Imagine forty years from now sitting with your loved ones by the fire and telling younger generations about the year 2020. It started just like any other year, full of hopes, dreams, goals, and life. Valentine’s day was a wonderful display of caring for loved ones and friends. There was dressing up, going out, seeing people’s smiles, and feeling the dread of the morning commute. Then you heard about the virus and thought….it won’t be that bad, we won’t close down, but just like that, we did. You spent from March to December adapting to working remotely, wearing face masks, limiting your exposure, and probably watching and reading more news than you ever hope to. You watched the Black Lives Matter protests, the election, and the increased spikes and losses from COVID. If this year was a race, everyone would have won a medal for participation! How you participated this year said a lot about your ability to use your healthy habits to reduce stress, excessive worrying about the future, your health, the world, and your ability to be with “You” and the parts that you can no longer distract yourself from.
Being super busy achieving our goals sometimes leaves our most vulnerable parts unseen, unheard, neglected, and wounded. Having more downtime might have allowed you to tap into your deeper parts and do some healing or you might have been stuck in trying to avoid which is an unhealthy stress response.
I tapped into a lot of research about the nervous system and little “t” trauma and how memories and beliefs from past events affect your current perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. I tapped into simple and fast ways to help clients process through little “t” and big “T” trauma leading to having less rumination, less being critical of yourself, less charge to past situations that bother you. I say, if it was not for COVID, I would not have had the time to update my therapy skill set to a new level with brain science and new research on the nervous system. I learned that things like focus, on-task behavior, impulsivity, overeating, drinking, gaming, watching, and other ways of avoiding is basically the frozen type of a stress response. When you are frozen you avoid any feelings and swing between fighting than running away and AVOIDING your feelings, issues, and being present in your body. All the issues that I work with can go under one big umbrella of stress and trauma and the healing can be more direct and faster than what we once thought was possible.
You might be thinking, what is little “t” trauma? Little “t” trauma is trauma that happened to you or someone close to you that bothered you. Big “T” trauma is sexual and physical abuse, a loss of a loved one, natural disasters, war, mass shootings that happen to you or you watched it happen to someone you care about. Both traumas get held in your Hippocampus (the green area), which is an area of the brain that holds long term memories from earlier in life. The Limbic system is everything that is colored on this photo which includes the amygdala (blue) which is involved in processing emotions and fear learning, the hypothalamus (red) involved in alerting the body and the brainstem of threats, The basal ganglia (pink) involved in eye movement, new skill and habit formation, and the reward system, and cingulate cortex (outer pink layer) which helps regulate emotions, pain, memories, and self-regulation.
Normally we talk a lot about the pre-frontal lobes and the executive functioning of a person with impulse, motivation, and focus issues however this deeper area of the brain weeds out information from our perception and then directs it to the frontal lobe for problem-solving. The problem is that by the time the problem gets to your frontal lobes for processing, it sets off a stress response in your body so that you are not able to clearly see or perceive things!
People usually do whatever they can to avoid pain, whether it’s physical or mental, which usually makes it worse and does not deal with the root cause. New research on the polyvagal theory is suggesting that we can learn to calm down our nervous system (our amygdala and our stress response) by doing habits that you have probably already been working on such as:
Walking in nature
Listening to bilateral music
Meditation
EFT tapping/Affirmations
Psychotherapy
Massage therapy/aromatherapy
Alternative healing such as acupuncture, chiropractic, resetting the diaphragm and first rib so that you can breath deeper
Deep breathing and the use of biofeedback such as a heartmath device
Playing with pets
Eating healthy fats, protein, and veggies every 4 hours to stabilize your blood sugar level (HPA axis)
Sleeping 8 hours or more a night
These activities restore the rest and digest part of our nervous system, taking the edge off our emotional and physical pain. This can help us face and heal psychological pain, little “t” trauma, and big “T” trauma by using an integrated approach called Brainspotting developed in 2004 by David Grand. I have gone through phases 1-3 of his training and participated in bi-monthly consultation groups since COVID started to bring this new fast healing modality directly to you. Brainspotting involves thinking about a specific past memory, belief about yourself, a behavior you would like to change, noticing where you feel that particular issue in your body or your mind, finding an eye position that applies the issue while listening to bi-lateral music to help calm your nervous system. The goal is to increase the discomfort to desensitize you to whatever it is that you are concerned about. Desensitization works 85% of the time and is the chosen treatment for any type of fear or anxiety but most people do not do it because it’s so invasive. With brainspotting, all you have to do is stare at a certain point and mindfully be aware of your thoughts, images, emotions, and bodily sensations and report what you are noticing every few minutes. It is not invasive yet the position of your eye gaze activates “emotional/memory capsules” stored in your cingulate cortex (the two pink layers, and the green, blue and red part of the photo). Our goal is to amplify the issue while teaching your body that you are safe. We are flushing this memory, thought, unwanted belief out of your brain, and your nervous system is re-regulating. This means you are breaking open the memory capsule and processing the body sensations, feelings, thoughts, and emotions inside of it. The purpose is to discharge the issue so that it no longer affects you. The healing continues to occur after the session just like your body keeps relaxing after a massage. You often are a little tired and you sleep deeply while your brain and body continue to heal themselves. If dealing directly with the issue is too uncomfortable for you, you can process the issue on a “resource spot” or “double spotting”. A resource spot is another eye position that connects to where you feel the most grounded in your body. After feeling less activated you then stare at the activating spot again and it does not have the same intensity. This is an advanced way to help people bring down their activation while soothing their nervous system.
I learned so many different techniques and we spent weeks practicing each skill and getting supervision and feedback. Many years ago, I was trained as a body orientated process therapist, and when through two years of specialized training for this technique but it was a little bit too fast and too much for people. The change was great but it was more painful and people would get stuck in the pain. This technique does the same amount of work, faster, is less painful, and it is not as awkward because you are just staring.
Doing brainspotting sessions online changed online therapy for me and my clients. When COVID first hit and I was not doing walking therapy, I really missed the feeling and the groove of walking therapy and I did not care for the online platform as much. Doing brainspotting online works better than doing it live. I get to see your face (safely) while you are processing and you are in the comfort of your own home while you process deeper issues. It’s been such a COVID gift to see people move out of their limiting beliefs, behaviors, and move into being their best selves in just a few sessions.
I have also figured out a way to do walk and talk therapy while we stop and add in a brainspotting session. I find that walking back listening to bilateral music helps us calm down the activated nervous system even more while integrating the session.
If you or someone you are close to would like to try online brainspotting, email me at Sherian@bestself.today to set up an appointment. It’s truly an awesome tool and the best part is you can learn how to use it on yourself for peak performance or procrastination.
This has been a memorable year and it’s probably going to get a little worse before it gets better but this is how we change. This is how we heal. This is how we learn, grow, and move forward. There is no other way to do this then go through it. It’s years like this year, we are grateful that we took the time to work on ourselves and our issues so that we can be resilient and pivot.
This is a year where you might have missed certain people, activities, and behaviors that you once never thought you would be without. This is a year of grieving the loss of so many things while continuing to move forward.
I invite you to be extra kind to yourself, to others, to the animals, and of course to our mother earth. Be in nature, wear your mask, increase your self-care, increase your support, turn over a new leaf, and be your best self in 2021. Let’s be in this cocoon and come out the other side like a butterfly!
I am so grateful for you and thank you for taking the time to read about my new passion and love. My goal is to hold your hand (figuratively) and walk with you every step of the way even when we are online being safe.
xoxo
Sherian
