OTs In Pelvic Health
Welcome to the OTs In Pelvic Health Podcast! This show is for occupational therapists who want to become, thrive and excel as pelvic health OTs. Learn from Lindsey Vestal, a Pelvic Health OT for over 10 years and founder the first NYC pelvic health OT practice - The Functional Pelvis. Inside each episode, Lindsey shares what it takes to succeed as a pelvic health OT. From lessons learned, to overcoming imposter syndrome, to continuing education, to treatment ideas, to different populations, to getting your first job, to opening your own practice, Lindsey brings you into the exciting world of OTs in Pelvic Health and the secrets to becoming one.
OTs In Pelvic Health
Helping Clients Cultivate Curiosity with Lara Desrosiers + Jessica Dobson
- OT Pioneers: Intro to Pelvic Floor Therapy opens Sept 16-20, 2024
- Introducing the Functional Pelvic Practitioner Levels and Certification - for OTPs Craving a Structured and Recognized Path to Specialize in Pelvic Health
- Trauma Informed Pelvic Health Certification with Lara and Lindsey
More about my guests:
-Jessica Dobson can be found at @pelvicyogiOT
-Lara Desrosiers can be found at @mindyourpop FB @pelvicresilience and @mindyourpop. Lara and I co-created the Trauma Informed Pelvic Health Certification.
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Pelvic OTPs United - Lindsey's off-line interactive community for $39 a month!
Inside Pelvic OTPs United you'll find:
- Weekly group mentoring calls with Lindsey. She's doing this exclusively inside this community. These aren't your boring old Zoom calls where she is a talking head. We interact, we coach, we learn from each other.
- Highly curated forums. The worst is when you post a question on FB just to have it drowned out with 10 other questions that follow it. So, she's got dedicated forums on different populations, different diagnosis, different topics (including business). Hop it, post your specific question, and get the expert advice you need.
More info here. Lindsey would love support you in this quiet corner off social media!
Lindsey Vestal Today I'm joined by two incredible occupational therapy practitioners. The first is Lara Desrosiers, an OT in Canada who has a private practice pelvic resilience that has a mission of supporting individuals struggling with pain and pelvic health challenges to get back to living with life. Lara mentors and teaches other clinicians who are interested in building stronger partnerships with their clients and to build their psychologically informed practice while maintaining their own wellness and balance. Lara and I actually partnered together to create the first trauma informed Pelvic health certification. And what an incredible journey that has been. If you want to learn more about this one of a kind program, please head over to functionalpelvis.com/trauma. We are joined by Jessica Dobson as well. Now, Jessica was part of our inaugural cohort in the trauma Informed Pelvic health Certification. She's been on the podcast several times in the past. She's been an OT for over 12 years and is a lifelong learner, currently deep diving into all things trauma, informed care and digestive health. She is a self-described as a health and wellness cheerleader. She's passionate about helping others learn how to connect with their bodies and promoting wellness through nutrition, stress management and life balance. Her favorite quote is by Oscar Wilde, which is Be yourself. Everyone else is taken. I can't wait for you to hear today's conversation.
Intro New and seasoned OTs are finding their calling in Pelvic health. After all, what's more adult than sex, peeing and poop? But here's the question What does it take to become a successful, fulfilled and thriving O.T. 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.
Lindsey Vestal Thank you so much, both Jessica and Lara, for being my guest today on the OTs for Pelvic health podcast. I have to admit, this is a really special episode for us. Lara and I have both co-created the first and only Trauma Informed Pelvic health certification, and Jessica was part of our very first inaugural cohort. And so what an honor. What a privilege to be sharing this space with you today. Diving into a couple case studies about how Jessica has incorporated trauma informed care into her current pelvic health practice setting. I'm so excited for this conversation.
Jessica Dobson Thank you so much for having me on. I'm so excited to be here and to talk to everybody about trauma informed care. How much I am so grateful for the opportunity I had. So if any of you get the opportunity in the future to be part of the public health Informed certification, I highly recommend it. It really put into words what I feel like I have been doing my whole career. But it was the blueprint. It was the extra advice and the verbiage and the language that really all brought it home for me.
Lara Desrosiers Thanks so much. That's awesome. And yeah, it's been such a special process, getting it out there and such a special experience with this first cohort of really amazing clinicians. I think what I really appreciate about it is we've got so many people with unique focuses and skill sets in their practice. And Jess, I first encountered you and your name when you did your presentation at the Oxford Public Health Summit and learned so much for you from you around gut health and nutrition. So it's been really cool to see each clinician kind of blend these trauma informed and nervous system informed approaches to into their skill set and their kind of wheelhouse. So thank you for being a part of it.
Lindsey Vestal Speaking of digestive health, I would love to roll up our sleeves on one of the two case studies that we're going to be chatting about today. And this first one absolutely does blend Jess's unique skill set and passions which are digestive health and trauma informed care. So this particular client, we'll call her Sarah, her her. She came to you just with a history of anxiety. She had depression. And her doctor said that she had knocked urea, which was getting up at night to pee frequently, which is exactly why she was referred to you. She basically wasn't sleeping at all. In fact, I think you said that she was getting between five she was getting up 5 to 6 times a night when she came to see you. And so some background here was that she has the empty h f r gene. And because of that, there was a very strict focus on diet. And actually she lost a ton of weight in this process because her diet became so restrictive. Also, I want to mention that you had shared with us as a result, she was very malnourished and it really affected that anxiety and that depression, that mental health component due to malnutrition, due to that restrictive relationship with food. So much so just that you shared that just a couple of years ago when she was in her 60s, she actually tried to commit suicide. So I have to say that finding you, finding you was like, my gosh. I basically had tears in my eyes when I was listening to your case because I just couldn't think of a better fit for her from a practitioner client relationship. Tell us a little bit more about this client in terms of your experience with her, her, her demeanor. And then, of course, I can't wait to roll up our sleeves on the treatment sessions together.
Jessica Dobson Yes. So she came to me and it was very fortunate for us in the past few years where the clients that I'm well-equipped to treat and the things I'm learning about those are the ones who are coming into my doors. It's like this beautiful symbiotic relationship of I they have what I need. I have what they need. And she was very willing. So there's that flipside that the other case that you were going to talk about where there is the opposite of that but she was tell me everything. Show me everything. She wanted to get better. She had heard from a friend that I had helped with some nervous system regulation things. So she was very open to that idea of trauma informed care. So with her, I have that buy in right away, which was super helpful. She had experienced so much medical trauma that. Was hard for her to trust anyone really at this point. She was told she needed to change her diet, as you mentioned, and she was just so disregulated. And she knew it. She knew she couldn't sit still. She couldn't sometimes get up out of bed. She didn't know what to do with herself. So using so many of the tools that we had learned, I started just getting curious with her. Just that's the biggest thing that I find to be helpful is to keep an open mind, keep the curiosity about what this could look like with the client. And then also. Cultivating curiosity in them. And this client was very. Up front with her gene mutation. But I didn't know that she had this relationship with food that was not serving her anymore. A very unhealthy relationship due to what she had been told. So that's the digestive health piece that I started with when I started incorporating the nervous system regulation tools, because really they go hand in hand the gut brain connection. We're learning more and more about it's undeniably a factor in mental health, what's happening to the gut. So I had to look at these two things and find a way to mold it together.
Lindsey Vestal And as it turns out, it wasn't nocturia , right?
Jessica Dobson It was not. She really wasn't having an issue with using the bathroom at night. But her doctor wasn't listening or hearing that it was the answer to her problems. But no, she wasn't getting up to use the bathroom. She was getting up to meditate for several hours, which was just such a funny thing because that's a tool we try to use with our clients when they are disregulated and they are overstimulated. But for her, this was something she was doing, almost alerting her too much in the nighttime. It did bring her a lot of joy, but it wasn't serving the purpose anymore to help calm and regulate her nervous system.
Lara Desrosiers I would love to ask Jessica, because I think one thing I'm hearing and there is a part of the medical trauma that perhaps she experienced where all of these passages around that she shouldn't trust her intuition or her gut about what's going on with her and listening to me. And I have the answers for you around what's going on for you and your body in terms of that diet that she was recommended to go on in terms of even that diagnosis of bacteria, perhaps. And it just it strikes me that you kind of taking that step back and being really curious with her. I wonder what your thoughts are on. Do you think that helps her kind of have a bit of space to not only build trust with you, but also to just kind of rebuild that trust with her own intuition? It sounds like she had a lot of great insights already in her to what was going on for her.
Jessica Dobson Yeah, great question. And that's exactly it. She did have the tools, but she didn't trust herself. And we had a lot of conversations about that generationally. That's something that was kind of forced upon. You didn't question other authority. And so for her, that was very shameful to question others and listen to herself. So I would ask her all the time, what do you think? What are you hearing yourself say? What are you feeling? And giving her that space to really connect to herself and just allow whatever to happen from there.
Lara Desrosiers So beautiful.
Lindsey Vestal It's so beautiful. And, you know, there's a couple of things you said that I'm like that I've written down that just resonate with me so much. The first was, of course, being curious as clinicians and maintaining that open mind. But I also heard you take it a step further in talking about helping her to cultivate that curiosity. And Lara, that's exactly what what you pulled out from from hearing, you know, hearing this case study, which I just think is is so beautiful. And the other thing that's so remarkable is we're inundated in our society. We need to meditate. We you know, we need to have this this in our life, you know, and we feel bad that we're not doing it enough. But, Jessica, you had this amazing perspective to hear. This is fantastic. You're doing this, you know, in, though, in real time when you need it in the middle of the night. But actually, through cultivating curiosity, you actually determined that this well versed tool, it is well touted and evidence based. Was it right for her? So tell us a little bit more about how you use the sensory system to kind of recalibrate and get her back to going from 5 to 6 times a night of waking up to only 1 to 2?
Jessica Dobson Wow. So we used a lot of bringing her nervous system back down in the night. She is more of a hyper alert person in general. She's like one of those amazing 56 year olds that you just want to sit and talk to under a tree in the afternoon kind of lady. And I just loved her personality. But I could see when she was talking about what was happening in the night that she was revving up like I could witness it in her body. I was seeing the tension in her neck. And so I knew that this calm persona that I was seeing wasn't what was happening in the night. So when we started to talk about tools for regulation, I wanted her to have her meditation. I wanted her to have those tools that really did help bring her joy and regulation. But to flip it and using it throughout the day versus at night. So we changed up our alertness to more alert activity with meditation during the day. And then at night when we were getting awoken or, you know, a lot of times with sleep, it's really patterns and it's just you're used to getting up. Your brain wakes you up. So when that was happening, instead of alerting herself to, I have to do this meditation and the sequence and these things, I'm going to do nothing and I'm just going to be low level arousal and feel just very calm and quiet and keep the lights low. I always recommend never look at the time, never look for sound. Try to keep everything as low as possible to help transition into the next sleep cycle.
Lindsey Vestal Just bravo for also the observations. That was a big part of our trauma informed certification. Lara when you agree, just talking about the kind of the observations and again, on surface level, if she's meditating, amazing how many of our clients come to us with a meditation practice like none. She had this, but due to your astute observations, you recognize that it was doing the exact opposite. So I just think that's incredible. There is another piece to this that really struck me. You had mentioned that she had lost a lot of weight, right? So she she was pretty malnourished, which was contributing to a lot of her anxiety and depression. But part of that, too, you mentioned how when our faculty morale levy came in and talked about being a safe provider with size neutral care. You had mentioned how this really influenced kind of how you saw this client. Can you tell us more about that?
Jessica Dobson Yes, that was such an amazing conversation and very emotional for me as well. And when I was working with this client, that conversation kept coming into my head about biases and just, you know, recognizing her own biases. And she was a thin woman and she looked very healthy as health doesn't discriminate with body size is we don't know what happens in the inside mentally or physically with people. And I think that's a bias that we can all just take a little look at. And I did with her and I started to question what's her relationship with food now and what's her relationship with her own body. Is she comfortable with how she looks? Does she have self compassion with her body? And I don't know that I would have thought about that as much without that conversation of just opening the doors of of biases and just our preconceived ideas of what someone looks like. So with her, she did. She ended up having this body image that had shifted because she wanted to gain weight and she couldn't. And it stressed her out even more that she couldn't and felt a lot of shame because the language people were referring back to her was, you're fine, you look fine. And she didn't feel fine.
Lara Desrosiers That brings me back to this is a bit of a personal story, but I really appreciated that call with with Mara as well. And it brings me back to my own perinatal experience and how I used to feel in my body. And then after having babies and having to adjust to a body that I wasn't prepared for, how much it changed. And then when I started to be able to kind of get back into my movement and my fitness routines, I started to get all of these comments that were intended to be compliments, right? About how how well I was looking. And and I was blown away by how uncomfortable that made me after having gone through this process of learning to accept my body as it was and go at its pace. And I yeah, one of the things that I appreciated from the conversation with Mara is. A good rule of thumb and something that I'm starting to do more and more is is just not comment on people's bodies. Right. And I think as clinicians, we can get curious about their relationship with their bodies. But but being much more mindful, whether it's in a clinical setting or outside of a clinical setting of those unsolicited comments we might make about people's bodies. Yeah.
Lindsey Vestal Beautiful reflections are. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I'd love to to bring in our second case now, which was also incredibly fascinating. It was someone just that you had been treating for about four months and are still treating and you're also still treating the first client we talked about. And this client had been treated by many other therapists, including your employer. She has a history of bipolar depression, anxiety, lichen sclerosis, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, several bladder lifts and now was upcoming and approaching her urethral sling a new urethral sling. Her son had committed suicide within the last five years, and she had been referred to you for relaxing her pelvic floor and use of dilation, which, as you found out, she actually didn't need. She was not overactive at all. I want to hear about that. And I also just want to add in that she was really insistent on seeing you 2 to 3 times a week with almost like a fervor from from what I could tell in this case study that you submitted. Can you tell us about about that, as well as the fact that how you discovered she actually wasn't overactive?
Jessica Dobson So this is kind of opposite from the other case as far as the demeanor of the client. She came in with a very specific idea of what she wanted, very rigid about how treatment was going to look. Very nice, but very stuck in her own cycle of what this was going to be. And it turns out so she had had pelvic health or pelvic floor therapy in the past, and she had had internal work one time by somebody that did really, really help. However, the doctor that was referring her to me had not done an internal exam and was asking to get me as the clinician her muscles to be relaxed with dilator as an internal work. So though the outline was very rigid from the get go, there was a lot of push and pull I was getting from her. So I had to really start with boundaries and explaining to her what I did. So this is this is the dance that I'm really trying to cultivate with myself, being better at where I'm introducing the trauma informed care, but I'm not making it part of the treatment plan yet. But I want to open that little window of light just to help that client know that this could be different. So I just explained what I was trained in and why it might look different because that I was an occupational therapist and my background is in mental health and I have treated in various settings before, and I'm very passionate about connecting the mind and the body. So she had this idea on day one that it might look different. So that was probably the biggest barrier was getting her to look outside of her very closed door. And I think with trauma informed care, sometimes that's all you can do in the beginning is just show the glimmer. Because you can't force people to open doors. They aren't capable at that moment, aren't able to understand or accept the information. So that was probably the hardest part to begin with.
Lara Desrosiers I'm curious, Jess, I think that's just such an important point and something I think that we all as clinicians struggle with right when we see the pathway that this maybe needs to go. But it's going to take a little bit of time because it really is the person that needs to get to a place of readiness to be able to go that pathway. Right. And so one of the things that big questions is that we we got help a lot, especially early on in this program, is how do I get them there? Right. Like, how do I get them to that point of readiness? And so I'd love to hear a little bit more because it sounds like this was a case where you really needed to meet her, where she was, and the movement had to be at a pace that worked for for her. What did that look like?
Jessica Dobson Yeah. So I've really been purposeful lately about this is not my journey. And I tell my clients that this is not my journey. This is your journey. You can take what you want. You can leave whatever you don't. It. It's not going to hurt my feelings. I'm here to facilitate, to educate, to open any doors you want to open. I'm a load of information and passion. And this is your journey, because I think right away we need to show them that they're part of this because that's not what our medical model does. We don't give that permission to clients to, you know, we go to a doctor's office, we don't get a lot of choices. So I really want them to know that one, this is this is going to be very open and your part of it. You're my partner, but you can do whatever you want. And the biggest part for me and for us as clinicians is to let go of the need to fix everyone and to make the changes, because sometimes we're just planting the seeds, we're just cultivating the curiosity. We're just opening these little doors, we're opening the blinds, but we can't make people change or understand things that they're not ready or able to or want to.
Lara Desrosiers Yeah. I want to snap. I want to do like this. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I think those are just such beautiful reflections. And I think such an important message for all of us. Which is really hard. Like I would say, this is something that I've been working on for many, many years. But still, when I'm feeling at my max and really overwhelmed, I find myself falling back into that pattern of I just want to get them there faster, that desire to fix. And so I think for us, like noticing what are my signs that those patterns are showing up for me and how can I find those ways to let go of that agenda, to move that quicker, then they're ready for huge. So thank you for that. I really, really appreciate that reflection and need to re hear it a lot myself too.
Jessica Dobson But isn't that like the whole interesting thing that our clients are our teachers and when we get to public health or trauma informed care, we're leveling up and we need that reflection back from those clients. We need to learn those lessons, too, because that's where we are. We have to practice what we preach, but it's so hard.
Lara Desrosiers It is. And I love your observations. Like even with that first client that we talked about building our capacity to notice on these different levels, when that resistance is showing up, whether it's coming from them or it's coming from us. But it's our ability to observe like the subtle things, like body language, like you did for that one client. Right. Or to notice how that resistance is feeling for us. We, as you said, likely develop more and more insights that we can use over time to step back from that six or kind of drive and into that curious, curious kind of place.
Lindsey Vestal Speaking of curiosity, in both of these cases, you really demonstrate that, right? Like with the with the first client, you know, it was really about the fact that there was know, the malnourishment, the rigidity with the eating and that connection with her diagnoses. But then with this client, it was the fact that you determined that she really didn't need the dilator work. She really didn't have an overactive pelvic floor. So can you tell us a little bit now about what you did discover that she needed and what techniques you used?
Jessica Dobson So this client was very dissociative, kind of came in with almost these two personalities. And I learned real quick through all of our coursework there, this was nervous system responses that she had learned over the years for self preservation. And she used to dissociate or shut down at times. So our biggest thing was she didn't really know where her pain was. She didn't know where it was coming from. She honestly couldn't tell me if it was internal or external. So we had to start with just bringing her into her body and trying to find a way for her to be able to explore and experience where the pain was. Were there boundaries to this pain? Was global. So that was the the first big lightbulb moment for me, but also for her that, I'm actually having external pain. So it it turned out it was more vulgar pain. She didn't have a lot of internal pain, but she was told she that. So she bought that narrative and lived it and used all these treatments and all of these gels and all these. Googling late at night to how to fix her pain with intercourse. That wasn't a separate issue, that she had an address in a very long time when really there was this other part of it. But she was never asked about it. She had never explored it. So we had to get her connected with her body.
Speaker 1 And so. Sorry. Go ahead, Lara.
Lara Desrosiers I was going to ask because I, I just having listened to this case study already, you took a really. Curious approach, it sounds like, again, to help find the right direction, to help her take steps towards that. And a really cool sensory. Q So I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you helped her to start to connect with her body.
Jessica Dobson Yeah. So it was very mindful. I asked a lot of questions. We had a lot of conversations. She was quite the talker. So I did gain a little bit. She would always refer to crafts and I have small children, so part of the building rapport was talking about what I did with my children for activities. And she was always giving me suggestions on crafts and art. So I got a little curious about that during our session, and when I asked her to try to identify her pain. I asked her about color and texture. And so she was using watercolor paint to describe her pain. And it was so cool. I didn't have any of this planned. It's all just off the cuff intuition treatment that while we were doing it, we were talking about boundaries. Where does your pain start and end? And what did the colors look like? And the boundary on the outside of it and the inside. Is it all the same color image? And it was really cool because she was able to only create some boundaries of her pain based on using color because it was just so purposeful for her. She enjoyed art. She enjoyed coloring. She dabbled in art prior to having children. So it was a really great way to bring her in. And then we worked on blurring the lines of the color, making it more of a water watercolor picture of can we add more water to this red area to make it pink in it? And these were ideas she was coming up with. She was painting it. And then she was like, Can I use a paintbrush? I'm like, Absolutely, whatever you want. So it was a really great way where it worked out, you know, using that intuitive piece of just what would work well with this client. Because none of the other traditional cues I was trying were making any sense. Right.
Lara Desrosiers I love that so much because for a couple of things, like one thing is using your intuition, it sounds like to take it where she needed to take it to find that cue that was really empowering for her. But for us, how much weight does it take off our shoulders when we're able to kind of take that step back and allow the client's wisdom to kind of come to the surface and use that to guide the approach that we take? It's just such a beautiful example of that Jess.
Jessica Dobson Thank you. It was it was fun. It's one of those times where things, you know, really show you what you can do. And it's there's so much mind and brain involved in this that. You know, we can change so much with just the way we think.
Lara Desrosiers Yeah. Speaking of that, I have it. I have another question for you, and this is that I think about both of these case studies in a way. I'm curious because it sounds like for both of these clients, as you are able to help them kind of cultivate that curiosity and connect with their body in new ways, they did experience changes to those symptoms that they were coming to you for. And they also were both really struggling with their mental health when they came to you. So I'm curious if some of if you found that some of the ways that you supported them with kind of shifting their relationship with their bodies, with their symptoms, did you have you seen it translate to changes in their mental health?
Jessica Dobson Yes. So the second or the first one we spoke about, she she had has come in several times telling me I feel like I'm weightless. More often than not, I feel connected. The language she uses is very earth driven and she's very empowered by the earth. And she tells me, I feel like I am present. I am grounded. And so she's using all this really good language that tells me her nervous system is more regulated now. And for her, the nighttime thing is definitely getting better. And we worked recently on one of the amazing things that we did at the retreat about giving a permission slip, and she's given her self permission to be herself, whatever that means. And that was so deep for her. So let go of this sleep issue. Whatever happens, it just happens. And she's just okay with it now. So for her, it's been a drastic change and it she just needed someone to guide her. She had the wisdom just like we were talking about, and she just needed permission and guidance. And with the other clients, yes, she keeps coming and telling me I'm so grateful I found you. Like, I can't believe I'm so lucky I'm here. And she has hope. And I think hope is so important. I feel like we do a disservice because I remember in school and at school there being this talk about not giving too much hope to people like false hope, like, you're just going to be better after X, Y, Z, or after someone has a stroke or a spinal cord injury. But without hope, what are we what are we living for? And she has hope now. She came to me this last session and said, Do you think I could ever have sex again? And I said, Do you think you can? She said, For the first time ever, I think it might be possible. So that's that's what she got. That's the mental health shift for her is that she is living, not existing.
Lara Desrosiers She's living. Not existing. Yeah.
Lindsey Vestal And so I was just going to say that adding to that incredible aspect to the case study, which, you know, we're having, we're so beautiful to have this conversation with you about it because you had submitted your case study. And so Lara and I geeked out about it. But then to hear more of these details is is fascinating. So it's a familiar story, but yet we're getting all the layers, which is just fantastic. And one of the things you had said in the case study you submitted, which really resonated with me along this line of hope, was she had said to you that with this journey of the artistry and the paint and being able to stop disassociating from the pain that she came to you feeling that for the first time she actually feels a semblance of true control. And what that control gave her was empowerment, you know, because so many of us use that disassociation to not get near it and to really distance ourselves from it. And so was just so beautiful that you had seen that there was this need there beyond what the referral came in for beyond. And that's that seems to be your your history here. Just it's like you really do think outside the box they come in with one thing and you're able to pivot and they're exactly where they need to be. And along those same lines, you had said this with the first case, but I wrote it down because it just resonated so much with me. And I think that when we find ourselves in this specialty of Pelvic health, which is a deep calling, what you said is exactly what I see in my students and I've always felt, which was the client gets what he or she needs and you as a clinician get what you need. And I just think that is such a powerful moment to recognize. To go. What a blessing this career path is that I'm in, that I get to do this every single day. No, very little burnout, right? Just hope and optimism and curiosity and cultivating all of that is just like the most the most beautiful gift that we can have and that we can give our clients. And it's just really beautiful to witness that in you.
Lara Desrosiers Thank you.
Jessica Dobson I think that's something we could all just reflect a little bit more on. Because I get the burnout when I abandon that relationship, when I abandon this symbiotic, we're here for each other. This is Collaboratory. And I start to get into that, I need to change this. I need to fix this. I need to do this and and lose this. The fact that we're all here together and we're all connected and we all serve purposes and it it's not just one of us. We all need to all do all the things. So, yeah, it's. It's hard to know that and to remember it into practice it, but it does decrease burnout when you accept your role as part of this whole experience and life together.
Lara Desrosiers And I think what I heard in there too, I could be part of what we're doing in Pelvic health is helping our clients build a sense of agency in their bodies. Right. And and that's central to trauma informed care. Right. If we can do that in trauma informed ways, then we can help our clients trust their intuition, trust their wisdom, build a sense of agency. And not only does it really elevate the care that we can provide it also. Does take the weight off of our shoulders and does help decrease the burnout that we have. We often think of do I have the capacity to be trauma informed? And so compassion breeds compassion, right? Empathy breeds empathy. So thinking of it in that way, I find really helpful. Like if I can really prioritize this trauma informed approach. It can only expand my capacity in terms of what I can give because it helps me be really clear about where my boundaries are. And it helps give that client agency. So I don't feel as much of that pressure to fix that. So I really appreciated that reflection in your case study to just around that shift towards your clients feeling more empowered and your reflection right now that this helps me eliminate burnout too.
Lindsey Vestal How awesome. Is there anything else that either one of you would like to to share before we conclude our episode?
Lara Desrosiers Just a big thank you, Jess.
Jessica Dobson Well, thank you both. This was super fun and I love these authentic conversations about all things pelvic health. It's just it's so beautiful to share stories.
Lindsey Vestal I agree. Thank you both so much.
Outro 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 posted 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.
