Thoughts From a Therapist: Individuality

Originally published on Sensory Integration Education on 30 January 2022.

Thoughts From a Therapist is a regular series written by Advanced SI Practitioner Anna Willis about something that piqued her professional interest or inspired her in some way over the last month. Anna, an occupational therapist and owner of Active Play Therapies, has over 10 years of experience working with children and adults with a range of learning disabilities and autism. This month, Anna considers individuality:

“You know the saying, ‘if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person’? I’ve been reflecting on this recently. The person-centred, creative and totally individualised nature of OT is part of why I love it. Being able to truly listen to the stories of families, pull it together and make sense of things in a new way as part of the assessment process, tailoring recommendations to each person (hence reports taking so much admin time), creating programmes that are meaningful to the individual, and then designing therapy sessions to maximise the fun (although these plans rarely come into fruition due to the beautiful person-led nature of ASI but that’s anotherthought!).”

“I love it. It isn’t a quick process though and I don’t miss being within statutory services and the time pressure this creates.”

“It also means that when creating recommendations from an assessment, despite it being a thorough process, we still end up taking our best guess to figure out what will work. And, because everyone’s so individual, it doesn’t always work. Take transitions for example – the amount of notice time each person needs before a transition is so individual. Some people need a day in advance, others an hour, and some, 3 minutes or less!”

“So, when carefully crafting our recommendations, it’s so important to bear in mind that each family or client will need to cherry pick and adapt them to their own needs. This is such a valuable step of the therapeutic process – I tend to give my reports out with this proviso, as working through the recommendations afterwards together can be such a productive step before starting therapy.”