Transcripts from Episode 0 of the "Be A. Neff" Podcast.
Hello. Welcome ground zero on the Be a Neff podcast. Thank you so much for being here listening today, I am really excited to work with you and contribute back to our mental health community. For those of you unfamilar with me and my work, this is the perfect place to start, the origin episode.
My name is April Neff, and I choose the name Be A Neff for two reasons, one my initials and name just happens to be a neff, the other reason is that it reminds me of the phrase “You are Enough” which has resonated with me for a long time. It’s our core belief that each person we meet is enough in that moment. Enough to get them where they want to be, should I be lucky enough that we find each other in my office and share their story, its enough to build that story into the life they deserve. As strange as it sounds, this is nowhere close to where my story begins. A lifetime field worker in the social work field, I’ve held very few jobs outside of mental health. In my first mental health experience in my career, early 2007 I was privileged to work as a lowly group provider teaching emotion regulation skills to middle schoolers. I was hardly prepared, fresh and young and imagining changing lives, writing curriculum to teach the value of prosocial skills. This wasn’t the field I intended or imagined myself in, but this was the job I could find with no degree and little college, and I gladly took to it. I enjoyed crafting up exercises, bringing them to life and building a team out of my little class. I enjoyed telling stories as a child, and saw each person I worked with as a collection of a story, and enjoyed my role writing it together to where the child, and later teens, then adults wanted to go. This started a long career of jobs that took me in schools, in crisis, but always in mental health. When I started seriously knocking out college courses, I switched from journalism to psychology to social work. It felt like coming home, so natural, and I received both my bachelors and masters in social work from Washburn University under some of the most talented, amazing professors. In university blogs I found a funny term that describes an academic’s life after academia, it’s called a “recovering academic”. This is what happens when you spend 4+ years immersed in education and learning, then your cut off and handed a degree. Thankfully were graced with these continuing education requirements, to brush up our skills and dust off our Diagnostic Manual. This podcast is my gift to all my recovering academics out there, its dedicated to you, you constant learners.
Today were going to take a look at 4 important questions, and launch you into my world. The first thing is to look at the purpose of our podcast, what this podcast is for? This is a podcast for mental health therapists who have enough theory in their life, and want to get richly grounded in holistic, intuitive interventions. Each month we will select a theme from our experience and core values, and each week we will dive deep into a specific age population and examine treatment that relates to our theme. The populations will be split into 4 age groups running from mothers in gestation, children, adolescent, to adults. Every now and then we will invite an expert in to discuss their practice and field experience.
Secondly, were going to talk a little about our interventions. What interventions?This podcast is going to be dedicated to a mix of holistic, mindfulness based interventions such as mindfulness based stress reduction techniques, DBT, ACT, and other holistic integrative grounding work. I know that sounds pretty, but what that means is that we like using techniquest that ground us in the present, this is where we begin and end each session for a reason. WIthout grounding ourselves, we may as well be retraumatizing without healing, and that isn’t ok. Each intervention is chosen based on how it aligns with this belief, it grounds us here and now, so our clients can move forward into their lives. Not to just give you 1-2 tools and wave goodbye, our primary interest is to review and identify several different interventions and ways to sharpen your skills by first applying them directly into your everyday practice and life. We appreciate you listening, but want you to take your self work home and make it a reality. We believe the groundwork doesn’t stop in the office, transformation through experience and role modeling enriches your life as a clinician.
Thirdly scripts and continuing education credit is available for these podcasts at our blog, www.mytherapies.org. Continuing education is available with posttests on the blog as well. Continuing education is a core value of our work, and receiving credit is part of our mission. Each week links for education will be made available for low cost CEU’s to continue to support our work. Should you enjoy this podcast, please support us through purchasing CEU’s on our site so that we can continue to provide low cost educational resources.
Fourthly enriching therapeutic practices with technology is the next advancement of our field. We may engage through journaling on a smart phone, receiving the weekly “assignment”, mindfulness apps, or games and short videos on you tube geared to engaging in both our left and right brains before we begin. Be a Neff is a place to let your geek flag fly, where any episode may have suggestions through pop culture metaphors, popular music lyrics and hip hop, or gaming may be used as examples to engage “where your client is at”.
So that is a little about me, my purpose, and the purpose of the Be a Neff podcast. I appreciate you joining me today and look forward to interacting on instagram and facebook @mytherapies or through the hashtags #topeka #anxiety #therapist and strive to respond to every post. Thank you for joining us. Interested in meeting with us live? This months podcast is sponsored in part by the 2019 KACAP Conference on Poverty. The Kansas Conference on Poverty brings together direct service workers, agency/department management, agency Boards of Directors, volunteers and anti-poverty advocates from Kansas’ non-profit organizations, faith-based agencies and government offices. Join us at the Capital Plaza Hotel in Topeka, Kansas on July 17th and 18th in our live workshops. This year’s conference theme is “Working Towards Prosperity”. I really enjoy this conference, it will be my 3rd year attending and 2nd year speaking. Each year I discover new resources to add to my referral list, and make friends with excellent people doing great things in my state. When you are in the business of solving problems and making change, you sometimes need to recharge your batteries and give back to other workers. We hope to see you live and in real life, and welcome you to our community of change makers!