The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer
So Hello, everyone, and welcome again to the podcast. And I'm so glad for you to get to know Tasha Rollins, and Tasha is a person that reached out to me online. And I'm really excited about this topic, because I think it will be important for a lot of people. But Tasha, why don't you tell folks about yourself and how you've kind of landed where you landed? Well, thank

Tosha Rollins
you, again, so much for having me here today, Jordan, this has been an absolute pleasure to be able to come on and do this and share what we're doing and all the opportunities available for all of our fellow clinicians. I landed in the world of autism as a parent. So my oldest son is now 22 years old, I have three sons. My middle son is 20. And my youngest is eight. So my two oldest both have autism spectrum disorder. And they were diagnosed later in middle school in high school. And I didn't actually go back to grad school until after my third son was born. And just decided that when I straight out of grad school, I was going to go into private practice, and decided I was going to go ahead and serve what I was very, most passionate about, because of my journey in Parenthood. And that was how I could really get started in private

Gordon Brewer
practice. Right, right. And so your Tasha is located in Easley, South Carolina, which I know, easily and we were talking about that before we started recording, but one of the things that's really exciting that Tosh is doing is she's creating a autism therapist network. And so you want to talk about kind of, obviously, you have a passion for working with people on the spectrum. But you want to talk maybe a little bit about the history and how that how that dream came to be?

Tosha Rollins
Yes? Well, research shows only two out of 44 mental health clinicians feel comfortable working with the autistic population, which makes it really hard for families like mine to access services. And even like, currently, right now, both of my sons are in transition with their mental health services. And it's been really, really hard to find a new counselor to come in and work with them. A lot of times, I think it comes down to competency and having the skill sets and the education. But really, with with the network, it was faced out of the need because of what I was going through. And then I think frustration from all of the additional parents, which I refer to as the autism tribe. All of the parents complaints of how hard it is to access services. I was reading a news article yesterday, and it showed that one in five families actually relocate, they move, because they don't have access to services. So there's a really big gap here in mental health and accessibility for the autistic population.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. Yeah. And I and I would, in the little bit that I know about working with that population, one of the things that I would guess even not only for parents of children who are on the spectrum, but also just therapists having that support, because it's just I can only imagine how demanding it is.

Tosha Rollins
It is very, very demanding. And it's frustrating, we run into a lot of roadblocks, and oftentimes either the school setting or the mental health setting, they're really the front lines for accessing continuum of care services for life transitional things, you know, children with autism grow up to be adults with autism, and the lack of services for after they age out of school. You know, that's, that's a big concern. It's estimated that anywhere between 70 and 100,000, plus children aged out of high school services with very little transitional supports in place.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. Yeah. So tell tell us more about the, the network and the process that you've been through with all of that.

Tosha Rollins
So this has been super, super exciting, and a super busy time as well. I really just my main mission is to educate clinicians, and to have them collaborate with one another on the skill sets that they need to improve on. I think oftentimes, we get comfortable in therapy, you know, in our private practices with a certain niche or population that we work with. And we do have to do continuing education, to meet our licensure requirements, but very little of that training. It doesn't seem like there's much out there for autism. And I think, I don't know if it's lack of resource accessibility, the fact that there's not a lot of trainings, I know pezzi does an awesome job. training the autism symposium that they did earlier in the spring. But that's really one of the very few that I've seen. The autism network itself for therapists is structured so that we have the weekly ongoing educational workshops, we have opportunities to collaborate and really offer that peer clinical consultation support in a very confidential way. And then also offer opportunities to meet and greet one another and really build a community there of support.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, it's a, I'm excited about this, because it's a no, it's something that's just been really needed. With, I'm just thinking about it, the, in my own practice, just one of the things that I hear is, from from a therapists that are working with, particularly working with kids is, you know, just the lack of resources in our area. I mean, there's a few few organizations around but as far You know, unfortunately, there are a lot of people that bought a therapist that just aren't comfortable in working with the autism population.

Tosha Rollins
But educational workshops are really focused on what I call the autism algorithm. And it's focused on three different C's, I guess, which include competency, clinical skills, and then community, knowing who to really work with in your community, you're going to have a whole autism tribe of people that you are going to work with that are professionals, whether it be school professionals, psychologists, psychiatrists, developmental, behavioral pediatrics, and the list goes on and on. There's a lot of other specific inner bench dentists that work in early intervention, like speech therapy and occupational therapy. So they're really you create a whole team for your client, and you have the ability to offer the best treatment plan available with good quality continuum of care.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. So yeah, so I'm curious, and I'm sure some of the listeners would be curious to, in working with the autism spot population, what are what are the skill sets that people that are therapists really need to hone in on?

Tosha Rollins
Well, I think that we really need to be open minded and adaptability and flexibility. So you might have a particular intervention that is triggered structured for like CBT. But you might have to modify it or adapt it gently for the executive functioning, or the cognitive ability of your client. So really, kind of getting a good overview of where your client is with executive function, cognitive ability, as well as their emotional regulation, that's really important to take into consideration.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah. So with with this, say, you've got, say a client is coming in, they've got behavior problems, and they're, you know, their mind might be depressed or, you know, anxiety problems, associate a lot of anxiety with being with autism. Absolutely. Yeah. And so what are some of the starting places that you would say, I mean, as far as assessment and that kind of thing,

Tosha Rollins
we really want to make sure that your client understands their emotions, that they really have a good idea of what that looks like, when it comes up, what their warning signs are, you know, and how to use those certain coping skills that you guys work through in session, when they're not with you in therapy. So what are the red flags that they would have? What are their signals? What are their body's physical symptoms, and giving them visuals that's very, very important. Oftentimes, I think, for anybody, not just someone with autism, but anybody. You know, oftentimes, when we're talking about things, it's hard to retain that information. So making sure that they have plenty of resources available that they can take home with them, and use them as visual prompts for ongoing maintenance of their emotions so that they can regulate when they're not in therapy, right.

Gordon Brewer
So a lot, a lot of homework, and I would think to it a lot would involve working with the parents and really kind of taking a systemic approach with things.

Tosha Rollins
Absolutely. And making sure that everyone's on the same page, the parents, you know, oftentimes we have families come in, and they present you know, and then when they leave, they're at a loss for what to do, and it's because they don't have the step one, step two, step three, to carry on throughout in practice, right practice. It takes a lot of structure and routine for our clients to learn to feel comfortable, and to learn that have those new neural pathways start to form where their habits transition and it becomes second nature.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. So, yeah, so what, what else would you think would be important for people to know about working with the autism population?

Tosha Rollins
I think the number one consideration for working with the autism population is to make sure that you have the education behind it, that when you get a referral, that wit in order to be comfortable and competent, you need to understand person centered planning, you need to understand cognitive behavioral therapy, and really have a good toolbox to pull from when working with these clients. And all of these are going to be things that we teach throughout the autism network trainings. With the educational workshops, we're going to have expert spotlights that come in and share their words of wisdom with this. And I think the more that you can grow your network with supportive people, in your industry in your field, you know, have those around you, the more that you guys can work together, and the more you're going to learn to grow.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. Yeah, I love that. And it's something certainly that's been been needed for some time. So tell tell folks how they can find out more about the network and maybe join and what's involved in all that.

Tosha Rollins
So you can go to the autism therapists network comm web page, and there's a waitlist at the bottom, it gives a really good overview of everything that's included in the program that we just mentioned before, with the educational workshops, the expert spotlight segments, the extra bonuses that are available, there is an autism ology autism dictionary that will go along with the course for one of the options. And then there's also for continuum of care, there's an autism tribe guide, that you can download, you can use it as a resource to give to your families to give to your parents, so they know who is they may be seeking out to work with or who you can refer them to. But also just to inform you that there's probably a lot more professionals in your area that you have the ability to build referral resources from. I know when I went straight from grad school into private practice, I had no idea how long it was going to take me to have a full caseload. And it was 90 days, it was less than 90 days, actually, you know, to go from zero to full. And sometimes we struggle with having a full caseload. But when you have a population in need, and there's a lack of services, you're not going to have that

Gordon Brewer
problem. Right. Right. And so that would be, again, that I think about that as being just a really important niche that maybe doesn't get as much spotlight as it should. Just around around all of that. So yeah, so what else would you say Tasha, that you feel like what the important for people to know around this topic?

Tosha Rollins
Well, I think that joining us for the autism virtual mental health summit coming up in October would be a great place to start, you'll get some free access to some of the professionals that we hope to spotlight during the network's six month membership. And really just, you know, go visit the website, check it out, you probably know someone that has autism, one in 54 children are diagnosed, according to the CDC, and something interesting, that's based on 2016 data. So this like five years off with research, you know, in terms of prevalence, so that's just going to keep continue to rise, you're going to see an influx of referrals come in with an autism diagnosis. And keep it in mind too, that you guys already have the experience that you need. You may not have had an autism intensive in grad school, but you definitely have the experience to manage all the dual diagnosis such as autism, I mean, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, you know, those are some of the most common ones that are dually diagnosed with autism. And then really taking a good look, when you do get a referral at the medical records that come along with that, you might have a psychological report. And that psychological report is gonna go way in further detail at the very end with treatment recommendations, beyond just the actual diagnosis that they were looking for from the testing. And those are things to consider in treatment planning. So yeah, check out the free summit that we're going to be talking about and coming up in October and then just go check out the website, autism therapist network comm and get on that waitlist

Gordon Brewer
now, right? Yeah. And we'll be sure to have links here in the show notes in the show summary for all of those things. Well, Tasha, I want to be respectful of your time. And this was just a great topic and I think It's gonna be interesting to a lot of people that just thinking about, you know, particularly for folks that have a passion for working with people. Well, just in general people with disabilities are, and particularly with autism spectrum stuff. It's it's a very unique population. And I know, I will say I have worked with a few autism spectrum, people in the past, and it's been great. The one perspective, I would say is that they see the world through a totally different lens that is just absolutely fascinating to me. So yes, yeah,

Tosha Rollins
yes. And you will not meet one client that is the same as another, every single individual with autism is unique. And I believe that there's a quote out there by Stephen shore that says that author Stephen shore, but it's very, very true. My two, two boys on the spectrum are completely different from one another, and they got their diagnosis is at different times. They need a lot of support. And we can provide that support. And this is a population we're missing in mental health. We're really missing the mark here. We need to, to get on this and help bridge the gap.

Gordon Brewer
Well, thanks. I love hearing your passion for this and, and thank you for doing what you're doing with this. This is a this is a you know, a really big undertaking to put this network together and think it's just going to benefit so many people. Thank you so much for having me and for sharing this opportunity. Yes, yes. Well, thanks again, Tasha. And hopefully we'll be able to get you back home again as the network develops.