OTs In Pelvic Health

What If My Client Isn't Ready to Commit to Pelvic Rehab?

• Season 1 • Episode 72

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Lindsey New and seasoned OTs are finding their calling in Pelvic health. After all, what's more ADL than sex, peeing and poop? But here's the question What does it take to become a successful, fulfilled and thriving OT. in Pelvic health? How do you go from beginner to seasons and everything in between? Those are the questions and this podcast will give you the answers. We are inspired, OTs. We are out of the box OTs, we are Pelvic Health OTs. I'm your host Lindsey Vestal and welcome to the OTs and Pelvic health Podcast. 

I had this beautiful opportunity to connect with a OT pioneer alumni yesterday, and she asked me some really thoughtful questions and I really wanted to jump on this week's episode and share some of them with you, because I have this really strong feeling that many of you can relate to this question that she asked me. And I think it's beautiful to bring up some of the vulnerability and self-doubts that many of us who have reinvented ourselves in a new field of practice like public health, have, you know, were maybe very accomplished in other roles that we've had in our lives, whether that was a different practice area within OT. or perhaps in our relationships and volunteer experiences and any of the other myriad of roles that we play. But when we make this transition over to a new specialty area, it can rock the boat within us in a way that we're confronting some of the things that perhaps we hadn't confronted since we were in our 20s or even our 30s. And now with this older, wiser version of ourselves, it's kind of like putting it into the rubric of imposter monster or self-doubt. Sally, as I like to call it, is, is really real and worth examining and I think worth bringing on to a platform like this podcast, because I think that the more we talk about these things and the more that we understand that it's such a part of the human condition, my hope and my goal is that we all can lean on each other a little bit more and feel the fear a little bit less. So the question that my beautiful student brought to me was she saw her first client the day before, and this was a newly postpartum person that she saw. And the person was six weeks postpartum. And my UTI pioneer student kept replaying in her mind thoughts that she had or thoughts that she would have if she was in the same situation. Such as perhaps I shouldn't have come to session. Perhaps I don't have the time and the capacity to commit to this right now. I you know, I've just had this baby. I'm still trying to navigate this new role, transition. Just what have I taken on? And I want to share with you the conversation that we had. And I hope that some part of it resonates with you. And I would love to hear from you if it does. So I'm actually going to take a clip from our mentoring session together and play it for you in this conversation. So this is word for word the thoughts that I shared with with my wonderful student regarding her question of the self-doubt that we may experience when we're sitting across from a new client wondering if they're ready to buy in to the commitment to this service and to bet on investing in themselves. All right. Here it is. It's so interesting, right? Because there's a whole it's so it's so interesting. There's like a whole nother part to this that we're never privy to. We wonder, well, are they willing to take that that milestone for themselves? And I know I often wasn't. I went through ups and downs myself of taking care of myself and then prioritizing that. But then there's another conversation where this person in front of you finally goes, I've had enough. I am I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I'm sitting across from my new pelvic floor therapist and she's listening to me and she's giving me great eye contact. And I really think she can help me. I'm excited for the first time that I have been in a long time, I'm making time for myself. Here I go. You know, like there's a whole nother flip side to that conversation that we're never going to know which one is being had. And if we don't show up, assuming the second one, we might be doing them a disservice. Because what if this is their one break, what one hour break they're having that day? So if that other conversation is happening, the one where they're going, why did I do this? I can't believe I'm going to be, you know, committing several more sessions. It's better for both of us, for both you and the client to almost pretend the other conversation is happening because A, it could be. And B, if it's not, you may show up differently. You might go, you know, she's just going through the motions when instead there might end up even be a turning point in the course of working together where she's like, Wait a second. Like, this actually makes so much sense. The stuff that I feel that I never understood before that my new pelvic floor therapist is sharing with me makes me really feel like I can step into my body. And the other part of it is when they realize that they're being an example for their child. You know, when we demonstrate self-care, when we demonstrate that, that we prioritize ourselves, our little ones are going to go on and do that for them. And that, I think, is also a way that I got a lot of buy in and in my own head would tell myself, okay, I know they're doing this. Maybe they don't believe in it yet, but they're doing it for the future and for that future self. When they want to play on the ground with their grandkids without worrying about a sore back or leaking, you know. So there's always two choices. I mean, there's probably way more than that. But for the sake of simplicity, there's two there's two conversations. And if we're never going to know the truth, why not assume the one that makes us our best self? So that was the short clip from the conversation that I had with my own pioneer mentee. Which I am so grateful for her asking such an important and brave question that I do feel like we can continue to ask ourselves and explore sort of how we're showing up in the course of every single day with every single client, whether it's our first or our fourth that day. Because I do believe that if we walk in with the highest and best intention, we are always going to show up as our best self and we're encouraging our client to do the same. 

Lindsey Thanks for listening to another episode of OTs and Pelvic health. If you haven't already, hop on to Facebook and join my group OTs for Pelvic health, where we have thousands of OTs at all stages of their Pelvic health career journey. This is such an incredibly supportive community where I go live each and every week. If you love this episode, please take a screenshot of this episode on your phone and post it to IG Facebook or wherever you post your stuff and be sure to tag me and let me know why you like this episode. This will help me to create in the future what you want to hear more of. Thanks again for listening to the OTs and Pelvic health podcast. 


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Lindsey Vestal

Host