The Taproot Podcast - 🧐How do you Brainspot Patients With Severe Dissociation? - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Brainspotting: Exploring Processing and Aftercare ✨ Address: 2025 Shady Crest Dr Suite 203 Hoover, AL 35216 Email: [e-mail] Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/cnverPNUPuxiPkbc8 Podcast: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] #Brainspotting #TraumaTherapy #MentalHealth #Healing #Processing #EmotionalWellbeing #TherapyJourney #SelfCare #TaprootTherapyCollective #GetTherapyBirmingham #Support #Guidance

Hey guys, it's Joel, and today I'm going to go over a couple of brain spotting techniques that I like to use. If you're not familiar with brain spotting, this is kind of a video for brain spotting therapists that are looking to try some other ways of helping a patient open up and engage with the subcortical brain. If you're not a therapist, if you are not trained in brain spotting, it may be just better to go back and jump to one of the videos that explains what brain spotting is and how it works I'll put that in the description so you can click that link

if you are a brain spotting therapist and you're familiar with the procedure you've had phase one or phase two trainings these are some things that I've found helped me treat certain cases So the first thing that I want to notice or I want to mention is like, you know, there's a lot of different ways to do brain spotting. So my language may not be exactly the way that it is in the training or something. This is just kind of the way that I do it. Hopefully this is helpful to you. I'm a dissociative disorder specialist, so I do a lot of things other than that, but I see a lot of patients that have a

dissociative disorder that's pretty extreme or dissociative identity disorder is something that I work with a lot with brain spotting. And a lot of times what brain spotting will do is it makes somebody dissociate. So it's important to distinguish between the kind of fugue state where somebody looks, you know, just kind of very, I call it, you know, looking subcortical. That somebody's face kind of goes slack like they're a Flannery O'Connor character that's seeing this greater version of the divine and can't handle it. But it's this place that's kind of in between wake and sleep where the thinky brain is turned off and the person is very much in this heightened awareness of their physical and emotional self. And that's good. That's where the brain swatting processing happens. It's kind of the place that we go in between sleep and dream. And you tend to lose

time there. You know, however long time somebody spends in that spot is how long, you know, they miss that time. They're like, oh my gosh, it's been 30 minutes. I can't believe that. I thought it was five because it took five for me to break through the protective part and to move them down into the subcortical brain. So that is, I wouldn't call that dissociation. I would call that processing. That's a good thing. What happens is when you're dealing with somebody that has a very strong dissociative disorder, it's hard to break through that protective part. You know, the thinky brain being like, what is this? How does this work? Or like, oh, I have to scratch or I need to blink and refocus my eye. All the things that patients do to not go into the cortical brain because it's

scary to face these emotions. The protective parts pop up to protect us from them. Breaking through those with a dissociative patient is hard because what will happen is you start to try and push them here. They dissociate as a protective part. Now I can't get them to focus on me. I can't get them to look at the pointer. Maybe they've regressed to a very young part. Maybe they've just completely checked out into an avoidant dissociative part where they're not aware of their body anymore. So now the processing's stopped. What do we do? Well, there's a couple things that I do to help somebody feel safer in the body and go

into the body. A lot of times with dissociative disorders and trauma, there's something that's happened that makes the body not safe. So maybe I don't like how I was touched. Maybe I don't like what my hands did. I don't want to feel my hands. Maybe I don't like what I smelled. It depends what the trigger is. But the goal is to get them into the body brain. But the body's not safe. And when I'm trying to pull you there, you're just going to dissociate and check out. No, we can't go there. So if you've done phase two brain spotting,

you know that there's a resource I and there's resource spots, that the resource spots tend to turn off anxiety, the resource I tends to slow processing down. That super duper resourcing stuff is good. If you don't have that, I would recommend getting phase two. I'm not going to go into all that technique here, but with or without it, you can still use some of these techniques. So if smell is not safe, if touch is not safe, if body feeling, you know, the energy of my heart just being a black hole and creeping out and being heavier than my body, maybe that's just too much for me to feel. I'm going to dissociate if a therapist tries to push me there. So what I do to get them into the body brain is find a part of the body sense that is safe, okay? And then go into that part of sense. You can call

this sensory spotting if you want. I don't know if that note is already, I don't know if that name's already taken. There's probably somebody out there doing a training called that. Sorry if that's the case. So first off, notice. So we've got five senses, right? We can use a lot of them. We can kind of picture a mental image one of the ones that usually people don't have a negative experience with is sound or with smell this is palo santo i wouldn't recommend using like an extremely strong essential oil like you use to to pull patients out of panic attacks and things like peppermint oil or tea tree oil or something. Sometimes that's just overwhelming. It's kind of too much.

What I like about Palo Santo is it's not really one smell. It's like three or four together. There's mint and vanilla and a cedary smell and it all kind of becomes more than the sum of its parts. It's just if you want to talk in the language of like wine or perfume or something, it's very complex. It definitely has like a beginning, a middle, and an end note. And so that gives you a lot for somebody to go into. So what I do is light some of the Palo Santo with a match, kind of have it going in the room. If you're not familiar with Palo Santo, what it'll do is flare up for a minute, and then it'll go out and start to smoke. And the smoke is what the smell comes from. So you can use sage or something else too so now we have the smell and even though you're dissociative and you don't want to feel

touch you don't want to feel body energy you don't want to be body awareness the smell is safe and I'm still getting you into the subcortical brain so here is this smell of Palo Santo and then we can get our pointer and we can get our glasses and we can start to brain spot just while you're noticing that and that's one way to start to creep somebody back into the body where the body is a very unsafe spot another way is sound this is a Tibetan begging bowl you can hit it and it rings that's not really the way to get the most nuanced sound out of one of these if you're not familiar with it these are Eastern there's a philosophical

Buddhist component to some of them. It's kind of mystical. Part of it is that the bowl can only sing when it is empty. If I put a bunch of rice in this bowl, I can't beg anymore. So that's kind of the Buddhist idea that you can only ask when you need, not when you want. And also the mystical idea that if I have a conception or if my cognition is full, my ego is full, I can't really hold the divine. I have to be empty. You don't have to go into all that with patience.

We're just going to use the sound today. So when you start to rub on here, you get a kind of wavering, nuanced tone that wibbles. We want something that's a little complex so that people are curious. Because one of the key ingredients to brain spotting working is that the person is curious. They have a sense of wonder and they're ready to engage creativity. When I'm afraid, when I'm shutting down, when I'm saying, I have to follow a rule. The rule is to listen to the sound. I'm listening to the beep.

That part of my brain is not on. I'm not going to go subcortically. I'm not going to grow and I'm not I have to follow a rule. The rule is to listen to the sound. I'm listening to the beep. That part of my brain is not on. I'm not going to go subcortically. I'm not going to grow, and I'm not going to heal. So I like Powell, Santo, and the Begging Bowl. There's other ways to do it. Maybe they have a sound, a music, a song that's safe. But you're saying let everything else go. Get out of your head and get into your body

and just listen to the way that this music is affecting you listen feel it don't just listen don't just smell but actually feel this in your body and and then start to the brain spotting that way go into the body that way and a lot of times that's a safer way to frame the session so that you can create somebody who is severely dissociative in there i wouldn't use that with just anyone walking in but those are ways to kind of have the body be safe. Another way to have the body be safe is to use touch. So I use something that has a lot of mass, like a marble ball. I've got an egg. You can pick the one you want. So these tend to be kind of cold, smooth have a texture we can heat them up you know if you if you want it to be warm but if somebody can't feel this feeling this is too much all that

body energy is too much but i still need them in the subcortical brain to process then because sometimes even if you've got phase two you're using the super duper resourcing you're using the resource side the resource spot you'll still find patients that are so dissociative, they're just going to white out and not be able to go into processing. And you've got to find some way to get them into the body. And this is one way to do that. So this is cold. It's got texture.

You have the person hold this. And as they're holding that, then feel it and this is safe I'm not afraid of this part of my body I can feel my hand I can feel the texture and then we can go to the brain spot and go into the body that way and then throughout the process they may start to lose contact with this part of the body and then the scary place becomes too much, but we've done a little bit. And you're going to be working even with something very fast like brain spotting at that speed with some kinds of trauma. If you're working with really severe cases of trauma,

you're going to be going at just a little, you're going to be opening up just a little bit so the next couple days they can process just a little bit and it just is going to have to move at that speed. One thing that you'll notice is when the person, they call this gaze spotting in the training, but you'll notice when the person is talking about a certain core belief like I feel trapped, I feel trapped, I feel trapped, or now I'm in a fight, I want to avoid conflict, I don't like it. The trapped eye position is kind of here, that's where I'm looking. The avoided eye position is kind of here. That's where I'm looking. But you'll notice that their body activates in a certain way too. Notice that too, because that's helping you map the whole experience. And you don't really have to tell them that or analyze

that. That would be kind of contra the brain spotting model. But what you will be doing is using it to bring their awareness to something if they're having trouble going into it. Now, you know, David Grand, a lot of like his training and when I spoke with him, he said, you know, don't map and suggest all these things to people because then they're trapped in the conception. You know, just like the begging bowl, we have to be empty if we're going to really hold the greater subcortical mystical self. But what you can do, what you'll encounter sometimes is that there are people who are so cut out from their body, they don't have the intuition, they don't have the feeling sense, they don't have the language to describe what their feeling is. And so you giving them words,

even though we don't really want to get stuck in words, get stuck in description, helps them understand it. And then that understanding can help them drop into processing. This isn't everybody. I wouldn't start off going like, okay, you look here and you say trapped. And then I noticed your back does this and you feel like your finger, your fingers do this. That's kind of a protective. That's part of that protective part is the physicality of pinching. And I wouldn't start to parse all that for someone.

I would let them just go into processing and notice that. But when they're getting stuck, if you've noticed it, then that means that you can use that to help them. And so I've had people a lot of the time that are so out of touch with their body or any kind of curiosity. We want to make them curious with language. Remember, we're trying to get them curious that they just say it's too much it's too much I feel everything I feel everything or I feel nothing and I'm watching their body and it's like I can tell you're feeling a lot but they're not able to be curious with it they're not able to engage with it and

they're not able to wonder about it and so they're not able to really start to process and so when I'm able to say okay well it looks like when I'm here you start to feel and then that's where you're helping them map okay so that's what this technique is for so with mapping like you're gonna notice a couple of things you're going to I think the will say weight is important texture is important temperature is important and energy, just a more open term. So when they say, my heart, I feel my heart, my heart hurts, it hurts, or I don't know, it's here, but I'm not going to engage with it anymore. And you're trying to leave room for them to explore it themselves, but they just can't. They kind of need help to open that up.

So does your heart feel heavier than the rest of your body? Does it feel like the thing is pressing on your chest? Or does it feel like the heart is pressure bursting out? Or does it feel like gravity is pulling your heart, center of your chest down? Okay, now the person's curious. Well, yeah, the pressure's coming up. It's this way. Whereas before, you could sit there and ask forever, and they're just going to tell you, oh no, no, it's too much, it's too much. So, that would be that pressure sense, or the weight, right?

What is it doing? Okay, now, does it feel colder than the weight, right? What is it doing? Now, does it feel colder than the rest of your body or than the room? Does it feel warmer than the rest of your body, than the room? Okay, yeah, the pressure's coming out of my chest like aliens, you know? The thing bursts out of the guy's chest. It wants to burst out, and it's hot. It's like a fireball. now they're curious they're more curious

we're likely to go into processing texture what does it feel like texture is a more vague word right so they're thinking harder you don't lead with texture and energy you lead with gravity and weight or pressure and now texture and what does it feel like is there any is it like a atomic bomb is it just like a simmering fire is it you know like somebody opens a coke can or your leg goes to sleep and little bubbles are popping up does it feel like it's just a rolling furnace that's gonna pop oh now it feels like a cocoon like it's almost like a hot egg and there's something in the center okay now you're getting them deeper into the subcortical brain and there's texture to this thing it's not just this big scary feeling right and then last i just leave this open-ended what

is the sense of energy i remember when i met with david uh a long time ago david grand i was asking him about some model that i came up with early in therapy. And he was like, no, no, no, you can't do that. You're not making room for the patient. He said one time he had somebody behind him and he said, or he said, what do you feel in an eye position? And the patient said, I feel like green is behind me. And I thought that was really interesting. You know, like nothing that I was thinking about in my cognition was making room for something like that and so now I just say what kind of energy do you

feel like just kind of sweep your body sweep the room is there just something weird and sometimes people feel like they're being watched by a presence sometimes people feel like this fireball thing in my chest wants something like it's angry there's an emotion there sometimes people feel like this fireball thing in my chest has an age or you just get places that they wouldn't go normally or it's bad there's a moral quality to. And so start off with a specific language that anyone can understand of, you know, the gravity, the pressure, the temperature, then more nuanced, open-minded texture, and then this nebulous idea of energy.

And those are some ways that I do it. I also think it's very important to listen to posture. And sometimes you kind of acting that out helps people. So if they're having a hard time going into it, another way to frame it is, you know, when you're in this eye position versus this one, what is it that your posture wants to do? Listen to your spine and your shoulders and your extremities am I trying to cover up and hide something that I don't want anyone to be able to get at am I trying to you know get away from something I don't like this

am I trying to stand up and fight do I want to just train spotting into the carpet where the carpet gets real long and the guy just disappears do I want to just float away in space and emerge that gets you somewhere also and those are just kind of frames that help a patient open up when you're trying to get them to go into the subcortical brain but they have different blocks about engaging with that space. So I hope that's helpful.

If you have a question, leave a comment, and I will talk to you soon. Bye.