And that’s the bit I don’t think we’re very good at yet.
Erik Johnson 5:09 Yeah, and I agree, like I, and it’s, you know, it’s interesting that you say that, like I had done for, you know, OT month last year, I think, April, I think I had, you know, my head had said, I’m going to do list 30 occupations, or my occupations around that define who I am. And I put some things that were very obvious, like better, and I was a veteran, you know, or I was, you know, worker, occupational therapist, you know, but the, the number one thing that got feedback was, I was a mental health care, actually, you know, I was a, you know, and I was very vulnerable, and that kind of, like, you know, like, I don’t like to say, I mean, everybody sees me, I’m the eternal optimist, I’m so happy, and I’ve got this fantastic life with this amazing, beautiful wife and amazing children. But, you know, the reality is, is like, I’m sitting here, in in a very deep, dark place that I can’t, that it’s hard to share, because of those things. And I was actually thinking earlier, you know, when we had decided to have this conversation is like, you know, like, why is it that more that we see more and more people? You know, and I don’t know, the statistics, but like, are more people depressed? Now? You know, and, and, of course, what drives that in a lot of, you know, I don’t think that it’s uncommon to think that social media drives a lot of that, you know, I should be more because, you know, this person, or like, even, you know, like, I’m thrilled about your photography, and I, we both share a common passion in photography. And I think that it’s very cathartic for me to go out and take pictures and, and, and it’s a, something that I just absolutely love. But even like, looking at yours is like, Man, look at Brock going out. And he’s like, taking all these beautiful, beautiful pictures of these beautiful places, why am I not going out as like, like he’s doing and I should be doing the same thing. And, you know, you get in your head, like, he’s living life better than I’m living life, and I shouldn’t be doing that more. You know, so. And actually, like, what’s interesting. And I’d actually love to hear like the rainbow T’s kind of take on this as well, is I feel that society puts so much expectation on us that we feel that we need to be this person for so many different people. And our true authentic person can’t really be okay with who we are. Hmm, that’s tough. Yeah, you know, you know, and and I have applied, you know, them for being so powerfully okay with who they are the rainbow to, like, just knowing that. In that place, they’ve accepted their own personal understanding of who they need to be, you know, and that’s who I want to be like, I want to be a person who is, is okay with deaf, depression, okay, with the flaws. I certainly have made 1000s and 1000s of mistakes and hurt people and rubbed people the wrong way. You know, and I’m trying to work in a personal space, that’s okay with making mistakes, and forgiving myself and being able to move on there. And that’s, that’s super hard for me, because I don’t want to be, I don’t want to make mistakes. I don’t want to, you know, say the wrong thing. Yeah, that’s hard.
Brock Cook 9:04 And I think in the many conversations I’ve had with Dev, that’s one thing that ate like heaps of other people that I’ve spoken to about dev admire about dev is the fact that they are or at least outwardly appear to be able to be super confident in exactly. You know, who they want to be. And, and I guess that that in a, I guess you call it like an inner confidence. Dev dev definitely sort of pushes that that image out and in conversations like I speak to Dev, almost every day. And I do believe like that. It’s not just a sort of an image that you get from from the social Two accounts, I genuinely believe that that’s who they are. But I do think you’re right in that for social media has had a massive impact on these had a massive impact on on everyone anyway, in that it is very much the highlight reel of people’s lives like like you’re talking, say, for example, like the photos you’re talking about. Yeah, there’s however many couple 100 photos on that, that account that I’ve taken like 12,000 photos. Right, right, like, literally just seeing the best of the best. And this, I can guarantee you there are miles more shit photos that I’ve taken, then the good ones that I’m actually going to show people. And that’s exactly that’s like a perfect sort of way to highlight the fact that Yeah, you’re seeing the the highlight reel of people’s lives. And it is natural, that that’s how we, I feel anyway, that’s how we traditionally have kind of measured ourselves. Because there’s no objective measuring stick on how to be a successful person, we measure ourselves by comparing to those around us. And unfortunately, or fortunately, with social media that around us in quotes has now gone worldwide. And we’re able to filter what’s actually put out there. So,
Erik Johnson 11:16 you know, I actually I love that metaphor, and that’s beautiful. Like I I do a lot of weddings and rice, I do a lot of weddings, I’ve probably done 15 Yeah, but still, that’s that’s a, that’s enough to know that I’ve have the similar like, where I certainly have taken probably three fourths of my pictures that I’ve taken are garbage. And, and I don’t want to use where you know, but everybody, I’ll take 1200 to 1500 pictures, and then give them about 400 Yeah, you know, and they’re beautiful, in the moment, joy and grace and in beauty. But the other three fourths are blurred, and the writings bad. The faces, the eyes are closed, and what a beautiful metaphor to our life. Right.
Brock Cook 12:09 But I know, I think that also, we can kind of expand on that, in that, as a photographer, that’s, that’s okay. Like, it’s almost that’s accepted, like, you’re not expected to nail every single shot. Like, you go out there, like I know, every time I go out, like, I’m gonna take three or 400 photos today, and I might get five or six good ones. And that’s kind of, like, I’m okay with that. I’ll probably be different it was film because that would cost me a fortune. But
Erik Johnson 12:41 which is, but again, you know, think about, again, comparing social media, like it exists now. And you know, 30 years ago, there’s nothing or 20 years ago, there’s nothing. And now we have this unlimited supply of pictures that we can take. Whereas in social media unlimited ability to share the greatness of our lives, if we wanted to, or, or the depths, I mean, people love to share their terrible lives sometimes, which is bizarre to me, but I, you know, I guess it’s their they want they need that
Brock Cook 13:14 feedback from but I think in both instances, often it’s about that dopamine hit. So you know, whether you’re, you’re sharing, you know, something amazing, or, you know, for a photo you’ve taken or whatever, or, you know, you’re putting up a whinge about, you know, you got cut off in traffic or whatever it is, either way, you’re putting it out there for the response in a lot in, I would say every case, but 99% of cases, I reckon, would be people putting it out there for the response, and it’s the same chemical reaction that we’re chasing, it’s the same, you know, feel good hormones that we’re chasing, either way. One is my interpretation of one would be that, you know, one is a healthier sort of option than the other. So, obviously both downfalls, but that they are essentially coping mechanisms to make us feel good. Both of them.
Erik Johnson 14:10 Let me ask you this. Yeah, so two things happen on social media, we post something to receive some kind of feedback. And then we also go on there to see what other people are doing. And it a little bit of a window into our lives, right? Yep. So what what does the other side do? So we’ve kind of identified that that dopamine hit from receiving feedback because you know, I think probably 99% of the people that go on social media look very quickly to Did somebody comment on my posts. How many likes Do I have on my post was a popular who’s doing what right now maybe the my top few people that I followed, maybe they made a post or something but you know, you very quickly go you’re notified And just see what’s going on how people reacted to you. So if let’s say, What if social media ended up being, you actually didn’t exist in that place? As far as what you share, the only thing that exists is that you can see other people’s stuff.
Brock Cook 15:23 Yep. So what did you get out of it? I think, yeah. Yeah, I think I know.
Erik Johnson 15:28 I mean, so do would that change the atmosphere of social media. But the problem is that this could never happen. Because if nobody could do their own thing, nobody would be able to post because they wouldn’t.
Brock Cook 15:43 But I think you can do a similar example to like, what they’ve tried to do on say, Instagram, where they’ve hidden the likes from the public? I don’t know. I don’t know if they’ve done it everywhere. They’ve definitely done it in Australia. So like, if I go on to say, your account, however many the number of people that have liked a post on your account, I can’t see that.
And that’s
Erik Johnson 16:04 Yeah, I think I think they did that. I think
Brock Cook 16:07 I know, rolling it out gradually. And I probably is worldwide by now. But like if, say, for example, you flipped that so that I go into your account, and I can see how many people have liked it. But you can’t, that’d be a similar thing where we want interesting experiment, you’re not going to get that sort of hit, you’re not going to know how many people have liked it. How many people have seen it, that kind of thing. You might well actually, let’s go take comments out of it as well. So you’re not gonna have any feedback. But I can see what everybody else but everyone else does.
Erik Johnson 16:38 Oh, man, how crazy would that be?
Brock Cook 16:40 I think I do think there’s still something to be gained by the person that is liking and commenting, because it’s kind of one of the other things that a lot of people use social media for is social acceptance. And part of that, or in humans is biology has interpreted that as that kind of mob mentality thing. So if everyone likes this photo, then I must like it to kind of thing. So that’s why you stretch. That’s one of the reasons why Instagram was looking at trying to hide some of the likes and shares or whatever, wherever else you can do on the was to try and give that process a bit less power, and have less impact on you know, mainly young minds or minds that aren’t coping so well, which at the moment is pretty much everyone. But I do still think there’s sub there’s probably not as bigger, say, it might be dopamine as well, it may not be as big a hit, but I think there is still I think what you’re looking for so when I’m scrolling, what I’m looking for is one either normalization or inspiration. So I’m looking for, okay, yeah, I like that photo, you know, I can, it still shows me like, if any, if any of my friends have liked that same thing. So I can sort of, okay, but also so with my photography account, I go flicking through, they’re looking for, you know, ideas, inspiration, that kind of thing. And when I find stuff like that, I get that sort of that hit as well. So, I think that’s, that’s probably not the majority of people’s experience on social media, the inspiration side of it, but definitely the normalization. I think a lot of people use it for that.
Erik Johnson 18:36 Well, I think to like, you know, I mean, think about it, like, when people used to read newspapers, they got a lot of input, but there wasn’t a lot of stuff to put back into it, you know, you just got information. And so and I remember, like, I joined Facebook, when, you know, you couldn’t get on it unless you were in, in, in university. Yeah, like and, and it was in my space was the biggest thing and, you know, then you could really personalize your whole experience on my space, whereas Facebook was very directed, very simple. And, and I remember just thinking like, it’s so neat to be able to see, you know, what my nieces and nephews how they’re growing up, instead of getting that one Christmas card that shows a picture of them one space in that. And I have a huge family. So it was really neat, to be able to just see my family grow in a way that I hadn’t previously prior to that. And of course, it now has become an instrument of I mean, especially in the last year, you know, with the US presidency and the chaos, that is the Trump Presidancy
Brock Cook 19:51 controversy.
Erik Johnson 19:54 And just you know, in either whatever side you’re on, it ended up being this There’s so much hate spread, you know, and I think hate brews, and that’s tough, you know, one of those things, start questioning your own your own feelings about stuff. You know, like, I typically lean a little bit more conservative, but I certainly am embarrassed by a conservative mindset in a lot of America right now. Yeah. But if I swung super liberal, it would be against my values, you know? And so it’s like, how do you find that balance? You know, and so that’s a, it’s an interesting game. And I think that, you know, people do very strongly believe that their words will change other people. And sometimes, they’re very harsh words, and sometimes they’re very kind. And usually I don’t, I’m not a big political poster. But usually I just asked, you know, convince me that your candidate is the right candidate, but you’re not allowed to say something negative about the other. Like, I just need to know why funny. It was like that.
Brock Cook 21:03 Yeah, I have those same conversations in Australia. I’m like, it comes to election side, election time, and all they do is slingshot at each other. I’m like, at worst, why don’t you tell me what you’re actually gonna do instead of why the other guy is worse?
Erik Johnson 21:16 Yeah, yeah. This actually, this year, I made people I don’t know if you saw, but I made people say something nice about the other. And so I said, Tell me, sell me on your candidate, you can and tell me two things that you wrote about them. And then you have to say one thing, why the other candidate would be a good option. So if you’re going to post, you have to say something good. You know, and I said, you know, if you don’t say something good, you can’t, you know, participate. And you’re and also a rules, you’re not allowed to say something bad. Yeah. And actually was really interesting. Like, I had some of my liberal friends just like, you know, I think Biden really cares about family and he’s got this, and Trump makes me a lot of money. That’s like, fair enough. A lot of money. There you go. You know, I get why. Yeah. And so there was some interesting like, some other people like Trump actually got us these relief aid checks very quickly, you know, Okay, fair enough. He, you know, whether or not it was him, or just the fact that he was in office, the vaccine? Yep, came along pretty quickly, you know, so. So that was, that was pretty interesting. And other people would say, you know, you know, for Trump, but against Biden, or, you know, they would say, like, Biden is very, he seems very compassionate, he’s got a lot of experience, he seems that he, he holds himself well as a politician, you know, and so, anyway, so interesting, you know, to make them think that those directions,
Brock Cook 22:48 and I think that that’s also, I guess, kind of breaking the mold of how information is delivered just purely on social media, because, like you’re saying before, like, with newspapers, like newspapers were very much a one way medium. I still think social media, as, you know, social as it tries to be is still that, especially when, you know, you hear all these things, I don’t know, if you’ve watched the social dilemma, the movie, that kind of stuff, like, especially when you hear those kinds of things where you know, that flow of information can be manipulated, you know, I can’t say yea or nay It was very interesting movie. I it definitely sounds like it possibly could be true. I’m not gonna confirm what the night No idea. But if it is true, then you know,
Erik Johnson 23:37 where Yes, yeah,
Brock Cook 23:38 it actually gave me a better understanding of why, you know, people have opposing views to me, potentially. But that it still is indicative that that information flow on social media is very one way. It’s one way traffic, whether it’s one way to a person that’s not willing to look at any other options, or whether it’s the fact that, you know, the algorithms are just feeding them one way, or one type of thinking or one version of a story. So that that’s all they end up believing, because that’s all they’ve seen. Either way, it’s still just one way traffic. And then I think when we do try and bring those people and I’ll say those people as in, like everyone on Earth, who’s actually on social media, we bring them back together. Everyone’s got their own separate narratives due to the whatever lane of traffic they’ve been fed. And that’s where we end up with this really contrasting views as opposed and No. I think also because of again, because I feel like I’m blaming social media for everything at the moment, but also I feel like because of that we’ve lost a lot of the I guess the skills to actually engage in those kinds of conversations with each other.
Erik Johnson 25:00 Yeah, yeah, actually, you know, my wife she doesn’t. Because I’m, I enjoy some of those conversations and I, I’m not a big I don’t argue I’m much rather just receive input. You know because again, you know, like if you were in the US, so you decided that fox news was your source of information you would believe all that stuff? And then when you’d have a conversation with somebody who’s liberal like, wait a minute, but that’s not true. And then what about on CNN is that actually true? Or wait, which true is true? You know, because I need to be able to sort that out. You know, because if I’m, if I’m going to have a conversation, and I’ve only ever asked anybody if they are going to talk about something is that, you know, like, make sure your facts are correct, you know, make sure you don’t just while you post something, and, you know, and and because the danger is that it if it is not correct, it’s influencing you, regardless. And so that becomes really dangerous with a mentality. So if, like, Fox News certainly leans heavily conservative. And so, you know, and really, you could say that, you know, because of the constant rhetoric that the left is wrong, that we have to have this insurrection at the Capitol, you know, like, you know, people, you know, they burn these fires, and it’s crazy, you know, and and the other side, too, it’s the other side, too. I mean, it’s, it’s no, it’s not no one saw one side is wrong here is actually the really is both sides are wrong. No One No side is really Right. Yeah. But it feels this, this hate and anger. And then what does that do to you personally? Do you hold that around throughout the day? I’m so glad politics is the presidential election is over. I can’t wait till this impeachment thing to be over, just so that we can really, truly turn a page and heal. I think that’s
Brock Cook 27:05 I don’t think it’s just Americans for thinking that right now.
Erik Johnson 27:08 You’re absolutely right.
Brock Cook 27:10 We’re all sick of hearing about.
Erik Johnson 27:12 Yeah. Well, and you know, what’s, what was the most interesting thing to me outside of outside of the US was Brock, like you woke up? And you’re like, what’s going on in America right now? Like, you posted something that was like, What is happening? Yeah, like, What is going on? And then like, you know, my, my friends from from England, you know, like, what is happening, guys, like I are, I’m so sorry about your country. Now, which is actually pretty empowering. Because like, you know, there’s our, our small body of OTS, like really care for each other. Like, I know that if there was somewhere where you’re struggling, and you’re like, I don’t know how you can do this. But Eric, if you had saved my life by coming out here, I would do it, you know, and I, I truly believe that there’s a body that cares enough about each other, that we would have each other’s backs, you know, come whatever it is, you know, and, and I don’t think there’s enough of that, in general. But I mean, but to know that, like, you’re concerned about your friends, because of what’s going on in the country is pretty powerful. You know, and, and, and, you know, I mean, I’ve followed, I’ve been following the Brexit thing for years now. Concerned about like, my brothers and sisters over Yeah, you know, and like, what’s that? What does that mean for the life like, and I’m trying to understand, like, how is that going to affect? You know, I was supposed to go do the OT show, over November last year? Yeah. excited to meet some of those people in person. And of course, pandemic.
Brock Cook 28:52 Yep. And it’s just like, I think even sort of one was at last week, or the week before I was getting messages from people asking if I was okay, because they, there was a cyclone coming in. I’m like, I didn’t even know it was coming. First. I was the first person that messaged me was in England, and I’m like, Ah, you know, what’s going on here better than I did. I haven’t watched the news. I should.
Erik Johnson 29:16 Actually, we could totally use some rain, so no big deal.
Brock Cook 29:18 Yeah. No, no, it was welcome. And it fizzled. Anyway, so pretty much just was right. But I think I think that’s an interesting observation, especially around IoT. And I do believe because, I mean, I’ve always looked at it as not a professional, obviously, it is a profession, but I’ve always looked at it more as a subculture and I do feel that that is where the power of that connection between sort of like even asked like across the The ocean is is that you know, those subcultures are groups of people that come together with shared values and you know, then there’s gonna be something’s been Not everyone in the profession is going to agree on everything. There’s gonna be some things that we disagree on. But there’s a lot of values that a lot of us would share just purely by the fact that we’re in this profession, and it’s probably why we’re in this profession, is because we, you know, we held certain values. And I think that’s a powerful thing. And I feel I feel like the power of subcultures is getting somewhat watered down with, I guess, the globalization of things where, yes, it is important that, you know, we look at people as global citizens, and you know, we’re looking after, you know, human rights, because everyone needs, you know, these basic human rights met, and that kind of stuff that that stuff, definitely important. But on terms of you know, as you get sort of higher up that sort of Maslow’s hierarchy, when we start to get to that section where we need connection, it’s surprisingly ironic. And if you were sort of going to start from sort of a worldview and work your way down, when you get to those sort of subcultures is when you would start seeing some of those really strong connections where people actually feel like they belong to things. And I feel like some of that is kind of lost. And this, this is going to be a terrible example. But so when I was growing up, sort of going through probably primary school a little bit, my mainly High School, there was stereotypes of groups of people, you know, at high school, there was, you know, the football players, and there was the Brahmin kids and the math kids, and they all hung out together like that. I mean, everyone at our school anyway, got along with each other, but there was definite groups that were closer than others. And it was those shared values. And I’m not saying I mean, stereotypes aren’t always a good thing. I’m not trying to say that to anyone, but they do exist, and they exist for a reason why is in is an important thing to know. And that is shared values. I feel like that kind of stuff, especially in today’s culture, where, I don’t know, everything seems to be wrong. I feel like we’re kind of losing some of those things that a lot of people probably found very useful growing up going, especially through like, those teenage years, which, you know, we have all been there, we know that they’re, they can be quite volatile, and sometimes cruel, and sometimes mean and that kind of thing. And I feel like some some of those things are being probably lost the water down. And I think, even if we wanted to look at that, from a client perspective, like, it’s important for us to get our head around, like, I couldn’t go into a school thinking that it’s gonna be the same as when I was at school, because it’s definitely not it’s a The world is changing so fast. And again, we’re probably getting back to social media, but social media is a perfect example of one of those things. Like my, my students, don’t believe me that I remember a time before the internet. Online. Yeah, they’re like, what did you do? We went outside. Yeah. I remember getting my first internet connection with the old dialup
Erik Johnson 33:21 that is that well, that’s interesting. Because like, So recently, they just had I saw something on on TV that are not TV, of course, because we don’t watch TV watch our phones and yeah, meters, right. So but I was watching something, and it was like, lost footage of 90s. Holiday season, at Toys R Us shopping season. And it was like 1990 Ninja Turtles. And there were people in the, you know, the eye and it was just footage in the aisles at a toy store. Yeah. And I was so blinded by how much there was, you know, like, literally, hundreds and hundreds and 1000s of boxes of toys everywhere. And that was that really defined are my childhood and yours, you know, like, and I was just telling my wife that it is like, I mean, my some of my best memories of childhood was Saturday mornings, I would get up at like at 6am grab myself a bowl of cereal and watch the various teams that started playing. And you would watch them until noon because that was the one day that that TV was dedicated to children. And then you went out and it was time for everybody to be done. And we went out and we just played and I loved the internet. And you know, actually, there’s something that I’ve wanted somebody to illustrate for me. And it’s it’s something like this where like I’m sitting there kind of on my phone because people talk so negatively about And people are always have their head down, you know, but what I wanted to do was I wanted to have somebody illustrate like me at the very side of a picture, and I was looking that way. And this big cone that came out, that would come out like this. And in that cone would be my life inside that phone. And basically GPS signal my like, I’m better connected now that I’m on this phone I am, I’ve got my scope, my sports on this phone, I’ve got my video games on this phone, I’ve got my mother on this phone, like pictures, my memories, and so, and all those things drawn into this, like, almost like basement or warehouse or attic. That is like hung up jersey of like an old time remembered or, you know, my connections to my friends overseas. And just this thing, like, we think this is so terrible. But it really has opened up the world for us to be able to engage in what’s what’s meaningful to us. Yeah, you know, and it would be a cool illustration, if I can get somebody to to really do it well, um, because I obviously do a lot with technology. And OT, you know, and, and I miss those days, and I and I miss riding my bikes with my friends, and, you know, like going to the ballpark and hitting the ball around, and everybody just was outside all the time. But I don’t want to discount that there’s a lot of joy and the ability to connect. You know, I literally you and I can let me think about you. And I tried to do if podcasts existed 20 years 30 years ago. What’s funny is when I say 20 years ago, that was just 2000 Yeah, so actually, you know, even before that, but you know, iPhone one came out in 2007. So, anything before iPhone one really is fair game, you know, but I was trying to do a, you know, pre pre internet, do a podcast, I would literally write you a letter, hey, we should get on the phone. You know?
Brock Cook 37:07 And it would cost like $15 a minute to ring.
Erik Johnson 37:09 Yeah, right. Right. And somebody recently said, like, describe your age, with that saying it without using a number or whatever. And I said, My age is ordered a shirt on JC Penney, and I can’t and you know, send a check to JC Penney from Germany. I was living in Germany, to hopefully get my new shirt in six to eight weeks, you know, something like that. You know, like, it was like, it was something where it’s like, you know, you couldn’t pay online, you couldn’t pay over the phone, you just sent a check. And someday you get the stuff. You know,
Brock Cook 37:48 I remember. So I remember just random thought that just popped into my head when you said that. I remember watching a cooking show, when I was a kid, I would have been in primary school, maybe 1011 years old. And I remember watching a cooking show, and you could send a fax away, and they would fetch you the recipe back. So you had to fill out this form or like write on the thing, like your details and whatever. And they probably collected that for the marketing or something. But I remember having to have one of the chemo, it was really the recipe was but had to fill out this piece of paper. And then I had to go into mom’s work and we faxed it off. And we had waited like I think it came in like the next day. They sorted it out and they faxed the recipe. Yeah, my fax back the recipe. I’m like, haha, see, this is the technology. It’s amazing. Oh, it
Erik Johnson 38:41 was cilantro. Cilantro is what did it. I didn’t catch that.
Brock Cook 38:47 But it’s interesting what you say about the phone? Because that’s obviously something that I’m sure everyone is familiar with that that statement around, you know, they’re not healthy. And we we use them too much. And I can see as a I would class myself as a heavy phone user. I I can see both sides of the argument still. And I guess my interpretation is of it is around the same as anything is not necessarily moderation. I think its intent. So I think people get themselves into trouble when they just end up scrolling for no reason. And it just becomes almost almost a habit rather than an intentional action. So yes, we can get connected like you know, like you said that you’re drawing like my mom’s in my phone. Tons of photos are on my phone access to all my friends are on my phone. Like I’ve got maps in my phone, I can look stuff up, I can research things, the whole library is in my phone. The radio is in my phone, all of my CDs and my records are in my phone, like everything’s in there. And if I’m looking to use those things, intentionally Brilliant tool. It’s for me and I do get caught up with this quite often for me, it’s when it becomes a sort of a mindless, I call it like a time fill, where you just, you don’t have anything else to do. So you pull out your phone. That’s when I feel the effects of not immediately. But if it happens for a while, that’s when I start feeling the effects of Okay, maybe this, like, I don’t feel good. I feel like I’m sort of I feel like I’m neglecting something, probably my wife or my dog or something else I should be doing when you know, I’m just why am I? Why am I playing on my phone? Like, why am I literally just what they want that’s given been given a term now Doom scrolling Instagram, like, why am I doing that there’s nothing. I’m not looking for anything, I’m not looking for inspiration, I wasn’t planning a photo trip, I’m not catching up on what people are doing. I’m literally just scrolling mindlessly to fill in the time. And I think that when it becomes a non intentional sort of engagement, that’s when I think people start to run into issues. Now I find that the when that aspect of me gets out of hand, that’s when I that’s one of my sort of triggers, not triggers. But that’s one of the things I recognize when I’m like, Okay, wait up, something’s not quite right. It might take me a few days probably take me a week to actually realize it. Or it could be my wife going, man, you’ve spent a lot of time on that thing. Like, what are you actually doing? And I’m like, Nothing?
Erik Johnson 41:40 Nothing,
Brock Cook 41:40 Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that’s one of the things I notice, when I my mental state is starting to slide is my not even just my phone, actually even the computer or Xbox, anything, any sort of any any kind of I guess you would, I would call it like an escape technology. Where it takes me out of the current reality for a bit. But anytime I find I’m using that, without sort of purpose or without intention, if that is a sort of a warning sign for me, I guess that you might want to sit down and actually have a think about what’s been going on? Because this isn’t, this is what happens when you no use no slip.
Erik Johnson 42:28 Yeah. I mean, I think that’s, you know, and I, this is actually a pretty good segue to, you know, one thing that I wanted to kind of talk about today, you know, and, and when I know that I’m slipping, when I’m going into that hole, that’s going to be dangerous for me, the depressive state that really kind of locks in on me is his positive stress reactions versus negative stress reactions. And, and, you know, in if we’re talking ot in general, you know, in the army, one of the things that we had was, they still have it actually, if you know, like, OT, we were born out of World War One and reconstruction aids, and you can kind of follow that back. But you know, but one of the things that the army has now is combat and operational stress control. So basically, it’s the mental health force that looks at ways to help soldiers handle stress and combat operational stress reactions in you know, in theater and so, so one of the things that they talk about is positive stress reactions versus negative stress reaction. So your negative would be like I’m depressed, I’m going to go drink, I’m going to depress I’m going to go smoke and my my, my my reaction my response is, is something that’s negative that potentially could hurt me or or is not going to fill me in a way that that I need you know, and and then of course, our positive stress reactions be something that we can we can be fulfilled within so I know that you know, even I don’t even know that you ever posted this but you going out doing photography told me something that you needed something more for you and something that a way to be able to breathe, appreciate the world sit there in a moment and capture that moment to realize that so many of the things that we are separate on are actually important. And and how much bigger this this world for me it’s a that’s a plus. Yeah, right. And sometimes, so I have about a 35 minute 45 minute commute to work every morning, and the sun rises to my left. And if I’m, if I’m at the perfect time, usually it’s the perfect time. The sun is Just coming over the horizon, and I, and it’s in, there’s nothing. So I see it come up. And it’s just takes my breath away almost every time. And then there’s days where I see that and then as I’m driving home, it’s on my right side going down, you see that horizon? And it takes my breath away. And I think about the insignificance. I don’t want to say, insignificance of my life, but how small I am, and, and how beautiful this this world is. And I get emotional about it, you know, then actually, when I’ve been seeing a lot of your posts, and actually Nita, Hamilton, Alice, or Trump, like they’ve been posting, like, videos of this notion of the beach or whatever, she one minute, each, you know, and that’s actually super cathartic for me because I, I, you know, like, that’s, that’s great, like to see that this world revolves around, you know, something that’s not you. Yeah. And that’s okay. You know, and so all the little small details of life that get into my head, the world doesn’t care about that, you know, and how can I capture the what’s more important, and, and so whatever I found, personally, that helps me stress wise, or helps me emotionally when I’m in a pretty depressed state is, is tackling small tasks, you know, so, like, I love working, I love working on my house, and I love like, again, photography. But you know, I have about seven email accounts right now and from different ways, my two nonprofits, I have email accounts, I’ve got my work account, I have two personal accounts, one for spam and one for, you know, like, personal stuff, and you know, and so even like, Okay, I’m just going to try to tackle 10 to 20 emails that have been kind of lingering there. And that will give me a little burden off of my shoulders, you know, or take a little something off. Sometimes if I’m at work, I’m just like, I’m just going to clean my office, I have 1000 things to do. But if I clean my office, I will see something change. And, you know, maybe I can internalize that change and put it towards something good. You know, so for me a lot of that stuff. So I, I’m not a huge drinker. I do enjoy having a drink with my friends. I do enjoy having a drink if I’m out socially, but but it’s not, you know, one of those things that will
Brock Cook 47:35 not a coping mechanism
Erik Johnson 47:37 yeah, a negative stress reaction, you know, and I’m not a big smoker, I will have a cigar with my friends or something like that. Yeah. Celebrating the death of somebody, you know, whatever. But I’m not a smoker. Yeah. And you know, but but I will say my negative stress reaction is this. I go here, you know, and I’m like, okay, I want everything to go out of my brain. Yep. And I just didn’t get to look at everybody else’s, either chaos or, or life. And then two hours later, I’m like, What did I just do literally filled my life with nothing. Yep. And now and that’s
Brock Cook 48:14 very similar, I do almost exactly the same in that it’s, it’s a way to it isn’t escapism, like it’s a way to like I don’t, I don’t want to deal with whatever it is going on. I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to have to like you know, clean the kitchen. I don’t want to have to do that. I’m just gonna sit here and I’ll just scroll for a little bit and then blah, blah, blah. And I think what what actually impressed you pretty much now my photography journey in one without I don’t know, if I posted it, I don’t I might have but I don’t think I had so Bravo. But again, it started as during our lockdown. Earlier in the year, I was just getting sick of being at home. And I’m like, all of my hobbies, interests, everything that I had access to or that I was doing at that time, were based around home, like I had my gym at home, I did this podcast, I was working from home as well at the time. So I literally, there was a six week period, even outside of the lockdown where I didn’t leave the house. And that was very thin. And I’ve always had a fascination with flying and I’ve always loved photography, and I ended up buying a drone purely for the fact that and I spoke about it with my wife before I bought it. I’m like I need a hobby that I can’t do at home. Like I have to go outside to do it and and that
Erik Johnson 49:49 and not interact with people. Right?
Brock Cook 49:50 Well, it wasn’t even that initially. I mean, that’s a side bonus. It’s
Erik Johnson 49:54 a pandemic, you know?
Brock Cook 49:57 Yeah, yeah. So something that I could do. on my own, or like a now now I’ve been on a little photo trips with some mates and stuff. But then from that I was like, I really need to get back into, like proper camera photography as well. So I ended up getting back into that as well. So now I do both. Well, I crashed my drone last week, so I’m getting that repaired. But normally, I would do both. So it’s, and it is, it’s very cathartic, it’s, especially now that I’ve kind of done all the really easy places that you can get to around here. So now it’s, you know, going for walks into the bush looking for things to take photos off. So you know, you really are getting outside, you go for hikes, and a lot of the places I’m going, you know, yeah, they are sort of like bushwalk tracks, but again, there’s not many people there and you have to be self sufficient. And you know, you carry everything in you carry everything out. It’s there’s a process to like, okay, like, I don’t want to take every single camera thing that I saw there on the table, like, there’s tons of stuff, right? Like, if I’m going for a hike, I don’t carry all that crap. So it’s like, I need to consciously think about like, what kinds of shots Am I gonna be looking for? What equipment Do I need, like, I don’t want to take every lens I own because I’m probably not gonna use half of them anyway, I might use two of them. Right, depending on what’s actually in that area. So there’s a, it’s become a one, there’s also the learning of actually had to do it. And you know, what works and what doesn’t. And that’s a lot of experimentation and stuff. But there’s also that sort of process before and after, like the prep, and then the, you know, afterwards is sort of editing photos, sometimes cleaning your year and that kind of stuff. If it gets wet. It’s become more than I had a lot more than I was anticipating when I originally started it, but it’s still serving that purpose in that I’ve always had a need for some sort of creative expression. And originally, that’s why this podcast was started as well as part of that sort of creative expression in that I was then able to learn, you know, I already kind of knew a bit about website development, but learn about audio editing, and all that sort of stuff. And I feel like as I got closer to, you know, I wasn’t learning as much with that, like, I still love it. I still love doing this podcast. But um, like, it’s the little things that I can learn about it that I was learning initially, when I first started, that’s kind of slowing down. So I needed something else, I needed a new challenge to take on as well to sort of keep that creative expression going. And I do feel like it’s something because it’s obviously camera gear is expensive. But actually, once you’ve got it just going out and taking photos is relatively tedious. Oh no, I was gonna say relatively low barrier to entry. Like you can just go out and literally just take photos in the backyard if I really wanted Yeah, yeah. But I think that’s one of the things like if I’m ever like, I’ve had a shitty day, like yesterday, I’m like I had a shitty day, I literally drove down the road and found a bunch of trees that looked fine, interesting and just started like experimenting, like what angles, what light? What settings can I do to try and make this look interesting. It’s definitely something that I’ve kind of embraced wholeheartedly as a, I guess, a support for my mental health. You know, and you get all the side benefits of being outside, you know, vitamin D, being in nature, being peaceful, you know, thinking about something other than whatever else has been stressing you all day, that kind of stuff. Like there’s all those sort of side benefits.
Erik Johnson 53:52 You know, it’s interesting that you say that, because, you know, recently over actually over the past couple years, if I do you know, if somebody asked me to come to be like a featured speaker or something where I’m doing, you know, commencement address or something, I actually have started with this interesting thing where I don’t talk for the first 30 seconds. Okay, and I just like so they’re like Eric Johnson, and then I get up there. And I just hold every person that’s looking me captive, in that silence. And then I and I look up at them and I say, the power of quiet the power of silences and incredible or as like silence is incredibly powerful thing. And, you know, it can teach us so many things about life and I go on to this small monologue about how the quiet has changed me, and how important it is to be able to live in that silence and be okay with it. And then I was like, you know, When I started a lot of you thought maybe he choked. Maybe he, you know, he just crapped his bases doing well, like somebody, send them somebody give him a glass of water. Somebody’s like, are you okay? Is everything okay? You know, and, and I’ve actually had to tell the people have put these on like, hey, by the way, I’m not gonna say anything for 30 seconds, but if you think 30 seconds, it doesn’t sound like a lot of time. But you and I, if we stopped talking for 30 seconds, everybody would assume that it was really. Yeah. And I was like, I held you guys kept, like, we anticipate what’s happening all the time. Like, you know, it is, you know, almost eight o’clock here. I know that, you know, our conversations gonna be ending soon, I can anticipate what the day looks like, you know, I know, I can expect I know that I you know, certain companies will email me at 9am. You know, I can expect that I was like, but if I if you can hold yourself captive in a moment that you’re not allowed to get out of. It’s a, it’s a very powerful, interesting thing. And so I really enjoy it because everybody anticipates me giving them something. And they’re not allowed to take it. And it’s, and so what I what I challenged him is like, take, you know, time to meditate. You know, even if it’s five minutes each day, and you know, you can do a lot of research on meditation, and quiet and the silence and, and how are the world’s greatest leaders, businessmen, bobal take time to meditate each day, um, that in that meditation, it’ll give you focus will give you answers to questions that you should be kind of thinking about, and then allows you to progress through your day more effectively. But, but that’s tough. You know, and, and I love that you say, like, sometimes, you know, just having a really terrible day, you will stop, get out of your car, and just look, you know, and you know, what’s what’s beautiful is your moment is the only moment that has ever happened in the history of time. You know, like this mama right now will never be replicated. The piece of grass, oftentimes, when you’re in nature, it’s the only the only person that will ever actually see that branch or, or bury, or you’re only the person that will ever capture that particular tree, because nobody else cares about it. You know, where as you go to, you know, the Sydney Opera House, how many pictures have been taken to that? The bazillions? Everybody read that one? True? Yep. Yeah. Well, that one tree that you decided was important. You did you know, and so, and so I think that’s, I think that’s a big deal. You know, and as I said, a lot of times, when I treat my mental health I treating my mental health sometimes is appreciating those small things, and then also helping other people identify their unique contribution to life. And, and that helps me also, you know, be like, you know, what, the things I’m doing in life, I think, are significant. And I think that if somebody were to look back and tell the story of my life, I hope that they can say, he loved people, and he appreciated those moments of silence. You know, yeah,
Brock Cook 58:21 it’s interesting. You said that, because I think, and you probably agree, my experience is sort of every time I have sort of a depressive bout, when you come out of it, you learn something new about yourself, or how to manage it, or, you know, you learn something from each time and happens. And one of the things that I’ve learned with the last one, which is obviously while I was taking photos and stuff I take it started that hobby, but when I had the last sort of bout was the so before that, I had to be very conscious and driven. And I had five, relatively just basic things that I would start building into my routine to try and drag myself out of it. And that were things like, I would do a daily meditation on one of the like, I have a I think it’s the calm app, and they do like a 10 minute meditation every day. So I would do that I would journal every day. I didn’t care if it was one sentence or you know, on a novel, whatever I needed to write, I would write, I had to sit in the sun for five minutes. had to do like 10,000 steps, and I think I had to drink two liters of water like they were the five real simple things. I just wanted to make sure I did them every day. But they were very I it worked. It definitely worked. But it was a very prescriptive, sort of like I need to do these five things and they targeted obviously very different aspects of what a human body needs. Vitamin D, you know, timeout connection, being able to play Resist thoughts, that kind of stuff. What I found with the last time when I had sort of a was in a really deep hole, which was about September, November, September, October ish around there last year, was that pretty much everything that I got from those five things, obviously, except for like, the water I was getting from photography. So photography was a very, because again, like I was going out there often on my own, into the bush or, you know, going for long drives, even to spots. It was a very sort of mindful pursuit, especially when you’re looking for a shot. If you’re in a location and you’re looking for a shot, I find that very, very mindful pursuit, because you’re not focusing on anything other than what’s in front of your eyes want to catch and how can I frame it, or what’s the best angle, what I find appealing about what angle blah, blah, blah, I was obviously outside, so I was getting, you know, vitamin D. So like, it was, to me, it was very much highlighting, I guess the difference between how an OT would work in mental health, and how pretty much any other profession might, because we don’t have to yet for some people that sort of, you know, here’s the five steps to getting out of depression kind of thing might work, that might be their thing. And yes, like I said, it did work for me, this work better for me engaging in an occupation where I had those needs met. As well, as you know, a lot of other needs, like we talked about earlier about, you know, being a creative pursuit, and that kind of stuff works better. For me, it was a much simpler, I didn’t have to put as much conscious thought into it. I didn’t have to, like, you know, use my discipline and motivation to make sure that I did all these five things, because I genuinely wanted was to go out and see what I could find. And the other thing, that’s cool, yeah, and the other thing that just you touched on before that, I really, I think the the mindfulness part of it was exactly what you were saying about being the only person to experience that particular moment. And that’s one of the reasons why originally, when I first bought the drone, on my I am seeing parts of the environment, whatever it is, was a beach or a tree or whatever from an angle that no one has ever looked at this from. Right, yeah. And then that that sort of mindset wanting to find those unique angles, those unique views of things is I carry that over into just my general photo photography as well in that some of those photos that I’ve taken are literally beside the highway 1000s of people would drive past you know, that tree or that rock, or that fence line, or whatever the photo is, every day, but no one has looked at it, the way I’ve looked at it, or the way I see it, or the way I’ve interpreted it. And I think giving yourself space to look at things in your own unique mindful way is a really powerful and important thing that everybody needs to be doing. And I feel like I’m getting full circle here. I feel like social media and a lot of ways is stealing that from us. Because we’re no longer interpreting things the way we do. We’re seeing things the way someone else wants us to see it.
Erik Johnson 1:03:29 That’s interesting. You know, actually, I was just having a conversation about like, I’m almost bum about watching, or seeing photos of there’s, like, my Instagram feed is filled with OTS and like beautiful things on the earth. So it’s like, I don’t know if you followed discover Earth, but it’s this beautiful. Yeah. And they always have something incredible views of places in the earth. And it makes me like almost sad sometimes because it’s like, Oh, dang, I wish I wouldn’t have seen that because it would have been cool to have traveled there and seen it for myself before I saw that. You know, and and so many things that are captured out there because like he said before like being inspired to take a picture or find something is like I have a whole Pinterest page that is pictures that I want to take and and I have one that is for like weddings also but like, you know, like this is a cool wedding picture like however this guy did this, like I want to do that for somebody and I wanted to be able to call it my picture, you know and so but some people will have like these amazing ideas that you know, a lot of times I may do get inspired to do my own take on it or something different. But you know, I’m like man I wish I would have seen that from for myself without previously like, like I would love to go wandering and then find it. Yeah, ya know as compared to like Hey, I saw this, there’s this amazing thing or like Brock, hey, I’m coming to Australia, I want you to take me to where you took that picture. Yeah, like, you know, like, I think my expectation of when I, cuz I’m going to visit you at some point, good lifelong dream Australia. So at some point and you know what i’m probably gonna say within the next three years I’m coming out there.
Brock Cook 1:05:23 I’ll be waiting
Erik Johnson 1:05:25 pandemic, hopefully gives me control. But once I get out there, like, let’s go, let’s go explore something that we haven’t explored before Yeah, let’s go get lost somewhere you know and haven’t experienced that people haven’t had before. And now and and i and i think that you do and I haven’t that like if I were like going to take me as a tourist attractions it doesn’t give you that positive. I mean, I mean it’s a memory but it’s not a memory that nobody else gets to have. You know, like when I lived in Las Vegas, the expectation was when you came to visit Eric, he would take you down to the strip because everybody wants to be on the strip, you know, the Las Vegas Strip, that’s just where we go see the casinos, you know, but hey, I’ve got this other place that is, you know, Red Rock Canyon, or like, you know, did you know that? Hoover Dam is? Yeah, so I mean, like, all these things are like, yeah, so these things, like are experiences that actually we could have that you didn’t expect or wouldn’t expect or something different. That is away from norm. And I think I find myself wanting away from the norm more than any thing ever. Yeah. And on Actually, I’ll
Brock Cook 1:06:44 know, I was gonna say, like, I found like a norm. And I’ve done the touristy things in Australia as well. Like you mentioned Sydney Opera House and stuff before. Yeah, yes. Okay. Yeah, they’re impressive when you see them, but I didn’t get the same. Like, I’ve seen photos of them. And when you get there, it’s like, it’s the same as the photos like I don’t, I know some people like oh my god, it’s amazing. And they might, when you do the tour, and you listen to the history of it, and how it’s built. Yeah, that’s it’s impressive. But it’s not something that I was like, Oh, my God, I have to come back here. Like, I’m like, I’ve done it now. Like, that’s it. And what I was gonna say before is with your when you’re talking about interpretation is so I don’t know if you remember if so I took a photo, a while ago of this tiny little tree. It’s not tiny, taller than me. But it’s a tree that’s just off the coast. So when the tide comes in, the water actually goes under the tree, and it looks like the trees out in the ocean. Now that’s fairly on terms of the photographer’s in Townsville, there’s a lot of people that know about that tree. And it’s interesting, because I first saw that tree, and I saw a similar shot to what I’ve taken, but I didn’t want to do that I my, for me, when I see that I’m like, okay, that’s a cool location. I want to go and see what I can see. That’s different. no one else’s see. I love that. And I’ve seen a few different photographers, because I follow quite a few of them now that are around this, this area that have all taken photos of their tree, they’re all different, which I think is so cool. Like, yeah, for me, a lot of people, a lot of people tend to take them sort of from the beach looking at the tree, and it’s probably 30 million, what’s that, like 50 feet or something away from the from the actual sand. Whereas for me, I went and stood in the water and shot up the coast. So it was a different angle.
Erik Johnson 1:08:27 I love that. And I think that’s a big difference between like, taking pictures and photography, you know, because I’m very similar. Like, I remember going to see the the arch gateway in St. Louis, if you’re familiar with that. It’s a big, yeah, you know, silver arch, right. And, and so you’ll always see people take a picture of the arch. And, you know, I remember going in the wanting to see it differently. And I remember taking a picture, just straight up the line of it. And as it kind of curves in and up. And then you know, kind of the clouds in the back, you know, and it was just like you would even really probably know that it was but it was this interesting bending piece of metal going into the sky. And you know, and I love that I actually do really appreciate that about what because typically when I go to something that if you took me to Sydney Opera House, which you know, these places are things that you want to see, like I wouldn’t go to Paris and not go to the Eiffel Tower, or Arc de Triomphe. But when I took pictures of the Arc de Triomphe, I went there at night, set my camera, like on the top of a trash can open the aperture for like 30 seconds, and all it is is just lines all around this crisp, beautiful arch. And it’s a picture that I took that’s different that people haven’t taken, you know, and so, you know, and so I think that that’s really beautiful, kind of in that moment, but you know, and so and that just brings me back to like, I want to experience life differently because there was a point that when I was the deepest depression I’ve ever been. And I mean and I’m in right now and you know to your listeners or whatever, like I actually see somebody for my depression every single week like I have a counselor that really helps me and I’m going through some different cognitive behavioral therapy right now just for my own like I want to be a better me and and and I’m trying to find who that is when I was in the very very depth. I watched this movie called her but with Joaquin Phoenix and I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s basically a movie that you should definitely watch it it’s a movie it’s about depression really. But the the concept is that the the protagonist Joaquin Phoenix had fallen in love with an AI you know, like Siri or Alexa. Because they’ve gotten smarter enough to be really understand you interact with you. And when sir and they learn you and then basically becomes like his best friend. Yeah. And but in the movie, he goes and sees a therapist, and, and he’s he quotes this quote that at the time, when I watched it, I just got so emotional broke down, because it was my exact feelings. But the quote is, sometimes I think I’ve felt everything I’m ever going to feel. And from here on out, I’m not going to feel anything new, just lesser, lesser versions of what I’ve already felt. And that was so and it’s still powerful to me. And, and I just remember thinking, like, I don’t have any desire, like, I’ve done everything, I’ve traveled the world, I’ve succeeded, I’ve gotten awards, I’ve, you know, people like me, I have a family, I’ve done everything, what more is there to do, and I just can’t find the joy in anything more. And I remember being like, in this very dark hole that I didn’t enjoy anything, it was really hard. And, and I remember thinking, like even traveling, I have no desire to travel anymore. There’s nowhere I want to go. I’ve already done Europe, it was very naive and stupid, but very real. And sometimes it still is real. You know, and that’s a hard place. Sometimes when I get in that dark place is like, if I die today, I’ll be very satisfied. And and actually, it’s, it’s, it’s actually a very positive thing for me, too. For me as well. Oh, you know what I want everybody to know, if I were to die today, what a amazing fulfilling life I was able to do i i impacted lives, I help people. You know, I got to see much of God’s creation on this world. And, and what a lucky person have I been, you know, where as people probably within a square mile of me, I’ve never even left the state, you know, like, their big trip in life was going up to Dallas, which is two hours from here. Yeah. And I want that life. You know, that’s,
Brock Cook 1:12:59 I think, what I what you’re, you’re tapping into there something that I’ve tried to carry through my clinical career for so long working with people who have had depression as well is that it’s, and this is kind of going to be a bit of a juxtaposition in that depression, my experience of depression was, it’s very much a kind of, it’s like putting blinkers on where your whole world just kind of shrinks. And you can literally, when it’s really bad, you’re literally just seeing the six inches in front of your face. And that’s all you can see. And like he said, like, that quote was perfectly my experience as well in that, like, Okay, my feelings have just stopped, like, there’s nothing new, there’s no like, I’ve done this, I’ve done that. I’m not feeling anything new, and you’ve got these blinkers on and this is my world and I’m in this hole and I can’t get out of it, etc. And, to me, the complete opposite of that, like I Oh, I honestly feel like sometimes like the opposite of depression is creativity. Because to me, it’s like you’re seeing something that you know, people may have seen before, but you’re seeing it in your unique way. You’re finally seeing different angles, you’re seeing different light you’re seeing you know, different things like I I’ve listened to music and I’m like this song sounds different. Like I now know that sounds stupid to most people. But if you listen to music, and you’ve got something going on like depression I can guarantee you similar to so the the episode that I put out about my depression, I took two photos, and they’re both of me the same edit. I look different. Oh yeah. And there’s nothing else to change other than there was about six weeks between them and I was really depressed in one and I was feeling pretty good. In the second one. It was sort of after the the episode had sort of waned. Everything sensory wise is different. Like ever. Breathing kind of shuts down and closes in, you’ll hear people with depression talk about it felt like the world was closing in. And that’s literally what it is like everything kind of shuts down and becomes dull becomes blunted becomes less interesting, less, you know, emotion evoking like everything just, you feel like you’re wading through honey, everything gets slower, and it’s your world shrinks. And then when you can come out of it, I do feel like and this is something I used to use in my clinical career and mental health, is that tapping into someone’s creativity is a really, really powerful way of helping them out of that hole either acutely, or, as well as in the long term. Because I honestly believe that the opposite or that the behaviors exhibited when you’ve tapped into someone’s creativity, like we’ve talked about today with photography, and art, and that kind of stuff, is, you know, different perspectives, and being able to interpret things differently and look at them in a wider way, a wider range of, of ways, is the complete opposite of what happens when you are depressed.
Erik Johnson 1:16:13 And I love that. I really sorry, yeah, I think I think you’re spot on, you know, and I haven’t, you know, because earlier on, in this podcast, I had mentioned that for me, one thing that really helps me is the small tasks or accomplishing something, and I love working with wood and working in my shop. And, and even if it’s as little as you know, patching a small hole that wasn’t a wall, or, you know, something, you know, something that’s been lingering there for two years, it’s like five minute tasks that I just never have done, you know, or, you know, going out and gardening like, I love gardening, I don’t do it enough. And we talked about, actually one of the integrated projects for my, my, my graduate students, is gardening, and I’m so excited that I get to be their mentor on on that, because it’s going to be cathartic for me to build something, and help them with something that’s going to serve the community. But, you know, in the background, it’s serving me so much more. Maybe, you know, but like, That’s awesome, you know, and I think I think you’re spot on creativity is like the, you know, arch enemy of depression. That’s, that’s a pretty cool concept. I’ll quote you on that.
Brock Cook 1:17:38 Yeah, feel free. But I mean, there’s always like, we’re talking about side benefits as well before. And you mentioned earlier about, you know, having to clean your office, or sometimes you just clean your office. And I’ve always found and I don’t know, if you have as well, that in order for me to be creative, I kind of have to be organized, like I can’t, like my camera bag, I could, I know that I could go through that thing with my eyes closed, I know where exactly where everything is. Everything’s organized, everything’s in its spot, and everything has a place, my desk, if I’m sitting here doing the podcast, it’s set up exactly how I want it, I know where everything is, Everything I need is within reach, everything else is out of reach. It’s tidy, it’s neat. And if it’s not, then I just can’t, like tap into that place that I need to. So I think and these are, these are things that you can take, if you do work in mental health, these are things that people can take and use with their clients. Like, I do think creativity is a really important occupation to tap in with people, you need to find some sort of creative outlet for a lot of people. It doesn’t, it’s not what you might traditionally think it’s not it’s not, you know, painting, it might not be photography, creativity for them might be I’m gonna try a different bus route to get to this and I’m gonna just jump on this bus and see where it goes and see if I can make my way back. I’ve had clients that did that before, like creativity, it’s what is creative to them, it’s, that’s the important thing. But also, there is that sort of, I don’t know what you call it, maybe prep work that you can also engage with them in in order to help release that creativity in it can be things like organizing, it can be things like you know, if they have sort of financial stresses and that sort of stuff like trying to help with some of that will help bring that stress level down a bit so that they’re then able to tap into that creativity more that this is like the perfect example of why oaties need to be in mental health and I know that it’s a very different situation on terms of clinically working in mental health in the States as it is here in Australia. But OTS, we are literally born to do that. wanting to do this is our This is our bread and butter.
Erik Johnson 1:20:01 Yeah, you know, I, what’s funny is like, I’m actually wearing this shirt that says, occupation is life itself. And, and it’s really, you know, and this is exactly what you said. And you know, the other day you talked about creativity can be anything. And what’s funny is like, actually the other day, last Friday or Friday, we were at, we’re celebrating my daughter’s birthday and a friend’s birthday at the same time. And we went to Oh, Sunday, and we went to this place to eat a steak restaurant. And on a whim, I just decided I was not going to order anything. I was just going to tell the waitress bring me something. I don’t care what it is. Yeah, just needs to be under like 30 bucks. Yep. And it was so interesting, and unique and fun to see what happened. And it was, it was brilliant. I loved everything that she brought out, you know, and it’s, you know, and I think in life for me, new experiences is everything like to be able to, and also surprise, like surprises, great for me, like unexpected, something. Hopefully unexpected good things. But unexpected is typically something that I really enjoy. To be able to experience and it does keep me fresh and new and interested. Yeah, and I am because I think that my depression and maybe yours as well goes to a place that is there’s nothing more than I need. I can’t say that I’ve ever been suicidal. But I can tell you that I’ve thought about am I suicidal? Am I done? Like would I be okay, dying right now. And that’s, that’s an interesting place for me to be often because I don’t think that I would ever kill myself. But I certainly would be willing to die. You know, like, if somebody were to come and do a mass shooting, I would have no problem sacrificing myself. Because it’s a beautiful like, yeah, I could do that. I think. And it would be selfishly because I think I’d be okay with dying. Yeah, at times. I’m not saying this is all the time. Yeah, I love life. I want to live I want to, and I’m not saying that I want to die. But I you know, like I I’m, you know, I get to this place where it’s like, like, it’s gonna be hard. This next, you know, month is gonna be so hard for me. I don’t know how to do it. You know, finances are really hard for me right now, I don’t know how to figure out my money. Work is really hard for me right now. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t think that I’m doing a good job. You know, and, you know, so all those things, like really weigh weigh in on me and I might have pression You know, it comes from a lot of different places. And a lot of times it goes back to my military roots and seeing some stuff. You know, sometimes I’ll see, you know, blood and, again, takes me right back to like, you know, we saw people coming in our, our Charlie met every, every day that were dismembered or blood everywhere and to process that and try to normalize that it is not normal. It’s very hard. Then see, being you know, one of the hardest things was seeing my buddy killed there. That was a very tough place for me to be. And I go back there often. And sometimes I see my dreams and it just makes me in this place where he hasn’t got to experience life like I have, he didn’t get to see, you know, new Star Wars movies or stories. He didn’t get to see that baby Yoda was the thing. We talked about going to like Vegas together and you know, living it up once we got back and, you know, going to visit his mother. And anyway, so just like, things that are really hard for me is when like, I realized that I’m experiencing things that people never got to, or whatever. You know, and so sometimes it’s like survivor’s guilt. Yeah,
Brock Cook 1:24:03 yeah, I think I never I never got to a point where I was suicidal, but I do the very first time, probably not the first time I was depressed The first time I realized I was depressed. I got to a point where I understood it. I’m like, I’m not I don’t want to kill myself. But I understand why people do. And yeah, that’s me was a really, especially because at the time are still working. Clinically. That was a really powerful realization because I don’t think it’s one of those things where I don’t think anyone can actually get their head around it unless they’ve been there. unless they’ve been that low that you can go are like I can understand why people think this is the only way out like I can understand why people think that it’s never going to get better or You know, this is my life now and I just don’t want that. Like, I could understand why people would even think that little own do it. I never got to that stage myself of actually thinking that, you know, I needed to, to end it or, or wanting to or thinking about a plan or anything like that I just got to a point where I was like, I get it like I can I can empathize with people. Yeah, have those thoughts?
Erik Johnson 1:25:30 Yeah, you know, I think empathy is a big part. And, you know, and actually, like, what a better therapist doesn’t make it make sense, right. Understanding the, those depths. And that’s, it is hard for me because I don’t want to feel that. I mean, I know you won’t, you would never choose it. But prior to Afghanistan, I remember thinking like, I’m the eternal optimist. Like, people come back from war, and they’re all like, quote, unquote, messed up. But I think it’s a crock. I think they’re just using it as a crutch, or something. That was wrong. And I was so wrong. And actually, I was pleasantly wrong. Because it may be it gave me a different perspective on how to understand the subtle things that will change, somebodies outwork. You know, and, and, and how I, it’s not in me to understand why they feel that way, just that they can. And it’s okay. You know, because it affected me very differently. And actually, you know, I posted at one point in time, like, I, because at some point time, like, I posted I really struggled with fireworks going off. Not actually I still do well, when fireworks go off. If it’s on, like, an anticipated date, like the like New Year’s Eve have no, they’re gonna go off, I can anticipate them. And I know that it’s not know
Brock Cook 1:27:01 know that it’s fireworks.
Erik Johnson 1:27:03 Know that it’s fireworks. Yeah. But two days before New Year’s Eve, or Fourth of July in America, when people typically do when, you know, you can go out you can buy fireworks, you know, a month ahead of time. And you can set them off whenever you want. That’s when I have issues. Yeah, because it’s an it’s an anticipated. And I like have this anxiety, that’s insane. But like if a bomb goes off, or like a fireworks go off, like I it’s an immediate split second reaction. And I know maybe it’s not significant. And I know quickly that Oh, that’s not a bomb. It’s Fourth of July is coming up, you know, but it’s like not anticipated. And that’s a problem. And so kind of what it goes back to is, um, what was I? was I going with this? Oh, somebody post, like, I posted just on a whim, like, you know, thanks Afghanistan for, you know, giving me issues for the rest of my life or whatever, you know, fireworks or whatever. Like, and somebody, actually one of my senior leaders posted, oh, please stop being such a sissy or something like that. Yeah. And I remember feeling that like, what an insensitive thing to say. And then I also remember thinking, have I done similar things to people where maybe I’ve discounted something that might be significant? Like, what’s the matter with you like that, that, that that should you should react like that? That’s super insignificant. You know, and, and then I, you know, I think well, but you know, people take things different ways, you know, and people react in different ways. And it’s not for me to judge why that reaction happens. And you know, so actually, I turned a page in OT, where I said that no longer would I anticipate what I thought was happening to somebody, but instead, worked very much off of their objective words, to me, I don’t want to assume something. I don’t want to say anything. But if you tell me that you have the stuff, I’m gonna treat you like that. If you tell me that, this is the experience you’ve had, you’ve had it. So I don’t care whether or not you’re lying to me, I’m just gonna treat you like that. So
Brock Cook 1:29:31 I think more OTs need to do but I think
Erik Johnson 1:29:33 it’s interesting because that’s a tough one.
Brock Cook 1:29:36 Yeah, as I remember, it’s in my my sister’s in the army as well. And I remember when she came back from Afghan, her boyfriend at the time was also in the army and he’d been over. I think they overlapped by about three months. But so I remember driving down the road with him in the car. And I’ll just sort of out of the corner of my eye watching him and he Was scanning the sides of the road for IDs? And I was like, I asked him, I’m like, you’re right, man, he’s like, Oh, yeah, he just it was like one of those things that was almost instinctual it was just habit, it just been doing it for I think he was over there for nine months was on me, was one of those things were over there. That was normalized, and it takes some time to try and adjust. And that wasn’t even like the sort of traumatic things that he saw. But my sister went through same sort of thing, you know, seeing things that most people would never see or wish to see in their life. And it took some time and some professional help to, to make sense and process it so that it wasn’t gonna affect her as much, I’m sure it still does. At times, some of the like, I’m sure there are still triggers, that will affect her as well, I’m not sure what they are. She’s doesn’t like to talk about that too much. But that’s okay. But it’s, it’s interesting, I find that sort of stuff really interesting in that, what you what you were saying about, like, you know, how I maybe done this to other people is that something I think of not necessarily in a super traumatic way, but even in a clinical way, early in my career, I feel like my perspective on mental health was, if I can help the person become aware of the what’s actually going on for them, then they’ll be able to fix it. And so it was like, you know, someone with depression, I’m done, I can’t remember any specific instances, but can almost guarantee I would have said something at some point in time, like, you know, you just need to get up, you need to build a routine, you need to do this, you need to do that. And that’s how you get better. And that’s, that’s not one, that’s not helpful. I know that now, that’s probably gonna have the opposite effect. But also, it’s me trying to, yes, you use the social norms that I’m accustomed to, to tell them what they need to do to fit into that social norm. Like it’s normal, like, you have to get up at, you know, in the morning, and you have to eat three meals a day, and you have to exercise 35 to 30 minutes for however many one days a week that they recommend now, blah, blah, blah, like these other social norms that were sort of ingrained in and to me, early in my career, before I knew anything better. Getting people to function in society. As you know, I believed OTS mission was back then, was a matter of getting them to conform to social norms. So that was like my mission. That’s what I was there to do. So later on very similar, not similar reasons, but similar realization to you. And coming to the, to the realization that like this, I’m pushing shit uphill, for one, I’m probably doing the complete opposite of what this person actually needs. Yeah, and I’m not helping them reach anything that they actually value. Why? Because I haven’t asked them I don’t even know what they value yet.
Erik Johnson 1:33:21 Right?
Brock Cook 1:33:23 That’s one of those things that and that’s one of the things I advocate for really strongly through this podcast, and through my teaching at work, and that kind of stuff, is oaties need to ask, like, we don’t know what to do, you can’t go into a room and go, Oh, this person’s got such and such, they need to be doing this. Like we need to know what they want to do. And that’s one of my couple, slightly, probably a whole nother podcast, but one of my big gripes with the whole OTS obsession with independence. Because that fits very well into that, because not everyone wants to be independent, or it’s not culturally, the norm for some, some cultures to be fully independent. And, yeah, I just feel like actually asking, it seems so simple when you say it out loud, but I just know a lot of OTs don’t do it.
Erik Johnson 1:34:16 Well, I mean, you know, how, like, there’s the lot of buzz buzz words around, you know, OTS use occupation quite a bit, and they’re speaking or whatever. And, you know, there’s like, you know, your ot practice framework, and then you have your, like, occupational justice. And I actually was thinking yesterday, like, you know, coming up with something new because we’ve been pushing occupation so hard and like, it’s got to be the center of your approach, you know, and so just thinking like, occupational revival or like a occupational rising, you know, or something like having this like new hashtag where we talk, you know, like, show occupation and like, the occupational resist sense or something, you know where, you know, because the one hard thing about our profession, and I understand why is that we’re trying to push into, you know, we do need to be evidence base and science driven. And we do need to have our foot around the world. But to what to what ends? And a lot of times I feel that occupation is the ends, that gets erased. Because because it’s easier, it’s for reimbursement to look at objective, you know, clinical results, as compared to what our foundation is, which is occupation. Yeah, you know, and so like, I can’t like for me, I’m an occupational warrior, you know, an occupational resistance, like, I’m just gonna start using that. And pushing back on. Yeah, yeah, there you go. I didn’t think about that. Yeah. Join the resistance. Yeah. But, you know, but even like, you know, in the US, we had this doctorate mandate, the OTD mandate, for, you know, that was this big uprising from the profession saying now, like, it was the resistance like, no, this is not going to do us, this is not good for the profession. It doesn’t represent the body of people. And I think that with reimbursement with ways to get paid, so much goes back into those objective things that reimbursement companies want to see. And that is, these objective measures that are not occupations, you know, like, and you go into clinics, and you just see very rote exercise. And, you know, of course, people think were PT, because that’s how so many people are acting, you know, and that’s where the money is. I mean, I worked in a rehab, that I literally had a conversation with the director saying, I need you to tell me that you want to compromise who I am, as an occupational therapist, so that I can meet your financial goals for the hospital? Because that’s what you’re asking me to do. You know, and I just won’t do that, you know, and so occupational resistance, you know, but, but, but it is interesting, and I think we do have to have that foundation. And I think that, you know, some of the big things that, you know, big takeaways that I have from this is one creativity is, you know, the, the archenemy to depression. And that occupation drives our our unique ability to treat clients, both in mental health capacity, but anywhere else. So I think
Brock Cook 1:37:50 I think these kinds of conversations are things that a lot of 80s, and I’m not saying, like, OTS need to have depression, or have anything going on, to be able to have these conversations, but just actually talking with each other, to be able to look at instances when engagement in occupation has had an impact on themselves. Because, like, similar to, like we’re talking about before, well, I say, clinically, my experience of having depression made me a better therapist, when I was working with other people who had depression. Similar if you’re an OT, and you are able to identify times when engagement in occupation helped you in whatever way, then you’re going to be a better therapist, working with people who need to be engaged in occupation to help themselves because you understand it better you get, you’ve got something to anchor that knowledge on your own experience. And you’re just going to have a deeper, better understanding of what it feels like to engage and make that improvement as opposed to, you know, what we were saying earlier that you just don’t want to do is just throwing ideas at people. And this is what you got to do very prescriptive kind of way of working. Just that doesn’t fit what our profession is meant to do. And it if you’re doing that you’re missing some of the like, most valuable aspects of what we have to offer.
Erik Johnson 1:39:17 And the beauty of our profession. Why Why did you do this if it weren’t for this creative outlet that you could really empower humans? Yeah,
Brock Cook 1:39:26 I didn’t, I didn’t get in here to you know, prescribe walking aids or what? not why I got into the profession. I got into the profession because I wanted to help people. And I think a lot of people I think getting back to that sort of just even that really simple core. Why? Why are you here is something that I feel like OTS need to do kind of almost regularly, as a bit of a reminder, like why are you an OT?
Erik Johnson 1:39:58 Well I love that and, you know, I even like how cool like actually might even use that. Even with my clients that I see, I’m just say I’m gonna look at them straight in the eye, very first thing I say is like, why are you here and then expand on, like, let me explain to you where we’re going with this therapy and why it’s important to you. And, and I want you to understand what success will be by graduating from it or from, you know, leaving it. And that success is a, you know, identification of success that says I can now do, and I can now engage, you know, and I think that, you know, people miss that, you know, like, Okay, well, we’re done with our treatment sessions, this is what people have done with our treatment sessions, you know, you did this many reps of that, you know, you’re stronger than you were then. Okay, good job. But that says nothing about their engagement in life. You know, like, if I can say, you can now hold your child, and you can now go bowling again, and you can now you know, go back to your job and enjoy and provide for your family. What a much more powerful statement, then, well, you’re stronger, or you’re, you know, that’s
Brock Cook 1:41:15 I think the real, I think pretty much exactly what you just highlighted, I think the real power is when they can say that, because they’re the ones that are going to say, like, I can do these things now. Not like, I’ve got five degrees more range of motion in my wrist, like, how can I say that? Yeah. And,
Erik Johnson 1:41:33 you know, this young this year, we run a really cool, free clinic out of our university for people that are uninsured or underinsured. And I’ve been working with this young lady who’s she’s 25 developmental disability, and, you know, so she’s kind of working in a teenager’s body and, and the family, you know, just really wanted her to be more independent and everything. And I started, I, you know, I, my very first thing I ever do with a client is just sit down and just tell me about you. Who are you? You know, and what do you what do you like in life? Tell me what what brings you joy? What brings you happiness? And, and we got to, you know, and then when then what would you like, were Where do you want to be like, what do you what your goals, you know, where do you want to go and, and this young lady and her family sitting there, and they talked about her wanting to, she loves cooking. She loves cooking shows, but they’re very concerned about her safety. And so for the next like, four or five weeks, we worked on safety and cooking. And the like, at the end of the semester, our very last treatment session together. We made this. And she she planned and organized this whole thing. But you know, she got recipes off of Pinterest. And she did.
Brock Cook 1:42:52 She actually faxed away for the recipes, I’m sure.
Erik Johnson 1:42:55 Yes, of course we did. We sent a fax and got it the next day. But we got a you know, French toast. She wanted to do french toast and she wanted to you know, so we planned a shopping trip together. So we went to the store. And she had to navigate you know, the store. Without us. I said here she made the shopping list, went to the store, got the ingredients, you know, and we checked out and then the next treatment session was you know, coming in, we practiced it. And then the next year, it was like Okay, now you’re in charge. You have to like negotiate the oven, the burners, hot stove, hot pads, like the timing and everything. And it was like such a neat place. Like, for me, because it’s a free clinic. We’re not charging, like, I could do anything I want whether you know, yeah. And she was so excited. Her family was so excited. And to know that that skill right there can potentially translate to her doing that. And actually tell her family that she can do this. You can do this with her you can empower her to be more independent was really neat, you know, and, and that’s life. You know, that’s what we do that like, if we’re not empowering life, then what are we doing? Well,
Brock Cook 1:44:12 that’s that’s as good a message as I can think of to to wrap that up. Yeah, cuz Yeah, if we are if we’re not empowering life, couldn’t have said it better myself. That’s awesome.
Erik Johnson 1:44:27 Yeah, Brock. I love you, brother. But I’ve got things to do
Brock Cook 1:44:31 You do! And I do too. And they’re called sleep.
Erik Johnson 1:44:35 Yeah, that’s right.
Brock Cook 1:44:36 It’s a forgot like, quarter to one. Yeah.
Erik Johnson 1:44:41 Oh, brilliant.
Brock Cook 1:44:44 So yeah, thanks for the chat, man. It’s it’s good to catch up again. If nothing else. It’s been too long,
Erik Johnson 1:44:52 Man, It’s perfect. And I appreciate it. Actually, you know, even just these conversations, it does build me you know, like amazing hours. sitting here talking about depression and you’re we’re really treating each other.
Brock Cook 1:45:05 Yeah. And that’s, it’s that, that like, like we talked about in the episode like that, that connection, it helps. And then normalization that’s one of the things I tried. That was the whole purpose of me writing that post. And even during that episode was I want to normalize it because it’s it happens. And, you know, a lot of the time people don’t feel like they can connect or don’t feel connected to people because I’ve got depression on like, now you do feel disconnected because you’ve gotten depression, like it’s the opposite. It’s almost like you’re part of this exclusive club. Now. It’s odd, right, but Welcome.
Erik Johnson 1:45:41 Welcome, and you know what, we can probably help you along the way.
Brock Cook 1:45:50 If you liked this episode, and want to check out more, head over to occupied podcast.com or search occupied podcast and your favorite podcasting app. If you have thoughts or reflections on the topics discussed today, please do get in contact. We’d love to hear from you. And lastly, if you got some value from this and you want to help us out, like, subscribe, share it with a friend. Remember, be good to yourself, be good to others, and always keep occupied
107 – Life and OT in the Arctic ft Rachel Schooley
Apr 12, 2021
On Occupied we get to speak to a lot OT’s from all over this amazing world but when I heard that there were OT’s in the Arctic I was blown away! This is why I had to bring in Rachel Schooley on to explore this very unique part of the world to practice in. Exploring how Rachel navigates living on traditional peoples land and working with their populations. This convo was absolutely eye opening and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
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Transctiption
Brock Cook 0:00 Have you ever been to the Arctic? Have you ever worked in the Arctic? Have you ever even considered what an OT might do in the Arctic? Well, this episode is gonna hopefully shed some light on that, as I had the amazing Rachel skoolie come in and talk about her job doing exactly that. The Arctic OT, we discuss a lot of the challenges benefits of this very unique environment. Get a My name is Brock Cook, and welcome to occupied. In this podcast, we’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy, we explore the people, topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources that occupied podcast.com. But for now, let’s roll the episode. Yeah, so
Rachel Schooley 1:04 I was working in group homes for many years, kind of, you know, between my teens into my 20s, and have done a degree in sociology and women’s studies, that was my undergraduate degree. And my partner had just finished a degree in biology and was applying to become an OT, and I had no idea what ot was at that time. After a bit of investigation, yeah, it just seemed like all the parts of the job I already had, that I loved the most really like finding things that were meaningful for folks that are improved quality of life and bring joy to activity. And so I thought I would apply as well. And we actually ended up doing the OT program at the same time with a with a baby and it was great. You know, I learned a lot and definitely opened my eyes to a lot of different parts of ot some some that really fit well with what I wanted to do with my life and others not so much. But I think that’s the beauty of the profession, too, is that you can kind of make it fit with with what you’re looking for, in some circumstances, others maybe not so much.
Brock Cook 2:24 Yeah, definitely. And that’s something I try and tell people a lot is that it isn’t, I don’t view it as sort of this unique, while it is unique, but this sort of very individualized profession. It’s kind of something that you combine with skills that you already have, or experiences you’ve already had, and then you turn it into whatever you want.
Rachel Schooley 2:46 Absolutely. Yeah. And it’s interesting, because, you know, my first year of our ot program, and it’s a master’s level program in Canada, I guess, probably all over the place it is. But I thought like what have I done? Just doing, you know, anatomy courses, and like I said, Bachelor of sociology and women’s studies, like never touched anatomy with a 10 foot pole. That’s no, not nominated. Yeah, exactly. And it’s pretty intense. Like we had three months to learn the entirety of it. And I felt a little bit like my first placement was on stroke rehab, and I really did enjoy it I loved. And because I had the experience with the group homes, I was trusted to do the transfers and different parts of the placement that maybe if I were a fresh grad with no work experience I would have been able to do and so that was really great. But my second placement, student placement that I had was at the AIDS committee of Kitchener Waterloo. And so working with folks that, you know, were living with HIV, and it was more of a systems level placement. So less clinical work, but more looking at like, how are we informing the programming that’s available to these folks and speaking to policymakers and so that was like my first dose of, of systems level OT and I loved it, and I love the social justice components that that I could dive into with ot. And it kind of just snowballed from there. My next placement was with the hepatitis C clinic who I actually ended up working for after graduation. They have an amazing mobile health unit. And so yeah, yeah.
Brock Cook 4:46 What I’ve never heard of it working on a health clinic, what’s what’s the OTS role on
Rachel Schooley 4:55 the clinic itself, you know, it has the medical side of things. But because, you know, the people that are most at risk for hepatitis C, or those who, you know, are using intravenous drug because and maybe unstably housed or or houseless. And so a big part of my role there was exploring, I mean, a big part of it was really exploring what it does, because there was no team working there when I did my student placement. And so it was doing a lot of outreach with this incredible team, like Dream Team, and they had a mobile health unit that would go out when I was there, I think it was only once or twice a week in the evenings. And they would literally meet people where they were at. So we’d go to various parks or whatever, and provide, you know, harm reduction supplies, but also just necessities of daily living. And my role was like a slow, it was a slow roll out. So initially, like gaining trust of folks, but then really, like, there was one fellow who was just kind of like always tapping on things and, and got to know him a little bit and found out that he used to play the drums and really enjoy playing the drums and found that was really soothing. And so like, I didn’t need to talk about what occupational therapy was right? Like, that wasn’t important, but how do I help facilitate access to this occupation that’s meaningful for him?
Yeah, and so that was kind of it, I did a bit of support coordination for them after graduation. So not all, specifically, OT but there was a lot of cognitive component to and, you know, working with folks on this harm reduction idea of, Okay, if you want to, you know, use less substance in your life, what, what can you do during that time that will be enjoyable for you and will make, you know, the reduction of substance use more attainable? It was awesome. I love that job is great.
Brock Cook 7:03 So that that harm reduction thing, as I assume were you and Rina connected
Rachel Schooley 7:08 yes, yes. Yeah, it’s funny, you know, I didn’t I until I listened to her episode with you, I didn’t realize that she was, you know, the moderator for harm reduction ot or whatever the Facebook group is. I remember that being kind of an early connection for me with my old Facebook profile that I’d left behind a couple years ago, but because I really at that time, couldn’t I didn’t have any connections of other OTS doing the work. And I remember even asking my call, like, how do I document my interactions with people when they don’t trust enough to even give me their name? Well, their health? You know, like, I don’t need to know how, and they were like, well, if they’re not giving you their name, like are they really in a place where they should be getting occupational therapy services not struck me a lot is like, maybe there needs to be a change in our profession a little bit, because I think anybody could use occupational therapy services, and everyone is deserving of them. But especially folks who are super marginalized, like we have this ability to kind of assess the situation in a holistic way and and figure out the best means of support moving forward, and it could be delegation, you know, like, connecting the person to a social worker connecting them to support coordination and connecting them to health care. But I think
Brock Cook 8:36 Yeah, yeah,
Rachel Schooley 8:37 I think ot I’m glad to see it moving in that direction a little bit or not, you know, I’ve chatted with Rina, a bit about it as well. Because it was a huge area of passion of mine before moving up here. And it remains a huge area passionate, it fits whatever geographical area you’re in. So yeah.
Brock Cook 8:57 So you made mention of it just then when you said moving up here, and that was one of the reasons why we are why your account on Instagram originally caught my, my eye and what we originally connected over and what I wanted to have a chat with you about. So your Instagram account is Arctic ot. And I was like, that sounds interesting. Because I feel like the majority of the world probably outside of your area of the world when they think of the Arctic they’re either gonna think of Polo Santa. So are you able to explain I guess why you are called the Arctic OT?
Rachel Schooley 9:39 Yeah, why am I Well, I mean, I guess I was looking for like a simple way to connect with other OTS and hoping really to connect with other OTS working in the circumpolar region because we’re You know, in, in this entire region where I’m in right now, there’s three of us, and one is my partner, and myself and then another fellow. And I think we’re pretty limited in terms of ot support or the type of work that we’re able to do. And so I was really looking to connect with other people living and working in the solar circumpolar region and ended up connecting a bunch of people that don’t, which is great, too. I’m really grateful for the connections and I’m not great at Instagram. Look, I don’t know that it was a super thougthout handle or ‘
Brock Cook 10:41 I don’t think anyone.
Rachel Schooley 10:43 Yeah, well, Iread your little post.
Brock Cook 10:45 I think everyone’s just like,
Rachel Schooley 10:46 OT’s are terrible Influencers. And yeah, yeah, it’s Yes. Yeah, so I think I wanted an easy way to kind of explain where I am. The work I’m doing. I, you know, want to make it clear that I’m a settler, I’m not an indigenous person living up here. And so my knowledge is limited, but growing. I’m grateful to be learning quite a bit. Living up here, but yeah, so we’ve been here for about a year and a half now. Not too long. And we live about I’m terrible with distances. We’re about 250 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.I think so.
Brock Cook 11:35 Kilometres or miles?
Rachel Schooley 11:36 kilometers. Close.
Brock Cook 11:39 Okay. Good. Yeah. The real the real unit of measurement.
Rachel Schooley 11:45 Sorry, to the American OTs. Yeah. So yeah, we’re about an hour and a half drive from the Arctic Ocean. And last summer, you know, because of pandemic, we we didn’t leave the territory we stayed put, which was awesome. But, you know, our beach day was at the Arctic Ocean, which is a bit different than any beach day that I’ve had before. But it’s pretty special place.
Brock Cook 12:12 I can’t actually even picture a coming from Australia, a beach day in the Arctic. That is I like two things that I can’t compete being put together.
Rachel Schooley 12:25 Yeah, I mean, if it’s, it’s a sunny summer day, then you better hope it’s windy, because the bugs are like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. But yeah, and you know, some people swim. I have not so swam in the Arctic Ocean, but some people do. Um, but it is you still get that feeling of being close to the wire. And yeah.
Brock Cook 12:49 I still can’t comprehend it. I don’t know. Maybe I’ve just got a very concrete view of what a beach looks like. And I can’t I’m gonna have to Google it and look it up.
Rachel Schooley 13:00 Send you I’ll send you a picture. It’s Rocky, like it’s a rock.
Brock Cook 13:05 Yeah. So it’s not saying we have some beaches that are like that. Some beaches that are made, or like broken up coral, and shells and rocks and that sort of stuff. They’re not all like, they’re not all like you see on postcards where they’re like, right, and then that kind of stuff. That’s probably actually the well, not the minority, but not them. Not all of them anyway. So just to like, I guess clear it up in my head, like, where, and this is gonna sound like a really dumb question. But where is the Arctic?
Rachel Schooley 13:38 oh…
Brock Cook 13:39 Where are you?
Rachel Schooley 13:41 Yeah. So there. I mean, there is kind of this Arctic Circle that goes around our globe. And so the circumpolar region or the the Arctic regions are really, you know, this far north area of the earth, and it runs through Canada and Europe and Russia, Alaska. And so yeah, we’re just above that. I don’t know what the latitude or longitude I don’t know those things. But yeah,
Brock Cook 14:15 That’s alright. I just I just think I I get the feeling on something that I get the feeling is that I always thought that it was kind of like this separate landmass, like a little hat on top of the earth where it actually is. It actually extends lower than that into a lot of the countries sort of up that way, into Canada and Russia and that sort of stuff that does come along the Arctic area, the Arctic Circle does come lower than I had originally thought
Rachel Schooley 14:46 a large part of Canada is within the Arctic Circle. And, you know, unfortunately, it it gets quite overlooked like even within Canada. I didn’t know much about this area. The country, you know, long before moving up here, and which is a shame, because it’s a pretty incredible part of our culture. It’s a pretty incredible part of the land that’s just really like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. And so really grateful to be up here and experiencing it and going to some pretty remote areas that I don’t think I would have had to go to if I weren’t up here working as an OT. Yeah, yeah, like I’ve I’ve flown to islands, in action, that are above the tree line. And it’s just like, you’re on a movie set for a different planet or something like it, to not be to not have any trees. And you can see so far, like, you know, and especially if it’s snow covered, like you really feel like you’re on the moon or something I don’t I’ve never been on the moon. But that’s what I imagine. And the lighting is so beautiful. Like it can be really eerie, especially during cooler night when the sun doesn’t come up above the horizon. And for us, that’s a period of about 30 days where we don’t have that there’s still that Twilight. And so the hours of the day where we do have daylight, there’s this kind of like, yeah, it’s a really beautiful lighting. And then in the summer, we have the midnight sun. And so the sun doesn’t set for about cost, like 50 days. And yeah, those are some pretty incredible like to 8am skies. Yeah, at all. It does not set it stays above the horizon. Mmm hmmm and so like even thinking about how…..
Brock Cook 16:53 So it gets like low but it never goes below? Wow.
Rachel Schooley 16:57 Yeah, that’s right. And you know, at the peak of it, it doesn’t even really get that low. Like I have pictures of the Sun taken 2am or 3am. At the peak of Midnight Sun time where it’s still well above, like, it’s, it’s like midday sun shining very bright, can make it very hard to sleep. You know, and that’s something that I’ve learned a lot as an OT appear, or things like this, that I’ve never thought about, but like, how does pull our night or Midnight Sun impact a person’s occupation, like sleep, of course, but anything else, there’s just a different timeline. And in general were, in the summer, folks can be out hunting or out on the land. And sleep isn’t really something that they worry about, like they could just continue on with their day, because the days continue on and on without a break for a very long time. And so even like the structure of our society, places like it, I don’t know, plays out a little bit differently. Like there’s just not, there’s not this nine to five mentality because that’s not the reality. I mean, there are 95 systems and structures because we live within a, you know, a colonial system and adhere to the structures of everywhere else. But I think for people here, you know, that doesn’t always work and, and hopefully, and especially with the pandemic, you know, there have been opportunities, we had incredible programming with the new reality and enriching governments up here, where they received funding to essentially send people out onto the land to the camps with the first wave of COVID-19. And so people were able to get back to their whaling camps and their, their hunting camps for the first time in really long time. And it’s a really, you know, it impacted their well being and mental health in such positive ways to be able to reconnect to the land. And so that’s been super influential as well, for me, as an OT, who doesn’t really have that background like I sure I have gone to I enjoy being out in the forest or whatever. But this very strong step here, especially such a foreign land to me, has been really interesting. And, like such an honor to be able to kind of witness and learn from
Brock Cook 19:43 Yeah,
Rachel Schooley 19:44 yeah, it’s a really, it’s a really amazing place.
Brock Cook 19:49 It sounds so different and what you were saying about how it’s kind of like, I guess the, the daylight hours because it’s kind of restructured how society operates. that aspect of it is fascinating to me. So is it like, obviously for the times when the sun goes down, like, if you don’t have a, you know, a nine to five type job, there’s really no structure to when you would be asleep. And when you would be awake. Does that doesn’t that throw I would imagine that would sort of throw a lot of the general, you know, social organization out the window. Like, even in Australia here, for example. You know, shops are open, whatever their time, say, let’s just say nine to five, and for a lot of people, so that’s the period when they would go out and when they would do errands and that sort of stuff, I’m assuming, is it? Is there any kind of structure? Other obviously, the daylight isn’t giving you any time constraints on, on when to do things? Is there anything that that is, like other shops only open for certain hours? And that kind of stuff?
Rachel Schooley 21:09 No, everything is still running kind of, as usual. Um, but it’s interesting, you know, and I don’t want to speak too much to like, the indigenous experience for folks up here, because I not, that’s not my conversation to have. But I do wonder about, like, the structure of just kind of staying alive on this land for millennia. You know, and during the, the times when it wasn’t a colonized space, like hunting and trapping, and cutting wood, and staying alive required a lot of structure. And so I don’t think that the daylight hours, you know, I think they’re, you know, it, definitely things are changing. But also the occupations in the winter are so different than the occupations in the summer. And for folks who, you know, who, whose ancestors have been here for millennia, like I think there’s a real there’s a real knowledge of just how to operate up here and what needs to be done, but I’ll be supporting some land based programming and a couple of weeks actually, were really like the occupation. The occupational components of it are like, how do we stay alive when it’s minus 40. And we’re out on the tundra with Canvas tents, like hunting and trapping, we need to be making fires, we need to be tending to the tents, like all of these different things that I’ll be learning about as I go, because I really don’t, I don’t know. I don’t like I would be useless on my own. And so I think the structure that that we would assume kind of like, Oh, my gosh, okay, well, if there’s no daylight, you could just sleep the day away. But that’s not that’s not inherent for folks here. I think that it’s kind of like in their blood to be working pretty hard to survive. And yeah, it’s, it’s really interesting to witness and like I said, I think you’re who have come from the south, there are a lot of government employees that work up here. Teachers, people that work at the hospital, but there’s a lot to learn from the folks who have lived up here and their families have lived up here for generations. Because, you know, I think otherwise we’d be, you’d be pretty screwed for lack of a better term.
Brock Cook 24:00 Yeah, I can’t even comprehend negative 40. I just had a look at like, what the temperature today and it’s like, 30. So that’s like 70 degrees less than it’s gonna be here today that I get, I can’t even comprehend that. Ridiculous. I don’t know how people could. It’s, I would, I would not I would live in a heater.
Rachel Schooley 24:26 Yeah, you know, I historically have been a pretty big baby about the cold and like any sort of weather. And so moving up to the Arctic, and we have two dogs. So like, there is no option we have to be outside daily. And for our kids as well, like just being out out and just like, you feel like you feel like Okay, everyone else is outside and people are doing all over the place like you know, they’ve got their snowmobiles and they’re going up to camps and they’re doing things outside in this weather and you learn pretty quickly He the right gear that you need to have. Because it’s a beautiful landscape. It’s a beautiful space and like being outside in that weather. It’s pretty dry up here. So there isn’t a ton of humidity, which really helps. And if there isn’t a wind it’s it’s doable. You can you can be outside and this It’s okay, but the winds will get shot.
Brock Cook 25:26 Because I remember seeing videos, I remember seeing videos years and years ago, someone like outside in like that temperature, and like throwing a glass of water in the air and it just turning to mist. Like, it’s just…
Rachel Schooley 25:40 Yeah, I’ve seen that haven’t done that yet.
Brock Cook 25:43 That’s cold.
Rachel Schooley 25:47 It’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, you’ll have to come up sometime
Brock Cook 25:53 ..so that. I will I it’s it’s definitely on my to do list. I’m not opposed to experiencing it. I don’t know how I would cope leaving that might take me a little while to adjust. Especially given the seasons, or all that stuff I got on the plane here, it would be summer. So it would probably be 35 to 40. So probably would be an 80 degree difference by the time I got off the plane. So yeah, the whole day like that…
Rachel Schooley 26:22 You I lived in Uruguay
Brock Cook 26:25 Oh, really?
Rachel Schooley 26:28 Yeah, I lived in Uruguay for a few years, and like would come home for visits during our summer and then head back there and be winter and vice versa. And I remember like, that goes plane rides were always really like jarring. Like, just because you leave one hemisphere. Yeah, but you could do it, Brock.
Brock Cook 26:55 That’s debatable, but we can try. So with the whole, the obviously very different sort of Vegas daylight situations, compared to a large portion of the rest of the world? How does that affect your work? Like? Does your work still follow a structure? Or do you essentially just have to make yourself available when the people that you work with are available? Or how does that impact you as a therapist?
Rachel Schooley 27:26 Yeah, so while I was working at the hospital here, up until the last week, actually, and so that I was still kind of doing an 830 to five day like, that’s when our services were available. And so you access them during that time or you don’t. And, you know, like I said, like folks still just go on with their their lives, it looks a little bit different when there’s no laid out. But it’s still like a bustling on it. Things don’t really shut down. And so yeah, that was I kept on with my reg biller schedule, they’re moving into kind of this free agency that I’m going into and supporting different programming. Moving forward, it will be you know, like, I’m going out to this camp for two weeks, and I will be there for two weeks, day and night will be out on the land. So I think that will provide me an opportunity to see like, what what is the difference between daylight or not, we’ll do another camp in the summer, I’ll get to see it, then. I think like for my own understanding as an OT, it’s shifted things a little bit because you can’t really apply like sleep hygiene when the sun is not going down. And somebody who doesn’t have a curtain, right? Like you need to think a little bit differently than Okay, well listen to calming music and like keep the same routine every night. Some of those things are helpful. But other times like I found up here more than I mean, actually any job that I’ve had, but up here, especially like I’ve learned so much from my clients and being client centered looks a lot different because I’ve had to learn an entirely different way of life. And mostly because of a the land and be the daylight hours.
Brock Cook 29:23 So one thing you just said then was like, looking at sleep hygiene. Do you still even though the sun doesn’t go down at certain times a year? Do you still call it night? Just for I guess continuity? Yeah,
Rachel Schooley 29:37 I guess so. I guess so. Um, and different people will follow it differently. Like I think folks who are able to kind of get out hunting or get out to their camps in the summertime. Like it may be a couple of days that they’re that they’re up or if you know you just have A week to try to provide for your family for the next year, you’re not going to sleep much during that time. And I know like, personally, my own mental health was really impacted. The polar night was one thing like I, you know, I’ve dealt with depression in the winter times before. And then moving up here because I, I’ve had those experiences before I was like, Okay, I need to get a happyland I need to have a lot of vitamin D, I need to like, have a routine and structure. But I think you know, there’s the things that you should do. And they’re the things that you don’t do. And last winter was was pretty tough. At a few different points where Yeah, I really felt like there was just no sun like I didn’t, there was no light. And so I learned quite a bit mostly that like, I need to be outside every day, whether it’s minus 40 or not. That’s been hugely helpful this winter. But the sun, like the summer impacted me even more, because I really, I can deal with noise when I’m sleeping, like I and I can go back to sleep pretty easily if I’m woken up, but like the light, and then we have blackout blinds, but even just like the smallest crack and that light is coming in, and it’s like midday sun, like it’s bright, bright light. And that was really difficult. And I’m trying to I’m still trying to figure out like, Okay, how do I prepare myself for that, this coming summer. And I’m sure compounded with a lot of things like, you know, global pandemic, there’s a lot that could have, you know, impacted my mental health over the summer. But, you know, I think about that experience. And then I think about some of the folks that I’m working with, and supporting and insomnia is, like a big issue for a lot of the folks that I’ve worked with. And I still don’t really have the answer as to like, Okay, how do we, how do we support people who are experiencing that? Because I’ve experienced it myself and like, tried my best to ot myself? I yeah. And still don’t really know, like, What is? What is the for that? And maybe just biologically, we’re not programmed to be sleeping when it’s like 24 hours a day? I don’t know.
Brock Cook 32:22 Yeah, just because I have no idea what is the happy lamp?
Rachel Schooley 32:29 So it’s like, well, sometimes, I guess, but I like happyland better. So it just gives you that UV light that the sun would provide. And so like i and this has been, I’ve heard about it in other areas of Canada, like for Canadian winter as well, when it gets kind of dark. But up here, it’s definitely like, yeah, a lot of people have them. Just to give you that light that you need.
Brock Cook 32:59 I would think that happy lamp is much better marketing than sad lamp. Like, doesn’t make me want to buy one.
Rachel Schooley 33:12 Yeah, like it makes you It makes you happy. My kids in the morning. That’s like, the first thing they do is they want to run in turn on the sun. And it’s just so like, it’s shining so bright. And their little faces because it needs like pretty close. But I think it does help.
Brock Cook 33:28 Yeah. Interesting. Makes sense. I mean, I think like biologically were PR diagrams programs. Actually, it’d be interesting, I think, to compare, I guess how people that know, like cultures that have grown up in those situations differ from the rest of the world, in terms of like, from my understanding of it, and it’s by no means completely, you know, infallible, but my understanding is that we’re biologically programmed to, you know, when the sun goes down, we get tired we go to sleep when, and that’s one of the issues with that people are identifying around the world nowadays is that people staring at their phones and stuff before they go to bed is giving this sort of false light input that is keeping us awake, and making it harder for us to get to sleep and that kind of thing. So I’d be interested to see if and I’m not sure what the need is there. Anyway, Inuits native culture.
Rachel Schooley 34:36 So yeah, so in Canada, I think like, you know, the general term is indigenous, and then there is the First Nations group and then the Inuit. And so up here we have in you eight there, the new Viola inuvialuit people, and then also gwitchin, who are First Nations or DNA, people. There are matey people there, you know, it’s a very multicultural town, actually. But I think, yeah, the indigenous groups up here and the government’s up here nuvia leeton, gwitchin.
Brock Cook 35:13 Okay. But yeah, really interesting to see, like, what the First Nations responses like whether it’s programmed, essentially completely different in them, because they’ve, you know, grown up, or lived in those situations for however many millennia compared to, you know, most of the world where the sun does actually go down at some point during the day. Or if it’s just something that like, like he said, like you’ve identified and is very well known thing around the world, that your vitamin D, or sunlight, or that sort of natural routine of the world has a big impact on your mental health, especially your your mood, like your usually depression, that kind of stuff. Whether that’s just something that they tolerate or manage.
Rachel Schooley 36:15 Yeah, and, you know, I, I do have to wonder if it’s something that was managed differently, like before, these kind of colonial structures and systems were in place, right, like, when folks had the freedom to kind of move with the daylight and do what they needed to do when they needed to do it. Because now, we do have a couple generations of folks who, you know, people who have been in residential school, people who have kind of been been forced to follow colonial structures. And I wonder, like, I just when we’re talking about this right now, like, I wonder, when I, when I’m meeting with people that are dealing with insomnia? Like, would that be the case? If there wasn’t this expectation to meet this, like nine to five? timeline for folks? Yeah, I don’t know. Because, I mean, obviously, they’re, you know, there’s pretty intense, like mental health issue. There’s a lot of intergenerational trauma up here at the last residential school up here, actually, are they the only residential school up here closed in 1996. So I was 11, the residential school here closed, which, to me is just mind boggling. And so, you know, I am hopeful, kind of as an OT, like, exploring this kind of like decolonization of healthcare, because I’ve worked in a colonized healthcare setting up here. And it’s not, it’s not great. It’s not really meeting the needs. And I think about schools, like I’ve worked, I work in schools as an OT up here, as well as we’re kind of generalists. But you’ve got these kids who especially in you know, the northern or more remote communities that are growing up with family until the age of five and, and the life with family and being out on the land. And the structure of the day is so different. And then they’re expected at five to go to school and listen and wait and follow these timelines that have kind of been implemented, but and then as OTS, we get all of these referrals for kids who can’t pay attention, they can’t focus, they can’t meet these expectations. But really, like, I do have to wonder if that speaks to issues with the system and expecting these kids to kind of add him as opposed to really focusing on like inclusive schooling, acceptable schooling and culturally safe schooling for kids. And so I think like move from the hospital structure and towards this kind of land based programming, it is helpful to think about like, there are no separations. But like, how can it for a change and things in order for there to be more inclusion and respect of these, like, you know, cultural practices that have been in place for millennia? Yeah, it’s been really, it’s been really interesting and I’m still learning like, it’s all very new to me. But Yeah, it has me thinking quite a bit about like when I talk about daylight and how it impacts occupation, but like, I don’t know if that’s the main thing that’s impacting occupation for folks up here. Like, I think the main thing is this expectation to be at work by 9am. But really, that’s, that doesn’t really work up here, like the, you know, when it’s still pitch black until 2pm. And then maybe you get like, a little bit of Twilight for an hour or so. So
Brock Cook 40:31 yeah, see, I as someone who probably struggles with sleep, anyway, and has to put a lot of conscious effort into trying to maintain a good sleep habit. I don’t I honestly can’t see how I personally would cope in that situation, like, a lot of the time. Is that sort of natural sort of daylight routine is all I’ve got to try and maintain any kind of sleep habit. So I the daylight, the constant daylight part, I feel like I could probably manage because you can, you know, like, like you said, You’ve got blackout curtains, you can make a false nighttime if you if you need to. But I think the constant darkness aspect of it, which I assume would be the is that during the winter or the summer, that would be winter,
Rachel Schooley 41:42 During the winter?
Brock Cook 41:45 Yeah, so I think there’s constant darkness aspect of it.
Rachel Schooley 41:54 Yeah. Yeah. You know, and that’s what I thought too, when I moved up here, and yeah, it just wasn’t, it wasn’t that way. Like I found winter to be more manageable. And it’s cozy like people kind of go to these like leisure occupations. And so there is like a lot of sewing and crafting and cooking and like, just this general coziness, about winter time. But for me, and I think it’s probably a very personal thing as well. Like, for me that is more manageable than, you know, it’s summer, it’s just really hard to turn off. And even if you have blackout blinds, like the rest of your house is bright until you know, it’s time to go to bed. But I think everybody has their own thing that works best for them or works better for them anyway. But it’s been an interesting thing to experience for sure.
Brock Cook 42:58 Because I mean, even just that routine, like that throws out pretty much every other habit or routine that most people have. There’s no sort of natural cues for when you need to wake up other than this arbitrary like you said, you need to be at work by nine o’clock, which when the whole 24 hours is daylight 9am becomes kind of arbitrary. It doesn’t mean a lot there’s other than if you’re the only thing I can think of what it would would work well to shift that time. So if you worked in a job that sort of interacted with people in other time zones, then you could sort of match your work to their timezone and it wouldn’t make much difference. Yeah, having a sort of having a nine to five sort of job when always daylight. Yeah, it doesn’t. Yeah. I think I’d have to experience it to sort of really get my head around it, but I just can’t see how she wouldn’t have a massive impact on literally and something that’s so silly, like, yeah, okay, the daylight like that’s all we’re talking about is daylight, without such a massive impact on literally every single thing that you do every. And even on a biological level. Like I could imagine that just especially with any sort of Western cultured people living in that area, who either haven’t been living in that situation for 1000s of years, or even have just recently moved up there. I would imagine the impact on their mental health would be messy. Especially if the especially because it would take a while one to adjust and find things like a happy lamp the I actually would help to maintain their mental health. I mean, when we have issues sort of in winter here and we lose maybe, I would guess we lose maybe an hour and a half a daylight during winter compared to summer here, which is compared to the 12 hours that you lose is rather minuscule. And we notice a difference. So I can only imagine, like mental health services up there being absolutely swamped by but yeah, maybe maybe people they’re just better equipped for that. I’m not sure. The insomnia things interesting, though, because that’s not something I would have ever thought of even that makes perfect sense. When you actually say it out loud. It’s not something I would have gone. Oh, yeah, that’ll definitely be an issue. Because I guess it’s not something that I really come across very often in my sort of ever in my career, really insomnia, other than maybe some kind of medication side effects. It’s not something that I’ve ever really worked with or anything like that.
Rachel Schooley 46:18 Yeah, yeah, it’s, uh, you know, it’s not totally new to me, I think working in jobs, it’s people who are unstable. The house, like sleep is not a commodity, you know, sleep is so fundamental to everybody. But it’s, you know, seems to be a privilege first, because I think there are folks that aren’t safe to sleep, there are folks that aren’t housed properly to sleep, and appear there, there’s a lot of that, I think there’s a lot of, you know, the trauma that people have experienced, can definitely play into insomnia. So when you, you know, when you’re having nightmares, when you really are afraid to go to sleep that will contribute to insomnia as well. And so from a mental health perspective, and I am like my background, kind of beyond working for the hepatitis C clinic after graduation, I worked for Canadian Mental Health Association, which is a national, public mental health provider. And so working as an OT, within that. Yeah, I’ve definitely come across, you know, insomnia as an issue before. And I think there are some, you know, different modalities for treating insomnia, I have not really come across any that have been super effective for folks. And it’s kind of like a, like a, yeah. Like, how do we reduce the impacts of the insomnia that you’re experiencing and support a person enough so that they feel safe to sleep? Like that’s, that’s kind of been my approach up here. And I’m sure other teams have much more experience with you know, working with folks dealing with insomnia, but yeah, it’s been an interesting like something for the first time in my life living up here like I’ve always been able to sleep I love sleep. I couldn’t sleep until noon every day if I had a chance at like, it really was that light like I you know, and even just you get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom is like full sunlight right in your face. Are you like it’s Yeah, it’s it’s a different thing. But hopefully many reasons why. Just aluminum foil over all of the windows, and I’m sure we’d make a good impression on our neighbors. or live in a cave with no windows or something. Yeah, doesn’t it doesn’t sound half bad. Actually when the Summertime comes.
Brock Cook 49:13 Not it. That’s probably the extent that all the lengths that I would have to go to to be able to function. I feel like I’m maybe I’m just precious. I don’t know. Maybe I’m starting to feel like I’m a little delicate after after hearing what other people actually have to just tolerate just to live day to day. So so you what you said you’re working partly with in schools, what what is your actual sort of role up there in the Arctic at the moment?
Rachel Schooley 49:47 Yeah, that’s a really good question. Um, so I’m, well, I’m in a sort of transition state right now. I can speak to that. The job that I was in probably first because that was a really interesting position. And so it was, you know, I like I said, I’m, I’m a mental health ot like all of my work experiences and mental health, most of my student focus was on mental health. And then I came up here and started work as a generalist. And so like really working with babies to elders and everything in between for all sorts of reasons, working in acute care, long term care, home care, schools, outpatient mental health, all other things, group homes. So it was a challenge, it really was. And it really also showed me that I was probably on the right track with mental health ot that’s, that’s where my passion is, and, and, you know, substance use as well, like, I’m really, I’m really passionate about that area, I really found a love for home care, though, that was great, because it’s mostly like you’re going in and visiting with elders and, you know, trying to make life easier for them, which was a lot of fun. But I got to, you know, like some weeks commute to work on this tiny little six seater plane, we go, you know, so twice a year, we have to go. Or we get to go to the smaller communities in the Beaufort Delta region. And so each ot there’s three, there are three of us. And each ot has four communities that you are looking after everybody in this community, you know, from an OT perspective. And many of those are any, there aren’t a lot of roads to where you need to go here. And so yeah, there’s a lot of little plane rides on small planes. My partner is terrified of flying. And so it’s been very good exposure therapy for him to be on tiny little, let’s hit some, you know, it could get pretty rocky up here with the wind. And so yeah, it’s, it’s interesting, but sometimes it’s going to help centers in these communities and kind of seeing people seeing people in their homes, seeing people in schools. I tried to do a lot of community education around like what occupational therapy is, and especially what mental health occupational therapy is, because, you know, we’ve had some brilliant occupational therapists work up here. And I think there’s been a lot of hard work put into developing an understanding of OT, because unfortunately, like the, the hospital or like the health care system that we work within, maybe doesn’t really recognize the value or loyalty or the potential of the things that we can do. So they’re like I did orthotics for the first time, in my professional career, we, I don’t even think we learned about orthotics in school. When it was like a lot of like compression, stocking magnet, or measurement, a lot of like equipment really, really basic, like old school ot stuff that I had never. I mean, yeah, never really touched. And so that was a learning experience, but also just, you know, really trying to advocate for our profession and what we could be doing. And I think that, you know, there was some buy into that, and I can see some changes being made kind of from the top down. But ultimately, like seeing the potential of what could be done from an OT perspective up here led me to leave that position. And so I’ll be moving into supporting right now it’s looking like a lot of land based programming. So for trauma treatment, it’s on the land healing camps, some of them are called and so working with adults, who are, you know, potentially using substances or struggling with their mental health and moving the treatment on the land, which is really amazing and kind of this like, too wide seeing approach, like you have this Western approach. And sure I have the skills that I have accumulated over however many years of being an OT, and studying these things that are helpful, they’re useful, right? And but then we also have this indigenous way of knowing and being that is really the most powerful thing for indigenous people to, to receive health care within. And so, like, we’re talking about meeting people where they’re at like that That’s really what it is like moving it away from the institutions and the hospitals and back to the land. And like I said, that’s that’s a pretty new endeavor for me. I just got the the list of things that I need to bring to this camp and I’m very underprepared. You know, cuz like, I don’t have a warm the cold weather gear. I’ll get it. That’s fine. But yeah. Yeah, like, I think it’s exciting to think about how occupational therapy actually I was listening to a webinar, there’s like a national indigenous health webinar that’s put on right now it’s every week just around COVID. But it there was a psychologist talking about using land based lessons to like, promote mental well being during times of COVID. And for the more urban areas, like if you’re in lockdown, what does the land teach you about maintaining wellness, and it’s that idea of like structure, okay, you have to get up in the morning, you have to move your body, you have to chop wood, you have to feed yourself healthy food, you have to keep yourself warm. But like, all of that is kind of very occupational, and occupation based and so exploring, like, how can ot support these programs? And what are the barriers for folks to accessing land based healing? What are the barriers for folks of implementing land base learning into their daily lives back in town? Like when they returned from camp? How can they kind of maintain this momentum? Because everybody I talked to that has been out on the land, whether it’s a client or a co worker, like that time is healing for them. And I haven’t experienced it, you know, to that extent, myself, and I don’t have the same tie to it, as many of my individuality and gwitchin friends here do because that’s in their blood like that is generations upon generations of connection to this very particular land. But as an OT, like if I can help to facilitate Unity’s I think that’s pretty exciting. And I think it’s really fitting like, it makes a lot of sense. To use occupational therapy in this way. It’s so I’m so excited. I’m very honored to have been invited to contribute to this programming, and so excited to see kind of how it pans out. Yeah, I think it’s gonna be a lot of learning on on my behalf. And hopefully, I can share some of like, the skills and just the benefits of ot for folks that I don’t think up here have really had access to that because ot has been used in such a old school way. For the most part,
Brock Cook 57:59 yeah. Very, very, very medical model way so far, by the sounds of it.
Rachel Schooley 58:07 Yes. 100%.
Brock Cook 58:09 You mentioned you mentioned before about catching the little tiny plane, which already gives me Heebie Jeebies add the remote, like really remote sort of communities, but only a couple times a year? Is that the, like the extent of the the services that they have access to? Just barely a couple times a year?
Rachel Schooley 58:33 Yeah, yeah. Um, so, folks either have to come to Inuvik. So we’re kind of like one of the hubs of healthcare, if they’re needing service, or there’s telehealth where I mean, you know, how our internet conversation has been functioning so far. So I think you can only imagine how telehealth works or does not work up here. But I think, you know, COVID-19 has really shown that like, healthcare needs to be more accessible to these remote communities because not only do they need to come to Inuvik for healthcare, for major, you know, health care needs, like certain operations and treatments, they need to go into the fire of COVID-19. So, like, Edmonton, Alberta is the closest place for a lot of these folks to receive the hot spots of COVID-19. So I’ve had a lot of clients who, you know, really the, got chronic pain, injections really, really help and I need to go into, like, a place that’s actually very dangerous for me to go right now to get the treatment that I need. And I think this is kind of Like, when I started work up here and started realizing the lack of access to health care, and even pretty basic things like OT, you know, the school kids that really could benefit from that extra support, like, if they live in one of these remote communities, they’re only being seen twice a year. And that’s kind of where, like, the colonial system of healthcare has probably failed the North, it hasn’t probably, it has failed the North, because it’s so inaccessible, to receive the services that you need. And even in a new vacuum, it can be really, really difficult. But then when you move to, you know, these smaller communities that are flying only, and they have a nurse, that’s, you know, maybe a couple of nurses that are at the health center all the time. And then keep doctors are only coming in and out, you know, OT PT SLP, like we’re there a couple times a year. And otherwise, it’s up to it’s up to them to travel to make appointments or get the health care that they need. So, yeah, that’s been pretty eye opening for me. And I think that’s, honestly, it’s not an Arctic specific thing. I think that’s the case for a lot of folks who are living in remote areas of the country that healthcare can be pretty inaccessible. But yeah, appearance. Yeah. pretty evident.
Brock Cook 1:01:32 Yeah, it’s, um, I think that’s something that we experienced here in Australia as well, I was just curious as to how much because I think in Australia, there is a real, it’s still probably not enough. But there really is an emphasis on trying to get a lot of outreach services to those really remote areas, those really remote communities, but they’re still this, especially some sort of specific medical care and that kind of stuff. There’s obviously some services that we can fly out, like we can fly out otas and physios and speeches. And there’s, I’ve seen, like dentists who operate out of trucks that travel around all rural areas, and really remote areas and that kind of stuff. But there’s some really specific care, like a lot of, you know, stuff like cancer care, and that kind of stuff that requires, you know, tons, literally tons of equipment that you just can’t transport to those really remote areas. So there’s definitely still barriers to access some healthcare when you live in those real, really, really rural areas, but I think, here anyway, I can’t speak for the whole of Australia, or I know in Queensland where I used to work for the state health department, they do do a fair bit of outreach. And they do have a lot of like permanent health care. settings probably sound similar to like, where you are currently, where they sort of in those not really remote, but those sort of rural centers, that, again, tries to service those rural areas, as best also does really remote areas as best that they can. So there’s definitely something that I can relate to here. I mean, I think Canada’s probably a bit bigger. But there’s still two very large countries with a lot of a lot of land, which creates a lot of isolated remote communities. Yeah, we’ve got a lot of desert, you’ve got a lot of ice. So actually, yeah, there’s a natural barriers.
Rachel Schooley 1:03:52 Well, and it’s interesting,
Brock Cook 1:03:54 the Arctic is a desert, apparently.
Rachel Schooley 1:03:56 Yeah. It’s interesting, because like, I think it also speaks to, for folks living up here, you know, like, there will be professionals that come up from the south, and maybe they live here for a year or two on a contract. And then they leave and so and then a new person comes up. And so you have these health care professionals coming into your community twice a year, and maybe the next time they come in, it’s a totally different person than the person you just told your entire story to, and started a plan with and so it makes it even less accessible. And something that we’ve talked about, I’m part of the occupational therapy indigenous Health Network here in Canada. Just an incredible group of people that you know, have really been exploring like accessibility of ot as a profession for folks up here and I think lovely ot on Instagram, Nancy had, you know, made a really excellent detailed post about this a couple of weeks ago, just like representation in our profession. And the amount of bipoc OTS that we have probably globally is it’s really? Yeah, that’s really like disgraceful. We just don’t have the representation that we need. And I’ve often thought, you know, and initially when I moved up here, I thought, like, Okay, well, what is it? Is it the cost of university? Like, could we start a scholarship, but the fact of the matter is, the nearest school that provides ot programming is like 2000 kilometers away. And that’s the, you know, the cultural differences between up here and the nearest school in the city, that that is their vast, right. And the family, the family structures here are very different as well. We’ve got multi generational families and people that are very invested in caring for their loved ones. And so I think that ot as a profession, like the education component needs to be more accessible for us to see better representation because like, what a dream, it would be for a new reality and kitchen may t students who grew up here, no, the land, no, the people would be invested in their community, because they haven’t been for their entire lives. To be able to do remote learning up here, like I don’t, and, you know, with COVID, like, why not? Why couldn’t it happen? Because I mean, yeah, education has been for the last year. But I think that’s a big part of the issue as well, like, yeah, we’re only doing these trips twice a year, but then the turnover of the people who are doing the trips also makes the healthcare really inaccessible, you have to start over again, completely. The teachers are rotating constantly, like it’s just the continuity of care is really lacking.
Brock Cook 1:06:52 And that’s the it’s hard because it is a hard job, but you kind of need. Ideally, you want people that are originally from that area, because they’re more likely to stay in that area. And I think that’s, it’s interesting, because the the the university that I currently work at is essentially exactly what you’re asking for. So I am about 1700 kilometers, not as Cannes, but ran, but somewhere between about 1500 kilometers from the capital city, which originally was the only ot course in the state, I believe, my course where I work and where I went, was the second in the state. Now there’s like eight or something. But essentially, it was set up as a like towns or the city. I mean, it’s a small city regional city. But the course up here at this university is designed to essentially create Hello, well, for our ot course designed to create OTS that are specially not, I guess, designed to service this area. So you know, we do a lot of, we have a relatively high Indigenous Australian population compared to the rest of the state up this way, and we do a lot more coursework I feel than other universities around the cultural differences and, you know, being able to work and tolerate working in rural or remote location. So I think what we have here is exactly what you’re talking about, in that it makes the access to an OT course, much more or much easier for people that you know, have grown up in North Queensland who live in North Queensland who want to stay in North Queensland and when they graduate, hopefully they will stay in North Queensland and service the populations in the unique settings that North Queensland presents compared to like the capital cities and that kind of thing. So that’s one thing I think we’ve, we have actually got, which is which is good. And I can tell you that it seems to work a lot of our graduates do stay in, like the areas that they grew up in, which is, you know, North Queensland is a pretty big area, like it’s probably 600 Kay’s sort of square, I guess. But, you know, so we have students that come down from cans up from MCI, you know, they come, they come from the west, they come from Mount Iser, that sort of stuff, and the majority of them will either go back to the place, they grew up and work there. There’s a lot of the people that I graduated with that are still in North Queensland. But again, it’s an OT course so they’re not bound to it. They still have the option if they want us to go and work overseas. A lot of people that I graduated with did go and work overseas for a bit. Even I moved away. When I first graduated, I moved to the big city and sort of got that experience and surprise, surprise ended up back here. So it that that theory does work. Like there’s quite a few regional universities, smaller universities in Australia that are designed to create graduates that service, those regions, and the courses are generally tailored to depending on what the courses but generally tailored to the population, or the the geographic area, or whatever it is that will enable graduates to specifically be able to work really well in those areas. So that that theory does definitely does work. And we’ve we’ve got lots of proof around Australia from our more regional universities.
Rachel Schooley 1:11:02 Amazing. That’s, that’s so great to hear. And we should definitely connect further around that just. Yeah, I think there’s some, you know, like, OT researchers in Canada, her record looking into this, like, how do we make this a reality? But how cool to hear that it’s been implemented where you are with success and like results? Because it can Yeah, like it makes a lot of sense.
Brock Cook 1:11:29 And it it does. I think the one I think the one thing I think what you’re talking about before is talking about getting more First Nations people through the courses, I think that’s something that still needs improvement here in Australia, it would definitely do the profession wonders, on terms of diversity, and I guess accessibility to a wider breadth of population to support more support getting more First Nations people into courses like OT and that kind of stuff. I mean, we it does happen. And there is a lot of support and a lot of what would you call them? Like pathways into university. There are like a variety of pathways into university that is aimed at trying to increase the number of First Nations people. But it’s one of those things that I think there’s always going to be room for improvement. So that’s that’s probably I think, would be the the next step like we’ve got the university. I mean, the university has been given a number of years, but think the OT courses 20 years old now at JCU. Oh, yeah, so I think I graduated in the first half of that somewhere. But yeah, I think there’s there’s always room for improvement, and there’s always gonna be room for improvement. And I think as long as we’re aiming and trying to improve and actually actively doing something to try and improve that, then you know, that’s that’s progress. Unfortunately, it’s very slow progress. But progress is progress in a lot of instances. And I think this is something we just need to continually trying to be trying to improve and trying to keep getting better at because I do see the value in having First Nations practitioners in in, especially in areas like this, where we do have like a large, larger than state average population of Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people here and here in North Queensland. Yeah,
Rachel Schooley 1:13:56 I got no, I think, Well, you know, there’s some really amazing like, there are things that we can kind of do, but then also to lift up certain organizations that are indigenous LED, like inmate led First Nations lead. There’s some really cool work being done up here for you some, like Western or chickies, collaborative, our Arctic Youth Development Agency, where they’re really like, okay, like listening to the youth, what do the youth want? Like? How do they How do they perceive themselves getting there? And so I think a lot of that work is already being done. But just like how do we, how do we as OTS amplify, you know, the work that’s already being done and add our outer voices and support? Because like I said, like, for me, initially, I was like, oh, let’s just let’s start a scholarship. Like if it’s just about money, but there’s a lot to learn of what it’s really about, and I think there’s some really good Like agencies that are on the ground doing the work to make things more accessible and successful for folks for kids, you know? But it would be Yeah, it would be cool to see like application of the program that you’re doing, like the work that you’re doing. In a Canadian context and northern Canadian context, we have a local college or or a college, like a satellite site up here in Inuvik. And so like, why couldn’t we do distance learning with an OT, you know, component? Why couldn’t it be a part of the job responsibility for the OTS that work here to have shuttling students shadow them? Like there are a lot of things that could be done to assist with that continuity of care? That doesn’t really currently exist? Yeah, it’s interesting. Yeah.
Brock Cook 1:16:03 I forgot what I was gonna say. This happens at least once. This isn’t.
Rachel Schooley 1:16:11 Take a sip of your tea.
Brock Cook 1:16:13 I had a really good question. And then… Excuse me.
Rachel Schooley 1:16:28 We’re talking about universities. We were talking about like slow improvement.
Brock Cook 1:16:35 Oh, yes, I got. I remembered. So you, you were talking about, like supporting programs that were either starting already running. And I think that’s a really important point, because I feel like a lot of OTS, and maybe it’s due to the isolated nature that we sometimes end up working in ourselves feel like we have to kind of reinvent the wheel, we have to do everything ourselves, we have to start everything ourselves, when it really isn’t the case. And quite often, we’re not the best people to actually be starting things, right. But we can be we can be super, super helpful, and super, super supportive for people that are or programs that are already running or starting up or in a better position to drive a certain program. And we can be there to support add an OT lens, add any clinical support that they might need to do so because quite often these programs are run by NGOs, or community organizations and that sort of stuff. And I just think it’s an important point that you’re making that OTS, I just wanted to highlight it that, you know, we’re not always the best people to be to be driving these things. But we might be able to add value in other ways to the people that are in the best position to be driving. Things like especially when we’re looking at First Nations, in any country, quite often the best people to be driving programs. For First Nations people are people. They don’t want some, you know, Western middle aged person coming in and telling them what to do and how they should be doing it. But having that same person alongside the right people to be running that and having them alongside for support, and to sometimes even, I guess bridge the gap between one culture and a Western medical culture, it can be a really patlak are much more impactful position for an OT to be in rather than be this sort of overarching driving force trying to, you know, fix the world kind of thing. I think it’s important that OTS, I don’t think we’re very good at it. Because we said this in the past. I feel like a lot of OTS have this impression that everybody needs an OT, which, I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, but that’s a load of shit. It’s like saying everyone needs a speech therapist. Yes. Okay. There’s probably someone that could benefit from a speech therapist in some way. But not everyone needs a speech therapist the same way not everyone needs a no t not everyone needs a GP all the time, etc, etc. We’re not that special. There, I said. But we can have a big impact on that. I don’t feel sorry. No,
Rachel Schooley 1:19:49 yeah. And this is kind of, you know, going back to that first student placement I had or the incident placement I had where it was ot on the system’s level, right? And so like, how with my knowledge of the healthcare system as it is having worked within it, and then like, how can I support these indigenous governments and organizations and the programming that they already have, like, I’m, I’m being invited to contribute, and I’m very honored and grateful for that. But this programming would exist with or without me, like, it’s, and it’s been, you know, running without me for a very long time with much success. And so like, I can bring a little ot flavor into it. And then also, maybe I can see like, okay, you know, maybe within this structure, the fit, like we’re looking at good fit, poor fit that OSI analysis, how can we learn to support these things? But yeah, by no means, am I trying to, like reinvent any wheels, or start things fresh up here, it’s really about supporting the things that are already in place that are indigenous LED, that’s really important for me having supported folks who haven’t benefited from Western systems up here, like they need to be indigenous led programs. Yeah, and I, I agree, like I think I see in a lot of kind of, like ot chats are the Facebook comments, or Instagram or whatever that I think because we like our our breadth of scope is so wide, and we can kind of work in a lot of different areas, that we feel like maybe we’re capable of developing things in a lot of different areas, but really, like, what we’re best suited to do is support the things that are that are already in place. And yeah, that’s a good point that you make, and it’s 100% i 100%, an agreement of that.
Brock Cook 1:21:53 Yeah, I think if there’s something because the other thing I see is like if there’s no services at all running, or the anything that you can jump on board and support that, then oteiza like, I got to run something, again, still not the case, you can still support other organizations that may be wanting to start a program and there’s no no, I get the impression that a lot of OTS feel like that’s almost secondary, like lower down the totem pole in terms of I don’t know, the social glory or something, then actually running a program yourself and I die, I completely see it the opposite, in that I actually feel like you’re going to have a bigger impact. supporting other people, it’s the same way that when we work with individuals, like we’re not hopeful, hopefully touchwood hopefully, we’re not there supporting them for our own, you know, satisfaction where they’re supporting them, because they need support. And we’re helping them and in the process of doing that we’re not going in there and telling them what they should do. We’re working with them. So that in a lot of cases, especially in mental health context, a lot of the time, we’re supporting them to come up with the answers to what they want to do about whatever the situation is. And then we’re supporting them to do whatever it is that they’ve worked out that they want to do about the situation. We’re not there. We’re kind of the GPS driver. And it’s the same way in supporting people running these programs. Like when we’re not the driver, in a lot of instances, we’re not the best person to be driving in a lot of those situations, but we can bring our knowledge and experience of a healthcare system of council of whatever it is that may help that organization or that individual or whoever it is, in order to throw out the best service that they possibly can with our help.
Rachel Schooley 1:24:08 Yeah, 100% agree.
Brock Cook 1:24:12 So it’s, I’m excited to see how you go with this program this on the land prayer, it’s, it’s something on the land when you even when you say that is something that I’ve heard a lot from a lot of the First Nations people that I’ve worked with here in Australia, the land is something that is very precious to their culture, they’re very connected to the land. And a lot of the, I guess, conflict, whether it’s physical or verbal, or psychological, I guess, between sort of Western culture and First Nations culture in Australia is around The land and the fact that Westerners kind of came in and just took over the land and the land is so ingrained, and so linked with Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders in Australia, so the land is when you’re talking about on land in Australia that would call it on country. programs. I that’s something that I feel like resonates massively for Australian it says it’s all hope, hopefully does. Yeah.
Rachel Schooley 1:25:34 And it’s cool, because I feel like for the first time in a long time, you know, like being an OT and mental health, I think we can get really lost and like, what is our role? Like, what is our focus, and I had a prof in ot school, like her words will forever stay with me that just like we are focused on occupation like that is that’s what sets us apart from social work. That’s what sets us apart from PT, from counseling. But I think for the first time in a very long time, these projects have me refocusing on occupation in a way that I haven’t because, like, I am not the expert in any other area where they’re like, I don’t have the expertise and being on the land, I don’t have the expertise in traditional knowledge, I don’t have the expertise and like, you know, what it takes to build a fire, like, I would be totally hopeless, but I am the I Am the expert in occupation, right. Like I do have that expertise. And so refocusing on occupational therapy, occupational science doing that in kind of like a two I’d seen way. So like, how do I incorporate indigenous occupational knowledge, because that exists. And it’s really, really helpful when contributing to this programming. But I, I feel like I’m real ot again, like, I’m really diving deep into the like, focus of our profession, like the core of our profession. Whereas like, especially in a generalist position, but in my mental career as well. Sometimes the lines can get pretty blurred, and things can get a little bit muddled in terms of like, what are they doing in this situation? Like, what is what is it that I’m focusing on, and maybe that’s just me, and my experiences, but I do kind of go for the first time that it’s very clear what my role will be, because it’s very clear what I am not the expert on. So I’m excited. I’m excited to not to look at it. And yeah, I will be like, a colleague and I will be writing a paper on it just like, what is the very specific like ot rule here? And how, how could we look at expanding this type of programming? everywhere? Like, what would it mean for ot to be involved in this kind of like decolonization of health and wellness? Like can how can we contribute, I feel like, you can contribute quite a bit from our standpoint, as occupational therapists, while also recognizing that indigenous led programming is of utmost importance.
Brock Cook 1:28:20 100% couldn’t agree more. And it just reminded me of a like I did an episode, I think it was Episode 63, around unpacking, thinking, in an Australian healthcare setting. And one of the things Terry said during or one of the big sort of, I guess, lightbulb moments, during that episode for me, was when turbo was talking about how Indigenous Australians had essentially their traditional way of living, like they have their own science, their their own, you know, social structure, their own, like all of these things that we think of as sort of Western constructs like science and that kind of stuff. They have their own and yeah, it differs to ours. And one of the like, what you were saying about being able to light a fire, I remember saying to him, I’m like I you could put me on the land and I might be able to survive, maybe I reckon three days. I definitely would be the, you know, the genetically gifted sort of chosen Darwinian sort of breed that would be able to maintain living on the land for 1000s and 1000s. of years. Yeah, but it sort of I think in thinking about the fact that a lot of indigenous cultures not just in Canada or Australia, but all around the world have their own science, their own way of doing things, their own medicine, their own all of these things, and we are Yes, we are a profession. That is Quite embedded in occupational science, but occupational science isn’t prescriptive. And I think the concepts of occupational science when you’re working in populations like that need to be like, like you described, they need to be incorporated, or sort of, I guess merged with the the knowledge of the population that you’re working with. So, you know, like I said, the social structures, I can only speak to the the experiences I’ve had in the populations that I’ve worked with, but so in First Nations people in Australia, this social structures are very, very different to our social structures. In a Western society, in a lot of cases, I actually think they’re better they’re stronger social connections within their population, than there are in the majority of sort of Western cultures, they’re very family orientated. And their, their eye OTS obsession with independence, I will probably do another I’ll probably do an episode about that at some point, because it’s becoming a pet peeve of mine, but only his obsession with independence doesn’t fit with with that culture. Because their, their, their social structure, their family structure is so tight that it’s it’s a very. And I know this comes across as a negative connotation, but it’s a very sort of codependent structure. And it’s, it’s the thing is, it’s definitely not a negative thing. It’s just that our Western society with our obsession with independence sees codependence as a negative just by default, which is a whole nother story that I’ll get into it another time. But we need to be aware that for the majority, the issue with occupational science at the moment is that yes, it can be translated or adapted to look at other cultures. But the majority of the research out there is we’re from within Western culture. And the majority of the teaching and the development of the concept of occupational science comes from a Western culture as well. So we just need to be aware that the current essentially, when we’re looking at being evidence based, the current research base for Occupational science is predominantly skewed towards Western cultures, Western ideals, and that kind of thing. And like I said, it’s not saying that it’s not applicable, or it can’t be modified and be applicable to other cultures. But if you’re just going off the evidence, based on what the evidence base says, Be aware that the evidence base is biased towards a Western culture at present, there are a lot of exceptions. And there’s a lot more research going on, that I even I know of looking at occupational science in a variety of cultures, which is excellent. And I think exactly what the profession needs, because we need to become more aware that, you know, it’s, I think what Jody booth would call it a socially awkward, she thought the socially dominant culture. But doesn’t mean that it’s applicable to everyone being just because it’s the socially dominant culture. So I don’t know where I was going with that. And I went on a side rant. But yeah, I think what you’re saying fits very well with, with my experience, and what I think as well.
Rachel Schooley 1:33:46 Yeah, and I think like, it’s an interesting concept to think of, um, you know, this, and I know, I’ve talked about to it a little bit, but it’s really like an evolution of our understanding, we’re not going back at all, and I want to be really mindful of not, like othering indigenous people or like tokenizing, either, you know, their way of life because it is modern, like this is everybody’s existing in 2021, you know, within Canada like, and really looking at merging these two ways of being it’s like an evolution when you talk about occupational science and, you know, very, like applying it to various cultures or like making sure that it’s inclusive of all cultures, like what a beautiful evolution for our profession to be moving in a way where we recognize that this Western way of knowing and being can’t be the be all end all like that is not it’s not serving us of Western descent, like, you know, settler descent and it’s not serving other people who are excluded from that narrative. And so it is kind of like a beautiful way of thinking of it. inclusivity like, for all because it this, you know, our, our systems as they are really do like they create this othering they create this like, well, if you don’t fit within, then like, that’s your issue to sort out. Whereas if we’re moving forward truly, then we are incorporating all different cultural lenses, we are incorporating different sciences that are not Western based. And I think like to an extreme benefit for our profession for healthcare in general society in general. Because, yeah, like these aren’t, you know, when I think about traditional knowledge, I mean, tradition is within it, but it’s not something that exists in the past, like it is something that exists now, that is useful now that can, that we can use to contribute to our profession now. And like moving forward, the possibility of that is pretty exciting. I think there’s so much room for growth.
Brock Cook 1:36:06 Yeah, and I think, yeah, relatively, I know that this often gets used as an excuse, but it is a relatively old, comparatively new profession compared to some other health professions. I think working in sort of really remote areas for OTS is still a very new or relatively new thing. And I feel like you’re right, we’re we’re in this period now, where the profession itself is exploding on terms of growth. It’s, it’s growing really rapidly. It’s growing into other areas really rapidly, which hopefully, will translate to an increase in sort of the research and evidence base, which will then broaden and deepen the general knowledge base of the profession itself. So I do think we’re in a time right now where it’s super exciting because the profession itself is evolving right in front of us. Like, even the change from when I graduated 13 years ago now. To now is enormous ly hidden. It’s almost like a completely different profession. It’s, I find it very exciting. as it sounds, do you? Yes. Yeah. I just think it’s an exciting time for the profession as much as you know, I’ve had people say, Oh, you do whinge about stuff? I’m like, Yeah, but it’s only little stuff, the good stuff. The whole point is I bring on people under this podcast to highlight some of the amazing things that people are doing, in the hope that more people will adopt those things. And as a profession, we we grow even more growth of the profession, and the advancement of the profession is, is something I’m extremely passionate about. And
yeah. Yeah, that’s, it’s exciting. You’re right. The work that you’re doing is exciting. All right, go ahead.
Rachel Schooley 1:38:31 Oh, sorry. I don’t, I think you may be froze up for a second. Um, I was just gonna say that, like, you know, this, this podcast has been pretty instrumental for me like working up here really remotely, and coming from a place. When I was in the south, I was working on monks, you know, there were seven or eight of us OTS working in one city, you know, very focused on mental health, very strong advocates for the profession together. And that was that was great. And like such a solid foundation for me as an OT. And then coming up here, I’ve been pretty, you know, removed. And like I said, the concept of what ot is, and what we can do, is totally like back 50 years up here in terms of like, health care provision. And so it was so cool to connect with you because I have been listening to your podcast and learning about, you know, the different things that OTS are doing all over the world and the ways that we can like advocate for our clients that we can advocate for our profession that we can make changes at a system level, like that’s all really, really cool, exciting and inspiring stuff and 100
Brock Cook 1:40:03 You’re I think I cut you off because I thought you’d finish, but I think it was just paused.
Rachel Schooley 1:40:07 Oh, no, yeah, no. Yeah, no, it’s just, it’s been really helpful. And like I, you know, it’s cool to just listen to the things being talked about, because you know, there are different different areas of the profession, people that you bring on to the show and but I think like, it gives a teaser, a really good sense of where things could be, or where things are moving to, and how to advocate for themselves like you. It’s not often that in our clinical practice, or daily lives, we’re learning how to use the words that we need to use to advocate for ourselves within the profession, to other healthcare providers, to the people that are making decisions about how ot is utilized. And I think it’s been really helpful to have access to your podcasts and listen to what other OTS are saying and doing, in order to kind of move myself forward as an OT, challenge how the profession has been used in different areas, because like, there’s so much more potential that has been realized, I think, especially here, and, and now it’s being actualized. Right? Like, I think that taking that inspiration, hearing that other oaties are doing it, and then that gave me the confidence to say like, you know, I don’t just have to exist within, like, I don’t have to be a square peg in a round hole, like I can find where I fit. I’m an advocate for that. And so I’m grateful for that.
Brock Cook 1:41:47 Yeah, that’s awesome. And I think that’s a that’s an important message for all IDs, especially some of the new grads that are coming out and feeling a little bit lost. because quite often the I guess the image of it that’s presented when you’re at university can feel quite different to when you graduate and you get out and you actually start looking into things. And it’s important to just I, I can’t stress it enough like back yourself, like you know, more than you give yourself credit for. The system is far from burger, I don’t care what country you’re in, I can say this almost universally that the system is far from perfect. We don’t often we are by default, it again, in my opinion, before anyone jumps down my throat, a non medical profession trying to fit into a medical professions world, in a lot of instances, and that, by default makes us different makes us unique. But it also, if you look at that as a negative, it’s gonna be a negative, I look at that as a positive, like, we stand out, we are unique. That is the reason why if you’re ever on a board, like with a multi D Ward, the clients, the patients, whatever they that they labeled as in your part of the world, they love oaties, because we’re different. And we get to do different things with them. And we get to do what is generally very practical things with them that they can actually see the benefit of, because we’re working towards very real goals, those goals are that individuals goals, and we are generally pretty good at communicating that kind of stuff in a language that they understand. So, yeah, why I encourage you, like don’t stress if you don’t feel like you fit in or you are feeling a little bit lost. Because that’s actually exactly where you need to be. So yeah, we’ll get used to that feeling that feeling does go away, be confident in your profession, be confident in your own skill set. Because just know that you are exactly where you need to be.
Rachel Schooley 1:44:08 100% I love that, Brock.
Brock Cook 1:44:11 That’s awesome. That got very deep and meaningful.
Rachel Schooley 1:44:17 Good, though, I mean, I’ve definitely had that experience, especially after graduation, or within the program where it’s like, oh, and even up here, like, I mean, pretty established and confident in the work that I’m doing. And then like all of a sudden I’m having you know, conversation with a doctor about a client and just like, forgetting that I am a bio psychosocial model professional working within a medical model and not like feeling just really yeah, like not confident in the things that I’m saying because like what is not matching here like we are really talking about two different things. Is it me like do I just not really understand how things work. And then actually, I think it was listening to one of your podcasts later that week and talking about that we are like a profession not within, like, it’s not a medical model profession, we are different, that I was like, Oh, that’s where that feeling is coming from. And being able to take that confidence and advocate better for my client in that situation. Like, that’s really important. And to be like, I think the benefit of nobody knowing what occupational therapy is, or like, you know, a few other lithium amount of times, I’ve had to kind of explain, and people are really open to hearing about it. But like, actually, I’m not a physio, or actually, like, that’s not what I do this is, you know, this is within my scope, we generally are the experts in our profession. So even as a new grad, or even, like, I’ve mentored students who have been on placement with me, or have said, like, in a place where nobody really knows what it is, like, you know, best what it is. So have that confidence and use it. I guess it kind of works for to our advantage, when other times it can be very frustrating.
Brock Cook 1:46:19 Yeah. Sometimes that frustration, you just have to put up with it. Unfortunately, that’s not pleasant. But frustration, frustrations never killed anyone. So I’m sure you’ll be okay. That’s the benefit of tolerating that and growing through it is far outweighs, you know, reacting to it, and being, you know, shutting down any kind of professional or clinical relationship that you might be building at the time. So just, yes, it’s gonna be okay. Like I said, You are where you’re meant to be, if you have faith in that you can tolerate anything. So yeah, do what you do what you need to do, and you be the be the OT, you never quite know, motivation.
Rachel Schooley 1:47:15 And you end up working at the ends of the years, and, you know, changing changing the OT game, they’re like, I never ever thought one day I’m going to move to the Arctic. And, you know, quit my job during a global pandemic, and start some self employment and see how that works out. That’s not that’s not on my list of to do’s but I think, you know, I’ve got a lot of passion, you know, both about our profession, but also how people should be able to access health care how people should be able to access wellness, and yeah, like, it’s, like, use that passion, like, see where it takes you take the risks? Yeah, I do. I do love OT, like I, I’ve seen it worked in, like, pretty hard circumstances, you know, with folks that have led really, really difficult lives. And just to have a little bit of a different approach and like, Okay, well, why don’t we do something together, that’s fun for you to do like to be able to walk alongside folks. Up here, like the the counseling staff isn’t able to meet with people outside of the hospital, and they always have to meet in their offices, and they’re so envious of me when I get to do like walking sessions, or, you know, go out on a boat with someone or you know, meet somebody for cooking or whatever. And it’s like that, that act of doing, when it’s what the person that you’re working with wants to truly do. And it can be pretty awesome.
Brock Cook 1:49:04 That’s awesome. And that’s a perfect note to leave it on. I feel so if people are wanting to check out your social media and stuff, whereabouts could they find you?
Rachel Schooley 1:49:22 I would, I would ask that people don’t have high expectations of my social media, but my handle on Instagram. I post I post very irregularly, especially like Internet access is not always optimal. But at Arctic_ot. That’s where I’m at.
Brock Cook 1:49:46 Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for for coming and chatting and enlightening me to so many things that are my mind’s a bit sort of mush at the moment. Still trying to get my head around the whole, like. Thank you so much for Yeah, coming in having a chat and sharing your very, very unique environment that you’re currently operating in.
Rachel Schooley 1:50:14 Oh, it’s, it’s my pleasure. Thanks so much.
Brock Cook 1:50:22 If you liked this episode and want to check out more, head over to occupied podcast.com or search occupied podcast on your favorite podcasting app. If you have thoughts or reflections on the topics discussed today, please do get in contact, we’d love to hear from you. And lastly, if you got some value from this and you want to help us out, like, subscribe, share it with a friend. Remember, be good to yourself, be good to others, and always keep occupied
106 – Semantics and Platitudes in OT
Apr 02, 2021
So many times over my career I’ve heard cliche’s and platitudes used by therapists and often wondered….do they know what that actually means? Recently I’ve had a number of discussions on this podcast about terms used that are used incorrectly OR used as lip service and I thought it was about time I did an episode and explored some of these.
Terms explored in this episode include:
Holistic Woo Woo Function Serving and more….
Tune in to hear my reflections from my brain and a dictionary.
I’d love to hear from you. Drop me an email or a DM on socials and talk to me about how I can give you even more value. If you know other OTs who would also get value from Occupied or Occupied plus then let them know and send them to occupiedpodcast.com. I can’t wait to see you next episode.
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
If you want even more valuable content join Occupied Plus+ on Patreon for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship and much much more!
Transcription
Brock Cook 0:00 A quick message to let you know that occupied plus has launched over on Patreon. If you are looking for some extra value from occupied extra podcast episodes, downloadable resources, access to me supervision, mentorship, and many, many, many, many more things that I will be continually trying to add more and more to than jump over to patreon.com forward slash occupied plus, and check us out tiers starting from $4 us a month, it is bargain basement for extra value that can add to your clinical practice. Now let’s check out this episode. I’ve been meaning to record an episode like this for some time. And I finally got around to putting it together and bringing this to you. There are quite a few things that ot say on the daily that I see very regularly on social media, in ot related groups, etc. that I don’t feel like OTS fully understand what they’re actually implying when they use certain terms and certain words. So I was actually have a look at the definition of some of the things that we say and see whether or not it actually matches up with what we are intending it to say. Get a My name is Brock Cook and welcome to occupied. In this podcast. We’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy, we explore the people, topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources that occupied podcast.com. But for now, let’s roll the episode. All right, so firstly, I want to lay out there that this is absolutely in no way intended as an attack on anyone or anything like that. This is simply me looking at patents that I see within promotional material things that people put out there with regards to the profession, how we work, what we do with people, etc. That has never fully sat right with me because I just had this sort of gut feeling that some of it didn’t make a lot of sense based on my understanding of the definitions of these words. I know often the the the term semantics is often thrown around for Potato Potato. Why does it matter? But semantics matters, semantics is the use of linguistics, the study of language and what words actually mean. So it’s kind of important, especially from a profession that is continually complaining that the one word that we use to define our our profession is used or known for a different definition by the general public. I don’t think we can have our cake and eat it too in this instance. So I just wanted to have a look at some of these words. If you’ve got other ones, let me know. And I can do a follow up and we can explore other words, but these are a few that. Some of them I’ve spoken about before some of them I have never mentioned. But let’s have a roll, let’s have a look and see what we can find. So the first one is one that I’ve explored many times on the podcast, but I would be remiss if I left it out, and that is function. So actually having a look at definitions of functions, it’s looking at effect is related to or dependent on other factors. Now when I explained my aversion to using the term within our profession, I use the example of mathematics as does this Deaf dictionary definition as well, where it explains that this factor dependent on other factors is for example, the price is a function of supply and demand. That’s some basic mathematical formula that you can use to work that kind of stuff out. But when you input some set of numbers at the end, you’re going to get exactly the same
format the exact same function out the other end of it because it’s consistent, and people are not consistent. People do not conform to if I input the same data into one situation in a person, I’m not always going to get exactly the same outcome. So that’s my aversion to function. There are certain professions that use that term quite successfully. For me Apple, if you’re looking at sort of manual muscle testing and that sort of stuff, if you put a certain charge through a muscle, you’re going to get a certain reaction, there are parts of the body that do behave in a functional manner. But the person as a whole, yes, there is some predictability but not completely to the point where you could say, Yeah, they’re they work functionally. In that instance, and we have other words, we have occupation, as a lot of therapists have an aversion to using the term, I’ve explained quite a few times how you can explain it, that just makes sense to people. But we have terms that we can use that one better explain what we actually do. But to also better encapsulate the breadth of service that we actually can provide. The next one that I want to have a look at. And I know that some of these words are going to get some people’s backs up. But what I would encourage you to do is if you do have an aversion when I bring up a word or a term, have a think have a reflect, because why you’re reacting to something is also a very important thing to reflect on. So the next one I want to bring up is holistic. For a long time, I’ve often been of the ilk that we’re not holistic, OTS are not holistic, there are very few professions, if any profession that actually are holistic. When we look at the definition of the term, from a philosophical point of view, it’s the theory that whole entities as fundamental components of reality have an existence other than as the mere sum of their parts. So you know, that you will have heard that in textbooks that people are more than the sum of their parts, that kind of thing. There is more to a person, then just the different systems within the body, you know, we have our limbic system and our gastritis, and all those sorts of things. And we put those all together, and that is a person. No, there’s a lot more to it. And yes, if you’re looking purely at that, you could probably maybe justify ot as holistic. When we look at medicine, like a medical definition. It’s looking at the care of the entire patient in all aspects of wellbeing, including physical, psychological, and social. And I believe that if you take those last three areas out of context of the whole definition, then yeah, OTS, right, we look at those things, as a profession, as an individual therapist, you should be at least see during those things. But we don’t care for the entire patient, based on all three of those things at the same time. Ideal? Well, yeah, it would be amazing if we can. But in reality, as a profession, there are probably enough people working in enough different areas that we could call IoT, as a profession, holistic
as a health service, I would hope that a really well designed Health Service has enough different professions, looking at all of the different aspects that make up a person’s health and well being that the health service could be deemed as holistic. Now, I know there’s a lot of issues with different health services. So I’m not going to say that health services are but in the ideal world, you would hope that a well designed well resourced health service could follow fall into that classification. And individual therapists, I think you would really struggle. I know for one, me as a, an OT work who worked in mental health, yeah, psychological social, all over that. All over that the physical stuff, I can make recommendations, there are a lot of physical aspects of ot I have absolutely no idea about and I would not look at, I might get someone else to do it. But again, that’s because the health service I was working within was holistic, not me as a as an occupational therapist. And I believe that the I guess morphing of this term, is where we’re getting slightly stuck with our use of it. So yes, we do look at the person as a whole but we don’t provide care for that person as a whole. We can’t, we can’t we just don’t have have the resources, I don’t know if one any one person has even the brain capacity for the amount of knowledge that would be required to do that. But the term in more recent years has almost been hijacked and sort of modified in this term holistic health. And what Holistic Health tends to look at is those professions that aren’t generally you identified during general health discussions. So you’re gonna have things like counseling, art therapy, being a youth worker, kinesiologist hypnotherapist, a lot of Eastern style, alternative and air quotes, alternative medicine type professions, tend to come under the moniker of holistic health. Now, that’s not to say that those individual professions are holistic in unto themselves. But I believe that the term is trying to, I guess, encapsulate a more holistic health view as an umbrella term by bringing in a wider variety of Health Professions into health discussions. The The, the thing that OTS get caught up in is there are a lot of 80s that are now looking at providing these sort of, for lack of a better term, I’m going to call them alternative health services. There’s a lot of 80s that, especially in the states that often start off studying kinesiology, before they move into it. There’s a lot of 80s that I’ve seen online that you know, now providing meditation, mindfulness yoga, guarantee you that there is oddities out there that also provide art therapy. Sure, we could find an OT that does hypnotherapy out there somewhere. But ot is trying to expand their skill set into other areas is why one, if it’s them, I guess, trying to expand their scope, because the for whatever reason, it could be that they’re not comfortable, or that there are with the the scope of ot itself, or that they feel like they’re personally able to bring more to their clientele with this extended skill set, whatever the reason is, it’s not important for this discussion. But that holistic health is then is then being tied in with OT, because people are expanding their scope of practice into this, quote, unquote, holistic health realm. When described like that, I don’t feel like there’s too much issue in using the term if it’s being used correctly. I it’s a red flag for me, when anyone is describing themselves as a holistic health profession or a holistic anything other than, like, I’m a whole person, but that’s about it. Because straightaway, I’m like, well, there are definitely things that you can’t look at and you can’t service and that you can’t provide care for.
I know a lot of therapists that actually have dual degrees in very in different health settings. So I know a couple of people that are also OTS and physios. I know at least one person is OT and a nurse. And having these dual roles provided, you know, the registered and both and all of those sorts of things would allow you to provide definitely a broader range of services to the people that you work with. But even then there’s still gonna be things that you’re not able to do. So, holistic health or whole, being holistic, I feel like yes, it’s definitely a term that gets used in health. I do feel like often it gets used incorrectly. And I do feel it’s kind of often used as a marketing tool because it sounds fancy and it sounds New Age and it sounds work and all of that. But I think having an understanding of how that word actually frames your service. If I was going to our holistic health profession, I would be expecting that person to be able to do everything, because that’s what the term means. Alright, let’s move on to from that onto one that tends to often go hand in hand from from my observation.
Woowoo. And I won’t spend a lot of time on this because I don’t think it needs a lot of time. I see a lot of OTS describing themselves as woowoo. And one, it never made sense because the term itself just doesn’t click with me. But also when you actually look up the definition, the very first word, in the definition is derogatory. And then it goes on to explain that it’s slang based on or involving irrational superstition. So if someone is woowoo, then they’re basing their ideas, their concepts, their thoughts on irrational superstition. Now, if I was going to any health profession, with the knowledge, that Oh, and I found out that they’re basing their treatment and their care on irrational superstition, there’s a fairly good chance I’d be canceling that appointment and finding someone better. I understand that if there’s a cultural thing around woowoo. With it, again, being art, you know, often used in the context of Oh, you know, I’m just fine and a bit quirky. But when you actually look at what that means, it’s pretty much the complete opposite of what the profession is. I don’t want an OT or any health profession that is irrational, and basing their their treatment options on superstition. So I’ll put that one aside for now, because I just feel like it has no place in the profession. And again, my opinion, another one slightly off topic to the slightly off of brand to the ones that we’ve looked at so far. But the the concept of serving, and I know this one’s gonna be slightly controversial. I know people are gonna have different opinions about this. But I have the microphone. So here’s my opinion. When we’re looking at definitions of serving, I know a lot of OTS do talk about I’m serving my clients, or I’m serving this population, etc. And it’s never sat well, and I never really understood whether it never sat well, because I don’t like being told what to do, or whether there was a more sort of genuine reason for me not seeing a correlation with ot. So I’ve sat down and actually put a lot of reflection into this one specifically. And I think I’ve kind of worked out why I don’t like it. So when we’re looking at definitions, the definitions is either acting in service or distributing something that’s kind of the two different trends of the the various definitions of serving. So we’re acting in service. So we’re serving someone, or we’re distributing something. So we’re like, you know, we’re we’re serving dinner or something, we’re serving our service of some sort. Either way, either one of those two, I think, and this is the big thing that that irks me and sort of my intuition never really clicked with the term is either way, neither of those are collaborative. Collaboration is one of the biggest things I see in a contemporary occupational therapy profession. And I feel like that’s where the profession is moving more and more is collaboration with our clients. If I’m serving them, then it’s almost like the complete opposite end of the spectrum to me being prescriptive and giving them a service and fixing their issues. It’s me almost taking that very passive role. And whatever you want, I’ll do that, that’s fine. We can off we’ll we’ll get an idea in our heads of what serving just as a general term, not in a healthcare setting sort of means. But it’s a very passive, it’s a very standoffish, it’s a very submissive role. Generally, in any serving profession. There’s not a lot of collaboration, if any inner serving profession. The other thing of distributing a service again, that’s probably more closer to the prescriptive role where I can serve out information and I can serve out, you know, equipment, and some people’s roles may fit that. That’s not what they should be in there. If they if your role does fit into that category, I’d be strongly advocating for you to advocate an upgrade of your job description because that’s that’s not really what it is I meant to do. But this collaborative, or lack of collaboration, when we’re looking at serving people
is the reason And why I don’t feel like it’s fully encapsulating in a really good way. Hopefully not Anyway, what we’re doing with people. I think a lot of the time it gets used because it sounds altruistic. It sounds like oh my god, you’re such a good person, you’re serving these people. And these, you know, it almost it very much, to me, an accident image of an awesome them, in my mind, if I’m serving someone than I am below them. And, you know, I am at their beck and call and fulfilling their needs, whatever they are, in this instance, that would be some sort of health care need, obviously, but what we’re trying to aim for within this profession is collaboration, we want to be putting the the person that we’re working with on the same level as us, yes, we’re bringing a different skill set to that collaborative team, but so are they. And we want to make a good mix of those skill sets. And essentially try and build the best team work that we can, in order for that person to get the best service that we’re able to provide. If I’m submissive, if I’m below them, same as if it’s the other way around, I’m not able to give them the best service that I potentially can provide to them. That that power differential, which we talk about, and anyone who looks at any of the bigger practice framework models, the one I’m thinking of, particularly as the Canadian practice framework model, because that’s what we tend to teach our fair bit of here in Australia will know that negating a power differential is an important part of that as his collaboration. But negating that power differential doesn’t mean swinging it to the other extreme, that’s not negating your power differential, that’s just shifting it to the other foot. So that’s, that’s where I have issues with serving, and I’m not 100% Sure. What an alternative, if there is needed to be an alternative, I do feel like it’s often being used as a marketing term for therapists, I do feel like they’re, you know, promoting it for almost like a virtue signaling like, Look, I am serving these people. And below you, I am at your service, use me for whatever you need. But I am of service to you, which in reality, it might sound altruistic, but I can guarantee you the service that you’re actually providing isn’t you’re not of service, you, hopefully, are aiming for that collaborative middle ground. So the next one I wanted to bring up is motivation. And I don’t want to bring up because this is this is one that I don’t think people are, like, shouldn’t be using, because we definitely need to look at motivation, I believe that some of the concepts and the understanding around motivation is not very well understood by OTS. So the the main, I guess, example that I hear quite often is a person or even themselves sometimes in the description has no motivation, which isn’t a thing. I feel like we have, for whatever reason, probably through this process of learning, standardized assessments got into this mindset, that motivation is
able to be measured quantitatively. When it’s not like that. It’s not like we have these seven buckets for the different activities we do. And we have to put some motivation in each one, in order to get them done. It doesn’t work like that. So when we’re looking at the actual definitions of it, we’ll This one here is it’s looking at the state or condition of being motivated, or having a strong reason to accomplish something. And that’s the important part is the reason to accomplish something. So you’re motivated when you have a reason. Now, if someone in for in the earlier example, when I was saying someone’s being described as having no motivation. Generally, that’s not a very well, that’s not a very helpful thing to look at. You’re not going to be able to do anything with that particular assessment of the situation. But being motivated means someone has a strong reason to do whatever it is. If someone is lacking in motivation, or they’re not feeling very motivated, then it means that they don’t have a very good reason. Now there’s a couple things that you can look at with that is one, you’re trying to get them to do something that they just don’t about like, there’s literally no reason at all for them to be doing it. ie, you can probably think of some kind of standardized ot assessment that the person just cannot relate any reason to actually be doing it, that makes it hard to actually get the motivation to do it. The other reason is that
you kind of think of this as like a tug of war. that reason, there might be a reason, again, you can think about these weird and wonderful standardized ot assessments for many moons ago. Things like pegboards. And that sort of stuff, there may be an actual reason. But it might not be strong enough to overcome the reason that they want to do something different. So I have a choice right now, in that I can sit at this desk, and I can record this episode, or it’s a beautiful day outside, I can go down to the beach. Now, my motivation to do both, there’s definitely a reason I can do both reason to go to the beach is I enjoy it, it’ll be nice and cool. It’ll be lovely weather for the first time in quite some weeks. It’s good for mental health, blah, blah, blah. Reason number two is I’ve been putting this reason not Reason number two, but reason for doing the alternative, which is recording this podcast is I’ve been putting this off for a long number of weeks, I really want to, and I’m really curious about your opinions, as to some of these words that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time. At this point in time, my motivation, my reason to do either of those activities, this one, as you can probably tell, because you’re listening to me, is a stronger reason. To me, it’s a more important thing, it’s something that I feel at this point in time, there are less barriers to the is I’m going to get more accomplishment out of and I feel like I can do the other one later on. There are other ways around it. So my reasoning behind accomplishing both of those activities. I just happened that at this very point in time, this one is stronger than say going to the beach. Now different time. Again, I would need to reassess if I had a scratchy throat that’s going to impact on which of those I feel like my reason or need to accomplish it is gonna change because I’m like, well, I’ve got a scratchy throat so I could push through, it’ll sound like crap. And I’m not going to be happy with it when I’m done. Which is that sense of accomplishment, I’m not going to get as much sense of accomplishment out of it. Or I can go to the beach where I don’t need to worry about my scratchy throat, do that. Do the podcast and other day. Yes, it’s been put off. Yes, that’s, that’s not adding to that barrier, because I’m putting it off again. But if I’m going to do something I need to me I need that sense of accomplishment. So a lot of those sorts of processes, often we do without thinking about them. Like I Unless Unless I wasn’t was actually recording this podcast, I probably wouldn’t have thought about those two particular activities, and go on. Hmm, I wonder what my reason might be for doing them and what the polls, the barriers etc, are, and which one’s stronger, etc. I just like our gut feeling, I’m going to do this podcast. Intuition is really powerful when it comes to motivation. And it can be, again, something that we may, a person may not have explored in depth or reflected in depth about the reason why they do or don’t want to do something. But it’s just a gut feeling. Often that gut feeling probably 90% of the time in my experience, that gut feeling, if you actually do then sit down and look at the reasoning. There is reasoning there. It’s very rarely wrong. But it’s important that intuition, which doesn’t often get taken into account, when we’re looking at motivation is actually looked at, in doing it that way. And we’re looking at reason, as opposed to motivation as a quantity. We’re going to have much more successful outcomes with the people that we work with, because we have a much better understanding of why they’re doing things why they’re choosing to or not choosing to engage in certain activities. Why aren’t you wanting to do your rehab exercises that the physio gave me? Okay, well, it’s because they don’t see the reason for it, or the reason isn’t very clear to them, which means it’s not going to be very strong. And they have all this other stuff, work stresses, family stresses, that sort of stuff, which to them the reason, the reason in quotes as a noun, getting on top of that stuff. is a much more important thing, because they can see the reason for that, you know, keep the family happy and healthy, keep the household running, etc, etc. So we need to look at it on terms of reason, which, for an OT really shouldn’t be that difficult. Because a lot of the times when we’re looking at occupation,
we should be looking at a reason for engagement. That reasons for engagement is exactly the same process that we’re using to look at the reasons behind when we’re looking at motivation. So if we’re looking at reasons for engagement, as opposed to just here’s the activity, and what’s your motivation, we’re killing two birds with one stone. So we’re going to get an understanding of how motivated they’re going to be, it might simply be a matter of looking at a broader range of occupations, like for example, the two, the two things that I could potentially have done today, or right now this afternoon. And looking at the reasons I would want to engage in those, and then you can sort of compare and discuss collaboratively about which is stronger, and which is going to have the most pool or at what time because obviously if it’s at nighttime, okay, cool, it’s during the day now, maybe go to the beach now and at night, when there’s not much point in being at the beach, because a lot of the benefits of the beach disappear at night, you can maybe do your podcast. So that’s the level that we need to be that’s a basic level that we need to be getting to an understanding of the people that we work, when, especially when we start looking at motivation. But motivation isn’t quantitative, we don’t, you don’t measure it. Not I’ve got three quarts of motivation. And I need three and a half to get this done. Like it doesn’t work like that. Alright, one of the last ones and a big one. And I put this out to Instagram the other day, just to get some other people’s opinions, the art and science of occupational therapy. Now, this one, I know a lot of people are going to have opinions, because a lot of people sent me their opinions on what they felt like it meant. And the interesting thing was, and I haven’t shared these responses on Instagram, because I felt like it might follow other people’s opinions. So the interesting thing about it was every single person sent me something completely different. There was there wasn’t even any system it really in the answers about what the art and science of ot actually me. So let’s start with the definitions. Obviously, we know what the definition of science is, I would be hoping to know the scientific processes, we know that ot is being backed up by a many different sciences, including occupational science, and some psychology and other things, some philosophy as well. But there are many sciences that go into constructing our perspective of what occupational therapy is. But we’ll say for the sake of argument that we’re going to look at that from an occupational science point of view, given that that’s the field that was essentially designed to try and support the profession. So that means we need to have a look at what art is. Now, there’s a million different definitions of art. Surprisingly, I didn’t think there would be I never actually had considered what the definition of art is. But there is a common theme between them. And its aesthetics. Which is interesting. Because that’s again, that wouldn’t have even been something that I may have considered putting in a definition of art. So majority of the definitions are either looking at creating something according to an aesthetic principle, or improving something’s aesthetics, presumably according to the same principles. So you can, quote, add up something as in, you know, dress it up, improve it, etc. But it’s specifically looking at aesthetics. So when I’m thinking about how that might relate to the art and science of occupational therapy, obviously, we know the sciences that that very, that very structured research background, and how we should implement and the types of things that we should implement as a profession. So what exactly is the art and I did have some people sort of try and explain to the, in their opinion it was to do with how it was implemented, but then that also gets covered under the science. If you’re going to have a best practice, then the best practice needs to include how things are actually implemented as well as what’s implemented because that’s otherwise it’s not a best practice, it’s just the best resource. So that was interesting. But the I don’t feel like there’s anything that
we do that’s particularly sore specifically to do with aesthetics. But then in reflection, the only thing that I could think of, and I am curious to your thoughts, a lot of the interventions that we do, we try and make them relevant to the individual. So a person has a hand injury, we need to try and find how we can help improve that injury. Improve that area of that person’s life using the things that they do in their day to day life, using their occupations. The art aspect that I could, the only way I could find to justify it based on the actual definitions was, is the art aspect of the art and science of occupational therapy, looking at how we take a complex scientific concept, and, again, for lack of a better term, dress it up, so that it seems one more appealing. And two more relevant to the individual that we’re hoping will actually engage in that for their their benefit. That’s the only way I could try and sort of make the two concepts fit. And I am curious, I wasn’t able to find too many sort of different specific definitions on the art and science. But it was mainly through reflection and discussion that these these thoughts started coming. But I feel like dressing up the aesthetics, so to speak of the information and the resources that we have discovered through the scientific process could potentially be our way that we could utilize the time within the profession. Now, how have I seen it utilized? The main way that I have seen it utilized by occupational therapists, which is the reason why red flagged for me in the first place was I feel like everyone has a relatively good understanding of what the science of it looks like. And then people would justify absolutely anything else that came up as if the art I, okay. Why? No answer. So I, anytime there’s no, I think, why is probably the question I asked the most. And I’m sorry, to my students, but I feel like critical thinking is something that the, the the profession needs. And while we’re on the topic, looking at critical thinking definitions is disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open minded and informed by evidence. So if you were not able to critically think about what this art is, then does it actually need to be there? The interesting thing is that it has to be informed by evidence anyway, so how that wouldn’t make it a science. So even the art of occupational therapy is actually science. Oh, is a deep rabbit hole. But it’s something again, I don’t have a definite answer. But I am definitely curious to hear your thoughts around what you feel the actual art and science of occupational therapy is, and be able to explain why in a clear, rational, open minded way. I am more than than happy to do a follow up episode. If people do have opinions on any of the words that we’ve explored here today, I find it really interesting. And I do, again, I reiterate, from the very start, I do feel like semantics are important, the linguistics, the words that we use, as a profession are important. And I feel like we need to, as a profession, be a bit more consistent with how we’re using these times. And I know that we are very broad and diverse and all of that stuff. But I do feel like one of the reasons maybe that people don’t understand what we’re doing is because we’re very inconsistent as a professional in using some of these terms. If we have our heads around them, and we understand them better. I mean, we shouldn’t be using terms we don’t understand anyway. But especially, for example, particularly the ones that we’ve discussed today, if we have a heads around these, and we’re discussing them, consider Instantly across the profession, I feel like one it’s going to make for a much more consistent professional identity, which is also going to assist us in being able to support and explain what occupational therapy is to the people that we work with.
So, that’s enough of your time that I have stolen from you today. Thank you very much for listening. Please do drop a DM, drop a comment, send me an email if you do have any other words that you feel like OTS might be misusing or misunderstanding. If there are any of the ones that we’ve explored today that you feel particularly strongly about? please do let us know. And let’s start this discussion because these discussions are how we make the magic happen. So thank you very much, and I’ll see you in the next one. If you liked this episode, and want to check out more, head over to occupied podcast.com or search occupied podcast in your favorite podcasting app. If you have thoughts or reflections on the topics discussed today, please do get in contact, we’d love to hear from you. And lastly, if you got some value from this and you want to help us out, like, subscribe, share it with a friend. Remember, be good to yourself, be good to others and always keep occupied
ANNOUNCEMENT: Launching Occupied Plus+ on Patreon
Mar 28, 2021
I’m super excited to be announcing……. Occupied Plus+
Occupied Plus+ will have Patreon exclusive resources for those supporters looking to inject some extra value into their practice.
For a long time I’ve wanted to expand the resources and value I can add to you, the listener. From this OccupiedPlus+ was born. From as little as $4 a month you become a member of the Occupied Plus+ Patreon. In there you will get access to resources from monthly Occupied Plus+ podcast episodes, Monthly AMA, a range of digitally downloadable resources, Short essays on important topics and so much more! In this higher tiers there is also available supervision/mentorship with myself, supporter shoutouts on the Occupied podcast and ongoing direct chat access to me for continued regular support.
Occupied Plus+ comes with 4 tiers to suit your needs, level of support and budget.
I do want to assure you that if you simply enjoy the Occupied podcast, nothing will be changing there and you will still get the regular episodes on all things occupation and occupational therapy that you are accustomed to.
Before anything else monies will be put towards making the podcast sustainable and even more accessible, e.g trying to get accurate transcriptions of each episode.
This is just the beginning! I will be continually looking for more amazing things I can provide to patrons to help add value to your practice! I’m excited to interact with you all and hear what resources you might be interested in me creating for you!
105 – OT Needs to be Doing Being and Becoming MORE ft Khalilah Johnson
Mar 19, 2021
Crowd favourite Dr Khalilah Johnson is BACK! and this time we are delving deep into the realities of inclusive practice. We started out discussing her research around including within a disability context but soon exploded to inclusion in many other contexts.
There are many parts of OT that need improvement and we explore the lip service that is often payed to topics around inclusion with different populations. This is an important topic, especially in todays overly connected society where information and access to news is faster than ever before. Where social capital is now derived from what one says and not what one does. How does this impact the work that so many therapists have lived and/or dedicated their lives to? Tune in to hear our thoughts on all of this.
105 OT Needs to be Doing Being and Becoming MORE ft Khalilah Johnson
00:00:00 – 00:05:03
We want to look at your your journey Into how you got where you are now and into the causes and the the research that you’re you’re currently looking into and how far back does that does that. Does that janney start before you started. Iot over. Half are baxter. We delve to start with. I don’t know that we want to start all the way back. Ot sixteen years now and we did. We did have a little bit of like hey going to the profession and stuff in the lawsuit that you’re on that’s right. Well i guess i could start is sort of the clinical experiences that I think really changed the trajectory of my work. After i moved to north carolina to pursue my hd at university of north carolina I was Subcontracting through a company that was providing services to the state in developmental centers or intermediate care facilities for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and was just really finding it very difficult to do my job Basically being told not only by the facility but really dictated by the state sort of what the range of an occupational therapy evaluation like And the expectation for me not Write a treatment plan or do any additional consultation with staff pertaining to addressing any sort of Occupational needs of the residents there. And so i’m sort of looking at this will want what. What’s the point of occupational therapy. Then if it is not for me to draw on it by professional expertise to say here here are some things. That are problematic weather. It’s just about being able to participate Or if they’re real real safety considerations in these facilities and here’s how we can address them or develop a treatment plant. Always you know in collaboration with staff. They wanted no parts bet. And so the more i pushed more. They pushed and Just went to buy adviser. Nancy bagatelle and said i don’t i don’t care what my dissertation is about but it has the center these sorts of issues So it’s like. What are the really the the policy that mediate not only what i was able to do as a therapist. That really how the people were the issue in these facilities are just able to live regular. Is you know Even what’s wrong with that kind of stuff because we have similar kinds of issues in australia as well. Do you think that the issue is like outdated policies or policies that have just been made in uninformed way a little bit of both right. you know. There’s definitely some historical towards people with disabilities that informed the policies when they were ready some time ago but they earn supposedly revives with you know thinking well ardal supporters in person centeredness and all of these things.
00:05:04 – 00:10:13
But you still have all these antiquated ideas of what that supposed to look like. He can’t be person centered without actually considering the person you know. How do you have a conference about what somebody can do. They’re there for you know. The even their caregivers are included in the decision. Making it makes sense. Yeah yeah it’s like you know. The the literature ari tells us that with appropriate support. People can participate you. But because they’re in this congregate situation there. It’s the thought or up the various a culture of the entire enterprise right that The folks who live in these facilities can’t make decisions can’t do themselves don’t know what’s best for themselves all of these ridiculous things that we hear all the time even each facilities. I mean happens in group homes to. Oh they’re out in the community. It’s like now. These have institutional qualities is experiencing the same thing in various mental health settings impassioned community same thing and one of the real simple things that we push full before i moved in academia was getting the person involved in their own case. Conference like sean. We’re can have a group of people sitting around talking about them but then people were worried about bringing them in because of all they’re going to hear what we say. I’m like yeah. They can hear what you say. You’re talking about them. What are you saying about them. They can’t hear oh that they shouldn’t here in. Does that one does that thing. Need to be said if there is something or a you just making out of a molehill and a lot of the the pushback that we had was more seemed anyway more just because all. We’ve never done that way. It’s always been done this way. I’m going well. It doesn’t mean you can’t change it but this kinda stuck in their ways. There’s no there wasn’t a policy saying that it couldn’t happen it was more just This is how we’ve always done it all. Is that all quicker if we just went through it among is thanks. Here it’s for the state specifically They’re op. There are policies in place to include people would As well as people with mental health as they fall under the same set of standards and guidelines But in practice. It doesn’t happen which is bizarre to me and just like you’re not even income. I at when you worry about compliance. All right i’m going to be in compliance when the state servier shows up. Yeah so where did you. Where did you so that was for your what did you. What did you find that. Basically we legislate ourselves into these holes right and it’s in. It’s all said by attitudes that you know again. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities Are not a musician to Contribute to their own care In ways that people believe are are safe or that make makes sense And that ease facilitation centers or developmental centers On paper say that they’re there to sort of support Bit availability skills and all these things to help. People return to the community. When in fact they. All they do is perpetuates custodial care. They’re really sort of built like skilled nursing facilities. You know with the exception of some adolescent programs respite programs and that sort of thing And that be happy. Let the state and national level. Who i think truly understand that the things we’re talking about about human rights. This isn’t about you know just simple healthcare sorts of things this is you know people have a right to choose what they want to eat and when they eat it you know people have a right to be out in the community like people have the right to the very basic things that we take for granted. And they’re not there. These ask are not exceptional. They’re not exceptional. No it’s not. Stop treating it as such The the people who were charged with their care twenty four hours a day. You know these frontline workers Their their work is grossly undervalued. They’re not treated as experts in the care people with id because they don’t have a particularly isis right so even how The the programming happens is very lowest in a way.
00:10:13 – 00:15:09
it’s like. Oh well if. They’re not the psychologists that are not this. They’re not that than one you have to take. You know their opinions of what you know mr. Tom can do with a grain of salt. Because you know what. They really understand about x. Y. and z. I can’t tell you how much that showed up in my in my data you know so. We have so much more work to do. Not just with how these facilities operate. Although i am in favour in abolishing all of them But in doing so we have to make sure. There’s a cultural shift Just about people with disabilities in general. But really you know understanding that we’re talking about basic human rights you know meeting the threshold people to be able to live the lives. They want to lead and then saw interesting. Because i’ve always found a number of conversations with clinicians about essentially the people with the highest paychecks usually know the least about the people that treating and like and another thing. I used to have her into whatever had students get to know the cleaners because i can guarantee on zone. It was on the key in it. They know everything about everyone. And everything that happens on that ward and if you need help doesn’t even matter what it is if you need help they know who can give it to bob la la. They were more helpful resource than any other clinical highly educated multiple degrees high paycheck stuff that could ever walked through that front door. Because that just around the people hold on bassa they get to them absolutely absolutely. I was a clinical instructor early. before going. back to school. I would do the same. The interdisciplinary team is not just the licensed folk talk about has during the entire environment. Is everybody in it. You know like you said like you said in. Its in its wild. We preach that an ot right but it’s really not practice. I used to get so like The rehab managers and things that some of these facilities sometimes. We get bent out of shape. If i would include a note that you know of the plan in collaboration with staff. It’s like first of all. I’m a i’m a. I’m a contractor. I’m not here every day you know. I’m not in the buildings all day every day. you know. Sometimes the evaluation was my first time meeting. Somebody said the only thing i know about them. It’s what’s an chart and whatsapp is telling me right. So how do how do what do i look like. You know saying like oh this is all these are all the things that you know miss. Betty’s going to need site. No let’s sit down and talk about you know what’s their history you know. What’s a typical daylight. What is it that you’re actually able to do. What source supports. Do you need to be able to do that. You know and if miss miss betty doesn’t use conventional language you know spending some time in the building observing how it is does communicate communicate her interest in likes in speaking to the staff about how to incorporate that so. They don’t have these arbitrary behavioral plans. I hate that term so much. Because they’re like oh she doesn’t want to sit down and you know eat home peas like we or to site world because she likes her deserters but we don’t want a two year dessert i. This is ridiculous like endure at your home. You decided you wanted cheesecake before your salad allen. Just chase guy. yeah. I mean a lot personally love salad. Yeah but you know. There are those sorts of arguments. That i’m like. Are we really spending time right on this really spending time on this. Yeah i often to you tell before about who’s included in the tame and. I wondered why i’ve never seen any literature or anything that has included. Say like one the person or the family or their caregivers or the support work or anything in the md t like as a definition and. I don’t know why. I wonder whether or not just even including them in the sort of the term of the trading team would actually create more.
00:15:09 – 00:20:06
I guess inclusive opportunities will make you normalize it normalized having them involved more were because like what’s what’s written changes everything right if it’s not in black and white then it’s it’s good. They’re excluded. So yeah the stuff that i’ve read to even around and this interpretation of a lot of the stuff but a lot of the stuff that you read. Iran client centered care. What of the models that you look at client centered care. It’s still discuss it as a discusses them as an other. Its yes we’re doing this. What putting them in the middle and we’re doing this but they’re still them and westville us and we’re still yes okay. We’re listening to them while they might be driving. The the the treatment is the usual sort of inclusive language. That gets used in those kinds of papers but this is still a separation this still. There’s no we talk about teamwork and we talk about united cohesion. And we talk about all that sort of things but none of the models. None of the frameworks that we use even for clients care. Do it is found because obviously you looked at a lot more of that than Nope the exact same you know there is. It’s almost like a passive mention right. If i have to make sure we include this one phrase about include the occupy dry. What actually happens in treatment and Sorry mexicana internet unstable message And you know. I think it creates this false narrative if you will that you know this is something that we ascribe to u. n. therapy and then it should happen in ways that that’s representative. Some of these articles are in textbooks. meghan blaskowitz wanda mahoney. I did a massive Scoping review of all all the literature. So not just what’s Represented in american journals but journals across the world that publish anything about people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and you know literature about sort of like inclusive treatment planning or Mid inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in therapeutic Decision making process was menopausal minimal. And i’m like how. How even in our twenty twenty one with so much talk about self determination About you know person. Senator clients center planning and all these things are we are. We still saying this blinding gap and what we’re actually publishing about it. So it’s like people actually doing it. How are they doing it if they’re doing it at all so the minimal stuff the did find because i’m trying to find the silver lining in this was in. Was it more recent like we actually moving towards that or is it just sort of scattered throughout the last decade. And it’s just kind of a non something that people just ought even considering it’s definitely more sent Just because we that was the the range of the dates that we use all morrison literature. But i i mean it’s concerning that it was not as much as we. We thought we might find angry. And this is not all occupational therapy literature literature that can relate to occupational therapy practice and the ot specific kind of literature is still you know specific to of course i d is still growing So we’re drawing from special education and no seeing at psychology psychiatry Which you know. It’s no secret to anyone that sort of over the history of those organizations to the way People with id disabilities in general have been talked about has not been favorable. So do you think you know. Overall at least There is somewhat in. its incheon. An occupational therapy to make sure that we are addressing. The interest in needs of The communities we serve.
00:20:06 – 00:25:01
Because you know we we ask about it in additional profile right so by it would. It would be my hope that we take it a step further and and sort of treat like we do in participant action. Research right at people are actually included from the beginning that everything about them. That’s what drives are decisions making process. Right they are driving the evaluation and treatment development intervention development. Planning and discharge. Cloudy on top of that. ’cause i probably cooling it in but Do i want a really good. How far back do i want to She’s a really good at patting each other on the back and saying how amazing. But i maybe in pessimist. I don’t see all of the amazing things that people think we do. I don’t think we are doing as well as we could be or should be doing. This is one of those areas. Where i don’t think we’re doing well at all even though my side my. It’s whether it’s just because we come. I mean demographic was when you look at the professional worldwide. Majority of people are coming from a fairly privileged position to a profession. That’s mostly middle age predominantly female well-paid highly educated like the ticking ticking. All the high socio economic sort of boxes. And i wonder whether a lot of these kinds of issues kind of get pushed aside a under the guise of sort of buzzwords. I see i see it a lot in mental health when people about recovery which is essentially. Exactly what we’re talking about. Recovery model is meant to be client driven and putting them in the driver seat of their own care and ask just being there as sort of supports along the journey and all that sort of thing and it gets mentioned and al treatment plans are called recovery plans and all of this sort of stuff but does it ever actually really get done the way it should get done Same as the right. And that’s how does it look. We’d take him. Yes the one that really annoys. The shit out of me is holistic. Oh yeah he’s a holistic we frigging well on not and if you are you doing stuff that’s one way out of skype. Usually on not not at all and you can feel it stick. There’s no reason to you know. I’m not saying that you can’t be holistic and you know look at absolutely everything but ot as a profession isn’t holistic like by definition. This has to look at it. But it’s it’s one of those buzzwords that who this makes us in good i’ll I’ll throw that one in. Yeah whole holistic will a back up and talk about pat each other on the back main It is it is prolific for sure. You know think about just what’s been happening and our national association here in the last year and a half With you know the third the self accolades there’s Some people referred to it as a circle jerk. But you know just the. But i know a lot but not what but usually how i try to be as real as possible. Ray i think people know that i i say all sorts of other things but you know. That’s that’s the thing know it’s like over going to. We’re going to pat ourselves and each other like everybody in our circle on the bat or doing these things that we think we’re doing and doing well and i think our organization here Last year you know the the profession just decided is going to hold a mirror to it right. So here’s here’s what you say you’re doing. And here’s what’s really happening and no your. Your governance is an awesome as you think it is. You can’t talk about the diversity and equity when you know at every level or the organization. There’s no diversity. You know As far as inclusion is as the representative organisation but you you know make sweeping decisions without including the actual feedback that you’re getting from representatives and then to say that you don’t want to get involved in something because a person is or is not a member is ridiculous.
00:25:01 – 00:30:01
It’s like whether give you money are not supposed you the national governing body. You gotta step up right but no it’s like we’re going to pat ourselves on the back because you know we make ourselves look good on our website and you know which i’m all of the other big net international organizations things think we’re great because you know they model themselves after after what about other website. It’s terrible yeah. It’s a little bit better than it used to be. I will say that But yet and then there’s something about bus court right buzzwords There there’s a term now being thrown around row keys you know using olga particular language right to really. I don’t want this to have appearance that you are about the live without big about. We’ll just put it like that. I would prefer that as virtue signaling. I like that too. I like that too. Yeah that’s how it’s commonly referred to while ashim in many places but that’s my circles in my people. I know it’s commonly referred to as that would exactly that people that are putting out the trying to put out the impression of caring about a certain cause or a certain topic or something but never actually doing anything to progress whatever it is wrong for contributions at all more more for the social capital and anything else right and honestly you know where where are they. Where are they gaining. ‘social tap with you know still still only and that fridley circle like these things occur for them to make themselves look good right or In it’s strange right. Because i’m an ot from certain socioeconomic. Background background has Privileges in my own ways. But somebody who is a cultural outsider. You know by artist. Titian are still look at things from an outsider perspective. They really believe that the work we’re doing is in some way addressing health disparities When literature still supports by and large that folks from black and brown communities like children with autism are still you know Receiving diocese much much later Even in my own professional experiences. I count on one hand in a year’s time. How many minorities patients having a patient rehab site. So you need to tell me you know when your community is forty percents But next that they’re not you know they don’t they. Don’t come to this hospital after having a stroke engine. Yeah anna it’s it’s just it’s so it’s so beyond all comprehension that somehow all of these well educated welby well-meaning spoke can see the data and still believe that they are making intentional meaningful contributions to the betterment of all pointing out like they. They honestly believe it. And i’m just like how how realities. I think one of the things that from my again from my perspective from my position of looking at some of these issues as they tend to come up over time and get the five in the spotlight so to speak one of the things that i think in. Nabil’s people to you know get that sort of dopamine hit from carrying a particular topic for a short time and then moving on is i see a lot of these Mainly on social media a lot of the causes these things come up and people love to bring awareness black but we already aware we need. We need awareness. We need action. We’ve got the awareness we know it happens Like we live in problems. But i think that’s it. We almost like bringing awareness to someone to someone to. Something is almost just from a marketing. Point of view is almost like sexier than actually doing something about it. Like getting your hands dirty putting aside your privileges.
00:30:01 – 00:35:02
Your i in life. Your whatever’s going on and actually helping someone who can actually help themselves due to not having the opportunity or not having the access to services or whatever it is posting on social media or making a big who are about something just to bring awareness to it from a marketing. Point of view is one. It’s xia people will enjoy looking at that mall and two is easier. It’s jazeera and you’ll get more social capital from it. People are going to get more like. Oh my god you’re amazing you you you care about these things and blah blah blah without putting any effort which costs imbed. And i’m i’m gonna leave the holistic conversation to this as well About the whole like influence sir. Her sort of saying that’s a on instagram. I don’t really see it as much anywhere else You know like winds bring awareness to something you know linking it to some other group at list tangible steps in all these things. That’s fine and great but doing the work is something that i would bet everything. I own that these folks aren’t even right like they want. The appearance of kerry Believing in equity in you know Portraying someone who considers advocacy as part of their practice and not something that they do in addition to their practice. I if i. I don’t know maybe maybe some of us need to like have a camera. Follow us around and stuff but the work that goes into doing some of the things that a few of us are actually talking about doing they. Would they would think because i think post about it but they might think of a little bit longer about posting before they actually do it. You know the the letters rewrite the phone calls we write the actually getting on the ground with folks the the ridiculous dmc that week it and you know not death threats or anything but you know phone calls are because they think that you know we’re being racist in some way is that black people cannot be racist sprayed of all the system of power. That is something. I do not have will probably never have in my lifetime You know it is more than just putting out your call them in an instagram right. Your little campaign with all of your slides. This is about doing work that impacts people’s actual lives so we talk about being holistic. Because i do see myself as a as a holistic practitioner but when i say that i’ve made the considerations that i give in the work that i actually do so i’m thinking about the social factors not just the physical supports in barriers one of those social supports in barrier. He know what a what are the policies around. But i can do as a therapist. What are the policies about The the services that my clients have access to. Where do they live. How was that community setup all of these other things that we really need to consider when you talk about whole zone and person centered this like these other. Things should go into your clinical reasoning and therapeutic process when when we work with our clients and and if you find that there are these barriers which you know that there are plenty Then that that’s where your professional ethics and advocacy come into play the people look at advocacy as this thing that’s like a appendage or something Attached to ot when you go to hill day in america or whatever government now have set up with w. f. o. T. conferences like all of these things. Like i’m going to be my advocacy like on this saturday in july. That’s it you know it is is practice practice is not an addition to our practice is very much part of our practice Two touch one slot side. Because you touched on something that i’m quite passionate about is with regards to like how you you were talking about.
00:35:02 – 00:40:16
How you look at the social aspects and everything and i. I believe that because it’s one of the things that i taught students before he’s around. You know real basic oxides like what is occupation. What makes it up looking at the and when we look at the environment. It’s more than just what you can see around you and i think that a lot of. It’s when they get sort of you know whether it’s pressure time while they just never learned it in the first place you need to be able to look if you can’t look at a macro level environment and see the policies that are impacting a person and how it might be either enabling or disabling a person to engage in occupation. Did starting to pick up a book because that’s vastly important and more important to certain populations who are more heavily impacted by certain policies. Like you look at any sort of disability population. Generally and i’m this is general because it’s i mean the main sort of the bigger westernized countries that i know of most of those countries have a disability act of some sort which doesn’t impact ninety percent of the population impacts group of people. So you’re going to have to specifically look at that to start with there’s also public access acts on. Some countries may have that all included in a disability act. I know in australia. We’ve got laws around access to public places and that sort of stuff but it’s in a different act like there’s other things that you get a have to look for when you’re looking at the environment it’s not just. They’ve got trip hazards in the hallway. Let’s remove that like that’s not just the environment this a lot more to it and like you said the social environment that we’re looking at supports we’re looking at friends family. Not just other. There has supportive are they. How often do they see them. Do they actually like them. Like do they get along with these people are all we try to force the support that they don’t actually want in their house like this environment if you’re looking at the basics person occupation environment environment is by far and away the biggest of things that we need to be looking at and it shits me that most. Ot’s that i talk to. I’ve seen seem to look at like maybe ten percent of what you can actually look at under environment and then just sort of The rest must be dr. You know. I i believe that you know we all take cognitive shortcuts. Call it Because of all the external pressures with time that sort of thing but for the sake of the communities that we work with but also for the integrity of what we do as a profession like you really have to be intentional About thinking about the the the environment as a whole. And i don’t know maybe maybe part of it is how we educate our students about it as well. You know I’m sort of running willard spackman through my mind where in the revision phase for the next edition. You know what’s what’s the language arouse some of these models. Ipo gop boho and all of these things you know At unc we talk about the transactional perspective on occupation. You know that was was birthed. From virginia dickey ruth humphrey and Malcolm cushion A we take sort of these more abstract sorts of things right like everything transact transact with herb the environment and people’s transact is Poke constructing ways and you know act on you know each other. It comes back on us all these things right but the you of course we always get the question world but what how. How do we bottle that in practice. You know and people wanted package nice in neatly. It’s like our lives are lost and they are complicated and complex and we can’t always package things you know in this neat little box to present it to students. We talked about it in very real ways. You know that it’s messy and we have all of these considerations and always emerged better fest in practice in ways that are going to be neat but these are still considerations and bury reported critical considerations We have to give in our work. And i know we’re talking about it in relation to practice a lot but it’s the same. It’s the same with research with research is well you know having these very limited Interpretations of data you know and you layer by race ethnicity and how those things are discussed in data.
00:40:16 – 00:45:28
Just just proliferates all the issues that we learned to admire and make instagram posts about sark does. And that’s because the other thing that i wanted to say before was around like you did. It sounds very much like you know shitting on every on instagram. And that wasn’t sort of the may name it’s a it’s a minority but it’s probably quite a few but it’s more of a cultural on instagram. Which made me think that. There’s a lot of especially i think young therapists coming through new graduates. Even students that you know probably are falling into a few of the traps that we’ve discussed. But i wonder whether it’s for them anyway. It’s more just all this is what everyone’s doing. It’s more just the an inculturation of them into that so the instagram thing rather than them specifically going hunting for likes and comments and that kind of thing not saying that. That makes it brighter anything. But i’m wondering whether to me the fact that people are being influenced by that sort of ankle it. An instagram culture means that we can change it. The fact that happens that way means that we can make it happen a different way out of the answers for that how we can do that. Or whether whether we can on that particular platform or not. But i do think it sort of ties. Something said multiple times on this podcast therapist. Dr currently have enough critical thinking skills. Because i don or if they do we very rarely. I’m the at cells. We’re very hesitant to reflect on how i’ve been operating. How y why did i make this decision. Or why am i doing. Why am i posting this this thing. Why am i. Why do i feel this need. And if it really is something that i am passionate about what else am i going to do about it. And i think that that lack of reflection in critical critical reflections specifically is a big proponent of why that culture’s come about in the first place because it’s people just post that all of that gave me a big dopamine hit. We’ll do it again next time. Something comes up as opposed to via awesome. Why why specifically that. Why did you choose those words. Because i’m big on semantics. Why did you choose to say it like that. Or why did you frame it like that or whatever. I would almost guarantee the majority of the people wouldn’t be like on just to set it all saw somebody else posted a lot. It’s just kind of mob mentality. Salsas gone with red kind of thing but it does mean that if you are conscious of it like we we would know quite a few people that are conscious of that kind of thing. I want encourage people to think about why. They’re posting things how they’re posting. It’ll what else if something genuinely passionate about. And what else you do about it. But also if you’re conscious about it don i see a lot of people who are conscious don post when those kinds of things out because they’re like everyone else just posting shit but that’s to me that’s it’s of like the whole on. Nobody knows what do because we talk about it. And we don’t explain it in ways that they can understand a society with this anyway like if you conscious like this is your opportunity to show other people have influence on other people the right way all like. Show them what you’re doing or how they can actually get involved in help. As opposed to just you know posting a hashtag or colored square or some other whatever. The kohl’s is that the posting about like the posting opportunities of how people looking involve Right i’ve seen have seen some really good price about like. If you care about this you can write his address. You can write to this person. Here’s a template that you can use to start with and then at journal spiel under like some of those things you do need to make them sort of path of least resistance for some people but at least some direction of actually action as opposed to just awareness. I think that’s gonna be one of my big reflective points with a lot of those things like he’s this action or is this just awareness because there’s very few things in the world nowadays that people aren’t aware of and and if they are especially something like say racism if you’re not aware that it’s there then there’s a good chance you’ll part of the problem but anyway that’s yeah as far as changing the culture on instagram specifically.
00:45:28 – 00:50:00
You know. i’m not sure what we can do either. You know i personally try to go back and forth with it right like i felt like i’m like i’m not i’m not controversial by. I am fairly provocative in the way that i talk about savings and that’s not on purpose. That’s just throw. I am i. Yeah and i believe in in naming it seems what they are not going to beat around. The bush But also challenge people to think deeper and more broadly about these issues. Sometimes i provide the tangible things. But i really prefer people go do their own education right because there’s a lot of free labor that we do on instagram. But but you’re right. Sometimes we have to provide like a little something like the last year after after. Mr george floyd was Murdered i did right at some plate that i said here the starting point for people to be able to voice their concerns to you know that that turned to a thing right now is like all right people understand that this is something they can do. They can share. I don’t do that every time But ego know. But the folks that i feel like students in particular lean on Don’t necessarily provide adequate guidance Probably because they’re not really bills. Eight baroness you know. But not about action and also think that that was the trap that not a in particular sell into your posting just to post you know but what are what are the actual things that you’re doing. Where the receipts go May maybe it myself in this as well for those of us. That do this work regularly. May maybe part of what we need to do to change. The culture on instagram is to show a little bit more fat. You know. I don’t i thought about is just asking to customize stories at there. They’re so much that happens between posts. It is so much that doesn’t get shared What i hope that part of what i do is show that you have to really be intentional about the things that you can’t just talk about it but you also need some sort of balance in your life. You know ’cause brock. I heard this. This is ongoing right. So that’s why. I also share things about my dog or cocktails that i make or i heard you know traveling just finding joy and all these other things because the world beats you down and so that’s the other thing i don’t i want students to always keep advocacy and justice and everything forefronts of their mind of a so. You know the way that our societies are built. You know. there’s there’s there’s injustice in everything right by even the way. This country was founded was odd. You know that the genocide of indigenous peoples like. It’s not something that we can afford to not consider without doing harm and charlotte’s communities we serve but don’t don’t lose your spirit that you know we have to do things to take care ourselves so while yes we probably need to post all of these other things about getting involved civic ways in doing that We’ll continue share all the other things too Not to say that what you’re suggesting but also just wanted to put it out there that Balance is nice. I don’t why is that you know the the the people that we’re addressing about you know. Sorta being bombed mccullough passive activists by sam going to bring awareness to this issue that everybody knows that’s existed for one hundred years bat. you know. Think about the why before he posts. And if you’re not actively doing something behind the scenes like if you can’t provide the receipt if ibm you and say like hey.
00:50:00 – 00:55:02
I left that post. What what did you do to address the issue like. Don’t don’t ignore it. I want you to sit with that because if you aren’t doing something about it that’s the problem mike. You’re you’re really part of the problem. Can’t sit there and say like. Oh yeah we gotta support. You know people of color who have disabilities but you don’t support grassroots efforts or Not connected with anybody in your own. The be doing that kind of work you know. Whatever is if if it’s not donate money by donate something else you know. Write letters make phone calls like there’s so many other means that you can do since you know we’re keyboard activism very very ways you know do something beyond your instagram. Post your tweet whatever yeah. That’s that’s more what i was talking my call to action for us specifically but more like if rather than just the post saying. Hey look like you said actually do something. And you’ll find that information now. They’re like his chances. Are if you’ve just found out about it even if you’ve just been about there’s a lot of other people that already knew what you before about being caught. I had the similar conversation in the episode. Richie around Especially racism within Australian healthcare setting and he highlighted the same thing he he remember his exact words but paraphrasing. He was essentially like that anyone. Who’s wanting to help the situation. You can’t rely on people in those minority places to always be You know the driving force behind it like he was kind enough unhappy enough to to come on and laid out all the information all the basics of information around on the podcast itself and then provided a whole heap of books and resources. People need to actually take that like a always be giving them the sort of. Here’s exactly what you need to do. Like he’s resources you need. Educate yourself for facade. That and that’s i don’t i don’t understand the Or the What’s the word. I’m looking for entitlement to education that That people feel like they want to be spoon fed. Everything like google’s powerful as are quick. Google search you know there’s a reason they one of the biggest companies in the world. Because they’re really good at what they do. Google could buy earth amazon. One of the two is going to bash you. Google the resource. And i’m saying amortized. Although if you can support honestly your your local bookstore other information suppliers support them But the information is already available to you and you know because there’s always an issue with compensating people that’s the way you can access it for free without astle the rest of but The the good thing is found to in manley looking through some of the resources that turkey gave me through. That conversation is in a lot of instances when you actually get those results so he. He recommended a books. You’re actually supporting the people who need. Who are part of that. Like the books. You recommended were written by aboriginal people so by purchasing their resources and learning about this is as a sort of a side benefit of teaching yourself and learning more about the issue. And then working out what you can do about it. You’re also supporting the people that you’re trying to learn how to support in a different way as well. So it’s got this sort of Financial i guess. Support thing along with it. If there are resources to purchase a lot of the resources all developed by the researchers. That’s the image that comes to mind and there is still much more out there that are by folk of color but it is not their work. That is dammed. You know the the highest level which now we can do a whole podcast on that too.
00:55:03 – 00:56:28
Amazing what an oem keep you any longer. Thank you so much for coming back. It’s always an awesome conversation. We definitely needs to do it again. Yes is a. Where can people find your amazing cocktails and salads fashion. Fash oh my goodness all all the things right so on instagram. I am the academic theorists beautiful. And all throw that link and any others you twitter account as well. I’ll throw that in the show nights so that people can check you out if they aren’t already following you for epic friday night drinks and food and fashion advice as well as you want. Learn a few things as well awesome friend. Thank you program. Thanks again if you liked this episode and want to check out more head over to occupied podcasts dot com or search occupied podcast and your favorite podcast app if you have thoughts or reflections on the topic discussed today. Please do get in contact. We’d love to hear from me. And lastly if you’ve got some value from this and you want to help us out like subscribe share it with friend remember. Be good to yourself. Be good to others and always keep occupied.
104 – My Hospital Stay Reflection
Mar 10, 2021
So it took 35 years but in early December 2020 I had my first experience being admitted to hospital. It was eye opening to say the least and my experience highlighted for me certain things that I NEVER considered when working for the same hospital system. These are my reflections on my hospital experience.
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
So early december. I had my first ever stay in hospital and during that time. And since all of the follow-up excetera i have really been trying to focus on using it as a learning opportunity to see what it’s like on the other side of the health service. I would like to have a conversation today about my experience. And hopefully there’s some tidbits in there that you can learn from and reflect on your own service delivery or your own experience on the other side of the fence So here’s my reflections on my hospital. Stay get a named brock. Cook and welcome to occupied in this podcast. Where aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy we explore the people topics theories and underpinnings the make this profession sewing credible. If you knew here you can find all that. Previous episodes and resources at occupied podcasts dot com. But for now let’s roll the episode in early october. Twenty twenty is started getting a sore throat. I had assumed that shoe to the weather becoming extremely hot and the fact that we started using air conditioning. More i was coming down with a cold. I tend to get sick very often. But when i do tends to be around those times where during my day i change from hot to call hot to cold environments sort of more regularly. That sort of shift in temperature is really often during the day. Tend to mess me up a bit. So i just assumed i was getting a cold. It started out. Felt like a bit of a nice strip thrive. That kind of thing took some throat. Lozenges etc fell my glands role a little bit swollen etc. Didn’t think too much of it. The next day that would have been like a wednesday the next day so thursday it was slightly was nothing to be concerned about. I’ve definitely had worse. Flus and sort of gradually very very slowly got worse throughout that thursday so went to bed about ten o’clock on thursday. Not not thinking anything open. I think had a throat lozenges or something just before oh into bed just to try and ease it enough that i could get to sleep. I woke up at three o’clock in the morning. Friday morning and my throat was so swollen. I could feel it impeding on my airway. I could still breathe fine. I was struggling to talk. It fell on. My tongue was swollen. And i thought this isn’t really good. This no longer feels like it might be a cold. I should probably go and get checked out now for a bit of context. I had the day before. Already made an appointment with my gp for that friday afternoon to go and get my throat checked anyway. Just in case at three in the morning it was at a stage. Where i was like. I can’t really white another just over twelve hours for my gp appointment. I’m gonna go into a med and see and get checked out. So i took myself into emergency department at the local hospital here. Which is where my story begins side. I’m rocking up. And i will preface this that i am not out to slag off any particular service any staf any department anything like that. I am simply conveying my experience with going through this system i system that have never been on this side of before of never had a hospital. Stay that our member. Apparently i had a short one went ahead. Add noise that. When i was a kid. I have no recollection of that But this is my first time that i’ve ever had access emergency services. First time i’ve ever stayed any extended time in a hospital or dealt with a lot of the professions that i dealt with during this i. I’ll preface it with that just in case it comes across because as positives and there’s definitely negatives To my experience the very first i would say probably negative was trying to actually sort of check in emergency. I rocked up the Obviously my iron ambulatory wanted myself in and trying to speak when i could. I was having some trouble breathing to a lady on the other side of a perspex screen. Who is asking me all kinds of details.
00:05:03 – 00:10:00
And i can’t speak. She’s struggling to understand me but rather than come up with some other way for me to be able to get her the information that she needed. We just continued this for a rather long on what felt like often al until she got enough details that she could actually admit me to or me on the computer. Anyway to the emergency department. I then waited at the front or in the waiting area at the front of the emergency department for not too long before nurse came out and took me and another lady who had been waiting there monitoring are how long she was there when i arrive. Says she’d been that long than me through the serve stores out into the actual emergency ward where she essentially showed us to a bed bed in an emergency. If you’re not sure is pretty much. Just a little curtained-off area. They’re very taught very small. They’re not very comfortable and it wasn’t too long. I i came pretty much all the same questions. The lady beforehand had asked me through the perspex gave her all of that information. It was stuff about what i’d been doing. You know what. I’d noticed how long the simpsons have been there all the usual questions you would think of a background as to the presenting issue. That was all fun straight. After that i had a junior doctor come and see me again all the same questions that the nurse had literally asked me probably ten minutes beforehand. This junior doctors However did a physical examination of my throat and my tongue and surrounding areas etc tribeca. What was going on which is fine. There was a slight bit a pain. She was quite gentle so it wasn’t too bad when that was sort of parking around my mouth in my my tongue etc. She had no idea what was going was a very unique presentation. I’ve found out since that even the when she went and got sort of her boss which i believe was the registrar on that shift. He came to the very similar examination. He wasn’t quite as gentle. Buddy was still. He was still really good. Those doctors in the emergency department. Wh- excellent keeping me in the loop about what they were thinking. What thou doing. What was going on. What was the next step. Excellent the emergency department at that hospital. It was as good an experience. As i could have hoped on the circumstances i guess they originally thought that it was some rare condition. Based on the fact that one side of my tongue was swollen and raised and my tongue. Wiscon- to slow ping and apparently that was some super rare condition that this Doctor had only ever seen before in his studies years ago. But that kind of made me somewhat of an anomaly for a short period. And i got more attention than i think i needed during that time. He did ask if students could come and have a look and examine because it was at the time he thought was going to be the super rare condition. Truck honey remember what. It was called some big medical name. The educator in me went. Yeah sure that’s fine mcafee lifelock. I got nowhere to be him sitting here waiting for you guys to work out what it is and how to fix it so i was more than happy for them to come and have a look. I eventually hurricane. I probably saw twenty doctors In that first couple hours Would come poss and purely ask if they could have a look do a little examination. Some of them were there for a minute I was poked and prodded more than i was expecting to. When i said that i was happy for that to happen. But in the end again the the educator in me or the want to assist in people’s landing Didn’t blink an eye when i that’s one. I got to a point where people were coming up to me and going. Oh your that such and such or you’re the person it wasn’t even my name. It was your the person with such and such condition by that stage. I was starting to think. Wow this is gonna make an interesting reflection at the end of it because that being labeled as a condition was definitely a new experience for me. It wasn’t some something that i was super pleasant or soup Comfortable with Up i never said anything at the time that we’re doing their job and again i was there for assistance. I had no idea what was going on.
00:10:00 – 00:15:00
I wouldn’t say. I was stress too worried because i like. I said i was still able to breathe. I started getting a lot of pain paint swallowing pain drinking pain anytime. I can talk anytime. I move my tongue. It would hurt so even though i could breathe. It hurt to do pretty much anything else i. I was trying to limit that which sending thirty five million doctors around to talk to me. Probably wasn’t assisting in it. I was sent for a c t where they discovered that it wasn’t actually this super a condition that they originally thought it might be all in reflection. I think they were kind of hoping that it would just to liven up their day or something. But in fact it was a massive soap starring in my saliva gland on the left hand side onto my tongue that had then become so infected and saw a swollen that it was actually pushing up on my tongue and then when it had nowhere else to go there was pushing in towards my airway side. The odd thing was often. I had that answer. I don’t think are sore now. The doctor until i got moved to award It was very it was an interesting experience. Where one it was on my slack. I i can understand why people play the victim. Because i had more attention than i wanted. When it was essentially sounding what could be super super severe and rare. And i was in there trying to google. What was what the treatment plan was for that particular condition etc and it didn’t sound very good But as soon as they found out it was something that sort of mundane that was it now was interested in talking after that the other issue was i was in the originally. They kept me onto by mouth. Because up until i found out what the actual issue was. They weren’t shortfalls. Gonna need surgery or anything like that. So i was kept nobody mouth. I got in there at three thirty. Am and by the time. I’d got back from the c. T. i had the answer. They realize that there was gonna be nice surgery i. It was probably about three o’clock in the afternoon. Saw lordy been there for twelve hours and eighty bed just sitting on it. He’s not the most comfortable thing. I was starving. I hadn’t had any water Either and it was difficult to get a plan What was going to happen with regards to the next step by that stage once once i had that sort of an saw so i i ended up having to go up to the n. T. and i had a skype. They checked out my throat to make sure my throat wasn’t being impeded from the inside or anything like that And there was purely this Swollen tissue around this this stein. Why before i left n. T. oft the skype that was oh that oh came back on before i left because i was admitted under the anti tame. I asked them if it was okay to eat. Now that they knew that the plan was gonna be that. I was going to have to stay in hospital and going some. Iv antibiotics for a few days. There was going to be no surgery. Okay sweet. that’s awesome to have some food have some more. Yep sweet niwa race. I had to go back down to d because that would chaka’s and almost waiting for a bed on the surgical ward. So i’m back down to ed just as the nursing shift handover was happening I heard during the hand iva that i was apparently still nil by mouth by which a doth protest because i obviously the anti hadn’t put that into the notes from my appointment in the department so the nursing staff in a d was still under the impression that was nobody math by that stage. I was getting hungry but that will really good once. I pointed out. Mike dude i just got back from ent. They said this is the plan which was written in the knights but the nobody mouth ending actually wasn’t conveyed cy. Shanna bringing in t- it took about forty five minutes but they found out she got permission to yes you can have some food etc and i got like hafa sandwich and a bottle of water which was by that stage. Because i hadn’t eaten the day before. I think it was about twenty eight hours. Since had anything fluid food or fluid. That was the best tasting.
00:15:00 – 00:20:03
Sam tell you what was on it now. But that was the best tasting sandwich i’d have had at the on because i was fading away to a baby elephant. Apparently eventually i got moved to the war now. This is in my experience where i think most people would guy your health. Professional health professionals make terrible patients. And i can agree with that for the most part because one of the things that annoyed me and i know it was hospital policy but it was really really frustrating. Was the fact that no one would allow me to walk anywhere. And that’s annoying. I feel like an easy situation where i can’t go any way. I can’t do anything being able to go to the appointment or move to the war etc on my own. Steam was one of the only things that i actually had control over in that situation. And that was being taken away de. I was in there for a starring in my mouth. I wasn’t on any medication at that point. In time i walked in a drove. The hospital. And i walked in on my pal. There was nothing impeding me from mobilizing. I’d been often wandering and garner the toilet etc in the in the idi ward the whole thirteen fourteen hours that i was in there and multiple nests. Had seen me do this but for some reason. Walking to the next ward was pooh-poohed. Anyway i got stubbing at some points and at one point i gave often just sat in the chair and push me around which was to me. I felt at the time really demoralizing. I found it really embarrassing. And i know there’s no reason for it but to me if i’ve got the power to do something myself and you’re taking that away that’s really disenfranchising and the everything else that have been going on. It has been a really emotional die. I was so tired up. Since three o’clock i was hungry house thirsty. I was not knowing what was going to happen. I’d be on the final tried to be on the phone to work to say. I’m not coming in which was an interesting phone. Call when you can barely speak but it was just sort of this one and it seems like such a little thing when you take it out of context but within the context of everything that had happened up until that point it was almost like. This is too much like i caught. I don’t want to deal with this. Just let me walk. It was the walking was the especially being confined to this tiny little bed so long. I’ve wanted to wanted to stretch my legs. I couldn’t go out of the the ward because the is locked. And i guess it’s locked for a reason like if you generally most people if you’re any there’s a reason you’re in there. I was in for the long period just purely writing for bed. Psi it was a very draining experience and it really got to me that the whole like you know. You can’t walk anyway to me and it got to a point where i think halfway to the wall. Actually the nurse. That was pushing me to this other ward. She was getting directions off another nurse. As to which room it wasn’t it was like back the other way like we’d we’d overshot the hallway and she was gonna turn the wheel and i just went and just stood up and walked because by that stage i was like i don’t care what you policy says. There’s no and this is the bad health bad patient. Because i’m a healthcare professional in me coming out but i was I feel like that choice was made for my own. Mental health was just getting a bit too much. So that assad once. I sort of settled into the surgical ward. Which is where i would stay for the next five days. I was on an iv antibiotics so i would have a bag of iv antibiotics every six hours eight hours to three times a day. Which meant. I was getting six o’clock in the morning and i was getting the lost. Wanna like ten or eleven o’clock at night that was okay. His mind being woken up on you. It was only gonna be for a short period. I’m not a person that generally cubs very well with lack of sleep. Which is the biggest issue. That i had was staying in hospital and again i know while of this happens and i can’t imagine why what someone would think. Well how would react. If they didn’t know the reasons for this but one of the biggest issues. I had a staying on award was being waking up every two hours throughout the night to have my blood pressure taken again. Not a big thing. But i’m not a person not a morning person for sure. I don’t deal well with being woken up for many reasons. Fanny reason really but being waking up every two hours is was just barely slept.
00:20:03 – 00:25:01
Because i knew it was coming again in two more alex i i struggled to get back to sleep. Sleep my sleep hygiene tanked during the week that was in the was horrendous kabul that with the fact that i couldn’t really do anything i couldn’t go anyway because i had to be around like i couldn’t just disappear for the day because i had to be around so they could take my blood pressure and etcetera etcetera all of that stuff fairly regularly plus obviously needed the avi antibiotics. But the one freedom i did get back is obviously. The surgical wasn’t a locked ward. So i could actually go for walks clear my head whenever i needed to this cafes and newsagents and all that sorta stuff onslaught on the hospital campus. I was able to go and get a real coffee and sit outside if i wanted to. I went to the news agents and got some photography magazines. And i was reading those while i was in hospital. My wife brought in pretty much all of my tech. So i have my laptop and charges and all of that kind of stuff so i have my laptop Luckily i could access the wallace in the and i watched a ton of net flicks find hospital. Tv the tiny little speaker thing that sits next to your head and probably annoys everyone else in the room highly inconvenient. And it’s tv. I can get much much better shows on youtube or on netflix. Cy i kind of myself. I was lucky. The room was in being a general surgical ward british such a myriad of different people and those a few people that were sort of in and out of the jury mice die but every single person that was in there. I found myself thinking. Like i’d i need to be here like i am not sick enough to be here compared to everyone else in this room doa people with broken backs. People that are just had like almost full facial reconstructions full-body burns joss compared to my pussy little star muscle a gland and a bit of a swollen fright. I was doing much better. I was wanting my rim than i can actually get up gonna show go to the toilet whenever they wanted which was It got to a point where i felt guilty because my my bed. There’s four of us in this room. Obviously this curtains and everything in between but quite often the curtains are open. And you can see how the paper and because my bed. My cubicle thing was at the very back. Like i had to walk past everyone to go to the bathroom and it got to a point where i was like how much feel guilty. Just go to the bathroom going to have a. Shell like being able to do that. Almost feel like i’m rubbing my mobility in their faces. Not that anyone said anything but it was just a thought that the cross my mind after being there for a while. I’m like oh hi. I feel bad and was a couple of times where i would use the bathroom always out and about. Nfo’s out in a bed just went to get a coffee like i would stay out for until i finished it like. I didn’t wanna walk back in with my coffee from the coffee shop in case someone else in that room has it triggered them in some way. Didn’t wanna rub my my other nine my wellness in their face and like i said i know that no one said anything and i know that that’s probably ridiculous but it was A concern from the time and it definitely had an impact on behaviors during the during my style and it got to the point where i would essentially close off the curtain fully around my bed so no one could see that. I was fond sitting in there. Just want to netflix. On my computer or chatting to people sending emails listening to podcasts. And that kind of thing. And i pretty much left. I have my headphones in oregon. Almost twenty four seven just trying to i guess almost create a little bubble around myself. Because i want didn’t wanna feel guilty about being me. And being there for the reason that i was there and not trying to minimize or not minimize but i guess trying to rob in the fact that i was relatively healthy compared to everyone also soaring that whole board. Not just my room so that was an interesting reflection something. I need really sort of realized that. I was doing or even considering or thinking about until after like a diastolic had already been doing it i went. Oh wait a minute. Why am i doing this. Why am i thinking this sigh. My nursing handovers were always super quick. It was always. This is brock. He’s fun that’s it pretty much he gets. Iv antibiotics three times a day. And that’s about it. Yeah anyway. Eventually i was. I was kept in over the weekend. I thought i’d be going on monday. That kept me in another couple of ice. And then i got sin heim think on the choose out of the wednesday the following. Choose another wednesday with another weeks worth of oral antibiotics. But i was feeling much better.
00:25:01 – 00:30:11
The ent consultants or the anti consultant. There i saw. I saw from the registrar’s and everything that i so regularly saw him a couple of times. He was rough. I i saw him. He was obviously in east full suit and tie and puts them rubber gloves on. He was going to have a program. I may off. And i just about bit his finger off because he joss jabbed me in the soft tissue where it was really inflamed and really saw buddy. I think a normal person would have like seen the reaction on my face or realize that the nearly lost a finger and apologized all gone. Ooh guy so. That’s a bit tender. Not not him. He just kept going and want one time he did. Bring it to you tomorrow. I was that saw He was the least gentle merson and in follow up appointments with him since continues to be the least gentle person i’ve ever had to deal with an all spital i. That was my inpatient experience. Overall i all of the nurses ahead on the surgical ward amazing. really attentive. Really caring even though they were while. You’re helping the middle of the often with apologize. And you know i spoke to a few of them about it afterwards and they’ll look outside the bit that i hate about doing that. Job is like waking people up for no reason other than their blood pressure etc. It’s gonna happen. I know i understood that it had to happen. It just wasn’t pleasant But i’ve all that impassioned experience for the vast majority of it pretty pretty good. I couldn’t really fault it. The the biggest issue like a senate. The stop was that sort of communication breakdown at the stock between ed and other departments. And i would come to land that. That’s that’s where the biggest breakdowns happen with my further experience. Anyway so it’s just awesome on those antibiotics with the plan being to give it a few weeks and then i had to come in for an outpatient appointment. Where he’s he thought that they might be able to remove the stein just under a a local anesthetic in that outpatient appointment. He’s pretty quick. They just sort of poverty out. It’s tally overnight on okay. Couple weeks i had. I had my patient appointment. These starting itself is apparently to fall back in my mouth. He wasn’t confident in being able to do it. Just while i was awake. Sing in a chair So he recommended that we do it via surgery under general aesthetic online. I can dot remember ever having surgery so this was going to be another new experience for me. He was the very rough consultant. That i saw that hap- patient appointment so again. Ouch but overall he was really good at explaining sort of the anatomy of it and where it was and how it worked and how the surgery was gonna fix it. Etcetera cannot fault. His his explanations he’s bedside is blunt. But that’s okay. I understand you know when you see that many people in a day that these things it happens floss award to not long into the new year and i have my surgery. Surgery was a completely different base. I have no recollection of having like. I said at the start. I apparently had had a a small surgery when i was a child. Dr remember it at all. This was a very new experience for me. And i’ve never waited in so many waiting rooms in my life. We had to rock up at six. Am just inside. The hospital doors is a a check in area. We had white in that waiting room. We got checked in. We got sent to the surgical waiting room We waited in that room for what felt like an ala. I then gots moved from that room while f. with me with me up until that point we got checked in again in that waiting room with Again i took all the same details that the first checking and waiting room taken there. I was asked to change into a hospital gown and ted stockings and all of that stuff. That’s that’s standard surgical stuff. I was told that it would be best. If i didn’t bring my fire in or anything like that with me. Any personal belongings. I didn’t even take my shoes. Because she told me. Scheme to your wife you pretty much going into surgery now. Reality was however. I was moved into a waiting room. That was full of people in the same hospital gowns. All of which you were wearing their shoes all of which had their fines. And i waited there. Four another hour with freezing fate and nothing to stare at but o’clock or the terrible news. I can remember. It was the day that they were doing the vote to impeach trump for a second time so that was the early on the news for the hour that i was stuck in this waiting room with my feet just freezing because for whatever reason in that waiting the echo was is called.
00:30:12 – 00:35:11
I remember that from that waiting room. I got moved into another waiting room. This waiting room had the very creative name called the holding bay. So i knew it was another waiting room where i was actually put on a hospital bed and i just got to wait by lying down so the best thing about that was a heated blanket which was lovely because my feet were frozen by that stage from that waiting room. I got moved into what was called theta six which i was like sweet going into theater. This is where. It’s going to happen when i went in there or got wheeled in the house like this is a very small room for to be doing surgery in and i spoke with the anesthesiology team. They inserted the needles for all of my ass theater. And all that sorta stuff hung out. There watched the registrar for that team how to insert one of those needles using a piece of paper blah and the machine. Listen to our member the register. i looked Sorry the student looked extremely like lebron james but that could have been my delusional. I’ve been waiting for so many hours in various waiting rooms talking by that stage. Eventually the emt surgical team shared up again all the same doctors that i’d seen before so i was quite familiar with them. They’ll familiar with me. Which is nice by that stage. Because it meant i did nothing the introductions. The very rough consultant had gone mole. Prod in my mouth with these finger just to for good measure and to bring it to the. I think you is what he was doing. I’m assuming checking which side because he’d andrew and arrow on my neck to make sure operated on the correct side. Which was up bit weird. But i can understand why they would wanna do that because i would hate to have woken up and it still be in there but the other side of my mouth have been kind of open from there i got moved into the actual operating theater and from there it was pretty much a boa. They spent some time setting up. I remember there being a thousand people in that room cords and pipes and also stuff flying everywhere and the next minute. I wake up and it was a battle. Our and a bit lighter in a recovery room surgical recovery room which i can only assume is right next to the final operating theater that i ended up in. I’d been intimated the anesthesiologist was there. When i wake up. I can only assume he woke me up. He pulled the chew out. The tube had been through my knives because operated my mouth. That was slightly uncomfortable and that was the loss of sort of him. That was the last doctor. I saw until a bit. Later in this story Nursing staff up until that point had been excellent really good bedside manners had explained things really well overall up until that point it had been a really relatively uneventful but goes fireside a pleasant experience but it had been as best as i could have expected under the circumstances from that recovery room. I got moved to another. Were covering room. Which would be my final recovery room. Luckily up until that point. I will say up until that point through all of my outpatients from optima inpatient stay from through my outpatient appointments and right up until i was put out for the surgery. The plan was this was going to be a day. Surgery always going in. It was getting steiner’s getting taken out. And i was going to be high in the often when i go back to the recovery ward. I was like all right. Suite my logical brian. Was you sit here. I wake up my get checked out. The doctor’s tom the doer review. I get that high. It probably took me. It wasn’t long. At all oregon. It was half hour before. I was feeling like when i first got my felt a little bit groggy. Probably half an hour later. I was feeling fine at forty five minutes later aric and maybe an hour was feeling well enough that i could go and get changed. I changed animal hospital gam but my clothes back on but my shoes back on all again under my own power Wasn’t being wheeled around or anything like that. A wife was We were talking. I would have been about twelve thirty ish that i got to this ward and the nursing. Hanover just happened. And i had overheard because they went speaking directly to me. But i overheard that i was being transferred to the surgical ward again whenever a bed was available and that was a bit confusing for me because up until that point i had no knowledge of this plan i to that nursing hand ever.
00:35:11 – 00:40:03
I know they’ve got a lot of g.’s. Go do for start of the shift etcetera but when she got around to me doing my blood pressure and stuff know. What’s the plan here like. How does this wecht like does the doctor common seamy now like i’m getting ready to pretty candy harm but i just sitting around all day And she said on you’re staying and walked away and that was the start of when things didn’t go as i would have hoped from a health professional view especially one that teaches communication. That’s when things kind of started to go it skew. If and yeah so i was a bit perplexed by that sort of reaction and over the next couple of times that i would see this person one being when everybody else in the woods. Lunch started to arrive in. I wasn’t given any. And i ost on like my able to get some food because you know been fasting Not before it’s again now. I eighty hours later or something. And i’m a little bit hungry and response was you didn’t arrive on the ward until after the launch orders had been placed. So there’s no lunch order for you and again walked away now. I i’ve been on the ward now a couple of times by this stage for the same process that we talked about earlier and i know that if there’s no lunch order there’s always extra meals etc that come on the trolley. Four circumstances like mine where food is still needed. But that wasn’t offered it wasn’t suggested it wasn’t anything. I wasn’t allowed to leave because i was still under monitoring post-surgery etc so i couldn’t even get my own food but more than the food. I wasn’t like superstar. Having like i was when i was in emergency but more than that the the bedside manner and the communication really just blew me out of the water because up until up until this point. I’d had excellent. Nurses excellent doctors mostly excellent. Communication with me was manly just the interdepartmental communication that i thought had lacked a little bit but up until this point communication with me had been unreal. Could not fault it. I eventually got to the point where i asked. Can i please have the doctor common or can you please ask. The doctor actually originally asked if they could ask the doctor about my plan to go high because up until that point the plan as far as i know had been to go home and she replied again with no. You’re staying by that stage. I was getting slightly frustrated with her. Lack of communication or the nurses lack of communication and the bluntness of a bedside manner and complete dismissive of my requests. Which i was under the impression seemed to be quite reasonable like. Can i have some food and i argued with her politely. I was polite about it. But i explained to her that up until this point right up until the point where i woke up the plan was for me to hire all of a sudden the plans change and no one can tell me why all i wanted to know wife. There was a reason that they can happen during the surgery or whatever it was if there was a reason why i needed to stay. I was okay with that but no one could tell me why in the space of one ala the plan changes. And i wasn’t aware of it. I use the launch as an example. I’m like even the fact that there was no lunch or placed for me indicated that there was no intention of me originally staying there longer than the day like i wasn’t meant to be no one had been planning for me to be their cy. Eventually she rang in tea and anti-saddam going to send a doctor down. I understand they’re busy. Took an hour and a half or so for that doctor. To come down jury period. Though was the final straw that i had with that nursing staff where i was sitting on the side of my bed listening to music. I’ll actually have one head finding. That was my left handed so she wouldn’t even seen it. My wife is sitting in the chair beside the bed. I was obviously very much awake and very much a look. ’cause i was sitting there looking around the room observing pretty much.
00:40:03 – 00:45:06
Everything that happened around me When that nurse who had been assigned to my brew my cubicle. Why have you wanna call my curtain. Surrounded bed came into my cutting surrounded room and spoke directly to my wife and said i’m going on launch that nurse over there pointing at the nurses station. We’ll be looking after him and then walked away and i may have called out off to her saying i’m sitting right here because not talking to the person that you’ll working with talking about them while they’re in the room and not acknowledging their existence is one. Oh one something that. I teach my first year students as one of the biggest no knows in any clinical situation. And i can’t get my head around. Why a seemingly experienced registered nurse would do such a thing but i by that stage i was beyond livid with the lack of communication the communication that i did have was so poor that when the doctor came he gave me the option of discharging or staying overnight. He said that the overnight plan was just a precaution thing that there was no indication of any swelling or anything like that that might indicate my surgery at the point in time which was now about four hours afterwards. And i chose to discharge. I one was already solo angry at everything that had happened up like after i’d woken up from surgery the lack of communication again. I was still hungry. Because i still hadn’t had any food. This was three hours after the. It’d been pointed to the that. I didn’t get any and i had spoken to the doctor and said like what are the likelihood of the swelling coming up excessively fast. It didn’t last time. It was like a two day thing. He agreed that it would probably be fairly similar. If it did happen and i came to the conclusion that well staying overnight isn’t going to do anything other than disrupts. My sleep again didn’t want to be there already was exceedingly uncomfortable. Those beds on the best show. Anyone piece into ospel will now. I said to the duck. I’ll get high end if anything stotts swelling. If i get excessive pain if anything out of the ordinary he gave me a list of things to look out for all come back and he was happy with that. I didn’t have to sign a discharge against medical advice. Why of all. But i was more than comfortable in that and again i know a lot of people have gone on. You’re just the health professionals terrible patients and that may be the case but it was an experience that i just wanted. I was done with it anyway. I had no issues following that. My surgery went. Well everything healed up fawn and everything has been erique since on reflection. i. I’ve taken some lessons as i’ve just described you guys. I’ve taken some lessons Around communication that. I think a really valuable And it’s reinforced. Some of the things that we’re taught and that we teach to our future professionals around communication like don’t talk about the person like they’re not in the room when they’re right there and that was number one i think being able to try and empower the person to take control to be able to enable them as much as possible to be in. Control is another one within raisins again. I understand hospital policy and stuff. But i think a lot of the time we see reactions that we might interpret as aggressive or frustrated annoyed. Angry when really. It’s being caused by the system that we’re working in and i think a little bit of understanding around that for the people that we work with will massively long way overall. I would say the majority of my hospital. Experience was as positive as could be expected under the circumstances. But there’s definitely some things that i believe that we as health professionals can assist in improving. Actually one story that. I forgot to tell that. Do want to add because when i was waiting in the fifth or sixth whatever waiting room before my surgery i was sitting in a chair in this waiting room staring at the tv watching the trump vote impeachment. Come in there was a guy. I’d never lou. I never actually turned around. Look does listening. Here’s behind me was in bed. He’d already had his surgery the day before i was about ten o’clock in the morning i found out he’d apparently had his surgery at about three o’clock the the apple previous and the nurse was trying to explain to him that there was a rule that you couldn’t get on public transport for twenty four hours after after surgery after waking up from general anaesthetic the quite an accent.
00:45:06 – 00:48:18
I’m not sure what country was from. It sounded sort of germany. But it could’ve could’ve been many of those. I’m not sure he lived on a small island off the coast of where i i live. He lived there so you have to catch a ferry which is technically classed as public transport. So she was trying to explain to him. I believe she might have been a social worker. Nurse i’m not sure but she was trying to explain to him that he couldn’t get on the ferry until three o’clock which would have been you know when the twenty four hours was up but she said that she was explaining that we could arrange so that you could get there at three o’clock so that when three o’clock rolls around you know you can get on the ferry and get hired as quickly as possible and she kept saying to him like we can put you on the bus so that you at the ferry at three o’clock so when that twenty four hours is up you can jump on the ferry and get high and this poor guy. I went around in circles for about twenty minutes because this pull couldn’t understand why he couldn’t catch public transport i e the ferry but he was going to catch the bus to the ferry before the three o’clock deadline or before the three o’clock sort of caught off and they went around and he was like. But you gonna put me on the bus so walk on. I just cast the boss now. Why kind of if you put me on the boss. Now walk on. Just get on the ferry now and they went around like i said for twenty minutes before even i clicked onto what she was trying to say. Was that that we’re going to get the hospital transport bus to take him to the ferry so that he was at the ferry at three o’clock but at no point did she say the hospital transport. It was just the boss and they just was. It was almost benny hill. Skit sketch it was just they went around in circles. it was almost comical. But it got to the point. Where i was like. Do i just go over and explain that these two people are talking about the same thing and just confusing each other and making i guess bad experience for this poor guy. I didn’t because i got moved onto another wedding room soon after that but it just was another example of when communication is so massively important for creating positive experiences for the people that we work with. I’ll leave it at that for now. Thank you very much. If you still listening by this stage thank you very much. I hope that my reflection of my experience has given you something that you might be able to take away into your own professional practice again once again. If you have any questions shoot me a a message at dm an email however you want to communicate best. Let me know what you think. Let me know your experiences and have an awesome awesome occupied day if you liked this episode and want to check out more head over to occupied podcasts. Dot com or search occupied podcasting favorite podcasts. If you have thoughts or reflections on the tops discuss today please you get contact. Lawsuit lost some that.
103 – Lived Experience Inside Graffiti Culture ft Mr Toy Division
Feb 28, 2021
Waaaaay back in episode 090, the lovely Clarissa Sorlie came on the show and discussed her exploration of graffiti culture. After this episode aired I was contacted by an anonymous therapist, Mr Toy Division. Mr TD was an occupational therapist who has been a part of this relatively unexplored culture for many many years. We arranged for him to come on the show and give a “lived experience” of being a part of graffiti writing culture.
Now Mr TD has done an episode previously on OT & Chill which I do encourage you to check out as well.
So Sit back, relax and see how deep exploring a subculture can get!
Check out his podcast which “includes stories about being a clueless graffiti writer and other related subjects”. If you are an OT in the Sydney area, Mr TD is now offering graffiti workshops for clients. If you’re interested contact him through the Toy Division Podcast instagram account.
102 – Difficult Conversations & BPD ft Keir Harding
Feb 23, 2021
DURING THIS PODCAST TOPICS SUCH AS SUICIDE, SELF HARM AND MENTAL ILLNESS ARE DISCUSSED. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.
A while ago I asked the audience what topics they would like episodes on and there was a big swell of support for an episode on how to have conversations with people about difficult topics. On top of that, there was a lot of people recommending that I get this gentleman in to have that conversation with.
Keir is a bloke that has been on my radar for a VERY long time. I’ve followed his work and his projects for years through Twitter so meeting and connecting was well overdue for us. We discussed the complexities of the healthcare system and how that often fall short when working with people who are diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. We also have an important discussion about suicidal ideation and self harm and where Occupational Therapy might actually fit when working with people experiencing these.
It’s super important that OT’s learn to become comfortable with these kind of conversations no matter what field they are working in.
So very accidentally so I my parents got divorced when I was doing my a-levels which is what you do before you go to UNI. Okay, so I didn’t have a brilliant time doing those exams before you leave. So I finished my levels without any offers for University. So I had to go through our clearing system of trying to find a place to do something so awful and I had it in my head but I was going to be a physiotherapist and I had this idea about traveling the world with Rugby teams and doing lots of massage and that kind of thing and you know started going through clearing couldn’t get these courses. And so someone said, well, what do you think about doing occupational therapy? And I went yeah, let’s do that and they’re right. Well think about you for this course, then we’ll think about you for the occupational therapy course will give you a call back and then because this was like a million years ago. I had to walk down the library to look up what occupational therapy was dead. Click through a couple of Brooks for yeah. Yeah, that’ll that’ll do about that might be okay might be able to switch to physiotherapy while I’m doing it and I am in London on an occupational therapy course, I think I was a terrible student for a big long time. And then I did my mental health placement on the second year. And yeah, I think the song is about being part of a touring rugby team went out the window then and I just thought I want to work in Psychiatry. This is where I want to be. What was what was the the placement was impatient or Yes, it was an inpatient. Psychiatric hospital I tell you one of the things that really struck me but and and it just kind of like really showed me that this place was very different to buy it experienced Soldier. So I was walking through the reception and there was this really bad smell and we looked around and if there was that and we looked over and there was this woman squatting on the floor defecating off. I was like look look what that woman’s doing and they said yeah, she’s visiting a guy on ward nine so the visitors coming in and doing this and I’m not going to get these expect other places in my life. I see that on a regular time. You never see anything like that interesting me write a couple of years ago. I was at this celebration of old T’s patients on Princess. Anne said to me. Oh, what was what was some of your memorable experiences and working in mental health and I felt oh do I tell that story or not and I did Serenading the royalty. So that’s that that’s clearly about the royal family want to hear stories about public expression. That’s what they want. I’m sure it’ll stand out as a highlight from a trip post. You’ll remember it hopefully cuz I can see she loves till I hit the punch line which might have been politeness a lot but they were a couple of people from the Royal College of Occupational Therapy looking at me as violence.
00:05:05 – 00:10:11
Yeah, if I just dropped my trousers in the room it was what is this man doing? He got a good story out of it. Yes. Yes, but it’s like I’m surprised impatient didn’t scare you away from mental health month, but I quite like the idea of getting people off the boards and it was my first experience of kind of doing things with people who were I kind of thought I probably couldn’t articulate it very well at the time but they were just kind of like outside of my reality and I felt that was quite fascinating that something had happened that they they were not connecting to the emails in the same way that I was so yeah talking to people who would repeat back everything you said talking to people who had ways of understanding things that sounded like some kind of spy novel and just I don’t know cuz she got to ask them about their lives in so much detail. You became a part of town. Narrative which seemed so much better than the see somebody and fix them up that kind of fell in the physical settings, but that really touched on the wage and the the stories was something I always cuz I work in a couple of different inpatient units over my career and the the stories you were here always fascinated me and home for me. The interest was more around sort of how that story developed cuz for a lot of them I could sort of work out like where the store or you had like, there’s some basis in reality to some of it and it was sometimes like a misinterpretation of an event or something that someone had said to them and then it’s sort of that got skewed and she could kind of almost tracked back to what actually happened to how they got from that to you know, whatever the the big tail that you were being told was and Thursday. Out of an OS just fascinated me and I think it really kind of cemented. I felt like a lot of people and it’s well-documented in history mental health treatment history that for a long time people in mental health were sort of treated almost as long as people they were you know to unroll with lock them away or we essentially treat them like farm animals and some cases and even just making that simple and a lot of home maybe still look at that, but that’s another story but I think that making for me making that link between like okay like these stories that are sometimes super her labret and out there and like you said something like a spy novel can sort of be interpreted into reality as I see it in a lot of cases is if you’re willing to spend the time and get to know the person and sort of explore it with them and that to me sort of went. I feel like these did that dip people know not not dead. Like in death of that, but it’s like they’re not it almost I guess gave me hope that the work that I was doing was actually going to offer help these people cuz there’s a lot of I’ve heard all you hear all sorts of things from other professions on boards and stuff like that where you know, you are such and such as hopeless has been here for months and months and he’s never going to get better or that kind of thing. And I think in the I always found working in a ward it was very much. I was kind of difficult for me in the first world that I worked that cuz I was a new grad because you kind of in this little bubble where you only ever see what happens on the war and I never cuz I was in new grad. I hadn’t committed any other places. You never see like the progress from the war you only ever see people at their very worst kind of thing. So I found in that role initially thought some of those sort of I guess perpetuating stigmas that other people were sort of taught other staff were saying on the ward. I almost started to I guess believe some of them like, you know, such-and-such is a hopeless case or back on it. So and I think yeah making that link between some of those sort of stories Andrea and my reality with my version of reality really so I think it was so high opening thing for me. Yeah a couple of weird things. I used to find working on an inpatient unit was dead. My Style Network people tended to be on inpatient units a lot longer, whereas now I think people kind of go in short admission and names again and I always remember some of my old colleagues say in do they get them off the board so quickly they they never leave them long enough so that they’re able to access OT and I always used to think.
00:10:11 – 00:15:30
Just getting there. What are you talking about? You know, freshener you where people have got to be a certain level of Wellness for you to get involved and I always thought quite annoyed that people didn’t see that that Acuity off when somebody came in but that was a reason to walk away as opposed to a reason to get in there when they’re functioning was absolutely through the floor. So yeah, I got off of frustration with my colleagues when they’re going to I had the same thing and in the one of the impatient years that I worked at because there was multiple OTS but on the second one, I was the only one so I just did Ed. Myself, but yeah, I had the same thing in that it was like, you know such as just come in. We’ll wait a few days until he starts getting a bit better before, you know OT goes in season. I’m like just yeah just need to talk to the dude like yes. Building Rapport, like start the process. It’s not going to hurt and if anything it’s going to make your life easier and his life easier. You probably get him out of here quicker. It felt like a quest to make our input a relevant to the board if we would only start to work with people when they were on the cusp of leaving it kind of sent this big message that we weren’t required wage. But the population there and people have the attitude. We just got the wrong patience. If you have any patients would be doing some good work and like oh such a nonsense off. Yeah. That’s that’s that even just that is interesting. I never thought of it like that, but I think that’s that correlates well with my experience as well on terms of like people were often, uh, almost like picking and choosing who who they would see based on diagnosis based on level of organization. Sometimes like if there were in a depending on how far they were from the the clinicians reality. I guess you could say, yeah. Yeah people We’re often put it in and it’s not uncommon for award to be like to for a too hard basket to be discussed on award unfortunately, but yeah, I always found that some of the some of the clients. I had the most success and the most personal enjoyment with were the ones that were passed by other people as too hard, you know to acute. Mm. Yeah actually work with and there’s some of the ones that I had the the biggest breakthroughs with and like the most personal where you call warm and fuzzies cuz I actually feel like I made a difference to this person. Yeah, but even like I used to say when I used to have students I’m like, even if you on the day they get here you just go and introduce yourself and not a chat. If you do nothing. Other than that then like that’s more than they probably going to get there in a strange Place. Some of them have never been there before. It’s not the most I can probably speak for all wage. Units they’re not the most stimulating of environments and they usually not very nice or comfortable. They usually freezing cold. For some reason. I don’t know why it doesn’t matter what off our country country a little Tropical Greenery over here. I don’t know why because it’s hot outside. So they just dump the air-con and it just that everyone I’ve ever been down here is freezing. So I don’t know how people sleep at night so cold. Yeah, they’re just not very inviting environments. But if you can be a happy face be a friendly ER, you know, introduce yourself actually show genuine interest in a person if you do nothing. Other than that when they first arrived you’ve already made more steps in any other profession on that Ward, I think and I think you know if we were going to put it in our own terminology, I think that is you’re addressing the social environment around him a little bit you are being a friendly place. So that will be perfect person but you didn’t have to be you know, in a sense that is a bit of an intervention and you know, we can write that off as just chatting to 70 but it’s not it’s it’s it’s worth the effort. That’s another one of the biggest Revelations I’ve ever had in my career is I am part of the environment for that person. It’s like a lot of questions. I found even talking with a lot of a team specifically like see themselves as having an impact on that person’s environment or like almost like an external force on that person on their environment on their occupations God, but without ever really looking at like they’ll talk about Therapeutic use of self but I don’t know how many people actually consider that in doing that you are the person’s environment and by changing like if you go in there, it’s just nothing else different other than you’re in a shity mood that’s going to have an impact on that person’s social environment and it’s going to have an impact on that person and I do Wonder off in a queue coming back to I guess have it working with the difficult people.
00:15:30 – 00:20:34
I wonder how often that I guess labeling of someone as a difficult person is mainly just them reacting to you, you know, cuz I’ve seen it a lot in other caring professions where if they’re in a shity mood then the whole Ward tends to sort of carry that mood whether they mean to or not. It’s sort of transference and Thursday. We use always used to say on the on the last board that I worked on that your mood is kind of contagious within that little cuz it’s such a little enclosed bubble on the ward. Yeah, whatever you bring into the ward is contagious and that metaphorically speaking but probably nowadays. I guess I can’t really say that nowadays Lobby carries a very different meaning but speaking around food when I’m saying that rather than bacteria and viruses but thinking about how those influences in the social environment do kind of reverberate off each other off. Remember, I think it was like the first acute inpatient unit that I was employed on I’m a rag I got admitted and the leader of this kind of pointy came out and he said, oh he’s got personality disorder and I didn’t know what that meant at the time and I was like, oh, what’s that just means that you can’t do anything to help them and because I didn’t know any different I kind of like, oh, right. Okay, that’s a shame and you know the idea about we can’t help those people. They’re just walk and seek and they just manipulative because I think we’re not trained particularly well in our undergraduate training to understand why people might act a certain way then we pick up there was kind of really stigmatising attitudes from people who also went trains to understand things in a different way and that just carries on you know, and we get this toxic idea of people Who you know don’t deserve to be on the boards people who are the source of their own Misfortune. And unless we do something to combat that that just carries on and off and I think that’s a big part in those people who you know, we end up thinking are we can’t help them because there’s often cuz people have told us that and it’s often because people have gone into trying to help them with the idea that they can be helped which generally doesn’t help sounds like I had a very similar experience the very first time I again, I never heard of a personality disorder. I was in a case management team and we got a new referral and it was someone with borderline and the general consensus was the can’t give that person to it a new grad because that diagnosis is too hard. It has to go to a super experienced clinician who I date in hindsight anything did any better than anyone else but dead That was my first thing so I’m like any time I saw that diagnosis on a sheet now. I’m like, okay that’s going to go to you know, such-and-such the senior clinician cuz it’s too hard for, you know us mirror new grads or ask me about no base level clinicians kind of thing. And I think that even just that kind of set the tone of that’s to harm. Well, there’s nothing I can do that’s that’s something for us and there’s no extra training to go from a base level service to a senior therapist here. It’s just like it’s a pay pay rise. It’s about it since you’ve spent off a bit longer pretty much just means you’ve been there for a while but so I don’t know what they were going to do that I couldn’t do and I’d but I’d never actually fought that at the same time. It was just this is the Lions done. So okay. This is the way it must be and I think that’s going to be cemented in in some team. Yeah, I think about idea the dog. God because borderline personality disorder is diagnosed quite badly in my experience. You’ve got wonder when you see it written in some of these notes does it mean that something given them a very thorough assessment and they have checked off what they meet certain criteria or not, or does it mean that people have actually found them hard to work with so decided they’ve got borderline personality disorder and you know life is a lot of my experiences the people that other people find hard to help other people find anxiety-provoking they get that label put upon them and that’s that’s how it comes about rather than as a process of thorough assessment and understand how I would spend probably that died like to be PD diagnosis more than any diagnosis has its own I guess stigmatized language that tends to regularly get used with it and just you saying that made me think like I would often hear, you know, it’ll be a a client.
00:20:34 – 00:25:10
That’s got a job. Something like bipolar, but because the clinician has found it difficult. They’ve also then got unofficially borderline traits, which was something that was so common when I was working clinically on like everyone that was difficult had borderline traits and I’m like, I don’t know what that means. Like, what is that’s not a diagnosis. Like what is that just means that you don’t know what to do with them or they don’t like maybe yeah that potentially engage if I went to the conditions like for a person that’s got worried. It was always thought you mentioned some of them before to that sort of gave me flashbacks was attention-seeking the fact that a lot of the people that I worked with on the war didn’t I believe that the acute unit isn’t the right place for someone with borderline because it’s just feeding into their you know what they want kind of thing. And I feel really I don’t know. I still seeing a Kerry somewhat I guess kind of guilt in a way because I didn’t know any better at the time to actually go. No, that’s actually true. That’s not how this diagnosis works. If that is the correct diagnosis that you’ve been you know that you’ve given them anyway, cuz I also agree I think it’s something that is it’s almost like the what seems to be almost like the like The Back-up diagnosis when they can’t sort of pinpoint another one. So the light bulb back online as opposed to actually going through the clinical process and formally diagnosing it with you know, it’s ticking all the boxes. Yes. Okay. This is borderline personality disorder, whatever type depending on what manual they’re using I guess I mean even then I don’t think it’s a very useful way of describing people or them making but yes boss. About level UPS often doesn’t happen. I find it’s similar to in Psalm case. I think it just getting better. But I find it similar to autism into in a lot of ways where it’s kind of like we’ve exhausted all these options. So it must be this one as opposed to actually testing for this one. But you know, a lot of people kind of say are people with BPD of actually got autism they’ve actually got disassociative identity so that and I think we’ve got this correction of diagnosis that people find it really hard to think about and you know, is it this way is it about or is it I’m this quest to get the right label. I think we put a lot of effort into it so very little rewards. Whereas I think that’s you know, what are they doing? And can we understand why they’re doing that and if we can understand that then we can start making some decisions about men developed. Whereas like is interesting. Is it dead? You know, we can pull our hair out from the label something because I think it gives us some feeling of control and knowledge when in reality. It does very little to be able to help that person or people formulate wage. We’re off and that’s it and I can see like I have talked to people where they’re like, you know, the best thing ever was when I got my diagnosis and that I knew what was going on and I’m like, oh that’s cool. Well, yeah, obviously everyone’s different but then there’s other people that love the people that I’ve worked with just going through that because that process of actually getting a diagnosis sometimes can take years like it can take you know, multiple admissions where they’ll collect historical data across those Admissions and then compare that to previous Admissions and like it can take a long time to get a formal diagnosis month and that process can be traumatizing to people actually the process of getting a diagnosis can be can be causing trauma to dead. The individuals and the thing that I’ve I mean, I’ve said it for years and while I was still working clinically to every student. I think I’ve ever had like I can as an o t off because I’m not I don’t view o t as a medical model profession. I can completely do my job without knowing what the diagnosis is. Anyway, like I don’t need the label to do occupational therapy. Yeah. I need to get to know the person I need to know what they want to do with their lives and I need to know some of the things that might be stopping them from doing that and that’s a pretty good place to place.
00:25:10 – 00:30:27
Well, yeah, particularly if the diagnosis is one that is associated with not being able to help people be an undeserving with care. You know, I think in that way diagnosis can be incredibly unhelpful. I think it’s it. There’s a lot of uh, pretty much just building on what you just said, then like there’s a lot of stigma. I thought you’d call it that comes along with these diagnosis that quite often it’s better. If you don’t know before you go into it cuz it stops you going in there with any preconceived ideas. Yes, I always get blowback when I say that but yes, okay the safety things that you need to know, but you can no safety safety things got nothing to do with diagnosis. Like there’s no reason why you can’t get off safety and over without getting. Oh, they’ve got this diagnosis and blah blah blah might they’re very different things where I do feel even on why do I find I find health staff to be the biggest perpetuate as of stigma of any population because I think in a lot of ways that kind of desensitized to it a bit so they just it just comes out. Am I suppose again is what people are taught is once that staff culture breeds. And unless there’s a voice articulating a different way of thinking about it. Then people don’t know and like you say, you know, maybe stuff perpetuate stigma more than anything else. I think the general public they don’t know anything about you know this area of work so they are happy to think. Well, I don’t know anything. Yeah, whereas, you know, somebody on the wards will think no it’s my job to know there so I know about these people and what they need and what they don’t and there is something about the lack of knowledge that a defense against that is to have some confidence about it. Which again I think we would be a much better off being a bit more humble and curious and we’re walking alongside people so often wondered cuz I don’t like obviously I’m working in the University now and I’m obviously overseeing or I can look over all the course material and I’m like, I can’t see anywhere. Within that sort, of course material that those kind of ideas would be picked up particularly with the mental health stuff cuz that’s my wheelhouse but I teach so I know that I’ve I’ve actively trying to make sure that there’s none of that kind of stigmatizing language or anything like that. I teach my students specifically about stigma and how it develops and you know, social constructionism and that kind of thing often. So hoping that they are very aware of it when they go out and then I still see that these workplaces some workplaces. It’s still there and I’m like we’ll obviously I’m sure other courses aren’t you know are actively trying to do the same thing that I’m trying to do or we’re trying to do in that we’re not trying to teach our students. I guess these bad habits on these bad ideas. So I wonder where this come from. Yeah. And I think it can move some stuff group. See you’ve never had the training initially. So they’ve just moved on the job, you know, so I live enter to talk to Suicidal Thoughts by talking to suicidal people on the phone and think that’s a terrible way to learn more me. I’m a person I was talking to but I think that’s what happens is we learned to work with a very complex difficulties by just being in front of them article and that’s that’s not ideal. And I think if you I can I can appreciate that not every higher education syllabus can kind of think right this diagnosis on this presentation, but I think when I was at University, I was prepared for people who’ve woods they they really want their lives to be different. They would be grateful for my advice than they would go off and do what I suggested and wage. A big part of me wanting to do OT was to be helpful, you know, and I I am a good person because I do helpful friends. And then if I’m working with people who you know, they’ve lived through a life of them so they don’t trust me and you know rather than being grateful for what I’m offering. They’re quite annoyed that I’m being rather flippant in mind suggesting the mid furious at the end and then I’m leaving work at the end of the day thinking or actually I’m not a good person because you know that person seems worse than when I started and yeah, I think that’s a brilliant recipe for being really annoyed and having really powerful feelings against the people we’re working with whereas if you can understand the people in a different way if you can think of bounced off of what is it about this person’s life that would mean that they wouldn’t trust in what is it about this person’s life that would mean but they don’t see their capacity for solving problems and then Thursday.
00:30:27 – 00:35:04
Changes, but I think if you can understand one, then we can be a lot more imperfect and helpful. Whereas I think what we often time to do is think when I wouldn’t have to like that so they’re bad in some way for Patiently they do. Yeah. I do wonder how often I guess intervention plans are often like but here’s what I would do as as it there was not Jose. He’s like any therapist even just friendly advice that I hear like nurses and social workers and stuff giving clients on on Wards, but I think it’s it’s important to be aware that That you know, what you would do is shaped by, you know, your experiences and you’re potentially lack of trauma and your full Social Circles and your environment. They’re going to go. Sides here. But and what you’re recommending based on that isn’t back to fit with that lesson who’s coming to you with that or more history who doesn’t trust you who doesn’t want to be there who doesn’t even know what you do and you’re not presenting it in a way that they even care about whatever you suggest. They probably just going to tell you the shove it and then you’re going to go well, they’re difficult to work with them all because you didn’t spend much time to actually get to know them and what they’re bringing to the table essentially soul exercise that I often do when I’m training wage. Is to try and get people to think about a baby’s needs and then a toddler’s needs and people will always talk about all they need to learn right and wrong. They need to learn their place in society. And that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, but so many people I work with haven’t had that socialization, you know, so when I’ve worked with people who was who went crying to their mum to say that the kids were home with me they mum said, well, you need to go and beat them up and I’ve worked with people whose father would dangle them out of the window as a punishment for Steph and you’ve just got to accept that these people again, we have really different ideas about themselves other people in the world’s then we’re going to have an unless we can appreciate that and get into that mindset. Then we’re always just going to be judging but they’re thinking about things wrong but you know, right and wrong and they’re choosing to do this actually may be the way that right and wrong was explained to them was very different to what we picked up dead. I remember working with a guy who has diagnosed with schizophrenia, but he’d been he was only I think he’s about twenty-five and he but he been in the hospital system since he was sixteen and because of that and decide his early diagnosis at sort of 16, I think at the time I didn’t know him when he was diagnosed. I think it was might have been drug induced but I’m not sure but he development why is he kind of stopped at sixteen? So at twenty-five when I was working with it, you know, the the complaints that I got when I when he got referred over to my team to me were he doesn’t want to work. He just wants to spend all this money on video games. He wants to smoke Wade. He wants like I’m like, he’s a sixteen-year-old. Like we’re expecting this sixteen-year-old to all of a suddenly magically be a twenty-five-year-old without any of the things the experiences that we would have gone through between 16 and 25 V that turned us from an adolescent. That’s solely focused on our own needs and pleasure and you know, having fun and having friends and doing whatever it is we want and no responsibilities. Into a young adult who you know, sometimes at that age most a lot of people would have qualifications and be starting careers and that kind of stuff and we’re expecting him to do that with none of the actual training was saying what that experiences are there training. That’s what how we get to that stage and I’ve always hung under that cuz for some reason his case it was like so obvious to me that faith is what was happening and I’ve always looked at anyone who’s been in the system cuz I’ve always found if once you get into a mental health system, if you’re in it for a long time can cause quite often, you know with Admissions and then you’ve got a period of time after admission.
00:35:04 – 00:40:06
We still trying to readjust those periods. Take away from life experiences that you might normally have a game. Which can yeah stunt your I don’t know I guess progression, you know, whatever you’re meant to be doing it and expect an age. In your Society. So I think that kind of stuff just even the fact that they’re in the system whether it’s a cute or whether your case managing them or whether you’re on a crisis team and seeing people anytime that there in the system it needs to be noted that this is a time that is being taken away from time that they would be normally having experiences that help people grow. So not only are they having a diagnosis which is taking them away from that. They’re also losing the time that would normally be going towards helping them develop into whatever they’re off stage of life is whatever age they’re at and I think that’s often forgotten. It’s often like if we you know sort of teach them to manage the diagnosis and you know that takes two years two years later. They’ll just be two years more developed does look like that then need to sort of Taylor we’re doing and Taylor our mindset like as soon as I clicked that this kid guy wage. Sort of behaving like a sixteen-year-old. I started working with him like a sixteen-year-old and we made so much progress because I started I was more aware of his level. I was more able to go. These are the kinds of things like I get it I vaguely but I remember being sixteen. I know the kinds of things are 16 year old boy wants to do and it’s usually not much he wants to sleep in to lunch time. He wants to you know, eat junk food for dinner and he wants to like he’s just learning to take control of his life. He’s learning that he has control of his life and he hasn’t quite found out how to manage that control in a healthy way and most twenty five year olds. Most and guarantee. There’s still some out there that don’t buy most twenty five yards a past that and then moving on to the next stage. So yeah, I always found that a fascinating working with anyone. Faith f thing is to sort of see well, where are they just because there are you know, chronologically and age doesn’t mean that the the behaviors of the coping mechanisms of the skills that suck at that age would normally have that this person is actually going to have I’m actually difference isn’t it is that we can look at people and kind of thing, right? This is what they should be doing. And this is double X Y and Z men if their goals are totally different to that page then you know, they’re not going to be part of our kids one and then we can think about it like you did and kind of think right. Well, why is that while we can think the sabotage in their care plan? Deliberately? I’m such a bad person and you know, if we can keep that Curiosity about why does this make sense? Then we can come up with some good reasons and do something with found wire to be the biggest question. It’s always my favorite question cuz I I don’t know even as a kid I always wanted to know why things worked or how they worked and I pull things apart to work out what was going on. I think that I guess it colder the skill set that skill-set sort of carried over into my professional life and that’s always interest me, especially when I got older and I sort of got an interest in I guess psychology side of things. I want to know why people do things. Why do they make the decisions that they make? Why did you react when this happened? Cuz that’s not how I would react that’s different. That’s why why is that different like that? Sort of stuff always fascinated me and I think we need to keep that we need to keep our skin. Why does something makes sense? Because I think it always does you know, I don’t think we do work with people who act totally runs and lie, and I think we become our most dangerous as practitioners when we start asking right and we start just judging their just do it because they are just doing this and as soon as we say that we’ve just stopped thinking about people just don’t care. Yes, cuz I think I mean a lot of people talk about, you know, being a lifelong profession and we’re always learning and I think a lot of people interpret that is CPD off and professional development and that kind of stuff whereas to me. I’m like it’s like individual clients. Like if I meet a new client, I’m learning off that person. I’m learning about that person. I’m learning how they react to learning how they think I’m letting you know what their families like what the hopes and dreams and what they’ve been up to with their life that kind of stuff like that to me is where the learning is because the moment. And I got all yet. I’ve had a person like this before this is what we did then like that’s to me that’s when the learning stops and you just phoning it in so I’ve always that’s that’s one thing.
00:40:06 – 00:45:01
I’ve always really know one thing but one thing I have always been very conscious of is that lifelong learning sort of Monica that gets thrown around with OT so often dead Is to not just think about that in terms of formal courses and yeah textbook stuff. You might usually consider when you when you hear that song that it’s it can be just down to the individual clients and I think in a lot of ways that’s more important than all of that sort of formal courses and learning and that kind of stuff. Thank you, very and I think I think there’s a failure to kind of like having a template of you know, I have some familiarity with this at the moment, but then I can recognize where things diverting from what might fit my template for being able to do that. You know, and I think that’s critical reasoning to some extent but yeah, just thinking schizophrenia. I know what to do with that. That’s not very helpful. Having said that though. I think that’s part of the reason that some people can have get that sense of you know, the they don’t quite belong on this what was cuz I think if you go onto your average psychiatric ward, somebody is acutely psychotic somebody who’s manic then the war thing, right we no longer do with this person. We’ve are very clear about what our role is here when you work with somebody who you know is hurting themselves if you work with somebody who is suicidal it’s wage. Not as obvious what the role is for the team there and again, I think that that not knowing wanting to be helpful and not knowing available that can lead to people being a bit unpopular may actually make us feel a bit. Useless. Yeah. I think that I mean that’s another population of the population but that’s another instance where I’ve heard people talk about having trouble or finding it very difficult to work with people who are acutely suicidal or thinking about self-harm or actively self-harming because I don’t I think that’s one area where It’s not made clear. What oh T’s role is with that in those situations cuz we often and I think because of the a lot of it is especially in like Fair crisis team. A lot of that is due to I guess the urgency of the situation. It’s like well, I don’t have time to you know, sit down and watch occupationally what’s missing from this person’s life and What needs aren’t being met and that kind of thing and honestly, that’s not what they need in that that you know. Of that phone call or. Visit or wherever you are. So I do think that a big that is one area where I think Some extra training might be useful 440 T’s and that might come down to OT courses actually talking about what his what oties can offer home or eat or coyotes offer anything unique in sort of those situations. Do you? What do you think do you think? Oh TVs are sort of equipped or suited not working with people who are suicidal or self-harming are some of your works with people who are suicide and self-harm. Yes. Yes. They are loaded question. Yeah, I I tell you what though, right if we if we got a new client tomorrow and we looked at how they were functioning. We wouldn’t hesitate to look at the things they do and how they get by with them and what the function of the different occupations were and there’s nothing to stop us do we met with self-harm and and suicidality, you know, so for some reason Send you know trigger warning coming, you know, some reason cut in your arms open is useful. It is better in that moment, but not doing it and we can say well that’s banned and you shouldn’t do it or we can understand what’s going on. So I in some way I don’t think we need any more training to do that. I think we just need the inclination to do that and perhaps some encouragement that that area of work. That’s something that we should probably be more interested in men so many other professions and equally as you know, that sometimes life doesn’t feel worth living. So people act as if that is true when they go and do something that might end life or is actively seeking life and the King, you know, let’s be able to adjust and that and particularly let’s be unable to understand why they’re still alive cuz something is happening that is serving a function. That means that they’re still around and again we can kind of go.
00:45:01 – 00:50:03
Well, you know, yep. They they go over those four times and they not dead yet. They’re bad and again, you know can we understand that what’s going on there? You know something really important is happening there that is keeping them alive. Let’s meet you off, but at the moment I don’t think we’re curious enough because that’s one thing I’ve talked about with students and I will actually put a trigger warning on this cuz I know some people uncomfortable with these kinds of conversations, but someone who really genuinely wants to end their life and they’ve exhausted every other Avenue for support and help there is nothing you will do that will change their mind like but the thing is with the number of people that you work with there are a lot of people that still have even just the tiniest sliver of Hope or the the tiniest protective factor. That might be wrong. Just even though they might be attempting at times. There’s something that is stopping them from making it doing something. That is so final that it can’t be undone and there’s a little tiny things that getting to know that person and sort of getting into their narrative and finding those little things and then building on those little things you can literally save someone Life by spending the time and being compassionate and showing that you genuinely care is is a big thing that I always found is dead. I don’t know why but clinicians seem to think that we can bulshit our way through situations and their clinician bullshit is easier to see through the normal bullshit because usually you don’t know the person very well. So it’s even more obvious. Whereas if you genuinely show that you care whether you’ve met that person or not, you can be on a a crisis team and you’ve never met that person before that dog. Mean, you can’t genuinely have concern and care for that person’s well-being and I think finding that or or showing that portraying that to that person is is a big step for a big First Step At least and then try to find those little protective factors. So like you said like they’ve attempted, you know, suicide four times. They’re they’re bad people. I’m like, yeah, but I’m like this something this they’ve dumped something. They’ve got some strength. That’s meant that they’ve survived four times like whether it’s a really supportive support network or dead, you know, they’ve got kids that are they last minute they sort of changed their mind and they can’t go through with it. So they bring the ambulance or whatever. The reason is. There’s something there. It’s not that they’ve failed 4 times. It’s the fact that they’ve survived and and pushed through 4 times like that’s like you like you described before like that’s a good thing, but that’s something that you should log. Right and build on and find out what it is so that you can highlight that to the person and bills on it. It’s it’s the probably the most strength based practice area that way God in health, but I think there’s anything else we can do other than be strengths-based to be successful when working with that population. And humans generally want to stay alive to know equipped a fairly powerful Instinct for that. So, you know, let’s celebrate when Matt instinctive kicking in rather than you know, laying people off but you know, I think we can be really curious about when people are suicidal and I think you hear a lot of people complain that they tell somebody that I feel suicidal and the First Response page if you tried distracting yourself from that. Yeah, I think you know, like my house is on fire. Have you tried distracting yourself? You know, we want to understand what’s going on because you know, it’s not something you know, something is happening in this person’s life that meaningless checking is is a viable alternative. It feels like it’s a useful thing so we can understand what it is in that moment. That means that life’s not worth living and maybe we can do some problem solving around that or maybe we can just validate that actually yeah, it is absolutely awful and then we can have a look at and is it going to be like this forever? You know, can we have some hope that this unbearable situation might change at some point. Can you hang on while we try and do excel buyers said that will change this unbearable thing? I don’t know if I was taught back way of articulating Suicidal Thoughts when I when I was training, I don’t think I was but you know, we we turn out of curiosity we can break this stuff down and you know, and if we don’t I don’t know who else does it, you know that this is an occupation this taking these tablets off drinking and laying down in bed is something that people are doing to serve a function.
00:50:03 – 00:55:06
We need to be able to understand understand better. I think cuz I’ve had these discussions of students office super violent. So nothing new grads that I’ve super vised and clinicians. I’ve supervised around trying to find these strengths when people are in that sort of acute suicidal phase wage. And if you if there’s nothing else that you can find the fact that they’ve talking to you is a big thing like the fact that they’re if they say especially your birth Most health services will have some sort of emergency crisis line where people can ring the fact that they made that like they picked up that phone and dialed the number and they’ve talked to someone because they’re feeling suicidal or sometimes. They attempted something that the fact that they’ve made that phone call means that there’s something there that’s telling them they want to stick around home like sat alone. If you can’t find anything else build on that. Yeah, cuz I think if we see suicidality as a spectrum like you said if somebody really wants to kill themselves, then you wouldn’t need to do anything about it because you wouldn’t know what you know, something is one hundred percent on my end of the spectrum. They just do it. Whereas everything else I think is an invitation for a different outcome. But we can and endings and like I said before like that, it sounds very drastic when I say like you won’t stop them, but the number of people that you’re well that’s cool. But the number of people that you will work with over your career, the number of people that hit that point where there’s nothing you could possibly have done. You don’t know they’re not going to tell you and they just suicide these infinitely smaller percentage than the total number of people that you may talk to about their suicidal thoughts or their place ends or you know, how they’re doing or have that attempted or that kind of thing like, it’s not I’m not trying to make it sound drastic. Like there’s nothing we can do cuz I’m just saying that if someone really wants to wage they will but that is by far and away the minority of people when it comes to the like it’s the total number of people you will have interactions with who are experiencing some song Suicidal Thoughts suicidal ideation that kind of thing. So there’s that give up. Hope there’s there’s tons of them believe it or not. That is actually highlighting that there’s a lot of birth. For you to be able to help people and not only don’t give up. Hope hold that hope for somebody else cuz they might not be able to see it. Whereas you might be able to without actually validating talk about previous experiences of helping people in similar situations before knowing people have gone through similar things and come over the other size, you know, and I think you’ve got a delicate in kind of heard you say that yeah, but you know, we’ve got a lot of experience that we can use would be I think I think one thing that is kind of unique about OT General Health is There’s very few that have actually experienced anything like the people that we actually work with like this very few eighties that have got to that point where they want to take a nice life and they need to bring for support like this. There would be very few. Oh T’s that have ever had to do that for themselves. So there’s very few eighties that sort of have that lived experience of what these people might be going through. So bear that in mind when you are like it’s okay to talk about like like you said before about you know, I’ve worked with people who have you know, described similar things to you and you know, here’s what they sort of Pride. Here’s what they talked about is that but I would be constantly trying to also offer flip that back to like is that similar to you. Do you relate to that not just try not to make it so that it’s here’s me here’s what I’ve done in the past and here’s what you should do cuz it works for someone else. So I’d be using them to more highlight examples of you kind of want to try and get the other person thinking so it’s like here’s what I’ve sort of heard of before, you know, is that something that you know, you have access to your mom. Is she around can you talk to her or you know, do you have any other close family use them as examples to kind of I guess you are high life because you don’t have that lived experience. You kind of highlighting vicarious experience through other people that you’ve worked with or that you’ve talked to Etc, but you’re using that mm. Make the other person still trying to think about their own environment and that kind of thing. You don’t have to highlight. I guess the process of what we’re doing as opposed to what like a prescriptive language is what you do to feel here’s what you do to fix your situation kind of thing, you know.
00:55:11 – 01:00:02
definitely Sorry. Let’s say the Chrome kind of self-harm. The suicidality, comes the rings with people in hospital. And again, I think this is where the environments really important wage. I see a lot of people who in the community they they sell firm in a way that is kind of relatively controlled so they might cut in a particular way or they might overdose and then go to the emergency room and seek help and what I offer to find is that when those people end up on a psychiatric ward off what becomes part of their care plan that is never going to discussed and agreed but he’s enforced as most people are going to stop self-harming there. We’re going to watch and we are going to take away whatever preference you deem to self-harm and then we can congratulate ourselves on keeping people safe while watching as they do whatever they can to get that same relief and say whatever like some Thomas do it and they still need to get it. So they you know, they start ripping Coke cans open to cut themselves with they start ligature in and you know medical news leaking where was for me. It just says there’s something in my environment that suddenly made their behavior considerably more lethal and what organizations often get stuck in is the idea will be can’t let them ain’t now we can have to keep them in this place where their way of acting is considerably more lethal to themselves until they stop doing it as opposed to when they were outside and were able to keep themselves safe a lot more. So a lot of my work at the moment is trying to get people I live environments like that kind of go to our mental health tribunals off and just argue that we can’t keep people in these places that are so dangerous to them, even though it feels weird to be a bit less restrictive. Just look at home. Restriction is interacting on this person that we’re supposed to be helping I think in those are the situations when I’ve worked with people similar to that home. I think the the natural reaction is on, you know, they’re cutting themselves take-away shop things or we’re we’re keeping I think I think a lot of the you know, a lot of that I think the intention is always good and the intention is to try and keep people safe, but you’re right. I I feel like the the lack of understanding about the reasons why that behavior is happening would come full circle back to why again, but why their behaviors happening is actually worsening it in a situation in that situation and I feel like That is hopefully before that but if if that’s the first Contact you’ve got with people is when they first hit the war two things start escalating Thursday and then don’t wait as i t as an OT your understanding of person occupation environment just even just those three concepts is off the perfect for trying to understand why people do the things that they do and what’s triggering certain behaviors. So what string self-harm behaviors Obviously if the behavior is happening outside and then brought in the hospital and it escalates then there’s something that it’s sort of carried through it’s not obviously not the home environment specifically that’s causing that behavior. You might need to explore. I always find out you to be kind of like being a bit of a detective and you can you get all these little Clues and you start the piecing it together, but do it with the person so obviously the behaviour if it’s something that’s been happening at home. Then there’s something about that home environment that is also happening to a larger scale if it’s escalating in the hospital environment and that gives you some Clues to start actually having a look at well what’s going on, you know, yeah the separated from their social networking with but they’re locked away in here. So they’re even further they feel like they’re further separated. It could be something like that, but they’re the kinds of things that you can start looking at. Based on the clues that you get you can be your own little Sherlock Holmes have a say and you only get those Clues if you’re interested in you’re curious and we can talk to people about this stuff. And yeah, and I think sometimes with the idea that the OT work starts when this stuff is out the way and you know, I would always say that this turns our work.
01:00:02 – 01:05:06
This is the stuff that we shouldn’t get any faith estimate. Yeah. That’s and I think it’s important to like this kind of stuff isn’t yes. Okay. It happens a lot more regularly on a mental health board, but this kind of stuff happens in every practice area. It doesn’t matter if you’re working in. Geriatrics adult physical doesn’t matter where you are you can they come across people who are exiting behaviors who are have mental health issues who, you know are suicidal are self-harming, whatever it is. You’re going to come across people. People who have mental health issues don’t always just end up in mental health boards. They’re probably like Iraq and 1% Maybe would ever hit a mental health ward of people who’ve experienced some sort of mental health difficulties. And obviously, I’m not leaning back that up. That’s just my assumption, but I’m highlighting that it’s a very small percentage. We have to have a lot more people going through a general hospital than there are going through a Health Board and the chances of you coming across someone who’s experiencing a mental health difficulty having as we talked about before this podcast, we had changed all this month and half ago, but I ended up in a hospital for a little thing and I had to reschedule it but that and again that was my first experience in a hospital touch wood, but I could see I just actually being there the impact on someone’s mental health the fact that I couldn’t even get a night’s sleep because someone’s waking you up every 2 hours to take your blood pressure the fact that the food is horrendous the FAQ. There are some words where you can’t actually leave cuz the doors are locked like you need eat. Yeah, even though like I wasn’t trapped I could last but the fact that I don’t have that option. I don’t have that freedom. It’s out of my control is very different to what I’m used to at home here where I can do whatever I want and go wherever I want whenever I want just being on award will have an impact on someone’s Journal Health. Like like I said, I was my first experience ever being admitted to a hospital and you may come across someone who it’s their first experience ever being they may have a car accident. They’ve been admitted to your physical rehab or wage. They’re going to experience some mental health symptoms where a major minor depending on their development. They’re coping skills their previous experiences. That’s one of our everything but they’re going to experience something whether it’s due to the accident itself or just the fact that their their health care is traumatizing. I don’t know how much I have to say that name. Something that I think we often forget and we’re too busy trying to treat what’s going on outside when we’re realizing that or not realizing cuz we’re not looking for it. The fact that they’re they’re in front of us wherever we are whatever Ward whatever team we’re working in whatever clinical setting were in the fact that they’re in front of us is going to have an impact. No one comes to see us when they’re young and healthy and they just want to say thank you tell me what right this is my experience of kind of feeling powerless and helpless in healthcare and and it’s something that I use to try and really in a small way to people who were detained right, but when I’ve got a son and a daughter, right and my daughter had broken her leg was in hospital in traction and just at that time, my son was being born in the same hospital for a couple of words apart and we’ve agreed with my daughter’s consultant job. That shouldn’t come up with us. You can come and recuperate home. So my wife’s absolutely exhausted from giving birth, but she’s ready to go. None of us have slapped pages and we’re ready to go and we’re like right with we’re taking my daughter right now. And is your weapon seen it before kind of came along them whence I know she’s got a fracture in her legs. She can’t go home and I was like, no we should treat it with a consultant. You know, this is all this is all part of the plan with we’re doing this like yeah. Yeah, they they cannot come up and I’ll tell you what we’ll cuz it’s all agreed to adjust your discharge against medical advice will you know will be all right to the power bills will be sorted and she’s like, yeah. Yeah. Well, we’ll get an ambulance so we won’t get about eight hours programme and something a month kept saying well if the physios have no we’re not going to take care of the consultant said that we can do this is all agreed and and this count on for about eighteen hours long. I’ll eventually the nurse that if you take your chance on we’re going to call children services on you and I wanted to explode and it it was one night of being in hospice and the toxic in the next day. When do you want to go home? And you still here? Yeah. I’ll see you go, but that night I wanted to explode and I think if I had had a little tiny bit less control.
01:05:06 – 01:10:00
I’d have been show in and swearing and or tearing the place down and I think you know if I had a label on me, somebody would have been saying inappropriate feelings and anger from man-to-man over there. Yeah, but I think there is something very neurotic of power that we can have in most environments that would definitely exacerbate our emotional reactions. And I just think if people who are trapped in environments that they don’t want to be in and so many decisions I mean before birth And you know, I had one tiny taste of that and I hated it but to live without day-to-day I think must be absolutely excruciating. I think that that locus of control thing is is massive in you know, what should be in all Healthcare but particularly in mental health and that’s one of the reasons why I always made a very conscious effort of every decision didn’t block. I may have made suggestions, but the final decision was never mind doesn’t matter what it was whether it was yeah, you know, do you want to play 9-ball or 8 ball on the pool table? Like whatever it was. It was their decision. Like I’m just a support and the analogy I used to use with people to try and explain I guess what I was going to do with them is, you know, you’re driving. I’m just the 50s kind of thing. So I think putting this is like deliberately even if it’s simple little stuff and you already know or you think you know, what they’re going to say is the answer like give birth. Person the option even the fact that you know, they might whatever the situation is. It might not really be an option give it to them the fact that they just bought have the power have the option there. Like I said when I was in e d I think I was in e d for I I must have been longer than that. It was probably twelve hours. And because Edie emergency is a locked Ward and yeah, I could have gone out but just the fact that I couldn’t get up and go off when if I felt like it like it was out of my control. I had to rely on someone else just to go and get a drink from the vending machine kind of thing that put pressure on me like that gave you like. Oh, that’s kind of anxiety-provoking in a way even though it was only minor, but then you get a few of those little minor things and it builds up and it turns what should be a fairly smooth thing into a negative experience. I would I would assume that on 99.9% a days you would consider yourself quite a calm logical person. And just that control being taken away and I guess the blase attitude that some people guess I don’t even think they would view it as well as I just think they don’t think about it. Not only am I might example there is like we think that you are a dangerous man who is going to hurt your children. Your punch a wall maybe but I do not welcome interpretation of me. Yeah, like and then we do it two people that we work with. It’s the same situation with where their environment including us in it is having an impact in it’s not always a positive one and unless we’re consciously looking stuff like wage that can happen. They are not even realizing that something’s wrong or that something’s having a negative impact on someone. One of the biggest ones that I get worried about is like I say, you know people self harmed in a way that was safer in the community. They do it the more dangerous way in hospital and then our response in hospital is to get people who have been sexually abused get three people to hold them down take their clothes off and inject them and we keep doing that until they recover. You know, what is that about just make it doesn’t make any sense. it it’s the same that we see it’s the same with like like behave like outbursts of behavior, especially like I used to see a lot of sensory stuff where you know, like you said earlier like a key towards aren’t necessarily the most stimulating environment. So people will find way like if they have a sensory need people will make it happen. Like people are very resourceful and sometimes those ways that they make them happen are quite maladaptive and then they end up locked in the Intensive side of the ward because they’re breaking things or they’re disrupting the peace or whatever they’re doing isolated even more and with even more limited resources, and I’m like that’s not actually going to fix it.
01:10:00 – 01:15:37
We actually need to give these people more things to do. Yeah life I can remember one, dude. Years and years ago and I was working with him and he he must have just had this sort of he just needed heavy work and they’ve ended up. I can’t remember why we ended up in the lock side of the ward and he was pulling that like concrete picnic tables and he was just strong young dude. He was ripping the tops off him and throwing them against the metal fence and the concrete was shattering and he thought that was hilarious. So he kept doing it to all of them and and their thing was like, okay, we’ll put him in seclusion. Like he’s always coming to this lot area which is lowest emulation. It’s causing more damage will put him in an even smaller room with less to do and we’ll see what happens like that can no one else see what’s happened. Yeah. And in the end, what I ended up doing is cuz the hospital that ward has a gym so I took him to the gym and he worked out here, you know. Yep. Therefore Health curling weights and trying to show off to all the all the nurses and that was it. He was good. He was calm he settled down. He just needed some input and we kept wage as a service kept like trying to put him into a less and less stimulating environment and he was getting less and less and he’s getting more and more agitated and then we were wondering why and obviously it was his fault in quotation marks because he was misbehaving. I’m like, no, it’s our fault because we are not servicing him the way he needs to be But I mean, it’s interesting what we’ve just keep doing more of what we’re doing will more and more away until we hit that magic spot and that thing off and nobody else see this is something I find happens a lot and I always kind of wondered if I’m just being incredibly arrogant when that’s happening, but I don’t think we do get stuck into these little organizational cycles of well, we will restrict and if that doesn’t work, we will keep restricted and then we might send to a more restrictive environment but home of the ones that really sticks with me at the moment is submitting who who used to sell term in private in their bedroom. They let you know that was their place where they would do it and every time they sell homes the unit would stop them going on relief and I was like, they’ve never heard themselves outside of a hospital, you know, it feels like the only reason we would stop and go home. Is it for them to sell term or we don’t want that so we can lock in their bedroom as opposed to kind of stop you in Korean only. Let’s keep them in the self home environment longer and not let them get out of it. That makes it yeah. Yeah and it’s just really put the environmental adoptions. We will keep from there. We will be more restrictive and you know, we’ll put ourselves on the book that we are doing something while kind of actively not looking at how much worse things are getting. So with with high mileage. Like most acute Wards, there’s the otsr usually vastly outnumbered by other professions. Like I said, there’s been War throughout work around the only OT and there’s been more thrilled work with us a couple. What do you think in my experience all wars have the same problem? I’ve not found on board that has somehow found some magic way to avoid all of them. In conversation with other people including yourself today. It sounds like towards a pretty similar around the world. Do you think that some something that OG clinicians can do to I guess trying to break the cycle. Like what do you think we can do to try and break that cycle even though we’re outnumbered and you know where we may not have the biggest impact on the whole workplace culture. What do you think we can do about some do you have to worked on the boards for a long time? I suppose wage, you know is occupational thinking a big part of our organizations and I don’t think it is. So the moment it would be almost Harrison in the UK make sure a occupational therapist in the board manager and there’s a couple of Marines but but I think we do that more. You know, why couldn’t white biker we lead wage. On my environment. I think monkeys are generally often a bit separate from the Wallace. They might have their own base. So they will be a nursing team and the Palm o t that comes in and out and again can we be integrated into those jeans a bit more? Can we do we have to be a separate some profession that comes on and does stuff or can we be in the numbers in the same way that the nurses are and that means that we would do some stuff that isn’t our typical role but it would also mean that we’re having a bigger impact and and again she might be changing the way the staff understand and think about people we might not be running a craft group, but we might be bringing a bit of different thinking into that team cuz you suck talked about earlier you have in becoming a part of their environment and hopefully takes their environment as well.
01:15:38 – 01:20:02
Yeah, cuz I think we I think our role should be change it challenging stigma perhaps more than other professions because it is the is the wage social environment around people. So if everybody is looking at somebody and thinking, you know that person there is splitting the team they they’re split in and and you know God that’s a seventeen-year-old girl who’s lived through abuse for years to know they they don’t have the power to pull highly functioning teams apart and something that’s going on with us off of that trying to send the other that of your team’s really not that highly functioning if that’s happening. Well, yeah, but but so much better to be able to blame the one person for IT and kind of look like well, I’m like falling down ourselves. But yeah, I think we could have OTS working within our organizations a lot differently. I think some people would object to log. Traditional mode see that’s that’s not what we normally do. Well, let’s do it. Let’s let’s do it. You know, there’s a couple of pioneers out there who are running boards and leading services and let’s get behind them because that one that’s what show was that we can do that work. I think I think in my career, I’ve been really lucky in that. I think it’ll probably more than half. The teams of ever worked on have actually been run by OTS. So kind of been lucky I think that’s fairly rare for a lot of people but none of the impacts are towards the inpatient Wards of always been run by the unit manager and you’re right. I think it would be even that simple change. I think it would be a massive organizational change and a massive cultural change. I don’t know how you do it on a very sort of long-existing Ward, but I think having a it’s even any any other profession run a war cuz I think predominantly they tend to be dead. Then to run towards and that’s one of those things where I think it’s just this is how it’s always been. So this is how it is, but even put a social worker in that point of no T in their put a song anyone in there. I think it would be a very interesting thing to see how the ward culture it’s self changed and I think it would be for the better off it would yeah, we’d always talk about diversity but I think adding more influence from some of the more I guess what you’d say minority professions on an inpatient Ward or even within many mental health teams would be very interesting especially for an OT. I could see that having a huge benefit. One of them was thinking before too is one of the biggest benefits I made or I found when I was working clinically was like you said quite often just the layout of wards is OTP You know, they’ll have a little office somewhere or they may not even like one of the wards office wasn’t even on the water was you know in the building but sort of out of the water down the hallway, so we went accessible to works out. We want accessible to the the patients the clients. So one of the biggest changes I made I made a lot of changes all at once but one of the biggest ones I’ve made was I pretty much realized. Well, I’m not actually typing something. I don’t need to be in my office. So any spare time I would often just sit in the dining room or in the TV room with the page that were on the war then you know, yeah, if I was talking to them, even if I had nothing else to do which was rare just have a conversation with them and just be with them. I just trying to normalize the or Trying to minimize the sort of us and them that just naturally happens on a ward like that anyway. Yeah. And you can share a coffee then have a coffee have a chat. Obviously, I believe him alone if they want to have their own space, but sometimes there was no one there and sometimes they’d see you sitting in there and come and sit with you and have a chat they’d instigate which again that tells you something about people like everything that you observe can tell you something about the people that you’re observing.
01:20:03 – 01:25:03
I think let’s do we amount makes you part of the staff team as opposed to you being in a different environment or somebody who they have to refer back to, you know, you just become part of the way that that Ward works and and again, you know in a very simple way that means you’re doing more input with those pages and groups and stuff, but I think probably the more the more important stuff is that your influence in that culture in a way that wouldn’t happen. If the OT just came on for Dolby a special things. Yeah. I think one of the important things in be curious to see your opinion on this cuz I’ve long had the opinion that an acute unit may not be the best. Environment for a new grad and I say that purely because in my experience with them they do have these very long hot and cultures on the workplace. Which tend to form you guys come in whenever someone graduates their main thing is like how they want to impress and they just want to do a good job and then do whatever anyone tells them because that’s nice is and they tend to be shaped by the culture as opposed to coming in with their own individual identity that they’re confident enough in to maintain and make changes themselves off. I’ll be Keen. Do you have any thoughts about whether or not it’s it’s sort of a suitable environment for a new grad or Wild thinking of printed on the spot. I think I suppose it depends cuz I think it’s it’s not so much award environment need the idea of kind of having the kind of closed institution where people can’t think I think that’s where things become quite toxic and you know, potentially Ward environments have got that to a greater extent than Community Services, but I think Community Services can be entrenched in the way that they’ve read about things as well. You know, I like certainly worked in Community Mental Health Team, but would say we don’t work with that client group that you work with Kia and I’ve always kind of amazed that they think that anime is that they feel confident need to say it. So yeah, I don’t know if it is just about that physical environment and if it’s a bit more about the cultures that can develop dead. Yeah, I’m very conscious as well. A lot of people first mental health placements are on the keyboard. So I mean that’s that’s where people go a lot of their time and yeah, could you take that away with the benefits taking that away with it being Replacements left? I think that’s probably a bit different over here cuz I reckon the majority of our mental health placements our community wage over here in the districts that I’ve worked in any way they have been. Yeah, I think I maybe that’s part of my experiences. I went on the placement on a inpatient unit. So everybody off and on like like I said, my very first job was an inpatient unit. So I’m the epitome of what I’m saying. Probably shouldn’t happen, but and I wouldn’t change it. I learned a lot in that team that seemed to slightly different to a pure impatient, but I think it takes a unique new grad to flourish in that Environment Straight Out of uni and wage. From my experience like I was talking about before I kind of got interested in that bubble of not really seeing the progress that people make outside at only seeing the worst or people win their their worst home and I didn’t really until I left that job and I went into Community case management after that and then all of a sudden it was like, oh there’s this whole other side to mental health care that I hadn’t seen up until that yeah sort of thing. So yeah, it’s interesting. There’s a few people. I’ve got a few people’s opinions on that and some of them are like getting a dog in in some like you or like I can kind of see how it could work, but I can see how sometimes it might not but yeah, it’s it’s an interesting thing. My my first ever job was in a special security hospital. So like people who were regarded as quite dangerous and I thought it was little it’s kind of like a lawn Hill in the middle of nowhere and Other people they’re just like they they weren’t going anywhere very quickly and let’s just fine. But my my experience of the work there was of a very closed institution. We’re off there was a lot of judgement towards the people who had been admitted there and some of them had done some horrific things. But you know, it was a huge us and then culture it was a huge culture of chrome trouble.
01:25:03 – 01:30:04
I’m probably leaning that way more than therapy. And again, you know, somebody is an in-patient environment, but that’s a place that even though he was a really awful OT service there. It wouldn’t take much to kind of really get into that mindset of us them control restraints keep them in their place. And you know, I think if I’d stayed in a long time that that would have seeped into me quite a lot and again, I don’t know if I as in patient in general or that kind of closed off separate Institute wage Foster’s a particular way of thinking yeah. Yeah. It seems I think a lot of the community services here are seemed to work fairly well together so they’re not home. So I load as I can see them being in in other services and maybe that has an impact whereas the impatience of is very solid collected. That’s it even has got a lot to us as well off swipe card to get in but even the fact that like where I worked my last job there’s two are here. It’s a secure unit and there’s a car park between them and that’s it and you never saw anyone from the other unit like that was it? Yeah, they worked in that unit. You worked in that unit. That was it. I didn’t even know who the OT was in, you know like home. So I had times it is a very silent service. So you’re right. It could very well be more to do with how isolated the team is where and then dead. The I guess the culture that that creates within any team, not just the the inpatient aspect of it. Yeah, that’s interesting. So what’s so you say you’re doing other work now? What are you doing now? So I left the NHS in April and I worked my own company and you know, I just kept seeing young people. He was oxygen kind of self-harm and and deeper currently suicidal and they would be sent to private hospitals that were very bad for young men’s. Nobody told that they were going to be very useful and I find that very difficult to watch particularly because I’d come from a team that never sent people to private hospitals off. So I was seeing people who I know if they lived in another part of the country. They just need support in the community know they were going to lose years of their life. So I want you to turn off an alternative to that. So yeah Beam Beam helps people who pay for those private hospitals to have a different option. So wage. We support people in the community. Yeah, this is supporting them to get out like to discharge from those profiles. So it depends at what point we get involved. So we have helped people who are in private hospitals to Thursday. We have helped people who are on a keep units where they are thinking of placements to approach hospitals. We’ve we’ve given them another option. So they take the mass and touch people. That’s awesome. That’s really good. Is that is that a common? So I don’t know in Australia in my experience. There’s not a whole lot of private mental health stuff going on. There’s a few. Yeah, but there’s it’s by Far and Away mostly Public Health within Mental Health Services. Is it common over in the UK for privates Mental Health Service to be offered or are you breaking new ground or how what you see in like over this? Definitely support? Seems accommodation is is a thing so people could would move into houses with support workers in there. It’s to help the kind of private home service in the community. That isn’t just you know, a bit of 121 feral horse is it’s fairly new I think with like to think of ourselves as being quite often, but you know in a way, you know, I I did and must have degree in person and sort of it was funded by the Health Service in Britain. And what I wanted to do was then taken back into the NHS and help them to stop sending people to private hospitals. And but the typically I find is that all the jobs where you could do that they were only for psychologists psychotherapists and you know these jobs you would get in there, you know, so my my dissertation was on how much he was stopped using Private Hospital placement dead. And the place I would working would have meetings about how to stop this happening and I couldn’t be invited along now.
01:30:04 – 01:35:01
That’s like my dissertation house or yeah, so it was really frustrating interesting that and you know, it costs a million pounds a year to send for people to a private hospital and again, you know because nobody’s got any optimism, but that’s going to make any difference. It just felt such a waste of taxpayers money in a country. It’s like two and a half million Australian that’s massive. Yeah, and we will not get we will not get good Community Services while you’re spending that much money on what is basically locking people up off the old the old a solemn model. Yeah, and you know, it’s one of the few Publications I have ever made so I managed to get something in the landscape last year’s. Say that we send people to private hospitals not because we think it will make them better. But because we are worried that they will die on our perch. So if we expose Enterprise in hospitals that he can be dangerous there they can hold the risk of it and we can feel all right, and you know, it just kind of goes against what I feel as a human being that we should be doing stuff based on our interests and organizations interests rather than the interests of the people that we’re working with like the moving the cops around of responsibility like who’s going to be cuz I’m just going to shoot around, so that’s kind of that’s kind of what I do in beam and then I’m really interested in kind of mental health tribunals as well. So if you get detained in this country, you are able to appeal wage attention and I saw myself I was in experts to kind of go along and say, you know, this this restriction is generally making this person worse, and they are probably better off not home. Spill so I’m quite enjoying that and then we do a lot of training and round what gets described as personality disorder, but working with people who are recurrently suicidal and self-harming off. So it’s in some ways. It’s quite scary to be working for yourself. And in other ways, this is exactly what I want to be doing. This is it’s a very much took some parts of the of the NHS work. We don’t the crippling bureaucracy and hierarchy that was crushing the yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of our civil areas between the NHS and the whole system over here by the sense of even just like team structure and a lot of the models are often quite similar like the the models of practice of golf and comb unless I The the comment about bureaucracy definitely resonates. It’s one of the biggest I didn’t even realize it sort of how bad it was until I left and I was like, oh man, that was that’s so the whole world doesn’t operate like that who knew? Yeah and you’ve also started a podcast off. Yes. So me and Holly Barragan so Holly is a lived experience practitioner that I work with Allah and we’re going to be talking to people who have some level of influence or have something important to say around the work of personalities cylinder. So we’re talking to I know you’ve got International audience. So this name is might not mean that much. So we’re talking to Norman lamb who was an empty over here. Joel Paris is a very influential psychiatrist. In the world personality disorder talk to Nicholas thought who’s she’s an actress and she’s a campaigner. He’s one of the few people in the public eye to talk about I have this song BPG diagnosis suggests. Yeah, it’s quite nice just to talk to people that I find quite interesting. I’m interested in and the about having a podcast. Yeah. So the people who are interested in a plot school, but yeah, it’s in some ways. It’s more for me anything else and what what’s it called? Whatever you guys name? Yeah, so it’s called it’s called the wrong kind of mass, which is how often people refer to personality disorder. It’s you know, you your needs are not high enough to access this level of care, but actually off too complex for us. So you can’t access that level of care. So we we got people on Twitter to vote for what the name should be. So yeah the wrong kind of meds which you should be able to get from most places accept wage. At the moment. I thought it’ll be ah reckon by the time this episode comes out. They’ll be able to get it pretty much anywhere and I’ll I’ll throw links in the show notes if anyone is Keen to check that one out.
01:35:01 – 01:37:12
I’m definitely Keen to have a listen cuz it sounds super interesting and I love that lived experience. I’ve had a few people on occupied with long periods of various diagnosis. I just always find that the really valuable learning material is lying directly of people same as I said earlier about learning off individuals that you work with. I always yes, that’s the bit of the job that I love the most I tell you what Holi wrote a really good piece on occupational therapy groups that need to be the pounds off. So I’ll Whip that over to you and you can consider here as a guest for some sounds good sounds awesome. Yeah. Thanks for calling minimum wage. I know I know. I know it took a while. We’ve like followed each other on social media for however many years. I tell you what right? You took a long trying to follow me on Twitter some extent but I was thinking what have I done? What why do you wouldn’t hear you? What’s going on? So yeah, I was I was always exam social media are used the least. That’s probably because I used I thought I swear I fall excited to see your stuff all the time unless it was like, yeah well off with someone else that I follow that just retweeted your stuff so much that I just assumed that I’ve ology but yeah, it’s it’s been a long time coming and this is the second time lucky cuz we didn’t get to do it last time like a month or so ago. Yeah, super super glad that we we got to hang out and have a chat and yeah, it’s definitely excellent. Yeah. I have enjoyed it. We must do it again.
101 – Comprehensive Kawa ft Dr Michael Iwama
Feb 14, 2021
Kawa Model has to be the topic that I’ve been asked to do an episode on the most. As well versed as I am in the model and its application I’ve held out for 2 1/2 years until this very moment when I could bring the one and only Dr Michael Iwama on to talk about it himself. This has been on my list since before I even started Occupied so I’m soooo happy that we finally made it happen!
I’ve known Michael for quite a number of years through various online networking and he has always been an incredible support to me and my career. Clinically the Kawa changed how I worked with and viewed peoples situations and the role of OT. The aim of this episode was to create a grassroots resource about how the Kawa came to fruition as I strongly believe that in order to get the most out of the model, understanding its roots is imperative. For those already familiar with the Kawa, you’ll know how ironic that statement is.
Please do enjoy this episode and I’d absolutely love to hear how you’ve used the Kawa model in your life/practice.
Referenced during the podcast: Iwama, M. (2003) Toward Culturally Relevant Epistemologies in Occupational Therapy, American Journal of Occupational Therapy, (57), 582-588. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.57.5.582
All right, I suppose it took a while but I you know, my family emigrated to Canada in the early 1970s and I attended High School in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. And so for my first studies when I went to college and it’s typical for I think it’s stereotypical for Asian families that have immigrated to other places that it’s just imperative that everybody goes to college or university. There’s this unspoken expectation that somehow your supposed to be supposed to be better than the past generation. Yeah, and so I went and studied. I think what people these days call Kinesiology or Sports Sciences. Yep, exercise physiology job. So I went and and studied for my first bachelor’s degree in a program called Human Performance. So I got a Bachelor of Science and Human Performance. And by the time I graduated I was working with Elite athletes and you know for the I’ve had stents working with the Canadian national men’s and women’s basketball teams, the men’s and women’s volleyball teams. I’ve even you know Fitness tested the professional hockey team and in fact that side of Canada called the Vancouver Canucks and so, you know Varsity athletes, I you know worked as a trainer for many of the Varsity Sports that the universities that have been at so that that was where I was but however, I I started to realize that Elite athletes are probably some of the most egocentric people on Earth birth You know, it’s all about me me me and how can I get the best performance out of me? And how can I win and and that and and so I began to bring it on my career Outlook and I guess I I sought to really want to work instead of working with people at normal levels of performance trying to reach normal levels. I wanted to work with people at sub normal levels of performance trying to reach some semblance of normalcy. I wanted to work with Ordinary People. Yep from all walks of life wage. And so the natural progression was to go into physical therapy or physiotherapy as we call it in Canada and probably in Australia and what it is. Yeah, okay. And so I applied to go to physiotherapy school. I got accepted and I was well on my way to becoming a physical physiotherapist until home in one of my clinical experiences. I was posted at a small Hospital on Vancouver Island and was called a Gorge Road hospital and I remember as I was working with client counting repetitions of hip extensions bored out of my mind wondering whether I was going to spend the rest of my life counting repetitions of people doing exercises, of course physiotherapy is far more than that, but you know, that’s what I thought, you know, this student was was too but I noticed across the gymnasium floor stump OTS working with a person who age For two stroke and what was remarkable was that as I watched these these OTS at work.
00:05:18 – 00:10:08
They were the same two people they happen to be husband and wife and they were not even Canadians were from the United States. They moved up from California and they were working in this little Hospital in Canada. And so I noticed that every day they were doing something different with the client. So while I was counting repetitions with the same client on a daily basis here, you know, they were doing things with objects and cones and balls and you know from one day to the next they’ve been doing something different and I became really intrigued with that and I got to know I’d befriended this couple and I didn’t know it at the time but well they were talking about occupational therapy. Like they were a couple of Crusaders, you know, they were so excited and passionate about what they were doing and log So I became really intrigued with with the whole professional occupational therapy at that point. We used to laugh at them from the physiotherapy side saying that oh, they’re just a bunch of basket Weavers home, you know people not addressed, you know, all of these things that anybody can do and so I found out I didn’t even know very much about o t at the time but I found out that they had studied at a place called the University of Southern California and they were there teachers were people like Bob Barry Riley and rude and Jean airs and others now, I know what those names mean they were just well, so what? Yeah, and then one day I guess that was so enthralled by by this relationship that I was developing with this couple that they invited me to move into their basement. So I was living with them and eating dinner with them and one day at dinner. I looked up and I saw this carving over the lintel of the door way to the to the kitchen and I guess that’s a really nice carving which one of you did that and they said oh we didn’t do that that was done by one of our classmates in school in California, and they said the person who carved that was a guy named Gary kielhofner. Yeah, of course. So so talk about finding me, you know, I couldn’t have asked for a more a better introduction to the profession. Yeah. That’s I was so enthralled by the by the end of that month so clinical experience that that I went back and I quit my plans to become a physiotherapist and I did the most audacious thing. I moved from physiotherapy to occupational therapy. All of my physiotherapy friends thought that it was crazy. You know, why was I leaving this sophisticated world of tienes and ultrasound and you know this and that. Um to a world where I’d be leaving baskets and teaching people how to dress and put on their shirts and things like that. But but I knew Brock at that time that way just the ability to manipulate a button, you know was the fine line between whether a person saw themselves as being able or disabled wage and and that really spoke to me and and so anyway, I enrolled in the program in occupational therapy at the University of British Columbia and the ice, you know graduated as with a bachelor’s degree in occupational therapy, and then I was invited to come back and teach vocation. Yep. Rehabilitation because that’s the field that I entered back into okay that I started in and I should say. Yep and I was doing some Innovative things at the time in that area and the then director of The Rehabilitation medicine program that British Columbia was an American fellow whose name was Charles Christensen and he gave me my first job teaching occupational therapy at the post-secondary level. And so, you know, I’ve had really good mentorship thumb good role models. And and so that’s so that’s my long-winded story about how I became an OT and I it was the best decision I ever ever made and if I could go back and do things over again, I do it exactly the same way, or maybe I wish that I would have found occupational therapy sooner.
00:10:09 – 00:15:16
So it’s been it’s been a wonderful Journey so far and that’s that’s there’s so many names in there that most people here would have probably found in textbooks and that sort of stuff we’ve had child child has been on the podcast before so people would would hopefully have heard his story. But yeah, that’s that’s an incredible like palm tree into the profession. I mean, yeah, so when I so when I look back I realize okay and and you know, I another thing that I kind of took leave and in terms of my own values is that you know, the more that you’ve been given the more the greater is a responsibility to do good with it. Yep. And and so that has certainly been the impetus to go forward and to try to squeeze as much as I can out of whatever abilities inoperative. It is and privileges have been given to me and in in that way. I think probably my work in the field of Occupational Therapy has been in in some people have called it all listed in that, you know, I’ve never wanted to profit from this. I wanted to give back and constantly get back and maybe that’s been the secret to whatever successes I’ve experienced wage is that you know, you just go forward with the sense of gratitude and do as much good as you can and the rest is sort of takes care of itself. So yeah, that was how we got to where we are today. So you did you work in Voc Rehab sort of the whole time until you went into Academia or had you tried a few other areas or was that your thought was your passion? Well that you know, it was what happened. Was that small hospital where I was doing my clinical placements that knew that I had a background in, New Jersey. Size physiology and they were developing a new approach to Vocational Rehabilitation sort of a kind of a a separate entity from the hospital self sort of a free-standing vocational rehabilitation service and work hardening ergonomics Consulting and and evaluations of people work capacity to help lawyers make decisions about whether somebody was able to return back to their former jobs or not following an injury or an illness. Yep. And and so when they started that program a fresh read like me, they invited me to come and be the coordinator of that new and took yeah, you know, you grab, you know experience but they I guess they they saw that I had a background in exercise physiology and that that you know, I’d probably be a good person to be able Go ahead and do it. So I was flying by the seat of my pants. And before I knew it I was being asked to be an expert witness and the Supreme Court and and then I started working privately as a consultant and it was just really really unbelievable times for a new grad who was like pumped full of testosterone. And you know, I had my red Triumph TR6 sports car. I was living in a in a penthouse suite in a high-rise apartment building with sweeping views Victoria Harbor and I would take a helicopter from Victoria to Vancouver to the to the Supreme Court in order to give testimony off and then later on when Chuck Christensen invited me to come and teach Vocational Rehabilitation. You know, I I was yeah, I was traveling across the streets and wage. Going. Yeah, I mean it was just crazy crazy times that you’re a rockstar back then as well. Yeah, but you know, there’s a story. Well, I should say a rockstar. But but what I say though is that I turned away from it. I threw it all the way and it’s where I had an experience and I’ve shared this story with some people wage war, but it’s one that really changed my whole life and changed my whole outlook toward occupational therapy and its future and that is that I had a client that I was just doing a legal evaluation for and the lawyers then took that report and used it to basically get this person cut off from all of their wages ability to benefit payments and you know young father of three small children and this person suicided And it was it it talked about rocking ones world.
00:15:16 – 00:20:03
Yeah through me right on onto my back home. That’s when I did some soul-searching and I thought what the heck am I doing? And so going from the red sports car and the penthouse apartment. So on I disappeared I went I went to Japan and the excuse that I used at that time was that I was going to Thursday how Japanese companies handle their employee health programs and so on. So I went and studied how Nissan and Toyota and Hitachi and all of these companies, you know managed all of that and taught English on the side in Japan. And so that was my first experience of going back to Japan as an adult and then later on I would go back. You helped establish. One of the first bachelor’s programs in occupational therapy there. So so that was a so when people ask me what is my clinical specialty area? It’s it’s Vocational Rehabilitation. But embedded in there are some real lessons that have really shaped who I am today and wearing the other thing that I’ll say about that to Brock is that other than that that one in stock that really really affected me vocational rehabilitation in the work that I was doing was a perfect merger between physical medicine and um and social and environmental aspects of of well being so it was really truly biopsychosocial in nature because when you’re helping somebody to return back to work again, you’re not just getting them physically able to meet the capacity that’s required for their for the job that they’re going to but they also have to make the transition. Socially and emotionally spiritually from being a chronic patient to see themselves as an able employee and worker and off after having lost their regular routines of daily life of a well person of not engaging in the song So activities not engaging in work losing having losing confidence in one’s own abilities not even knowing what what’s cheaper bilities are anyone, you know, the OT that I was practicing at the time was seemed to be Innovative because I was I recognized those those those challenges. Yeah, and I’m working with them more on a physical and environmental level than I was physically like I found out that you can get a person physically. Well, you can get ten people with the same soft tissue back injury dead. Then you’ll see ten different levels of function and you’ll see 10 different levels of recovery and return to work potential. So that’s what I thought. Well occupational therapy. It’s just like it’s incredible. It’s just so Broad in its scope in it and Incredibly useful. It’s it’s essential, you know, we spend with our lives gaining competencies and abilities, but we don’t quite know what to do when catastrophe interrupts that yeah and turns it all apart. Right? We’re not so good at putting all the pieces of the puzzle back together again for ourselves and we need professionals who understand a whole landscape to come in and help us. That’s what I’m original there appears to me. Yeah. I see i t is kind of when people aren’t able to still sort of see that big picture like we’re able to stand back and see you know how their soldiers weixin and how their experiences and all of that sort of stuff fits into the big picture so that we can kind of help them Stitch things back together and get back on on onto that that track Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So so yeah, I mean Talk about serendipity or Karma, you know, it was really important that I I went and studied Sports Sciences or exercise physiology first, you know that I I happen to meet some incredibly influential people that then I would go and practice in the field of Vocational Rehabilitation and had the kind of experiences that I have. Yep. And that’s really what clued me into the incredible potential of occupational therapy.
00:20:04 – 00:25:07
And so that’s always been my vision. Yeah that that, you know of OT and its possibilities and I still believe that it is the greatest idea. In fact now 21st century health and medicine. So what we’re along that Journey or what made you I guess make the the relatively Conventional leap into Academia. Well, I mentioned that Chuck Christensen, you know gave me my first job and so therefore an introduction to the academic home life and that’s where I discovered that I really enjoyed teaching, you know, and my students told me that I was really good at it. So it’s something that I’ve I’ve always stayed close to is is education in in occupational therapy. So I I then really started to think about how about going down the path of becoming a teacher instead of a practitioner exam. So I went back to graduate school and did a master’s degree in Rehabilitation scientists. And and so I thought at that point that I would embark on a career of teaching and doing research Now the the experience in in graduate school was one in which I was really studying the getting gaining the rudiments of how bout to do quantitative research. And a couple of people in on on my committee happened to be social scientists. I caught us psychologists and sociologists and they my interaction them turned me onto the social and and and intrigued with the social so that would then lead me to then pursue the PHD in the sociology and then later on with a medical anthropology. Still talk about certain events and experiences that are really shaped where I’ve gone. That’s how I I developed but the other thing that I want to say and I think that this will probably lead into may be a question that you might want to ask later. This session is about how the Kawa model got its origins in how I got to the point of creating the column odd. Well in in the midst of all of this I mentioned earlier that I had opportunities to go back to my native Japan, you know first to to escape educational Rehabilitation and to you know, study how Japanese companies did Occupational Health But I went back and had the opportunity then to teach occupational therapy in Japan and this whole experience of me being born and raised in Japan. acculturating into North American Life going back to my native Japan re acculturate and back to to Japanese life and going back and forth between these geographical and cultural locations. In my own life, I was experiencing this phenomena of how ways of knowing and doing and being in one place don’t necessarily need the same thing or configured differently in another cultural location. And so here I was teaching occupational therapy in Japan and trying to teach Theory, you know T. That’s what they had me teaching because that was the thing back then. Yeah, you know what Canadian bottle of Aram Aram what you was in the woods in the mid-1990s? Okay, so, you know the really big push on sort of models and Frameworks and stuff at the time. Yeah. Oh teeth were leading the whole field of Rehabilitation. Yep. They were well away ahead of the the physiotherapists in terms of developing Theory and models and Frameworks to guide our processes wage. Guide are practiced. So here I was teaching trying to teach models that were made in North America. And in Australia thought there’d be more models like the lotto and apma that sort of Australia. Yep. And and so but my Japanese students and colleagues were not yet. They couldn’t understand and I clued into the fact that even in my own personal life.
00:25:07 – 00:30:01
I was having trouble adjusting back into a Japanese society and I realize oh my goodness, you know, it’s not that you guys are lacking the right kind of instruction or even in the level of intelligence required to understand models in OT cuz here I am, you know, I’m Japanese. I’ve got Japanese DNA Yeah a hundred percent, you know, and and and I can understand mod. And so why can’t my computer it’s also it’s because the ideas could not be anchored. The ideas run occupation could not be anchored to anything tangible and practical in in in how Japanese people constructed their activities of daily living wage experience of everyday life. In fact, the Japanese don’t have a word in their lexicon in their language their actually captures the definition of occupation as we know it and celebrate it within our profession and in English-speaking places, right? So that’s so that’s why we needed it dawned on me that we needed new models and we needed models that were culturally relevant. Cuz so last time you when you were in Australia like we hung out a bit. I came down to Brisbane and did you workshop and we went out to dinner and all that stuff and you explained it to me then cuz obviously I’m not of Japanese Heritage. I’ve never even been there. So I didn’t have I couldn’t initially get my head around I guess what it’s like to not like I guess see the world differently to how I am currently see it and the way you explained it to me then was in a a western world. We look at the person and we look at the environment and occupation is the bit that in between with the person acts their influence over the environment. Whereas in a Japanese culture and I believe at the time you you said it’s similar in Australian indigenous culture as well. They don’t well they they they don’t conceptualize them as separate. Everything is sort of joined together everything influences everything. So there’s no space in between for occupation as a khong. Step to actually fit is that when am I am I still remembering that correctly like bang on you say I still remember the diagram? Yeah, and the thing that I would say is that really what it is is that those of us in a rationally thinking Western world where the individual is celebrated as being the center of the universe that the self and the environment are two separate distinct entities. And so in that particular worldview, you need something to be able to connect the two months then it happens to be through our agency through our action on the environment and unbend and unwittingly really. It’s a quest to control our environment, you know, the early stages of the model of human occupation of you go back and do those readings they were basically postulating that that your job Ability to control the environment was an indication of adaptation and that that was a optimal place to be and that once you lost control of your environment and and aspects of the environment where then controlling you that that was synonymous with disability. Okay, but when you go into a place where people have grown up and they’ve learned the world differently, you know that we’re we’re we’re in interconnected with everybody and everything in the world. Yeah, and that it’s everything is in flux and always changing. They’re Inseparable. Nothing happens isolated that everything has its its influences and its impact and reactions as two-way two-way influence as well. I think that’s the important thing as well. Like, you know, we impact the environment change something in the environment that impacts us change. Our that impacts the environment and everything sort of influences everything. So there are oties around the world like in places like in Japan where when they hear about this about the basic of Occupational Therapy Theory which is always the self is for the individual is is a distinct entity that is separate very very close next to the environment but yet separate and you need to have this off some kind of an an agent or vehicle of communication between the two and that is what we in in Western occupational therapy call occupation.
00:30:01 – 00:35:17
Yeah wage, but the Japanese person and others would say hold it if the environment is in me as I am in the environment. Why do I need this thing that you call Accu patient? You know, once the instrumental value of that like we don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah, Sensei, you know, they’re like, what is that? Okay if you say so so, okay. Well this memorized definition of occupation. We don’t really quite know how to explain it for ourselves. But because the leaders of OT have said that this is what it is, we’re going to say you respect that and we’re going to also repeat the same definition, even though we can’t quite make sense of that ourselves. So it was a teaching in in Japan house that point in time. I’m assuming then that a lot of the like it would have been viewed as a very Western profession and a lot of the theory all of the theory up until that point was you know them learning like it’s just Western Way this Western health profession. Was there any sort of other like research or Theory or anything going on over there at that point in time before you started birth? Helping, no there there wasn’t in fact the very fact that the very notion that that theory e or models could be built in Japan. Was just like that wasn’t on anybody’s Consciousness. It was like well theories and models are made by more learned people in those countries were occupational therapy has been around for a lot longer. They’re the ones who are able to make the theory and it’s our job to learn those theories thousand learn them well and execute those theories and and models as closely to the original as possible. You know, Japanese people over time Sears typically have been lauded as copiers, you know, we’ll take Automobiles and cameras and how to grind lenses and you know, we’ll take all of these Technologies from the very busy places around the world and then we Jetta and even make them better so but what’s what’s hidden dead? What’s hidden in in all of the in in this is that the Japanese social structure is built quite distinctively. And that is that everything is is seen through collectives through through groups of people and each of those bodies of dead. People are always arranged in a hierarchy. Okay. So this whole notion of everybody being equal and democracy as a concept is a very difficult thing for a Japanese people to get their heads around because they’ve learned the world in a different way that that everything is stratified in a hierarchy and so when when we then translate that over to a larger macro level it means that occupational therapy and especially American Occupational Therapy is at the top of the pyramid okay wage. So they’re they’re the authority and it’s up to us to I guess respect that and to follow that lead. Yep, um to the point where if we were to go and make a new model like the column model. Made by people clinicians and practitioners that collaborated with clinicians and practitioners in Japan who are seen to be at the lower echelons of the occupational therapy Kermit. Yep. It would be seen as offensive in a and an affront to the venerated leaders of OT wage in America or wherever to downgrade to sort of indirectly downgrade the value and importance of their work by creating something about ourselves to use for ourselves interesting. So yeah, I mean this is this is why even though the color model was made in Japan decided that most often push back there was there was there was a ban on on publications of the, model. I mean that was an unspoken log. That that was whispered to me by somebody who was on the the editorial board. Yep. And and and so there were there was all kinds of opposition off the there is no way that that Japanese OT is could possibly make anything that would come anywhere close to the Perfection of models that were made in place like America and Canada.
00:35:17 – 00:40:11
So I was so frustrated in in that alone that I decided. Okay. Well if that’s the way that this is I’m not going to be able to change it. I’m going to now take this model and take it outside of Japan and propagate it out into the world and off that’s when in two thousand and two at the wfo team meetings in Stockholm the Congress there. That’s where I took my Cadre of dead. Of my my my group of practitioners who were already being browbeaten by wage superiors for participating in the development of this. Sin, ya this model, they they work very hard and trained for this. We had a great number of papers that were accepted for 4 or oral presentation and posters and we went to Stockholm Sweden and I’m so proud of these practitioners who practically memorized their presentation in English. Yeah and and presented the work across the world and and I went to work at that time. I left Japan left my profile position there and I went to work with Elizabeth Townsend at Dalhousie University in the eastern part of Canada and wage. That’s where I started writing about cross-cultural epistemology issues as well as practice issues and really it come back. All from my own experience of having a culture rated into these different spheres of shared experience. Yep, right that’s really been the impetus to the development of the column model. You know, why? Why did we need a model? Yeah. Yeah and let me just really One More Story to you about this church. That was at at Stockholm one of the most amazing things happened. And that was that I was scheduled to give a presentation on the column model at you know, 1020 rooms that at that time people were presenting on aspects of theory. And when I got there I found out that there was a conflict and that somebody else had my life on it. And so we were arguing as to who’s who’s presentation should be allowed to be given Well, it was given to the other person and then they came to the organizers of the of the conference came back to me and they said we’ve got an opening tomorrow in the keynote theater and you can give your presentation their house that and I said well, okay, that’s something that you can give me for this appointment. Well, you know what? I followed Gary kielhofner Gary kill after gave a presentation. A keynote address. Yep, and then there were a couple of other ones that came after and I then gave mine and I think that I was talking about Kang eastern and western from the the about occupational therapist cultural relevance. Yep, and and and so forth. Um, if people are interested in what I talked about it is captured in my publication in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy the September 2093 issue, I believe that’s where my article called toward. The title is toward culturally-relevant epistemology in occupational therapy. And so what I basically postulated in in that serendipitous presentation was the need for Ooty wage now to grow up and to now develop more models that would that people in other places could relate to yeah the wage Western countries. Yeah. Yeah, you know individual Centric sort of biased toward middle-class and affluent patterns of of living and just all kinds of other Norms that are embedded in our models.
00:40:11 – 00:45:05
Yeah models are really culture. They are actually cultural artifacts. They’re made by human beings wage if they’re located in a particular sphere of experiences. Yep and view of the world, right? So in that presentation, At the end it was a question-and-answer period and the first person who shot her hand up and asked the question was none other than dr. Gail Whiteford of of Australia also been a guest on the podcast. Yeah, right. You got you got all of the Heavy Hitters they’re trying to collect the whole set. Yeah, and she asked a poignant question. And and that was are you you know, how many new like are you thinking that we need one another model or do you think we need many more and I said as many models that that will allow people in different. Walks of life to be able to relate to occupational therapy and what it has to offer. And so I think that really the 2002 wfot Congress was also another turning point in the model. That’s when the model went International. Yep, and I’m happy to say to just sort of close the loop that decades later at the World Federation wfot Congress in Yokohama, Japan in 2014. I believe this When ya want him in that one, that was a later than that was Or it could have been yeah, I had twenty-four chairman money. Whatever 2016. Yeah, like six things about that. Yeah. Yeah that that the The Color Purple was translated and published in in Japanese launched. It was launched at that that W 14 and life. So it’s been back imported back into Japan and now slowly but surely it’s gaining some traction there but during but at the time which Tacoma model was developed, there’s just no way that that it had any kind of a chance of propagating in Japan. Yeah, that’s really cool. So going back to you just like that was sort of I guess the why it was necessary. But so you got a group of practitioners and yourself, and I’m assuming probably a couple of other people too easy. Sort of I guess collaborate and work on developing it. So how what was that process? Like how did you get obviously most people have heard of even if they don’t fully understand the different components of the the model itself of the metaphor. How did you come up with those particular components? Like what was the the process or the how did you how did it Courtney you come about? Well, it’s interesting. Well, one of the first things that I did when one of the first things that I was asked to do when I went to Japan to teach OT month was that many people there recognized that I was of Japanese descent that I practiced occupational therapy in North America, and I was actually teaching at at the you know at a university there. So they they were having difficulties understanding theory in OT and like I said, they’re often they look at the world. They see things in a hierarchy and they wanted so desperately to to to to to run alongside the American o t s and the Canadian. Oh teenage, but one thing that was hampering their their progression was their ability to understand and use occupational therapy Theory, so they asked me to give a workshop. I believe I think it was a two-day workshop and people from all over Japan came OT teachers, especially in practitioners to learn how to do understand and apply the model of human occupation. And I proceeded to teach over two days what I would normally cover in two hours in a theory lecture. Yeah, and in North America, right? I thought it was a piece of cake there and then I knew that I was in a lot of trouble just by the first morning of people were confused.
00:45:05 – 00:50:03
They were dejected discouraged here. They thought finally we’ve got a Japanese guy who’s able to teach here explain it to us. Yeah month and we can get it. And so afterwards there were a number of people who expressed how saddened they were many people were thinking about maybe even abandoning OT and going to work elsewhere like maybe as you know work in a supermarket or whatever job that they can get. Yeah, they were that discouraged and so I I thought you know wage was going through my own transition of a culture reading back in the Japanese life as an adult and I thought no, you know, what we need is we need to develop a new model. And so I gathered these people that kind of met with me afterwards and I said, I think what we need to do here is that we need to develop an a unique model of Occupational Therapy. That would be understandable by Japanese clients. Especially Roti Japanese students and Japanese practitioners so long, I mean later on I find out that that this model that we created was not just relevant to Japanese or tedious process that yeah, the metaphor that this based on the one of a river depicting a person’s life journey is a metaphor that a lot of people in many different places around the world can relate to As a metaphor. Yep, that’s why it’s been the utility of the car, model has been really quite impressive in terms of where it’s gone around the world and did just for people that might not knock off a means River. Doesn’t it? It means River and that’s what you know, what is the Japanese word for River? Yeah. So what I did was that I gathered these people together and you know, they were saying we can’t make models. That’s something that’s really intelligent people on the other side of the ocean do and I said no this is you know, the the The American Canadian and Australian OTS, but especially the the the the leaders of OT in America have the luxury of building their model and theory on their own historically and culturally located experiences. And what we’re going to do what I think that we should do is that we should do the same. We should go right back to the basics and start to ask the the basic questions. What is the definition of Health? What is the definition of well-being? What is the definition of disability to us Japanese? And and so we need to start at the very basic places not take models from other places and translate them trying to make for your language wage. So I gathered a group of people to undergo a process of qualitative research. We met at another University in the evening and we had OT teachers. We had OT students. We had OT practitioners from mental health practice Pediatrics adult physical rehabilitation to name a few as well as a couple of clients and yeah to gather together on a weekly basis and I remember that inspiring these meetings where we’d go from like 7 in the evening until 2 or 3:00 in the morning. Wow. Yeah, you know and it’s really something because in Japan The universities of being buildings, they usually shut off their their electricity their lights and air conditioning at like 8 in the evening and when it’s the summertime when air conditioning cuts out. Yeah and it gets hot in Japan, you know, and so people would be sweating. We should be doing our focus groups and so on way into the night under these conditions and in the wintertime, you know, just the opposite we’d have to bundle up and we’d be kind of have freezing and having Arthur’s or oceans, but it was just really quite inspiring and so at the time I had implored this group of people that if we’re going to develop a model wage, it’s going to have to be kind of in a systems theory kind of format. Like boxes connected by plus signs with an equal sign and then a box of the end. Yeah, baby plus b plus C equals D found very prescriptive way of doing it.
00:50:04 – 00:55:09
Yeah, and it’s a very rational. Yeah modernistic North American Australian way of office building. Yeah, cuz the area is is a rational exercise. Yep. So these Japanese oties, you know, we talked together and and off go the first model that they put up was quite incredible. It was four boxes in a circle with arrows not plus signs, but arrows connect each box to every other box inside the circle. Four boxes inside of a circle and that and when I asked well what what does this mean? What is it explain? It means that these four elements off water the river walls and and and floor insides the sides of the the River Rocks and Driftwood those four elements were in a constant interplay and that if you change one box and make it bigger than it would affect the relative sizes of the other boxes, that would be all of these adjustments being made kind of like an an amoeba. Okay always in flux always changing always moving and so just to make sure my explanation water was the concept that we used for life or life flow. Well being the river walls Inside Job. It’s were symbolic of the physical and social environment that if there were problems in any of those areas. It would be seen in this metaphor as a thickening of the Riverwalk hotels there for constraining the channel of water of flow of Life water is life. Yep, like flow and then there would be rocks of different sizes and shapes that would appear and these were symbolic of problems difficulties and challenges and then Driftwood are these elements that can have a positive negative or neutral effect on the flow of the river these Driftwood can get stuck between the hard structures and the river walk and create even a greater obstruction to flow or they can actually move rocks out of the way as they Flow by or erode the side of the the the wage. Four walls a bit to increase greater flow. So these are what I call personal factors abilities and personality Tendencies and whatever it is training and schooling the person has has received whatever it is, those are personal facts or so here, you know, we have at the time this round circle with four boxes and then finally in our discussions, you know, we developed we said what are some easier ways to explain this is one of the first images that came forward was one of a river. And with a digger of heavy equipment Digger on the banks of the river that was also in sort of digging out holes and things and that was supposed to be what medical intervention was about surgery and the use of prescription drugs, you know to kind of effect a an effect where you would expand that I have to change that to be a very deep metaphor that one loading the sides of my river, right? So so, you know an artificially yeah, but however, so then it was like no let’s get rid of the bigger all together. This is a much better much more unrelated understandable way. And and so that’s how the river metaphor came to be the Kawa model so is using metaphor to cuz this is something I’ve always wanted and I’ve never actually asked you about wage is using metaphor to explain a concept like that. Is that something that’s like common in Japanese culture or is that something that you just sort of amongst you decided like this might be a better way to like where did that idea of using cuz there’s not so in OT most people can name a handful of 18 models. There’s none that use metaphor to actually get their their message across other than this one really. Well, and and and there’s a lot of people who don’t understand the models because it’s you know written in a in a cultural language. The concepts are things that that we don’t normally relate to on a daily basis and and and they’re very narrow in their application believe it or not.
00:55:09 – 01:00:12
You know, it’s only OTS that can really fully understand the concept of occupation as we’ve learned it. Yeah in our possession, but however, Brock getting back to what you just said metaphor is something that we all use and relate to like forget about just models just think about our conversations if you were to have a conversation with anybody and you reported it and then transcribed it word for word you’d be astonished at how dependent we are on metaphor. You know, I know I definitely even when somebody swears and says oh shit, you know, and and so when you think about that as a metaphor you get a very clear I did not do this is not good. Yeah, you know that right or your patience says the pain It Feels Like a Knife that or the pain is a knife. Yeah feels like I’ve been stabbed. Yeah. Yeah, so it’s an interesting thing right? But it is a part of how we communicate to one another and not relate to one another. Yeah. And so what I say about the koe model is that it is just a metaphor. It is just a metaphor and and it is not a universal prescriptive model really it gives the occupational therapist using it the freedom to be able to use the metaphor in the most advantageous ways to communicate with your client and to help them move toward their potential cuz I remember when you’re in Australia last and we were we went out to dinner with a whole group of our T’s and there was a discussion. I can’t remember who wrote it up but there was a discussion of from one of the eighties around them essentially using the same Concepts, but using a different metaphor in that from memory, and I could be butchering this but from memory it was they used the metaphor of a football field and so like the opposition players were like dog Equivalent to the the rocks in the car why the size of the width of the field was obviously like the banks your team was the the Driftwood and obviously had to try to you know, get through Thursday score try obviously. Most Americans probably don’t understand this sport that I’ve just described but it’s an Australian. Yeah an Australian version of football, which is yeah quite I guess like I thought you probably couldn’t translate it to American football as well. But that was just even that was like a thirty-second conversation during that dinner that clicked in me. Like it really is just packed full Concepts and the river explains to me because obviously understand what a river is and how it works and what’s in it and that sort of thing I get how all those four things into relate and you can do and started and the reason that that was using that is cuz the the population that are working with yes that population understood River without you working with from memory like young and teenage Aboriginal Straight on the people in Australia. They relate really really well to playing football. It’s a really big part of you know, that particular town or that that region that our in of their culture so long to get by in I guess from the kids. They had it set up so that they were doing this the the cob with a football field instead of a river. I’m not to say that the river wouldn’t work, but just a little bit essentially to that particular region and I remember that like it was it was yesterday? Cuz that was when it was clicked that this is a metaphor and you can use it. However, you know, however you see fit really and and and really the goal of of you know, I would want people who are using the column model to have as an objective to understand and empathize as much as you can to the clients experience of everyday life. It’s like an error If that is waiting to be discovered and appreciated and respected and so each of our clients have got their own experience with their particular wage illness or injury or whatever the issue is and it really instead of Us coming in with these preconceived ideas about what their reality should be. That’s what we do when we take models and universally apply that model to everyone everywhere like the same Shoe Fits everybody when really what we’re doing is that we’re forcing our narrative on the part of the client and really missing what is essential to occupational therapy.
01:00:12 – 01:05:11
I want to believe and that is it’s the client’s experience of everyday life that should be at the center of the universe. We should first be able to appreciate that first and then step back and then think about ways that wage. Ways the occupational therapy can make a difference or has to offer right? So that’s why I say there is no correct way to use the Kawa model we can suggest ways, you know in terms of how it was conceived in Japan and how it was first used but really the essence of client-centered Occupational Therapy was really about putting your client on top of everything in the Centre of everything right and that that means that we should not be unwittingly forcing. The person’s narrative to fit into our narrative. Mmm. Okay. Yeah. So if it’s an AFL football field or a rugby game or the the Autobahn in Germany, which which is a road without speed limits with on-ramps and off-ramps and Ed. Access photos and traffic and folgen, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean whatever it is, you know, if the client can relate to it in a meaningful way and effectively than that’s the right metaphor or that’s the right pathway. So you may start off with using the river metaphor because you can relate to it. But if you find out that your client can’t relate to it as effectively as something else then my change it my recommendation has thrown the Kawa model away from now. Yeah, go to something else. That’s much more safe to use. Yep, and and and then others will start off with a color model and then it will morph into something really awful different and that is okay because the the essence of the color model is that It’s the client’s explanation of what they’ve drawn or what they have put forward in the metaphor. That is the most precious most important job. They don’t even have to follow the rules. You know, like, oh gosh, I think you’re wrong water is supposed to mean this and rocks are supposed to mean this. I think this should be a Driftwood instead of Rock all just let it go. Yeah and encourage them to if they’re drawing skull and crossbones or flowers or fish in there River let it go because the home then it’s going to you’re going to be treated to some insight into what this person’s experience of everyday life is like when they begin to tell you what the fish are or you know, what the snake is off. What what what these things are what is flowers represent. So I just hope that the cover model draws OTS to be able to do them. Educational therapy better. Yeah, you know, yeah and more effectively and effective means as helpful as possible to your client Bots who’s trying to move toward their potential. Yeah, that that brings me to something. I definitely want to talk about. I got a couple of questions from other people that I think will lead into that home and and I’ve actually heard this question a few times myself. Someone sent me a question asking whether you believe that the car off its more as a conceptual practice model or a paradigm. Or I will getting into semantics when we start looking at things like that the answer to it is and I think maybe it’s an extension of what we just been talking about is that it can be it’s it’s it can be all of those things and it has been so there are some that will use the color model as a conceptual model. They use it as a mental framework to ensure that they are keeping the client in the center of all of their their their thinking and in their planning so it can be used instrumentally like that. Right? I mean from that Viewpoint it has all of the qualities of a conceptual model, you know that it’s effective and good when it can describe the phenomena of Interest. Well if it can expect Being processes in a systematic way if they can if it’s good enough to be even predict outcomes and future outcomes.
01:05:11 – 01:10:01
Yeah, those dead zones of the benchmarks that we would use but in terms of a paradigm it is all of it is also that in that the model really when you compare it with contemporary models and our own personal therapy or contemporary Theory. What is fundamentally different is whether you see the self you construct the self as a separate and distinct entity from the environment. Or whether you see the two as interconnected in separately and influx in a complex relationship. And so so in terms of Paradigm, we can also reflect it back to the larger social paradigms that that many of us in the industrial world are are going through you know that we’ve gone through the modernist. We’re you know, we had Universal singular Grand theories to explain all phenomena. It’s what gave birth to the scientific method and how we can reduce complexities down to its Elemental smaller bits to be able to able to explain that those realities now we are in the postmodern a condition in which understandings of Truth and knowledge is power. Much more relative. Yep. Okay, like you ask a question and the person will answer. It depends. Yeah off and ever since the we’ve had these advances in digital technology and especially social media. You know, we’re we’re now recognizing that oh my goodness. My view of reality is not necessarily the same as your view of reality or understanding of the same phenomena, even right you can you can right now I’m talking I’m located off the east coast of the United States and I’m speaking to you on the on the East Coast of Australia. Yeah and faith in this real-time conversation. I mean, we haven’t gone to sleep but we haven’t if we were in some kind of an argument we would know right away. Oh my goodness, maybe you know in fact Of what I’ve experienced in my life and how I’ve made sense of reality you you’ve got your own unique and equally valid different way of experiencing and looking at things. Yeah, right. And and so that’s to me that’s what social media has really accelerated is the awareness that there are multiple realities. Yep. It’s much more relational. It’s not as cohesive and simple and square as as the as modernist thinking I feel like to this is a preface that as well. Like I said, I a hundred percent agree with you. I it’s definitely made it more aware. I still think there’s a ways to go before the majority of the world is more accepting that there’s other factors influence, but there’s definitely more aware that there’s people all over the world with the same and different opinions to myself and yeah that kind of thing I’m getting a wage With both barrels here in the United States. I mean look at what has been happening politically here over the last couple of months. Yeah, you know, like what is qanon and and all these conspiracy theories, you know, I mean everything from you know, the shootings at Sandy Hook of those children. Yeah as being a false flag to you know, in other I mean people actually bought all this stuff, right? So it is that’s what the underscores for me the reality that no, we have all we all each developed our own uniqueness of reality faith and we decide what is believable or what isn’t and and we have our ways of being able to validate those things for ourselves to some people it’s whatever people talk about and reinforce through conversation with two others. It’s about using some kind of a scientific measure to be able to determine that Right. So now I think the amount way off on a tangent can’t even I think I think to build on that too. And this this could be a very loaded question cuz I feel like you know what the answer is going to be but where do you in my experience in using the car? Like we’ve talked about how a lot of our westernized developed models work very well understood if off.
01:10:01 – 01:15:01
All in the Japanese culture, but in my experience going the other way, there’s a little Western people from a western world that I’ve worked with our Western culture that I’ve worked with understand the car wash the wires at all. It’s really easy. I wonder whether firstly that’s your experience but where you feel Or if you feel even the car wash fits within say occupational science, who is I guess promoted as the underpinnings of our whole profession from a Western World. Anyway, where do you feel they do they oppose each other like or do they fit somehow together? Like, where do you see that sort of relationship? Well, yeah, it depends on I’ve got to be really careful about how I answered this question. That’s what I thought. Yeah, and it’s good that you’re asking this because I think that this is something that that we as a profession should also reflect on if we want our profession to be truly relevant and helpful to people in different locations different places different experience sets around the world wherever you are. I think that really dead we we need to reflect upon our own understandings of our own Concepts and and really come to terms with either off with we’ve got a graph grapple with a very same issues of whether the concepts that we put forward are truly relevant and applicable to everyone everywhere else. Given the growing sense or awareness of diversity that we’re gaining. I think that that occupational scientists, especially in the early days, so and they still have the very best intentions at heart. They really really want to give something of Great Value to the world revolutionary, you know of being able to really highlight the benefits of this thing that we call occupation, but I will say and this will be maybe metaphorically wage quite crude and maybe a little bit over-the-top but you know, the colonization of many of the Southern countries of the world was propagated and justified by Good intentions, you know when Northern countries would go into the African continent and basically say we’re going to save these people from themselves. We’re going to teach them how to behave how to act and how to speak our language and so on and so forth. So really, you know, I mean, I thought we were to just think openly we’d realized that that we also need to be careful with in our profession in terms of what we not just wittingly but unwittingly communicate to the other the the kinds of assumptions that were making about the other and about really what we think they’re reality should be with very much consideration for how they might see it from their viewpoint. So I have you know, I’ve been I’ve supported occupational science from a distance, but I’ve always rejected or resisted the label of being called an occupational scientist. And that is because I really do feel that the the core concept occupation is culturally bound and that it’s going to suck resonate with a lot of people who abide in shared experiences as with the authors of these Concepts and thoughts. However, it does disadvantaged people who can’t relate to the concept because they can’t anchor it to the same social conditions of individual centrality of human agency and so on and so forth. So I I just think that you know with best intentions. I mean, you know occupational science was launched as dead. As a new discipline and one that you know was not limited to occupational therapy. Um, but you know was certainly a growing body of knowledge that. Oh jeez could refer to to support their their fledgling growth, you know, so it it started off with yeah with Renee really good good intentions.
01:15:01 – 01:20:04
Yeah. I think that really what it’s suffering from and this is evidenced in the fact that there hasn’t been the kind of buy-in from other disciplines from other act from academics and other fields. Yeah to come over to the to this and and I think that that, you know, they’re it’s it’s indicative of how just like our contemporary models and occupational therapy were developed with a modernist mindset. You know where you want to create a grand theory that is going to explain this phenomena for everyone everywhere regardless of their differences in experiences of the world and not reality it is I believe that occupational signs at least in its original form is a Vestige of worldviews that that way we’re very Central to the modernist. And now that we are into the postmodern arm some of these Notions and assumptions that are based on a rational view of the world in which Grand theories are adequate to explain a phenomenon for everyone everywhere it it it’s not going to hold off and so occupational scientists have two in my opinion. They’ve got to do some Major rejigging and that is eating Humble Pie stepping back and saying okay, let’s start from the very beginning again. And let’s ask the essential questions page is instead of making statements. Like all people are occupational beings. Or occupation is essential for health and well-being or occupation is doing being belonging doing being becomes doing becoming bologna becoming belonging. Yep. Okay, instead of making those statements with a great deal of confidence. Let’s go back life. All of these other many other disciplines have done and let’s ask the essential questions that’s formulated reformulated into a question is occupation. You are actually required for health and Is occupation doing being becoming and belonging? Are we all occupational beings and and if if that would have been in the equation from the very beginning I think that we would have seen occupational science grow into a much broader much more eclectic, uh discipline of thinking and I think the Palm now occupational scientists, especially those that are more trained in the social sciences are trying to make those exceptions. They’re trying to backpedal and they’re trying to get into office everything from uh, disability Theory to the field of science where we we look at text and we offer we analyzed text and draw understanding from it. It’s called critical. It starts with a d Theory. Anyway, it’s got a Long Hill ahead of it. I so damn long and short of it is that I’m not opposed to occupational science, but I do most certainly have some cautionary issues about it. And that’s what I have been participating in occupational science because I don’t want to participate in any kind of activity. That would maybe be seen to be actually excluding. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Okay, and that’s a that’s a strong and hard possibly unfair thing to say, but really when you look at the effect of it if you’re taking a set of ideas and you’re just assuming that this is the way that everybody around the world. Sees reality and and you know with the best intentions you’re trying to get that vehicle moving in that direction it there are going to be people who can’t relate to it who don’t see it as part of their own understandings of reality and therefore don’t value it as as as essentially and fundamentally as many of us might change. It actually is excluding. It’s actually rewarding the people who abide in that view of reality and that that fits with something of thought for a very long time in that job as a whole. And again, this is a very generalized statement as a profession.
01:20:04 – 01:25:04
We don’t I don’t feel we have enough critical thinking we don’t question enough things even right down to the the little things of like why am I doing this assessment with this person? Like what is What benefit is it going to be to them? I hear so many OTS that and I used to be the same one. I used to get referrals that I’d get a referral for a baseline assessment on my okay Baseline for what expecting them to come back? How about we just do a really good job now and then they went after come back. So yeah, I just on every level I feel like OT as a profession Mondays in general could do with a million, including myself in this could do with more critical thinking or at least even more space to to be critical and think about some of these Concepts that we work under that we use some of the assessments some of the some of the places that we even see the profession actually situated. I I I mean, I’m fairly opinionated as you know, how long I feel probably aren’t the best spot for our profession and might be better suited to other professions. Whereas there’s other places where you know, we could put more eighties because we’re able to have a bigger influence. In that that particular area but I do feel I’m always wary of people that talk in absolutes cuz I’m like if you’re talking an absolute or absolute truths or you know, this is the way in the most that Star Wars thing that Mandalorian this is the way I feel like then you’re already negating some other options, Yes, any any any other options one more thing that I wanted to cover before you go? Cuz I know I’ve taken up a lot of your time is I’ve had someone Tom asked about the application of the car were two individuals but also to community-level cuz I know like I can speak from my experience as a mental health clinician. That’s usually, Peru pretty much since I learned about it right through my my clinical Korea. I’ve used it as similar to what you were speaking to before we were talking about whether it was a paradigm or a model home. Drop I’ve used the Car Wise a number of different users an initial assessment. I’ve used as an outcome measure. I’ve used it as pretty much any sort of point along that therapy process. I I’ve used the car. I’ve used the color on a job interview. I got a job interview wants doing a presentation using the car which is one of the more unique places that I’ve heard it used but I am lucky it it fit it worked and I got the job. So obviously it works. So from an individual level. I feel like it’s relatively easy for most people to get ahead and how to to use it as an individual level, especially if you’re working one-on-one. Like the other thing is in Jan you have to look at like a, hashtag on Twitter or something to find the Myriad of ways people actually apply it like, you know, I’ve done things real basic from drawing it on a piece of paper ordering it on my iPad to digging a hole in a park and actually filling it with dog. And sticks and that kind of thing and I’ve heard there was someone on Twitter yesterday talking about outdoor Car Wash where essentially they again do it at all. I don’t find a little cross river or I saw photos someone posted of them doing it with a group of people on the beach. Like there’s a myriad of ways to actually I guess physically use model. I know a friend of ours Jen gas who does a lot of Art in the UK paints a lot of car wash inspired images and that kind of thing. There’s there’s other ways that people can use it one thing. I haven’t done a lot of and I’ve heard of examples I think mostly from you was how it’s used at a community level or a larger group level. Can you speak to that at all? Sure in the same way that you know earlier we talked about how we we all took different ways of understanding the reality around us and our our relation to it in terms of the self as being a separate entity from the surrounding environment to others who see that as being a much more Blended view or entity if we were to take how we take how we use a koe model on our own selves. And we have the ability to then imagine groups of people as being described as a body.
01:25:04 – 01:30:14
You know, what we talked about a core of people we’re we’re talking about a group of people that are basically unified in purpose or are together in a particular place another word for a well knit Community the example that I’ve seen use of the color model have been with organizations as well as with Community College where let’s take a community. Let’s take a setting in which this example maybe comes from Thailand. For example, where a month elderly support group that meets together on a regular basis in a particular part of a of a city are LED through an exercise in dog. Which they’re they’re reflecting upon their Community the place where they all live and interact with one another and they then have a conversation about how their Community is going in general whether it’s a you know, healthy a place that’s really happy and healthy and thriving and instill inspires hope for a lot of the residents in the community. There will be conversations around what the social and physical environment of that Community is and whether there are certain problems and issues that are thickening the the river walls at that point and what are the kinds of challenges and problems and difficulties that the community is facing some people might say well there are Financial issues that that are there there’s Conflicts between people who are from this particular tribe and those who aren’t and so on and so forth and then there is an inventory taken of all of the assets and all of the strong and and and you know, and and some of the other factors that cannot be captured by the other elements of their River and to be able to them be taken through a process where everybody’s able to reflect and agree upon. This description of their present state is an been to put their heads together or to be led through an organized procedure in which then they’re they begin to identify which kinds of problems they want to be able to tap what rocks they want to either remove or decrease in size what can be done about their social and physical environment to allow more health and happiness to flow down. So you get an idea of how these same ideas can be extrapolated from the individual introspective way of using the colour model one. That’s much more organization applicable. So in that instance, would you be talking to sort of individuals within the organization or would you be doing like group discussion type stuff wage depends on the size of the organization obviously, but yeah, you could do you yeah, if the end result if the end goal is to be able to understand their narrative wage, then you as the professional will be able to make the best decisions as to whether you want to take select people from that group or the leaders or whether you want to hold a a much larger group meeting where everybody has the freedom to talk and Converse and so on right? Yeah. So it’s it’s it’s not this is not a modern birth. Marvel yeah that says you have to use it this way and in this order and the concepts can only mean this I think that’s that’s one of the things that I was always drawn back to what I was using it clinically was it’s and I’m sure I’ve heard you or someone else described it as this is your essentially building a model of the person rather than trying to make the person fit one of our existing models like we’ve spoken about earlier but to the point where I recall a few years ago there used to be an app on iOS on Apple for the car wire and I remember there being I remember getting the app and checking it out and going. Yep. Okay, all the usual stuff is there and but there was these like extra things down. There was a fish and there was I think it was called a sparkle. It looked like a little star and I was like, I have no idea what that is cuz it’s not in the textbook. It’s not in the original and birth. A was using it with a client it was before I even had a chance to ask you like what are these extra things and I was using it with a client and he just decided that the fish were going to be supportive relationships and I was like, okay sure like why no, and when I asked you it was pretty much the exact answer.
01:30:14 – 01:35:36
I was expecting in that it can be whatever they wanted to be home. So we would use it to like we would do one probably every couple of weeks as I saw him fairly regularly and it was he was using that to sort of track. He’s supportive relationships how close he felt with you know, at the time I think it was his mother and his sister something like that and you know had a falling out with Mom this week. So her fish is not there this summer kind of thing and it was that that’s how it was used. And I’ve had other people that like you like you sort of alluded to yesterday yesterday earlier that month. Some people might put things as a rock that you might have thought wait up. That sounds like it should more more be a a piece of Driftwood kind of thing. And I think that’s the big thing that I I like and I try and get across to my students as well about car Juarez. It’s no matter what you think about it. No matter how you use it. It’s a narrative exploration tool. So no matter what comes up no matter what the final image the final whatever it is that you’re doing like if you digging a hole and putting rocks or something no matter what it looks like at the end. Like that’s not the end of the story. That’s the start. That’s the beginning of where your home your work with that person starts, whether it’s the start of the session or the start of your therapeutic relationship. Once you’ve done our car Hua using it as a noun. I guess. That’s that’s that’s the beginning cuz now you get the privilege you get the opportunity to go through and really get a better understanding of how the the the person that you’re working with season with their individual their circumstances that they’ve laid out within this model that they’ve constructed about them. You get the privilege of being able to learn how those into relate for them. Doesn’t matter what the model actually says or how it’s constructed or you know, the theories the bill that sort of stuff sort of goes to the side cuz you get to find out exactly how that person operates according to them. And that was always the thing that I absolutely loved the most about it was it was a tool that allowed or I guess in Hancock what I always felt already as a privilege to be able to, you know be that close or be allowed to explore sometimes quite delicate things, especially working in mental health with with an individual on a level that yes, the level that you’re exploring at was generally a really deep level. But it seemingly they using this model made it. I don’t like almost an intrusive to touch on Sometimes some really really quite delicate topics. It just made it much more accessible to the people that I’ve I’ve ever used it with it always works exceptionally well for for for the people that I chose to use it with. Well, I’ve just been kind of spending all this time nodding my head and and just sort of marveling at the fact that yeah, you know Brock you really know and get the cover model and I think that yeah what’s just really essential here is that that really it’s the clients narrative it’s their story. It’s their experiences that we want to gain access to. And and we have to fight the tendency that we have in our own professional training in the hierarchical field of medicine wage to we have to resist the tendency to want to project what we think are what we think the answer should be home the other and that’s when we unwittingly do when we take Concepts and of a model or Theory and we you know project that or even use it as a lens out to interpret what the client is telling us because you know, when we do this kind of thing and we were to take what we’ve been translated from their story through the language of our model home and we were to show what we’ve written or what we’ve taken back to the individual. They won’t be able to recognize it as their own store and as as a religion An accurate reflection of what they’re going through. They just have to throw up their hands and say, okay. Well, you’re the professional you must know but so really, you know, when we talk about enabling occupation being client-centered this is exactly it may be what I want to do is maybe just kind of you know with this box to to leave you with an anecdote that I always try to tag on in any kind of presentation that I can give on the Kalamata at the actual if there’s anyone if there’s one thing that I want people who encounter the role model to Come Away with you know, the one sort of the most important lesson Were to take away from learning about the, model.
01:35:37 – 01:40:04
It’s this it’s that the client becomes a theorist who builds a model that explains or describes really well what their experience of everyday life is like you as a therapist now becomes the student of this theorist model asking questions. Like what is this rock here? Oh, I thought that maybe your boss. Would it be this other thing or why are why is this rock over here? So big and this one so small asking questions to try to learn as Kathleen accurately as possible what the components of this theory is from the theorist who is the client and them together you put your heads together and think about what occupational therapy processes might be helpful in helping this person’s River to flow better. So in other words to be able to jointly together set goals and make an agreement about the kinds of things about that you want to be able to work on right? So that that you know, that that’s it and to understand wage. At the column model metaphor is simply a vehicle of communication that mutually you both can relate to so that an opportunity to speak the same language rather than us medicine and EM speaking than whatever they understand and for the other to really gain a really good grasp of what occupational therapy is. You know because the language is now being reduced to what both people can understand. Instead of coming in with the sophisticated language of our culture. Yeah, occupational therapy personal causation, you know volition habituation performance, you know, the people who can relate to those Concepts. That’s perfect. That’s fine, you know, but a lot of people can’t and don’t realize and the therapists not doesn’t realize that they’re actually imposing their their their their colonizing the other two one’s own reference of what is real and worth doing and worth knowing Couldn’t have summed that up better myself. Yeah. Well thanks. I am just as you talked about how long you know, the, model is just a start. Yeah. I hope that for your listeners that they’ll also see this conversation is as just the start of uh on a journey of looking at ways in which they can really give power to their practice and to bring their practices more in line with the needs of their clients. Which in our world should be on my T. That’s that’s that’s why we’re all here hopefully wage. Yeah. So is is there any resources or any where people can go to find more information about Carl? Obviously, there’s a text book and I’ll throw the link for that in the in the show notes, but there’s a website as well. I believe if that’s still run wage. Well, yeah, it’s still running. I think that it hasn’t been updated in quite a while. The main thing about the column model is that I’ve always wanted to be a Grassroots kind of thing off, you know, and and all of your listeners should also know that we have pledged from the very beginning not to profit from the Kalamata. So I haven’t made a penny on the cover model home. And so the just lost my train of thought you were the website. Yeah the website real life and and so there are some people that you know had committed to to it but they’ve gone there started PHD programs and you know, I have no way back we’ll Circle back to it.
01:40:04 – 01:45:04
But the fact that I want to say about this is that you know, I’m forever learning from my daughter who’s eighteen years old and she’s in first year in college and she dead You know when when I talk about news and politics with their I’m just astonished at how so much more she is informed that I am and Thursday and she’s where she getting a lot of her and she watches or she accesses an app called Tick-Tock. Okay. What I haven’t been able to bring myself to get onto that. Yeah. Well she knows what’s going on. Yeah all in these half minute XXII blips of you know of information but so it’s just wrong be reminded me of just how much of a dinosaur I am when you know, I just thought well, I’m on social media cuz I’m on Facebook and here’s my daughter saying my Facebook page kind of like for old people which I am but but I am too. Yeah, so what I would say to your teacher to again your audience dead. Is just that if they want more information about the Kalamata, they probably have a better idea of where to get the information pretty sure there’s going ton of stuff. If you just Google it it’ll bring up all guns and things off right YouTube and Facebook and you know ya Instagram, I mean whatever it is, I think that there’s just the growing body of information out there and and you know, it kind of fulfills part of the mission of the column models that we had recognized the very beginning that the Kalamata was going to be difficult because not only conceptually different and paradigmatically but but also different lines like oh how it’s yeah. Yeah and how it’s How It Should Be propagated. Yep how it’s going to be distributed. We wanted it for practitioners and students. Especially not just for the academic sitting in the Ivory Tower like myself. And in order to do that, well, we hope that it will follow these so-called unconventional and non-academic ways of getting out and that is our social media and all kinds of other current venues or Vehicles like this podcast like the spot. Yeah. I like this podcast. It’s been a great great privilege and honor to be one of your your guests rocket guys, I guess like I said before we started on like you’ve been on my list I think since before I even actually started so I’m glad we could finally the stars align and we could finally make it happen cuz you know, it’s white. It’s been really good to catch up into it’s it’s been thoroughly enjoyable read or not reminiscing, but I guess re going over all of these conversations that we’ve had in the past and and relearning and reaffirming all of the things that I bought. Assumed that I knew about Carla and hopefully the the listeners will be able to take something out of it. Even if it’s just a a curiosity to find out more. That’s that’s I mean, that’s where most great idea. As a curiosity. So yeah, you know, it’s just it’s fantastic, you know, maybe a little cap that I want to let out of the bag is that you know, I’m always discovering areas of the, model that are just developing and evolving and it was really really happy to learn that doctor hadeel off and I think thinking about what I’ve heard from Saudi Arabia and the Arabic World in that doctor hadeel back just bought it has translated as has published as getting is on the cusp of now releasing the publication of the color model in the Arabic language. Well, that’s cool. So that should be able to reach another kind of new sector of the world. Yeah that can appreciate occupational therapy in a culturally relevant way. That’s fantastic. Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, thank you. Sorry. I can’t thank you enough for your time. And you’ve been a massive influence on me professionally for years. You like introduced me to things like social constructionism and recommended textbooks and books and all sorts of stuff for me to read and yeah, you’ve had a massive influence on me clinically and I’m glad that I could finally off Rangel you in and and put you on the podcast for to share your your brain with everyone else.
01:45:05 – 01:46:21
Well, yeah, I’m brain. I don’t know but but certainly responses to the and I and I really grateful for the the questions that have been brought forward from some of your your followers and I think that hopefully it’s again us repeat. It’s a start and that it will be an ongoing conversation.
100 – A Celebration of OT Podcasting
Feb 08, 2021
What a journey podcasting has been. Mid-April 2018 I finally pulled my finger out on an idea that I’d been tossing around for years. I got the equipment (what I thought I needed), learn the process, set up the accounts and made some graphics. On May 17th 2018 Episode 001 of Occupied launched to the world and I couldn’t be prouder having put a whole 22min of content out for public consumption. I shared that first episode with, friends all over the world via email, in Facebook groups, and Twitter. In the first couple of weeks, about 350 people had listened and I was absolutely blown away. I’d had people I didn’t know email me about it, tweet to me, DM me and I was in a state of disbelief.
Right from the very start, I’d always lead with the belief that if just 10 people listened it would be worth the effort. If a handful of people learned something or took something away it would be worth the time. And if i was able to have an impact on just 1 person in a positive way then it would be worth the long recording and editing sessions and the lack of sleep.
Now:
Advance forward 33months and it’s safe to say my initial goals have been far surpassed and podcasting has given me so much more than I could have ever predicted. I’ve connected with amazing practitioners, learned massive lessons and made life long friends.
The absolute best part about hitting episode 100 is that I’m doing it at the EXACT same moment as one of those life long friends, Sarah Putt from OT4Lyfe. We’ve been there and supported each-other right from the beginning and i couldn’t think of a more amazing person to celebrate these milestones with. I can’t thank you enough Sarah for everything you are and everything you do.
Lastly, I’d like to thank, you. Without you, podcasting wouldn’t have the meaning or purpose that it does. You are the reason I do it. You are the reason for the hundreds of dollars spent and countless hours invested. You’re the reason for the late nights and super early mornings to align timezones. You are the reason that I love doing this so much. Without you, there is no Occupied. So thank you for listening, engaging, DMing, sharing, reviewing, disagreeing, supporting and continually being there for the podcast. You are Occupied.
Enough soppy talk. Enjoy the episode and lets make the next 100 even bigger and better 😉
099 – Sexualisation and Identity ft Sakshi Tickoo
Jan 27, 2021
Dr. Sakshi Tickoo (she/her) is an Occupational Therapist, Personal Counselor, and Student Mentor based in Mumbai, India. She currently works in telehealth, school-based and home healthcare settings serving a diverse population of age 3 years to 65 years. She’s also the brains behind Sex, Love, and OT.
Sex, Love, and OT is a sex-positive space for everyone to embrace their whole being and be respectful of everyone else’s choice(s). It is to build a better ecosystem, a healthier community, and be ready to voice and protect what matters to us, what we love.
This episode we explore the concept of sexualisation how that relates to identity and what this means for Occupational Therapy practitioners.
098 – What Does My Depression Look Like?
Jan 21, 2021
On December 8th I went public about my journey with depression. Some of you may have seen this on the Occupied Insta and some on my personal FB. If not here is the post:
“Story time about a little photo project I did.
About 2 months ago I was depressed. My time management disappeared, I isolated, didn’t want to get out of bed, no motivation, tanked mood, drowning in work, barely left the house and all these things combined in a perfect storm of shitness.
This has happened in the past a few times even though only a hand full of people know it. Each time you come out of a depressive episode with new knowledge about triggers, coping mechanisms, your reactivity to situations and your levels of tolerance to even little tiny things.
This time, or the first time, I was able to remain quite analytical about the situation. This time, I understood that despite my feelings, a lot of the stressors I was experiencing had a time limit. I knew that I had about 4 weeks till the weight would start to lift. So, theoretically, if I could get through the following 4 weeks that I would start to “feel better”.
Now, it’s not uncommon for people with depression to try and hide it from others. The way I’ve described it is that it’s like wearing a mask. A mask put on for everyone else so they couldn’t see the real me. That’s what this picture project was about, what’s under my mask.
So 2 months ago I decided to see if I look different when depressed as opposed to when I’m feeling great. The first image, most of you will know but may not have known the story behind it, surprise lol. The second pic I took this morning. I tried not to have an expression in either pic, just my resting face. Same edit on both, and tried to get the same lighting, angle etc. I can see a big difference and that’s really heartening and yet a little scary putting this out there.
So, why did I post this right now? I don’t want your sympathy or anything like that. I was talking to a friend today who encouraged me to share. Reminded me that sharing my own experience you never know who might benefit from it. You never know who might hear something in your story that might help them along their own journey.
I want to normalise the discussion.
If you can relate to any of this, don’t be shy or embarrassed by it. Depression can happen to anyone. If you want to talk about it, I’m more than happy to engage with you.
Look after yourself, look out for others, stay connected and prioritise your mental health.“
Some people asked for more, asked for an episode. So here it is. I hope someone out there finds it useful
Hi, on The eighth of December 2020, I made a post, both on my personal Facebook page and the occupied Instagram page about my journey with depression. And a lot of people asked if I could turn that into an episode elaborate and share my story a bit. So that’s what I’m going to do today.
So in about September, I took a self portrait, it was black and white, it was just my face. The background was blacked out. It was dark, it was moody It was me in a depressive episode. Now I had this thought. While I was sitting with that, and trying to sort through some emotions and feelings that I was curious as to whether or not I actually looked any different, while depressed compared to normal. Depression is something that I am familiar with. I definitely wasn’t the first time this has happened. The first time, I recall very clearly Well, the first time I recognized it as depression, I recall very clearly it may have happened before that and I didn’t pick up on it. But the first time that it really well that it clicked for me was in about 2015 16 I was feeling just so low. And I had constantly put it down to the fact that I wasn’t enjoying my work, I didn’t want to go to work, I was feeling bullied at work, I put all of this negative emotion that I was experiencing down to that simple fact. I can’t precisely remember the what triggered it. But I remember the almost lightning bolt realization when I went, holy shit, this is depression. It was eye opening to me for a number of reasons. Because it was like an instant shift in all of the emotions that were in my body. So it went from all of these emotions of flatness and sadness and low mood and that kind of stuff. And all of that was like instantly evacuated and replaced by guilt and shame. I was at the time working clinically as an occupational therapist in the mental health community rehab team. And I remember thinking, How am I? How am I helping other people if I can’t even recognize at the time what I was expressing to myself as like very basic, very, very simple depressive symptoms that I would recognize in an instant if it was with anyone else. But in myself, I didn’t see it for months.
That instant like no I’m talking it would have been 10 second moment was both freeing and terrifying at exactly the same time and unless you You’ve been there, it’s so hard to explain what that’s like. I all of a sudden had an answer to everything that had been going on for me for a number of months. I all of a sudden knew that there were things that I could actually do to assist to manage what had been going on with me. But at that same time, I had, like I said, that intense guilt and shame like how did I not see this coming? Like, this is what I do for a living? How did I have all people? How did I not see this? So in the lead up to that, and I described this in the post, and I’ll share the post in the show notes if you want to have a read and I’ll share the the photos that I’ll talk about in a bit. But I describe the fact that I got to a point where I wasn’t feeling anything i was i was numb. And I was essentially self aware enough to know that okay, say for example, that person said something funny. I need to laugh at that. That’s the social convention is to laugh when someone says something funny, so I would laugh. But I wasn’t actually feeling the the funny, so to speak. I describe it as wearing a mask. I’m essentially putting on a show to hide my own feelings, my own depression from everyone else. I didn’t want people to know that I was having a hard time I didn’t want the the pity the Oh my god, are you okay? I there is. And this may be one of my own shortcomings. But there is very little that drive me up the wall more than that. I know that it always is coming from a good place and that people do it because they care or they don’t realize the stuffs going on, I get that. But for me, and I can’t speak for everyone for me that that’s not what I need. That’s not what I want, when I’m talking about this kind of stuff. So please don’t message me saying oh my god, are you okay? I’m fine. It’s okay, I promise. So I the very first thing I did once I had that 10 second sort of realization lightning bolt was I was speaking to a friend, I was actually due to meet that friend for a coffee. And I spilled to her my realization built up the the guts to get over the guilt and shame to actually tell someone and she opened up that she understood she had been through similar. And she gave me probably some of the best advice to this day that I’ve ever been given. And that advice was that at times, that point in time being one of them, it’s okay to be selfish. And I know that is hard for some people because it goes against a lot of things that we’re taught and what we believe and how we should behave towards other people, etc. But the, what she was meaning was that there are times when you need to prioritize yourself, and you need to say no to other people’s stuff. We’re in a helping profession. That’s one of the main reasons I was in occupational therapy. And in occupational therapy. We’re in a profession that we give so much of ourselves and sometimes it’s hard to switch that off.
It tends to be the types of personalities that are attracted to that profession, this profession. So it’s not just at work, that this happens, you know, we generally fail in giving of our time of our resources, etc. But that can have a toll on us, especially when we need our energy. to focus on us and helping ourselves. So the way I interpret that, that advice is, it’s okay to take back some of that energy of your own and use it on yourself, it’s okay to go No, sorry, I can’t help you. Yeah, move house or whatever I need to look after myself for a bit, I need to you don’t even need that’s the that was one of the big freeing things, or you don’t even need to provide an explanation. You are an independent person that needs to look after themselves. So that was some of the best advice. And it’s To this day, I’ve talked to many people from this post, I had a number of people messaged me with their stories of either being currently in the same situation, or having been through it before. And I did have a number of people asked me for advice. And that was the exact advice I gave to them as well, because even though it happened, you know, sort of within half an hour of me working it out, it’s still to this day, some of the best advice that I’ve ever got, with regards to managing this, this, this demon of sorts. One of the other things, I guess I kind of turned it on myself to a degree. Even though that sounds really cheesy and corny, and, and whatnot, I, at the time, sort of had a look at my occupations. And I had the time, there was really only one that was making me feel anything that was a big thing for me, once I realized, like, I’m not like, I’m not actually feeling anything, happy, sad, angry, mad, anything at all, like, there was just nothing. So the only occupation that I was actually feeling anything during which luckily happened to be, you know, happiness, or joy, or whatever you want, it was making me feel good, was my my strength training. So for a period, I put a lot of stuff on hold, I pulled back on a lot of what I call extracurricular ot activities. So things that I would classify like this podcast, I would classify as an extracurricular activity, things that are ot related, but aren’t necessarily your job. I used to run, I still do. Like Facebook groups, I used to be involved in all my conferences, and I used to be involved in our national association and the state association and all that and I pulled out of me everything, everything, I tried to free up as much of my energy and my time that I could then redirect into me. And I ended up training more, I did the thing that was actually making me feel good. That was making me feel something, which I don’t think is uncommon. But I think what you’ll find is that for some people, it’s not always things that make them feel good, that are the things that are making them feel, sometimes people will have maladaptive coping mechanisms where, for example, something like cutting might be the only thing that will make a person actually feel anything. So that’s what they end up doing more of. So luckily, that’s one area where my clinical experience did help guide me and I was very aware of maladaptive coping mechanisms, etc. So that wasn’t something that I was going to do, per se. And I did that for a while. And what you find is if you are spending more time of your so you know, you’ve got a finite number of, say, hours in your week. If you’re spending more of those hours happy, then I guess your average happiness is gonna go up. When that happens, you start to feel better overall, that kind of leaves like a happiness impression on you on you.
And what you will find eventually is, after doing that for a while, there are going to be other activities that emerge that will start to make you feel they will make you not necessarily always feel good, but you might all of a sudden, things might start annoying. You, which is what happened to me. And initially I was did the typical thing, and I got annoyed. But then, after a couple times, I’m like, no, wait a minute, this is something I haven’t actually felt in ages like this is as weird as it sounds, this is a good thing. This is progress. This is me moving forward. So then you can, I guess, build on your strengths, to start filling your week, with more and more things that make you feel good. One of the things that I wasn’t able to shift was that work situation. So as we know, as all good it is, we can either change the occupation, we can change the environment, or we can change the person, I tried a number of things to change the person, me to be able to increase the occupational performance of that occupation, did not all work. Unfortunately, I ended up changing the environment, I left that job and moved on. And it was a decision that had to be made, obviously, with my partner, because it was a big decision, because it was a really good job. It was well paying, it was secure. But the decision we came to was that no amount of money is worth being sad. Like if you don’t want to go to work every day, if you if it’s a struggle to drag yourself out of bed. It’s not worth it. You better off being on unemployment and actually being happy than to put yourself through that. And I think that’s a very Western culture thing, to essentially work ourselves to death, which is just dumb when you actually frame it out and look at it from a distance. But most of us are too close to it to actually recognize that. Anyway, so I moved on. And that situation was then remedied as well. So I think I was then you know, doing something that I actually enjoyed, I went into teaching. And again, my week was then even more filled with activities that I actually enjoyed, that made me feel good, that made me feel. And my average happiness, as I seem to have adopted, the term went up. And that’s sort of gradually slowly how I started to bring myself out of that initial depressive episode. Now, since that time, I’ve had a couple. And it’s been the same process to come out of them. But what you learn is with each one, I seem to be getting better and better at actually identifying before hit. You catch it early are, you put things in place earlier, you may already have some preventative things in place. To stop you getting as low as you have been. But it’s still gonna happen. It’s seen for me anyway, I know not for for some people, it seems to be I guess more of a trigger thing for me, it seems more of a cyclic thing. So whether it’s hormones or brain chemicals, or whatever it is, I don’t know. All I know is my experience of it. So the photo that I mentioned at the start, so the last episode that I had was around September ish.
I took that photo. Because I had had a couple of these episodes before I caught it much earlier. And almost immediately, I already knew that I was going to come out of it, which was a big, big shift from the last couple like I already knew straightaway. I’m coming out of this. And I took that photo, almost as like a future plan. Because even in my head when I was taking that photo online, I will compare it to another photo that I will take in the future when I’m feeling better. Previously, I don’t even think I would have been able to get my head Have railed that concept of when I’m feeling better in the future. So to me again, that’s growth. That’s progress in how I manage it. The interesting thing, I guess, I when I took the second photo I hadn’t, hadn’t thought about it in a while. But I made the first photo, my facebook profile picture. Because, again, I knew that there’s no end like a definite endpoint where you go, yep, okay, depressions over. It just kind of fades away. And because you’re immersed in your own life, quite often you don’t notice it. And I knew that would happen. So I made the photo, my facebook profile photo. Now granted, I don’t go often, and look at my own Facebook profile photo very often. But it got to about the eighth of December, when I made this post, and I caught glimpse of it went, ah, how to sit back how to reflect went, yeah, I’m actually feeling really good. So I took the second photo, just to compare and see if there was any difference. I applied the same editing to the second photo, as I did the first like identical, like I literally, in Lightroom, copied it and pasted it onto the other photo, all the settings, I mean, I cried in both photos to not put any kind of expression, or anything like that it was meant to be just my resting face. And the the the same edit. So essentially, I tried to make the photos, conditions as similar as possible. So I could really just see if there was any difference in how I looked between them. And for me, I can see a massive difference. And I had a lot of comments from other people saying they could also see a massive difference. A lot of comments about my eyes. And like I can see all the differences like you know, I just look sad. First one turned out now, Barbara, that kind of thing. little puppy dog eyes, I just looked down, which I was. So there’s no shock there. But even the clarity of my skin is different. But the biggest difference I noticed. And then obviously other people notice because they’re messaging me about it was my eyes, which I found really fascinating. Because eyes, I think you don’t often think that they change. They’re just their you know their color. And unless you get a cataract or something you don’t often think about them changing. But there is a definite difference. I can’t even pinpoint what exactly the difference is. And I’ll post the photos in the show notes so you can have a look as well. And if you can work out what exactly the difference is then please do tell me but they definitely do look different. So I think one of the big reasons why I made that post was I wanted to normalize the conversation. I wanted people to be able to talk about their own mental health we have public mental health awareness days in Australia, we’ve got our UK day and that kind of stuff. We meant to check in on your mates and make sure they’re doing okay and that kind of stuff, which is cool, that’s fine. But it’s that kind of thing is is set up because people aren’t reaching out themselves when they need it.
I made that post in the hope of at least showing someone one person if it was one person that took this away from it then I’m over the moon but showing one person that it’s okay to talk about your own mental health like you don’t have to there is no shame, no guilt around, you know, not having a great time. At some point in your life like it happens. It’s normal. It does happen to be able and the sooner we get out of this like site or not cycle but we get out of this habit of you know, feel Guilt and shame like I immediately did when I first realized what was going on with me. The sooner we get out of that the sooner people will be able to ask for help, the sooner the conversations will turn, supportive and non judgmental, the sooner the services will start getting funded for actually helping people. The better and the the mentally healthier our population is going to be. And if I can help make that a thing within my friend group within my peers group within you guys, then why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t I at least try. So it’s definitely something I’m very passionate about. I’ve spoken a lot about mental health on this podcast, I’ve brought people in with lived experiences of all different diagnoses. And now, I guess you’ve got a bit about my lived experience. So I’m keen if you do want to contact me if you want to have a chat, feel free. I practically live on Instagram, you can get me in there on the Occupy podcast, Instagram. If you have considered doing I don’t know if anyone has, you know, done this sort of pre and post photo thing before but if you’ve considered doing it, or you’ve done it, hit me up, let me know. I’m keen to see if you can see. Or if you can work out what the differences is in between the two photos then yeah, please do. Hit me up and let me know. I’ll leave it at that for now. I’m sure you’re sick of my rambling but thanks for listening. And thanks for always supporting this podcast. It does mean a lot to me. You guys are the reason why I’ve done this for so many episodes now and continue to have no plan to stop. So probably props you and thank you very much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
097 – The OT Lifestyle Movement ft Rhiannon Crispe
Jan 16, 2021
Rhiannon Crispe describers herself as “a salty soul, health enthusiast, sun chaser and blessed mumma & wife. A dreamer and a doer. A goal setter and a go-getter. A change agent and a game changer. And also a proud Occupational Therapist and business owner.”
I’ve wanted to talk to Rhiannon for a long while and once she started the OT Lifestyle Movement it was the perfect reason to get her on!
Rhiannon Crispe describers herself as “a salty soul, health enthusiast, sun chaser and blessed mumma & wife. A dreamer and a doer. A goal setter and a go-getter. A change agent and a game changer. And also a proud Occupational Therapist and business owner.”
And to kick off another year of podcasting I thought I’d take a look at that age old tradition of making New Years Resolutions…..or rather why you shouldn’t bother.
I wanted to look at why soooo many people fail their resolutions and an alternative method that I use and you might find more successful!
Hi and welcome to 20 21. You made it congratulations that alone after last year is a massive success month. So Props to you, but are you one of the 74% of people that is thinking of setting some New Year’s resolutions? Well, let’s have a chat and make sure that you’re not part of the eighty percent of people who don’t usually succeed with said resolutions.
New Year’s resolutions we’ve all heard of them most of us have probably sat them at one point or another very few of us have actually succeeded in completing any of the resolutions that we set but why is that and what can we do or what can we drive it’s a little bit different to make sure that we are actually progressing along this journey of self improvement that we are self-imposing on ourselves every 1st of January So it’s important to sort of know that despite 74% roughly in the US of people wanting to set nice resolutions this still 80ish percent of those people that are going to fail them and that’s a massive fail rate, which makes you wonder like why I’m not doing it. What is the purpose we All have these things in us or about us or around us that we want to change that we want to improve sometimes. It’s health-related. Sometimes it’s career-related. Sometimes it’s money related. But every single person has something that they would love to improve upon in that lives. Now for some reason it’s a it seems to be a cultural thing. We’ve been brought up with this belief that the start of the new year is this magical time, when all of a sudden boom, we can start fresh start clean everything that we’ve sort of patterned and built up to that point no longer affects us and we can only choose what we’re going to change or what we’re going to do better at in the new year. It all sounds wonderful on paper and I wish I could tell you that that’s exactly how it worked. But unfortunately, we can’t instantly regained right all of our patterns in our history at the the tick of The Twelve o’clock. Unfortunately, it would be much easier if we could change now for most people the majority of their New Year’s resolutions tend to be health-related seconded by self-improvement type goals off. It’s interesting that. The younger generation so jensy is much higher percentage of them actually wanting to or anticipating setting New Year’s resolutions. And as you go through the generations towards the older Generations the Baby Boomers and so on that gradually gets less and less and I’m only predict or I can only sort of guess that that’s because they failed a number of times during their younger years wage at actually completing some of these resolutions and that Honda wears on you. I would imagine so down baby boomers where it’s sort of only about 60% of people are going to set New Year’s resolutions for 20 21 Jen’s. He’s offered that 92% So there’s a massive difference dead. They just young and fresh and hasn’t been haven’t had the life beaten out of them yet. So that’s quite interesting. one of the one of the reasons that it’s I guess hypothesized that resolutions don’t necessarily work for the vast majority of people.
00:05:11 – 00:10:50
Is it there there’s a broad it’s I want to improve my health. I want to make more money or be better better manage my money maybe off the really broad. There’s no guidance. There’s no reflection on what the actual issues regarding that are or anything like that. And yes, we know as though T’s that wage. Generally what you would do. If you came across a client with said resolution or goal that you would then go through and break it down and turn it own no manageable steps, but unfortunately the I guess the culture around New Year’s resolution isn’t to do that. It’s just Going to improve my health New Year comes around and boom will buy gym membership for the year and we’ll go for days and waste the rest of it off. What can we actually do? Like, why are we setting these big wish statements? I I think that one of the reasons that that fails is just abroad but sometimes they’re also somewhat Out Of Reach for that point in time for the person which isn’t a bad thing off. I’ll get to that scene. It’s not a bad thing. But because there’s no breakdown of that goal. We don’t know we don’t know that okay. I don’t actually have the skillset yet to be able to complete this resolution. So how am I actually going to do it? Skill sets such as discipline or willpower, which I’m sure many of you will attest really really important when it comes to setting things like exercise goals, like going to the gym or nutrition goals, like, you know, eating healthy eating more vegetables, whatever your goal might be the the soft skills of discipline and willpower a massive and probably the one thing that gets overlooked every single time. Those of you who have listened to this podcast for a very long time now may recall me doing an episode way back. Like eighty Nine episodes episode 7 about smart goal. And I’m going to touch on a little bit of that now while we’re discussing this so one like I said earlier one of the things the needs to happen if someone’s going to make this sort of life-changing decision is it needs to be broken down? It can’t just sit there as this massive on a pedestal life-altering a call on its own and expect to be completed expect to be engaged in and expect to actually happen. So we need to break down now what most people’s defaults would be would be to break it down into smaller goals and I would Hazard a guess that ninety percent of them would recommend writing them are smart goals Now interesting enough. I spoke about in that episode that the sort of the actual purpose of smart goals and what they’re best suited for home. So I spoke about how they are best suited to do things that you already know you can do but you want to be able to do them with more efficiency and speed and efficiency and teamwork if it’s a big group thing that kind of thing. So there are actually things that smart goals may help with and if your resolution is something that you’ve done before or something that you are hundred percent know you can do then there’s the potential that smart goals may actually help you achieve that but given that we seem to be relying on the magic power of January 1st. I’m going to assume for the rest of this episode that wage You’re actually wanting to change about yourself is something that you either have never attempted before or have never attempted successfully before faith in that that tends to be where most people put their wish list for things that they would like to improve about themselves. So I’m not going to look at smart goals as a valid a valid method of achieving these resolutions, but if you would like to jump back to episode info Link in the show notes if you want to have a listen and hear about those So one method that I’ve been using for a number of years now and I believe it was Melinda Gates Bill Gates as wife who I first heard about it in an article where she was being interviewed was too choosy a word or I’ve sort of wage isn’t it to a phrase for the for the upcoming year? So rather than picking something, you know, I guess a negative thing.
00:10:50 – 00:15:14
Generally. That’s the thing that we want to change event as well as is the negative. So what we perceive is the negatives so rather than starting the year off looking at the negatives and what we don’t like about ourselves. I choose a word or a phrase that I want to essentially live that year by and what happens is I don’t for me personally. I don’t tend to set very hard specific job. Dolls of round achieving that it’s simply making me aware of when opportunities around that word or phrase present themselves so that I’m ready to dive into them. So for example, a couple of years ago, I had all the words that I chose was minimalism. So whenever I was looking at purchasing things whenever I was say cleaning out a cupboard in my in my house and my office minimalism was my focus and because it was something that I had been thinking about I had been researching about I had it sort of front of mind it made it very easy for me to incorporate that into any decisions that I’m day-to-day. I ended up clearing out a lot of the Clutter that you know, most people just have rubbish stored not rubbish rubbish, but like useless app Things that I’ve haven’t looked at in years or used in years stored in drawers and cupboards all over the house. I managed to get rid of part of that stuff. I had recently not been the greatest with money but focusing on minimalism and focusing on minimalism when I was actually purchasing things made a massive impact on my decision making and that sort of thing. So another year last year. In fact 2019 my phrase for that year was dead choose adventure ordinance our new adventures. So what I wanted was I had a friend a very good friend who had moved to my city for 12 months and in showing her around and doing all the touristy type things when she first arrived it sort of showed me how little I had actually done in my local area code. I I chose that particular phrase because I wanted to actually get out and do new things. I found that at that point in time. I was very much in my life. Very comfort zone padded like a comfort zone I guess and would not really straight out of it very much and not found that I was sort of missing out on all these random opportunities and trying new things. So my city has a lot of different sort of cross cultural events and that kind of thing stuff that I never ever would have even considered going by my all before but because the the new adventure I guess Monica was front of mind for me that year I went to all sorts of things like art shows and light shows in park. And brass band concerts in Parks more like a lot of art stuff. Actually now that I think about it a lot more camping trips in a lot more would probably a lot more restaurants that sort of thing. So whenever an opportunity would present itself for something that I’d never done before my initial reaction was to say yes, other than it’s not really my thing if I didn’t like it afterwards so be it but there was a lot of things like for example, like a brass band concert in a park definitely not usually something I would choose to do, but I’m really glad that I forced myself into it essentially because it was an experience that I thoroughly enjoyed with some really good friends and the music was really relaxing and kind of cool and it was just, you know little slang on the grass under a tree with this is obviously pretty covid-19.
00:15:15 – 00:20:03
People listening to music and it was an amazing experience something that I wouldn’t have done before that. So that’s how I would work with the phrase or the word of the year. So My 2021 if you follow me on instant, you will have seen a few days ago. I posted at my 2021 off phrase that I am going to live by Thursday. So to speak is genuine connection. I think that this year has made everyone very very acutely aware of their social connections and how to make n them walk through difficult circumstance, but it’s also probably made you realize one how fragile people can be 20 21 has had a mass. Impact on on a lot of people’s mental health including my eye, which I have posted about not too long ago and I might throw that link in the show notes. If you are getting my little girl twenty mental health story, but I think a lot of the issues that arose for many of the people that I spoke with boiled down to connection and either lack of connection or you know, finally coming to the realization that some of the connections that they had weren’t as genuine as they may have believed or any number of different reasons, but it all sort of boiled down to connection and support and and consequently like things like support kind of thing. So my Guanica for next year for twenty or four this year. Sorry, 20 21. I am recording this on New Year’s Eve in the afternoon. So it won’t be twenty-twenty for much longer. But by the time you hear this it will be twenty twenty-one. Yeah, my my word to learn more my phrase to live by for 20 21 is going to be genuine connection and what I’m meaning by that is not Messenger not WhatsApp not any of that like at bare minimum Voice next Thursday. Would be like video but ideally face-to-face face-to-face connections are something that a lot of people have been missing out on this year and continue to in different parts of the world, I completely understand if you know, you might be a bit annoyed at me suggesting some of these things if you’re not currently able to do that in your part of the world, but hang in there it will happen again, you will be able to make those face-to-face connections, but that’s why I set out like a spectrum so you can try to ignore I don’t I I find it very difficult to make really really genuine connections over text cuz there’s so much of communication that’s lost in that but voyage. Minimum video second face-to-face is the gold standard for me next year this year this year going to get used to saying that so that’s what I’m doing this year. So what how I’m going to actually sort of break that down not using smart goals, obviously as I said earlier, but there’s a few things and I’ve met took them off and on throughout the last two and half years of this podcast, but the first thing is when you’re first starting out with something like this that can be quite a large is you want to try to set yourself up to guarantee success. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that we want to sort of break down this long large thing into smaller more manageable parts. That should be no surprise to anyone. That’s what we do in a variety of ways through Thursday. Clinical practice we grade activities, etc, etc, etc. How I’m going to do that is probably a little bit different to most so my method of doing that is I’m not going to have a really structured rigid plan of I can achieve this this week and that that next week and that the week after excetera.
00:20:03 – 00:25:15
What I’m going to do is say week one or I’m probably month-to-month actually throughout the year. So say for January, what is the minimum the absolute minimum thing that I can make sure that I can achieve with regards to genuine connection. For that month the what is the smallest thing? What is the minimum that I can 100% guarantee that I can do? So it might be I’m going to make a video call with one of my friends that I haven’t spoken to in quite some time just one. That’s the minimum I can do more than that. I can a different person every day if I want to but my minimum standard is what I want to actually set when you’ve done that. So for February like the next month Okay, cool. I was able to do that. I actually rang three people. That’s awesome. So what’s going to be the minimum standard that I can a hundred percent guarantee that I’m going to be able to achieve in February while I know that you know, February is going to be a really busy month for me University goes back. I’ll start studying again. It’s going to be pretty full-on. I don’t know if I could do more than I did last month. So I reckon the minimum I can do cuz I managed to list a month pretty good. I’m going to do three. So the same and you know, I might do for I might only do the three. That’s okay same again. You repeat process each month or each week if you want to if you want to set an eagles, but I just know monthly works for that kind of thing because I’m weak so busy some weeks of quiet some weeks. You have more time than weeks. You just flat-out. So that’s how I would break that down using the minimum that I can 100% get guarantee that I can achieve. So you get a hundred percent successful through the whole process. I don’t like setting it up. Like at the start of the year, like I’m not going to go I’m going to do two calls this month three calls next month for calls a month after blah blah blah. I think that’s a recipe for disaster when it comes to a chevening success with these resolutions. The other thing I would encourage you and I know this kind of goes against what I’ve spoken about so far is don’t wait for a date and I’m not talking about it than a day off and talking about our habit of Always setting a date in the future that we’re going to Change Behavior. So you know New Year’s resolution is a perfect example. Don’t wait for January 1st. If it’s something that you genuinely want to work on start at straight away if you miss January 1st, that doesn’t mean that you can’t start on January 13th or February 19th or whatever. Choose a phrase choose at all choose anything but you don’t have to wait for a date. The classic one is are going to start dieting Monday know if it’s Thursday starting now start to age. I start it right this moment right now and pick a phrase. It might be I’m going to eat more vegetable something real simple like that or you know, I’m going to resist dessert like depending on what your nutritional crutch might be. So nice cheese, whatever the minimum you can 100% guarantee. For that week for that month. Whatever time. You’re using is fine, but don’t wait when we set a future date for this kind of thing. What we end up doing is I think surely prolonging the time that we can either forget or we just don’t or hardwire the the goal or the resolution into our brain. So for example with my phrase if I was going to go, yep, okay genuine connection. I’m going to start on the 20th of January. That’s another like three weeks away that I’m not thinking about it and it’s not front of mind for me and there’s a good chance to get to January 20th, and I’m not even going to realize and it’ll end up being like February 4th before I are white I was going to do that and then I’ll stop or I’ll just forget completely and never start which also happens.
00:25:16 – 00:28:58
You’re introducing more moving parts to a machine that doesn’t need it off and we all know that the more moving Parts the more chance of things breaking so Why especially if it’s a behavior change and not something like, you know, I’m going to save for a holiday or I’m going to buy a house or whatever where you actually need like life. You’re going to buy a house. I need to get an appointment the appointments not for four weeks. That’s a bit different. You set the appointment you just waiting on to someone else if it’s something in your control don’t wait. To-do lists as this one reason what to-do lists and that kind of thing. I know they work for ninety percent of people but they’re never work for me because I spend ninety percent of my time. I’m like setting up a to-do list and realizing what’s on the list and working out how I’m going to do each step and then I have missed deadlines and I’m behind and I never actually sort of get through the actual list. So the the not something against similar to a smart goals. They’re not suitable for every single person in every single situation. And I know I’m I’m quite odd with regards to that but is what it is, so don’t wait for the date. So that’s my little guess wrap it out. New Year’s resolutions and the fact that you don’t need them you can start a change your behavior change whenever you want and they don’t use the traditional cultural like magic January 1st date to think that it’s going to fix all of your problems because the only thing that’s going to fix your problems is you dead. So good luck with them. I’d be very keen to hear what you what your phrases if you’re going to use this this for ma’am that I’ve used successfully. Well that I really enjoy using be really Keen to hear like what what what are your phrases? What’s your what’s going to be your word of twenty Twenty-One. So drop it off comment on social media. Shoot me an email should be a message. Whatever you want. Give me a voicemail if you want on occupied podcast.com. But yeah, let me know. What’s what’s going to be your home you. your phrase or your word for 20 21 once again thanks so much for joining this occupied Community gotten of the year I’m aiming to improve things and try and improve my audio quality I’m going to keep trying to get some amazing guess some amazing topics off and we’re gonna have a look and see if we can drop some extra resources outside of the podcast at some point this year a little side project but I’ll keep that one a bit of a secret for now other than that thanks so much for listening and happy New Year
095 – BEST OF 2020 – The Importance of Language in Disability
Dec 27, 2020
I’ve wanted to talk with these two people for a very long time so when the stars aligned and I was able to get them both on the same podcast episode it felt like Christmas!
Having this discussion about language and how we as therapist use it to frame and situate our therapeutic relationship, power and recovery for the people that we work with.
094 – BEST OF 2020 – The Dark Side of Therapy Memes
Dec 14, 2020
This is most definitely a passionate plea from me to you guys. Firstly, I love memes. I think so many of them are amazingly clever and incredibly funny.
Therapy-related memes, however, are a thorn in my side. Firstly, 99.99% of them are not remotely funny. I’m really sorry to break it to you guys but therapeutic relationships are rarely funny and trying to make light of them comes across as soooo forced and often offensive. And this is where today’s episode comes from.
I’ve spoken many times about the impact public portrayal of OT has on our profession. In my opinion, I can see how condoning some of these memes could be doing us damage.
The meme above is the inspiration for this episode. It was a short video of a person falling out of a wheelchair after going off a step. The comment, as can be seen by my comment, is the main part that really got to me.
I encourage you to keep an open mind, have a listen to hear my opinion and come up with your own opinion on the matter.
093 – BEST OF 2020 – Dev and Brock Deep Dive into Gender Identity and Stigma
Dec 08, 2020
Dev, or you may know them as theRainbowOT is an amazing human. That’s all anyone really needs to know to get started. If you want to know more, keep reading. Dev is on a mission. A mission for inclusion. A mission for happiness. A mission for equal rights. A mission for acceptance. I’ve known Dev for a little while now and even though all of our chats and his other podcasts I still struggled to get my head around their mission. I asked Dev to come on the podcast for the selfish reason of challenging my own knowledge and perspectives and OMG did they do that in spades!
092 – BEST OF 2020 – Unpacking Colonised Thinking
Dec 03, 2020
PLEASE NOTE: This episode discusses topics such as colonisation and racism in multiple forms. The guests would like to make it clear that this episode does not sit as a ‘standalone’ teaching tool. If you are planning to share it with your cohorts of students we encourage you to use it alongside other aspects of the curriculum with cultural responsiveness with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Have you ever considered the impact colonisation might have had on the indigenous peoples of your country? Have you ever considered the ongoing impact these historical events have had in terms of systemic racism and institutional marginalisation of our clients?
Australia has a checkered and often hidden history when it comes to its colonisation by western entities. The impact that this event has had on Australia’s indigenous peoples is something that continues to impact them today. Today’s episode delves into the institutional racism and cultural isolation that continues today due to Australia’s colonisation in 1788.
This conversation with Tirritpa Richie and Jodie Booth was deep, confronting and mindblowing all at the same time. I can’t express enough how important it is to listen to this one with an open mind and a critically self-reflective lens.
Racism in Australia traces both historical and contemporary racist community attitudes, as well as political non-compliance and governmental negligence on United Nations human rights standard and incidents in Australia.[1] Contemporary Australia is the product of Indigenous peoples of Australia combined with multiple waves of immigration, predominantly from the United Kingdom and Ireland.
As I reflected on in episode 044 This session had a HUGE impact on me, alerting me to many considerations in my own schema that I was completely naive to. At the Australian National Conference where Tirritpa Ritchie challenged the room to critically challenge their “whiteness” in the context of the service they deliver/teach.
Map of Indigenous Australia – The map is an attempt to represent all the language, tribal or nation groups of the Indigenous peoples of Australia.
A huge thank you to Jodie Booth who brought this conversation together as its something we all wanted to do justice to as it is something that so important to Australian health care but also relevant to many many other western cultures around the world including the USA and Canada.
Some of you will remember Erin from the Occupied 2020 Guide to Job Interviews….Well she’s back! and this time we are delving into her true passion, falls prevention. This is an area I will openly admit that I didn’t know much about the specifics of it so i absolutely loved this conversation. Erin is very occupation based in her views and practice and very practical in her advice. Give it a listen.
090 – Exploring Graffiti as an Occupation
Nov 11, 2020
This episode the lovely Clarissa Sorlie joins me again to shed some light on her interest in the occupation of graffiti. Considering this occupation using the concept of the Dark Side of Occupation we explore the depths of why people engage in it and some of the meaning they often assign to it. If you’re a person that holds the belief that graffiti is something done by “delinquents” or “criminals” than this episode is a absolute must listen.
089 – Leading a Mindful Life with Jess Leggatt
Nov 02, 2020
Jess is a phenomenal OT and a great friend of mine. She has often explored the road less travelled in this profession and has developed into a clinician with a unique perspective on life, health, wellbeing and OT. In this episode we delve into Jess’s story, her burnout and how she rebuilt herself to be a better, stronger OT. She talks about her use of mindfulness, self-awareness, rest, and yoga among many other things.
I’ve been trying to get Jess on the show for quite some time so I’m super stoked i finally wore her down and helped with her shyness as her story holds within it, so many learning points.
Hi, welcome to episode number 89 just a quick thing before we get stuck into this episode is if you roll on over to the occupied podcast Instagram page or our Facebook page, you’ll find a little video explaining that we are currently doing a giveaway. We are giving away a copy of Assessments in occupational therapy mental health version three the textbook for nothing. Well not necessarily for nothing. There is a change something that you have to do for it, but jump along their check out that and enter that if that’s something that you think might be of interest to you this episode not a long-term friend an amazing amazing occupational therapist. Just like it. Let’s kick out the jams off.
Yeah very much. So I I’m kind of of the same Theory OT definitely found me when I was in my younger teenage years. I always wanted to get into like a helping profession of some sort. I went through a phase of wanting to be a nurse at some stage and then I really got Keen that I wanted a doctor and then I found out how long it would take to become a doctor and the study that was involved in that so I decided no that wasn’t for me. But yeah, there’s definitely a period of time for a good probably one or two years when I was serious about becoming a doctor and then I got to my later teenage years and my senior high school study that thought I was talking to my sisters friend who was studying occupational therapy at the time and she was telling me about this wonderful profession and what it included. And I was very holistic and it was very based on, you know, the person and very client-oriented. It was all about helping people get back to what they loved, you know doing things that were meaningful and when she started telling me about this profession and at the time she was interested in Pediatrics OT so she was studying a lot of subjects based on that fact, I was very much interested in working with kids as well. So I thought perfect this is a beautiful match up. I’ll be able to help people but it will also be very holistic and I will be able to work with kids need someone to so from there. I basically thought yep, that’s the profession for me and it wasn’t I think I was in like you’re twelve at the time so luckily I’d taken the rat subjects more science-based kind of subjects and yeah knowing that I wanted to get into sort of some sort of tertiary sciency helping profession and then yet when I found out about that when you’re twelve was like God That sounds like the perfect perfect profession for me. So I went in to actually didn’t get straight into OT. I didn’t get a high enough o p but I ended up going into human movement studies and I did a year in human movements and then I was able to go from Human movement studies into occupational therapy from there. And I was very focused on becoming a pediatric OT. I was just going to like there was just no doubt in my mind. That was it. I was going to be pediatric OT there was just no question marks around that Mom took all my subjects in Peds. I I did my practice at the The Children’s Clinic at ukyou. I did a wonderful job at the Royal children’s Children’s Hospital here in Boise and absolutely fell in love with the profession even more and also it’s like yeah kids kids kids all the way home. And when I graduated I also did my honors project with grade grade one kids at the Morris School here in Brisbane working with young indigenous and irrational Torres Strait Islanders at the most school. And basically after I graduated the first job that I went for was a new grad position at the Children’s Hospital. Okay didn’t get it was absolutely devastated like it was like heartbreaking. I think I was bawling my eyes out after I didn’t get job and I just thought oh my God Almighty felt like all my dreams were like ripped away from me in that one instance, but they explained to me at the other place that they had other new grads applying for it and they had the the OT that got it had been out for a year.
00:05:20 – 00:10:18
So she’d been practicing for 12 months in Pediatrics. So that kind of made me feel a little bit better off. I was still absolutely heartbroken and devastated and I thought gosh, what am I going to do? Like real children’s hospital that was kind of like this dream dream aspiration of mine off. So the very next job I went for was in a cute adult working at a hospital. And this was at gravesites Private Hospital here in Boise, and I went for that job and I got the job. So it would and I got the job based on some of my clinical subjects that I’ve done it uni. I’ve done some study in chronic pain management. So that was something that they looked at as you know favorable favorable and I’d also done some splinting so some Hand Therapy work at the Royal here in Brisbane as well. So they looked at and I said, right you’ll fit this accutrol that we have available and I got thrown into that and I became the Dead. Yes, flinching o t and therapy o t at the hospital and I also worked in the the area of chronic pain. So and I never got to work with kids, you know, God well more recently. I mean, I will probably talk about more more about this as we go along. But yeah, I mean, I’ve had a very eclectic occupational therapy career choice pain. I have dabbled in every single little area that you could probably think of an occupational therapy and have sort of jumped around in the hospital system off in different Wards different departments different areas, but more recently funnily Enough full circle. I’m working with young people. So not with Kitty finally finally finally watching twenty years and it’s within youth mental health. So an absolutely adoring it loving it and have certainly found my Niche that I can bring. Everything together including that that passion of working with young people. So that’s awesome. Because I know when we met your working at Green slopes, do you remember do you remember the story of how we met how you connect with me gosh was that we’ve first days was that we I think it was after it was after I remember when I came across to you passed across many years ago back in kind of Rufus days, which is occupational opportunities for refugees asylum-seekers, which is a volunteer-based group of OTAs that did some wonderful things back in the day but Clarissa, I remember that you had either interviewed her or you had she had a choice you you about something and I saw a little article and I saw your name at the bottom of the article and I really liked what you’d have to say about occupation and using occupation as you know, God As the mains to your therapy basically and I remember ready to add a class in your name and I think somehow I jumped on and we connected in that way but that was way back in the day long. Do you remember you have a telling more about the cuz I remember this clearly cuz it still cracks me up cuz I’ve never heard anyone do it since okay. I got this random email from you. Yes never met we never spoke and we’d never anything and I think the opening line was we need to connect or something to that effect. And the story you told me and you written this off a massive email and it was like the very end of it doesn’t sound like me and I hope that doesn’t scare you off kind of thing. But the basic premise was that I’d popped up three times. Yes, apparently had this rule. Like if something happens three times, then you have to like lean into it. So I got this email saying from this completely random lady, I’d never wage Before sending that I popped into a life three times recently and I’m like, okay. Alrighty, this is shrewd that is totally my go-to in life. If something pops up for me like it might be like a random something on social media. It might be a book. It might be someone kind of mentioning it offhandedly, whatever it might be home. Exactly. Yeah. So I think maybe that first time was that little Crossing and part of me reading that article with your name at the bottom and going off like what this guy’s got to say about occupational therapy and I love his passion and enthusiasm and that you know, there’s this real basis of using occupational therapy and then there must have been two jobs and stuff says I don’t remember what those two other instances Were Somehow you cross.
00:10:18 – 00:15:01
My problem, Probably still got the email. I’m pretty probably find it somewhere in The Volt. From we call that would have been might years ago. That was a long time. Yes. Yes. I think I just moved back here to town. I love that you remember that because it dulls me back into the country as well. It’s three times and you’ve got a lean into it. You’ve got to jump on it and go what’s what’s coming up for me that needs to be kind of explored or that I need to connect all and weirdly. I think it was only a few weeks. After that. I was going down to Brisbane for something was in a conference. You’re going to cross reference kind of conference driving past the hospital. Yeah. I was I think I might have been on the Gulf Coast. Actually. I think that might have been the mental health Forum on the Gulf Coast. Yes, which was read about 2012. Mm that must mean 2013 2013 age they caught up in the city for lunch. I think and had a chat and yeah, yeah tested ever since birth. Yes. Yes we have. Oh and we went to the car. What model Workshop remember to? Yep. That was yeah, you’re after all so yeah. Yeah, so a lot less than the last time I think Michael Obama made it out to Australia. We both went and a couple of other people I knew and when it’s dinner after that with a big group of fotis, which was always fun. It’s always a fun thing to do when you suck specially after a day like that. We’ve just had a like a whole day just sort of interest in OT related software rock your world didn’t have to be ideal like anything and then you sort of continued it on in the home is a more informal way, which is what yes, that’s what this podcast has been described as I don’t know if you deny JT Booth. I know Judy both. We actually study together Universe. I never got to work with her after that. I should stay out of the University now, I think so, but she’s she’s described in her description when I first started it was this is the conversations that you have in the bar off. A conference that’s that’s fairly accurate preferably before or after a wine or a beer during during jury. I know I remember that night very fun. I remember that whole day that night very fondly because we connected with some pretty special oties including Michael and voila all the way from the US and thought that was my second time. I got to meet Micheal in Australia, which was pretty unfortunate. But it just it took me back to my days when I went to the home World Federation it conference here in Australia, I think which is like yeah investing. It’s like 2006. I think a lot of be before I graduated so I missed it wage. Yeah. Yeah. So when was your your graduation 2008 2008? Yeah while I was at Uni it was on I think so. That was a pretty magical time and magic club. Experience for us. There’s a small group of us who are involved as I mentioned before with Rufus and we were just kind of on this trajectory of connecting with some pretty incredible expertise from around the world. We we sponsored sponsored an OT who worked with refugees over in Georgia the country of Georgia and we’d be fundraising events and my husband’s a musician and and we have musician friends. So we put together performances and live music, you know events and things to raise money and we need these big bulk of money and were like, what are we going to do with it? And so we decided to advertise for this scholarship for someone to come to Australia who work directly with refugees off grass roots on the ground, you know in the kind of you know sort of yeah in the field and so we put it out there and we got this amazing incredible birth. I’m to actually amazing incredible OTS because wolf it in the end the World Federation OT decided to chip in money as well. And we were able to sponsor to scholarships for them to come over here to Australia. Yeah, so they came along to the world OT conference in Sydney and we got to meet them. We got to be exchanged so much just make sure and clinical experience and yeah, we developed and forth like some really lovely friendships with these two.
00:15:01 – 00:20:04
I teased from from Georgia and yeah, they flew back home and took the wonderful experience of Australia hear back with them. And yeah, we continue that friendship in that professional relationships are quite some time pretty sure I remember seeing photos I think cuz so I met Clarissa at the state conference and can’t write in dog. 2012 gosh, I reckon that’s when you was she was that article potentially. I’m not sure but that’s that’s where I that’s where I first took over as like a pretty much signed up on the spot cuz she was an invited speaker or a keynote speaker or something at that conference. So like connected with her there and there wasn’t that many members up this end of the country at the time. I think it was only a couple but it it was definitely I think that was that sponsoring was one of the examples she might from memory. She used during a keynote of the different things that sort of do for acid on a new facet achieved. Yeah and also fan. This is even if it’s not like like and the time it wasn’t an area or I’d ever worked in or even considered working in but I’m I’m sold like this is yeah, this is Artie and she speaks about she could sell ice to Eskimos. She speaks about so much passion. So has so much eloquence and birth. Professional just passion and she’s just his wealth of walking knowledge and wisdom. I yeah, I was very very blessed to be able to kind of walk alongside her and work with her as my through the leader. I guess although the founding member the key founding member of roof racks, and yes been a lot of time and close during those years and years. She has inspired me immensely with her leadership. Yeah, very very much connected heart-to-heart connection. But yeah, very Grassroots based. So you’re a green slips the whole ton. So when you first see you said before like you started a green slip. Well you at that hospital right up until recently when you left. Yeah. Yes. So basically my journey has been a so I started as a baby new grad a green slopes Hospital back in 2005 cried heartbroken that I wasn’t able to work with kids, but yep. Obviously life has a plan and I always believed, you know things happen for a reason and I was obviously drawn into that hospital and working in those areas for particular reason. So 2005 baby new grad Greensleeves hospital. I was there for about three years I think and then I spent a good chunk of time. I think it was just over a year and another hospital building a pain management program. So we established just basically from like ground level up totally like this green level position where I was thrown into the mix of creating this pain management department pretty much pain management program Department. You name it from scratch and I went in there and there was I was it there was off the team that was like nursing is no other there was a there was a bit of a rehab multidisciplinary team, but that was it. So I went into this role. Completely blindsided that it was basically me to set up this program and I spent a good you know, chunk of that first page three months going what the hell of a got myself into I was like, yeah coming home sort of in tears and thinking, you know, I’ve if this doesn’t get better in the next few weeks that I’m walking, you know, I did for pregnant, you know pretty quickly. And so that was added added an extra kind of element to the mix because I had terrible morning sickness. I was yeah sick as a dog right up until like my seventh eighth month of my pregnancy, so I’m juggling this management role. For like morning sickness through that hole. It was it was rough. I remember vomiting in the car on the way to work and getting like my hair stuck off to the hospital and then having to kind of like get out of the car and sort of like, you know pretend everything was okay. And I’d also like off in panic attacks as I was like going to the hospital in the car because I was just so I was I was out of my depth I think Brock like I literally I was like twenty what was I I was a baby. I was like Mom 324 trying to tackle this management role. I was the youngest manager there by I think about fifteen years like they were all like in their forties and fifties most of them even like late fifties.
00:20:04 – 00:25:02
So here I am twenty something year old trying to create this program this pain management department from the dead. Level up pregnant sick as a dog, you know watching in the Caribbean world, but guess what? I got through it you made it’s not I made it. Okay, it was okay and that program is still running to today and they developed an adolescent program within the hospital. You know, it’s gone, you know from from a basic kind of like ground level to what it is today. And yeah, I kind of look back and think yeah, hopefully I had something to do with that building that Foundation Fair idea that you did I had to recruit the team and everything like I was thrown into the HR side of things like human resources. I was like having to do the interviews having to call up, you know, so it’s just I basically had to do very much an Eclectic OT put all the different hats on General trades kind of job. Plus I did the clinical. So I was the OT we employed another o t and the team but I was the OT on the ground like working in the program as well as all the other management responsibilities. So so how did you know burn out doing all of that stuff? Well that just kind of leads me into this journey of burnout, right? So I think I was on that trajectory of burned out before I started at at that hospital building and building a pain management program. I think I was probably there with my teenage years. I stepped into some pretty heavy responsibilities leadership roles during my teenage years and high school even a primary school. Actually. I just had this I don’t know if it was It was just this ambitious driven personality that had this look of mellowed a loss of had to have had two in the last, you know, since becoming a mom I think and then going through through different Journeys myself. But yeah back in that day. I literally I would see an opportunity or project and I would just jump in like no no hesitation high standards perfectionistic traits, you know, got to get it right. Otherwise the the world’s going to kind of Crash an end. Yeah. So for me, I I did that right from when I was about ten or eleven years of age like thinking back over the history of my life and I just pushed myself, you know, no matter what was going on in my personal world, and there was lots of intense stuff going on through teenage years through, you know, my older sort of Queens dead. Both juice going on but I just I focused I think it became a little bit my coping mechanism to get through the tough stuff. I would throw myself into my work. I would throw myself into my studies, you know, and that kind of became my distraction that became my focus and because I was kind of when I throw myself back to a project as you know, Brock worked on a few in the background and you know history like I just try myself in a hundred and fifty percent and and I have this very high standards high expectations of myself. So when you bring all that into the mix your kind of like a recipe for disaster and a recipe for Burnout it started in that little bit of a a downhill Slide towards my body just starting to hit its limits and there was a few physical health symptoms that were creeping in that I just kept ignoring and kept pushing aside and kept pushing on through. So yeah, and that’s an interesting thing cuz I think a lot of people often are under this sort of a misconception that burnout is like one thing happened and that’s it. Like it’s too much where in my experience and it sounds like it in yours as well. It’s kind of almost an accumulation can be little things as well. I mean an accumulation of things over a longer period of time like for you if you take one of those elements long way from what was happening, it may have had a completely different thing. Like if you hadn’t have been pregnant at the time or if you hadn’t have had to do say all the HR stuff as well as everything else or if you hadn’t had to do the clinical stuff on top of birth. Like if you take one of those elements away, it could have been a completely different situation completely story but hundred percent.
00:25:02 – 00:30:06
Yeah, totally and I think I thought I was going to add something to that. So I broke are you trying to do cuz I had something amazing and so no lost. It dropped. What was I going to say? So yeah, you’re right. It is an accumulation and there’s multiple elements involved. I think for me my personality has a big thing to do with it. So if I had actually learned to say no wage or if I had actually kind of reduce my standards like, you know with this job that I took on I was in my early twenties, you know, I’m young. I’m kind of like, yeah and Susie Astic I’m a bit naive. I’m ambitious all of that. But I threw myself in and for me to accomplish what it accomplished by the end of that sort of thirteen fourteen months 10th song. I wanted it to be you know, the bee’s knees. I I created two programs. I didn’t just create what I created an inpatient program and and outpatient program. I you know, I made sure that the multidisciplinary team were at the highest most, you know had some beautiful people working for me and working with me. So I wanted to make sure you know, all of that was up to that kind of level and so, you know in those early twenties in those early years. I didn’t know how to say no and I didn’t know how to reduce those standards of myself, you know, it’ll struggle with that sometimes. Yeah. I mean, I do too totally guilty of still struggling with people pleasing and you know, perfectionistic kind of like this idea that something has to be just right choice, you know, I mean I call myself a recovering perfectionist know because like a recovering perfectionist because literally I know when I start to get a birth About something I start to just throw everything in and other things kind of Fall by the wayside. It’s usually my health. I usually sacrifice my health. That’s the first thing that goes and then you know other things, you know, the time with family and relationships and all that sort of stuff. So those sorts of things can start to suffer when you really throw yourself into yeah, they need to to kind of like tunnel vision focus with the projects that you take on. So, when did you know that you’d sort of hit that wall? Gosh, I’ve made I think for me it happened multiple times. So when I was younger, it just happened at a very kind of more manageable level where I could sort of bounced back a little bit quicker, but I remember back in those early days. It will help would start to crumble energy levels would get really low. I wouldn’t be able to sort of cope with day-to-day kind of pressures and normal everyday stuff off. And things would just stop to kind of overwhelm that feeling of overwhelming, you know to me anxiety has been a big big part of my life since long as I can remember so symptoms of anxiety would just escalate through the roof. Yeah to a point where panic attacks, you know, anxiety attacks would start to happen and I would kind of keep this under wraps really well in my twenties and I I was able to kind of fake that kind of what’s the word, you know that confidence in that kind of like, I’m okay. Everything’s okay, and I’ve got got all my shit together. You don’t think it’s going to kind of fall apart. So I was able to really fake it. I guess somebody’s early twenties and and through that younger period of time and bounced back quicker, but yes thinking back definitely there was multiple times in that period where I guess you could say like I dropped the ball like I dropped the sort of birth. And a little and it wasn’t until basically I mean I’d had in D my beautiful first daughter. She’s ten going on eleven next Thursday gosh, so that was how that was. How long ago those horrible morning sickness months were so ten eleven years ago. So I had indeed that was a really beautiful time. I had in D one. I knew I didn’t have to go back to that job. So I was like, yes, that was my ticket out of there. So that was my my my thing. That was just yeah a big relief, but no first and foremost to have this beautiful baby. I’d wanted to be a mom since as long as I can remember falling pregnant with the Indy giving birth to Indie, you know, having my first child having both my daughters, you know, but definitely with your first child, it’s just that little bit extra kind of relief and and in this special moment that you know, get em, Your mom so during that period after I’d had in D was kind of like this beautiful little honeymoon period of like I’m you know, I’m being a mom for the first time.
00:30:06 – 00:35:25
I’m totally invested miss beautiful kind of like period of my life where I’m you know, living out this aspiration and dream of had for a long time. And so that was a really beautiful. Of our lives and then fell pregnant with Zara like probably sooner than what we were expecting as you know, all good things happen things happen when they’re meant to but yeah, so Pregnant was Zara and I don’t think my body had recovered even fully enough for my pregnancy with Indy by the time I’d Fallen pregnant mazara. I was still home health issues, but I was pushing through and I was on this beautiful high of being a mom for the first time and really just feeling you know that I’ve found a little bit of my Niche my groove as a mom. And I started back working at the hospital. Not the management role. I decided that wasn’t for me particularly being a mom off. So I started back I Christ lives hospital just casually, you know, taking our shifts and getting back getting my my foot back in there kind of OT bread-and-butter world and yeah pregnant with Zara and then this is when life gets blurry for me as well. It just gets a little bit hazy cuz there were so many things going on for us, but in a nutshell, I won’t do the long drawn-out story of all the things that happen to us and such a short period of time the basic package was slugged with curve ball after curve ball and the biggest kind of there was a couple of big things but one of the big things was that we lost our business. Period of time where I was super vulnerable, we had a little toddler. I was pregnant with Zara struggling with a few health issues in the background and you know, it was our main source of income that it was, you know, it was quite a successful a little business that we had going and and obviously my husband ran it but I helped out from time to time with the bookkeeping and admin side of things said, so just we were blindsided with the loss of the business and it wasn’t under my circumstances. It was under very ugly circumstances. So it would be kind of a huge stress or for us and that went on for months and months and months of us trying to kind of recoup him. Perhaps. Yeah reclaim how business and have some income off slow and income. Periphery, but then we had some major stuff going like life happens. You know, we lost some family members, you know way too soon. We was sort of having to sort of yeah move through grief. They’re grieving process all over all of that and then my sister who is you know, my closest wage. Let’s say my closest human to me in my life. My bestest friends, you know, she went through a very difficult traumatic birth with her her second baby and this actually happened after this is where it all gets blurry cuz I’d already had Zara. We’re still struggling. We’ve not having an income losing our business all that sort of stuff. And then she was after I’d had saw which was a an amazing Birth, by the way, if you ever if anyone wants to learn about hypnobirth e I’m sure the up your Elly Brock. I’m already well-versed. I’m sure off. No, that’s there anyone out there who wants to know about beautiful calm ways to labor and hypnobirthing contact me get in touch off because my second birth was very even though we were going to add a really pick stressful period of our life in our family at the most magical beautiful labor and birth with her. So that was such a blessing she was a nine pound Rollie Pollie gorgeous little bundle of joy, too. So yeah, she was like four kilograms. But yeah, that’s that’s a big baby and I’m not, you know, I’m quite a small frames person. So for for me to carry her, you know all the way through and then at the end of our natural birth, it was just beautiful magical experience quite a contrast to my first book in D. So, yeah, I got to have the two sides home. Yes, so we had Zara and it was enjoying, you know, this beautiful new life into into our world. But yeah, I I had this there was this money. Well, I remember it was kind of like that whole straw on the camel’s back but just hearing use, you know have little six-week hold a little table things going on in the background for us and then hearing a news my it was a phone call from my mom and she told me that I should be rushed to hospital.
00:35:25 – 00:40:21
So that was kind of like the straw for me and I think that was the moment. We’re all those little accumulated burnout series that are kind of let up to that point. That was the moment that everything just crashed for me my sister and my beautiful nephew got through that experience and wage. My nephew’s growing up as healthy and and gorgeous as ever so very grateful that we move through that that really intense sort of a very traumatic experience for all of us. But yeah Sammy it was kind of just this this shock to the system and I guess you could probably in that moment. I just I still remember the moment that basically my my knees hit the floor. Like I was holding my six week old baby and my knees hit the floor and I remember I felt like home this is it like this is my little breaking point where gosh, how am I going to get back from this? So from that moment, yeah, it took it took about two years just kind of rehabilitate myself back to the land of the living I guess because it claimed mentally emotionally on all those areas. I was just depleted completely depleted. So when you go through long periods of stress off when you go through that chronic accumulative stress halls and even some traumatic experiences within that your you know, your adrenals are completely bombarded with your you know, your your neurotransmitters your biochemistry. Everything is literally taken out and for me that it had gone on for too long and then it just hit that moment was like okay time to to kind of hit rock bottom and then rebuild and replenish and rejuvenate and yeah, that was crazy. Out of the start of my journey to becoming you know, like it was it was it was a long journey. Hm. It’s odd that it always find it interesting because a lot of people again, I think a lot of the time that this sort of topic is talked about it’s talks about like, you know, it’ll be burned out on otey’s off. One of the things that you mentioned other than that job was anything to do with OT and I think that’s an important thing to point out is that this isn’t it’s not an OG thing. It’s not a health-care thing. It’s not a anything thing. It’s a life thing. It’s it’s a life thing. Yeah, it’s I mean, yes, we’re dealing with it because we are oties which is why we’re talking about it here, but God it’s something that The people we work with our managers our family like they’re all going to go through it. They could be a homeless dude somewhere that’s going through burn out because he’s got so many stresses like wage has nothing to do with the profession itself died. And I think it’s important to recognize that all like in helping professions. We probably more at risk. So there’s a higher level of risk of burnout and it doesn’t necessarily mean, you know, like we we humans having this Human Experience and we’re going into office jobs in these helping professions where we have to exert a whole lot of emotional psychological physical energy in our jobs in there now rolls and no T’s yeah just the same as factors just the same as and you know doctors are their stress levels are probably even through the roof. I remember my first client my first client that I had birth. Holistic OT dealing with integrated Wellness was a doctor and this particular doctor was dealing with burnout. So, you know the profession in the health professional field is basically you just more at risk of depletion and burn out and then when you’ve got lights happening around you and you know, there’s face long periods of of time. We’re just shit happens, you know one after another and it’s just like, you know, you can’t sort of catch your breath. You can’t catch a break and it’s in those moments that way it can be kind of that danger sort of Zone and I think that’s what we as health professionals need to be really aware of and kind of kind of have each other’s backs in this area like recognize we are humans coming from these personal worlds that are full of stressors and full of intense stuff and we come into our Hospital places and we come into our Clinic wage.
00:40:21 – 00:45:03
Well School settings or wherever we might be working and we bring all this with us, you know, and there’s this loading effect as a cumulative effect and it could be something that happens really suck at the workplace. You know, it could be just a conversation with a colleague that’s intense or it could be that you’re dealing with someone up on the wards that’s dying from cancer and you log in palliative care and you’re having to work with the family and the intensity of that and that triggers, you know the wounds within you and there’s this concept that I think we need to be aware of empathy fatigue off of you know, what are some other words, you know, there’s burnout there’s depletion. There’s you know being aware of all of this that goes on that affects our physical mental emotional body. Yeah. I think I I do think that as a profession is in a really good place to wage. actually help people with it and and I agree with you like people in the helping profession probably more risk of burning out or probably put in particular compassion fatigue, then, you know people in other professions whatever they want to list them but other professions One thing I’m curious about is cuz it’s I’m as uncomfortable as it is. I’m a big Advocate when I was working clinically of sometimes people have to sit with things and it’s not a matter of us going in a note. He’s a bad at this because we’re too good at other things but where we go in and we want to fix things something’s wrong. We need to fix it. But sometimes there’s a process and sometimes that process is time. How long when you sort of when you first sort of like you’re talking about before like you feel like this. Is it this is that. We’ll yeah. Yeah this thing isn’t it’s not like a yo-yo you don’t just sort of like whoop Rock Bottom bounce back up stairs and I’m speaking from my own personal experience here as well. There’s a period of time where palm yeah. Okay, you hit rock bottom you’re going to sit there for a while and it sucks, but I think that it’s also unnecessary part of the process. Obviously, you don’t want to stay there too long when it gets drawn out then it becomes an issue but I think it gives you a lot of time to start processing what’s happened where you are taking stock of, you know, your life support networks yourself your own personal resources your personal attributes for going to look at Kawa but it gives you that time that space off. Yes. It’s a very uncomfortable space but it’s something that needs to happen. How long for you sir for me when I sort of told my bonus during a previous podcast, but when I sort of hit that bottom bit it was like at the worst of it it was probably a couple of weeks before I sort of even had the capacity to go. Okay, like here’s what I’m going to do. How long how long do you reckon that was for you when you first sort of went from that point where you went like this is it this is the final straw. How long was it before you could start? I guess thinking clear enough dead. To start trying to make a plan or start trying to consciously do something about it a good question. And I think you’re so right about being okay about not being okay and being the uncomfortableness knowing that there’s something incredibly wrong like being in that uncomfortableness is like your Catalyst for change. If you don’t have that very sort of icky uncomfortable. Gosh this kind of rock bottom moment for me. You’re not going to make the changes that are going to create a different trajectory a different progression Way Forward and it’s certainly a journey in a process and I know they said that word journey is so cliche, but it is such a process to work your way from Rock Bottom off. Um to learning how to put yourself back together again in a more resilient strong integrated way and unlearn some of those behaviors. I’m learning some of those habits and patterns that got you there in the first place.
00:45:04 – 00:50:10
So for me personally, like oh gosh that was you know, I had a baby a little baby had a toddler. So for me, it took a lot longer than I had all this stuff going on in my life other responsibilities, you know juggling balls in the air, I guess and we you know, there was an accumulative Financial stress is going on for us as well. So for me personally, it took probably a lot longer than if it was an isolated incident where you didn’t have all that other peripheral stuff going on but yes me it was two years. It was two solid years and I’m talking like a hundred percent committed to myself care package percent committed to changing, you know, an unlearning patterned behaviors that led me to that point changing the way that I responded to stressors in my invoice. Fireman in my external world, you know learning that life happens life doesn’t stop a little proverb or a little saying that I owe quite often quote. I you know with my clients and and I use for myself as we can’t stop the waves, but we can learn how to surf and so teaching those skills of resilience and balance and you know learning how to kind of yeah ride the waves of adversity is a really important skill to have a dog and it’s your it’s your key for Burnout prevention and also burnout recovery. So yeah, what was your cuz it’s going to be different for everyone obviously, but what was your home step one? What was the first thing that you went? Okay. This is what I got to do first. I still remember it. I still remember it clear as a day like khong As mud clear slime no clear as Crystal not clear. Asthma so clear as Crystal. I still remember there was like actually there was two things that happened one thing was that I had a massive panic attack in the middle of the night. It was actually in the early hours of the morning. I just spread breastfed Zara put her back to sleep. I was getting settled in and thinking yes, you know, I try and get some some some sleep and I totally got a worst panic attack anxiety attack that I’ve experienced and probably have never experienced again since that time and it was literally feeling like as the kind of name says like I was being attacked and I felt like death was at my door and it was scary as hell and I remember thinking I never want to go through this again. I never want to come back. Experiences depth of kind of Terror and being so scared in all my life and it was you know, it was early hours of the morning. It’s dark, you know, both kids were asleep and it was that moment where I was like I have got to do something about this and the very next day. I remember thinking I remember doing a little bit of yoga meditation type of stuff when I’m pregnant with the indeed to get through that intense time, but I just did it like fire a DVD I throw on a DVD and I just did some really kind of yeah casual itna sort of. Yeah Yoga Yoga belly. I think it was called and I just remembering the next day thinking God of gotta get back to that of gotta learn how to find that calm State again, and I jumped on my laptop and I on my phone at the time. I can’t remember it was stolen laptop that I remember Googling yoga in my local paper. Real so I put myself and I’ll put yoga and the first thing that came up was this yoga class called yoga of the heart and I thought beautiful bags. There it is. That’s why you know, that’s my ticket to rehabilitating myself out of this space and I was still you know, I still had a little Barber thought how could get two classes. I’m not on cam going to make it work and I just decided you know, I’ve I fed Zara before I left I booked in to go it was it was on a Tuesday night. I still remember was a Tuesday night was down the road and really convenient. So I left Bob with my husband. Bundled myself up. I don’t even think I had a yoga mat. But the teacher said don’t worry just turn up and I turned up and I I went into the little local kind of like this little Community setting off yoga of the hot with the beautiful Jackie. I still remember beautiful Jackie the teacher and I did this yoga class and it was about a 60-minute class and not the end.
00:50:10 – 00:55:01
They do this relaxation calls shavasana. I don’t know if you’ve heard shavasana. So it’s this deep deep rest and it happens at the end of the month the class. So I did all the synopsis which is what you call the postures and all the movements and I’m like, well this feels okay. My body was still in a high state of alert. There was still so much anxiety rattling around and by the end of the class. I just thought gosh, I still felt anxious. I still feel and I was anxious to be there with people around me as well. Like I had this Agora phobia that I developed off. Didn’t want to get out of the house. I was isolating myself completely even just to talk to someone else was anxiety-provoking for me. So to go to this class was, you know, big step to actually do the class and get through. It was my next big step. I got to the end. We started shavasana. I never done two of us and I like got only ever done the postures of positions and some breathing work took. This is where we lay down on the mats. And basically you do nothing and I’m like gosh, okay, this is different Amazing Life space now, I will teach you some of us know what day you can come to one of my classes one of these days down the track and that’s good social life. So you lie down on a mat and basically the teacher walks you through this deep restful process. And I remember the for the first time in years, like this wasn’t just months. This was years and years for the first time. I got this little window where I felt Stillness. I felt this relaxation kind of like switch flick on and it was only for like Iraq, I would say maybe 3 seconds at the most but I was hooked like that 3 seconds hooked me in and I was like, this is what I mean. I want more of that. I don’t want just three seconds. Like I want 30 seconds. I want a minute. I want you know, so yeah that first yoga class. That was my first-ever yoga class went to and I never looked back. So that was that was it that was the moment and Germany and Very much further and you know, there was so much more involved than just yoga in my Rehabilitation. But yeah that that was a starting point for me. So what other stuff did you do actually so that was something you added in. Was there anything that so I know for me one of my first steps was essentially getting rid of a heap of stuff out of my life wage material stuff. Well, that was yeah. Well that was part of it. But also like I took a step back from heaps. It was like OT related stuff at the time the project projects and all that sort of stuff like it took a step back from heaps of that because some of the the best advice still I have ever got in that situation was from a really good friend of mine. And she said you have for the time being it’s going to suck but for the time being you have to be selfish and for someone who works in this kind of profession, that’s a weird like even song But hearing it you like doesn’t do I have to doesn’t sound right like it sounds like you’re going to be a bad person if you do that or something, but once I was when you’re in that headspace wage, it makes sense because you spend so much time like at the time like it’s working with clients and you stressing you out that and you stressing about you know, making sure that the workplace is happy with your documentation and not doing your right shifts and then you’ve got your home life and everything that’s going on there. And if you actually sit and reflect 90% of the stuff I was doing I was doing for other people took all of those. He projects a lot of online staff networking stuff Community Development stuff was all for other people. So getting or hearing that advice. Oh, okay. Maybe I really do at the time. I didn’t really have any sort of eyes didn’t really have any even like hobbies that were just for me like I was dead. Would do things to help other people or overdo things because that’s what my mates were doing or something like that. But I never really had anything like that. I did this is just for me. So like when I took my first steps was not necessarily getting rid of it by taking a step back from a lot of that stuff to give me the space to start exploring some other stuff.
00:55:01 – 01:00:01
That was it just for me. So it was totally do you have any like a similar thing with that like was this stuff that you had to take a step back from or get rid of from a life in order to I guess start this sort of Rehabilitation kind of process. I think, you know, it’s in our conditioning right? We taught them are not taught from when we’re little to look after ourselves. We’re not taught to prioritize self-care we and particularly when you know, the personality of being a helper job. Being someone who gets satisfaction out of you know service and being in a role where you get to yeah assist other people to have any meaningful sort of Rich allies we tend to use that as our go to as our Focus. So not only are we not taught to take care of ourselves when our personality is driven to be there for everyone else and and to kind of immerse ourselves in yeah, the people and the projects and the the things that that are observers we forget about what’s important to us. And definitely I think as occupational therapist, you know, there’s that element of knowing the importance of meaningful engagement in the things that light you up that a meaningful to you that connect with you heart soul mind Spirit, you know off Going to uplift you and and make you feel kind of alive from the inside out, you know, we passionate about encouraging others to wage in that but we’re pretty bad at making sure we do it ourselves, you know, practicing what we preach and I think you know as a mom I’m speaking as an occupational therapist and a mom. We tend to just be focused on you know, the kids are children. What are they need? Also? What about clients need what what’s needs to be given there and a dog is giving giving you know, and and you become like your cup sort of starts to kind of become very empty your fuel tank gets, you know, very low birth or coming back to your question of you know, how do we Do you personally like as a mum? I think first and foremost it had to be a matter of self-care became my priority and then from them as I started to sort of become a little stronger physically my health started to kind of balance out. I I was able to for me, you know how you said it was getting rid of stuff thought it was kind of like getting rid of in a baggage for lots of inner baggage and unlearning some of those behaviors like what you said, you know, the constantly looking generally of where to give yourself and what to do. So for me, it was totally like taking that heavy backpack off and these taught time, you know, these are deeply ingrained habits and when you’ve gone through trauma when you’ve gone through, you know intense stuff and there’s stuff that I know I was still carrying from my childhood. There was Heavy baggage. Always still still was holding onto subconsciously, you know, this wasn’t a conscious decision that I made but you know being being an empath which you know, most thoughts tend to be this is why we love helping people because we have that very empathic quality. So you tend to take on other people’s baggage as well. So healthy boundaries is what I had to life broke like literally. Yeah letting go of the inner baggage and then creating these healthy boundaries so that I wasn’t taking on all this external stuff so much anymore and then that created space so when you get rid of stuff you create space and then as space started to be created in my inner World, it also started to be created in my outer world and then I was able to start engaging in the stuff that really let me up me feel good made me feel purposeful and engaged and I think you know, yep. So it’s kind of getting into the you know projects that I love and that make me feel like I’m making a difference that they remember occupations that let me up most life. You know again, yes, it was a focus to be of service and how how I can make the the world a better place kind of like this big, you know Vision that you know you tend to have wage.
01:00:01 – 01:05:03
Well I tend to since I was little but how can I make the world a better place? This made me feel good if I could immerse myself in those sort of projects and I think that’s you know to me creating my website creating my private practice. I’m getting into learning more about how to look after the mind and the body they become the occupations that song became my healing impetus, but also became My meaningful way of engaging, you know with the things that that matter the most to me. I’m going to throw an alternative argument at you two something. Yeah said before, so you talked about how you didn’t feel like we get taught how to look after ourselves and I disagree with that but only on a minor point in that I think we do but we get taught wrong. Yes. I think I think that a lot of the time and it’s you know, do we think back to the ads and stuff that are on T when we were kids and we love God even now is Artis. We can look at like previous Health models and that kind of thing and up until you know, we sort of probably got to adulthood looking after yourself song about eating healthy and exercise and that was it. You’re right and those even I’m trying to think there was a yeah something the big meal things that were like looking after yourself. It’s yeah, it’s any way home. Yes, but yeah, like there’s so many like you can remember ads from when we were kids that fit that mold completely that that was it like and it was very much now thinking about like the previous Health months Health then was sort of the absence of illness or disease which is now what we know it’s not just that but back then that’s what even if it wasn’t that’s what a health department we’re looking at it as that’s what a lot of marketing companies and you know, that kind of thing that we’re actually selling US Health cuz that’s health is a a commodity whether you like that idea or not people are selling Health, whether it’s with, you know, essential oils or cereal like it doesn’t matter like everyone is selling healthy. We’re selling Health as oties. We’re marketing ourselves to sell this Brand, New Jersey. Holistic health and yeah, okay, it sounds unsexy to say that but it’s true. That’s what we’re doing whether we work in public health or Private health or whatever it is. We’re still marketing it to sell it. It’s a commodity and that’s how it’s been viewed over the longest time. I think. Why I say it’s been told wrong is because it was literally only eating exercise and that was the only two things there was but there’s so much more to it like you touched on it before like there’s connection and creativity and all these other aspects to being healthy to being you know, having good. Well being that that’s the bit that we were never taught absolutely wage. I think that’s where my passion came in really strong after my personal experiences cuz it’s like hang on a minute. You know, I’m I’m trying to you know, move my body and I’m trying to eat. Well, you know, but that’s not enough. What what what else? You know, what else can I add to the mix in what I found what was so beautiful on a journey. I’m so grateful of the occupational therapy framework for this. Was that seeing the person as a multi-dimensional X Factor factorial You know human that has you know, we not just moving eating robots. You know, we have these very rich life is very in-depth most of us. Yes, we have these very rich very deep, you know, International emotional psychological and even spiritual parts that make us up as humans and health encompasses all of that and for me when I went through my life, I you know, let’s call a breakdown breakthrough burnout moment it it you know, there was it wasn’t just physically that something was going on with me, you know, it was emotionally psychologically socially, you know, I wasn’t I didn’t want to get out of the house because I was so consumed with my physical kind of sim. Was an illness and my mental health like there was that Agra phobia that I developed and then there’s the spiritual as well, you know, like the inner Spirit what lifts your spirit nothing was lifting my spirit at that point in time. I was in pure survival mode and there was nothing that that inner aliveness that in a spirit was yeah, it was depleted.
01:05:03 – 01:10:06
It was disconnected is probably a better word. So absolutely we’re not taught to look after our emotional health and mental health our spiritual health our social connections, you know, so yeah this this was New Territory for me and I think like for me one of the biggest things again something that was never really taught as a Concepts was having a creative Outlet cuz I never even sort of realized that that was something that I needed until I needed it off. Yeah, like loving senior created that less a lot of the projects that I did. Yeah. Okay for some people like I did a lot of like web design and that kind of stuff. I’ve had thoughts for years and for different things and different projects and then I had you know, Facebook communities like m h r o t and that kind of stuff but yes, they’re very useful resources. And yes, they serve our purpose but the meaning wasn’t there even though for some people I’d guarantee some people find I know some people that will find like designing web pages off of like a creative outlet for me, even though I can be doing exactly the same thing as them the meaning was different like it wasn’t a creative thing for me. It was more of a purposeful like I need to do this because it’ll lead to something else. It was our another purpose and I the sitting back and creating that space like we talked about earlier to again for me to age. It’s selfish and find things that like Hobbies just for me tapping into and experimenting a little bit with some sort of like creative things like a little bit of painting and random soft still got paintings hanging up in the house that I did. Yeah sauce, you show me those. That’s the you know, and yes. Okay, that’s not something that off of stock but I did it and it felt good knowing. Okay, so it’s not necessarily the painting that felt good in that instance. It was the fact that I was creating something. I was expressing myself. I was trying something new and I’ve done a couple different things since then my latest thing that’s the same before is like photography and I’m really sort of getting into that and change. Not just the actual photographing but even editing to create moods with different photos and scenes and that kind of stuff and I I’m finding that at the moment to be a really really powerful way for my creativity to show and I’ve had people my wife doesn’t like half the photos I take she’s she’s much she’s the she’s the type of person that wants to photo to look exactly like it did when you were looking at it with your eyeballs and on the kind of person that wants to create a mood. So I’ll you know make things darker or desaturate pictures or you know, make them black and white or whatever it is. So again the same thing like that’s the same occupation but two very different meanings. She looks at a very much as a I don’t know I guess a form of documentation like she’s documenting what happened like what’s in front of you you want to yeah a clear picture almost like a, you know, a physical memory. Whereas I’m trying to log Like literally I’m trying to create a mood from a scene or from a picture or from a something that you know wasn’t normally they’re like I’ve taken photos of some weird damn and created something sort of dark and Moody out of it taking photos of a fence like in front of anything and just so I try to create something from it. So for me, that’s just at present. Anyway, that’s my current sort of creative outlet and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. But whether it’s going to be that way forever, you know, whether it’s going to be something that I do for the rest of my life, maybe maybe not and that’s the beauty of creativity. There’s no rules and that’s I think that’s the thing is again. I’m not doing it I said this people including people very close to me the title like what I’m doing and that’s okay because I’m not doing it for them. I’m doing it for me and it’s serving its purpose for me. Yeah and and off. Creativity to serve its purpose is through the process not the outcome, you know, it’s that exploratory process. It’s you know, that helps light up that part of your brain that really connected to our emotions. Actually. So creativity is is is an Avenue for emotional expression as well. So you’re literally able to express, you know, your inner worlds in you know, something that you yourself can look at and see the beauty in that and see the you know, uniqueness so long.
01:10:06 – 01:15:15
Yeah, it’s a very cool. What else do you think what other things have you used? Yo, you did some meditation and stuff. You spoke about earlier what other things did you off even experiment stuff? That didn’t stick. Is there anything that didn’t stick that you tried during your sort of rehab type process? Of course, that’s a good question. That makes me think. Thinking is good, right? Oh, gosh. What did I try? That didn’t stick, you know, there was points where I tried to go a little bit gung-ho with my physical kind of fitness and it was probably a little too soon to push myself. So I think you know any guidance or advice on anyone who’s you know, wanting to replenish wanting to recover from depletion of some sort, you know, don’t try and push yourself to physically too soon too hard, you know, so when you bring that kind of very driven ambitious personality into recovery or into personal development or into creativity, for example, you’ve got off Blowouts because it’s not you know, you’re not designed to kind of pushed to your limits when there’s other stuff going on. So to take a bit more of a gentle approach. So yeah some things that I have to kind of do away with was like maybe going for a big run. You know, that was just too much for my system or you know, I think I even experimented going to the gym a little bit more again. That was it just didn’t kind of fit and work and it made me feel more exhausted more depleted. I think I don’t think there has to be I think you can apply that same theater anything. I don’t think it has to be just the physical stuff like even the the mental stuff like if you like to dive in head-first then there’s a good chance you’re going to get a cat. This is too much of that like it and not go any further words if you kind of ease into it. Then you’ve got a better chance of it taking you’re going to you know, pick up a lot more of the Nuance of the whatever the occupation itself is and you probably going to get more out of it. Yes, I did that too like mental kind of Fitness C type of stuff mental like I yeah, I would go gung-ho and I push and I’d had blow off even with emotional healing, you know, like healing from trauma or healing from emotional some things that you’ve that have gone on for Europe presently going on for you. It’s not a process that you can force. It’s definitely a process that you need to kind of easy to write or wave. Yes, so and it’s funny that brings me into kind of like the next phase of my recovery was this surrender Compass concept of surrendering into surrendering into the dog. Rose sets rather than pushing controlling trying to drive it like pushing Boulders up hills. You know, I did that for probably the first thirty years of my life pushed off push all those up hills, you know, and yeah, there’s so like working with the young people that I work with now so many with that type of personality that’s their kind of programmed habits of just it has to be really hard really gung-ho and if you’re not pushing yourself to your limits, you’re not going to get improvements you’re not get outcomes. But yeah, there’s definitely this beautiful kind of like dance this balance of of you know, what did I took the sale of a day of this discipline and surrender this beautiful kind of dance between the two and then you can to The Sweet Spot is Flo birth. Whatever you might be putting yourself into whether it’s recovery from burnout, whether it’s a recovery from a chronic illness, whether it’s anxiety depression mental health, you know challenges that might be going on for you. If you can work this beautiful discipline surrender balance this dance and find that sweet spot that sweet spot of slow. That’s when the magic happens. That’s when the healing happens. So if I can encourage that on anyone’s Journey, you know, yeah and disinfectant isn’t what else do I read the other day it said, you know, self-discipline is the highest ACT of self-love and I loved that song self-discipline is the highest ACT of self-love.
01:15:15 – 01:20:05
So if we can bring that element of self-care in all aspects that what make us human emotional psychological wage Cool spiritual social bringing in that element of self-care self-love through our discipline processes in our discipline so steps but not doing with doing it with this lovely kind of like, yeah less force and more surrendering into that process. We get this flow. We get this this healing process that can happen. I think one of the interesting things that’s happened sort of practice lives in the Los. It’s probably not even that long probably in the last maybe five years wage is I think previously Burnett was one of those things where you like you burn out and then you get better from it. Whereas I think it’s almost getting more airtime. Now where people are like, how can I prevent it and I think one of the good things is why personally think it’s it’s hard to get your head around what it’s like unless you’ve been there and that goes for anything mental illness physical home. Anything like that, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t, you know prevent yourself from burning out without actually burning out like you don’t have to walk completely burnt out in order to change your life and look after yourself better. Absolutely. And that is certainly I guess the teaching that I want to put across and and the clients that I still see now and then I’ve seen over the years is yeah, you don’t have to hit rock bottom home to work out better ways to care for your your mind and your body and and you know, your mental health certainly prevention is definitely odd Focus that should really be brought in more and more into the workplace and certainly, you know as young people going through High School. And going through toastery studies. You know, how do we help and support them to ensure that they don’t follow that path towards yeah depletion and burnout home. So yeah prevention is Yeah, for sure. So if for people that well, I mean there might be people listening to might be sort of approaching this this burnout level or they might be people that are you know going. Oh crap. I don’t want that to happen to me. And I think I like I know I tell my story as a cautionary tale of please don’t let me get this level. But what what are some things you think just anyone can start looking at to try and not even looking at Burnet just be dead get more well-being just be better get more. Well, let’s put that as a little that’s what we can how to get wealthy off mileage, but unlock it love it. So, how can we get more well-being? I guess essentially. Oh gosh recognize. Well first and foremost thought knowing when to seek out help knowing when to reach out knowing when to basically put your hand up and say I need a need a little extra help here. I need someone to talk to I need you know guidance support or whatever. It might be and sometimes we don’t even know. How to do that so if we can encourage those around us we can encourage either, you know loved ones family members people that we work with our colleagues that you know, it’s okay to not be okay and it’s okay to reach out and ask for help and this goes with you know, whatever might be going on in someone’s life. Whether it’s just, you know, struggling struggling with your own mental health struggling with personal challenges, you know in your personal life, whether it’s struggling with things at work just to talk about it and to reach out I think is a really important first step and giving others permission and almost like a really gentle kind of nurturing knowledge in that direction is really important. And then also recognizing that yeah, like what we were sort of saying at the beginning that we are.
01:20:06 – 01:25:01
These you know humans that have multiple needs, you know, we’re not just robots. We’re not just machines that need to be moved and need to be fed off. There’s just so much more to us and recognizing, you know, whether it’s burnout prevention whether it’s recovery, whether it’s just what was it off to get good well being able to get more well being, you know, whatever it might be recognizing that we need to look after our physical mental emotional and even our spiritual well-being and what that looks like for for everyone is unique and different because we all have different histories, you know men and women are quite different, you know different personality types, you know, as I said before some people might love going to the gym four days a week and that’s their stress release and them Really good about it. And you know, it’s their go to go to for me. It’s not I need more nourishing nurturing kind of more flowing sort of activities in my life. Yoga, like a gentle kind of brisk walk somewhere rather than you know, a full-on run. You know, you’ve got to work out. What suits you what fits right in with patient some people go. Oh gosh, you know meditation. That’s not for me. I can’t meditate. What does it even mean but you know, there’s all different forms and you’ve just got to you know, do your research. Look what’s available check in with someone who has a bit of a you know, multi-dimensional skill set of tools that can show you different different things so that you can utilize but yeah different breathing techniques different Focus techniques different kind of embodied practices. You’ve got to work out what works for you. So yeah, and on an emotional level, you know, some people are very good at expressing their emotions. Some people need a little bit of extra help and a little bit of encouragement and just you know, working out what it is that works for you and trying to seek out the right supports to help you with that. I think I think one of the things that’s really important job to touch on a little bit but not directly is that the the process going from, you know, even if you do end up completely burning out so hitting rock bottom and then dragging yourself out of that hole for lack of a better term. It’s not linear and you you’re going to take steps backwards during that process as well. Like I was saying before like this stuff that I tried and yes, it wasn’t a huge step back with the stuff that I tried and I went oh, this sucks like this, you know, I don’t like this at all, and so I’ll page. Up that hook and try something else. There’s going to be times when like life doesn’t stop that’s the other thing is while you’re doing all this life keeps going. So there’s going to be a normal crap that happens in people’s lives that still happen while you’re sort of dragging yourself out of a burnout phase and that’s okay. It’s okay to kneel be okay, like it’s okay to take that step back. I always like I used to use a lot of solution-focused brief Intervention when I was working mental health as long as you’re pointing or aiming to try and always point in that positive direction. That’s all anyone can ask of you at that point in time. So, you know strong strong. That’s okay. We’re taking an asteroid. We adjust we adapt we keep trying to move forward. Yes. We’re moving forward from a different point than we were at before but we still try and move for a job. Like that’s that’s all anyone. That’s the meaning of life as I keep telling my students the meaning of life is to constantly improve. So whether you’re at rock bottom or your absolute top of your game, the aim is to still constantly improve. No one sort of gets to the top and goes that’s it. I’m done. You don’t see like say Rodger Federer or something hits number one in the world and he’s like, oh, that’s it. I’ve done it and I’m finished now off as good as I’m ever going to get like that’s not how we as humans work. So it’s okay to take a step back, you know, and it’s okay to be in a holding pattern sometimes too. You know, like I think I think when you’ve got that personality of constant self-improvement, you can beat yourself up and be really hard on yourself when you feel like you’re not progressing. So sometimes even giving yourself permission to go. It’s okay to be dog paddling right now.
01:25:01 – 01:29:29
It’s okay to be in a holding pattern, but think this will change. So pass and we going to work on strategies and look at what we can bring into the mix to help support you through this and it’s moving like helping people move out of that survival mode into thriving mode. I think it’s a really key point, but it’s okay, you know to be stuck for a little while, but we’re going to we’re going to make sure that that doesn’t happen for too long. I love it. I love it. If people want to look you up where can they find you off gosh, good question. I’m in the throes of getting a new little site set up, but that might be a little way in this picture. But if people people can look at my original website at the moment, so this is something I developed over a number of years. It’s a bit of a labor of love and there’s a few things. Said I’ve got in there that I quite informative. So if you want to jump on it’s just like it so it’s just my name. And and yeah, I can find out a little bit more about me and my story and my services and a little bit more about my journey on their taxes and stuff on there as well as as resource pack ta stuff on there as well. Oh, gosh, I’m not sure if no, there’s no audio yet. I do have a YouTube channel that is just kind of starting to kind of build off. I’m doing some meditation little met at many meditation series at the moment where I’m just putting something really simple and you know easy to put in your day-to-day kind of routines up off. So there are some recordings on my YouTube channel, which I think you can get two by my website. But anyway, just Google my name, I’ll put a blanket put the link in the show notes. People will find me dead. You know, if you do want to reach out and get in contact with me, I am open for questions. I’m very approachable. There’s a there’s an email on my own website. So I feel free to yeah the time the Jets showing up in your life, then definitely shoot her an email. Sean has to happen off three times and you act on it. No hesitation meant to be Universal telling you you have to that is the message is for the universe. Totally pointing pointing you in the right direction. Awesome. Thank you so much. We’ve I’ve been wanting to bring you on here forever as you know, and we’ve we’ve we’ve taken our time and he’s back into it, and we finally wrangled you on here, so I’m stoked. So thanks for finally agreeing to come and have a conversation with me handle. I just say Brock. Thank you. Inviting me and thank you for being patient as I kind of Traverse the last little while to jump on your podcast, but I believe in that work I believe in you and I think what you’re doing, you know, you create creating those little Ripple effects and planting those seeds, which is an important. It’s an important work to be going. So thank you for inviting me to be a part of that and yeah more than welcome more than welcome off.
088 – Starting a New Hobby
Oct 24, 2020
In these unprecedented times, many many people are experiencing occupation disruption on a large scale. Many people are starting or looking for new occupations in order to maintain their occupational wellbeing. Today I wanted to explore a small part of my journey into a new occupational engagement.
A new hobby in a crazy world. I took up photography and am aiming to learn as much about it as i possibly can. The more i learn, the more i find i have to learn. But I’m absolutely loving it and immersing myself into this new community and new world. Listen in to my experience of navigating this period of occupational disruption through an occupational lens.
087 – Get a Dose of Support with Dr Vanessa Kasper
Oct 18, 2020
DURING THIS PODCAST TOPICS SUCH AS MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENTS AND GUN SHOT WOUNDS ARE DISCUSSED IN GRAPHIC DETAIL. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.
Dr Vanessa Kasper is a nurse practitioner that runs the Dose of Support Podcast, a podcast that aims to highlight self-care and support to prevent health practitioners from burning out. We delve into her personal story and everything that’s led her to start her own podcast to try and help others in similar situations. We also highlight somethings health practitioners should be aware of and what they can do to help maintain their own mental wellbeing.
086 – The 2020 Occupied Guide to Job Interviews
Oct 11, 2020
You asked for it, so here it is! The 2020 Occupied guide to job interviews. With the assistance of the awesome Erin Jeffords we give you the extent of our knowledge and experience to best prepare you for your first or next job interview. If you’re a student, a newgrad or an OT looking to brush up on their job-hunting skills then tune in and learn how you can give yourself the best shot at landing that job!
We explore tips for everything from the preparation right through to what to do post interview.
How to nail down your preparation
How to practice for your interview
What to research prior to your interview
Being self-aware and open to feedback
How to present your 100% authentic self in the best way
I am excited about this one. This is hopefully going to be the start of a brand new thing. We’re going to try and update this like annually so that it’s always the latest information for you guys. You guys told me that you wanted an episode about how to prepare for a job interview how to get ready give yourself the best opportunity to nail down that job. So here it is the 2020 occupied guide to job interviews i
So a little while ago. I threw out a message on the instead of asking what people were wanted to hear about. I got quite a few really amazing topics this being probably the biggest one and that’s how do I interview? How do I get a job? What is this process? And how can I be better at it off? So this is the occupied 20/20 guide to interviewing and trying to get a job. Obviously. I have some experience in that but yep. Definitely not all-encompassing in that experience. I’ve brought along the lovely orange efforts to give me a hand with this episode. So thanks for coming in and helping out with the this you have a myriad of experience throughout your your career and your family apparently with regards to interviewing. So I’m hoping this is this is going to be a bagger and really useful. That’s what we want to do is try and create a really useful resource for not just new grads going for their first interview, but anyone really that’s prepping for a job change on, you know going for a promotion or any way that you’re going to find yourself sitting in interview. So I think one of the first things Is I guess firstly to kind of recognize that yeah interviews stressful. That’s probably one of the first things it’s normal for you to be stressed going into a job interview. It’s normal. It’s it’s usually going to bring about some kind of large change in your life in your career. It may even been precipitated by a change in your life or your career. You may have other things going on that may have led to you applying for this job or going for this change or moving or anything like that. So there’s usually all the stresses that can accompany this additional stress of going for an interview. So, I think the first thing to acknowledge is that yeah, it’s it’s normal what you’re feeling is normal when you’re coming up to this situations, but there are definitely things that you can do to better process and better manage them and we’re going to have a look wage. I guess some of the preparation stuff. So one of the things that Aaron mentioned to me before we recorded this is some of the stuff that you can prepare for with regards to your normal routine or kinds of things can can people do for their normal routine with regards to getting ready for an interview error. I I think personally when I think about like when I have gone interviews in the past or things that I recommend that my students who are just like think about the routine of the day before the interview or the day of the interview, you know, making sure you know, you get enough rest possibly like for me, I’m not a breakfast person but you know, I am a coffee person. So making sure you know, I have some time to have my cup of coffee and you know, making sure that you know, I do whatever I can to manage my stress for the day, you know, just kind of setting I hate to say it sounds kind of cliche but set yourself up for Success. So like doing all those things that you would do in a if you’re going to any important meeting or presentation or or in this case an interview, so making sure you know, you’re getting enough rep rust possibly, you know, whatever you need if you need to eat breakfast or not put any laying out. This is like a I’m treating it. Like I was my my children laying your clothes out the night before, you know, but really knowing what you want to wear for the interview, you know, don’t just wake up and grab the you know shirt out of the laundry basket kind of thing, you know, you need to to actually treat it you need to make sure that you treat it that it is the important event that it is, you know, you are you’re going to place you want to make that great first impression.
00:05:02 – 00:10:14
So what can you do, you know that day or the day before to kind of prepare for that interview so that those are kind of the things that I was talking about the rules of making sure that you’re giving yourself enough time, you know, and not you know rushing to get there and knowing the parking situation as well, you know, just kind of the planning the whole planning of the day is something that I think will really help make you feel more confident when you get there because you’re not going to be worried birth. That your day didn’t start off on the right foot, you know, just making sure you kind of do everything. You can’t now sometimes it’s unavoidable. You know, you you might sleep through your alarm or and there might be an accident on the way to the meeting and I mean the interview and you might be 5 minutes late, you know, so don’t let those things, you know really creeped in as far as like yourself doubt. But if you can do things to avoid those things like setting a second alarm or leaving extra early. So if there is an accident, you know that that’s what I’m talking about. Just trying to implement some extra steps to make that routine as smooth as possible on that day. I think I think times of massive one especially for for me personally am so like you said like getting yourself organized so there’s less things that you have to put mental energy into on the day, but another thing with regards to time is you can give yourself too much time off. A really bad this so for job interviews if I have say an interview in the middle of a workday, it’s not uncommon. I have done it in the past where I’ve taken the day off just so that I can prepare myself and I’m not running around nothing comes up at work that is going to make me late or stressed or anxious or anything like that but in doing that because I’ve got everything prepped the night before. I’m just sitting there all morning just going over things in my head and to me that I can always suck myself out of it. So being self-aware about that and we will get onto self-awareness in a little bit, but knowing how much time you need and then just adding a little bit extra like if you are going to take all morning and you know that you’re not going to have a lot on then maybe you can leave some of that sort of getting a warning these colors and that sort of stuff to the morning as long as you leave plenty of time. So knowing how much time you need adding a little bit extra not going completely overboard. Otherwise, yep. It is a potential there to to stress yourself out and kind of has the opposite effect, unfortunately. What about actually practicing for the interview? How how can we do that? Cuz one of the questions and the one of the reasons actually we’re connected was answered the question. I’m trying to bring this up now because I think it’s one of the funniest. So I just go ahead and on Instagram around the same time as what do you want me to talk about about what interview questions people have had recently found Aaron came back that one of the interview questions. You were given were what was it? What chocolate bar are you? It was what candy bar, you know, we’re shopping. Okay. Yeah, you have to you if you were a candy bar or what candy bar would you be and why and I was so I had probably I have eleven years of experience. Now. This was a few years ago. So I think I had nine years of experience at this point and you know, I was not expecting this interview question at all, you know, and and I I tried to I think I probably did laugh cuz it was just kind of awkward, you know, I didn’t know what to say. And and I told you I responded cuz you you came back and said well, what did you say and I said a crunch Nestle Crunch bar because I think that was honestly I think that was the lack of candy bar I had eaten so that was the first thing that came to my mind and then I had to make it work and I said well, you know, it’s smooth on the outside but it has texture, you know, you don’t know what they’re getting you know, and and and so the girl you know, she kind of laughed and and then I asked her. Well, what what would you what what’s your answer and I can’t even remember what hers was off. But yeah, that was definitely by far the most out-there interview question I’ve ever been asked and it’s I did get some interesting ones in a lot of them typical ones like tell me about a time you had conflict and how you managed it that kind of stuff. But sometimes I I have heard quite regularly questions like that, which is So seemingly weird. When I think a lot of the time questions like that are designed to see how you react not honestly your answer itself. Probably is negligible. Yes, you managed to come up with a cool story about how the front bar but it was probably more to do with how is she going to react under you know, this is sudden pressure cuz it’s a pressure.
00:10:14 – 00:15:08
You’re not expecting that kind of question and it could be anything. I’ve heard all sorts of things. The chocolate bar one was definitely a new thing. But you know, I’ve heard about one I have heard is sort of if you were if you had a superpower, what would it be just random question. Just nothing necessarily to do with OT or health care in general the one thing I would say is a lot of people those questions aren’t necessarily their way to test your Healthcare knowledge or your dedication to healthcare. Sometimes they’re there to learn a little bit more about your personality. Sometimes they’re they’re like, I suspect the chocolate bar one was just to see how you might react and I think in preparation for those kinds of questions, you just kinda need to be yourself. I I’ve heard people when I get that especially the superhero question. I’ve heard some very out their answers for that but people try and rather than just answer like, you know, I like Batman like I thought I would be Batman why because I liked the sort of underground Underdog Story of you know, coming from this sort of traumatic experience and becoming for whatever the reason is dead. But I’m not going to sit there and try and come up with an answer that makes me look like I’m model for health professionals. Like I’m not going to you know, I would be dead. He falls prevention man or something like it. I don’t that’s not the purpose of those questions. There’s plenty of other questions in an interview that are there to test your knowledge on health but wage that is not the only thing that people are looking for in a in a in a in an interview. So be aware that not every question needs a health answer. Oh, absolutely. And like you said, they’re looking they’re kind of teeth out your personality a lot of times interviews too. So, you know, I mean they are I mean, they’re just trying to figure out wage you are what makes you different think everybody at that point has a license to practice. So what makes you different from the other person you all have the skills you all pass your you know, your certification exam. So what’s so special about you or you know, what? Can you bring to this job role that someone else can’t bring so sometimes those questions. I think you’re right. They’re just trying to figure out who you are as a person and you know, So sorry to hear you. I want to say like, you know, if you’re authentic or not, you know, like you said like if you try to come up with some like off-the-wall, you know answer or if you just walk in like hey, I like like you said like like that. I’m an eighties child. So I would have probably said like he bad or sheer or somewhere somebody like that, you know, which the people at their students who that is. But yeah, that was that was who I was obsessed with when I was a kid, you know, so that’s probably the first thing that would have come to my mind, you know, not like anybody else cuz I don’t know other superheroes. Yeah, and I think a lot of the time a lot of interviews I’ve heard from yeah, like people conducting interviews that quite often what they’re looking for is is this person is their personality is the attitude. Are they going to fit in team that we already have so like you said everyone should if it’s an OT position everyone replied off An IT everyone is registered. Everyone has passed their exams passed all of the different things that they need to, you know be a registered OT and it might come down to the fact that this person personality-wise seems like they’re going to fit better with the team that we already have cuz we have a really good team. We don’t want to upset that we want to be better and be more productive as a team. So they’re quite often looking for that. They want to it’s hard to gather. I mean you can understand when you when you meet new friends how long it takes to get a handle on their personality. And that’s without sort of the really sort of formal interview process adding to that barrier. So it’s difficult to try and get a good understanding of someone’s personality when they’re putting off. It’s very professional front. So questions like that random questions like that can sometimes almost be like a jolt like a bit of a shock to the system and can can help give some insight into the the kind of person that they are and it might be that might I don’t feel like there’s a wrong answer for those which is I know probably not what I was hoping to hear because everyone wants to know that this is what you have to prepare for and these are the questions that you’re going to get but every interview is going to be different.
00:15:08 – 00:20:04
I’ve done interviews my like I’ve gone for jobs and had interviews where they’ve asked all the various standard questions, you know, tell me about a time when you had conflict with a team-mate and how you managed to tell me about a time when you managing Difficult situation or when you showed leadership or whatever it is. Tell me about your experience. But I’ve also had interviews. We’re probably the most unique one where I had to just come in and present the case. I had to prove a power was given it like the brief beforehand to present a case of it. Obviously, you’re going to choose one that you did. Well Ali and I had a I had a power point everything I had to go in there and press office annal and like that was that was it that was the interview was me doing a presentation and then the panel asking me a couple of questions afterwards managed to get that job by the way, just saying. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that was a completely different set up and there was no way if I had have been practicing interview questions and then got the email saying oh you have to present. Okay, so I’m not ready for this month. So Luckily that played into my strengths and that’s that’s another thing that you need to be aware of is that not everyone I know many people that will say I am really awesome and interviews Wicked and if you give me an interview any day select group assignments when you’re unique no one goes. Yes, ma’am more group assignments. Oh gosh. Yeah don’t get started on the yeah. That’s definitely not a favorite amongst. You know, I’m with you. I mean, I feel like Every interview is different but no one wants to be caught off guard, you know, and like you said like having that someone telling you like. Oh, we’re going to have this case that you’re going to repair for improvement. I mean that is really a great way for you to Showcase your skills. I would as a you know, if I was going to hire someone I would rather have someone do that than like you said ask them. You know questions that we always get asked, you know, the routine question some of your strengths and weaknesses and and those types of questions but as you know, the majority of interviews are going to be the more traditional ones, so there are things that you can prepare for and the general interview questions. And when I asked you guys it all came back sounding fairly similar don’t think these General interview questions have changed very much for decades, but it is usually things around depending on the setting as well. There might be some setting specific questions around, you know, if you work in drug and alcohol might be settings questions specific to that setting but for the most part, it’s generally, you know, tell me like we said before tell me about a time when you showed leadership if it’s off the ship position tell me about a time when you had conflict within a team and how you managed it. I’ve found dead. That quite often the questions that are asked can give you insight into what’s been happening in that team prior to you going for the job, which is a good thing because what you can do is and it’s been a fairly common recommendation. I remember hearing it when I was at Uni years to always make sure that you’ve got a question for them at some point and I think the type of questions being asked can if you wanted to not just phone that question in and actually ask someone thing is genuine and could be very useful to you, is to have a think about the questions that you are asked and then see if there’s anything from that that you might be interested in asking. So for example, if they’re asking about telling you asking you to page them if there’s any times that you’ve had conflict with staff and how you managed it and that kind of thing then potentially that may indicate that there’s been some issue in the past with wage. Either past staff et cetera. You can ask about that, you know, have you has there been issues with this in the past? Is there any how how how was it off the employment got into that much detail, but how could I support myself or support the team in working through that is the team set-up well for that kind of situation with the and that’s just one example, but depending on the questions I asked you can base what you’re going to ask them on that which is I think a really good way cuz it shows one that you’re switched on Thursday and you’re paying attention to what’s going on.
00:20:04 – 00:25:08
Nothing happens by accident. I don’t believe that especially with these kinds of things people are very much looking for specifics in your answers and they’re asking questions to do that. So if they’re looking for someone that knows how to manage conflict there’s a reason if they’re looking for someone wage. If specific skills and they’re asking about this specific stuff. Like I went for a job a while ago. It was a very generic job at that are asking a lot of questions around Crisis Intervention, and I was just didn’t pick up on all the time cuz I was young and dumb but that was something that was lacking within the team at the time. I found it afterwards didn’t get that job, unfortunately, or fortunately, you know, but that was something that was lacking within the team. So if I had have been switched on enough I could have a framed a question around is this something that you’ve finished up I had in the team. Is that something you’re trying to introduce? What are the issues that are brought this on kind of thing and it it shows it bodes well for you, like I said before because it shows that your real boost on in in a and a tune if I can get that word out to Health Systems Health processes. So it works well for you in the long run and you’re going to find out Little bit more information about what you’re stepping into if you do get the job, which is always a good thing. That’s a good point. I never thought about it in that way because I have been asked in interviews before about wage like my learning style. And you know, like are you a self learner or you self motivated things like that? And that’s typically in the jobs where there are not there isn’t a lot of supervision or lack of opportunity. So they want to know can you just hit the ball ground running you can you do this or do you need a lot of hand-holding and you know, I know myself like you say, we’ll talk about the song Earnest Bass But as a new grad, I needed the hand-holding, you know as a practitioner. I don’t feel like I need it as much now I still you know, if I’m going to an unfamiliar setting off, yes, but as a new grad, I was very vocal that I was looking for that type of opportunity where I would have that mentorship, but now I’m working more in dead. PRN our more part-time PRN, you know, they ask me questions. Like, you know, can you start you know, when you bring you okay with you know less supervision or less contact and you know, they just want to know that you can take off and do it take the job and do it. And so that makes sense cuz I never thought about that but that’s a question you get asked is what your learning style how do you learn best learning style is definitely one thing that I’ve been asked before as well again, probably when I was too young to realize that it kind of had some indication on what they were looking for or what was missing another one. Like I mentioned before is I’ve been asked to you know, tell me a time when you exhibited leadership, which is such a broad question. But again, it can indicate something that they’re either looking for succession plans or looking for something that’s lacking within the team at that point in time wage. Can be a team that doesn’t like the team that I think it was the interview that I had with the front of language interviewers. Which job but I think in that team there was a lot of sort of projects within the team and you were leading those projects. So that was why they were asking about that. So definitely keep that in mind. Obviously the other thing I think specifically for new grads is that without some of those questions like that haven’t got a lot of that experience because you know, you may never have have worked as a and I tell you might you might be going for your first job and I don’t know about you Aaron but one of the things that I like to try and is something you can prepare for is with things like leadership conflict learning song all that kind of stuff pull examples that aren’t related like you’ve done other things in your life. I remember for the last question. I remember pulling out a an example of wage Something that happened when I was like in Boy Scouts like it was years ago years prior, but it was a good example of what they were asking for and nothing to do with OT but again leadership isn’t an IT thing or learning style isn’t an OT thing. So it doesn’t have to be specific to the job that you’re applying for or to the degree that you’ve just completed that they’re looking for in some instances. I would say they’re also looking with those questions to find out about your general life experience and see what else you’ve done. So if So it’s nice to include like you said other experiences, but you know, if you’re a new grad you and you do have you might you might think.
00:25:08 – 00:30:01
Oh, I don’t have the experience. But if you had something you can pull from from your level to do fieldwork placement or we we call the mobile people your level to fill replace that or even in school. If you’re talking about group dynamics and Leadership, maybe a group project where you were dead in school. I mean try to you know, like you said use a an example. It doesn’t have to be like necessarily as a practicing therapist. It could be as as your role as a student as your roam like you said in another job, you know, so just make it you know for the question I think one thing too is your degree that you’ve just completed the whole degree wage is back engineered to get you a job at the end of it. So not anything that most health settings are going to ask you. It has been built into your course. So if they’re asking about leadership if they’re asking about learning styles, there will be an example that you can pull from your course somewhere if that’s all that you’ve got. I’m talking about someone that’s lived under the stairs their whole life come in front of no T course and then there’s applied for a job guarantee you there’s other things in your life, or you could probably pull examples from but if there’s not and you can’t think of anything there will definitely be something from throughout your course for pretty much anything that you’re going to be asked maybe not the chocolate bar one down any sort of the Practical tell me about a time when type questions they’ll be something from your course that you can pull from as an example. And these are all things like using these General. I guess topics that commonly looked at these are the things that you can prepare for prepare an example and the question may not come in the exact form that you prepared. But if you thought an example of you know, when you showed leadership, I thought about an example of when I was involved in the conflict with a person I worked with or with a client. I’ve thought about an example of how long how I learn best. I’ve thought about an example of when I’ve been independent, but then needed to ask for help. You can reframe on the Fly depending on how they asked the question if they don’t ask it exactly how you prepared. That’s okay. That’s okay. You say you have to think about like they don’t really care how you dealt with, like they just want to see if you’re resilient. You know, they want to see if you’re flexible. They want to see how you think on your feet, you know, sometimes the things are really looking for so, you know try to Showcase those things, you know, and so I think if people go into like, oh, I don’t have this like like you said this, I didn’t have come back with a co-worker, you know, but they if you can showcase that you’re you know, you’re resilient. You’re flexible you deal well with stress, I mean that’s what they want. You know that things are really trying to dig deep to see if how you deal in this situation how you handle those types of situations. I always liked the question wrong. Of like like I was going I said earlier like what? Why what can you bring to this organization or or job that someone else can’t you know, because you really have to be able to think about okay. Well, why am I a better role than my end of my classmate but also applied for the same job or and we’d like you said we both have her license at this point. We’re both skilled. We both have changed the necessary requirements to be in the role, but you have to kind of figure out you know, what sets you apart and why you would be good for that job. That’s hard too long to do, you know, but you this is like an opportunity to really kind of showcase who you are, you know in your strengths and your personality, so it’s not just about being an OT wage. You know, what is it about you personally that you think would be a good fit for that job or that rule. Well, that’s a good segue. Let’s delve into the the software. So the self-awareness stuff those of you listening. Just for a while. If you happen to be one of my students at any point in time, you’ll have hear me heard me ramble on about self-awareness and being self-aware a thousand times over because I feel like it’s one of the biggest skills that not only are we lacking a lot of cases, but we need and does us very very well in all instances, but it also does very very well when it comes to interviewing so nobody is perfect. I’ll say that aside from me know but when they when you’re going into an interview, they’re not expecting you to be able to answer about how amazing you are for every single question believe it or not.
00:30:01 – 00:35:06
It can work in your favor to actually highlight some of the things that you are not so good not sometimes in specific cases and I say that way because it’s not just like, oh, I’m terrible at this or I can’t do that what you would be dead. Better off saying if this is something that I’m not as strong at and here’s how I might compensate for that hears. You know, I’m not strong something. I can tell you an example film and now but I compensate by doing extra readings. I study outside of work a lot that kind of thing. I’m involved in communities of practice online that I get a lot of support from excetera. Like there’s a myriad of things but not just saying I suck at that and don’t do that but not a not a highly recommended thing. But if you’re trying to say like these are the things I’m pretty strong at and even maybe wife, you know, why like, you know, I’ve got strong leadership skills because I was Captain’s a sport teams and I did this and I did that and blah blah blah. I’ve done that for a long time and then I’m literally transferring their skills over to this particular job. I’ve also not as strong at this but here’s the sort of things that I’ve done and are trying to do to age Prove that that works really well in your favor. It shows that you’re actually aware of what you’re doing and what is needed in a roll and it showed is that not only are you looking at the hell? Yeah. These are the things I’m awesome add, but you’re looking at the things that help you grow. I think and I mentioned this earlier so that’s actually part of my curriculum as a I’ve gone back to school forty years old and a student again and and it’s like that first semester was really kind of like the onion layers like peeling back of like who I am and I’m like really like you have to kind of look at your had to kind of look at myself as long as it’s not just a practitioner but like how I was as a person, you know, the things that I’m willing to admit like the flaws that I have and the strengths that I have and so I think it’s okay to be vulnerable interview and they just want to just be your authentic self. You know, like just like for me early on I remember saying God, what was I was going to say? I remember saying that documentation was not my strength, you know, like I was I was good at documenting. I just time wise sometimes always felt like I needed a little extra time and and Choi That is normal as a new grad. You know, it’s like just admitting that you know, I just need a little extra time documenting but you know, I I I’m also a quick learner. So, you know, you can kind of take a negative kind of negative that you can take something you feel is as a weakness and say well, you know, I might need a little bit. It’s a learning curve for me. I’ve never used this electronic medical wage the system before but but I’m a quick learner. So, you know, give me 2 weeks and now feel more confident with it, you know, so just trying to take that negative and then make it positive if possible or the essay negative. I mean weakness and and make it as a learning opportunity be learning exactly. There’s always room for learning, you know, and and being lifelong Learners off. So that’s so being self-aware and that’s it’s hard as a new grad to get your head around what your strengths and weaknesses are because at times if you haven’t changed a lot of sort of vocational experience your only experience might be your placements. Which actually again works in your favor because quite often you’ll get a written review of your placements and it’s written out there what he these are the things you’re good at. These are the things you need to work on home use those if that’s all that you’ve got at that point in time. That’s the only experience you’ve got that you can draw on then you’ve got a written report. I know it’s called a spiff for most of these in Australia Thursday. It’s called in America, but it would be very similar. So those points that are highlighted in those placement reports if that’s the only vocational experience that you’ve got to draw on Thursday. We actually have they have them twice they have well, we have them I say at the halfway point. Yes, I’m going out at the completion, right? So there’s two opportunities and and if you have a fax so we called them filled work supervisor, you know there it’s kind of what they’re whoever that role is if they’re not telling you those things as a student. I would just ask I would say, you know your last name. Your last week, you know, what are the things that I need to work on if they’re not you know and and don’t be afraid to ask that question, you know and ask your I mean, hey I answers to I mean, you know, what are my weight? I mean that’s the whole conversation cuz you don’t want nobody really wants to hear.
00:35:06 – 00:40:07
You know, they want to hear the good they don’t want to hear. You know, but if you’re willing to if you’re open for that conversation, then I would ask. Yeah again, yeah, like you said that’s that’s a hard thing but it’s a wage during A Life Lesson because especially when you’re young and you’ve just got out of uni, and you’re raring to go get into the career that you’ve been training for. However many years to get into the the the last thing you want to do is think about all of these are the things I’m not very good at but I think you kind of need to reframe that cuz it’s not necessarily that like, these are the things that I suck at. It’s these are the things this is where I am prioritizing my learning for the next little bit so that I can get better at that because I’m already good at this other stuff. I’m already at a standard that is worth more than okay at this other stuff. So now I’m going to focus my learning on this and like you mentioned before I T and most Health Professions all Health Professions. Hopefully, we’re lifelong Learners and this is Where it starts is it doesn’t you know, you don’t finishing any and then take a couple of years off before you start learning things again starts from day. Starts from when you start preparing for your first interview. These are the these are the things that I am looking to improve in my own practice in my own self in my communication skills in my whatever it is. But yeah, like I said before or drawn your placements talk to you your your placement supervisors talk to your professors get their feedback if their feedback is yeah really blunt. That doesn’t mean like the esok. It’s not like that. It’s actually a constructive thing. I would yeah again, it’s really cliche but we learn more from failure than we do from success. So it’s having someone around you saying. Oh, you’re really awesome. You’re really good at this. Yeah, that’s nice. Everybody likes to hear that but you’re not going to grow from that being able to learn about the things that you need to improve on Thursday. We need to work on and then putting things in place one. Yes, that’s awesome because you’re going to improve on these things and that’s how you grow too. That’s an awesome conversation to bring up in an interview if You’re asked about your strengths and weaknesses. Cuz if you say like I had this placement identified that these things were things I need to work on his some stuff that I’ve done since that placement that you know finished however, many years ago and I feel like I’m making improvements and I will continue to do that into the future. If you’ve got an established. I guess almost part of the reflection cycle if she got an established reflection cycle that you can draw on in an interview and highlight that this is how I kind of a learning style. I guess I do something I work out what I did good. I work out what I did bad. I put things in place to improve and then I repeat that looks really good to a potential employer. Like we’re hiring this person who is self-aware enough to know what they’re good at even more self-aware enough to if not know what they’re not so good at then they know that they can get feedback from someone else, but then they also put this plan in place to fix it themselves or improve at them. Post like that looks amazing to someone who’s looking for a new employee. I’m sorry. I’m at 6 I had been just making sure that you were saying like that. If you are willing to take the feedback and a planet like that shows that you’re listening to what the person has to say, you know, and if you take it at the midterm and you can say oh what my midterm reflection these are the things that I need to work on and then I was able to take those strategies and Implement them. And then this is what the result was at the end. So, you know that was that kind of gives you’re saying an example of taking it and Implement like you’re saying showing that you took the feedback. And and did it because that shows that you can actually listen to people which another and employers want to know that you can you can do that as a as an employee that you’re actually going to take feedback, but also utilize what if you’ve been given to you. So there’s so many things. I think they were looking at when a reviewing you and when you’re going for an interview, you’re just thinking they’re asking what you these questions, but they’re really there’s a reason for you know, the questions of their asking cuz they’re really trying to figure you out. You know, that’s supposed. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the other things that I think you can duck back to I had written earlier but we’re out right is actually researching the organization that you’re going to interview for.
00:40:07 – 00:45:20
So, do you have any hints and tips on how people can do that? How does a website I mean exactly? I mean, it’s you really need to do your you know, like you’re going for think about it that way, you know, you’re going you’re going to study for an exam. You’re not going to show up for the exam without having studied. Hopefully, I mean you you need to do some background you talk to people if you know people that work for the organization wage, you know, just kind of get a good feel of what you know where this place was started why it was started who started it is it a for-profit and not-for-profit. I mean, there’s lots of things that just going to change the actual I think the website will tell you but if you need more, you know, just do your work and find out more you don’t want to be unprepared when they ask you your name. I ask you a question specific to the our organization. You don’t want to say I don’t know, you know, I don’t know anything about this job. It was just the only job that was you know, they’re so fly off. it’s better to be over-prepared than you know, maybe they will ask you anything, you know, but I think it’s just kind of a that’s a rule of thumb then, you know better to be over prepared for anything so you can’t hurt to kind of just do your you know work there and and I also I liked it. Like I did say talk to people if possible. But if somebody has a negative experience and an organization, you don’t I mean not to say you don’t want to listen to that conversation. But I also don’t want that to possibly foreshadow. You know, you applying for that job because you know, it’s still if it’s an opportunity to interview an opportunity to apply found still take that opportunity, you know, and and it may be even if someone else has had a negative experience. It might not be that for you. So definitely, I think we know as long as when we’re looking environment the context plays a big part and someone negative experience doesn’t necessarily guarantee that it’s going to be a negative experience to you. You don’t know all the details around what was happening in this situation is happening, but it’s important to take what you can from that information you might be able to from that conversation. Take away some information about how the organization authors. You know the fact that they might have employee support programs on site or maybe the fact that they don’t like this. I think that you can take away from the gas station other than the emotions of the person that you’re talking to. So what you really want to try and do is find out how much about the organization how it’s funded or putting more important over there than than huge different Health System how it’s funded how that works, you know, even if you can find stuff if it’s a specific a job specific to a specific Ward if you can find information about that would somehow from someone that you know, or if it just when asked you know things like, you know, what’s the average stay? What are the age groups that you are commonly see if you can find out about common diagnosis that you see through that particular Ward stuff like that that kind of stuff will do one little to your confidence going into the interview age. World of good, but also if there are questions that come up around how do you handle this? You’re going to understand already why that question is being asked. How do you handle, you know a brain injuries caused by Falls? You already know because you’ve rung up and you found out that that is one of their leading reasons for admission. That’s why they’re asking so because you already knew that you’ve done research into the types of things that may be more specific to working with someone who has that particular condition or that particular diagnosis Etc and you’re better prepared to get that question when it comes up in an exam. So it’s not necessarily just about researching like oh, who’s the CEO and how much does it pay and all those sort of like operational things how the organization Works any information that you can get with regards to that and granted some of that stuff is going to be hard to find but I don’t know if you don’t ask And that your great questions to ask you an interview to like if you can’t find the information when you’re preparing, you know, when it comes to your time to ask questions, you know, you can ask those, you know, like what are the typical diagnosis that you see or you know, what’s the average length of stay like you mentioned rock or you know, what where do most people go if it’s an inpatient facility where most of the people being discharged or they just get back to the community or they discharging to other Rehabilitation settings? I mean just kind of those are the questions that if you’re not give that privy to that information that that those questions to ask because it makes it does give the impression that you are invested, you know in the interview but that you’re also trying to prepare for for the job and it even if you can’t find it.
00:45:20 – 00:50:03
I definitely think you said ask you can always ask, you know, the worst thing that can happen to him to ask is someone says I don’t want to answer it or they don’t answer it. Other than that, you called them you’re going to get some information. Even if it’s something information that you thought you were going to get. I think prep and going back to that preparation piece. You asked me earlier like, you know, what can you do to prepare and I will get I mentioned in our last conversation that I was insane before I went back to school and I had to go to Saint Louis Missouri for two weeks for sales training for this one particular job and they video like this is back up when you had a camcorder like there wasn’t we didn’t have iPhones and this was a 2002 so we didn’t have it but they would gave me a VHS tape and it was I had to watch it, you know, if like me doing my kind of sales pitch, you know, or like my mock sales call there were several and they were all missed a but I had to go back and kind of critique myself off. And so I think if you can if you can interview yourself, I know this is going to you know, like sell in the mirror, you know talking to yourself or have someone else interview. And they can record you and you can go back later and watch it. That’s a great technique, you know to kind of self-improvement technique because then you can say I know personally I I say like a lot, you know things that I try to correct, but if I can watch myself on a video then I can go back and see it off and then I’m more aware of it. So I think that’s just like a preparation strategy. If you don’t feel comfortable, you know having someone else do it then just set your iPhone up and bring your apartment and record yourself, you know go back and watch it. That’s it. And what you’ll find in a lot of instances is people are so concerned with answering the questions. They forget about their body language song videoing. It can be a really good prompt to you know are when I get nervous I bounced my foot up and down or I play with my I put my hands in my pockets or something that you look at and you guys that just looks strange. Why am I doing that? Cuz you wouldn’t normally so videoing it is a really good way of videoing you practice or he’s a really good way of Seeing the things that you wouldn’t normally get to see so definitely a thing if you can it doesn’t even have to be the exact type of interview questions. Although it is a good chance to sneak in practice those as well. If you can write up some common things and have someone else ask them to you you can practice some of your rehearse dancers practice some of your rehearse topics, but also then get an a look at one the way you’re saying things some of those sort of arms are different fillers. I guess you would put in when you when your nerves people communicate differently when they’re nervous to when they’re comfortable. So the more comfortable you can make yourself in that situation the more fluid your Communications going to be with one of the one of the preparation stuff that we’ve already talked about is about doing it’s not about rehearsing. It’s about making you more comfortable so having answers so that you’re not shot off. Not caught off guard by questions having your routine set out so that you’re calm your collected. You’re not rushed. You’re not stressed on the day. All of this is about making you more confident off at the point in time when it counts, which is when you’re sitting in front of that panel, that’s the thing. Yeah. It just helped it helped me. I mean helps it helps me off helps me. So it’s like, you know, it’s like trying to give everyone all the little tricks of like maybe this works for you. Maybe it won’t but you know, here’s something that may may help you pack and separate preparation in that way in a type of like a mock interview format if that will help you then like you said, it can’t hurt to try it, And if you if you’re coming at this from a new grad point of view, you probably graduating with a human people in the same situation practice with each other interview each other every other benefit is you don’t have the dog. Need a VHS everyone almost that’s what I said before we had exactly you get everyone can I’m sure the people listening to this is don’t know what age is a child. So yeah video and stuff on your phone.
00:50:03 – 00:55:08
Even if you just recording the audio if that’s all you’re looking at, but you know, most people have got some phone or video capabilities, you know, when he came when you computer whatever you’ve got cuz that’s the other thing is we’ll have a look now the different types of interviews and I think at the moment especially there’s a lot of interviews that are happening online. Yes. Yes, I would agree. So actually interviews interviews classes. I’m sure everyone is done something online in the last eight months that they probably would have never done before or haven’t done very much or before so I think that’s that’s a new type of thing. And I think it was practice. We know specificity with regards to environment how long we know that for male clinical practice. So if you are preparing for an interview in that interview is going to be online try and do some of your practice online Zoom. You see my friends and just do the interview like this cuz the other thing is If you have Tech issues on the day, when you’re trying to connect into an interview, your stress levels are going through the roof immediately cuz you’re it would be like running late or example earlier about if there’s an accident when you’re trying to drive to the interview and your stress levels are going to rise because you’re like, oh crap. I’m going to be late. They’re not going to like me. This is a bad first impression. Exactly the same situation if you’re having Tech issues, so if you’re able to get online, if you know what platform it’s going to be on if it’s going to be on soon sweet anyone can jump on to him if it’s going to be on something else Skype Etc. See if you can click on that and test it out on your computer where you’re going to be on the day set it up you can this is your opportunity you want to try and control the things that you have control over wages of the things that you have control over in that instance is one that you detect is yeah ready to go. One thing. I’ve seen a lot of people not put any thought into with anything this online stuff is the background what is behind you when you’re interviewing I try and keep very little in the background because if I open that cupboard it’s full of rubbish. So I’ve tried to keep just playing background if you’ve got somewhere nice like a bookcase or whatever it is. Use that make sure there’s no like bad books on there or something. But any other windows that have a professional if you do use the filter, you know, do you like a green screen don’t use something to put yourself on the beach or something or yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like I mean you can you know, just just do a plain background and color home. Yeah something just simple keep it. So sometimes you know simple is better so and I would treat those Doom interviews and virtual interviews like you would a regular interview like all the things we talked about still get, you know still make sure you’re treated like you’re actually going to the interview, you know, take a shower get dressed little pants on Monday, right? Like traded a few routine the same as you would if you’re going obviously without the drive. So the the more normalized you can make this process the better you’re going to perform because your brain is just going to get this is normal. I know how to heal. I know how to deal with this. I know how to handle this and that’s what you want. You want to go into those interviews as a calm collected and prepared as you possibly can. What are the types of enemies so I mentioned obviously I’ve had a presentation one. There’s your general one where you just have your usual questions nowadays. Obviously, we have a lot of Zoom ones what other types of interviewees have you come across. So I’ve had so I had lots of different styles. I’ve had Styles red interviewed actually with more of the human resources department first and they filtered through that was early more was a new grad. I did that and then interviewed with the rehab director of the department. I’ve been in three interviews where it’s been a month, It’s like a a meeting style interview, you know where there are multiple individuals in the room have a panel where you’re really I mean that’s like kind of your thoughts on you. Definitely, you know, and and I will say one One one was my first interview out of college. I did get that job and I felt like I was shocked when I he died because it was my first interview after we’ve talked about earlier. I had that imposter syndrome and it was in a I was in a room with two occupational therapist to physical therapist one was the rehab director and bought a whole department one and then they had another person and they were asking me very specific questions about diagnosing.
00:55:08 – 01:00:17
What I would do in this certain situation with this client, you know home and so I mean you can be in those very intimidating interviews and then I’ve been in interviews where people it’s just like one person and it’s more of a a conversation with not so much all of those questions that we talked about where they just want to know more about like my experience and You know. What I can bring to that job and there’s nice interviews tended to be more recently not earlier in my career. Yeah, the boardrooms valley reviews can be intimidating. I’ve had the the group interviews as well one that comes to mind is what I was first at a high school. I had an interview was of long interview process for the Air Force. But Thursday interview aspect of it. One thing that I’ve always remembered is there was a group of us and before we went into the interview. We were just in like a waiting room. Didn’t realize until afterwards that at one end of that waiting room was one-way glass and part of the interview was you were being observed to see how you handled where you social you isolated where you fidgety that you were being observed from day one or from like minute one as soon as you walked into that building it was on and I think yes, that’s kind of extreme. But also you’re if you are attending an interview, there is a good chance that you’re going to be observed how like from the moment you walk in on the moment the way you walk in you might you know see the the office lady and say, yep, I’m here for such and such an interview and she tells you right away if there’s a group if you around have a chat one thing it’s going to put your mind at ease and calm you down cuz she’s going to be nervous. So having a conversation with someone who’s going through the same thing as you can actually be really cathartic and two if you log, Happened to be seen doing that then it shows that you’re not shy it shows that you are open and willing to converse and that kind of thing. So you can also work in your favor. It’s not always be is the one-way glass in the waiting room, but you can be you will be observed while you’re there. That’s just the nature of how Office Buildings work are like use that excuse me. Like he said when he let the person know the front desk, sorry. That you were there for the interview how you treated that person if you’re you know, I’m here for the interview, you know, but if you that person is is also off their part of the interview process, you know, they’re going to go back and Report. Yeah, this person was read when they came in. They were that have any patients, you know, I so just be aware of that, you know, so and I think that’s that’s Thursday. We’re being switched on and being ready from the not the moment you walk into the interview room at the moment, you hit the floor of moment you get out of your car. Maybe you turn that zoom on them. Even if you’re in a room waiting room or whatever before you get brought into the actual sort of interview main room, uh be switched on be ready be be professional I guess right exactly. I tell people even if you’re on scene where parents because if you’re even if you’re just waiting and you happen to like, oh, there’s a noise. I’m going to close the door off you get up. I’ve seen it too many times where people will not be wearing anything from sort of wisdom about he had down. Which is yeah, not the greatest professional look when when it comes to an interview. Unfortunately. I had a my child ran in naked when I was on page him call, you know, he was supposed to be in bed and I would thankfully it was for a class. It was for a class. I’m taking and not any a class. I’m teaching so it was a little bit more casual cuz I was just the four other students in my professor. We have a son ran it, you know, I thought now I know to lock the door when I’m doing a call, you know, so for interview if you’re off making sure they’re not going to intervene. Yes setting yourself up for Success, right, Lastly one thing you brought up before we started this which I hadn’t thought of was follow-up. So what what are your thoughts around that? I just I mean I am I was encouraged to do this before I went back to school to be an empty I’d say am I when I first started interviewing at college for other other jobs that I had spoke with kind of being in the practice of sending an email after the interview.
01:00:17 – 01:05:15
We did have email. I did have an email that sending an email after the interview, you know, thanking that person for their time that I was excited about, you know, the job the potential job position, you know, I mean just showing them that not only that I appreciate their time but that even after the interview I’m still interested in the job, you know, the job is something that I’m interested in and now this is taking it a little step further. So this is just a personal thing that I’ve done is I’ve always said a follow-up like a written card to to thank them so that’s I know that’s a now I don’t do that now, we’ll say I don’t I have not done that wage. in the past couple of years early when I was first getting out of school and like, you know what it can’t help but that just shows that you’re very interested and that also if you don’t get that job, you want to let them know that if it opens up in the future to think, you know, maybe they’ll think of you if if for some reason You know, maybe you don’t get that job that you’re you’re interviewed door, but they have another colleague that leads six months later. You know, you want to be thought of possibly, you know, I mean if it’s something that if you want to ask for it, that’s kind of my motto like if you want if you want the job and and you don’t get it just let them know. Hey, I’m still interested, you know, if something happens in the future, so that’s that’s it. I think that you want to leave whether you get the job or not. You want to leave an impression and hopefully that’s a good impression. And again, like I said before you want to control the things that you can control that’s something that you can control hundred percent whether or not you send them a thank you, Thanks for your time or think of me if this if something else comes up or you know, I appreciated the opportunity whatever it is, whether it’s card or you know an email off. The email is probably more common nowadays, right? I know but you have 100% control on whether or not you do that and thought it might be the difference between them remembering you when something comes up and then you just being another number that went through that interview process. So it can be really valuable tool in Your Arsenal. I know it’s easier said I mean to get discouraged if you don’t get that job that you really want, but you know, you just you just have to remind yourself. I feel like if you’re I try to tell my students like just remind yourself that you know, you are competing with people sometimes for jobs that do have more experience. So that’s not a bad thing, you know to just be aware like go back to that self-awareness piece that it doesn’t mean that you aren’t equipped to do the job. It’s just that if for some reason you suck At that job. Just you know, there is a job out there for you, you know, so just continue to to look for the jobs that are you’re interested in and try not to get off easily discouraged. If you don’t get the first job, you know before I think it’s important to I don’t know. I know it’s cliche, but the worst thing that you’re going to get is interview practice if nothing else. And yes, like I said, I know it’s cliche but one of those things that can help you in an interview is practiced. The reason people get so nervous in interviews. I don’t do it very often. We don’t sit in job interviews. Hopefully, we’re not doing them very often you’d like to think you’d stay in a job for a little while. But because we’re not doing them that often it seems like every time it comes and even now like if I went for a job the last about the job, I mean now when I went for the interview for that, it was almost like I had to relearn how to do a job interview I had to re prepare and I went through all of these steps exactly the same stuff that we’re talking to you guys about is exactly what I did when I had to like interview for this job that I’m in there because we don’t do them very often. It’s something that we tend to kind of forget or not really take in after we’ve done it after we get the job. That’s it. Okay, if we get those skills, we don’t need those now-dead. I gotta focus on actually getting good at this job now and then when it comes to having an interview against like oh crap, what do I do? I forgotten. So yeah. So the all of these things that we’ve talked about today and recommended that you guys do are things that I do myself would do myself will do myself if I ever need to interview again the 100% off very rarely if ever recommend anything that I wouldn’t know haven’t done myself.
01:05:15 – 01:09:53
So yeah, so that’s where we’re at. Just as I guess a bit of a summary page big things that you can do is really now your preparation. There’s so much you can do with your preparation from preparing yourself mentally physically your clothes all that sort of stuff. We did not go into like how you should dress that sort of stuff. You can find on Google like this is a more important stuff practice your interviews if you can video them review page, Your strengths and weaknesses with regards to how you interview. Do you research on the organization? Do you research on the role? See what you can find out again? Bring ask you check on a website everywhere has a website now. My dog has a website. Everyone’s got a website. I can find this information information is out there. You just need to find it being self-aware being open to feedback is really important skill one and also something that you can bring to the interview itself after you’ve sort of analyze some of your weaknesses again just touch on don’t just drop your weaknesses actually highlight them in a way that these are the things that I know that I need to improve and here’s how I’ve currently been doing it wrong or currently been improving and here’s what I’m going to continue to do. There’s a number of different interviews. You will hopefully find out what sort of interview you’re sitting in prior to where if you have to do a present dog. In or if it’s something sort of a bit out there group ones that kind of stuff so you can then prepare for that specific type. But again, if you get caught off guard try and think on your feet long, you will have the knowledge you will have the examples of what they’re asking for. They wouldn’t be asking if it was something way out of the blue. You just need to be able to process what they’re asking if I’m not 100% sure you’ll ask for a clarification or is this what you mean? Here’s what I’m thinking you’re talking about. Is this kind of thing you mean ask for clarification ask ask ask ask ask ask and then follow up down up is again one of the things that you have complete control over and it can leave a lasting impression that with a potential employer in something that is really not that time. It doesn’t take a lot of effort or time or anything and it’s something that can be really valuable. So the return on investment for sending an email can be massive for you and your career. Yeah massive. Thanks for Erin coming in and helping with this this massive amount of information. I realize it’s a lot of information in a short time and I hope that it’s it’s very useful. It’s something that I’m hoping to provide updates and probably do them every year and update it so that it’s you know stays fresh and stays current full and new grads cuz we want a new grads to do as well as they possibly can when it comes to joining this awesome profession. So thanks for coming in and having another chat Kerne. And yeah, thanks for all your help and your expertise and you’re welcome. I enjoyed it. I just I just hope that this actually students but please remember to just be yourself. Like that’s the if I any take-home point for me is just Like vehicle tinted as you can and be yourself and it’ll really ship like it’ll shine through you know, so that’s what I wish someone had told me and your last podcast was what what I wish I would have known. I wish someone had just told me going into those interviews as a new grad that it was just really important to just let like you said let your guard down and be yourself as much as possible with being professional hundred percent hundred percent. So yeah, thanks for listening. Good luck with your interviews. Let us know how you go off.
085 – Occupational Transition from Professional Sportsperson
Oct 05, 2020
You may remember Jesse Parahi from episode 43 when he and his lovely wife, Carlien, came on to talk about their private practice, Sense Rugby.
If you’ve listened to the podcast for a while you will know I have a strong interest in Occupational Transitions. Jesse recently retired from his professional rugby career and it seemed like an opportunity too good to pass up to pick his brain about navigating that transition into civilian life. Obviously everyone’s experience of transitions will be unique but the insights gained from talking with Jesse can be utilised in your work with almost any population.
084 – What I Wish I Knew When I Was A New Grad
Sep 16, 2020
I put this out to you guys about what topics you wanted to hear about and many of you requested to know about this! So here it is.
Being a new graduate is hard. You’ve just moved from a lifestyle of structured direction and learning where you’re purpose is often dictated by the next due date. You are now in this world where you might have to “adult” for the first time. You have 100% responsibility for your life. This may be your very first taste of complete independence. On top of this you are starting a job that you’ve been preparing for, for years yet probably feel like you know nothing. Firstly, you are not alone. This is 100% normal. I hope this episode helps you out navigating this exciting occupational transition!
By popular demand (literally), What I wish i knew when I was a new grad.
Exploring the Dark Side of Occupation in more detail this episode, Rina and I delve into the world of harm minimisation. A question that I’ve been asked by many students is how can you work with someone who is “using illicit substances” when its “illegal”. When is “getting off” or “staying off” drugs not the goal? By not addressing these things are you encouraging it? These are the ethical grey areas that many students and clinicians have toyed with when moving into mental health or duel diagnosis settings.
Rina works in exactly this field and runs a super informative (and aesthetically pleasing) Instagram, educating clinicians all about harm minimisation. This made her the obvious choice to come and chat with me about the importance of harm minimisation. Check her out here:
082 – Danielle Delorenzo Talks Infant Mental Health
Aug 12, 2020
Danielle Delorenzo is well known to much of the online OT community and may be better known as @MorningswithanOTmom on Instagram. Danielle has a phenomenal personal story about becoming a mom and learning and growing with her neurodivergent son, Luke. She is also qualified in infant mental health which is what we wanted to talk about in this episode. We delve into infant mental health, postpartum care, self-love, and discuss how the world is impacting our wellbeing at the moment.
If you’re interested in hearing her heart moving birth story definitely have a listen to her episode with Sarah over at OT4Lyfe:
081 – Promoting Strength through Adaptive Training
Jul 26, 2020
DURING THIS PODCAST SOME STRONG LANGUAGE IS USED. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.
Dr. Amanda Iannotti is an occupational therapist with Fairfax County Public Schools in Fairfax, VA, where she supports students at the primary and secondary level, including young adults who attend a career training centre. Dr. Iannotti leads the Mental Health Collaborative Learning Team, and is passionate about facilitating increased independence and participation, especially regarding mental health & wellness promotion and post-secondary transition. Outside of school-based practice, Dr. Iannotti contracts with Northern Virginia Therapeutic Riding Program, utilising hippotherapy as a treatment strategy and is a Level 1 CrossFit® Coach. She recently received her Adapted Training Certificate.
Those in the industry may be aware of some severely racists actions by the, then head of the Crossfit® organisation. This was recorded prior to that happening and this episode in no way condones the actions of former CEO Greg Glassman or anyone else at Crossfit®. Also let it be known that Adaptive Training is a completely separate entity to the Crossfit® organisation and this is where our focus lay in this recording.
This episode we discussed the progression of adaptive training focusing mostly on the functional fitness world. Exploring the training of those with a disability from a coaching to a competing perspective.
080 – From Depression to Advocacy for an Unbreakable Woman
Jul 15, 2020
DURING THIS PODCAST TOPICS SUCH AS SUICIDE AND MENTAL ILLNESS ARE DISCUSSED. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.
Ciara (Kee-Rah) Corrigan is a powerlifter, Olympic lifter, strongwoman, gym owner, trainer, new mum, and mental health advocate. She came on Occupied to share her story. We discuss topics such as depression and other mental illnesses, training, resilience, emotional flexibility and recovery. I had a fantastic time talking with Ciara and I know you will all love this conversation as well!
079 – Conversations with an OT Student Through her Final Placement
Jul 07, 2020
Something a little different for Occupied this episode. Adele Musco was kind enough to allow us to tag along through her final placement. This episode is broken into four periods of time through the placement process. We discuss what she learned, hows she grows, how she overcomes some of the challenges associated with placement and at the end have a discussion on what she feels would be the biggest learning points for other students going through or coming up to their placement.
A huge thankyou to Adele for allowing us access to her during a fairly hectic time in ever OT students life compounded by a variety of events impacting the whole world.
078 – Detrimental Language and Documentation
Jun 26, 2020
Language is important. Documentation is important. The people we work with are important. But with all these “important” factors splitting our focus, have we lost the point?
Zara Mills is an RN with extensive experience in mental health and a passion for improving nursing and healthcare in general. We talk often about the language used in health care and the throw-away terms and conversations had by health professionals that have a profound impact on those we work with….without us even realising it.
I’m super glad we got to have one of those conversations on the podcast to share with you all.
077 – The Importance of Language in Disability
Jun 15, 2020
I’ve wanted to talk with these two people for a very long time so when the stars aligned and I was able to get them both on the same podcast episode it felt like Christmas!
Having this discussion about language and how we as therapist use it to frame and situate our therapeutic relationship, power and recovery for the people that we work with.
It’s no surprise that I’m a huge advocate of Occupation Based Practice. One thing I love more than anything is coming across private practice and projects who are utilising OBP in new and exciting ways! This episodes guest is doing exactly that. Aimee Blacker runs a not for profit called Surfing the Spectrum that provides surfing as an intervention to support kids with autism as well as their families.
Surfing the Spectrum aims to provide therapeutic surfing to the east coast of Australia. We discuss exactly what that is and what the benefits are for the kids. One thing I always find with occupation based practice is how incredibly holistic it is naturally. What makes it even better is seeing a therapist incorporate something they’re really passionate about into their business. What a beautiful world.
DURING THIS PODCAST TOPICS SUCH AS SUICIDE AND MENTAL ILLNESS ARE DISCUSSED. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.
DURING THIS PODCAST PERSONAL OPINIONS AND EXPERIENCES WITH MENTAL HEALTH CARE AND MEDICATIONS ARE DISCUSSED. THESE ARE OUR PERSONAL OPINIONS AND EXPERIENCES ONLY AND YOU SHOULD DISCUSS YOURS WITH YOUR DOCTOR.
Gabe Howard is an award-winning speaker, author, and podcast host who lives with bipolar disorder. He hosts the weekly Psych Central Podcast and is the co-host of the Not Crazy podcast. He’s the author of Mental Illness is an Asshole – and Other Observations and has appeared on numerous websites, podcasts, and in many traditional media outlets. You can find him online at gabehoward.com.
In this episode, we explore Gabe’s lived experience of BPAD, his experiences with health services, the impact mental illness has had on his life and EVERYTHING in between. We also have a very blunt and in-depth discussion about his experience of suicidal thoughts and making suicide plans.
074 – Dev (they/them) and Brock (he/him) deep dive into gender, identity, and stigma
Apr 23, 2020
Dev, or you may know them as theRainbowOT is an amazing human. That’s all anyone really needs to know to get started. If you want to know more, keep reading. Dev is on a mission. A mission for inclusion. A mission for happiness. A mission for equal rights. A mission for acceptance. I’ve known Dev for a little while now and even though all of our chats and his other podcasts I still struggled to get my head around their mission. I asked Dev to come on the podcast for the selfish reason of challenging my own knowledge and perspectives and OMG did they do that in spades!
073 – Leadership, Mental Health and OT with Dr Virginia “Ginny” Stoffel
Apr 15, 2020
Virginia “Ginny” Stoffel has played a large part in my career without her even being aware of it. Her co-authored textbook helped shape a large portion of my early mental health practice knowledge and I continue to use the latest edition of it with the students I teach today. I was super excited to talk to this phenomenal OT and garner her perspectives on life, MH and OT. Ginny was also the recipient of the 2020 AOTA OT Award of Merit. The OT Award of Merit (Est. 1950)is the highest Association honor recognizing an OT who has demonstrated extensive leadership through sustained and significant contributions to the profession.
We discussed her amazing story of finding the profession. Her growth with it and the amazing impact she has had on OT. Topics range from mental health to leadership, from technology to the future of the profession. One thing that really stood out to me is Ginnys unwavering priority to her family above all else. This was a conversation that was an absolute gift to me with someone who I very much admire.
From the AOTA website:
Dr Stoffel is an associate professor in the Department of Occupational Science & Technology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She has also served as AOTA’s vice president. In that role, she was responsible for the organization’s strategic planning activities and chaired its Centennial Vision commission.
Stoffel served as AOTA president from 2013-2016. In her capacity as president, Stoffel chaired the Association’s Board of Directors, serve as an ambassador for occupational therapy in the United States and internationally, and work to foster the development of the profession and its members.
An AOTA member since 1975, Stoffel earned a PhD in Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service from Cardinal Stritch University in 2007, an MS in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1983, and a BA in Occupational Therapy from St. Catherine’s in 1977.
Dr. Stoffel has worked on numerous leadership and service projects with AOTA and the American Occupational Therapy Foundation (AOTF). She has served on the AOTA Specialties Board establishing Board Certification in Mental Health. Among many publications, Stoffel co-authored the mental health text, Occupational Therapy in Mental Health: A Vision for Participation.
072 – Successful Telehealth with Melissa LaPointe
Apr 07, 2020
This is a time of uncertainty and it’s also a time where we are seeing a huge uptake in clinicians trying to move their practice into the online space using telehealth, in a short period fo time. Melissa LaPointe is an OT who has been working in the online space for many years and supports other clinicians to do so as well. Bringing her on to discuss how therapists can make this transition more successfully is something I hope is of high value to you guys.
Telehealth related tools were delved into. Some of the tools discussed in this episode were: Voxer Loom Zoom Acuity Doxy Simple Practice World Time Buddy
Please also find these videos by Dr Kieran Broome and promote by Occupational Therapy Australia and the University of the Sunshine Coast.
In recent times I’ve come across some absolutely amazing OT private practices. Becoming an entrepreneur is rapidly becoming a valid career progression for OT’s around the world and I suspect that in this current health climate the potential of going into private practice will become more and more enticing, but how is that someone can develop a truly unique and innovative practice? The first step is about developing the mindset required to turn your idea into reality.
Stay safe. Stay home. Keep learning. Share the love with your colleagues. #happyaprilfools
070 – Mindful Moments with Michelle Amussen
Mar 18, 2020
In the current climate, it’s more important than ever to be in control of your headspace. Mindfulness is a tool that I’ve used both personally and professionally for many years and I still can’t express how underrated it is as a modality. What better person to bring on and talk about it with me than Michelle Amussen from Incorporate Mindfulness! I first connected with Michelle back in 2012 when Michelle had what was seemingly the very first OT Podcast. Although OTgoTO is no longer around I’ve managed to 1) convince her to come and talk to me on Occupied and 2) join our new podcast project, The OT Roundtable!
Michelle graduated in 2009 with her BS in Health Promotion and Education and later in 2013 with her Master’s degree in Occupational Therapy from the University of Utah. As a graduate student, she researched the benefits of Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) in helping individuals with depression and co-morbid substance abuse.
As an occupational therapist at a local children’s hospital, Michelle helps children with mental/physical disabilities, mood disorders, and injuries get back to leading meaningful lives. Michelle is passionate about the therapeutic benefits of yoga and mindfulness both emotionally and physically.
Michelle has received specialized training in teaching mindfulness to children using Dr Amy Saltzman’s, A Still Quiet Place, Curriculum; and Learning to Breathe: A Mindfulness Curriculum for Adolescent to Cultivate Emotion Regulation, Attention and Performance. She is a 200 RYT yoga instructor with additional training and certifications in trauma-sensitive yoga classes and yoga for at-risk youth through the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Center. She is currently in training with Brown University to become certified in Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR).
In her free time, Michelle enjoys hiking the Uintas with her fiancé and two favourite mutts (Sawyer and Finn) and travelling abroad any chance she gets.
Tattoo’s and tattooing has become somewhat mainstream in western culture today and we, as therapists, will work with tattooed individuals every day. But how many of us have actually considered them through an occupational lens?
The notes collated for this episode were kindly researched by the amazing Emily Cheesman. I can’t thank her enough for the time and effort she has put into this!
During the episode, I also discuss Dr Sarah Grey, an Australian Surgical registrar who actively pushes against the negative stereotypes often associated with heavily tattooed individuals.
We, the tattooed nation: Australian tatt stats: 2018 statistics released by McCrindle state that 1 in 5 Australians admit they have a tattoo. Women with tattoos outnumber men with tattoos (21% to 19%); people of all ages have tattoos (and not just in their youth – 36% were 26+ when they got their first tattoo). 31% of people with tattoos say they regret ‘to some extent’ getting a tattoo (McCrindle, 2018).
There’s a global resurgence of ink: Tattoos are increasingly visible with a global stage of celebrity/social/media/TV (Rees, 2016). The current tattoo in a resurgence in Australia is sometimes dismissively referred to as a fashion or fad.
However, tattooing traditions have rich histories and meanings: these can be traced back to the Stone Ages, and across continents and cultures, with tattooing traditions developing independent of each other (Buss & Hodges, 2017, p.5; Dinter, 2005, pp. 9-21; Farley, Hoover, & Rademeyer, 2019, p.155).
Buss & Hodges (2017, p.5) explain a trajectory of tattooing: ‘(1) from ancient traditions in which tattoo practices were fully integrated into social settings; to (2) a period of tattoo stigmatization, even taboo, which paralleled the rise of organized religion and nation-states with ambitions to conquer and colonize the world; and then (3) to the resurgence of tattoo [from the 1970s] that we are seeing today.’
Multicultural & contemporary Australia may represent many tattoo traditions and systems of meaning: Nearly half (49 per cent) of Australians have either been born overseas (first generation Australian) or one or both parents had been born overseas (second generation Australian) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017). See also Rees (2016, pp. 165-167) on cultural fluidity, appropriation & tattoos generally.
Key concepts/literature informing tattoo as an occupation:
There’s no tidy formulato explain the reason for, or the impact of being tattooed, either in historical or contemporary settings (Buss & Hodges, 2017).
But an occupational lens can be applied: Kay & Brewis consider ‘mainstream’ tattooing in UK through an occupational lens of doing, being, belonging, becoming and suggest that ‘the process of tattooing is complex and involves multiple facets of art, sensation, exploration of issues and creation of connections’ (2017, p.361).
Wilcock’s framework of occupation looks at doing, being, and becoming with occupation as a dynamic interaction between each component (see, eg, Wilcock, 1998). ‘Belonging’: Hammell discusses how occupation can encompass more than the individual (2014).
Literature has considered motivations, processes and implications of tattooing, but considering tattoos as occupation ‘challenges understandings of what occupation is’ (Kay & Brewis, 2017, p.361); this may be because of our understanding of ‘occupation’ should be broader (see, eg Twinley, 2012).
Potential explanations for why tattoos and tattooing may be outside a narrow conception of occupation:
Occupation is generally conceived as activities, tasks and ways of being that are health-promoting, pro-social (see, eg Twinley, 2012). Occupational literature and models are also based primarily in Western practice and experience (see, eg Iwama generally).
The Western understanding of the body is often informed by the ideals of the pure, young and unmarked body, established and reinforced through colonisation (distinguishing colonisers from tattooed indigenous inhabitants), dating back to Roman and Greek expansion (Buss & Hodges, 2017, p.5; Dinter, 2005, pp. 23-53)
The body is increasingly seen as a site for constructing (and commodification of) identity: (Rees, 2016, p. 160). However, tattoos are seen differently to other forms of ‘cosmetic’ body modification: [teeth whitening & straightening, tummy tucks and breast implants] because they challenge dominant ideas of beauty.
Tattoos are a marker of pathology in health and social research:
Heywood et al. (2012): A health study on demographic & behavioural characteristics of 8656 Aussies about tattoos. Found that ‘tattoos appear to be a marker for risk-taking behaviour in adults.’ Includes references to previous (old) Aussie studies that included a consideration of tattoos (see pp51-52, but the main survey cited was focused on sex and relationships; tattooing was incidental).
A German study of personality characteristics of 540 tattooed individuals found that tattoos were primarily an act of self-expression (as well as risk-taking and other factors) (Swami et al., 2012).
A 2008 review of medical and health literature on the meaning of tattoos and the people who were tattooed found descriptions from the 1980s onwards of the tattooed person as “simple-minded.” “immature.” “hostile.” “aggressive.” “self-destructive.” “untrustworthy” and “infantile” (Sanders & Vail, 2008, p.37)
Attitudes towards tattoos can impact on the quality of health care: consumers have a negative reaction to body art, viewing surgeons less favourably (less competent/trustworthy) if they have ink (Baumann, Timming, & Gollan, 2016, p.37).
Tattoos are considered to be related to the taboo:
Some literature focuses on the sexualised nature of tattooing: “The very process of tattooing is essentially sexual. There are long, sharp needles. There is the liquid poured into the pricked skin. There are two participants of the act, one active, the other passive. There is the curious marriage of pleasure and pain..” (citing Parry, 1971 in Sanders & Vail, 2008, p.38).
Pain and painful experiences; willingness & desire to undergo pain and reflect pain in permanence.
See, also Vice’s series on tattoos, pain as means and ends, ritual, passion, performance art & BDSM (Kaviani, 2019, 2016).
Tattoos within Wilcock’s framework for occupation
Doing
Kay and Brewis (2017) suggest that the ‘doing’ of an occupation lens involves consideration of how tattoos and the tattooing process ‘can be adapted to meet individual needs and [how they are] constrained by external factors’.
What is a tattoo? Dinter (2005) names 3 elements:
Indelible, fixed mark on the body by inserting pigment under the skin
Deliberate (rather than accidental or incidental) darkening of the skin or scar
Creative (but see brands – below)
The choice/act of getting a tattoo can involve an individual’s control/adaptation of:
Meaning
Design and style (often now drawing on many traditions and styles; ‘tribal’ or ‘blackwork’ is shorthand for styles that aren’t easily traced to a contemporary Western tattoo style: Dinter, 2005, p.23).
Unique tattoo designed for you or flash tattoos (generally quicker, picked off the wall of a studio) or replication (thanks, internet).
Timing and paying the cost (artist fee or exchange; waiting & planning time; time for tattooing; acknowledging potential future cost to self and reputation; achievements required to be able to bear ink; life experience; anaesthetic vs experience of pain)
Choice (of an artist(s), studio location, tools, ink source, negotiating design and redesign with the artist. Could be done in professional, traditional, amateur, or cosmetic settings (Farley, Hoover, & Rademeyer, 2019, p.154).
Trust & power underpins the relationship between artist and wearer. But the nature of relationships between artist and wearer can vary:
Commercial (for a monetary fee, where the artist is a service provider and the outcome is what matters)
Transactional (in exchange for an offering, trade)
Rite of passage (role of the artist to tattoo the wearer)
Artistry (where the wearer is the canvas of the artist)
Placement and size: meaning is attributed to parts or regions of the body (‘tramp stamp’); beauty marks; potential for pain; public vs private.
Being, Becoming
Kay and Brewis (2017) suggest that being relates to how personal tattoos and emotions experienced are. Becoming incorporates ‘a transformation of the body and self through tattoos’. ‘It is through doing that humans become what they have the capacity to be’ (as cited in Wilcock, 1998, p.255).
Contemporary practices of tattooing generally either tap/stick & poke or electric gun (from 1861 Buss & Hodges, 2017, p.18).
Many contemporary tattoos (including those that draw on older traditions, such as ‘tribal’ tattoos’) have ‘meaning that may [instead] lie in personal projections’ (Buss & Hodges, 2017, p18). They are ‘an expression of personality, interests and desires’ (Thompson, 2015, p. 152); and can also be seen as a therapeutic experience (see eg, Tsang & Stevenson, 2014; Strübel & Jones, 2017).
Tattoos and their experience and meaning on the (female body) are an intersection of class, gender, race, culture and age (Farley, 2019, p.155).
Thematic experiences and meanings/reasons for being inked:
A love of the aesthetic; a collection of art; tattoos (like graffiti) being increasingly accepted in the art world; tattoo artists are increasingly demonstrating highly developed & professional aesthetic styles, technical skills & academic training; these are paired with cultural & historical roots of tattooing (Rees, 2016, pp. 167-171).
Primarily ornamental, a means of building self-esteem, attracting attention or potential mates; marriage or a relationship
Enhances the body; conceals, masks or reframes the body (and psyche) to something positive (Strübel & Jones, 2017).
But this is disclaimed by research as a myth that “people who have tattoos get them for the viewers or for the ‘outside gaze,’ that tattoos are some sort of personal advertisement.” Overwhelmingly, heavily tattooed women start their collection in spite of the attention they begin to receive, not in order to receive it.” (Thompson, 2015, p. 161)
Pain becomes something beautiful: The body & mind (and its experiences) can be reclaimed through control over what is experienced and displayed. You know you are alive when you’re hurting.
Survivors of abuse reclaiming control & bodily integrity (Buss & Hodges, 2017, pp. 21-23) (se also Survivor Ink below)
Living scars & tributes – ink stories from American military (Deitch, n.d.)
Project; (mental health awareness & suicide prevention) (“Project Semicolon—Mental Health & Suicide Prevention,” 2017).
A message to oneself & memorialisation; survivor
Back tattoo that represents the Iraq war civilian and fighter dead (Pellegrini, 2010)
Breast tattoos for survivors of breast cancer (Lauriello, 2018)
An expression of penance, redemption, remorse
Living scars & tributes – ink stories from American military (Deitch, n.d.)
Marking growth or milestones; initiation, a rite of passage; bravery; warriors, ritual; tradition
See eg, Filipino Taktak (Tagalog ( a dominant ethnic group post colonisation) word for a tattoo; and other traditions, which Magellan first spotted in 1521 and called the indigenous peoples ‘pintados’ (painted ones). People wore tattoos as clothing, and ink reflected the patterns of the natural environment of their provinces/lands/waters. Tattoos awarded for bravery, coming of age, and also marked the ability to withstand the pain of the tattoo (Wilcken, 2010).
Tribute to an interest or passion; humour; status-enhancing
See eg… take your pick of Harley Davidsons, the Simpsons
BUT: tattoos have also been used punitively, to mark & brand people against their will; punishment (Dinter, 2005, pp. 9-20, 32), obscuring individuality and dehumanising (Buss & Hodges, 2017, pp. 11-14)
eg including British soldiers who committed offences such as desertion (and then shipped off to colonies such as Australia) (Dinter, 2005, p. 32); Nazi treatment of camp prisoners (Farley, 2019, p.155); women in situations of sex slavery are demeaned and diminished (Sidner, 2017).
BUT: reclaiming narrative bodies (Survivor Ink) erasing the inked marks of sex slavery (The Guardian, 2014) ‘you have to look at these scars… you wonder if you’ll ever be anything else’… [at 2:30ish] ‘turn that ugliness into something beautiful…. That’s what art is’.
Experiences post fresh tattoo: aftercare
It’s an open wound. About a month or so (depending on size, location of ink) to heal; healing practices vary & everyone has better advice.
Careful washing, covering & avoiding abrasion, protection from the sun.
Experiences post-tattoo: health concerns (Farley, 2019, p.163)
Ranging from mild irritation, infection, scarring and burns; concern about bloodborne diseases. Increasing range of reported complications due to relatively lax regulation of ink and mixed compliance with international health standards (see eg, Hall, 2016 & Farley, 2019).
Shame about what’s seen as self-inflicted may mean people don’t seek help.
The meaning attributed to tattoo (see above) may impact on the choice to seek help.
The view that health professionals don’t understand tattoo care.
Tattoos may mask health issues (eg less visibility of melanomas, other skin issues, etc).
See stats above.
Pretty tricky to get complete removal; 10 or more sessions for some tattoos. Random google sets a minimum for a single session at $60.
Booming trade & entertainment about tattoo regrets.
Kay and Brewis (2017) suggest that ‘belonging’ is experienced through connections created by tattoos.
Ink can simultaneously support belonging as:
an expression of:
belonging (to a group (military, family, tribe) or cultural identity; or sub-cultures)
individuality (including collector of art; trendsetting and ‘the mark of the idle rich’ & wealth (Farley et al, 2019, p.155); deviance, adventure and challenging norms) AND
a source of exclusion (primitive, lower class, criminality and punishment, ownership/slavery).
Wearers transition from ‘blending in socially to standing out visually’ (Thompson, 2015, p. 153) … ‘Ultimately, tattooed people understood that their visible tattoos would receive attention, but none of them expected the extent of it’ (Thompson, 2015, p. 161).
Nothing lasts forever: However, the symbolic meaning of ink (from wearer and observer’s perspectives) is constantly changing (Farley, 2019, p.155). While the ink is static ‘the canvas upon which it is rendered is not, altering its appearance as the skin undergoes change, whether from weight gain or loss, pregnancy, ageing, or a skin disorder’ (Farley, 2019, p.155).
Being tattooed often seen as permission for others to sanction: to stare, to comment, to ask and to touch; tattoos can break down the [Western] social wall of ‘tactful inattention’ (Thompson, 2015, p. 152). The private becomes public.
There are moral entrepreneurs (who see tattoos as deviant); arbiters of taste (whose aesthetics don’t include tattoos or types/styles etc of particular tattoos) and those who see tattoos as ultimate transgression (e.g. women choosing to transgress gender norms by choosing to be unfeminine and be ugly by being tattooed (and/or have a traditionally masculine tattoo, like a skull) (see, eg Buss & Hodges, 2017, p.18; Thompson generally).
Common experience of tattoo bingo: visibility of tattoos often initiates comments and questions from non-tattooed strangers. It is an act of ‘othering’ (see eg, Sanders & Vail, 2008 generally):
Why do you wear your pain on your skin?
Won’t you regret that when you’re older?
You’re such a pretty/innocent blah girl, why would you do that to yourself? What if your future husband doesn’t like it?
Didn’t that hurt? Etc
There are also the interactions with other inked people: there are subtleties of hierarchy and posturing between those with ink (comparisons of styles, tattoo artists, size, etc; different subcultures; tattoo war stories (have you told your mum?) (eg, Thompson, 2015).
However, context is ultimately what matters as to how tattoos are perceived: ‘for instance, the same behaviour or even the same good can appear distinguished to one person, pretentious to someone else, and cheap or showy to yet another.’ (Thompson, 2015, p.156).
Wearers of ink have different responses for different situations/reactions to ink:
Polite, to combat stereotypes
Palatable & censored
Grandiose stories
Stare down
Episode picture provided kindly by my friend @merrynmayhem
Baumann, C., Timming, A. R., & Gollan, P. J. (2016). Taboo tattoos? A study of the gendered effects of body art on consumers’ attitudes toward visibly tattooed front line staff. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 29, 31–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2015.11.005
Deitch, J. (n.d.). War Ink. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from War Ink website: http://www.warink.org/
Dinter, M. H. van. (2005). The world of tattoo: An illustrated history. Amsterdam: KIT.
Farley, C. L., Hoover, C. V., & Rademeyer, C.-A. (2019). Women and Tattoos: Fashion, Meaning, and Implications for Health. Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, 64(2), 154–169. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmwh.12932
Hammell, K. R. W. (2014). Belonging, occupation, and human well-being: An exploration: Appartenance, occupation et bien-être humain : Une étude exploratoire. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 81(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/0008417413520489
Heywood, W., Patrick, K., Smith, A. M. A., Simpson, J. M., Pitts, M. K., Richters, J., & Shelley, J. M. (2012). Who Gets Tattoos? Demographic and Behavioral Correlates of Ever Being Tattooed in a Representative Sample of Men and Women. Annals of Epidemiology, 22(1), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2011.10.005
Kay, H., & Brewis, C. (2017). Understanding tattooing from an occupational science perspective. Journal of Occupational Science, 24(3), 351–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2016.1241186
Maley, C. M., Pagana, N. K., Velenger, C. A., & Humbert, T. K. (2016). Dealing With Major Life Events and Transitions: A Systematic Literature Review on and Occupational Analysis of Spirituality. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 70(4), p1–p6. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2016.015537
Project Semicolon—Mental Health & Suicide Prevention. (2017). Retrieved November 12, 2019, from Project Semicolon—Mental Health & Suicide Prevention website: https://projectsemicolon.com/
Rees, M. (2016). From Outsider to Established—Explaining the Current Popularity and Acceptability of Tattooing. Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, 41(3 (157)), 157–174.
Sanders, C. R., & Vail, D. A. (2008). Becoming and Being a Tattooed Person. In The Art and Culture of Tattooing. Customizing the Body (pp. 36–61). Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bw1j21.6
Swami, V., Pietschnig, J., Bertl, B., Nader, I. W., Stieger, S., & Voracek, M. (2012). Personality Differences between Tattooed and Non-Tattooed Individuals. Psychological Reports, 111(1), 97–106. https://doi.org/10.2466/09.07.21.PR0.111.4.97-106
Tsang, A., & Stevenson, A. (2014). ‘My body is a journal, and my tattoos are my story.’ 1—Exploring the motivations and meanings of tattoos using a multi qualitative-method approach. 30.
Thompson, B. Y. (2015). Tattoos Are Not for Touching: Public Space, Stigma, and Social Sanctions. In Covered in Ink (pp. 151–176). NYU Press.
Wilcock, A. (1998). Reflections on doing, being and becoming. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 65(5).
Wilcken, L. (2010). Filipino tattoos: Ancient to modern. Atglen, Penna: Schiffer Pub.
068 – Passion and Content Creation with OT Miri
Mar 01, 2020
Miri Lee is a super well-known name in the online OT content creation world, especially in America. She also has one of the biggest and most successful OT based Youtube channels OTMiri, where she releases videos for students and new-graduate therapists to assist in their studying for the NBCOT Exam.
We explore content creation and exchanged hints and tips for OT’s to not only find their creative talent but also to dive into sharing it with the world.
067 – Sensory Processing and Reflex Integration
Feb 20, 2020
Sensory processing is something that is not uncommon to hear spoken about in OT circles but unless you’re on the coalface of its application it can seem a little like the therapist is playing games. I am well versed in Sensory Modulation in mental health but I wanted to learn a bit more about the basics of sensory processing in paediatrics.
Kara Rice runs a private practice that specialises in brain development and sensory integration. She was amazing and taught me so much! I really loved how she framed sensory integration not as a standalone modality but in the context of the impact it has on behaviours and reactions…..on OCCUPATIONAL ENGAGEMENT!! This was VERY exciting for me.
Learning about primitive reflect integration was also very exciting for me as it’s not something I’ve ever been exposed to before. If, like me, you have an interest in learning the basics of sensory processing and what an OT does in this space than this is definitely the episode for you!
This is most definitely a passionate plea from me to you guys. Firstly, I love memes. I think so many of them are amazingly clever and incredibly funny.
Therapy-related memes, however, are a thorn in my side. Firstly, 99.99% of them are not remotely funny. I’m really sorry to break it to you guys but therapeutic relationships are rarely funny and trying to make light of them comes across as soooo forced and often offensive. And this is where today’s episode comes from.
I’ve spoken many times about the impact public portrayal of OT has on our profession. In my opinion, I can see how condoning some of these memes could be doing us damage.
The meme above is the inspiration for this episode. It was a short video of a person falling out of a wheelchair after going off a step. The comment, as can be seen by my comment, is the main part that really got to me.
I encourage you to keep an open mind, have a listen to hear my opinion and come up with your own opinion on the matter.
065 – Digital Communication, Confidentiality, and Information Sharing
Feb 07, 2020
Do you ever wish communication in healthcare was more efficient? Clarissa does – all the time. In this episode, Clarissa shares how her frustrations with clinical communication led her to seek out a job in the health technology industry, and what she learnt about transferability of Occupational Therapy skills in the process.
Clarissa (@geekyOT on Twitter) works in forensic mental health, and also for the secure messaging app Pando.
Pando is free to download in the UK. To get your name on the international waiting list, please email aline@hellopando.com
064 – A Lived Experience of Borderline Personality Disorder
Jan 31, 2020
DURING THIS PODCAST TOPICS SUCH AS BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER, SELF HARM AND EXPERIENCES OF TREATMENT ARE DISCUSSED. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.
OTforBPD was an account on Instagram and Facebook that I came across through MH4OT. They were putting out some practical and detailed resources for practitioners about the often misunderstood diagnostic category of Borderline Personality Disorder. BPD is a diagnosis that even though I encountered people who have it through my career, I do not feel like I had a good grasp on the user experience of it.
I messaged the page and managed to track down the owner, Laura, who explained that she had a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, was a qualified OT and her mission was to help not only support others with BPD but to help educate OT’s and other health practitioners about BPD.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD), is a mental illness characterized by a long-term pattern of unstable relationships, a distorted sense of self, and strong emotional reactions. There is often self-harm and other dangerous behavior. People may also struggle with a feeling of emptiness, fear of abandonment, and detachment from reality.[4] Symptoms may be triggered by seemingly normal events. The behavior typically begins by early adulthood and occurs across a variety of situations. Substance abuse, depression, and eating disorders are commonly associated with BPD. Up to 10% of people affected die by suicide.
I’m super grateful that she agreed to come onto Occupied and share her invaluable experience of navigating the health care system as a person with BPD. Laura was so kind and genuine. There is a sense of vulnerability in her words but a feeling of strength in her words.
Gunderson, J. G., & Hoffman, Perry D. (2005). Understanding and treating borderline personality disorder : a guide for professionals and families (1st ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Pub.
Sampson, M. J., McCubbin, Remy A, & Tyrer, Peter J. (2006). Personality disorders and community mental health teams : a practitioner’s guide. Chichester: John Wiley.
063 – Unpacking colonised thinking in OT
Jan 21, 2020
PLEASE NOTE: This episode discusses topics such as colonisation and racism in multiple forms. The guests would like to make it clear that this episode does not sit as a ‘standalone’ teaching tool. If you are planning to share it with your cohorts of students we encourage you to use it alongside other aspects of the curriculum with cultural responsiveness with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Have you ever considered the impact colonisation might have had on the indigenous peoples of your country? Have you ever considered the ongoing impact these historical events have had in terms of systemic racism and institutional marginalisation of our clients?
Australia has a checkered and often hidden history when it comes to its colonisation by western entities. The impact that this event has had on Australia’s indigenous peoples is something that continues to impact them today. Today’s episode delves into the institutional racism and cultural isolation that continues today due to Australia’s colonisation in 1788.
This conversation with Tirritpa Richie and Jodie Booth was deep, confronting and mindblowing all at the same time. I can’t express enough how important it is to listen to this one with an open mind and a critically self-reflective lens.
Racism in Australia traces both historical and contemporary racist community attitudes, as well as political non-compliance and governmental negligence on United Nations human rights standard and incidents in Australia.[1] Contemporary Australia is the product of Indigenous peoples of Australia combined with multiple waves of immigration, predominantly from the United Kingdom and Ireland.
1As I reflected on in episode 044 This session had a HUGE impact on me, alerting me to many considerations in my own schema that I was completely naive to. At the Australian National Conference where Tirritpa Ritchie challenged the room to critically challenge their “whiteness” in the context of the service they deliver/teach.
Map of Indigenous Australia – The map is an attempt to represent all the language, tribal or nation groups of the Indigenous peoples of Australia.
A huge thank you to Jodie Booth who brought this conversation together as its something we all wanted to do justice to as it is something that so important to Australian health care but also relevant to many many other western cultures around the world including the USA and Canada.
062 – Meditation and The Good Lives Model with BreeTheOT
Jan 11, 2020
Breeanna Janson (@breetheOT) is an Australian OT who I discovered through Instagram and her amazing content. Bree often has “theme weeks” on Instagram where she would education on topics around Occupational Therapy and personal growth including meditation. Bree has a number of amazing projects on the go at once, most of which we touch on during this podcast.
I really wanted to discuss meditation with her and its clinical application for OT’s. Bree has a side gig voicing guided meditations for an app called Bloom. She also utilises the benefits of meditation with a prison population in which she works with.
On that topic, during the conversation, Bree introduced me to an amazing model called the Good Lives Model which we went through and she utilises to highlight where in a persons life meditation can have a huge impact.
Since we recorded Bree has also set up a mental-health related podcast which will launch in February 2020. Give The Strong Minds Club a follow to stay up to date with their launch and new episodes.
061 – Picking the Brain of Dr Charles Christiansen
Dec 31, 2019
Charles Christiansen is a name that a large portion of Occupational Therapists from around the world would recognise. From his papers to his textbooks to his positions on AOTA and AOTF boards, Charles’ impact on the profession has been nothing short of paradigm-shifting.
I first met Charles in 2012 when he was flown out to a conference here in Australia as the keynote. Through a serendipitous turn of events, I was given the privilege of picking him up from the airport. From that first minute, his bubbly personality and amazingly measured and thoughtful conversations had me enthralled.
Since that time we have kept in contact and it was an absolute pleasure being able to host him on Occupied. An amazing man, an amazing story and such a great conversation.
060 – BEST OF – Online Technology for Occupational Therapy
Dec 19, 2019
WELCOME TO THE OCCUPIED BEST OF!
Voted by you guys as one of the four best episodes thus far, Dr Anita Hamilton has arguably had the biggest influence of any individual on my OT career. If you’ve heard this episode before I can guarantee you’ll get something new out of it. If you haven’t heard this amazing episode before, strap in, you’re in for a ride!
The one and only Dr Anita Hamilton has had a MASSIVE influence on my career and volunteered me for a number of amazing opportunities I would not otherwise have had the fortitude to tackle. Anita is an expert and leader in the space of OT’s utilising online technology and has been a massive proponent of the OT4OT group who founded and help facilitate the whole range of 4OT facebook communities.
Stay tuned to the end for a WORLD EXCLUSIVE ANNOUNCEMENT regarding the ongoing future of the OT24VX virtual conference!!!
Also find the “first follower” video discussed in the episode:
059 – BEST OF – Why SMART Goals are DUMB
Dec 13, 2019
WELCOME TO THE OCCUPIED BEST OF!
Voted by you guys as one of the four best episodes thus far, this episode rustled more jimmies than just about any other! If you’ve heard this episode before I can guarantee you’ll get something new out of it. If you haven’t heard this amazing episode before, strap in, you’re in for a ride!
Goals…..we’ve all heard of them and all been advised that we should be using them both personally and clinically….but why and how are we using them? Do we have a good understanding of how they work? Hear me out and I’ll see if I can make you think ?
When I say how do you write a goal I bet this is what you think of:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time-bound
………….but why?
I’m sure we’re all very familiar with this format for “goal setting”, it’s been drilled into us for year! But how many of you could list a different goal format right now off the top of your head? To me, that in itself is an issue. I encourage you to hear me out and listen to this one with an open mind. I’m a believer that SMART goals are not only not a good method of goal progression for OT’s but even that they can be detrimental….and I’m about to explain to you my thoughts around this!
058 – BEST OF – Occupational Justice with Professor Gail Whiteford
Dec 06, 2019
WELCOME TO THE OCCUPIED BEST OF!
Voted by you guys as one of the four best episodes thus far, Professor Gail Whiteford has had an almost immeasurable impact on the profession of Occupational Therapy. If you’ve heard this episode before I can guarantee you’ll get something new out of it. If you haven’t heard this amazing episode before, strap in, you’re in for a ride!
I am honestly so excited about this episode. When Gail first sent me a message asking to be on the podcast I almost fell off my chair. All my Occupational dreams come true!
Professor Gail Whiteford has been an OT hero of mine for the longest time and even though we have met multiple times, getting to have a chat with her was a surreal experience. To say I was fan-boying was an understatement. Coming to the conclusion that she is not only one of the most intelligent and well rounded Occupational Therapists i know but also one of the most easy to talk to and engage with. I can’t thank Gail enough for allowing me to pick her brain.
Professor Whiteford’s work has had a significant and lasting impact on the direction of the profession and Occupational Science. In particular her work with Dr Elizabeth Townsend in the development and promotion of the Participatory Occupational Justice Framework was something that resonated with me from the core of my OT beliefs. Being involved with OT organisations such as OOFRAS and working with some marginalised populations the framework instantly resonated with the work and professional experiences I had up until that point.
The Conversation
Our conversation started with her journey through the profession and the evolutions of OT she experienced throughout that time. Gail, on the spot, came up with ideas I would never have ever considered about the profession. Blew my mind wide open. Feel like im still processing it.
We discussed the POJF and how it came into development. The current state of Occupational Therapy as well as what the future may hold for the profession. Definitely one of the deepest, most reflective conversations I’ve had and I really hope it blows your mind as much as mine.
057 – BEST OF – The Dark Side of Occupation with Rebecca Twinley
Nov 30, 2019
WELCOME TO THE OCCUPIED BEST OF!
Voted by you guys as one of the four best episodes thus far, Rebecca Twinley’s Dark Side of Occupation has been growing exponentially over the last few years. If you’ve heard this episode before I can guarantee you’ll get something new out of it. If you haven’t heard this amazing episode before, strap in, you’re in for a ride!
Dr Twinley came into my life, as many have, via online connections and shared thoughts on Occupation and Occupational Therapy. When we first connected was just before she publicly released the concept of The Dark Side of Occupation. This concept very easily resonated with me. It integrated into my clinical practice and conceptualization very easily. It just made sense.
The understanding that occupations having purpose and meaning, being contextually situated and having an impact on health are nothing new to OTs. Reflecting on “the dark side” of occupations and seeing that there are many people in society, you included, who engage in maladaptive, harmful or health decreasing occupations was profound. It’s something, that for many, doesn’t seem to have been given the focus it deserved until it was given a name.
Why is it important?
Since this time I’ve seen the concept spread and evolve and become more widespread. One thing I’ve seen is the evolution of how people used the term. It was good to get Bex’s opinion on this and how it differs from her understanding and presentation of the concept.
It’s incredibly important that Occupational Therapists not only look at occupations that are health-promoting but also those that may not have such a positive impact. Only then are we able to fully gain an adequate understanding of the people we work with and deliver effective health services. If you are wanting to get a better understanding of the concept then definitely start with the website linked below.
Twinley, R. (2017) Woman-to-woman rape and sexual assault, and its impact upon the occupation of work: A Learn at Work Webinar. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXGxvh96pnA
Twinley, R. (2017) ‘The Dark Side of Occupation’. In: Jacobs, K. and MacRae, N. (eds) Occupational Therapy Essentials for Clinical Competence. 3rd edn. Thorofare, NJ: SLACK.
Twinley, R. (2014) ‘Everyone is a moon’: The dark side of occupation. OT24Vx2014: A World of Health and Well Being. 3-4 November 2014. 24 hour Virtual exchange available at: http://www.ot4ot.com/ot24vx.html
Twinley, R. and Morris, K. (2014) Editorial: Are we achieving occupation-focussed practice? British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 77(6): 275
Twinley, R. (2013) The dark side of occupation: A concept for consideration. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 60(4): 301-303.
Twinley, R. (2013) Response to Re: The dark side of occupation: A concept for consideration. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 60(6): 459.
Twinley, R. (2013) ‘The dark side of occupation’ Occupational Science Seminar Series. 24 April 2013. Plymouth University: Plymouth
Twinley, R. and Addidle, G. (2012) Considering Violence: The Dark Side of Occupation. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 75 (4): 202-204. DOI: 10.4276/030802212X13336366278257
056 – What If You Just Found Out That You Had A Sibling?
Nov 20, 2019
Have you ever thought about how your life would change if you just found out you had a sibling? Sounds like a movie script right? What if one sibling was an Occupational Therapist and the other had Cerebral Palsy? How would your occupations change? How would your family dynamic change?
I came across Whitney and Dexter’s story on Instagram. In this podcast, we explored their amazing story and how finding each other has impacted both of them.
055 – Exploring Neuro with TheBrainyOT
Nov 11, 2019
I came across Crystal’s Intagram account during her “Neuro A-Z Photo Challenge”. Her content and explanations are exceptional and I learned a lot. Since then her content has continued with her focus on educating OT’s and the public on all things neuro, especially stroke. Her passion for her practice area is very obvious and infectious.
We explored her journey into OT, her passion for promoting brain health as well as a number of other helpful little tidbits for therapists to be aware of.
054 – Mental Wellbeing and Occupational Therapy
Oct 31, 2019
This episode I wanted to reflect on an idea that I’ve been playing around with for a few weeks and that’s the difference between Mental Health and Mental Illness. Having an understanding of the links between wellbeing and mental health is a skill that every clinician can take into just about every clinical practice area.
This is an area and a concept that fits core with Occupational Therapy and isn’t constrained by the boundaries of Mental Health practice. Exploring Mental Wellbeing with clients is something for ALL OT’s to engage in….but how?
“There is no health without Mental Health”
Erik Johnson
During the episode I explore one model for wellbeing that you can find here:
053 – Brooke George is Teaming with Dementia
Oct 19, 2019
I know a lot of passionate people. I also know a lot of people in a lot of different practice areas. I’ve been lucky enough to know a couple of people who are incredibly passionate about working in the aged care sector. Brooke George has an amazing passion for working with people who have dementia. Those of you who have listened to a couple of episodes will know that this is far from my forte so I’ve been keen to learn more.
This conversation was one that I’d wanted to have for a long time given my own knowledge gap. I learned an absolute tonne about working with people with dementia. We also explored how Occupation based practice can be exemplified in this practice area. Brooke was also able to highlight some of the difficulties of working in this practice area.
It was a fantastic conversation and Brooke was brilliant. I learned a tonne from her expertise and I’m sure you will too.
Brooke also posts a TONNE of amazing videos and resources on her Instagram profile so definitely give her a follow if youre interested in learning even more! 😀
052 – An OT Students Lived Experience of Chronic Pain
Oct 08, 2019
Continuing on a bit of a trend of lived experiences on the podcast I roped in the awesome Taylah Douglass to have a chat about her experience with Chronic Pain. Taylah is currently completing her OT degree just outside of Melbourne Australia and the combination of her study and her experience of pain has given her some great insights into its impact on occupational engagement.
Her story and her insights are invaluable and I learned so much about the mindset, and the toll that pain can have on a person. With roughly 1/5 people having chronic pain of some kind in their lives if you are lucky enough to not experience this for yourself you will definitely work with someone during your career who does. For this reason, gaining an understanding of the experience and toll of pain on a person is invaluable for an Occupational Therapist.
Books: Dr Howard Schubiner – “unlearn your pain” and also has YouTube videos. Dr John Sarno: “the divided mind” Nicole Sachs (therapist working with pain patients) – “the meaning of truth” Steven Ozanich – “The great pain deception”
Podcasts: “The cure for chronic pain” – Nicole Sachs “The mind and fitness podcast” – Eddie Lindenstein (pain success stories through the mind-body connection, relating chronic pain to athletes and fitness)
Taylah’s details for any questions or feedback! taylahdouglass95@gmail.com
051 – When You Love What You Do…WORK with Karen Jacobs
Sep 30, 2019
Professor Karen Jacobs is one of those guests that makes me feel like I don’t work hard enough. Any of the projects she has been involved in could be looked at as career-defining by mere mortals like myself. Everything from writing textbooks, creating national campaigns looking at safe backpack use, writing a library of kids books. Also, she’s been President and VP of AOTA, run a cable TV show, started an academic journal and runs an OT podcast. The list goes on and on and on!
I first “met” Karen in 2011 when I first got involved with the OT4OT team (where she was a member). There, I was able to help them out with their 24hr virtual conference as well as their suite of Facebook groups. The more I learned about her the more I was just in awe of the impact she has had on our profession.
AOTA’s summary:
Jacobs is a clinical professor of occupational therapy and the program director of the distance education post-professional occupational therapy programs at Boston University. She has expertise in the development and instruction of online graduate courses. In addition to being an occupational therapist, Jacobs is also a certified professional ergonomist (CPE). She has a private practice in ergonomics.
Jacobs earned her BA at Washington University in St. Louis, her MS at Boston University, and her doctoral degree at the University of Massachusetts.
Dr Jacob’s research examines the interface between the environment and human capabilities. In particular, she examines the individual factors and demands associated with increased risk of functional limitations among populations of university and middle school-aged students. She focuses particularly on notebook computing, backpack use, and games such as WiiFit. Most recently, she is co-developing, with Dr Nancy Baker at the University of Pittsburgh, the Telerehabilitation Computer Ergonomics System (tele-CES) for computer users with arthritis. The tele-CES is a remote systematic ergonomics program. It’s aimed at substantially reducing work disability among workers with any type of arthritis.
Jacobs is the founding editor-in-chief of the international, interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment and Rehabilitation, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2010.
Jacobs is a past president and vice-president of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA). She is a 2005 recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Akureyri in Akureyri, Iceland; the 2009 recipient of the Award of Merit from the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (CAOT); and recipient of the Award of Merit from the American Occupational Therapy Association in 2003.
050 – A Celebration of you, the Listener
Sep 11, 2019
When I started Occupied I didn’t really have a plan for how it was going to go. It was a form of creative expression for me and I enjoyed learning the process and creating a product. The uptake of said product has been absolutely amazing.
I’d be lying if I said I was excited every single hour of the editing process or thrilled to get up at 4am to record but the feedback from you guys and hearing every now and then that you love the conversations is a big part that keeps it fun and interesting.
50 episodes 70k+ downloads 34 amazing guests 55+hours of released content. 70+hrs of recording 140gig of raw audio files 115 countries reached 44 different podcast apps 2 websites 2 MacBook Pro’s 3 Microphones Still only 1 tech issue (touch wood) Many early morning alarm clocks A Million laughs
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. It means the world that you guys would listen, comment, email, share, like even just think positive thoughts about the podcast. I encourage you to keep building this amazing OT community of podcasters and podcast consumers. If you listen to a podcast and take something away from it, take the couple minutes and get in contact with the host. Let them know. I can 100% guarantee you will make their day.
049 – Meaning and Occupational Engagement
Sep 09, 2019
This is an emerging topic for me. It’s something for which I’ve seen a correlation for many many years. Now is the stage in my career where I’m starting to explore this more in-depth. Meaning is arguably the most important aspect of a person’s occupation. Yet, in my experience, it is also one of the most neglected or least understood areas of our practice.
This episode I wanted to take some time to reflect on my thought process and how “meaning” has evolved over my career.
I make reference to an article during the episode that has recently provided me with some food for thought around this:
Morris, K., Cox, DL. (2017) Developing a descriptive framework for “occupational engagement” Journal of Occupational Science 24 (2), 152-164
Would love to hear your thoughts on “meaning” and how you see it relating to occupational therapy! Shoot me an email or a voice mail! All links in the profile.
048 – OTReference Discusses the Similarities Between OT and Powerlifting
Sep 01, 2019
Since the beginning of my involvement in the sport of powerlifting, I’ve always been fascinated by the similarities. There are close links between the skillsets required to excel in Powerlifting and those commonly utilised by Occupational Therapists. I have, previously, written blog posts on how I’ve utilised my OT skillset in my coaching. To build on those I have planned to record an episode on it for the longest time.
At about the same time I started this podcast, I came across two ladies on Instagram. One was a powerlifter, one an OT who was developing quick reference products for students and therapists. I’m semi ashamed to admit that it took a good 12 months for me to work out that these two ladies were, in fact, one and the same…Jennifer of @OTreference.
I was talking with Jennifer one day about these previously mentioned similarities between the profession. I reflected and knew that I couldn’t record this episode on my own. Luckily for me, Jennifer agreed to come and have a chat with me, for you.
What I present to you is an exercise in viewing the world through an occupational lens. In our instance, Powerlifting was a mutual love that we discussed but I bet you could look at a myriad of your own hobbies and find similarities.
047 – The Life and Times of the Occupational Therapy Hub
Aug 22, 2019
There aren’t too many OT’s in the online space that hasn’t come across or seen posts from The Occupational Therapy Hub. I’ve known Jamie for about as long as Occupied has existed. He was one of the very first people to contact me after the release of my very first episode. Since that time Jamie has always been a strong supporter of Occupied and all of the OT podcasts out there.
From Radio and TV then on to Occupational Therapy, Jamie discusses his journey and all the ups and downs along the way. Glad I was even able to teach him a new saying:
“The important thing to remember about the idiom “how the sausage gets made” is that it always refers to UNPLEASANT details (not boring details, unimportant details, etc.) and it always refers to a PROCESS. It means that there are a number of details that we’d rather not hear about.”
Jamie had a vision when he was an OT student and that was to create a “hub” where OT related resources could be curated into one spot for ease of access for therapists and OT students. He poured his heart and soul and energy into building the Occupational Therapy Hub and released it to the world (all for free I might add). He has pulled together a worldwide team of volunteers to continue building The Hub as well as developing an online community of therapists looking to learn and grow together.
He has juggled all this whilst also making the transition from student to new-grad as well as all of life’s other trials and tribulations. His passion for growth and learning is evident and something we could all use a little more of.
046 – Overcoming Anxiety/PTSD with one of the Worlds Strongest Humans
Aug 14, 2019
DURING THIS PODCAST TOPICS SUCH AS ABUSE, PTSD AND VIOLENCE ARE DISCUSSED. THERE IS ALSO STRONG LANGUAGE USED. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.
When we think of Anxiety and PTSD we all would get some image of a person in our heads. But what we need to understand is that no matter what that image looks like, it’s wrong. PTSD and anxiety are both in-discriminatory.
I had the absolute privilege of knowing and being able to chat with Heather Connor who is pound-for-pound one of the strongest drug-free powerlifters on earth. With multiple national and international titles and records under her belt she is looked up to and admired by people all over the world for her strength, dedication, work ethic and her humorous outlook on life (as well as her dogs, Pancake and Butters lol)
What many people are not aware of is that the history that helped create her is quite confronting and at times scary. She has battled anxiety and post-traumatic stress for a large part of her life. This podcast is exploring her mental health story. We hope that this will help shed some light on the experience of these conditions as well as provide hope and motivation for people who have experienced similar things that you can not only survive, but you can thrive.
Heather is passionate about using her social media platform to help people and open up the conversation about mental health. She was incredibly open and vulnerable with me during this conversation and it shows in her message. Cannot think Heather enough for such an amazing chat.
045 – Newgrad Mental Health and the Transition from Student
Aug 05, 2019
This conversation starting talking about the transition and what to expect moving from a student to newgrad practitioner. Thalia was honest and raw and didn’t sugar-coat any of the experiences, good and bad. We explored the intricacies of practitioner mental health. The aim being to come up with some strategies for newgrads to help maintaining their mental health and thrive during the transition. Thalia, as am I, is of the opinion that this level of awareness and conversation is important for newgrads to be exposed to.
I first came across Thalia about a year ago and was instantly taken by her confidence in putting herself and her experiences out there for the world to see and to learn from. At the time she was a student who had been documenting her placement experiences and reflecting on them in youtube videos on her channel, Endless Eduation.
She has since then graduated and begun working as an Occupational Therapist. Her channel, likewise, has graduated to sharing her musings and reflections on her transition to a practitioner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnnojVzKgVs
Her content is amazing and i thoroughly encourage all students and new grads to check out her youtube (shown above). She is also working with The OT Hub so if you’ve not checked them out yet, get on it! If you wanted to contact her, leave a comment on her youtube or you can tweet her at @Thalia_OT 🙂
On July 10-12th 2019 I found my way to Sydney for the 28th Occupational Therapy Australia National Conference & Exhibition. This was my 4th Australian National Conference which runs every 2 years. In this episode, I’d love to highlight some of the key moments and amazing inspirations for me from #OTAus2019.
Key Conference Stats
Delegates
1419 Registrations (Record Number!)
915 OTA Members
283 Students & New Graduates
14 Countries
Australia, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, United Kingdom, USA, Vietnam
Program
642 Abstract Submissions
6 Occupation Stations (New Format!)
347 Oral Presentations
168 ePosters
Exhibition & Media
18 Organisations Sponsoring
120 Organisations Exhibiting
40+ First Time Exhibitors
12 Media Releases
Leigh Sales AM and her brilliant presentation about adjusting after life-changing events. Associate Professor Natasha Lannin and her amazing keynote focused on how we can sustainably get more clinician-researchers within the profession The omnificent Professor Gail Whiteford mesmerising the audience and pushing the profession to live up to its true potential in her Sylvia Docker Lecture. The Debate: Should the profession ditch the categories of Self-care, Productivity and Leisure?
Overall I have a fantastic time. It was so amazing to meet so many of you who listen to the podcast and your stories and kind words really made my conference so to those who came and said hi, thank you so much 🙂
043 – Sense Rugby: Occupation-Based Practice with Passion
Jul 14, 2019
I first came across Sense Rugby when the below video came across my facebook browsing. Being a strong advocate for occupation-based practice AND an old rugby union tragic, this video appealed to me on multiple levels. The use of Rugby Union as a therapy seemed so simple yea sooooo powerful.
The combination of Occupational Therapist, Carlien Parahi and her husband, Australian 7’s Rugby representative, Jesse Parahi has produced an amazing service. Utilising the culture, training, social aspects and even the equipment of rugby union and adjusting it to make it fully accessible to their clients is their core business. There is no inclusion criteria for Sense Rugby. Due to the word of mouth of friends or other therapists they have amassed a small army of children who are now reaping the benefits of organised team sport.
Their amazing program has now expanded across almost 20 locations across Australia. They are planning to expand it even further to other parts of the country and the world. If you want to check out Sense Rugby check the links below:
042 – Choose your Mental Health with Sarah Cawthorne
Jul 02, 2019
DURING THIS PODCAST TOPICS SUCH AS SUICIDE AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION ARE DISCUSSED. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.
DURING THIS PODCAST PERSONAL OPINIONS AND EXPERIENCES WITH MENTAL HEALTH AND MEDICATIONS ARE DISCUSSED. THESE ARE OUR PERSONAL OPINIONS AND EXPERIENCES ONLY AND YOU SHOULD DISCUSS YOURS WITH YOUR DOCTOR.
Who is Sarah?
Sarah Cawthorne is a friend and an amazing human. She’s always been open and friendly and there for people who need her. Almost 12 months ago she made an amazingly honest post on Instagram addressing her experience with detrimental alcohol use and her recent decision to “remove alcohol from her life”. I remember talking with Sarah at the time and being in absolute awe of her strength and clarity around the issue. To see someone who was so physically strong (she’s a badass, strong AF, powerlifter), have a hidden weakness for alcohol and to be on the journey to addressing it is so amazing to see.
We discussed our mutual experiences working in the mental health field before delving into her personal experiences with alcohol addiction. I know Sarah was super nervous about having this conversation but her brutal self-honesty and vulnerability with myself are so greatly appreciated as it’s given me a much greater appreciation of the lived experience of alcohol addiction and recovery.
We also discussed mutual experiences with functioning depression and conceptual ideas around mental health treatments.
I can’t thank Sarah enough for opening up, being vulnerable and taking a chance in chatting on the podcast and I truly hope this conversation gives you as many insights into addiction as it did for me.
041 – How to Become an Entrepreneur in Private Practice
Jun 24, 2019
Laura Park Figueroa, to me, is something special in the profession. To take on the often scary role of an entrepreneur and turn your passion into a private practice takes STONES. This is exactly what Laura has done with her practice, Outdoor Kids Occupational Therapy. Loving the great outdoors and having that connection with nature are driving forces behind the business.
Laura also runs the Mind Your OT Business podcast where she shares her insights and thoughts about private practice and supporting OT’s to take the plunge! We delved into her journey into private practice as well as what it might take for others to do the same.
I was able to draw on my experience of a time when I NEARLY became an entrepreneur myself and Laura helped me highlight the areas where I could have improved.
I’m a firm believer that many of the amazing new and adventurous OT practice out there at the moment is coming from the brave people in the entrepreneurial space. Those that are brave enough to really back up their words and turn their passions into projects that help others.
040 – Michelle Perryman Hijacks Occupied
Jun 12, 2019
A while ago I asked Michelle to come and be a guest on Occupied. As I had expected she agreed but then retorted, “I’m going to interview you”. We both laughed and that was that for a couple months while we tried to nail down an appropriate time. When we did find a time Michelle mentioned that she had been thinking about questions to ask me. This is when I finally realised she was serious….she was intending to hijack the podcast!
In all seriousness though, Michelle and I have known each other for a long time and we talk often about all things OT and OS so I knew her questions and ideas were going to be deep. We went right through my OT history but from the perspective of my conceptual development which was an interesting reflection.
I hope there’s something for everyone in this one as we explore a whole gamut of OT and the OT process. Some strong discussions around Occupation based practice, institutional trauma, alternative lenses and where we’d like to see the profession go in the future.
039 – From Army OT to Adaptive Gaming
Jun 03, 2019
The release of the adaptive XBox controller might have been something you saw cross your news feed a while back. You may even have thought “damn that’s awesome, I wonder how OT’s are going to use this”. What you may not have known is that an OT was heavily involved in its development! Erik Johnson is that very OT and his story is phenomenal.
Some of you may remember Erik from his time in the Army when was known across the social media landscape as ArmyOTguy. Back then, like me, you might have been in awe of his amazing work with service men DURING his deployment to Afghanistan. For me it really opened up my mind about the potential for where OT’s could work. At the time he also inspired me to explore the use of Nintendo Wii in my own practice area.
Fast forward a few years and Erik retired from the Army. Since then he helped start Warfighter Engaged, a volunteer company that custom designs and sets up adaptive control centres for people with accessibility issues so they can engage in the occupation of gaming! Incredibly creative and inspiring work can be seen on the Warfighter Engaged website here: https://warfighterengaged.org/projects
I thoroughly enjoyed this chat with Erik and his rich experience and occupational focus was amazing and inspiring.
If you have the will and capacity to support Warfighter Engaged in the amazing work that they do than do check out their website for how you can support them.
If you want to find more about Erik you can find everything you could ever want to know about him on his website: http://www.erikunleashed.com/
Erik’s work also extends to Operation Supply Drop, an NFP organisation helping enhance service persons lives through community engagement https://weareosd.org/
Keep occupied
038 – Is Occupational Balance BS? ft Alexis Joelle
May 20, 2019
Alexis is an OT, an online juggernaut, a clinical mentor and metaphor aficionado. If you’re on Instagram or Facebook then you have more than likely come across some of her posts, stories or live chats. Hard to imagine how she has any balance…. 😉
A few months ago Alexis invited me to do an Insta-live with her. Honestly, I can’t even remember what we originally started talking about but we digressed to occupational balance. We decided then and there that we needed to record a podcast and give the topic the time and space that it deserved.
Occupational Balance is a concept that ALL occupational therapists have heard of and the majority would mention regularly, usually as a potential or ideal outcome. But how many have thought about the concept in detail? How many have considered the process of occupational balance outside of the feeling that we get when we have “achieved” it? What is actually being balanced?
Definition:
balance /ˈbal(ə)ns/ noun
1. an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady. “she lost her balance and fell”synonyms: stability, equilibrium, steadiness, footing”I tripped and lost my balance”
2. a situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.
By definition balance is about offsetting things against other things in the correct proportions. When we look at getting the “just right” perceived amount of engagement in a certain occupation what exactly are we offsetting this against? We explore the merits of considering this phenomenon as Occupational Wellbeing instead.
We also branch off and consider ditching occupational classifications in favour of classifications of engagement. The paper discussed during the episode is here:
Hammell, AW. (2009) Self-care, productivity, and leisure, or dimensions of occupational experience Rethinking occupational ‘categories’, Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 76(2): 107-114
CreatingconfidenceinOTs.club updates on happenings, resources, e-courses, mentorship program, tools, and shares. Hang out with Alexis on Instagram at @8alexisjoelle. If you have any questions you can email her at info@alexisjoelle.com OR tweet her at @8alexisjoelle
I can guarantee you that many people reading this did not know that a coffee bean comes out of a cherry! Why? Because, for most of us, it’s not important to our engagement with it. Some of you may not even be aware that it is a seed! and some of you might not like coffee at all (say it isn’t so!).
What I want to do with this episode is take something that I love and explore how it has the potential to mean so many different things to different people. By looking at the different ways in which it can be engaged with I’m hoping it will act as a lesson/reminder that context is king and assumptions of meaning have very little place in Occupational Therapy.
As an added bonus, I came out of this episode so highly caffeinated I recorded another right after it!
036 – The Occupation within Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
May 01, 2019
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a clinical modality that I was introduced and exposed to during my clinical career. Unlike many psychotherapies, ACT was always able to be incorporated into an Occupation-Based Practice framework.
I came across Lou Sanguine on Facebook through a post about the podcast. She challenged me to make a post about ACT. I challenged her to make it with me. It was a challenge but she caved and joined me for a chat. We explored this new experience for Lou during the conversation and use it as an example to explain a lot of the different aspects of ACT….very meta.
Lou’s knowledge and passion for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy runs deep and that comes across in our conversation. She mentions the underpinnings being based in Contextual Behavioural Science. If you’d like to explore this more, do check out their website contextualscience.org
For more regular updates and information on ACT in the OT profession go ahead and give Lou’s FB page a like:
035 – The Realities of living with Schizophrenia
Apr 22, 2019
There’s very little I can say about RachelStarLive that she hasn’t expressed herself in one of her amazing youtube videos. So using her own words, Rachel is a “schizophrenic badass from Youtube and TV stuff.” She’s been on Americas Got Talent & Ninja Warrior. She is a Mental Health advocate. She’s a Schizophrenic (listen to the episode before you take offence to the word). She’s survived a flesh-eating bacteria. She’s a Stuntwoman. She is not a pornstar.
Her story is diverse, scary, inspiring, shocking and all that without even considering her schizophrenia. When people say they’ve “been through some stuff,” Rachel is the embodiment of that phrase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjxmQt47Uwo
I’ve personally used some of Rachel’s videos to help teach students about the lived experience of various symptoms etc. So when it came to wanting to highlight lived experience on the podcast there was no one else for me, It had to be Rachel.
There are a lot of things that originally drew me to Rachel’s content. Firstly her energy. The way she presents information is full of buzz and very engaging. As she discusses in the podcast, if you didn’t know she had schizophrenia, you wouldn’t guess by watching her videos. To a large degree that is one of the learning points, I liked from her content. Her descriptions of her experienced symptoms are dynamic, descriptive and strangely comprehend-able for a wide audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0da-Dbdkvow
Rachel has been working on her own movie called Stuntgirl so give her Youtube a follow and stay up to date with all of her mental health and stunt content!
034 – The Dark Side of Occupation with Dr Rebecca Twinley
Apr 14, 2019
Dr Twinley came into my life, as many have, via online connections and shared thoughts on Occupation and Occupational Therapy. When we first connected was just before she publicly released the concept of The Dark Side of Occupation. This concept very easily resonated with me. It integrated into my clinical practice and conceptualization very easily. It just made sense.
The understanding that occupations having purpose and meaning, being contextually situated and having an impact on health are nothing new to OTs. Reflecting on “the dark side” of occupations and seeing that there are many people in society, you included, who engage in maladaptive, harmful or health decreasing occupations was profound. It’s something, that for many, doesn’t seem to have been given the focus it deserved until it was given a name.
Why is it important?
Since this time I’ve seen the concept spread and evolve and become more widespread. One thing I’ve seen is the evolution of how people used the term. It was good to get Bex’s opinion on this and how it differs from her understanding and presentation of the concept.
It’s incredibly important that Occupational Therapists not only look at occupations that are health promoting but also those that may not have such a positive impact. Only then are we able to fully gain an adequate understanding of the people we work with and deliver effective health services. If you are wanting to get a better understanding of the concept then definitely start with the website linked below.
https://thedarksideofoccupation.wordpress.com/
Also check out some of these:
Related publications and presentations
Twinley, R. (2017) Woman-to-woman rape and sexual assault, and its impact upon the occupation of work: A Learn at Work Webinar. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXGxvh96pnA
Twinley, R. (2017) ‘The Dark Side of Occupation’. In: Jacobs, K. and MacRae, N. (eds) Occupational Therapy Essentials for Clinical Competence. 3rd edn. Thorofare, NJ: SLACK.
Twinley, R. (2014) ‘Everyone is a moon’: The dark side of occupation. OT24Vx2014: A World of Health and Well Being. 3-4 November 2014. 24 hour Virtual exchange available at: http://www.ot4ot.com/ot24vx.html
Twinley, R. and Morris, K. (2014) Editorial: Are we achieving occupation-focussed practice? British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 77(6): 275
Twinley, R. (2013) The dark side of occupation: A concept for consideration. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 60(4): 301-303.
Twinley, R. (2013) Response to Re: The dark side of occupation: A concept for consideration. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 60(6): 459.
Twinley, R. (2013) ‘The dark side of occupation’ Occupational Science Seminar Series. 24 April 2013. Plymouth University: Plymouth
Twinley, R. and Addidle, G. (2012) Considering Violence: The Dark Side of Occupation. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 75 (4): 202-204. DOI: 10.4276/030802212X13336366278257
033 – Thoughts on how OT’s can talk about OT
Apr 06, 2019
It’s OT Month in the states and I’ve seen a TONNE of social media posts promoting the profession and saying how amazing we are and outlining the wide variety of things we can do. What I haven’t seen is a large swell of people promoting the profession outside of the profession. I’m all for giving each other a pat on the back when we’ve done something awesome, 100% but don’t expect that pat on the back to be anything other then what it is. If we really want people outside the profession to understand what we do then we need to promote to them.
So why now?
This all started after a conversation with Gail Whiteford. Sitting on my couch the other day I had the thought that I would put out my “elevator speech” to see if it was similar to other peoples. I also wanted to share with my networks (most of which are non-OT’s) with the hope that it might trigger the conversation where I could explain fully about our amazing profession. What I didn’t expect was the reaction these three little pictures would get. To date they have reached over 70 thousand people after over 1400 of you shared them with your own networks. To me, these numbers are INCREDIBLE! So I decided to put together a little episode to explore this and why I think it’s important.
I am most definitely not saying that OT Month/Week/Day activities that are about highlighting our professional strengths are a bad thing. Quite the opposite, in fact, I feel like they do serve an important place. What I am saying is it’s important that we continue to try and push the understanding of occupation and occupational therapy outside the profession if we expect to grow and be respected as a health profession.
032 – The Rocket OT returns to Earth: Occupation in Action
Apr 01, 2019
You may remember Simone from episode 2! She is the creator of the Regulation Rocket and an amazing occupation-based pediatric OT. Simone has definitely been one of our most popular guests. She has just got back to Australia after spending a year travelling the world (pretty sure the last episode was recorded from Japan!). Because of that, I thought it was time to touch base again and explore her occupational brain. 🙂
From the moment we met Simone and I have got along really well and found that we’re both on the same occupational wavelength. We could literally talk for days if left to our own devices. This episode we explore her new business venture including telehealth and how occupation can be implemented using it. We went deep into the realities of implementing Occupation Based Practice and the systemic limitations that become barriers. Naturally, a lot of pet peeves came to the surface such as OT memes, client labels, generational communication differences. We explored the importance of routines and habits but also of developing the adaptability and resilience to cope when they’re disrupted. From that, the topic of success and not recoiling from failure came up. We then discussed how OT’s can often let fear hold them back from breaking the mould and doing something truly innovative or scary. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Rocket OT podcast without discussing the Regulation Rocket and self-regulation.
Like I said at the start, Simone and I could talk forever and we’ve decided that we will record again. Expect an episode in the future that explores the professions over-reliance on “independence”. http://rocketot.com/
031 – Succeeding to Fail with Jon Jon Rivero
Mar 21, 2019
Prior to meeting Jon Jon my measures of success were most definitely material and superficial. Since that time I’ve been a much more introspective OT. I met Jon Jon Rivero in 2014 when he came to Australia to deliver the keynote at the QLD State Conference. I’ve still never been to a more amazing presentation. There was singing, dancing, roundhouse kicks, beatboxing, harmonica as well as amazing occupation based practice stories. I learned about creativity and growth and finding yoURawesome.
Since that time we’ve kept in touch and I’ve followed along the success, growth and development of Qi Creative. Some of you may have seen me hinting at a link between my last guest, Meghan Harris, and Jon Jon and that link is that Meg also works for Qi!
The conversation ended up moving towards something that I’d been mulling over for a few weeks and thats, pulling success from failure. Jon Jon was open and honest enough to share an amazing story. He told how a large part of his professional self and his business birthed from a large “fail”.
I had an absolute blast talking with Jon Jon and left feeling inspired and motivated for the profession and the future.
030 – An OT’s Story of Trauma and Rehab
Mar 13, 2019
THIS EPISODE DISCUSSES TRAUMA & TRAUMATIC INJURY. ALTHOUGH THERE IS IS NOTHING OVERLY GRAPHIC OR NEGATIVE, PLEASE DO EXERCISE COMMON SENSE IF YOU FIND THESE TOPICS DIFFICULT OR TRAUMATIC.
Meghan and I connected many years ago on twitter and I’ve followed her career and growth since then.
Last year Meghan and a group of others from her cycling club were hit by a truck whilst out for a ride. She suffered vast and traumatic injuries and spent a long while in a rehabilitation hospital. Meghan is now back at home but still working through her rehabilitation. In this conversation, we explored Meghan’s experience right from the accident to this point in time through her occupational lense. The hope is that we are able to give therapists a view and perspective from the other side of the fence.
Through the trauma, Meghan remained positive and driven. This was something I was curious about and we did get to discuss the realities of this perception. Meghan is an amazing therapist and her views and observations of the process I find incredibly positive and inspirational.
SOME CONTENT IN THIS PODCAST MAY BE CONSIDERED EXPLICIT BY SOME PEOPLE. SEX AND INTIMACY TOPICS ARE DISCUSSED AND MAY INCLUDE SOME COLLOQUIAL TERMINOLOGIES. EXERCISE COMMON SENSE IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY THESE OR RELATED TOPICS.
I discovered the OT After Dark podcast only 4hrs after they released their first episode (Sex as an ADL). My initial reaction was “Yes! Finally someone is brave enough to talk about sex and sexuality in a public forum!” But it got even better. Firstly, they’re hilarious and very personable. Secondly although speaking candidly about these topics they are exceptionally well read and well researched…. They also include, on their website, all of the research they discuss in each episode for your perusal.
I firmly believe that sex, sexuality and intimacy are topics that OT’s often neglect for a variety of reasons. Similar to most social change I feel that opening the conversation is the first step. Exposure to the topics will hopefully ease some of the anxiety and awkwardness about addressing sex with our clients.
I encourage everyone to check out the OT After Dark podcast on your favorite podcast app. Also check out their website or tweet them:
028 – Seniors Flourish in a Digital World with Mandy Chamberlain
Feb 26, 2019
You may know Mandy as Seniors Flourish. She’s an OT. Entrepreneur. Business Owner. OG OT Podcaster. Online OT personality. but most of all she was kind enough to come and have a chat with us here at OCCUPIED.
Many of you may have come across her work on social media where she produces and curates tonnes of useful and interesting content for therapists in all areas of practice. Her work is, as the name suggests, predominantly targeted at those working with seniors in the aged care sector and we explored just why her passions lay in this practice area.
It was an extremely fun conversation that had us both laughing a lot. We explored Mandy’s journey into OT, her business, her podcast, the evolution of digital tech and even her dance prowess.
If you don’t already definitely get along and check out her website and social profiles:
Facebook Twitter Instagram
And if you are in aged care or have an interest in aged care her membership site, The Learning Lab, provides and unprecedented community of support and resources to help you develop your practice.
SeniorsFlourish.com/learninglab
Also we’re still waiting for her dance video…..
Keep occupied
027 – Occupational Observations of a Natural Disaster
Feb 19, 2019
I’d like to reflect on a natural disaster. At the beginning of February 2019 the city where I live was stuck under a monsoonal rain even for over a week. This event dumped over 1.6m (5ft) of water in 7 days. Townsville being a typically dry place was not designed or ready to drain and divert more than its yearly rainfall in one week. What proceeded was a 1 in 100 year wet event with unprecedented flooding.
Throughout the event I received so many messages from friends, family and fans of the podcast and I’d like to thank you for your thoughts and concern. It meant the worlds. Long story short, myself, my family and most importantly my dog are all fine. We didn’t even get the worst of it. Some of the suburbs on the south side of Townsville were completely devastated. In many cases lost everything they owned.
The Podcast
This podcast is some observations I made during the even through an occupational lens. My aim is not to sugar coat, nor shield anyone from the realities of natural disaster. I do discuss, death, loss of possessions, grief, etc so if this is something you are sensitive to then please ensure you are appropriately supported or alternatively skip this episode. I also touch on some of the amazing things to come out of such a difficult time. People pulling together to help each-other, rescue each-other, and dropping everything for each-other. In some cases even using their own tools and resources to help their fellow man without hesitation.
Social media played a massive role during this natural disaster and I reflect on exactly how I saw this powerful tool being utilised. From that I also explore my own occupational experience during the floods.
This video should give you an idea of the water levels and widespread devastation.
026 – How and Why EVERY Occupational Therapist needs to Research with Dr Kitty & Dr Anna
Feb 12, 2019
Kitty (@truly_radical_) contacted me over Twitter some time ago and emphatically stated that she wanted to talk with me about research. She told me that herself and fellow OT, Anna (@aurbanowicz) had a huge passion for promoting research to Occupational Therapists. She wondered if I would like to talk about it with them on Occupied…. definitely!
Dr Anna Urbanowicz and Dr Kitty-Rose Foley did their PhD’s at the same time in the same place. This lead to two very different directions and experiences. Sitting down and chatting with the two of them highlighted the challenges and rewards of completing research and a PhD.
Anna is Australian but currently in the United States as a VC Postdoctoral Fellow (Fulbright Scholar) at RMIT University. Learning inclusive research techniques to bring back to her work in Australia.
We talked about their respective journeys through PhD and into Post Doc. From there we went on to explore why research is important to the profession and various ways that OT’s are able to get into it. The key takeaway is that research isn’t scary, it just takes a little bit of planning. With this in mind you have the opportunity to add to the evidence base of the profession using your own clinical experiences.
For me personally this a great follow-on from episodes 013–014 about transitioning to academia and I’m def more driven than ever to get stuck into some research! I’m excited!
Keep occupied
025 – Mindfulness and Occupational Therapy with Leah Forman
Jan 31, 2019
Leah Forman is a COTA and an OTD student whom I originally discovered from her Instagram. The very first post I saw was a photo of a pelvis and a comment about womens health, mindfulness and OT. This (strangely) caught my eye due to my good friend Melissa LaPointe and her business/interest/passion in the field.
I also noticed Leah had a blog and through reading some of her posts I got to see some quite similar interests to myself. The use of mindfulness and meditation being one of them. Connecting with her then and having further discussions it didn’t take long to work out we were on the same wavelength about a lot of different things. Seemed like a no brainer to get her on Occupied and see where the conversation took us!
Leah taught me about what a COTA is and what they do. We also explored the therapeutic use of mindfulness and meditation. Finally we looked into the links that can be seen between the concepts of mindfulness, minimalism and Occupational Therapy. The conversation was fun and came really easily and I’m sure you will get as much out of this conversation as I did.
Check Leah out in all the following places:
lifesoccupations.comwww.instagram.com/lifesoccupations/
Keep occupied
024 – Occupational Justice with Professor Gail Whiteford
Jan 19, 2019
I am honestly so excited about this episode. When Gail first sent me a message asking to be on the podcast I almost fell off my chair. All my Occupational dreams come true!
Professor Gail Whiteford has been an OT hero of mine for the longest time and even though we have met multiple times, getting to have a chat with her was a surreal experience. To say I was fan-boying was an understatement. Coming to the conclusion that she is not only one of the most intelligent and well rounded Occupational Therapists i know but also one of the most easy to talk to and engage with. I can’t thank Gail enough for allowing me to pick her brain.
Professor Whiteford’s work has had a significant and lasting impact on the direction of the profession and Occupational Science. In particular her work with Dr Elizabeth Townsend in the development and promotion of the Participatory Occupational Justice Framework was something that resonated with me from the core of my OT beliefs. Being involved with OT organisations such as OOFRAS and working with some marginalised populations the framework instantly resonated with the work and professional experiences I had up until that point.
The Conversation
Our conversation started with her journey through the profession and the evolutions of OT she experienced throughout that time. Gail, on the spot, came up with ideas I would never have ever considered about the profession. Blew my mind wide open. Feel like im still processing it.
We discussed the POJF and how it came into development. The current state of Occupational Therapy as well as what the future may hold for the profession. Definitely one of the deepest, most reflective conversations I’ve had and I really hope it blows your mind as much as mine.
We covered everything from the workflow involved in creating and publishing a podcast as well as how OT’s can utilise this media space for their own professional development.
A massive thanks to WFOT for supporting this presentation and to Karen Jacobs for facilitating and inviting me to be part of it.
022 – Going From Burnt Out to Lit Up with Erika Del Pozo
Dec 30, 2018
Erika is an OT and entrepreneur who together with her husband, Mike, run their business Joy Energy Time. Their focus on burnout in health professionals is a contemporary issue that needs to be addressed now before it becomes an epidemic.
How I found Erika
I first came across Joy Energy Time on Instagram and, being the visual person I am, was instantly attracted by their awesome pineapple logo. I found the podcast and was an almost instant fan! I’m generally quite picky with the podcasts but i instantly got this sense that the content Erika and Mike were putting out was real and honest. I tuned into an amazing Instagram Live story where Erika explored a revelation she had recently had about her long term anxiety and burnout. She then turned that into a podcast which I have shared for you below.
It takes a special something to be able to put yourself out to the world like that. It takes something even more special to take these experiences and turn them into an opportunity. This is exactly what Erika and Mike have done with Joy Energy Time. They aim to educate and support therapists around burnout and self-care practices.
The Burnout Conversation
We started chatting about the concept of “travel therapy” and the differences regarding this between the USA and Australia. We discuss our common burnout experiences and the contributing factors. We then unpacked some of the common impacting factors of burnout and highlighted some of the tools we’ve found that can help manage these factors. Of course, as you would expect from Occupied, we also related it all to Occupational Therapy and Occupational Science.
Joy Energy Time offers an online course (Bash the Burnout for Healthcare Professionals) for clinicians. The aim of the courser is educating HPs about burnout and how to manage it. Information and enrollment in the course can be found at: www.joyenergytime.com
021 – In Depth on Diversity with Alondra Ammon
Dec 17, 2018
Alondra Ammon is an Occupational Therapist from California. She graduated with her masters in Occupational Therapy from Samuel Merritt University and is currently working as a school-based OT. Her passion is Diversity and the promotion of the profession!
I first came across Alondra’s youtube channel and being a bit of a geek had a search around for the rest of her social media presence. After that, we engaged in some conversations over Twitter where I found that she had been on On The Air. The diversity of her professional experience, her bright and bubbly personality and her interest in promoting diversity throughout Occupational Therapy all added up to her being someone I just had to chat with. I have always found people with a broad and varied life experience have the most interesting perspectives on things and Alondra’s military and previous health service experience intrigued me.
At the beginning of the episode, we discussed Occupied Ep 020 which wasn’t released at the time of recording. Alondra Added her ideas around the changing diversity of the profession and the impact it might have on Occupational Therapy as a whole.
Occupational Passion:
Throughout the chat I hope it’s evident that She has more passion for Occupational Therapy than your average OT. As a result, she is harnessing some of this explosive enthusiasm and channeling it into a media that she is hoping will have a positive impact on the profession.
She has some important messages for all OT’s about promoting the profession and taking, the often scary, step to put yourself out there for the benefit of spreading the word among the general public.
Check out Alondra’s Youtube channel where she discusses contemporary issues and interviews a variety of Occupational Therapists. I challenge you to watch and not crack a smile after soaking in her unbridled enthusiasm!
020 – Is the Sex Disparity in Occupational Therapy all Bad?
Dec 04, 2018
Today’s discussion stemmed from a number of observations of late. Seemed like too much of a coincidence that the topic came up multiple times in a very short space of time so I decided to put together my thoughts. I’m very aware that for some people this topic is quite sensitive. I do encourage you to have a listen with an open mind as I am simply trying to highlight an idea that I haven’t seen spoken about in the literature. That idea is that changing the demographics of Occupational Therapy will change the profession fundamentally. I definitely don’t have a definitive answer to any of these raised concerns but the (well rounded) discussion needs to happen.
Topics:
I compare some of the reported experiences from the literature to my personal experience. My belief is that the experiences are legitimate but my interpretation of the cause of these experiences seems to differ greatly from those presented in the articles that I have read. I’ve seen a lot of very heated discussion on the topic of sex disparity.
My concern is that the views being taken into these discussions are not conducive to effective discussion. When the chat gets heated, this is stilting the ability for clinicians to have a well-rounded view. Another question I wanted to pose is if this is an issue from the perspective of men as my personal experience has never highlighted it as an issue but also I’ve not read any papers on the topic that have included men as authors….. so if you know of some shoot them through to me because I’d love to read.
Reference to the article discussed:
Beagan, B., & Fredricks, E. (2018). What about the men? Gender parity in occupational therapy. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 85(2) 137-145. doi: 10.1177/0008417417728524
019 – Occupation Based Practice with Dr Nicholson
Nov 25, 2018
Dr. Ellen Nicholson is the Head of Department at the Aukland University of Technology’s, Department of Occupational Science and Therapy and has had a vast and profound influence on my own career being the inspiration for Operation Occupation. We talked about everything from her journey into OT, the professions move back towards Occupation, and the role of Occupational Language in that journey.
I first came across Ellen’s work in ~2012 when she presented at the OT24VX on her PHD research. This really hit me at a time in my career when I was having a professional identity crisis. I was struggling to even work out if i was working as an Occupational Therapist. Ellen was super friendly and easy to connect with. She normalised a lot of the feelings and experiences that I was having at the time and acted as a super intelligent, amazing soundboard.
Using her references, ideas and inspiration i not only changed my own practice but also started a couple projects that aimed to support other clinicians to do the same for themselves.
Check out her work here:
Collective action and the transformation of occupational therapy practice
Abstract
There is evidence of a growing tension within the occupational therapy profession regarding the legitimate knowledge and practice of occupational therapists. While occupation is described by many as the legitimate knowledge base for occupational therapy practice, the history of the profession, and the practice context, often appear to endorse accepted practices that are not overtly aligned with an occupational paradigm. Oppressive, dissatisfying and disempowering social conditions, revealed in the knowledge, power, and discourse which underpin occupational therapy practice, have likely further influenced the meaning and intention of occupational therapy practice with children and families over time.This thesis describes a critical participatory action research project which sought to investigate and affect how occupational therapists working with children translated knowledge to inform and transform their practice. Embedded in shared concerns about the legitimacy of accepted practices with children and families, and using a contemporary occupational therapy theory as a framework, eight occupational therapy co-researchers engaged in two phases of critical action; deconstruction-planning and action-reconstruction. Positioned in between the phases, the resolution of a subjective quest for validation was revealed as a principal catalyst to transformative action. Practice stories and critical dialogue, gathered as project information, was reflectively analysed to progress both the dialogical inquiry and the transformative intent of the research.Implications for practice drawn from the research findings include a suite of action-oriented strategies which will enable practitioners to discover and advance practice transformation within their own practice. These strategies have been consolidated into the VENIA model, which is presented as a practical solution to changing the practice of occupational therapists, and strengthening the political agenda of the occupational therapy profession.
018 – Occupational Transition Periods
Nov 14, 2018
We’ve looked at values and how they may highlight a person’s occupational needs so the next logical progression is to have a look about what happens when someone changes the occupation that fills a need. That gap between occupations is a time that I feel OT’s can really have an incredible impact on peoples lives. Let’s explore the different types of transitions and how this can impact on the interventions and OT could perform.
We continue our chat about Sarah’s experiences overseas, what developed country OT’s could learn from these limited resource experiences, professional understanding of culture and OT’s use of diagnosis.
Sarah Putt is pediatric OT and fellow podcaster! She currently runs her own practice but has practiced in more countries than I was able to count and has some amazing stories to go with it! As expected we discuss the amazing medium of podcasting and how OT’s can benefit and engage in it and she also introduces me to Hippotherapy and the occupation based benefits for service users of this very unique practice modality.
Sarah Putt is pediatric OT and fellow podcaster! She currently runs her own practice but has practiced in more countries than I was able to count and has some amazing stories to go with it! As expected we discuss the amazing medium of podcasting and how OT’s can benefit and engage in it and she also introduces me to Hippotherapy and the occupation based benefits for service users of this very unique practice modality.
As requested! an expansion of Episode 009 – How Do Values Fit with OT Practice by having a chat about how I’ve used these concepts in practice. Looking at a very practical way of finding a person’s occupational needs which can then be used to guide the occupation based practice direction.
Super keen to start the discussion an hear if other clinicians have used any values-based perspectives in Occupational Therapy
014 – Exploring the Experiences of Three Early Career Academics pt2
Oct 01, 2018
The 2nd half of our roundtable discussion with Michelle Perryman and Dr Jessie Wilson about the challenges of transitioning from a clinical OT role into an academic role. Between the three of us we are from 3 different countries, pre, during & post Phd, varying clinical backgrounds, and all have recently moved into academia.
013 – Exploring the Experiences of Three Early Career Academics pt1
Sep 25, 2018
A roundtable discussion with Michelle Perryman and Dr Jessie Wilson about the challenges of transitioning from a clinical OT role into an academic role. Between the three of us we are from 3 different countries, pre, during & post Phd, varying clinical backgrounds, and all have recently moved into academia. Being able to compare multiple experiences from around the world fostered some amazing conversation that I hope any people considering a move into academia will find interesting.
Stephanie Healey graduated from the University of the Sunshine Coast and moved into her first OT position with the Department of Education in her home state. This position turns out to be quite unique in Australia and I wanted to learn all about it. Steph explained the types of intervention she does with her students, her journey into OT and her dream roll!
011 – Online Technology for Occupational Therapy
Sep 04, 2018
The one and only Dr Anita Hamilton has had a MASSIVE influence on my career and volunteered me for a number of amazing opportunities I would not otherwise have had the fortitude to tackle. Anita is an expert and leader in the space of OT’s utilising online technology and has been a massive proponent of the OT4OT group who founded and help facilitate the whole range of 4OT facebook communities.
Stay tuned to the end for a WORLD EXCLUSIVE ANNOUNCEMENT regarding the ongoing future of the OT24VX virtual conference!!!
Also find the “first follower” video discussed in the episode:
https://youtu.be/fW8amMCVAJQ
Anita’s video highlighting the use of her model of knowledge dissemination “the IM-KT Framework”:
010 – The Grey Revolution: Aged Care’s Young Leaders
Aug 26, 2018
Samantha Bowen is an Occupational Therapist from Perth Australia who found her passion in the aged care sector. Samantha started Acorn Network, an entrepreneurial venture aimed at promoting young leaders in the aged care sector by providing mentoring, support and growth services to individuals and companies.
Samantha has also just dropped her own podcast (The Grey Revolution)! So if you work in aged care, are interested in aged care or just breathe air then check it out!
009 – How do Values fit with OT practice?
Aug 16, 2018
A rather spontaneous recording whilst getting some vitamin D, sitting outside, and relaxing. You know what they say, strike while the iron is hot, so whilst thinking about how I utilised values and values assessments within and occupation-based practice context it seemed like the perfect time to put my thoughts on record….and then send them out to the world.
A bit of a reflection on how I’ve used concepts such as Occupational Need, Values, Occupational Disruption, and how these interrelate in order for us to be able to support people with more authentic interventions and recommendations.
The example model discussed in this podcast is the Theory of Basic Human Values and is shown below.
As is highlighted in the episode this is just one of many, many models of values and how they interact.
This is a brief overview of how I think about these concepts interact together and I will be exploring them individually in more detail in future podcasts.
008 – Dr Jessie Wilson and the Co-Op approach
Aug 06, 2018
Dr Jessie Wilson is a former colleague of mine who now works at Western University in Canada. Her paediatric and mental health clinical background led her into her Ph.D. around an occupation based therapy project for young adults with autism.
We discussed everything from previous episodes of Occupied, some of the marketing issues of the profession, some of the challenges between undergrad and graduate entry OT’s as well as in depth about her experience completing her PH.D. project using the CO-OP approach.
Goals…..we’ve all heard of them and all been advised that we should be using them both personally and clinically….but why and how are we using them? Do we have a good understanding of how they work? Hear me out and I’ll see if I can make you think 😉
When I say how do you write a goal I bet this is what you think of:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time-bound
………….but why?
I’m sure we’re all very familiar with this format for “goal setting”, it’s been drilled into us for year! But how many of you could list a different goal format right now off the top of your head? To me, that in itself is an issue. I encourage you to hear me out and listen to this one with an open mind. I’m a believer that SMART goals are not only not a good method of goal progression for OT’s but even that they can be detrimental….and I’m about to explain to you my thoughts around this!
006 – The Business of Women’s Health and Occupational Therapy
Jul 16, 2018
Melissa LaPointe is a friend I’ve known for a number of years and I’ve watched her entrepreneurial journey building from her original passion area, Occupational Therapy and Women’s Health. Now she is an online entrepreneur, a women’s health advocate, a coach, a leadership consultant and a community builder!
We went into some detail around therapist burnout and how we both have been through it and come out the other side. I obviously explored the role of Occupational Therapy in Women’s Health and the types of things they might do in this area and how Melissa’s work in this area devolved into her current online businesses. Melissa’s passion has now evolved into supporting and coaching other therapists to follow their passion for developing healthy and sustainable private practices’.
005 – What can Minimalism teach Occupational Therapists
Jul 05, 2018
So in this episode, I explore some random reflections I’ve had after coming across the concept of “minimalism”. It started when I found a documentary on Netflix called Minimalism: A documentary about the important things which was the beginning of me diving down the minimalism rabbit hole.
“Minimalism is a lifestyle that helps people question what things add value to their lives. By clearing the clutter from life’s path, we can all make room for the most important aspects of life: health, relationships, passion, growth, and contribution.”
The reason this concept grabbed me, once I started looking into it, is because I could see some really close links with Occupational Science! I decided to have a think and a chat about the links that I could see and how they might relate to Occupational Therapy and I hope this provides some food for thought for some people.
004 – Newgradoccupationaltherapy.com with Dom
Jun 24, 2018
This episode I delved into the world of the New Graduate Occupational Therapist!!
I had the pleasure of sitting down with the one and only Dominic Lloyd-Randolfi to hear about his journey into Occupational Therapy including his involvement with www.NewgradOccupationalTherapy.com
NewGradOT is an amazing blog resource for new graduates containing an amazing array of information with the aim of helping new graduates navigate the (often scary) transition into the profession.
We had a chat about his transition from student to practitioner, sex as an occupation, made some comparisons between American health care and Australia’s as well as (OF COURSE) provide some tips for new grad therapists to help make the transition to practice a much smoother and more productive one.
Keep occupied
Every now and then a small thing happens during my day triggers some much more extensive thoughts/reflections (ironic right?). Discussing with my Occupational Therapy students about the importance of reflection got me thinking about my personal journey towards developing this SUPER IMPORTANT skill. I discuss a bit about my experience of finally realising how amazing this skillset can be and some tips about when and how you can start implementing it.
If you enjoy it and know someone else who could do with some tips on reflection than feel free to share this podcast with them!
002 – Occupation based Pediatrics with the Rocket OT
May 23, 2018
Simone contacted me on Reddit following the release of Occupied episode 001 saying she wrote a blog called the Rocket OT and had created a visual that “demonstrates how regulation develops and is affected depending on environment/occupation”. After having a chat it was clear that Simone and myself were on similar wavelengths so how could I not have a chat with her and learn more about her occupation perspectives and her story.
We delved into a tonne of topics including OT’s and the drift away from occupation, professional identity, sensory modulation as well as Simone’s very own Occupation based pediatric resources. I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed having the discussion!
Operation Occupation was a project that I undertook a few years ago and was a turning point in my career for my personal growth into the profession of OT. Below is a presentation that I gave to the OT’s in my district about the “Operation Occupation” project whilst it was in progress:
For the longest time I’ve wanted to start a podcast. The blend of technology, creative expression and Occupational Therapy has always appealed to me greatly.
My vision for this is to be an online space where I can discuss concepts, new ideas, old ideas, talk to interesting OT’s, explore the dark depths of Occupation and generally have fun. If you have any ideas about topics you would like to hear broken down and discussed OR if you would like to discuss things with me then get in contact!
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