The thing community therapists are expected to just know

You walked out of uni expected to just know how to manage a complex caseload, regulate after a tricky client, and write the case note before you've finished the drive home. No one taught you that. And no one's named that this is the job underneath the job.

In this episode I talk about why I built the Cognitive Capacity Reset — and the moment four years ago that started it. We get into why we don't have the language to bring cognitive load to supervision, why community OTs are already climbing a mountain every day, and what to do instead of downloading another app.

The Reset is live Monday May 4th. Code PODCAST gets you in for $24 until Monday. imogenot.com.au

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Cognitive Capacity Chat. This is the podcast for the therapist ready to think beyond the therapy room. I talk about our cognition as our foundation, not just for our clients, but for ourselves. Because the way we think, organise and live directly shapes our clinical work, our capacity, and longevity in this profession. I'm Imogen, an OT, here to bring you practical conversations that fit into real life. This podcast is for the therapist who wants more depth, more clarity, and more life. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

I wanted to jump in and talk a little bit about my perspective as how we operate as community therapists and why I have created the cognitive capacity reset because I have been there. Four years ago, I felt like I was trying to work really hard for my clients and the complexity of my clients. I was trying to develop projects, new templates, creating opportunities to prove myself in leadership positions and work towards being the best therapist I could be. And I have been employed at three different workplaces, and then I have also created my own business. And it wasn't until I realized when I launched my own business that the places that I worked and the common thread among community therapists is that the element of organizing, planning, managing your thoughts is just expected to be placed onto you. You go from university as a student, and you are expected to just know how to organize a whole caseload. You're expected to know how to manage your higher level thinking. You're expected to be able to manage complex clients and sit with them and talk with them and then go right back to your desk and write the case notes. You're expected to know funding bodies, or you're expected to be able to get the funding or the follow-up of that, and there's so many pieces of information. And I remember sitting there and downloading all of the apps, always spending longer than I should. The fillable KPI definitely went down that day, and I spent spent half a day deciding that I was going to implement something different. I was going to download a new app. I was going to create a system that actually fixed everything. But what I was actually doing is I was just avoiding the thing that I actually needed to do. I was actually just trying to put a band-aid on the wound without actually addressing what was causing the wound. I mean, pressure injury 101, right? I was still driving home thinking about everything that I missed, everything that I needed to do. I was remember falling asleep and lying awake and being really concerned about a case note that I'd forgotten or I needed to do early the next day. But I was so good in the room with my clients. But as soon as I opened my emails, you know, I actually remember needing whenever I needed to use my laptop for my client, and I'd turn on the hotspot and I'd see all my emails come through, and how impactful that was to me. How I was not able to, that just drew my attention. I I wasn't able to then concentrate in with my clients because my email was coming through and my attention went there. And it that's just a perfect example of what I support with turning off your email notifications is not only it just reduces your attention going to somewhere else. And so when we are holding all our tasks in our head or we're forgetting things, we aren't able to use our high-level thinking skills that we really need to in order to operate as a community therapist. And this is really tricky because when we arrive at our most complex client, then and our clinical thinking has gone out the window, we can't regulate our emotions, we problem solve, we can't make decisions. If you had to consistently pick things up and put them away, pick things up, put them away, and you started hurting your back because they were too heavy, would you just continue on lifting those heavy boxes? I know some people do, so to take this analogy with grassalt, but or would you think about either talking to your boss about the heaviness of the boxes or potentially go to the gym and get really strong through safe movement? When we think about higher level thinking, we don't consider that how do we go to our boss and say, I don't have space to think about my problems, I don't have space to regulate my emotions after this tricky client. I don't have space to problem solve and make a decision on this report. We just don't. We don't have the language for it, but we also don't have the norm for it. We don't like if you had a uh wheelchair and you were having difficulties with that, your supervisor would welcome that clinical discussion. But when it comes to understanding our capacity, our organization, how our cognition is actually working, is it very rare that we'll have a conversation with our supervisor that says, Look, I'm going to this client, I'm or when I went to my client, I checked my email, tell my hotspot down, check my emails, and then I couldn't maintain my attention because I was so overwhelmed by emails. No one wants to tell their boss that they're overwhelmed by emails, and sometimes it's hard to articulate as well because it's typically the little things that crop up as well. And my key problem with this is one, we need our high-level thinking for actually being able to be a good therapist and rock up how we're intended to, provide our clients with the necessary clinical needs that they need to achieve. But two, it's likely that your effort with at home, if you're having to do your case notes after hours or you're still thinking about cases at home, that's going to impact your personal life, which we certainly don't want. And so, my goal is to create and create a work week where people feel ahead, where your attention needs to go, where you're able to carry out yesterday's appointments to do this, where you're able to have capacity to think, where you're not just getting in the car at the end of the day and just worrying about everything you didn't get done, you're just happy with what you did get done. And this is the work I do. This is what I love to do with occupational therapists primarily, but a community therapist who have difficulty just finding the space and finding the capacity. Because I have been there and I just know that cognition is how we are going to change this profession to actually enable us to get things done without that consistent burner. I feel like every therapist I speak to is like, oh, I'm really overwhelmed. And if we're able to control what we can control, the external chaos is going to feel much lighter than when we aren't controlling what we can control. We are late on reports, late on case notes, and things are outstanding. We can't even get an appointment with our client. And so, what I have a challenge with is when I speak about this work, a lot of people feel like, great, sounds good, would love to do it, feel like I'm too busy. Great, sounds amazing, but can you just almost do it for me? Great, sounds good, but I don't have the time to action things. I'm already so busy. And it is challenging because when I do this work, I do encourage people to put a little bit of extra effort in to that they do need to climb the mountain a little bit, but when they climb that mountain, they can go back down the other side when they implement the new systems or the new structure that we're implementing for them. What people don't realize is they're already climbing a mountain, and if they don't do anything to fix it, they're just going to continue to climb and climb the mountain. So what I have done is critically analyzed and implemented a functional solution, but I have, because that's what I do, that's what I do best. I understand what the barriers are and I work my darndest to make sure it's functional for people. So with all the work I do, I have captured it in to 20 minutes of work. Eight-minute private podcast and 15 minutes. Okay, so that's what 23 minutes of working through a workbook for five days to get you started. It's intended for the busy clinician who feels like they're too busy that but they're still climbing the mountain. The podcast is intended to be listened to whilst you're going through the workbook, and then you've got AI prompts to help you have a coach without having a coach to copy and paste everything that you've done so that you can actually move forward. On day one, we clear our cognitive load. On day two, we understand where our capacity is going and we do a cognitive capacity diagnosis. Day three, I talk about the busy versus effective trap. Day four, we try and expand your cognitive load and your cognitive expansion to start actioning things. And day five is your commitment to moving through and getting something else. If you're listening to this live, we are going live on Monday, the 4th of May, and the discount code finishes on Monday. For my podcast listeners, the code is podcast. Head to Imogen OT.com.au if this is for you. If you're listening to this later on after the 4th of May, the podcast would be live. It's forty eight dollars. Uh if user code podcast is only twenty four. And I cannot wait to see you in there because I know that every therapist needs this.