Have you ever felt this way? You're finally ready to DO.THE.THING., make the change, go for it! You are primed and pumped and ready to go. WooHoo!
And then. wahwahwah. The person you want to help you isn't available or you can't get that vital piece of whatever you need or you have to wait on a backorder or whatever it is and suddenly all that momentum and enthusiasm is gone. Right out the window and you're afraid you'll never get that motivation to change back.
Just me?! No, I don't think so!! I know you know that feeling. And while I have some coaching thoughts around this (like, you don't need anyone or anything else to make that change - you can just decide and then embody it and be it!), what I want to address today is access to help when you do actually need someone else's assistance to make a change.
Part of my reason for offering my services outside the realm of traditional Physical Therapy is the way medical care is set up and the way insurance companies work. Without going into too many (boring) specifics, traditional PT must focus on functional deficits and when a patient is able to perform that functional activity, their insurance company will no longer pay for PT. It doesn't always even matter how well a person can perform that functional activity, just that it can be done.
For a lot of people, once their tissues have healed, they've been taught exercises and how to progress them and how to manage potential flares, and if they are consistent and faithful to the plan, they do pretty well and PT feels like a success. For others, their issues don't resolve and they continue to have problems. We might call them Frequent Flyers in PT; they come to PT for various issues, or the same issue, time and time again.
Where traditional PT has failed these people is that we, i.e. the patient and therapist, were not given the opportunity to get to the root cause of what was causing the dysfunction in the first place because once we demonstrated that the patient could do the functional activity, no matter how well or with how many compensations, we needed to start looking at discharge from therapy before the insurance company stopped paying for it. Of course there are exceptions to this scenario; some people do great within this traditional model of care.
But for those who don't do well within this traditional model of care and find themselves still in pain or still having trouble doing things or just never getting back to doing the things they want to do, it can feel like they are therapy failures and that they just can't seem to get it right. "Maybe if I tried harder!" "Maybe with a different therapist!" "Maybe I'm doomed to always be in pain."
I say, "maybe if we worked together outside the traditional insurance managed care model we could figure things out together and you could feel better and get back to doing the things you love."
Now, I'm not saying that just because you see me as a private paying customer you will automatically get better. Not at all. What has to change is the way you and I look at the healing partnership. You have to be open to hearing new thoughts and theories about what pain really is, believe that I know what I'm saying and doing, potentially change your thoughts on movement, exercise, and anything else you've been told about what is wrong with you. I have to learn to listen to you and honor your experiences in your body. You have to realize I can't cure you or fix you. I have to stop being the fixer.
I have developed several Packages that address some of the most common issues people have that aren't usually resolved, or for that matter, treated by physical therapists. Be sure to check out all the info on my website kirstinbergman.com .
Additionally, I have developed some Intensives. These are half, full or multiple day sessions where we do a deeeep dive into what is going on with you. Why do you still have pain years after an injury? Why can you do this without pain, but not that? Why can't you get back to doing that thing you love so much?
During these Intensives, we will spend a lot of time with hands on work, addressing circulation, inflammation, lymph, organ and nerve health, as well as musculoskeletal health. I will assess your positioning, chronic holding patterns, movement patterns and tissue integrity and health. I will offer you exercise, movement, breathing, mindfulness, BodyMind Coaching and nervous system care, understanding that your capacity for change is limited by how resilient your nervous system is. We will look at stress and trauma, your window of tolerance and how large that window is. We may choose to spread our Intensives out over several months to allow your nervous system the opportunity to adjust and change and grow capacity.
There are no hard and fast rules, only that you are open to learning and committed to doing the work. 1000% committed. This is the work, the hard stuff, looking at things we may not want to look at. You may need additional support to maneuver through this. Can you feel better without going deeper? Likely, yes. Will you heal if you don't go deeper? Likely, no, not completely. It's up to you. Know that, when you are ready to DO.THE.THING, make the change and motivated to go for it, I am here to walk with you through your journey.