Dan, it is-- I think it communicates a good message when we, as in mental health providers, are right there with the physicians, primary care docs, and such, um, and sort of it's communicating to the patient that, you know, their, their physical health and their mental health are connected in a way that I think can be helpful.

Yeah, I agree.

I mean, I think most of us just know from our own experience if we have a significant physical health problem, back pain, headaches, uh, really any sort of significant medical problem, it starts to affect us emotionally.

It affects, it affects us behaviorally.

And vice versa.

When you have real severe emotional and behavioral issues, they often begin to affect you physically.

You feel it in your stomach, you feel it in your head.

Like, do you see the patient the same day as they have their physical with their primary care doc? Is it just that one session, or do you follow them for a few sessions? What does that look like?

[chuckles]

Yeah.

So after going through all the test results that we did, I'm feeling much more confident about what's been causing the problems that you've been experiencing, and it's a bit of a good news, bad news situation.

Uh, bad news is, yeah, there, there's some real problems here.

The good news is what's causing your problem is something we can change.

It's not an easy change, but it can be changed.

What are your thoughts about that? But I would, I would just leave that out there and see where he goes.

That's for sure.

So what else should we know about the basics of the four processes?

Yeah, I think you did a, a good job of describing them.

I think, um, it can be helpful to think about them as linear and sequential, but it's also helpful to hold on to that lightly and to let it go.

I think an important insight is to begin with engagement, helping the person to feel understood.

And often in this stage, this is a time where we're, we're often most interested in hearing both sides of their ambivalence.

So again, if, if we just stick with the example of a cigarette smoker, when we're engaging someone, we wanna know how do you feel about even having a discussion with me about your smoking? What comes up for you when, when you start to think about talking about this? And then what are the reasons why maybe you, you do wanna keep smoking? And what are the reasons why, why you might wanna cut down and quit? We don't wanna dwell on the good things about smoking.

We don't wanna wallow in that, but we do wanna spend enough time there that we can make sure that the person feels understood.

But for neuropsychologists or other clinicians who are in more busy settings and they don't have that luxury of time, what tips do you have to engage?