Occupational Therapist Leah Bridge, MSOT, OTR, Joins NESCA’s Coaching Team Full-time

NESCA welcomed Occupational Therapist Leah Bridge, MSOT, OTR, as a per diem Real-life Skills and Executive Function Coach this past fall. We are thrilled to announce that she has joined our coaching team full-time, allowing her to offer more in-person coaching services to clients in Eastern and Central Massachusetts. Learn more about Leah and what she brings to her clients from our recent interview. 

How did you become interested in occupational therapy?
As a younger student, I was diagnosed with a learning disability and was exposed to other students with various challenges in my classes and while receiving services. Through that experience, mostly in high school, I became interested in helping other friends and students engage with their work. That kickstarted my desire to work in an area where I was able to support the specialized needs population engage more in their everyday lives.

When I started my undergraduate degree, I actually didn’t know about occupational therapy at all. After ruling out other career paths and with the help of my advisor, I realized that OT was exactly the path I wanted to go down. It encompassed so much of what I love to do.

Once I started my occupational therapy graduate program, I learned about the mental health side of OT, which I hadn’t really known about before. That was very interesting to me, so I did a clinical placement at a behavioral health hospital, which set me on the path to becoming a mental health occupational therapist. From there, I ended up working at Cambridge Health Alliance for the past two years in the inpatient pediatrics, adolescents, and neurodevelopmental unit. Since these are acute settings, the patients mainly come in after a mental health crisis, and my job was to help stabilize them and work with them on self-regulation and coping skills.

Why are you moving to NESCA as a Real-Life Skills and Executive Function Coach?
While I really enjoyed working in an acute setting,  I didn’t feel like I was able to make as much of an impact as I wanted to because the patients are there for a short period of time. I wanted to work with clients from start to finish, showing them the necessary skills for life.

I came on board at NESCA as a per diem coach and moved to full-time this winter, because I quickly learned just how amazing it is to help people build skills in a natural setting, whether it’s in the community or at home. I love working with people from scratch, and seeing them progress, become more resilient, and build skills.

What approaches do you take in working with our coaching clients when they are so unique from one another?
I want my  clients to feel like I’m easygoing and approachable. I use a very warm, empathetic approach and a lot of humor to make connections with them. I also like to see where individuals are at and follow their lead – never pushing someone too quickly and meeting their comfort level throughout the process. Once we have a foundational relationship, I can see where to challenge them.

What skills do you work on in the home, in the community, or anywhere else with your students?
It can be a whole range of things. So far, I’ve worked on behavioral activation, meal prepping, note taking, folding laundry, taking out the trash, placing things into the dishwasher – generally helping people to take more of an independent approach to their daily tasks.

In the community, it could be anything from going into a store and feeling comfortable interacting with different employees in that store. I may take an individual into a store and practice some of the different types of jobs we are working on, like organizing a shelf in Target that was a bit disheveled and putting items back in their places. It’s a more interactive way to work on the organizational skills we may be building. We may also just walk around a crowded grocery store or mall where we can determine different self-regulation techniques that work in these overstimulating and overwhelming moments. It helps individuals be confident that, in the future, they may be able to go to these places alone and feel completely comfortable there.

What is the profile of some of the students that you’ve worked with?
I like working with people of all ages, and I love the differences among all of the patients, students, and clients I’ve seen. I’ve worked with a whole wide variety. At Cambridge Health, I worked with kids who are struggling from depression, anxiety, or a mood disorder, like bipolar, borderline personality disorder or psychosis. In the neurodevelopmental unit, I worked with a lot of different kids with autism, have an intellectual disability, or a traumatic brain injury. While there, I worked with kids who are both very resistant to working together as well as those who are incredibly self-motivated and really want to do the work.

At NESCA, I’ve also seen a whole variety of clients who are really fun to work with. We do things like work towards building skills they can use when they go off to college, helping them to be more independent and live on campus more confidently. I’ve also worked with students who are taking some time off from college or graduate school to rebuild their confidence and mental health before going back into the school setting. We’re working on a lot of daily tasks to help them feel more regulated and less overwhelmed, and on strategies to help in those difficult moments and remember that they can do this.

How do you gain buy-in from the individuals you work with?
Meeting them where they’re at is so important. I go in with an open attitude and determine where they are at in each session, adjusting my plan from there. I never force anything, but rather go at their pace. I find I’m more successful when we just take time to get to know each other, build trust and understanding, and then the buy-in comes.

Most people are more willing to participate when they know why they are engaging in an activity or some type of coaching. When they learn that I am trying to teach them skills to help them advocate for themselves, they feel more empowered – not just that their parents are making them do this. It’s been very helpful to show them that they have a say in the process and a voice that helps them get to that place of independence.

How does NESCA’s collaborative approach help you in your coaching practice?
It offers amazing value. As an example, I may be thinking of an approach to use in a session, and then I hear from or consult with someone from another discipline within the practice about how they may approach it. It opens your eyes to a whole other way of looking at something. I’m also someone who is very eager to learn and improve my own skills, so I love getting input from other people and delving into the resources they suggest. I always want what’s best for my clients and my patients, so I am always happy to collaborate with everyone to be able to get that for them.

How and where will you be offering your coaching services?
I will be mostly in-person with my clients, which could be at their home, in the community, on a college campus, among other locations, generally within a 20- to 30-minute drive from Newton, MA. I will also be able to offer remote services.

What’s your approach to designing a program or curriculum for someone?
I start off with doing some assessments to determine the areas that are within the domains of OT, such as activities of daily living, leisure activities, work/school activities, and also looking at what skills the individual can already do on their own, and ranking their performance level within each of those along the way. Some clients are able to complete these assessments independently, and some require input from their parents or caregivers. From there, we choose what areas we want to start with and set goals, mainly based on what the greatest areas of need are. We typically work in increments of eight-week sessions. Near the end of the eight weeks, we reevaluate and see if we want to do more.

What are some of the goals your students are working on?
A person may have the goal to go to a grocery store and pick out items from a shopping list. We may not start with going to the grocery store right away. Instead, we may sit down and look at a map of the grocery store and get a feel for what each aisle looks like and what we can find in each one. We may do this kind of work for the first four sessions and then spend the next four sessions going to different places where we can look at how different stores are set up, and how we can find items when the aisles look different from store to store. If we can’t find the items, we work on how to approach someone and ask where we can find them.

What is your take on using different technology tools or apps?
I’m someone who loves learning all about new approaches, including technology, to see what may work. I’m open to exploring new technology and introducing it to students if I think it is something that will support them in reaching their goals. There are some great ones available for anxiety, which may help them engage in our sessions together. There are others for banking, scheduling, and calendaring. If a student prefers using Google Sheets or Excel to help organize their day, I am definitely willing to work with them using those as long as they are a support.

Is there anything else that you would like people to know about you?
I love working with individuals who are going through mental health challenges, whether short-term or chronic. But it’s not the only area I am interested in. I’m someone who feels I can offer a lot and am willing to do the work to really learn and feel as though I can provide the best care to those with whom I work. So, for me, there’s really nothing that I feel I want to avoid. I’m a very open person in that sense that I really just want to help as many people as I can.