What is Vision Therapy Like for an Adult

"There's going to be times when you come across something that just seems mentally or physically impossible. You can say 'this sucks' and take defeat, or take a step back and say, 'OK, I'm not so good at this, but I can do this." - Coach Ben on not letting your Visual Therapy exercises bring you down.

Today, Jess takes the host seat and talks to our very own Coach Ben. He's a board-certified Optometric Vision Therapist, working behind the scenes, providing feedback to the 4D Vision Therapy team on what activities could be performed to improve patients' results.
He also has a long history with filmmaking, storytelling, and editing, which he has been able to incorporate into his work and the way he sees therapy.
We're focusing on adults and how we approach their vision therapy, highlighting the importance of setting clear goals, even when things seem too easy or too difficult.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

(04:32) Setting vision therapy goals for adults. The Simpsons teach us a valuable lesson.
(08:47) When therapy seems “too easy”, Coach Ben tells us how we deal with it.
(14:42) The mindset role when starting a therapeutic experience.
(20:02) A hero’s journey: a filmmaking angle on vision therapy.
(23:18) Who’s the “ideal” adult to take Vision Therapy?

Check out our Digital Programs

• 4d Built to Read Digital Program
• Concussion Recovery
• Built to Drive

Follow us at 4D Vision Gym on Facebook and Instagram @4dvisiongymvt for the latest news and updates. DM us if you have any Vision Therapy related questions - you may hear the answer in a future episode!

If you enjoyed this show, please rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We really appreciate your support!
Send us a screenshot of your review and receive 10% off any one of our 4D Vision Gym products or services. And if your friends or family are experiencing inexplicable challenges, refer them to this podcast and tell them, “It Could Be Your Eyes.”   

Transcript

Dr. Juanita Collier: Welcome to the It Could Be Your Eyes podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Juanita Collier. Through my decades of work in the field of vision, I have met thousands of patients, parents, educators, therapists, and doctors searching for solutions to the seemingly unsolvable. Challenging traditional medicine's new normal?

We'll uncover that the root cause isn't necessarily what you thought it might be. It could be your eyes.

Jessica: Welcome back to the, it could be your eyes podcast. Today, I'm stepping in as main host. My name is Jess. I am usually the co host, but today my co host is Coach Ben. Coach Ben, could you introduce yourself and tell our crew, if they haven't heard your previous episodes, who you are, what you do with us, and what your deal is?

Coach Ben: Yeah. Hello. My name's Coach Ben. I've been a vision therapist for a few years now. I'm a certified Optometric Vision Therapist, board certified a couple years ago, back right when COVID hit, which is super fun. Digitally, right? Yep. Yeah. The first class to do it digitally. My job now, I'm doing a lot of behind the scenes work, so I'm programming a lot of patients and just kind of looking at their notes and everything with Dr. Collier and with Jess and giving my feedback as to what activities I think they should do next in their grand scheme of things. 

Jessica: It's been really great to have you as part of our case managing team because our patients who are here in the office know that primarily they see me and our other therapist in the sessions, in the office, and see what's happening in the moment.

But then Ben is able to take kind of the bird's eye view and take the quantitative data from Dr. Collier's exams and my qualitative data from how things are going in session and kind of create this. symphony masterpiece treatment plan that can kind of, I have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees where you can zoom out and you can see the whole picture a little better.

And so I think together, the three of us, along with our other therapists and assistants in the room can really take people where they need to go. And you even have started helping us out with the digital programs too, and kind of, uh, our individualized. remote treatment plans, uh, you're able to kind of see those through in a different way as well, right?

Coach Ben: Yeah. I think it's been a really rewarding process for me too, just to kind of flex that brain a little bit and look at things a little bit differently. I have a long history with like filmmaking and a lot of that like spent editing. And when I would edit a film, I, I like to be not on set just because I kind of, when you're on set, There's more of an emotional attachment to every scene so you're going to have to keep every scene in the film and with vision therapy now that I'm not really so much in the office, I'm getting to look at things a little bit more objectively and just kind of still taking in what I think is going to be frustrating or what Jess reports is was frustrating for the patient.

Okay, but like, here's where we should really try to, to go. 

Jessica: But we need to push a little bit more there because this is really important to the end goals, right? Like, I, I can be a little softy and be like, oh, that's hard. Okay, well, we don't have to do that. And then Coach Ben is like, no, you need to go back to that.

Let's try that again. And I like that you point out your background in filmmaking and storytelling and story editing and such because I think that actually plays in. So put a little flag on that, everybody listening and Coach Ben to come back to that. Remind me to come back to that because I think it actually has a lot to do with what we're talking about today.

So I asked Ben to come back because before we talked about having kids in therapy, and how to make therapy fun for kids, how we do it here in the office, and how we can guide parents to do it from home. But now, I'd like to talk about adults, and the adults we see in the office, and the adults that are doing vision therapy kind of remotely, through one of our digital programs, or kind of on their own.

I think with us both being, then, even though you're behind the scenes now, you have been in the office, too quite a bit. Hands on. So when we first start an adult, we ask them just like we ask our kids, we just ask them in a different way. We ask them like to make a goal, like what is the one thing you wanna be getting out of this?

And so do you wanna talk a little bit about goal setting and how that works for an adult that's going to conquer or take on vision therapy? 

Coach Ben: Yeah, absolutely. Goal setting, I think, is super important, obviously. I think one thing, first of all, that it does is it helps keep us focused as to why we're doing what we're doing.

Going back to filmmaking, there's kind of, a good script has a character that has wants, and then they have a need. And sometimes they're... Work in harmony together and sometimes they work opposite each other like why I want to get my eyes Aligned it's like I need to do it for this goals can be Relatively simple where they can be super complex whenever I think of goal setting or motivation.

My first thought is with the Simpsons which... there's this episode that goes back in time when Homer and Marge first had Maggie, their third child, when Marge became pregnant with her. Homer had to leave what he considered a bit of a dream job at the bowling alley to go back to the nuclear power plant.

And Mr. Burns, his boss, to kind of get back at him, had a plaque over his desk that said, Don't forget you're here forever. But Homer, over time, they show that he had posted pictures of Maggie. Blocking out letters that just say, do it for her. 

Jessica: Do it for her. 

Coach Ben: Yep. Exactly. I've, I rip that off whenever I had my own daughter too. It's just, I think my kids are, a lot of goals or a lot of the goals that I have are centered around my kids and adults are similar. If they have kids, sometimes it's even just more of like a, a goal for their own self. Kind of getting a self sense of like self-reliance or independence back, especially for some of our T B I patients.

Yeah. 

Or like overcoming a hurdle that they've had their entire life. That, you know what, I finally want to do this. I finally want to, you know, see a 3D movie or I want to finally get my license. 

Jessica: Exactly. I think it's when we talk about goals, and I know I've talked about it here on the show before as well, but you know, one of our biggest tools when it comes to goal setting is figuring out not just what you want, but why you want it.

Like you said, your kids can be such a big motivator, but why is it important for you to be there for your kids? And so, one of the tools that we use is we actually have every one of our adult patients sit down and identify their why and write it down. And not just necessarily, we've even started doing, not just why you want something.

Okay, let's say, I want to see clearer at night. Great. Why do you want to do that? So that I can drive comfortably. Well, why is it important to drive comfortably? I need to drive comfortably in case there's an emergency and my child needs to get to the hospital. Well, why is that important? Because I want to be there for my kid and I want to be the best possible parent that I can.

And then it's why is that important to you? I mean, you could even go level after level after level into like we say seven or eight levels. Then you're going to really kind of distill down the core reason why it's important. I want to improve my eyes because I want to be the best parent that I can be.

It's not just, I want to be able to see at night, because if it's just that you want to be able to see well at night, when things get hard, you know what? It's not that important that I can't see at night. My husband can drive when things get tough. You're going to give up, but if you are wanting to be there for your children, no matter what is happening, you're going to stick with it a little bit more.

Coach Ben: Yeah, and adults, I feel like there's two phases that adults tend to start to lose interest in it and kind of faint off a bit. And that's both. Like when activities seem to be too easy, and when activities seem to get too hard and they can't quite crack it, there's a bit of a plateau everybody hits, and there's sometimes there's several plateaus.

And yeah, I think that goal setting is just, just keep moving forward and keep doing it. 

Jessica: So you hit on something really important there, I think, too, as well, though, sometimes things are too easy, right? So if an adult is, say, they've already started therapy and maybe they're in the beginning of their program and the beginning of their treatment, And things feel really easy. What should they do in that instance? And why shouldn't they just stop? 

Coach Ben: Yeah, well, one of the things that we get a lot with adults is, Why am I doing this? Or they crush something. First of all, it's really hard to predict what's going to be easy or hard for people 100% complete. We kind of have general ideas.

You know, what somebody is going to crush, but there's patients that will do our hardest 3D activity that we like can't make it hard enough for them, but whenever we put a chart in front of them, we have to count spaces left and right, they completely, they completely kind of fall apart a bit, but you know, if something's easy, definitely let us know it's our job to make it harder for you, but in a way that's relatable to Why you're here in the first place.

So if you're a teacher and you notice that everything at your computer is really hard And then especially like looking back and forth the class We'll try to mimic that as best we can whenever we introduce an activity. We tend to start where everything's most ideal We're going to do it where you're going to be really successful at it.

Not like completely successful, but really successful. And what we do is once we get comfortable with that, we're just going to try to add stressors to it for you. We're going to try to get that brain going either thinking of something else while you're doing it, looking at something else while you're doing it, having to listen to something annoying while you're doing it.

Jessica: That's my favorite. But exactly when you're working with us in the office. I like to think that we have a pretty good feel for when to make things harder and how, but also when you're doing things on your own, when you're practicing at home, or if you happen to be doing a digital program or rebuild, or are built to soar, or we have these programs for adults as well.

When you're on your own, I try to give you as many tools as possible so that you can come up with ways to challenge yourself as well. But also, whenever we do have people doing things from home, they're never alone. That's why I never say you're doing this on your own. You're really like, you're being supported by us.

So I have people emailing me or sending texts to the office like, Hey, can you tell me how to modify this activity? Can you teach me how to make this one trickier? Because maybe it is just maybe you've been practicing it for a while and you've really got a handle on it. The brain loves variety, right? We need to repeat things in order to let it sink in, but we also love the novelty of a new challenge.

So that's a big, important note. Okay, so we've got, this is easy. Now I bumped it up. Uh oh, this next activity is way too hard. Can you speak to that, Ben? 

Coach Ben: It's kind of going back real quick to uh, one way that I think about activities is almost like a new video game, right? Like Mario, I think is a perfect example because the first level Mario is easy But it's teaching you the mechanics and like the rules of the game while you're playing it And if I were to just play the first level of Mario on repeat, I'd get really bored So I totally get that part.

And yeah with when it comes to Making things hard eventually. Yeah, there's gonna be a come a point when everybody It's something in vision therapy that's just, this activity, man, just does not gel with me. And a lot of times it's, you know, those red green charts. Whenever I program those, I'm always like, I almost take a deep breath whenever I program red green for the first time.

It's like, all right, this is where they're going to start hitting Jess in the room. But, you know, there's a lot of techniques that we have. For things that are really hard, without really getting into the specific, it's, you kind of have to try new things with it. A lot of times, like, even the setup of an activity helps.

If you've been crushing it while sitting down at your room, with the chart taped to your wall, move the chart to a window. Try a couple different things. Try the time of day that you do it, and the same if it's too easy. If something's too easy at the beginning of the day, try it at night. And likewise, if it's too hard, if it's too hard at the end of the day after work, try it in the morning.

See how it goes. You know, eventually it will work to when you can do it whenever, wherever, regardless. But, you know, just try to eliminate either eliminate stressors if it's too hard or increase stressors if it's too easy. 

Jessica: Exactly. Right. That's the whole thing. But what is life? If not stressors, so I think that is a big important point to is that what I always say to my patients is that you're not always in a quiet room, able to focus explicitly and exclusively on what you're doing, right?

Because even if you are in a quiet room, able to like really hyper focus, fantastic, but that's not reality all 24 hours of the day, you're going to be stressed about family situations. You're going to be thinking about what you need to make for dinner. You're going to be thinking about that project that's going on at work.

You're going to be thinking about, Oh, I've got to leave here for this appointment at this time. And I hope I'm going to have enough time to get to there. And then what is the traffic like and blah, blah, blah, blah. You're always. Thinking about other things, not to mention, if you work in an office, you're going to have Susie who comes over to chat while you really need to work on your proposal that's due in 10 minutes, you're going to have these sorts of challenges that you need to be able to rise to, if not emotionally and mentally, at least visually, right? So then you said we all come up against things that are hard, right? But what role does mindset play in starting something new or something challenging like a therapeutic experience? 

Coach Ben: One of my old wrestling coaches is a sports psychologist too.

I didn't hear him say this until like after I graduated high school, but it actually helped me a lot with like bowling tournaments too. There's going to be times when you come across something that just seems mentally impossible or even like physically impossible. And essentially you have two options where you can either say, well, this sucks.

It was fun. See of. Already take defeat or take a step back, say, Okay, I'm not so good at this, but I can do this and this, like, how can I use these tools to help me? Maybe if I do this other activity to warm my eyes up, maybe I can do it then. Or maybe if I just take a deep breath, try to relax and come back to it in 10 minutes, or like, I can't do this whole activity here, but I think if I give myself time, I can do like part of it and come back and do it like 25% of a chart is better than no percent of a chart.

Jessica: Not letting the exercises defeat you. I think that gets hard. Yes. In the session and during exercises, we get a lot of patients. adults who walk in and say, am I the oldest person you have? And they're like 32. That's not what this is. At least in our office, we see everybody. My youngest graduate just turned two and my oldest graduate was well into his eighties.

The point is that these exercises can be hard, no matter where you are in your life. These things are hard and you can very easily save yourself. Well, like this is a kid's game or I see children walking in and out of here. How come they can do it? And I can't. And then you start to get down on yourself.

And I think that's especially true if you happen to have had a concussion or a brain injury. And then you say, like, you see, What you used to be able to do or what you think you used to be able to do and then what you're currently capable of and are you going to let that defeat you or are you going to let that spur you forward?

And I think a lot of times, yeah, it's important to highlight the strengths that you do have. Like you were saying, I can't do this yet, but I can do X, Y, Z. And maybe that's like three steps ahead of where I was a month ago. A good therapist can help with that process. But also, if you are doing this for more remotely, for example, in like the rebuilt program, we have a lot of mindset tools where we have journaling prompts, where we have like meditations guided meditations.

We use tools like EFT tapping different tools to help you overcome that kind of. internal barrier, because I think, especially for adults, we get caught up in what we can't do instead of what we can do, or our weaknesses instead of our strengths, or this isn't the way it used to be, and I want it back, and that may not be the real, actual picture of what's going on.

Coach Ben: Exactly. I remember snowboarding for the first time. I was 19. I wrestled all through high school, so my winners were taken up with that. And my first time snowboarding, I was just eating it every five to ten feet. Like, it felt like, as I'm falling down, six year olds are just like flying past me. But it's, you know, it's just like, I had to remind myself, they grew up skiing and snowboarding, I didn't.

So it's, you know, whatever I can drink after. I'm joking. Not at 19. Not at 19. But yeah, it's, I think, one of the worst things you can do, and everybody does it, is compare yourself to others. And it's really hard, especially like when you compare yourself to that other person and that other person being you from years ago.

Um, you know, there's something that we had back in my retail days of regional or reasonable expectancies. We have them for every patient in a way, like, yeah, this patient has X, Y, and Z going on. We're gonna give them this activity, but we know, or we anticipate it being really hard for them. We have the luck of, and the luxury of looking at it from that outside area.

But a lot of patients will try something and it's super hard, like it's super hard for anybody that doesn't have anything visually going on. And it's really easy to beat yourself up over it. But you know, just, There's a moment where you have to just kind of take a step back and be like this is tricky, like this is tricky for everybody, I'm here to work, I'm here to get this done, I'm here for a reason, let's just, let's try it.

Jessica: If you or someone you love has suffered a concussion and are still feeling its effects, don't accept that this is your new normal. Join behavioral optometrist Dr. Juanita Collier and vision therapist Jessica Liedke for a free online workshop to learn how concussions impact your vision and what the key to full recovery from your symptoms actually is.

Click the link in the show notes to register for the free online workshop today. You don't want to have to wait to get your life back. 

So I think. Then that, too, lends to, like, why I asked you to put a pin on the whole filmmaking angle here. Because we've talked before just in, like, how we plan our treatment plans and how we look at each of our patients journey.

In therapy, can you talk a little bit about the story writing process or like the hero's journey in what that means and like how we translate that or bring that to therapy? Yeah, 

Coach Ben: I'll break it down kind of as simply simply. So Think of any movie, pretty much, and divide it into three parts, more or less, the middle part being the longest.

The first part is a situation, so act one, this person is confronted by this thing, this obstacle in their life. Usually there's something that, either dramatic that happens, that just kind of shifts their view of the world, but all of a sudden, this person has an obstacle to face, and that's where those goals come in and their needs. And then act two, the second part, the longest part is the confrontation. So this is all the trials that they go through. Batman trying to catch the bad guy, but he keeps running into like wall after wall trying to stop them. And you know, there's right at the end of act two, they tend to be at their lowest, not really where we want our patients at, but not typically, but there's this moment where it's something kind of sparks and it all goes uphill and that's act three, which is the resolution, which they're finally able to conquer their enemy or lose, but we'll, we'll say it's a happy ending for this, you know, and then they kind of walk into their new reality, like change both by reaching their goal, but also changing like, who they are inside and like realizing what they've become when Frodo returns to the Shire like he's a completely changed Hobbit 

Jessica: and thus they set the scene for the sequel. Yep That's a cool thing to to think about right in adults, This whole beginning of their life could be their scene one, act one.

And then something changes that spurs that act two. And then through the trials of whatever it is that they need to overcome, they then push through the barriers and they, they succeed or they move on into a new reality. And I think that's a cool way to think about the whole experience, right? Because often, Dr. Collier and I talk a lot about how like we were cheerleaders. So we'll be your cheerleader through the end and we'll cheer you on, but you're the hero of this story. Or people always say to me, Oh, thank you for so much for your hard work. No, I'm just bossy. You're the one doing the work. I just help direct the scene.

Or I could be the villain, making you do that red and green chart for the 80th time and you are done with it. But it's all a way of means to get you to that breakthrough, that next step, that next level. So, who, I guess this is my last question. Who is the ideal adult patient or member or person who should take on vision therapy?

Coach Ben: Oof, that's tough. So I think vision therapy can be for anybody and everybody who feels held back by their visual processing system. A lot of times it's, you might not even realize it till you're older when you hit something with your car or sometimes it's even something that's been bugging you your whole life.

My eye turns in and every photo that I see of myself, I have this eye turn in and I need to not see it anymore in photos. I can't do homework for more than a half hour without getting a migraine and having to sit and I have two years before college or even somebody that I am a really good lacrosse player, but I want to be an excellent lacrosse player, you know, and I've just noticed that there's something that I haven't tried yet and it's this. So it's... everybody has their own reason for being here, even if two patients have the exact same diagnosis. They have a completely unique what reason for being in the office. You're not too old. It's nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of. Yes. You're probably going to bump into a nine year old or something that's doing, doing an activity that's similar to yours, but their activity is set up in a different way for a different reason, for their own demands.

My favorite moment in the office, I think it's probably like the most beautiful moment that I've seen was I had, Two concussion patients in a gym, and neither of them had ever met anybody that had a concussion before. They didn't realize it until the end of their session, and they just sat for like a half hour just talking, and I was like, you two just, you do you. I think they ended up hugging each other because it was just like a relief that somebody else, like another adult, was struggling with things that, from their initial like outside look, should have been easy for them and it was like, oh my gosh. Like this is hard for you too.

Yeah. 

None of this is really meant to be easy. If it's easy, like great job, we're gonna make it harder. Mm-hmm. . But if it's hard, it's by design and by the end you're gonna thank us for it. Hopefully eventually. , you might have some other words for us first, but eventually 

Jessica: Exactly. I think that's the most awesome thing that, that I do get to see.

quite a bit is people like, Oh, that happens to you too. Or, Oh, that's hard for you too. Or, Oh my God, thank God. I'm not the only one. You hit the nail on the head. You just said it so much more perfectly than I have ever heard it from another person's mouth. Like those kinds of back and forths of God, I'm not alone.

Have been really spectacular to hear. And it is our joy and our privilege and our honor to be able to facilitate those kind of connections, but also to be witness and be the villain in a good way here and there. 

Coach Ben: The antagonist. 

Jessica: The antagonist. That's better. I like that better than the villain. I'm also called the bully or the torturer. So I prefer antagonist. Well, Ben, thank you so very, very, very much for joining us on this very special episode. Is there anything else that you want people listening to know or to hear before we say goodbye? 

Coach Ben: No. Thank you for having me. I just would say just before I go to celebrate victories, no matter like how small they are.

Yes. Through your process. As somebody that programs a lot of activities, I will circle back to activities on purpose. And a lot of it is just to see where you've gone, keep some of those old activities that you did and see how easy they are a couple months from whenever you start. Celebrate those wins.

Jessica: And if you haven't started yet, what you waiting for? Let's go. Give us a call. All right. Well, thank you everyone for tuning in to It Could Be Your Eyes, and we will catch y'all next time. 

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the It Could Be Your Eyes Podcast.To schedule an appointment with Dr. Collier, visit us@4dvisiongym.com. To train your vision at home, visit us at 4D vision therapy@home.com. Rate and review our podcast and email a screenshot to receive 10% off a new evaluation or any of our digital programs. Subscribe to join us for more eye-opening episodes as we dive deep into all the ways that it could be your eyes.