Interviews Mental Health Neurodiversity Podcasts

Recovering from Acquired Brain Injury with Dr. Jen Blanchette

acquired traumatic brain injury neurodivergent

Welcome back! Today I’m discussing acquired brain injury, recovery and neurodiversity with Dr. Jen Blanchette. Dr. Blanchette is a licensed psychologist, trauma (PTSD) expert, fitness expert, and concussion clinician who tailors coaching to your mental health and total wellness needs. She leads the TBI Therapist podcast, streaming wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Want to listen? This post is based off of Episode 54 of the Neurodiverging Podcast! Listen on Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Youtube

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Show Notes:

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Guest Bio:

TBI Therapist is lead by Dr. Jen Blanchette, a licensed psychologist, trauma (PTSD) expert, fitness expert, and concussion clinician who tailors coaching to your mental health and total wellness needs.

Dr. Blanchette has over 10 years of training and experience in brain injury therapy and neuropsychological testing. Her superpower is curiosity, out of the box thinking, and a huge heart for people who are trying to rebuild their lives after an accident or illness.

Jen lives in the beautiful state of Maine with her husband and two boys.


Transcript of Recovering from Acquired Brain Injury with Dr. Jen Blanchette

Danielle Sullivan [DS]: Welcome Dr. Blanchette to the Neurodiverging podcast. Thank you for being here, it’s good to see you. How’s your day going?

Dr. Jen Blanchette [JB]: Great, great, just finished up my day here at the office. I’m glad to be here with you and have this conversation – I’m excited!

Introduction to Dr. Jen Blanchette

DS: I was very excited to hear from you! You are a clinical psychologist and you work with folks who’ve had an acquired brain injury or a traumatic brain injury; what originally got you interested in working in this field?

JB: It’s an interesting story, a little bit. [Laughter] Because I think a lot of – this is a theme throughout my life – is many career transitions with me happen out of sheer necessity, so I think this work found me, I didn’t find it. I didn’t go out to seek it, but I found it anyway. So, I was jobless with a doctoral degree, in a new city, and I decided to cold-call a neuro-rehab program and say, “hey, would you like a post-doc?” [Laughter] I pumped myself with a lot of energy and Beyoncé might have been part of that mix.

JB: They took me because, I think, what they really wanted was a therapist; they didn’t really want someone who just wanted to do the neuropsychological testing. They wanted me to run groups, they wanted me to run some neuropsych assessment and evaluation, but that wasn’t my primary role on my post-doctoral residency. I had a lot of training in therapy and they really like that. They liked that I was interested in talking with people and sitting with people.

I found that the work was—I was just kind of shocked by what I didn’t know, first of all. I was reading this dense neuropsychological textbook trying to understand, like, “what is that? whoa…” So, part of it was me kind of figuring things out, and I think as a therapist I didn’t find there was much of a blueprint.

[DS agreeing]

Of course, my supervisor was there, and was like, “okay, use some CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)” or “did we ever get that DBT group?” which is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. I’ll spell out the acronyms for those who don’t know. But besides that, it was really eye-opening and I really fell in love with the people because the unique issues that they presented with seemed so isolating and misunderstood. I think that’s just a little bit of backstory about the way brain injury work found me.

DS: That’s really cool that you were able to just sort of jump in and find something that suited you so well. Sometimes you end up with stuff that you don’t really enjoy, but this sounds like the complete opposite. That’s fantastic!

JB: Yeah! And I worked with different professionals too, so I worked with PTs [physical therapists] and OTs [occupational therapists] and speech therapists, and we’d all collaborate on the care of the person in front of me. I really found that really helpful.

Introduction to Acquired Brain Injury

DS: Yeah. I know that traumatic brain injury, acquired brain injury – and if there’s a difference, you should tell us about what the difference is – there are so many repercussions with something like that happening, and so many professionals that then have to jump on and try to help support rehabilitation for the patient. What are some of the most common consequences that you see from these injuries and what folks are dealing with on a day-to-day basis?

JB: Yeah. So, if I’ve seen one brain injury I’ve seen one brain injury. [Laughter] I think that’s—if I can start with that.

DS: Yes.

JB: Every brain is so unique. You primarily talk with most people on the spectrum. Is that fair to say or not fair to say?

DS: I think it’s a lot of ADHDers and Autistics, but we’ve had occasional folks who have either medical issues or other neurodiversities happening. But not so many. I work with a couple of folks who’ve had a traumatic brain injury and are post-concussion, but I don’t think we’ve had any of them on the podcast yet.

JB: Okay, yeah.

DS: You might be our first podcast introduction to this topic, which is pretty fantastic.

JB: Yeah, I’m just kind of seeing where people are with regard to this topic.

DS: Yeah.

JB: I’m going to back up just a little bit and talk about acquired brain injury. There is an acquired brain injury which is our umbrella term that encompasses all of brain injuries that are acquired. We say ‘acquired’ because congenital brain injuries are something that you got from a congenital or birth situation; that would be like someone who has an autism spectrum diagnosis. They would not have an acquired brain injury although they could have had something that happened in the consequence of the birthing process or pre-birth that affected their brain health. Then, under acquired brain injury you have things like TBIs [traumatic brain injuries], you have concussion – which is a type of TBI. A lot of people don’t know that, that a concussion is a TBI! It’s a mild TBI, but it is a TBI.

DS: It seems traumatic enough to me.

JB: Yeah. Well, and I think some people had a jostle to the head they didn’t have a blow to the head, and they think, “oh, that, I didn’t have a TBI, you know, I was in a car accident, I didn’t hit anything.” But they did have a traumatic brain injury because there was injury to the brain that could have been axonal shearing where axons – which is part of the neuron – actually shear, they separate from each other. The most common type of TBI is actually a fall. Most people don’t know that. They think it’s a car accident,
they think it’s some kind of major football injury. It’s not. It’s a fall, especially for adults. I see a lot of adults here in Maine who have fallen on the ice. They haven’t been in a car accident or had some sort of sports-related concussion.

Other acquired brain injuries that I’ve worked with and that are out there are certainly things that can happen, like, toxic mold. You can have an acquired brain injury from something like toxic mold. Lyme disease. And anoxic injury where you lost oxygen to your brain. There’s lots of ways that you can have an acquired brain injury that don’t require the head jostling or the head being hit in some way. So that’s just a little bit, I don’t know if you want to unpack any of that, or…

DS: That’s really helpful. Maybe we can [also] talk about [how] it plays into neurodiversity – but you have folks who are born with a brain the way the brain is and then you have folks who are born with a brain and something affects the brain. Very broadly, just to really make very basic all the things you just said, where if they have an injury, a fall, a stroke, a mold event, something like that that changes something—

JB: Yes, I didn’t say stroke, which is a major one, thank you for saying stroke.

DS: Oh that’s okay. You have these two strains, but you could also have somebody who, say, was born with a different brain and then also had some kind of acquired brain injury on top of that. It’s like you said, all brains are different, if you’ve met one, you’ve met one. There must just be layers and layers and layers of what’s going on for folks.

How do people recover from these? If you’ve got a traumatic brain injury, just to reduce the [scope of] what we’re talking about a little bit more – you said a fall is the most common one, right? So, if somebody falls, has a brain injury, what might their symptoms be once they’ve woken back up? And what does the recovery look like from something like that? I know that’s a big question.

JB: It’s a big question. I can talk in broad strokes a little bit about what that might look like for people. An initial recovery – so if we’re talking about more of a— if they’re in the hospital, we’re probably talking about more a moderate or severe TBI, or they’ve lost consciousness for at least three, four hours, possibly over twenty-four hours. If that’s happened, they’ve probably had a significant blow to the head. Initially that can look like a headache, you know, pain to the actual head, swelling, so they might have to have some kind of surgical procedure to reduce any swelling on the brain. They might have to have some kind of brain scans to see if there’s anything that needs to be fixed, basically.

From there, then they’re going to kind of see what this person can do. Has there been— they’re looking at basic functions in the body and the brain. They’re going to do some evals to see is their speech affected, is movement affected, basic daily functions of living. That’s in the hospital, they’re going to focus on that. And I think most of us do have a concept of what that looks like in a hospital, right? You’re going to have OT, PT come in, they’re going to help you with maybe writing stuff or remembering things. With speech therapy they might help you with speech production but also memory; they work on memory as well. And then PT, you know, they can work on a whole host of things, but a lot of that will be movement related. So, in the hospital it looks like that. Basically, their job is to make sure you can do your activities of daily living, or your ADLs.

Beyond that, I think they’re looking at can they kind of do other things psychologically. There’s not so much of a focus on how are you feeling after this. You know, did you have this life or death experience? Was there a trauma? I’m a trauma expert so I often think through the lens of trauma, and was this incident traumatic for that person? And how are they going to recover from the trauma of whatever happened to them with that brain injury? I also think through that lens, and often that’s not addressed very well in the hospital, but again, that’s not [the hospital’s] role so much. I think neuro-rehab centers do have psychology involved in treatment, so that can be something that happens. So that’s initially. There’s a whole host of symptoms we can talk about that can happen, but, you know, memory functions can be impaired, speech can be impaired, movement. And then how someone responds to that, then varies by the person and the injury.

DS: Mm-hmm. Okay.

JB: A more severe injury could [have] the more prolonged recovery. They might have to stay in the hospital longer, they might have to stay in rehab longer. That’s kind of a broad stroke a little bit about TBI. I don’t know if you have any questions there.

What are some common effects of acquired brain injury?

DS: That’s really helpful, thank you, for folks who are at a very introductory level to this topic and just starting to learn about it. I know that when you first got in touch with me – and actually, prior to having I guess my first client who’d had reported a concussion and they were still recovering from it was a couple of years ago – and outside of working with those couple of clients I really haven’t had a good understanding of what it encompassed. I know that one thing that might be interesting to folks to learn about is what some of the fall-out from a brain injury can be. I think it was maybe in our email chain, you had mentioned things like social pragmatics can be affected, and executive function and memory, like you just said, can be affected. There are a lot of things that can change in the brain as a result from this injury that are similar to what some of us with different brains, like autism, ADHDers, are dealing with too, which I found really interesting.

JB: Right.

DS: Do people tend to – and again, I know this is broad question – is [someone] likely to recover completely after a traumatic brain injury, say if you’re younger and relatively healthy and you have a fall? Do you regain most of your functionality after a number of years, or is it likely instead that you’ll have sort of long, lingering kind of effects from it? Or both?

JB: Yeah. Again, it totally depends on severity of [the] injury. If we’re talking about concussions – let’s talk about a mild TBI. [With a] mild TBI, which is the most common type of acquired brain injury and TBI, most people do recover. I would say a majority, maybe eighty-ish percent recover from that. You maybe have twenty percent that don’t.

If we’re thinking about what that person might need or what that person experiences…attention is one of the biggest symptoms we work on after a brain injury. Attention is impaired, which then impairs the whole host of the brain. Because we need information to be able to get into the brain to remember it. If we have a limited capacity – think of before I had maybe, an eight ounce cup that I could fill up in my mind. Now that things been reduced to like a two cup size. If I have [a] reduced ability to hold or take in
information, then there’s just not a lot getting in there.

DS: Yeah.

JB: Sometimes it’s “okay, can we start to learn to grow that?” And I do believe in neuroplasticity! So yes, people can recover, people can regain abilities. Even years after an injury. If someone has told you, “this is all that you can do,” that’s a lie! Because it’s not scientific. We know that we can regain function even after an injury. I just want to encourage people, that’s not true, you can regain function. Can you regain everything? I don’t know. Because I haven’t seen your brain, and I’m not sure about that answer. But I think there’s always something we can do. I do know that one hundred percent.

DS: When you work with clients, maybe in the clinic, I guess you do an evaluation and you see where some deficits or where some places [are] that people might want to improve. What is your role in terms of helping them with that improvement? Is it kind of exercise-based? Is it more therapy-based? Is it a whole broad host of things?

JB: When I was…I’ve been in private practice now for ten years. I’m a psychologist by training, and pretty much I’ve done psychotherapy since my experience in post-doc. When I was in post-doc, I would do initial evaluations; and so as the psychologist I’d get your background, your history, talk about mental health symptoms, and also cognitive symptoms. I’d ask you, “what are you experiencing? Are you experiencing problems with memory? With attention? What is math like, now?” … a whole bunch of different questions on brain function and basic life function. Movement, I would ask questions
about [movement] but I wouldn’t assess specifically.

And then, when I was there, PT would handle the movement side of things, OT would handle the executive functioning in detail, speech would handle more memory and actual speech production and being able to understand written language or speech. Then, we would all come back together – which is a beautiful process – to look at everything that people evaluated. And then kind of say, this is what’s going on, this is what we think you might need, whether that might be some psychotherapy, or more OT, speech therapy. That was my role there.

Now, I do some evaluations and I do the mental health side of things pretty much. I’ll provide treatment for trauma – I’m a trauma therapist as well – and I do biofeedback now, which is a really nice adjunctive therapy for a whole bunch of things. And I refer out to those other therapies that…are not my expertise. So that’s what I do now. And I do some coaching and other things, podcasting, multi-passionate things that I do. Primarily I would say my role is in psychology and emotional health and wellness.

DS: I know that one kind of – or, I believe anyway, you can tell me if I’m wrong – common symptom afterwards is emotional regulation issues, right, that people are dealing with. And I guess that this is a trauma symptom as well, right?

JB: Yes

DS That wherever trauma comes from, whether it’s from childhood experiences, from an accident or injury or just traumatic experience, often times emotional regulation tends to dip afterwards. What might emotional regulation look like after in incidents like this? And is it different, in your experience, from the kind of emotional regulation issues we see after, say, an adverse childhood event or a less physical trauma?

JB: Right, yes. I do notice big differences. With my folks that have had a brain injury, I often see a reduced ability to regulate their emotions, and a big or wider range of emotion.

DS: Oh, that’s interesting.

JB: Many times, people describe it like, “I’m on this roller coaster and all of a sudden, you know, I’m crying.” Lot of folks that I’ve seen have not experienced a lot of tearfulness and they’re just kind of overwhelmed by not knowing how to deal with that. Some folks I’ve seen had intense anger, that I’m doing like straight anger management to help them through the anger pieces of their injury. Because a lot of changes happen after a brain injury where maybe they can’t do the same job that they did before or can’t do it right now. Maybe they lost a relationship or relationships, and that can happen…with concussion a lot of times with the sensory issues, I find I see that a lot more. Headaches and sensory issues with concussion. And they can’t really be in a big group – and you probably see this with a lot of different people in the neurodivergent kind of realm—

DS: Absolutely

JB: —that it’s hard to be in those loud environments. We just had July 4th, and I think about all the people that it’s a struggle for them to be able to absorb just the sensory pieces. We talk about how it’s really hard for them to go in the grocery store now. And they’re like, “I used to just go get groceries and now I can’t even make it through the grocery store without feeling like I’m going to cry or freak out or run out of there.”

Sometimes it turns into anxiety and some avoidance because they’re really scared of those environments that can…be more intense from a sensory perspective like a louder environment or a really open environment like the grocery store. Most of my folks don’t go to concerts [but] it’s just, some do, they put in earbuds and they need to rock out and that’s the choice the make and I’m totally in support of that because that’s what they found they need to do.

DS: Yeah. But it can be hard. As someone who has sensory issues myself, though obviously not having had a traumatic brain injury, you want to go to the music, music is good, but also it is so many people and so much pressure and the strobe lights from the stage can get really tricky.

JB: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. We often work through what are their…sensory triggers that might make them more anxious. Sometimes I’ll use a lot of different therapies to help them with that. Sometimes I do EMDR for the trauma pieces or the anxiety pieces. I do some mindfulness work, biofeedback work for a lot of that too. And I find that a lot of people – not that they don’t need other therapies or that I know all, because I do not [laughs] – but sometimes I think it’s overlooked that they’ll be seen in neuro-rehab and they’ll have all the more physical or cognitive therapies, then they get
discharged, and then they’re like, “but how do I live my life? Like, I’m not working anymore or I’m not going to school in the way I used to do.” And they’re really reeling from the identity shifts, the emotional shifts that they’ve felt, and it’s just a unique issue because it’s invisible, right.

DS: Yeah.

Acquiring Neurodiversity through a Disabling Event

JB: No one can necessarily tell unless there’s a physical disability from a brain injury that something’s changed. Their family members will look at them and then like [say] “oh, you’re still dealing with that concussion, that brain injury stuff?” “Um, yup, I’m still dealing with that, and I still have trouble walking in a store or remembering things.”

DS: I’m wondering if it’s similar – there are a lot of differences – but what I’m thinking about is the folks that come into my coaching practice who have been identified as neurodivergent as an adult. It’s a little different because they’ve had many years of being ADHD and they just haven’t had the name for it, but a lot of times that identity shift like you just said, of that transition, of suddenly I am a “disabled person” and suddenly I am not “the same as everyone else” – I’m making air quotes for people who are on the podcast – that can be really a big emotional and mental shift. It can cause you to have to reset boundaries with your family and friends, to change your expectations of what you can and can’t [do], and what’s reasonable to ask for. And it sounds like some of that negotiation of identity might be similar to folks who’ve had this [incident] whether it’s falling down two steps or falling down a big, sheer cliff, that
renegotiation of identity sounds like it could cause long-term trauma that keeps reoccurring as you’re trying to make all these mental shifts too.

It’s not this one big traumatic event and then you heal from that trauma and then it’s done, but rather that there can be reoccurring stress and impact as you try to navigate all these changes.

JB: Yeah. Yeah, and I think the shift is huge. You know, I was this way before and now I’m quote ‘this way’ after. And to have somebody move to acceptance, which our culture wants us to do, to say, “you just need to accept this and move on,” and they’re like, “but I’m a different person and I’ve lost a lot of stuff and I can’t just switch it and turn it off and say nothing is different.” Like, I went to sleep last night and it’s like everything in my whole life [changes]. It’s like if you had something to shake your life and upend everything, that’s what it feels like; that’s what people talk to me about, it feels like there’s a tornado that came through the house or a snow globe they shook it up and it’s all different and [they say] “I don’t even know how to navigate or find anything anymore or do anything.”

DS: Yeah. Yeah, it’s really interesting how similar that sounds to some of my clients’ experiences. And in terms of the neurodivergent piece, I think it’s really interesting because we have folks who are born neurodivergent or in these categories that we call ‘neurodivergent,’ and then we have folks who have an acquired injury or an acquired brain change and kind of become neurodivergent in all ways that matter. Would you then say, based on your clients maybe, do folks take this label and then run with it, and
they’re neurodivergent for life now? Is it helpful for them to frame themselves in this way? Or is it something that they’re neurodivergent for the time and then they get back all their executive function skills and manage a full recovery and then they’re not neurodivergent anymore? How do they frame themselves? Have you noticed anything in that? I should ask an actual survivor probably, but I’m just interested.

JB: Yeah, I think a survivor in their experience cause I’ve — I know I’m thinking of all the
people I’ve worked with…

DS: I’m sure there’s broad…

JB: Yeah, a gamut of what people have experienced. And some who I would say it has been a complete brain shift and change, and that neurodivergence does remain, that if they are living in health then they found a way to incorporate that into their identity, and let people know “this is who I am. I have memory issues, or I say things a little bit differently and that’s part of me.” The people who are authentic, and love them, and that can see them in the way they really are, they accept that, and they love them for that.
They can laugh about those things together and it’s not really an issue in those really supportive relationships. I think I would say yes, people do find a way to have that be incorporated into their identity. Some people do recover. I think in the case of concussion I see that, because again more of a milder injury, more a metabolic injury.

For someone who has structural changes to the brain, then we can assume that likely they might have some things they’re going to be dealing with for the rest of their life, if it’s a lifelong disability. So yeah, that’s my attempt to answer that question. [laughs]

DS: [laughs] No that’s really helpful! I recognized halfway through the question I should be asking someone else. But just your experience with a broad kind of swath of population, and different people who’ve kind of handled different things also gives you an insight…

JB: And some people have really struggled with that too, I would say. If we’re thinking of a severe TBI and I know that they’re probably going to have life long issues related to that TBI, they don’t want that identity and they don’t accept that identity. When people can label them— I’m even thinking of an individual who, like a police officer saw them, and they had ataxia so their body you know kind of made different types of movements and assumed they were drunk–

DS: Oh yeah…mmhmm

JB: — and not a TBI survivor. They also had some dysarthria so their voice potentially could have sounded like a slurred speech versus that [it] was a symptom of their TBI. They were livid that there’s not more acceptance that people can walk differently, can talk differently and that’s how they walk and talk now. I really felt for them that they were seen that way.

DS: Yeah. Yeah. And it is certainly a way that maybe folks that were born neurodivergent and survivors of acquired brain injury can ally together. When I think of human rights, I think of autistic youth [who] have so many more issues with the police in the United States than neurotypical youth tend to. There are just so many human rights issues around ability and disability, this seems like a place we can ally together, right, no matter where the neurodivergence came from originally.

JB: Right. And how can we be more, I think, curious versus accusatory.

DS: Absolutely.

JB: Okay, this person is walking differently, this person is talking differently, can I have a curiosity about that person versus [putting] them into a box like “that person must be this,” or “they must be that” ability. And I think by working with people of different abilities too, you know, some people might assume that that speech pattern might be someone who was of a different intellectual functioning when in fact it is not.

DS: Yeah, they’re not always related.

JB: Right.

DS: That’s a really good point, yeah. I think a lot of the folks I work with too have had experiences where people make judgements about them based on something about the way they were moving, speaking, reacting to sensory stimuli, anything like that. That can be really frustrating and really demeaning and makes it harder to live your life as someone who is trying to do their best and move forward.

JB: Yeah. One hundred percent.

DS: What would you say for folks who are listening who have never experienced a brain injury or know anyone who has? Is there any advice you have for people who might be dealing with it for the first time or who might just not know much about it? What should they know and what should they be thinking about?

JB: Yeah, I mean I think the one thing is that it’s very isolating, so find support and find other people that can understand you. That can either [be a] survivor group or someone who gets what you’re talking about. A lot of times when I have people come to me for therapy they’ve been to other therapists who don’t maybe understand the weight of what they’ve been through – not that I can understand everything that they’ve been through – but talking to many survivors for a decade, I feel like I get a good sense of
“okay, I’ve heard this before, yes you’re not crazy, this is a real thing, this is super hard.”

DS: Absolutely.

JB: I think just knowing you’re not alone and then seeking the right help. So many times they’ve heard – either they’ve gotten bad advice because they haven’t been to someone who knew about brain injuries, or knew the right support that they needed – felt like they didn’t get the treatment, and…their recovery has been prolonged. I think about that a lot with concussion, because they used to tell us, “well, just go in a dark room for two weeks and call me later.” Which is really bad advice and something we don’t
recommend any more!

If you’ve had a concussion, certainly seek support sooner than later. And I think just to keep being curious and questioning; if you’re not getting the answers you need, keep looking for those answers. To keep seeking people until you feel like you’ve gotten an answer that makes sense to you.

DS: For therapists who are practicing trauma-informed care, how can listeners who might want to access [trauma-informed professionals], how can they find them or assess them for actually being trauma-informed? I feel like it’s kind of a buzz-word now and a lot of people just kind of put that there.

JB: Yeah, it is.

How can you find a trauma-informed practitioner?

DS: Do you have any advice for folks who are really looking to assess if their practitioner really understands trauma?

JB: Yeah, so, I am a member of EMDRIA which is the EMDR International Association and I would encourage you to find an EMDR-certified therapist. They have even more credentials than a therapist who might be trauma-informed. I believe in finding someone who has been trained in an evidence-based model of trauma therapy so those would be: EMDR; cognitive processing therapy is another one which the VA endorses, and they also endorse EMDR or prolonged exposure therapy.

DS: Okay, thank you.

JB: Yeah, so I would look at therapists that have specific certification and training in those different modalities because we know they’ve been well studied, and I think those trainings do a good job walking therapists through what they need to know when they’re stepping into trauma work with someone.

DS: Yeah, it’s a really complex field. Thank you, that’s really helpful because you can [go] on Psychology Today or you’re trying to Google someone and it can be really hard to wean down who is actually trained and who has [just] clicked the little box on their profile.

JB: Right. I think that when you first come out of your training, you have a generalist’s training and I think it served me well to go through a specific trauma training that you know really takes you through, ‘okay this is what you look for, these are the issues that can come up, these are some reactions that you might want to watch out for, or some things that might be problematic for someone who is going through trauma therapy,’ just to know.

DS: Yeah, for sure. I know that it’s very easy to re-injure folks or cause harm using traditional therapy techniques sometimes when there has been a trauma. I’m really pleased that it’s something the United States is sort of starting to grapple with and we’re starting to see these programs and these specific trainings come out because working with a hugely traumatized population as a coach too it’s nice to see people like you who have gone and done this extra work because it can be so supportive to clients.

JB: Right, yes, yes.

Where can you learn about Dr. Jen Blanchette?

DS: Thank you for that. Where can people find out more about you and your offerings and your podcast which you should go subscribe for…where should they go find you?

JB: Yes! I think certainly like you can see all my stuff on Instagram which I have a link there, but I’m on https://drjenblanchette.com/, you can find me there. I do have a brain injury group that’s coming out in the fall which is called Calming the Storm and that’s exclusively for people after brain injury so that is coming in September. All my offerings through the podcast are free, so information, survivor stories so if you just want to access some free information you can listen to the podcast,

I have an email course for free if you want to check that out you can give those links for
people if they want some free resources too.

DS: Awesome, I’ll put them in the show notes. I took the email course, actually, it was really good. [laughs] I’d forgotten about it because it was when we first connected. But it was really easy to sign up and I learned a lot so you should do it!

JB: Good, I’m glad! That’s really good feedback.

DS: Yeah, I’m glad. I really enjoyed it, I got a lot out of it. Well, wonderful! Thanks so much for being here today!

JB: Thanks for having me!

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