Helping with the “talk” in “talk therapy”
We recently had a young teen who was working on identifying and stating how she was feeling. The young teen’s mom had asked us to work on this with her daughter mainly to teach her that she didn’t always have to feel or say that she was “happy”. Her nonverbal communication (slouching down in her chair, hiding her eyes, etc.) often alerted those around her that she was not happy, but rather, nervous, anxious, or uncomfortable. This is not an easy a task, as it requires several things: being able to tune into your body to identify how you are feeling and why, having the language skills, including emotional vocabulary, necessary to express the feeling, and being “ok” with not being ok- not stating a positive emotion if you are experiencing a negative one. This is where there is a clear and obvious overlap between the scope of practices of mental health practitioners and speech-language pathologists.
For many years, SLPS and mental health professionals (therapist/counselor/psychologist) stayed in their respective “lanes”. Us “speechies'” mainly focused on receptive and expressive language skills (identifying and labeling emotions of self and others) as well as the social cognitive aspect of how one person’s action(s) affect another person’s feelings. The mental health therapist focused on helping an individual identify their own internal feelings and teaching coping skills to deal with those BIG feelings such as anger and sadness. Over the past few years however, in our practice, we have realized that our responsibility is to go beyond the basics- metaphorically, we need to start sharing lanes.
Our scope has changed with the times and our job includes helping to prime our clients with language disorders for “talk therapy” (the irony isn’t lost on us either!) with a mental health professional. We do this by: 1- Teaching emotional vocabulary early and systematically, 2-Teaching explicitly that not only is it ok to have a range of emotions and physical states but that it’s expected, and 3- Giving kids opportunities and space to practice focusing on what their bodies feel like internally when they experience a certain emotion or physical state and pairing that with what their face and body look like externally. For kids with language deficits, visuals and adapted language to help with learning is imperative. If we can help our clients with these three skills, it’s going to make accessing the “talk” in “talk therapy” a little easier.
Prologue: After months of targeting the above skills with the teen I mentioned above during our therapy sessions and being told repeatedly that she felt “good” or “happy”, one day I greeted her the way I always do: “Hi! How are you?” Lo and behold she said, “Sad”. In my head, I was doing a dance of joy because she didn’t say “happy” when she wasn’t, but I hid my excitement and said with much empathy, “Oh no- I’m sorry! It’s ok to feel sad, though. Do you know why you are sad?” Her answer? “I don’t want to do speech today!”
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If you or someone you love struggles with identifying emotions, explore our services page here, or click here for a free 15-minute consultation to see how we can help.
