[SPEAKER_00]: Therapy Chat Podcast Episode 510 This is the Therapy Chat podcast with Laura Regan, LCSWC.
[SPEAKER_00]: The information shared in this podcast is not a substitute for seeking help from a licensed mental health professional.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now, here's your host, Laura Regan, LCSWC.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, welcome back to Therapy Chat.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Laura Reagan, and today, as we're in the thick of the holiday season, I'm bringing you a replay of a conversation with my friend, Kristen D. Boys, where we talked about how brain-spotting and EMDR are similar and how they're different.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is one of the questions I am asked so often.
[SPEAKER_02]: Would you do EMDR?
[SPEAKER_02]: therapy training or brainspotting training.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now that I'm trained in EMDR as well as brainspotting, which I wasn't when we did this interview, I would say that it's a very individual choice.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you'll hear
[SPEAKER_02]: from Kristen who's certified in EMDR and also not sure if she's certified in brain spawning, she's definitely trained in brain spawning and she uses both of them so she will talk about how they're like, how they're different and what you might want to think about when you're making that decision.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope if you are therapist,
[SPEAKER_02]: Or if you're someone who's considering attending therapy or starting therapy with either EMDR or brainspotting, that this will really help you understand how they're similar and how they're different.
[SPEAKER_02]: As always, thank you for listening.
[SPEAKER_02]: The new year episode will be coming soon and we will
[SPEAKER_02]: conversation with me and Dr. Sharon Martin, another good friend about family estrangement.
[SPEAKER_02]: So wishing you a restful, restorative, peaceful, fun, whatever you want it to be holiday season and see you in the new year.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, welcome back to Therapy Chat.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Laura Reagan, and today I'm very excited to be interviewing my friend and colleague, Chris and Boist, LMFT.
[SPEAKER_02]: Chris, and thank you so much for being my guest on therapy chat today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, Laura.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is an honor and a privilege to be with you today, and I'm excited for our conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the honor is all mine and I'm here someone that I've wanted to have on here as I've gotten to know you and another group that we're in together and it's interesting because we have a lot of similarities.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're both daring way, certified daring way facilitators, we're both group practice owners, your practices pathways to healing counseling and we're both podcasters,
[SPEAKER_02]: your podcast is close the chapter and you're trained in brainspotting, which I just started training in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what we don't have in common is that you're also EMDR certified.
[SPEAKER_02]: Brain.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: EMDR trained.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm super excited to talk to you about EMDR and brainspotting and how they're similar and how they're different because I know that people are always, they've heard about EMDR, I think people are beginning to hear more about brainspotting, but people are like, oh, I think EMDR is what I need, but they don't really know what it's going to be like, how it works and I think it would be great to tell our audience about, you know, how it started
[SPEAKER_02]: What it feels like for the client and then talk about brainspiting and how the two are similar and and different.
[SPEAKER_02]: So before we even get into all that though, let's just start off by you telling our audience a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was so excited for this conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I cannot tell you how many times I get asked by clients.
[SPEAKER_01]: What first of all is EMDR and what is brain spotting and what are the differences.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a question that gets asked repeatedly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the fact that you're having this podcast to talk about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it will be so beneficial and helpful to anybody in therapy thinking about therapy trying to understand what the differences are.
[SPEAKER_01]: So first of all, I'm so excited for the conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a little bit about me, as you said, I'm a licensed marriage of family therapists.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been practicing since 20, 2005.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a long time and had a group practice for the last 13 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my heart really centers around trauma and working through those negative beliefs we have about ourselves or not enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm defective and there's something wrong with me and they're shaped from early experiences in our lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were just beer beans that came into the world and my heart has always been to hopefully change that narrative the way we see each other and see ourselves in the process and heal those emotions that in memories and experiences early in life that have kept a stuck that was really
[SPEAKER_01]: my motivation to get EMDR trained as well as brainspotting, because several people kept telling me, you have to do EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got trained back in 2011 and like EMDR EMDR and I kept hearing about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, I want to go check out this EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I quickly signed up for the training.
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually hired a, I enrolled a,
[SPEAKER_01]: EMDR therapist for myself, because I believe as a therapist, we have to be doing our own work in order to help others.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I quickly was like, let me check this out for myself and found it very effective at the time, very effective.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then over the pandemic, brainspotting kept coming up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, oh, this, this, this would be perfect time for me to really jump into brainspotting.
[SPEAKER_01]: and during the training you do your own work as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like an intensive and I took it and I have a list of all these things I want to work on.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very intentional to do that during that training and now our whole practice is built around EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we had a school shooting back in 2018 in our backyard here in Noble'sville.
[SPEAKER_02]: Noble'sville somewhere I couldn't place why I recognize the name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, all of a sudden CNN is in the backyard, all the national networks, nothing like this we had ever anticipated and I knew in that moment I see why we're called in this community to be EMDR trained in have trauma training.
[SPEAKER_01]: because we were right there, able to help the community heal and that really for me makes there's so much intention and purpose with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in our local community, we're very well known for EMDR and brainspotting and trauma informed period like that's where just kind of the go to in our community for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were able to pretty quickly and real time on the scene
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't brain-smotted at the time, and we know quickly if you can get into reprocessing the body memory, the emotions, the belief, the pictures, the sounds, the smells, is quickly as possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're less likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were able to even take groups of people, which is very surprising and do not total EMDR, but some breathing exercises, some kind of resourcing, and then we were able to, where there was about five of us that were able to one by one by one, take some of these students
[SPEAKER_01]: and out of that experience is really the most powerful evidence-based research I can offer anybody as real life experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what you're going to hear from me is more practical, kind of real life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to give you some of the history and the practical application to not have it be so cognitive, more how does it land in the body and the heart center and emotionally.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's beautiful because that's what how I experience you is that and whenever we talk you are like I'm sensing and I'm like man she nailed it like which feels so good and I think that's what this felt sense of
[SPEAKER_02]: therapeutic experiences is so much different from the cognitive, you know, just changing your thoughts type stuff and which has a place, but, you know, it's limited in how far it goes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know that you're not like an EMDR trainer or consultant or anything and that's not the claim, but it's just the practical experience of using EMDR for.
[SPEAKER_02]: a good long time and how it's obviously what you've observed with the victims and survivors of this school shooting but also the comparison I think is really valuable because again people have heard oh you had a trauma you need EMDR but they don't know what does it entail and you know all the the mysterious aspects of you know what's the magic that makes this work so I'm excited to get into that.
[SPEAKER_01]: absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought it might be helpful to kind of go through the background of how it started.
[SPEAKER_01]: So people can have a conceptual framework of how to DMDR get even get started.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was actually started in 1987 by Dr. Francine Shapiro, who was a researcher.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was at the park and she was experiencing a memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: She had body sensations kind of the
[SPEAKER_01]: looping thoughts around this memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she started to be observant of her own experience and noticed that her eyes were moving back and forth, right, and left, and right, and left.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she thought, oh, this is interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she felt like it was desensitizing her to that memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was starting to calm her nervous system down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so she started to take that back to the research, researchers, and some clinicians, and
[SPEAKER_01]: to get some feedback, some data back, is this a good idea?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this really work?
[SPEAKER_01]: How does this work?
[SPEAKER_01]: And the research was incredible on the feedback that was coming in with veterans who had been doing Pock Therapy for 25 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of a sudden, they were experiencing some relief for the first time with EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it stands for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing.
[SPEAKER_01]: at originally started with EMD.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've moved mentee sensitization, and it did not have the reprocessing attached to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that came later in the 1990s, 1991, I believe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it kind of has evolved over time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now it's one of the most empirically-based researched models for trauma treatment and anxiety and depression.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's used from multitude of avenues just like brainspotting is.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're using bilateral movement.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: You can it originally started with eye movement.
[SPEAKER_01]: So going right left right left and following either a light bar or fingers back and forth.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as it is evolved, there's more modalities other than just the eyes to do the bilateral bilateral stimulation.
[SPEAKER_01]: to reprocess the memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can use what we call tapers and they vibrate in your hands.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, left, right, left.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can use music and that can also be a bilateral sound.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can also do tapping.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's many what we call the butterfly hug where you cross over your arms in front of you and put your hands on your shoulders and you can go right very formally, right, left.
[SPEAKER_01]: right left.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's, so there's many modalities that have evolved from the original development of EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what there is is there's an eight step protocol in EMDR, which is very different than brainspotting.
[SPEAKER_01]: direct the therapy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I've done it over the years, I don't follow the strict protocol.
[SPEAKER_01]: They do that for a reason to get the training down.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're following the research protocol.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of the pieces in terms of it can it can feel overstimulating for some people.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can feel
[SPEAKER_01]: rigid for some people.
[SPEAKER_01]: It could feel heavy like because during the reprocessing what we're doing is we're inviting someone to pull up the memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the therapist might say float back to the time where you felt the same way that you do right now and what memory comes back comes up.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a call the float back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the client might report, oh, I remember being on the bus and they called me stupid on the bus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I still ever since then, I have felt stupid, you know, I feel like I'm just an idiot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so then what we're doing is we're targeting the call it, targeting the memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we come up with a target.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so then we, we look at how intense is that on a zero to 10.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we look at, we call that suds.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're doing the unit distress of distress disturbance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you of disturbance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's how intense does it feel in your body and someone will rate that on a zero to 10.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we're looking at, well, what's the negative, where do you feel at your body?
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're naming where you feel at your body.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're looking at the emotions.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what do you feeling?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're asking a lot of questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the clients having to kind of come up with these answers.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're also asking what's the negative belief you have about yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in this example, it's fairly easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am an idiot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am stupid.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you want to believe about yourself that I am, Ana?
[SPEAKER_01]: I am smart enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's very cognitively.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to shift from the body into the belief, which takes us into a different part of the brain.
[SPEAKER_01]: What we're doing is we're trying to access the sub-cortical brain, the sub-cortical part of the brain, as opposed to the prefrontal cortex that has all the talk, the talking.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so sometimes that can take people out of the processing, into that sub-cortical brain, into that prefrontal cortex, which is like the CEO of the brain, the organizer, the rational side of the brain, and take them out of that process.
[SPEAKER_01]: and then I want to explain some of the differences with brainspotting that may be different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: And before you go into the differences, can I ask for a couple of definitions?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you said bilateral, I know you said right left, right left.
[SPEAKER_02]: But can you explain just generally what that means for our brain?
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going between the right and left hemispheres of the brain that stored different, if you think of the sensory system, the senses are stored in different parts of the brain.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have the smells and typically with any memory, we'll have a smell that comes up, we'll have some sounds associated with that memory, what we saw with associated with that memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're typically depending on the memory, someone can have very vivid memory or they might have any memory at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, and it's okay if someone does it have a lot of memory, I might just work with the body sensation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is where,
[SPEAKER_01]: as I've done EMDR for since 2011.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've adapted it in a different way to really hone in on what is what is held in the body.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you look at somatic experiencing, there's roots also with somatic experiencing and you'll see some ties in different modalities with both brainspotting
[SPEAKER_01]: is is important.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're working on, when we talk about bilateral, we're working on that right hemisphere that left hemisphere to access the different parts of that memory that are stored in different parts of the brain.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the easiest way to explain it based on those neural networks that are all connected to that belief that I am stupid.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and isn't there something about
[SPEAKER_02]: going from side to side, it moves it carries it over or into the place where it can process.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's from what we in EMDARTS called adaptive from maladaptive to adaptive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we can store memories in what we call maladaptive ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we can be frozen in time basically our body, our beliefs, our emotions can be stored in time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we call that maladaptive, and then we want to get to an adaptive place where we work through that memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've reprocessed it enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can almost have a different perspective about the memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: A different belief about the memory once we're finished with reprocessing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's say we started with a disturbance, a level of disturbance at a 9 or 10, and we can get that down to a 0, because we've moved from maladaptive to adaptive processing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they call it information and wrote it down just to drug my memory, since I just do it experimentially so much, it's information processing theory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when she added really the R.
[SPEAKER_01]: you EMDR in 1995.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's really based in that maladaptive to adaptive because we are moving those frozen parts that didn't get processed in a real time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I really emphasize that with plants, like did you get to process that experience on the bus?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I got home and nobody was home or
[SPEAKER_02]: I just couldn't tell my parents.
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't
[SPEAKER_01]: so it got frozen in time, as the best way I like to say it to somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: So sometimes we can look like we're adults, but when we go back and we pull up that part, we almost, it's like, oh, I have, I'm stuck in that spot where that person told me that I was stupid.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so insidious too because it's like I find for myself and clients report like it's really hard to tell when you are back in that frozen space of time because it feels like a truth that I am stupid not that I'm reliving being on the bus when I was eight or whatever it was and someone called me stupid exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like it's cemented as exactly at proof now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're trained to say, how do you feel about that memory now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Using the keyword now to see what comes up in real time, because often it's very similar if I pull up that memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I watch it like it's on a movie screen.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of times, I'll say, watch it like you're on a train.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where the nervous system can sometimes it could be overwhelming.
[SPEAKER_01]: to somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to say that they'll say watch it like it's a movie or that you're in on a train and you're watching the scenes go by.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's distance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you can think about it as a black and white picture on a TV screen to distance that memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not as if you're reliving the memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what
[SPEAKER_01]: of a challenge.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the challenge because when it's frozen in time and off of feels like you're relieving the memory and we will have what we call sometimes abreactions where that's a body memory because what we're meant to do we know through Peter Levine's work that isn't associated with EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's somatic experiencing that when we don't get the but when we don't let the body do what the body needs to do in that moment because we're in freeze or fun or flight or flight
[SPEAKER_01]: We often will see an EMDR, we'll see the body doing what it needed to do when that memory happens, when that experience happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that can be very overwhelming for clinicians.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they're not, you don't know how to handle that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, okay, good.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're letting we're releasing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're releasing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it can be very scary to the client if I haven't prepped him ahead of time to tell them your body may respond.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing wrong with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It may bring up some fear.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm right here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We work on some centering exercises.
[SPEAKER_01]: So before we start in DR, I recommend that so we can come back to center if we need to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I say this is just your body releasing what it needs to release.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let it do what it needs to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm right here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let it do what it needs to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that can be surprising when people have it
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I mean, you know, what you just said about preparing clients, I think that's really an important thing to highlight as well because I've seen where people go to someone for EMDR and on the first or second session, they're doing EMDR and this person has a very complex
[SPEAKER_02]: trauma history and there's not enough of a therapeutic relationship to build up for the space to really be held for the client to feel safe to allow whatever's happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this reprocessing starts in their back in that trauma and they don't have that relationship and they they can have some pretty negative effects.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I'm in our practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do a lot of connection with the client and helpful coping strategies, also coupled with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they know how to, with our help holding the container, how to come back to center that it's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna come back and if we don't have that prep work, it can be very disarming to the nervous system and retraumatize the client, which we don't wanna do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and I don't mean that the EMDR is re-traumatizing the client.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean the lack of foundational prep work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if the client, if the therapist hasn't done that part, which is a critical part of EMDR, and that's part of the phases of EMDR is that prep that foundational prep work, rather than jumping in, we want to do no harm to the client.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's really not the MDR going wrong, it's the lack of adequate preparation that's really a deficit within that therapeutic relationship or just not a deficit, but a missed a missed step or something that should have happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, it could be it would be considered a maladaptive right that we may have jumped into soon and when you are pretty skilled at you can go, okay, let's do some resourcing, which means let's do some centering some breathing and the the tapers are actually very soothing to the nervous system.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I, that's what I was like, if I could through, if I could have you told the tat, like, if I could have everybody hold the tapers, even just holding the tapers are very calming to the nervous system, like even just holding them and feeling your feet on the floor and just doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we're not reprocessing anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: were just feeling the tapers in your hand.
[SPEAKER_01]: I typically will start very gently, very softly with EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then there's a felt sense of safety of, oh, these also can calm me, and that always activate me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the tapers are very, I personally love the tapers.
[SPEAKER_01]: and a lot of clients like it because it's working on that physiology of the body, which I think is not something spoken about often with the tapers, which was the buzzies that vibrate in your hand very softly.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can turn them up or turn them down.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've experienced that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I used to have a sweet mate where I used to rent space and I came out of a session.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, oh,
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, that was intense and I wasn't even really fully aware of what I was feeling but I think she could tell break away that I was kind of out of my window of tolerance and she was like, come, you know, I want to sit down for a minute and I came in and sat down in her room and she had tapers and she was like,
[SPEAKER_02]: just hold these.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, well, you know, it buzz.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, well, what's this?
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, she's like, you know, just see what happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, a few minutes later, I was like, I felt different.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't like, you know, I just felt different.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, able to really sort of express what I was feeling instead of just being like, oh, I don't know what it was.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was just so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, I don't know why I feel like this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it was like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe a normal emotional reaction happened instead of this like hit foggy, you know, not clear knowing what was going on with myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was that's my experience with the MDR.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the only one I've had.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's that would be in VR.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just not you're not doing the full protocol.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're going by the eight step protocol, and the other thing people ask me a lot, is can you do EMDR remotely?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how does that even work?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're software now that has been developed.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is remote EMDR and that has bilateral sound.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can put headphones on and you can pick from music to nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you want birds, chirping, and you're like, no, I don't want birds.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like the ocean.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can do ocean.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can do
[SPEAKER_01]: Rain forest, white noise, you can also do just kind of ping-pong sounds, and you can move at a very, you know, we can move it at the pace of the client feels, I owe of a clock the client can handle and is comfortable with, and that is a number one, I would say, it most important part of the NDR is checking in with the client, how do you feel and inviting the client to check in with how they feel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's check in with just, let's just, let's just kind of tip our toe in the water and we just kind of do some real light to take in some deep breaths, putting our feet on the floor, let's just kind of see how this feels in your nervous system, the felt sense of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're not just jumping in to re-processing a real traumatic memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: whatever it is disturbing you in any level, we might start with something less intense.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it might be something that your spouse said to you or your kid said to you that triggered this feeling in your body.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we might start with that, which could lead us down what right to the roots of where that lies, typically does.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's school bus.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's full buff summary that you're stupid and so in this is I think this is the most important part is meeting the client or they are in attuning we're going to get to that with brainspotting but this attimate where it says I see you I see what I see your body language I see your eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I see a breath.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm attuning to you because the therapist has to do their own work in order to be able to notice this within the client.
[SPEAKER_01]: And EMDR and brainspotting it's critical.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't emphasize that enough that you continue because we're all works and progress to do our own work and to notice those triggers.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we are with a client, we can hold this space for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: to do this hard-scary work.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it is possible to do both brain spotting and we can get into that, but brain spotting EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: But EMDR in particular, people like can we can you do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, yes, there's there's ways to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was one of those.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was like, I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was all about in person and didn't think that that could be effective while I eating my words because it has been
[SPEAKER_01]: remote EMDR, almost better than I did in person, surprisingly.
[SPEAKER_01]: It clients different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know.
[SPEAKER_02]: The pandemic has definitely taken all of those who are like in person only for everything and saying, okay, well, I guess virtual actually works really well too, so we're like so wedded to what we know what's familiar.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the net shell and just more expand experientially about EMDR because those are the questions that people want to know.
[SPEAKER_01]: How does it work?
[SPEAKER_01]: How do how does it feel?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it feels different for everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I first did it, you do it in the training, you go through it just through any kind of modality.
[SPEAKER_01]: You learn as a therapist, the therapist goes through and experiences with the client experiences.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I went through my own
[SPEAKER_01]: personal therapy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at that point, it tapped into grief that I wasn't able to get to, otherwise, it got to that sub-cortical level where...
[SPEAKER_01]: it tapped into what was really keeping me stuck, which was the real deep, deep, deep, almost like a gutteral greed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that transformed my work to go, oh, this is, it's not about just the thinking and I knew that, but to experience it and then what that freed up in me was life changing.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And thank you for sharing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it also brings up another thing I wanted to ask for a definition of a vehicle
[SPEAKER_02]: which is the sub-cortical.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you explain what that means?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in the sub-cortical brain, it's the non-verbal, oftentimes it's a non-verbal.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to say it in simple terms, because that's perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: The client's, it's the non-verbal part of the brain that we can't access through talk therapy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what is the non-verbal part of the brain?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's body sensations, it's emotions, it's things get...
[SPEAKER_01]: tucked under almost like in the body that we don't even know is there because we can intellectually say something how many times we're like I know that this is shame or I know this is you know I feel really sad but we're not really connected to the emotion.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: What the sub-core text is, is that sub-cortical brain is that part that doesn't have words, oftentimes it doesn't have words necessarily.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, it's also like, pre-verbal experiences, so like, birth and crying in your crib when you're six months old and your mom's in the shower, you know, and doesn't come.
[SPEAKER_02]: So those things that you can't be like, well back when I was six months old, I remember my mom didn't come.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought I was worthless because she just left me there crying when, you know, you didn't think any of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's more of like body, you know, message that's like somehow your body says I'm unloved or something and not in those words, you know, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you wouldn't be able to access that.
[SPEAKER_02]: you wouldn't be able to find that in your cognition.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even in uturo, like in pregnancy, that we don't even know, perhaps what the biological parent was going through mother at the time, that can get passed down into our nervous systems.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that would be in the neocortex of the brain, something that like you said, we wouldn't have a narrative around, even, perhaps.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no narrative to make sense of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's locked in the body.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the brilliance of both EMDR and brainspotting, is you're actually getting to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So some of the significant abandonment issues, and they're like, I just, and they may have a physical abandonment, they may have an emotional abandonment, and they may not be able to pinpoint it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And oftentimes we can get there through the
[SPEAKER_01]: So if someone had tubes, had noids removed, or there was a surgery, they were in the NICU, or they had a surgery early on, that gets tracked, that's trauma to the body.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that Neo Cortex will hold that body sensation, that experience, even being put under with anesthesia.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, the frozen and mobilized feeling that can be accessed through EMDR and brain spotting even if there's no memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're just going even with the body sensation or this belief and I don't even ask beliefs now, what typically with beliefs, you're going, okay, I feel unworthy, but really underneath it's abandonment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, come to find out, they were separated from their parent for a surgery for even if it was one night, three weeks, whatever the length of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or even the time that they were the parent was not able to go with them into the operating room, maybe it was a 45 minute surgery, but they needed comfort and no one was there.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a case I worked on where we were in the with the Noblesville shooting and couldn't get past the crap feeling and come to find out it was because there was a surgery early on and the mask from going under the anesthesia was the feeling of feeling trapped and then the separated from our
[SPEAKER_01]: parents.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's like, of course, so we could only get so far until we got to that root memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that wasn't a cog, you could, she couldn't cognitively think there was a tie there.
[SPEAKER_01]: That only came through that sub-cortical experience, the reprocessing that it came up.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in that example, and I don't actually want you to give away anything of this person's personal information, but in an example like that would, they know that that was what came, like how would, let's say, it's a 10-year-old child, and they had this surgery when they were one.
[SPEAKER_02]: How would they know that it was related to that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do they know that that, oh, what?
[SPEAKER_02]: a surgery.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, or is the parent share that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, they did have a surgery.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, and they're saying, there's something over my face or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Typically through the history taking, which is a phase of not only therapy and EMDR, there's a history taking as part of the initial protocol step process.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're going to be asking about surgeries or separations.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you have a child, you're going to be asking about
[SPEAKER_01]: procedures, separations, anything like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it could be a medical separation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be a trip that mom or dad took and there was a separation there.
[SPEAKER_01]: There could have been where they were literally separated from their parent because the parent was in the hospital.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're extended period of time, so we're going to get a thorough history, like if we're working with a child or we're working with the client on their medical history or separations.
[SPEAKER_01]: I find that I work a lot with a bandament that's, it's just part of trauma.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes we're digging.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're trying to get in the person may not have that history.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have to have that history.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to go with the body sensation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to go with the emotion that's coming up now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that may take us someplace.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to let the brain do what the brain needs to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to go with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know what that's going to lead.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what that's going to come up for the client.
[SPEAKER_01]: I trust that the brain and the body will show
[SPEAKER_01]: where we need to go, and I don't, I might not get that information in the client, might not have the information in that's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I can find that it's very upsetting for people when they don't have that information, because they really want the information to put the puzzle piece together on why they know the way they do.
[SPEAKER_02]: That whole mystery of needing to understand to make sense of it for the anxiety about what is this?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is this like this fear?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sometimes we don't have all the answers and I'm like, it's okay, let's just go with where you feel at your body now and where that's coming up emotionally and we can still get to where we need to go even without the information so they can experience the relief and the release that needs to happen even if they don't really know why they need it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly, because that's the gift of the subcord subcord text and that's the gift that the subcord text can give us because we won't have words and we might not have the information and we're just going to know that the body in the brain can heal itself depending on what it is unless you've had a brain injury or something along those lines and even then you never say never I'm not talking from a medical perspective I'm talking from a emotional perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I want to make that distinction.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, so now, if you are ready, we can get into the brainspotting part.
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, brainspotting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's jump into brainspotting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Disprane spotting was an offshoot.
[SPEAKER_01]: The birthplace of brainspotting came from David, Dr. David Grant in 2003.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was EMDR trained.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a facilitator.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was doing a lot with EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the beauty of why I love this because we don't have to be constrained sometimes things are burst out of unknown places when we're attuned and his framework is really where you look at is is the felt sense of that where your eyes go is where.
[SPEAKER_01]: we go as a clinician.
[SPEAKER_01]: We follow that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We follow where the eyes go.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: It means we're not moving the eyes back and forth by laterally necessarily.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're watching for the fixed eye position where the person has the memory come up or the body sensation or the emotion.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we might watch the client and notice, oh, you are looking off to your right when you are talking about the loss of your mom.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what we're gonna do is we can use either a pointer, we can use,
[SPEAKER_01]: A spot on in their environment and my environment depending if you're telehealth or you're in person and we're going to attune to the client.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the framework is built on a toolment.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does a toolment mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: A toolment means I'm noticing the client's eye movement.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm noticing the client's facial expressions.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm noticing the clients.
[SPEAKER_01]: smile or not smile or even an eyebrow lift, a little eyebrow lift when they're talking about how they're feeling.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm noticing their breath, their body.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just fully present in my body so I can be fully present with the client in front of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a tunement is burst out of really
[SPEAKER_01]: we know through research, one of parent is attuned to the child, emotionally, physically meeting that need, that that is healthy for child development and creates a sense of felt sense of security and safety.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so David Green took this concept, you can took a food mint, which I resonate with greatly and that's how I practice therapy anyways, so that spoke to me that framework of attunement.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's trusting the client's process to go where we need to go to clear, to release, to reprocess that whatever's in front of them in the moment, where as an EMDR, we're asking the client to pull up a memory potentially.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do a little differently, but historically, if you're following the eight-step protocol, you're asking the client to pull up a memory, and perhaps all the details describing what happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't necessarily have to do that in EMDR, it's part of its optional.
[SPEAKER_01]: The person doesn't have to describe it whereas in brainspotting, the person doesn't in EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: in brainspotting, you're really less concerned about the story as more and tune with the body, the activation level of the client.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're going to also ask the same question.
[SPEAKER_01]: How you can ask it, how it intends is it for you, how activated are you on a zero to 10?
[SPEAKER_01]: The client is going to connect to their own body, tell you what that looks like.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to do that subjective level of disturbance, so unit of disturbance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're also, and that's pretty much, and then you're going to have the client just kind of go with whatever they notice in the moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: You put a framework together of what the client wants to work on.
[SPEAKER_01]: You find the fixed eye position.
[SPEAKER_01]: There also is what's called bio lateral music.
[SPEAKER_01]: that the client can listen to that David Grant developed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's again, we're kind of, it's more of a, it's hard to describe.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going in one ear out the other, but it's not so right left, right left.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more like you're kind of right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't describe it in words.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a, it's like an infinity loop versus a.
[SPEAKER_02]: left, right, left, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more of an infinity, like an infinity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they call that bio lateral.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's different than EMDR, which is bilateral.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a coin difference there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the client can listen to music or not listen to the bio lateral music.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's up to the client and how that feels in their nervous system.
[SPEAKER_01]: And
[SPEAKER_01]: So this was really interesting because what drew me to it is one, he really didn't David Grant, the founder of BrainSpotting, did a lot with 911 in the Sandy Hook shooting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that drew me in because of what we experienced here in Noblesville.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought that is that is really powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: their EMDR was also available for those situations for those promise.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Sandy Hook research was that game pretty high up on what worked the best for people was brainspotting.
[SPEAKER_01]: They really got, they found healing, they found,
[SPEAKER_01]: refuge, they found it really was beneficial for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a pioneer, I think, in a lot of ways of he devoted every single weekend going to the Sandy Hook community, an offering therapy and training therapist with brainspotting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now he's really moved towards that there is no
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't want any rigid protocols that constrains the attunement for the therapist and the client.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's much more of a not a rigid, the call is set up, and even then, he's like, you know what, I don't want any kind of oppression in this model, no oppression in this model.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've gone through the three phases, there's several phases, there's phase one of preening phase two, phase three, and then he has master classes, and in the last phase, which was phase three, he really emphasized this is not an oppressive model.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not a rigid.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to do it a certain way model.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's much, much more important about the attunement with the client and meeting the client where they're at.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's some people say it's a less jarring and I'm just using feedback that I've, and some people love the MDR just depends on the person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can use after you get the training down, you bring what you bring is the therapist, which is your authentic self, your full present self.
[SPEAKER_01]: And either of these modalities, that is the most important component of therapy.
[SPEAKER_01]: is bringing your present a tune's self and that's so in brain spotting that is the essence of its about attunement with the client and that's really where he emphasizes the whole model is attunement and we know through attachment work that how healing attunement is and repair work.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really believe that you know how they probably said this so many times on this podcast, but you know how they have the study where they did that like super therapist thing and they found what what is it that these super therapists have in common that makes them have more effective therapy outcomes with their clients and it was all it wasn't the modality that used it was the
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have experienced it myself and therapy and so when we can be on the other side of the couch and we're like, oh, yes, it's so vulnerable to be on the other side and talk about things that are so card and scary, I think that enriches this.
[SPEAKER_01]: to do EMDR and brainspotting even more effectively.
[SPEAKER_01]: So anybody that's the therapist out there listing a highly recommend doing it yourself on top of even the training and see if it resonates for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it doesn't, that's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it really?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my number one thing I think in terms of my team.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does it resonate for you?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then bring yourself into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a rigid protocol person.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying this is a rigid protocol.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying that when you have flexibility in the work, in any modality you have, I think there's brings forth a sense of safety and security for the client, because you're not abandoning your own self and the therapeutic process.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that feels so true, like the letting something unfold organically and taking away the illusion of control and the therapist as the expert means that it's a relationship where, you know, one person is in a position to walk with guide, you know, witness and hold space and the other person can just let themselves feel and be figuratively speaking be held within that.
[SPEAKER_02]: safe space and have the opportunity to explore something that wasn't safe to explore because they didn't have anybody to safely hold the space for them at the time when it happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, being held and us holding the space is I love that that's so beautiful how we are that's exactly how I frame it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all we're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not a one-up position from the client and they're not a one-down.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just holding the space so we know a lot of Peter Levine's quote that says,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, what trauma is it what happened to us?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the lack of having an empathic paraphrasing an empathic witness to what happened to us and that is the essence of whatever modality you choose but really EMDR and brainspotting is that for me at least personally.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's being that empathic witness and holding the space because we don't heal in judgment.
[SPEAKER_02]: You
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't heal and we got to do it this right way.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a right and there's a wrong way.
[SPEAKER_01]: That feels that does feel oppressive.
[SPEAKER_01]: That does feel for performance based and shame based rather than just let's flow with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going with the flow of where that takes us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a beautiful feeling of trusting the process and what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think when you're trusting the process, you are as a therapist.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you can trust the process, it means you are feeling safe enough to allow the process to happen and not trying to be the process and get in the way of what is organically,
[SPEAKER_02]: happening with that, you know, person's inner ability to heal being accessed and rather than thinking like, I have to fix this for them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So kind of bringing it all together, the commonalities between the two modalities are we're working in the sub-cortical brain.
[SPEAKER_01]: we're working on the body sensations, we're working on the act at both work on the intensity in the body and they just approach a fixed eye position with brainspotting versus the more by movement or bilateral movement with EMDR.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's similarities, they're just going out of the different way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I want to see what you think because you have more training in brainspotting than me, but I just did my training like less than a month ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they were saying that as a therapist, we talked less in a brainspotting session than we normally would in any other type of therapy, because including EMDR for month they were saying, I don't know, that, you know, it brings, you mentioned this kind of before, but I just want to like emphasize it by talking that
[SPEAKER_02]: processes language it has to come online where you're working in non-verbal memory.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you talk, then you have to go to that language processing place.
[SPEAKER_02]: It makes you leave the non-verbal space, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think that's for me is that therapists help pull to think like,
[SPEAKER_02]: And they have that weight, acronym why am I talking?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, you're saying, as a therapist, you are like, so what are you noticing?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's like, you're pulling them out of that, you know, deep processing place.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I love about brainspotting that you can have this whole experience internally.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you still know that the therapist is there with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can feel their presence is what I experience when I did it as a participant.
[SPEAKER_02]: you can feel their presence, but they're not, they're not talking, you're not talking, you can, but you don't have to.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can still be having the experience of feel safe.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when it's over, if there's something you want to reflect back to the therapist, you can, but it's okay if you don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, people are always like, I don't want to tell my story, where I'm afraid of having to tell my story.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, you can do this processing without having to be in this story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and I think with both EMDR and brainspotting, saying that at front is important.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't want to with the traditional protocol and I say traditional because again, adaptive, just doing this for so long.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've adapted it in a little bit of a different way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't interrupt the process anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just years of doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I stopped doing that a while ago because I noticed I was jarring people out of the process.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was interrupting their process because it unintentionally unintentionally because the protocol says go about 30 sets of eye movements check in and say what are you noticing take a deep breath or okay release and it was choppy felt choppy to me and but that is that is the protocol
[SPEAKER_01]: And it can't be helpful for some people because they get a relief.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, I need to break brainspotting.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The client is really if they need if they need to tell you something.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll tell you something.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're leading it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're leading it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's it's a different feel in terms of how the approach or the setup is between EMDR and brainspotting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Kristen, this is so cool that you took the time to explain this and describe the differences in the similarities.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think, you know, I've had people ask me these questions so many times and I don't even do EMDR.
[SPEAKER_02]: So having you explain this from your knowledge and so clearly and succinctly, I just really appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's going to be a lot of people are really going to appreciate this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know I'm going to be referring a lot of people to listen to this episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: So why, because I can't explain it to them like this.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're just listening to therapy chat.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the other thing I wanted to mention is it feels strange.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's very important to mention, like, what are we doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I say, yep, it's going to feel kind of weird perhaps strange.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's just because we're not used to doing something like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I like to say that a little bit because it's not your standard talk therapy, if you will.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's another good point because it can be hard to relax into the process when you feel
[SPEAKER_02]: Does this what's supposed to be happening and you're kind of stuck in this like I need to understand I need to understand and am I doing it right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you might suppose to go to something totally different than when we started with a nice totally okay let the brain do with the brain needs to do let's just trust that the brain will lead us where it needs to go today it's okay and it may seem random just go with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, okay, for some reason I'm talking about aunt Sue that I haven't thought about in 30 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: I might go with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot of performance anxiety can come up.
[SPEAKER_01]: My doing it right is this how it's supposed to be and just normalizing it's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is it all kinds of things are going to come up that you may not expect.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes it just stays in one lane and you don't go to other lanes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are just neural networks that are connected all connected.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: just follow it, we'll see where it takes us, trusting the brain and body to do what it needs to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where you're being grounded in your body.
[SPEAKER_02]: If they get nervous, you can reassure them rather than getting nervous, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, because if you're like, oh, am I doing this right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, maybe this isn't working.
[SPEAKER_01]: That will jar their processing.
[SPEAKER_02]: That makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, Kristen, it's been so good talking to you like always.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm really grateful that you
[SPEAKER_02]: Will you tell people, where can they find all of these things that you're doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's two places that can find me, Kristen, HRIS, TEN, D, Boyce.com, B-O-I-C-E, and you can get a five-day free journal if you want it.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're like, I just need a little first step, that's one place, and then pathways to T-O, healing, counseling to LongOne.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then if you want to get on social media, it's at Kristen D. Boys on Facebook and Instagram.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I try to put out helpful hints here and there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the stuff you post.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And do you will people find your podcast on one of those websites?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and you can go to any podcast platform at closed the chapter.
[SPEAKER_01]: I put a lot of the new episodes on Instagram and Facebook, so you can get a sneak peek of what the episodes about.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do a lot of co-dependency, trauma, family systems, relationships, self-worth, shame, so join us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for being my guest today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was an honor.
[SPEAKER_01]: I loved
[SPEAKER_01]: our conversation beyond measure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.