Heart and Soul OT

10/03/2025

OMG!!!! Just learned of this and I am so excited! First Nations owned REHAB services provider in Calgary Alberta opens a clinic.....this will be a model of what a recovery oriented approach ACTUALLY means in Alberta!!!! Awesome news for my own heart and soul today. Congratulations!!!!! 🥰

09/30/2025

Wise words re CPTSD and recovery

You are going to run into a bunch of stuff in this CPTSD recovery journey that won’t seem to make a lot of sense.  You’re going to run into memories that don’t seem to fit in with the rest of …

09/30/2025

Ah, love this so much Greg Santucci, Occupational Therapist 🥰 I have been speaking up lately about this paradigm shift and whew....it's gonna take time 🤪🤪🤪

What the "function" are you talking about?

I'm going to be blunt. There's no value to classifying a behavior as "attention seeking", "escape", "to get something tangible" or "sensory**", the traditional "functions" of a behavior".

**not related to the theory of sensory integration and most often labeled by professionals with no training in sensory integration.

Each one of those "functions" puts the onus on the child. Those descriptors don't help solve any problems. The human experience cannot be simplified to 4 "functions". You know what DOES help? Actually HELPING the child!

If your FBA (Functional Behavior Assessment) has one of those traditional descriptors or "functions", RIP IT UP and start over. It puts the people working with that child on a trajectory of behavior management instead of helping the child learn the skills they need to be the best versions of themselves.

Here's the re-frame.

Behavior is a symptom.

A child has a concerning behavior when:

1) There is an emotion they can't handle
2) There is a need not being met
3) There is a skill they don't have or
4) There is a problem they can't solve

Each one of those implies HELPING a child!

Helping a child navigate a big emotion. Helping them meet a need.
Helping them learn a skill, or
Helping them solve a problem.

As soon as a professional asks, "what's the function of the behavior", I know there's a massive disconnect not only between how we view behavior, but also how we view the child.

The re-frame supports helping a struggling child. The old paradigm promotes manipulating and/or extinguishing observable behavior. We know more now.

I'll say it again. Behavior is a symptom, not a problem. The problem lies within.

Let's commit to re-framing what behavior is and how we can truly help kids. Let's move away from token boards and behavior plans and focus more on skill building and supporting needs.

We can do it, but we need the old paradigm to be retired. Unfortunately, it's still pervasive in our schools and the mindset of behavior analysts and technicians. Let's choose compassion over compliance and helping over manipulating. Our kids need us to do that. They need our help.

Greg Santucci, MS, OTR
Executive Director
Power Play Pediatric Therapy
Chief Adventure Therapist
ClimbRx

Sharing this post is like sending a giant cyber hug! 🥰

08/22/2025

LOL

Meanwhile from The Onion

American Psychiatric Association adds ‘Obsessive Categorization of Mental Conditions’ to DSM-5

“We’re confident that continued study will assist doctors in more easily identifying and treating this debilitating disorder, and what we’ve painstakingly catalogued as its 117 common variants and 286 sub-variants, so that its sufferers can go on to live productive, untroubled lives.

OCMC itself could be merely part of a much larger, though mostly benign, mental disorder involving obsessive attempts at educating oneself in order to help others.”

07/04/2025

Awesome offering!

Online Support Group for People Experiencing an Eating Disorder or Disordered Eating This ONLINE support group is for anyone (18+) experiencing an eating disorder, disordered eating, and/or experiencing anxiety around food, eating, and body image. You do not need proof of diagnosis to enroll. This g...

06/17/2025

💜

06/17/2025

Love this lady and the wonderful work she does!!!! 🥰

Trauma informed group music is now the only way I ever want to do music.

Singing as tears drip down our cheeks without having to wipe them away. Listening when singing is too much. Harmonising with each other without knowing if we’re ‘doing it right’. Dedicating songs to other group members as a form of support. Singing our vulnerabilities out loud with no fear of being judged. Non performance based, intimate and therapeutic based musical experiences with others experiencing exactly the same. No musical critique. No learning. No practicing.

Just music, emotions and relational safety

Please bear with me as I work on creating a trauma informed and neuro affirming group music facilitation training, aiming to launch early 2026!!!

(Telling you so we can all help keep me accountable 🤩)

(this space already exists in A Gathering of Voices, my description above is an exact replica of this weeks song sharing circle, join us there if you want to experience trauma informed and neuro affirming group music in person) ###xx

06/16/2025

Omg this is GOLD!!!

06/16/2025

I'm grateful Denis has been a spiritual mentor for me, since the fall of 1999, when I took his class on the relationship between science and religion! 💜 He opened my overconfident atheist eyes to the possibility of Something More.....but there is always a Step of Faith!!! Science isn't the only way of knowing. This is why Spirit is at the center of the main OT worldview!!! I love my work and the clients I am honored to serve. Thank you for your guidance and teachings Denis Lamoureux!

My approach to a peaceful & fruitful relationship between my evangelical Christian faith & the modern sciences (like evolution) is based on two basic principles. The first is this one below. There is a reciprocal relationship between our Ultimate Beliefs (Metaphysics) & Science (Knowledge of Physical World; Greek phusis means "nature") that requires a Step of Faith. In this way, I contend that everyone (including atheists) have a deeply embedded faith in their worldview.

05/30/2025

This is GOLD! Yes! We need to learn to trust our inner compasses 💯❤️. In OT lingo it's learning to tune into our body signals and emotions, (interoception! It's the 8th sense!), so we can spend our daily lives doing the healthy stuff that feeds our bodies and souls! 💜🙏

When we get stuck not trusting our built-in compass, our inner child runs us on self-doubt and codependency.
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Examples:⠀⁠
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NOT trusting red flags 🚩in dating because we don't want to be mean or alone or judgy; ⠀⁠
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"I'm probably wrong or mean about them being so late all the time."
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NOT setting boundaries or addressing conflict because;⠀⁠
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"what if I'm wrong…and I'm just being a pain, and it probably isn't as big of a deal as I'm making it out to be…"⁠
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NOT getting out of situations that no longer serve us; ⠀⁠
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"They're probably right... I can't do better than this."
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We can overcome self-doubt by spending time looking at our childhoods and find concrete specific examples when the adults were abusive about reality and rewrite them.⠀
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1) "It's your fault I'm feeling this way." - WEAPONIZED SHAME AND BLAME
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2) "We're a normal, loving family." …WHEN IT'S TOXIC AND DYSFUNCTIONAL⁠
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3) "Your mother loves you...you're just so difficult." - TURN THE VICTIM INTO THE ABUSER
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As kids, we have to surrender to our parent's lack of reality because they have all the power.⠀⁠
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Let's correct those three.⠀⁠
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1) "It's your fault I'm feeling this way."⠀⁠
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I'm shaming you about my own sh*tty feelings to gain power and sympathy.
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2) "We're a normal, loving family."⠀⁠
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I'm denying and minimizing dysfunction and not using my power to fix things for the kids.
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3) "Your mother loves you...you're just so difficult."⠀⁠
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I'm making you into the problem, not protecting you, and not addressing how abusive your mother is because I'm a coward.
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It is very powerful to start calling things for what they are in our present lives, but we can't do that until we start calling out the abuse for what it was in our childhood. ⠀⁠
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Imagine trusting yourself and your amazing built-in intuition. ⠀⁠
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Clients tell me they don't have a compass, but that's not true. ⁠
They have one and they just need help trusting it.

05/27/2025

❤️💯💯💯

The main shift moves away from focusing on simple compliance to understanding behaviors, have important meanings about children's bodies and minds.

03/08/2025