Your Reluctant Sidekick in Recovery – The Health Insurance Company [Episode 7]

01/25/19 • 30 min

OK, from birth, we are all potty trained, learn to eat, then distrust everyone over 30, and finally, hate insurance companies. But when we are expected them to pay our healthcare bills, we need to understand how they want to control the quality of care that hospitals, doctors, and therapists deliver. Now we know they have a rich reputation of denying care, especially when we feel our loved one needs it most. But why do they do it? This is Tom’s talk on understanding that why, so every parent or caregiver can be armed with that information to either advocate effectively to the treatment providers, or advocate to the insurance company to pay for necessary care.

In this episode, Tom takes a balanced look at the good, and not-so-good, and infuriating about how insurance companies do their job. But here’s the thing - Tom is coaching you to get out of the emotional and into the (mild) weeds of thinking like them, and staying ahead of their decision-making. Then, you can truly use them as an effective partner in getting. . .and keeping . . . someone well.

Previous Episode

Visiting a Psychiatric Hospital – Primer for First Timers, and How to Handle Yourself AND Help the Patient When You Are There [Episode 6]

One of the most mystical but misunderstood places in the medical world is the psychiatric hospital; this place has been dehumanized in our modern culture, and has a plethora of characters..the “looney bin, padded rooms, “crazytown”, all making it seem like some scary, even fascinating place. If it were a reality show , most viewers would expect the voyeur rush of watching an addict freaking out and destroying their room. But in real life, the “psych unit” is a really pretty boring place. And It IS a place where everything that matters happens quietly and unspoken – a place full of people who are quietly in distress, some really suffering, but all experiencing a brain injury that needs healing.

But for families who have never been, there is are basic rules ways to behave to meaningfully participate in the recovery process. Tom take his listeners on a visit and explains the ways to get the most out of your visits to your loved one who is there. This episode walks you through a how-to plan for this most intimate and consequential of hospital stays for you and your loved one.

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undefined - Cracking the Code on Borderline Personality – How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Brings Change and Dignity to Your Loved One Living in Chaos [Episode 8]

Cracking the Code on Borderline Personality – How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Brings Change and Dignity to Your Loved One Living in Chaos [Episode 8]

Borderline personality disorder is one of the most stigmatizing and sensational (pejoratively speaking) conditions that the mental healthcare world tries to understand and “treat”. So needless to say, if the experts are always struggling to figure out (and agree about!) its traits and disabilities, parents and families are suffering beyond belief each day caring for a loved one living with it.

In another of his Shrink Rap talks with national experts, Tom introduces his listeners to Dr Anne Wake, a national expert on dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and herself a longtime colleague and collaborator with DBT’s originator Dr Marsha Linehan. Like all Tom’s picks, Anne is a soothing but exacting reporter on how to understand the person suffering in their chaotic world AND this uniquely functional and successful behavior therapy. And how families can count on it for real change.