Send us Fan Mail

Before your technique, before your assessment, before your hands even touch the table — there’s something your patient needs more: to feel safe.

In this episode, Jamie dives into the first of Hobfoll’s Five Elements of trauma intervention: the promotion of safety. Drawing on a vivid story from his time as a firefighter learning rope rescue, Jamie unpacks why so many patients walk into your room with a nervous system that’s still braced for danger — and what you can actually do about it.

You’ll learn:

• Why fear avoidance isn’t weakness — it’s the nervous system doing its job
• How shared decision-making and patient-centered care are actually safety mechanisms
• What graded exposure looks like inside a treatment room (and why you’re probably already using it)
• How to reflect improvement back to your patient in a way that builds self-efficacy — not dependency on you

This episode will change how you think about what you bring into the room — and it has nothing to do with your hands.

*Next episode: Why Changing Your Language Changes Everything — element two, the promotion of calm.*

Support the show

Subscribe

Send us Fan Mail

There are people I treated early in my career who I owe an apology to.

Not because I didn’t care. Not because I wasn’t trying. But because I was doing things I genuinely believed were helping them — and I’m not sure they were.

This episode is about the shift. The messy, frustrating, identity-shaking process of going from someone who thought they had it figured out to someone who had to admit they didn’t. From the sports guy who believed deep pressure was the only way to make a difference — to a practitioner who had to question everything he was taught, everything he paid for, and everything his professional identity was built on.

If you’ve ever felt angry at the people asking questions — or stuck in the middle between what you were taught and what the evidence is telling you — this one’s for you.

In this episode:

• Why I came out of school convinced I was going to be the “sports guy” — and why that identity cost some of my early patients
• The Facebook moment that made me furious — and what was really underneath that anger
• The patient I still think about who never came back
• The San Diego Pain Summit and the community that finally changed things for me
• The full circle moment — when I became the person making *other* therapists angry
• Why you’re not dumb for not knowing this yet — you’re just at a particular stage in your career

We’re all just at different stages. And that’s okay.

—

If this episode resonated with you, the best thing you can do is follow the show and leave a review — it makes a real difference.

Support the show

Subscribe

Send us Fan Mail

This is the final episode of the Are We Mental Health Professionals? series — and this one gets personal.

Parts 1 and 2 were about your patients. This one starts by turning the lens on us. Because everything we’ve been talking about across this series — the psychological weight patients bring, the emotional complexity of these conversations, the pressure to get it right — all of that lands somewhere. And a lot of the time, it lands on us.

In this episode we cover:

• How integrating basic psychological techniques like abdominal breathing and guided body scans into your sessions outperforms physical therapy alone
• The NOI Group’s danger signals vs safety signals framework — and how a simple conversation helped one patient reclaim yoga, movement confidence, and her relationship with her own body
• How to navigate mental health conversations without stigma — the language that opens doors and the golden rule you cannot skip
• The clinical evidence behind yoga, tai chi, and MBSR for treating MSK conditions and mental health simultaneously
• Universal screening — what it looks like in a clinic and what it looks like when you work solo
• The Mental Health Champion concept — and why solo practitioners are their own champion
• Practitioner burnout — what it actually looks like, why it sneaks up quietly, and why booking that counselling appointment isn’t weakness

All three parts of the series are now out. Start at Part 1 if you haven’t already — they’re meant to be taken together.

🔗 Sign up for the Mental Health and Psychological First Aid waitlist:

[CLICK HERE]

Support the show

Subscribe