Emily Roberts has really begun to champion the niche of body image within the OT community. She has @thebodyimageOT on Instagram where she posts excellent information and resources all about healthy body image. I wanted to have a conversation with her and find out more about OT’s role in this space and what drew her to this area of practice and passion. 

After you’ve listened definitely give her a follow if you’re not already 🙂

Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied

Brock
@brockcookOT
brock.cook@me.com

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Transcript

Brock Cook 0:01
Hi, and welcome to yet another episode of occupied. Just a quick note, if you are enjoying these, please do share them with friends, colleagues, people you know who might be interested in whichever topics they are. Also, if you’re looking to get even more value out of your podcasting experience, pop on over to patreon.com for slash occupied plus, where you can get exclusive episodes as well as a ton of other resources to enhance your practice and your knowledge. Without further ado, let’s get on with this episode. Today we are speaking with the one the only Emily Roberts you may know her as the body image ot on Instagram, we talk about everything with regards to body image identity and how that impacts on a person’s occupations. And what OTS might be able to actually do for people who are experiencing this. So please do grab a drink, sit down, relax, and enjoy. Get a My name is Brock Cook and welcome to occupied. In this podcast we’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy. We explore the people topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources at occupied podcast calm. But for now, let’s roll the episode.

Emily Roberts 1:34
So I actually would want it to be a dietician. And my whole family was turning me away from dietetics for whatever reason. And so then my sister in law’s a nurse and I never heard of occupational therapy, but she knew an occupational therapist was like, I think you would really like occupational therapy, I think it like really fits your personality well. And so, I went and I shadowed one. And, um, and honestly, it’s not even, it’s not that like, pretty have a story, I just kind of just went along with it. Um, I mean, I enjoyed the shadowing experience, but I just kind of chose it. And then I really fell in love with it when I was in ot school was when like the whole, I really, truly felt like I understood what occupational therapy was. And I was like, Yes, this is exactly what I want to do.

Brock Cook 2:34
So you guys have to do like it’s a post grad. Course over that. What was your undergrad in

Emily Roberts 2:40
kinesiology? and Spanish

Brock Cook 2:43
seems to be a fairly popular option over there. I remember talking not long ago about the fact that you know, a lot of Americans seem to use kinesiology as access to the profession, and it’s not really a thing here. Really? Not well, not a university course anyway. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s interesting. I don’t know any universities you can study kinesiology specifically. It’s mainly if you’re going to do that kind of thing. It’d be like exercise science or sports science. But yeah, nothing. I’m actually pretty sure I even had a look one day and I couldn’t find a kinesiology uni degree. You could do like, little like TAFE certificates, which I don’t know what the equivalent of TAFE would be over there. I’ve never even heard of that. What’s that? tapes, kind of like if you’re gonna do a trade? Like the theory aspect of your trade would be run through the tape. I don’t know what it stands for. But it’s kind of like it’s not a bachelor’s degree, but it’s like a certificate level qualifications under that.

Emily Roberts 4:02
equivalent of what we call an associate’s degree. Do you guys have one of those? Where are you? Right, but

Brock Cook 4:07
it’s probably sounds like it’ll be similar to that. So yeah, I think I found a couple places where you could study Kinesiology and get some sort of cert for that, but not there was no like University Level qualification. Which is interesting, because yeah, it’s like a whole field that doesn’t exist in another country.

Emily Roberts 4:32
Yeah, well, honestly, there’s nothing you can really do directly with kinesiology like you have to go on to do something else or get other certifications. So that makes sense.

Brock Cook 4:43
Yeah. I don’t know what I mean. We don’t have masters entry. Oh, we do. You can do masters entry, but it’s not a requirement here. So most of the courses in Australia are bachelors. Yeah. Oh, man. It’s Direct like mine is a Bachelor of occupational therapy. So it’s, it’s seems like less stuffing around. It’s a lot easier to process over here.

Emily Roberts 5:12
It’s just that the US is education education system is just a whole mess. It’s just

Brock Cook 5:18
It’s very, it’s very unique. Very unique and very expensive. But yeah, very. Yes, very expensive. So, you I mean, I followed you for a while now on Instagram, and we’ve chatted a few times. Just wait for that. That’s my dog. Okay, I have to it’ll happen. I don’t know what he’s barking yet. But hopefully he shuts up. He’s barking dogs walking past.

All right.

Yeah, so I followed you for quite a while now. And we’ve connected over Instagram. And the thing that really grabs me about your your content is it’s I don’t I don’t know any other ot that’s posting at the information you’re posting, but your Instagram handle is the body image ot how did how did that come about?

Emily Roberts 6:23
Yes. So I used to be empower something empower ot or something like that, when I first started my ot kind of Instagram, and then I changed it to my name. And then eventually I changed it to the body image it because that I just that’s where most of my content was going. Like, that’s what I enjoyed posting about. And what I got a lot of engagement out of, and kind of where I wanted to go further in my career, passion, whatever you want to call it with it. So I just nobody else had it. And I was like, I better grab this Well, last. But that’s why I chose to be the body image ot on Instagram. But, um, but really, it is something that I don’t feel like a lot of OTS talk about, but it’s something that is super relevant to OT and to what we do, because our body image and the way we feel about ourselves directly impacts how we show up in the world, and how we participate in our occupations or don’t participate. So.

Brock Cook 7:35
So what was it? Was it a personal experience? Or what Where did your interest in looking at body image through an occupational lens come from?

Emily Roberts 7:47
Yes, definitely my personal experience, and then after that more, so just seeing the world in a totally different way, and seeing how much it impacts everybody else. But, um, definitely a personal experience. Do you want me to get into my show? So I’ll try to keep it somewhat concise, because I can go off on a million tangents here.

Brock Cook 8:12
I like tangent. It’s okay.

Emily Roberts 8:15
Okay, so growing up, I have two older brothers, and we are great friends. And we’ve always been decently great friends, but they’re brothers. And so they teased me all the time growing up. And I guess first I should probably say, I’ve never been in a non marginalized body, like I am average size. I’m like, I’m heterosexual. And I have never actually gotten a lot of stigma on my body from the outside world. But I think that it doesn’t really matter. I mean, it matters, but it doesn’t matter for people individually, when they’re getting things. I mean, you get it from all different directions. So my family was probably the first that really started focusing on my body more so than just me. And my brothers would make fun of me and they would call me chubby and always like asked me like, what is Emily gonna lose her baby fat. And I’m like, this sounds horrible. I hope my brother doesn’t listen to this because he’s gonna feel horrible. But he would like show up my fat rolls to his friends and be like, look at all of her roles. And at the time, I would just laugh about it because like, he’s my older brother I want to fit in I want to hang out with his friends. But looking back I think that just that over and over and over again. kind of shaped how I felt about my body and made me think okay, well, whatever fat I do have on my body is not okay to have to

Brock Cook 9:54
be around like when that was happening.

Emily Roberts 9:57
Um, I remember it probably like seven or eight years old, okay. So I don’t know if it happened before then. But if I do if it did, I don’t really have much memory of it. Um, and then my best friend growing up who is still my best friend to this day, she is just like, as a totally different build than I do just like very thin, tall with long legs. And all of the boys had crushes on her. And all of the girls wanted to be friends with her, not me. And there was really like we grew up together. So there was really no difference in my mind, at least of how how I was seeing versus how s