261: Adapting New Ways of Doing Things in Private Practice Because of Difficult Circumstances

I’m hoping 2021 will be a new year of great experiences and opportunities after what we went through in 2020. Today’s show covers one specific way that clinicians have had to adapt to new ways of doing things because of difficult circumstances. Join us to learn more.Roseann Capanna-Hodge is an integrative and pediatric mental health expert. She’s the founder and director of the Global Institute for Children’s Mental Health and Dr. Roseann and Associates.  Roseann had a simple idea during the pandemic about doing therapeutic activities via Zoom and telehealth sessions. This realization led to her writing the first-ever book on the subject. She’s here to share about her book, its inspiration, and the mental shifts that have become necessary.www.sellingthecouch.com/session261Transcript: Melvin:Hello, welcome to session 261 of selling the couch; Happy New Year. I hope that you are doing well. It's so good to be back with you. With the way 2020 was I'm really hoping that 2021 would just be a new year, year of new opportunities and new experiences and new podcasts episodes. This is my wish for all of us because I feel like I shared this toward the end of last year in our community.But I felt like one is just how resilient we have all been in the midst of all of what's happened with the pandemic and even as I'm recording this right now we're in mid-November. And here in Philly, we are about to go into a second modified lockdown and trying to navigate all of this and so even I, I'm hoping when this episode releases that we'll just be in a different space, that there will be vaccine ready and that distribution channels and all that stuff will have been figured out and navigated through and all of those different things.Today's podcast session is a special episode. My guest is Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge. Roseann is a integrative and pediatric mental health expert. She's the founder and director of the Global Institute for Children's Mental Health, as well as Dr. Roseann and Associates.Roseann had a simple idea during the midst of this pandemic, which is many of us are doing zoom sessions and using various other online platforms to do telehealth, and how do we do activities in a zoom session? So she did a quick search on Amazon and discovered that there weren't any options out there, and so she decided to create the first ever book on Teletherapy, therapeutic activities, and we're actually talking about the process of creating this book, where her inspiration came from, and some of the mental shifts that Roseann had to really consider and own in the midst of this pandemic.Roseann was actually super busy; as you'll hear on this podcast. She actually wrote four books in the midst of this pandemic, which is just an amazing feat. So we'll get right to today's podcast session. Here's my conversation with Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge.Hey, Roseann, welcome to Selling the Couch.Roseann:Well, thank you for having me Melvin.Melvin:I'm so grateful that Christy connected us; shout out to Christy.Roseann:We love Christy.Melvin:We do. We really do love Christy. Selling the Couch would not function and exist without Christy's editing. So thank you Christy, for connecting us and Roseann, I'm really excited for our conversations. You are doing so much in the world and including creating the first ever book on Teletherapy therapeutic activities. You've been busy.Roseann:I have been busy Melvin during what I call my Corona creative period, I wrote four bucks.Melvin:Oh my Gosh! That's crazy.Roseann: Yeah, and I did a bunch of other things including; getting a podcast of my own, which is how we both know Christy.Melvin:Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to ask you; maybe we can even start there. With this pandemic, I feel like a lot of clinicians when it happened, it was almost like you got sideswiped right?Roseann:Absolutely!Melvin:How in the world did you find the energy to write four books and do a podcast in the midst of something that's just so chaotic and uncertain?Roseann:Yeah, we all have different superpowers, and I think one of my absolute superpowers is really thriving during points of crisis. I'm one of those people like I can visualize being an undergrad, and somebody got in a motorcycle accident literally right in front of me. Like 15 feet away from me, and everybody was totally immobilized and I remember looking and thinking, why isn't anybody moving? And I just sprung into action and helped him and I just have that ability to future think, think about what needs to happen and take action.So during this time, I think like all of us, all the therapists in the world, we thought, “Okay, just going to be like four to eight weeks, and we'll all be back at work.”Melvin:I remember those early posts even in the selling the couch Facebook community like, “Yeah, we'll do our quarantining for like, three, four weeks, and we'll be good.”Roseann: Yeah, I said to myself during this time, when do I have time off? I have a large practice with many therapists, and we do a lot of Neurofeedback, and I do a boatload of media, and I was on an airplane or driving into New York City a minimum of once a week. Sometimes I'd be in L.A in New York, and then seeing clients in between in the same week.And literally up until March 5th, that was what was happening. And when I had time off, I knew when the pandemic started, I said to myself, “Oh, they're saying a couple weeks,” I said, “This is got to be at least four weeks” My sort of prediction was eight, we went to closing our Center for 10 and we were able to open up on May 20th.I knew during this time, after the four weeks, I was like, “When we come back to work, it will not be the same.” And I had said, I have worked with a lot of special needs parents and we work with people of all ages, but our specialty really is kids with ADHD and do a lot of work with PANS and PANDAS and autism, all of these things that are common today.And so I wrote my first book was, It's Gonna be OK! And I worked on that, and then we've two books to support that book. And then June happened, and I said, “Wow, people really aren't coming back to in person.” And I was surprised on that. I thought, “Okay, people are going to come back in person.” I knew Teletherapy was here to stay and we've been doing Teletherapy for 10 years at our center in Ridgefield, Connecticut.But I didn't realize that almost nobody was going to come back in person, and then we really have very high level training at our center. Everybody gets a least one supervision a week. Some people we do ERP. So there's ERP supervision. We do EFT tapping, we have supervision for that, we do group supervision and all the new clinicians have to have at least one supervision on their own a week for like the first two years.So we're really serious about supporting therapists and blossoming them. And so I started to get worried; what were my therapists doing? Did they have enough activities? And I started doing what all the other therapists were doing; scrolling on their phone, checking the Amazon, looking for a book on Teletherapy activities.I remember this so vividly; it was a Wednesday night was late June, and I'm sitting in my hot tub and I put in Tele, and then mental health activities came up, and then it just dawned on me, there wasn't a book. So I said, I'm going to write this book; and I wrote it in 31 days, it's 420 pages and I just came very fast at writing and also done a boatload of Neurofeedback. So my brain works really fast.I started with wanting to support my own therapist, and then I realized that like therapists Melvin, during this pandemic, they all are feeling like they just got out of grad school because nobody was trained for Teletherapy.Melvin:Yeah, and I think many people are like, yeah, it's a new skill set. A lot of folks I think, what we talked about earlier they’re dealing with their own emotions, and then the practical things. Like a lot of therapists are, for example, caregivers or parents, and they're trying to navigate changes on multiple levels and on multiple systems.Roseann:Absolutely! And practical like, before we started Melvin had me do a tech check, and a lot of therapists that regardless of age may not have the comfort level with technology, and just even that was a barrier then supporting your clients’ technology. There were a lot of hurdles to face.I think people now are in their stride with that, like everybody knows zoom now or different platforms that you're using, I use the HIPAA compliant version of zoom and have always have. And then, like you said Melvin, people who are like feeling their own raw emotions; we've been on a roller coaster during this whole pandemic, not just with COVID, but with many other issues.Melvin:Yeah, absolutely! I wanted to shift a little bit and the question is actually about mental shifts. So I totally did not do that on purpose. But what do you think like a mental shift is that a clinician needs in working with kids and teens because you said that's like a big part of the population in an office versus a Telehelp, so like mentally, what's the shift they...