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Occupied

108 Episodes

116 minutes | 2 days ago
107 – Life and OT in the Arctic ft Rachel Schooley
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 Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.comwww.occupiedpodcast.comwww.patreon.com/occupiedplus If you want even more valuable content join <<Occupied Plus+ on Patreon>> for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship and much much more!
42 minutes | 12 days ago
106 – Semantics and Platitudes in OT
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: HolisticWoo WooFunctionServingand 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 Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.comwww.occupiedpodcast.com If you want even more valuable content join Occupied Plus+ on Patreon for bonus podcast episodes, resources, mentorship and much much more!
9 minutes | 17 days ago
ANNOUNCEMENT: Launching Occupied Plus+ on Patreon
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! Join the Occupied Plus+ Patreon www.patreon.com/occupiedplus If you have any questions feel free to get in contact and let me answer them for you! Keep Occupied Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.comoccupiedpodcast.compatreon.com/occupiedplus
61 minutes | a month ago
105 – OT Needs to be Doing Being and Becoming MORE ft Khalilah Johnson
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. Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.comwww.occupiedpodcast.com
49 minutes | a month ago
104 – My Hospital Stay Reflection
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 Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.comwww.occupiedpodcast.com
111 minutes | 2 months ago
103 – Lived Experience Inside Graffiti Culture ft Mr Toy Division
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. Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.comwww.occupiedpodcast.com
98 minutes | 2 months ago
102 – Difficult Conversations & BPD ft Keir Harding
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. Keirs links:https://twitter.com/Keirwaleshttps://www.instagram.com/keirhardingot/https://www.beamconsultancy.co.uk Look after yourself, look after others and always keep OccupiedBrock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.comwww.occupiedpodcast.com Automatic Transcription 102 Difficult Conversations & BPD ft Keir Harding 00:00:01 – 00:05:02 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
107 minutes | 2 months ago
101 – Comprehensive Kawa ft Dr Michael Iwama
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 Dr Iwama’s details: https://twitter.com/michael_iwamahttp://www.kawamodel.com/v1/https://www.facebook.com/KawaModel Keep Occupied Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.comwww.occupiedpodcast.com Automatic Transcription 101 Comprehensive Kawa ft Dr Michael Iwama 00:00:00 – 00:05:18 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’
116 minutes | 2 months ago
100 – A Celebration of OT Podcasting
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 😉 Keep Occupied Brock@brockcookOT brock.cook@me.com www.occupiedpodcast.com
80 minutes | 3 months ago
099 – Sexualisation and Identity ft Sakshi Tickoo
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. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dr. Sakshi Tickoo (she/her) (@sex.love.andot) https://www.sexloveandot.com/ Keep Occupied Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
28 minutes | 3 months ago
098 – What Does My Depression Look Like?
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 Keep Occupied Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
73 minutes | 3 months ago
097 – The OT Lifestyle Movement ft Rhiannon Crispe
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.” Keep Occupied Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
29 minutes | 3 months ago
096 – A New Look at Resolutions
WELCOME TO 2021!!! 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! Mentioned is a previous episode that you can find right here: What SMART Goals are DUMB Keep Occupied Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
22 minutes | 4 months ago
094 – BEST OF 2020 – The Dark Side of Therapy Memes
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. Keep Occupied Brock @brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
94 minutes | 4 months ago
093 – BEST OF – Dev and Brock Deep Dive into Gender Identity and Stigma
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! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Devlynn, MS OTR/L (They/Them) (@therainbowot) on Sep 20, 2019 at 5:27pm PDT I loved this conversation. It was challenging and enlightening and real and raw. I hope everyone gets as much out of our conversation as I did. Listen to these episodes for more in depth information defining the different gender identities: You can find Devlynn’s website FULL of awesome resources here:https://therainbowot.com/ Keep Occupied Brock @brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
116 minutes | 4 months ago
092 – BEST OF 2020 – Unpacking Colonised Thinking
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.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Australia Personal Reflection 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. Keep Occupied Brock @brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
79 minutes | 5 months ago
091 – Falls Prevention and OT
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. Check her out here: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Erin Jeffords, MS, OTR/L (@theotadvocate) Keep Occupied Brock @brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
89 minutes | 5 months ago
090 – Exploring Graffiti as an Occupation
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. Keep Occupied Brock @brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
90 minutes | 5 months ago
089 – Leading a Mindful Life with Jess Leggatt
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. Keep Occupied Brock @brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
30 minutes | 6 months ago
088 – Starting a New Hobby
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. View this post on Instagram Breakfast and a wander around Cairns Shot with #canon90d #dronephotography #dji #townsvilleshines #townsville #mavicair2 #mavicair2photography #sunset #sunsetphotography #dronelife #dronestagram #droneshots #drone #dronestagram #droneshots #canonphotography #canon #townsvillephotography #townsvillephotographer #sunrise #cairns #cairnsofinstagram #cairnslife A post shared by Brock Cook (@keep3rphoto) on Sep 29, 2020 at 7:48pm PDT Keep Occupied Brock @brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com
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