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Teri Barney. Occupational Therapy & Trauma Treatment: from the archives · The Trauma Therapist

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Or Today we even another episode from the archives with one of my incredible guests,
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enjoy or Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is guiming
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Person. My mission is to help Trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to
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be human, to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big
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believer in who we are is more important than what we know, and this
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requires cultivating authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can
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learn more about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot
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com. That's the Trauma Therapist project dot com. Let's get started, our
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guys. Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. I'm very excited to have
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my guest today, Terry Barney. Terry welcome, Thank you guy. I'm
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excited to be here all right. So Terry is not us an occupational therapist
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with twenty years of experience. He is the first occupational therapist or OT I've
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had on the podcast. She finds fulfillment in helping children, teens, and
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adults achieve good physical and mental health through meaningful functional activities, sensory integration,
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and psychosocial interventions. As an occupational therapist, an adoptive parent of two boys
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from each in Europe. Terry has a special interest in addressing attachment and complex
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trauma through activity and relationship based interventions that promote competence, self regulation, and
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confidence. Terry's recently completed an intensive eighty hour post grad program at Attached.
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That's ATTAC and international coalition and professionals and families dedicated to helping those with attachment
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difficulty. All right, Terry, obviously just a kind of human, a
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nutshell. But share with our listeners where you're calling from and where you're from,
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and now let's do it. Sure. I'm calling from self Glass and
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very Connecticut. I currently work in a therapeutic school in Connecticut. I love
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my professionals. An occupational therapist. I've been an occupational therapist for over twenty
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three years and working in a variety of medical and educational settings. As you
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said, I'm also an adoptive parent, which has kind of been part of
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my journey into the trauma and formed care world. I love English bulldogs,
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growing sunflower, ballroom, dancing, playing scrabble. Okay, so so those
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are my occupations. Okay, So yeah, I am really excited to have
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you on here because, as you may or may not have known, in
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my last job, I worked in a community clinic here in northern California for
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five years and we were assessing and treating kids showing early signs of psychosis.
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And on the team we had an OT and as you kind of alluded to,
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many of us didn't know what that was. So let's break it down.
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Let's start out, and I think more of it will kind of come
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out and unfold as we speak, But give us, give us your definition
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of what an occupational therapist or an OT is does, etc. Store So
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it's really occupational therapy. I could think, well, we do that a
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lot because it encompasses so much, but I love the profession and it's it's
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exciting. Um, it's really the only profession that helps people across the life
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span to do the things they want and need to do through the use of
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therapeutic daily activity. So we use activity to help achieve health. And you
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know, we really look to the person's diagnosis is important in terms of giving
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us a frame of reference, so what we're working on, but really we're
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more interested in the present moment and where this person is going, what's important
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to them. What do they want to do. So, you know,
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there's sort of several things that we look at as occupational therapists or that we
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that we specialize in. One, as I've already said, is the purposeful
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use of activity. So using activities to learn a lot about you, to
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figure out what your strengths are, to figure out where your weaknesses are,
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and to help you feel confident to move on from the space that you're in.
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We're experts that analyzing activities, figuring out what all the steps are in
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an activity and where a client might be breaking down. Um, we're great
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at adapting things, adapting act duties so that someone can do them with the
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limitations that they have, and also in adapting the environment, which is really
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critical when you look at people with sensory issues and trauma. Yeah. I'm
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sitting sitting here nodding my head in agreement because I'm recognizing a lot of what
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you said from my own experience. You know, not having previous experience with
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working with an OT, I didn't know what they did. And you know,
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whereas myself kind of when I when I was seeing clients as a as
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a younger clinicianum and having had the kind of trauma education that I did have.
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I was and and being pretty naive and inexperience, I was eager to
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get in there, you know, and kind of implement certain interventions. Um
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and oftentimes, as you know, we all know, many times people who
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experienced trauma talking isn't isn't the best thing to do at a specific time.
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And as you were taught explaining finding activities bringing to life again, right,
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activities that this particular person once loved or likes to do could oftentimes be a
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great way just to engage to the client and to give them confidence and to
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empower them. That was my one of my experiences. So I'm here nodding
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in agreement to everyone you're saying, and I really really appreciate it. And
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I think a lot of clinicians don't really, in my experience, just don't
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know that don't have that experience so exactly. And I love you. You
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hit the nail on the head from me because my you know, my passion
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sort of are you noted that you know not to talk as much? You
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know to China that you were inclined to talk more. And that's always my
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my big piece of advice to people is stop do stop talking and do do
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more, do more with the clients and the talking will come right. Yeah.
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So let's your your story is um? I mean, for what I've
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I've heard here is pretty interesting. Let's um kind of start and I do
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want you to tell us a story of how you kind of got into this
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field and where um along that journey the adoptive parent happened here. Yeah,
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I think it sort of happened first. But let me let me start a
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little bit because I think, UM back about two thousand and three, two
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thousand and four, I was working in a rural elementary school in Connecticut,
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U and I actually probably get really interested in this in trauma and form care
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to a degree, actually working through a young working with a youngster with autism.
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And the mother had come into the school and had gone to do process
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and had asked the school to do this special approach called relationship development intervention.
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And it was by a doctor Goodstein. I believe he was out of Texas.
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I'm not an expert in the whole approach, but we had a consultant
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working with us and the whole school team. So the school did this,
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they took this in the mother. It was really a home based program,
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but the mother came into the school and worked with the with the team every
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day and um it it changed my life as a therapist because we ended up
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pulling the child out of the classroom. She was a little girl with autism.
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She was in preschool and we worked for a whole year in a small
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room. Most of the time was just her and the adults and relationship activities.
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Everything was about relationship there weren't We didn't really introduce academics, per say,
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I mean, she was in preschool, but so everything was about working
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on reading non verbal cues, you know, tunement activities. And then as
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she progressed and she became more connected to us, so we then you moved
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into bringing in one peer and then working in small groups and down the road
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she was you know, integrated back into the classroom slowly, and I loved
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it. It was fascinating the whole approach. It was very I thought,
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this is occupational therapy. You know, we were working on flexible thinking on
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um you know, celebrating the completion of activities of using you know, my
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therapeutic use of self. So how do I use myself to connect and do
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therapy with people? So it was using my body, you know, my
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my eye, gazes my you know, touch my um oh, I don't
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know. Anything really that involves my relationship with her was what led her to
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be really successful. And by fourth grade she was fully integrated into the classroom
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without a one to one pair of professional. Um. There was a professional
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in the room, but it was just for me. I just thought,
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we can do this with every student. And you know, built into the
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program was sort of this idea of waiting um, so, waiting her out
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if she did not stay connected to us, we had to wait like a
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full ninety seconds before she came back, you know, see if she would
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come back to the activity and um and then if she didn't, mean you
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would approach and try to make her do one more trying to engage to her
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and one more turn or one more activity, you know, one more time
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of doing something. And I just found that that idea that she needed that
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time to process and she needed to be give even the opportunity to repair our
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relationship was just life changing for me, and I started doing it with all
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my students. Can you elucidate and kind of elaborate what maybe one or two
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of these interventions looked like the attunement and attachment. What exactly specifically you did
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you do? You know, you talked about using yourself and I mean,
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I think a lot of us can guess or maybe surmise, but what did
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you do? Sure love too. One of the first things I really started
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doing that built on sort of the things they did with her. I started
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to do with all my students was the first time i'd meet them, I
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would simply just sit across from them. I might take out some beads and
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I would hold up two beads and I would say, I'm going to you're
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going to pick one of the beads. You're gonna pick you the one on
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my right hand or the one in my left hand, and I'm going to
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nod my head yes or no, whether that's the bead I want you to
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take. And if I say yes, i want you to take it and
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I want you to string it. So now I'm working on some write,
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some fine motor activities, some bilteral hand activities. But they have to read.
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They when they just have to read my nod yes or no, and
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you know, believe it or not. For some kids, they couldn't do
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that. So sometimes I would have to pair the language with it at first,
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and then I would back off and just do the nods. The kids
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love it, so then what they so if it was a you know,
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I would do yes, yes, yes, for several times and then no,
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and then they would start to become intrigued as to why I was saying
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yes or no and which bead to take. And there was really no reason
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I had to do you know, why I was doing it. But what
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I found was it was it was a great way to get them in tune
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with me, for them to be clear about my nonverbal directions. I've often
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found frequent I could walk into a classroom after doing exercise like that if a
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student was maybe doing you know, out of their seat and needed to sit
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back down, I could just look at them and shake my head no and
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they would they would respond immediately. But to me, the ability for that
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nonverbal intervention was incredible. And you look at the processing issues that students have
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and stuff, I think that anytime you can minimize the language, you know,
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So then what I would do is I might start to step back from
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the student a little bit, you know, give a little more space if
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they could handle it, and then I might start to do it as I'm
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walking them from their classroom to the therapy room. I might be doing the
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same activity in the hallway, and then by the time they get to my
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room, they're sort of tuned into me. And I found that, you
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know, I'd like to use It was a great way to use every possible
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therapy moment, you know, to build their skills. So I did a
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lot of things in the hallway like that, and then what I might do
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is the next after they've sort of become competent and knowing what to expect doing
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it with beads, I might on a current school I mean I was using
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a small marble run. I had middle school boys, So I would use
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a little marble run and they'd have to pick them a marble and put it
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in, and then it's kind of intriguing to the other students walking by,
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and they come over. They want to know what the student's doing, and
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pretty soon the student's really interesting to other kids. And then I might change
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it about half so after they've become confident with a marble run, I would
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put a baseball cap on my head and I'd hold up two clothes pins and
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they would have to take a close the right clothespin and clip it on the
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brim of my hat. So now they have to again, you know,
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read my non verbals. They have to facial gaze. You know. It's
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funny, it's playful. I'm goofy. And as you're talking, you know,
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I'm really realizing how you're breaking down what many of us just accept as
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normal everyday interaction and behavior right into relation to personal behavior. Absolutely what you
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needs to be broken down and fundamentalize in a sense, step by step for
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these for some of these kids, for some people. Yeah, I mean
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I even found with some of my you know, my middle school kids in
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school where I work, and it's a functional classroom, but they would be
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raising their hands to answer questions in a group I was running and I would
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nod my head yes, and they would they just look at me. And
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I realized was that they didn't know what that meant, even at the age
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of fourteen. So I would I had to actually just do some very like
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you know, I'm going We're going to line up at the door. I'm
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going to look at you, and when I nod my head yes, I
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want you to get up and walk to the door. And you know that
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I was taken aback even then, you know, I was still having to
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kind of teach those skills even at that age. You know, awesome,
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thanks, thanks for doing that. So let's kind of talk talk more about
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continue, talk more about your your your own story, how you got into
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this and yeah, see where that goes? Okay, Well, I got
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into occupational therapy I think partly because you know, when I was in a
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junior in college, I was in a psychology of deaf and dyeing class,
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and I was always kind of interested in how people made meaning out of suffering.
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That was really interesting to me. And I went to a Jesuit college
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called Fairfield University in Connecticut, and so we had to take some religion classes.
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And I had some great professors I had when we studied religion that asked
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us to look at a situation in our life, and that when we did
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a survey of religion. So if we were studying Buddhism, we had to
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kind of summarize the reading that we did, and then we had to say,
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how would this religion tell us to deal with sort of the oh,
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I don't know, the challenge in our life that we were facing so you
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know, I sort of had this little spiritual journey of sort of looking at
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something in my life. At the time. It was a grandmother who with
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Alzheimer's disease who was living with us, and you know how a religion,
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this particular religion, would Tommy to deal with it. And we had some
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other I had some other courses like profits of non violence, so things studying
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people like Martin Luther King, and you know, looking at how do you
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be present with people who are suffering? So I was always very intrigued with
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that what does it mean to be present with people that are suffering? And
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I was an English major, so I was immersed in stories. And sometimes
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I thought, how did I make this jump from occupational theory from English to
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occupational therapy. But really, you know, it's all about being in people's
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stories, I think when you're in therapy. So I guess it wasn't really
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that big of a leap. I ended up actually then working at when I
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graduated, for a company that adapted children's books to film and video, but
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decided, you know, I really still wanted to do something with maybe idle
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children, and I ended up going up to Boston and just around the job
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signs at the hospitals up there and saw something called an occupational therapist and researched
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it and thought, this is what I would like to do. So that
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it's sort of how I got into occupational therapy. UM. And you know,
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then I just went to OT school and worked in a variety of different
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settings. UM. And then it ended up adopting about three or four years
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into my career, adapting two boys a year and a half a part or
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so from Russia, and UM, you know, I guess as we got
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them home and just started encountering some of the challenges UM. You know that
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you're dealing with with kids that have been in an orphanage, UM, who
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maybe haven't had solid attachment so UM. Sometimes their hyperactivity, their impulsivity.
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Sometimes we started to see learning issues at attention issues and trying to understand like
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what approach the you need. You know, they really responded to playful this.
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They didn't do well with sort of traditional kinds of disciplining. And so
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I'm a reader, so I started trying to learn, you know, about
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why this was so all this is going on while I'm sort of doing this
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special program with this little girl. The elementary school with autism, and I
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started to think, my goodness, this is so interesting. Everything we're doing
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with her is really things that would be fantastic for people that need to work
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on attachment with their children that they've adopted. So I just started to see
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these two paths kind of coming together and it just all made sense. And
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I think it was kind of when the ass study came out that I just
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had this huge aha moment where I was like, Oh, my goodness,
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there's like neurological reasons for all of this, and that was just a huge
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for me. I just a total aha moment. I almost couldn't sleep at
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night because it was like almost everything I had been learned and trying to figure
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out made sense. Um, when I studied, when I started learning,
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you know what was happening to the brain? Um was it challenging to to
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I mean, there's one thing to to to know this information to work with
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clients, but um, you know, oftentimes think it can be different when
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to your own kids, your own children. What was that experience Like,
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Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because I think it was in some ways I
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had a lot of understanding. I knew that my kids needed a lot of
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outdoor time, a lot of activity. You know, we would go to
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the park across the street and dig in the sandbox. I was always the
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last person at the pool on a rainy day to leave, you know,
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like I was always using UM sensory experiences. You know, as a as
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a parent and an occupational therapist, M I was sometimes puzzled, I think
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with sort of some of the school stuff about you know, sometimes feeling that
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you know, there's sort of a lack of understanding about maybe what they needed
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at school in terms of services. UM. That was sometimes challenging. Sometimes
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working as an OT all day and then coming home and having similar challenges with
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my children could be you know, tiring or um. But you know,
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I think I understood the need for simplicity in our own life and our family
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life, but um, you know, not traveling a lot on the weekends
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giving them time to just play at home and be quiet and not be overloaded,
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but they didn't thrive and sort of the typical things that a lot of
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children do in terms of being on sports teams, and you know a lot
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of that was just too overwhelming. So times it could be lonely, you
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know, as a parent of a child of special needs, and I think
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that helped me though, I think a lot to understand the parents that I
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of the students that I you know, interacted and the struggles they were facing
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were the the I guess what worked with them? I mean was the things.
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Were the things that you were utilizing with them or implementing Were they helping?
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And to what degree you know what work quote unquote yeah, um,
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you know, it's been. It was a lot of different things. I
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mean we had we had in addition to sort of just lots of lots of
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making sure that we had good sleep, you know, making sure that we
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had snacks, you know, start of making sure all their basic needs were
21:36
met, that they felt safe, maybe in situations that other students or other
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children might not feel, you know, so nervous about um. You know,
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sometimes one of my older son, anytime we went anywhere, he would
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tend to get um. I think it was anxiety probably, but anxious you
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know about where. You know, before before we got there, hamilst always
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threw up in the car. And we're trying to kind of you know,
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appreciate um, you know, some of the emotions that they must be feeling
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that you know, we had no idea, you know, no idea about
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but I think, UM, I think a lot of it was just keeping
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life simple, UM, you know, getting the right professionals involved, UM,
22:22
exploring medication at times, UM, you know, meeting with teachers.
22:29
UM. You know, it was a journey. It was interesting because it
22:33
was it was it was kind of the psychotomy of being a parent, UM
22:38
and trying to figure it out on that side. And then I would go
22:41
to work and be the professional so it all. You know, I could
22:44
do it as a professional, but I still needed to support as a parent.
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You know, from my village of UM friends and neighbors and you know,
22:53
professionals, UM, they were lucky to have you. Well thanks,
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thank you. Yeah. I mean, and you know, I'm not I'm
23:06
not where it's a challenge and it still is some days. And there's you
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know, and I think that brought for me and you know, a real
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understanding and ability to relate to UM. I don't know that I would have
23:18
appreciated the trauma informed approach without being an adoptive parent. And I really admire
23:22
people that can because I really think that that is what helped me to really
23:30
appreciate this approach and to say these you know, it is about the relationship.
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People need to feel safe. These kids need to feel safe. They
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have sensory you know, they're easily overwhelmed. They don't process things quickly.
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I don't think I would have appreciated that to the depth that I do had
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I not had it was my own children. Let's talk about kind of switch
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gears here, and I want to ask you about a kind of early clinical
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error. M. I want you to tell us that story. I mean,
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you've been doing this for a while. Yeah, I was trying to
24:07
think of something really specific. You know, I still go back to that
24:11
more than maybe not a specific incident, but that idea of um, just
24:17
not talking so much, you know, of talking too much, of trying
24:21
to be a cheerleader, you know, and entertaining to keep the child stimulated.
24:30
And what I what I found as I gained more experience, was that
24:33
sometimes really lots of repetition was really what the child needed. They needed sameness.
24:38
UM. I think understanding what it means to provide like a just right
24:45
challenge. UM. We call it an occupational therapy, where like you know,
24:48
you just you try to find that place where you're challenging this student or
24:56
your client just enough to the point where they feel successful and competent. And
25:02
so it's sort of walking a fine line where you know, getting them to
25:07
really be able to find that place of confidence and competency on their own,
25:11
you know, with your guidance. UM, I think appreciating my role as
25:15
a coregulator. I think I learned a lot of that with that relationship development
25:21
intervention program. I think, um valuing myself and the role of adults and
25:29
interventionists as coregulators. We have a really important role to set set that sense
25:34
of calmness and safety. And probably if I had to say anything else,
25:40
it would be, you know, the big idea of taking better care of
25:44
myself and the process of all of it. It's you know, as a
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as a caregiver, as a parent of kids with special needs, and as
25:51
an occupational therapist to really make making sure that I'm taking time out for you
25:56
know, to regroup. What does that look like for you? How do
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you do that for me now? Um? I take walks with friends,
26:07
I try to get together with friends. I ballroom dance. I just took
26:10
ballroom dance lessons, which actually was inspired by my younger son, you know,
26:15
so he liked sports, but he it was a lot for him to
26:18
to manage, you know, sports teams, and he played a little bit,
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but and I think, you know, he had some a little some
26:25
motor planning issues and stuff, so he wasn't always it was fun to play
26:29
sports, but it wasn't always his best thing. And then he was in
26:33
a play, you know. And that's the other thing is appreciating the arts
26:36
for and as an outlet. I didn't really grow up in a particularly artistic
26:38
family, but the arts have been so amazing for my children. But he
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was in a play and they learned ballrooms steps for Cinderella ballroom scene, and
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he decided he liked that. And uh so sixth grade he's been taking ballroom
26:51
dance lessons and you know, it's fantastic. It engages the whole body memory
26:57
and rhythm and tempo. And so I never was a dancer, and so
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um I started after about four years, started taking lessons and it was a
27:06
great activity for us to do together and it and it changed me. You
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know, it was very healing for me. It's always fun and it's very
27:14
relational, which I like. Have you I'm guessing you've worked at some point
27:21
and in some at some level with you know, mental health clinicians. Um,
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what what advice would you give to you know, those people who are
27:30
just starting out clinicians who are just starting out on this journey to become trauma
27:36
informed. You know you've been doing this for for again for a while as
27:38
an occupational therapist. But what would you say to them? Yeah, um,
27:45
I think you know a few of the things that I've probably already alluded
27:48
to butt my I would say, try to get an understanding of the neuroscience.
27:52
I think it'll help make sense of a lot of things. Um.
27:57
I think it helps you not to be so maybe judgmental about where you know
28:03
a child is coming from. Um, if you can appreciate that there's just
28:07
been brain changes. Um. I think I'm always trying to encourage the clinicians
28:12
you know that I've worked with who you know, why don't you try cooking?
28:15
You know, um, you know, instead of just sitting and chatting,
28:18
maybe you could get you know, sitting you know, make a box
28:22
of you know, brownies with them. When you say that, uh,
28:29
yeah, I should. But you know, it's like it's it's something that
28:33
you know, it's something if you're not used to doing that. To plan,
28:36
it takes planning. You have to get the materials and and and whatnot.
28:40
But um, you know, you know, sometimes I will, you
28:45
know, you try to model it, you know for people, or you
28:48
know, share stories of what happened or um. You know, I in
28:52
the elementary school I worked in, I did a lot of UM, we
28:56
did a lot of co treatment, tied with a special ed teacher and UM
29:00
speech language pathologists. You know, we work together a lot um and you
29:07
know, just we could learn what each other was working on and carry that
29:10
over. But also, you know, gave me an opportunity to say,
29:12
you know, you know, if you want to work on reading, it's
29:15
really good to stimulate the brain through swinging. Why don't we get your site
29:18
the site words out and put the child on a swinging and you know,
29:22
I have the child swing while they're trying to you know, practice their site
29:25
words. But it was hard. It was hard. I would say to
29:27
the reading you know instruction to feel free to use the swing. I'll come
29:30
do it with you. But it was hard to break people out of their
29:33
traditional roles. But once you did, if you found those few, you
29:37
know, some of those teachers that did and it could be it was it
29:41
could be a really amazing collaboration. You know, especially teacher to go down
29:45
to the gym with you and you know, work on reading with you know,
29:48
while the child on scooter boards and and things like that. So importance
29:55
of movement and touch, it's what I sort of keep trying to stress and
29:57
being in a therapeutic school, and that was my biggest you know, it's
30:02
been kind of interesting and fun to be back in the mental health side of
30:04
things. You know, those teams we get training both in mental health and
30:07
physical disabilities. And you know, because we've been so kind of immersed in
30:11
the physical disabilities piece because I don't know, you know, it's just people
30:15
work in hospitals and things a lot. It's been fun to really go back
30:18
to my roots and be like, you know, these students, you know,
30:21
they need some time to just do some things in their hands. You
30:23
know, they need to move, you know, if you want to teach
30:27
them their math facts, get them up and moving around, you know,
30:30
have them jump out a number line, have them, you know, have
30:33
them we do something about your triggers and what pushes your button. So you
30:37
know, let's sew a button and then label the button what their trigger button
30:41
is, you know, and teaching you know, functional activities and people are
30:45
traumatizing their in crisis. You know, the little things that you do every
30:48
day that seems you know, it seems so easy and natural and second nature.
30:52
You know, all of a sudden become hard. It's hard to get
30:53
up and get dressed. It's you know, it's hard to engage in your
30:59
daily activity and so um and sometimes their censory issues, you know and not.
31:04
The big piece of working in trauma unformed care is understanding the sensory piece,
31:10
um, you know, of being hyper aroused and hypo aroused, and
31:15
what strategies are going to help bring a child down to a place where they
31:18
can participate in school or home or what things are going to you know,
31:23
kind of get them up so that they engage. So that's the real area
31:29
for OTS to focus on. Awesome, I love it, Love it.
31:33
Um. How about a go to book recommendation, whether you know trauma related
31:37
or not, or OT related or not. What do you have? Yeah?
31:41
Can I say a couple? So one of my favorite books when I
31:45
was getting started as a as a parent, as an OT, working a
31:47
School's a book called Helps for Billy and it's by Heather T. Forbes,
31:51
and it's kind of a relational um approach to helping children in the classroom.
31:56
So he gives lots of um, really good I think Nero introduction it was
32:00
one of the first ones that kind of just grabbed me and was an a
32:04
moment for me. And then she just gives lots of ideas and understand lots
32:08
of support and understanding that you know, a lot of this isn't rooted in
32:13
sort of so much behaviors as it isn't you know, self regulation issues and
32:17
what they can do. So I loved that books say that last statement again,
32:23
a lot of this isn't rooted in behavior explained that because I think that's
32:28
important. Yeah, Like, um, you know, maybe you know that
32:32
idea that trum I did, you know, so of saying like, you
32:35
know, why are you doing this? It's sort of what happened to you
32:37
that's making you do this? Right? So, um, so that's sort
32:43
of what what I'm getting at with that, you know. Yeah, relation,
32:46
Yeah, it's so important. It's so easy to get blinded by what
32:52
you know, the behaviors just they they're they kind of become explosive on paper,
33:00
right, and that's what you see. But I really appreciate you kind
33:04
of highlighting that, so thank you. Yeah, yeah, that you know,
33:08
you can feel like a child's coming in ready to you know, you
33:10
know, they come in, they're ready to torture me, you know,
33:13
and you really know what the child's getting up coming to school, wanting to
33:16
be a difficult child. You know, things are happening for them, and
33:21
you know, let's get what those things are. Another great book that's written
33:25
by an occupational therapist that's kind of exciting right now. She's coming out with
33:29
a curriculum in the fall. It's called Interoception the Eighth Sensory System, and
33:35
that's by Kelly Maller. She's an occupational therapist and she's doing a lot of
33:39
research on how the how we feel sensations in our body. What does it
33:45
mean to feel hungry? You know, what's happening in our body when we
33:50
have inner sensations and then there's a lot of research that's showing that that's connected
33:52
to our emotions. So it's almost like the first step in teaching self regulation
33:58
is trying to figure out getting people to tune into their body. So it's
34:02
that real, you know, bottom up approach. UM. So I think
34:06
that's really exciting work that she's doing. UM. And you know, I
34:09
just have to give a little plug you know. One of your guests gave
34:12
a plug out. He recommended East of Eden and it wasn't you know,
34:15
really a you know, a trauma professional book at all, UM, and
34:20
I wentut and immediately listened to it and I loved that recommendation. So yeah,
34:24
so I'm gonna I'm gonna recommend a book called story Worthy. It's by
34:29
UM, a storyteller and teacher UM in the area where I live. And
34:32
he's one, oh, I don't know, something like thirty five of the
34:35
Moth Radio our story competitions. And the book is called story Worthy. UM.
34:43
And there's a little subtitle, but it's long, so I'll just leave
34:45
it A storyte story Worthy. It's by Matthew Dick's d I c KS and
34:50
he just talks about the small moments, the little moments in life, you
34:52
know, getting up in telling stories about it's the small moments in life that
34:59
really may because who we are and that makes life worth living and UM and
35:04
I kind of feel like that as an occupational therapist. You know, we're
35:07
we're down in the kind of the muddy waters of just the real simple,
35:10
daily lifecuities with its people. And you know they it may seem not very
35:15
glamorous, and it may seem, um you know sometimes we say, geez,
35:20
it's just it's so practical, it's so functional, it's it's so easy.
35:22
But you know it's not when you realize that not everybody does get that.
35:25
And and those are the beautiful moments, you know, And there's the
35:29
little things in our life that make us, um, you know, feel
35:32
good about who we are and you know, feeling independent and competent and you
35:37
know, um in control. So true. I love that you highlighted that.
35:44
Um so just again, everything is going to be up at the show
35:46
notes page at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. I want to remind everyone
35:50
that I'm speaking with Terry Barney and Occupational Therapists Extraordinaire. The three books Help
35:57
for Billy Beyond Consequences Approach to helping challenging children in the classroom Introception, second
36:02
book, The Eighth Century System, and then Story Worthy Engage, Teach,
36:07
persuade, and change your life through the power of storytelling. UM. All
36:12
right, Terry, what's the best way for people to get in contact with
36:15
you? UM? I have an email OTT Emotions at gmail dot com.
36:25
I have an Emotions okay, awesome. I have a little Facebook page that
36:30
I'm started under the same title, but it's kind of under construction. I'm
36:35
sort of hoping to start a little side practice, UM, kind of specializing
36:37
in self regulation, trauma, attachment, UM and ot. Yeah. So
36:45
I'm sort of working on that slowly, trying to figure out where how I
36:49
can do that, and I'm excited. Awesome. Look, I want to
36:52
thank you so much for taking the time to do this. UM uh,
36:57
really, I appreciate it. You're the first one again, first occupation timers
37:00
I've had on here and it's been awesome. I want to thank you for
37:05
taking the time to do this. Thank you so much for having me.
37:07
I really appreciate it. All right, Terry, take care, you have
37:10
a great day. Bye bye.