75 [Healing Series] Brainspotting
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/75
Haley Radke: This show is listener-supported.
You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm your host, Haley Radke, and this is a special episode in our Healing Series, where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves, so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee.
Today we are talking about brainspotting. First of all, what is it? And why is it so helpful for adoptees in particular? Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Dr. Julie Lopez. Julie's a trauma-informed practitioner whose primary clinical specialty is working with trauma and PTSD. Welcome back to Adoptees On.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Thanks so much for having me.
Haley Radke: I am so excited to talk with you today because we are going to touch on brainspotting. I've seen it all over Facebook, all the adoptee groups are talking about brainspotting. I know it's not brand new this year or anything, but it seems to be getting really popular, especially in the adoptee community. So do you want to just give us a brief overview, like, what is brainspotting? It sounds like such a funny word, like, what is that?
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah, so brainspotting was developed by David Grant up in New York, a psychologist, who had long been doing EMDR and was an EMDR practitioner. And he noticed, especially, I think the story that he tells when he first started researching what was going on with eye positioning, was when he was working with a professional level figure skater. And she was having trouble mastering this one particular move. I'm not sure I'm gonna get it right, it was like the triple toe loop or something very challenging. And every time she went to do it, she wasn't landing it. And so she came to him to do the traditional EMDR, and he realized when she was doing some of the eye movements, that her eye position, when they were going over the move, was always in the same area.
So he started to get curious about what that relationship was, and by having her stay in that one area where it seemed more activated or there was some area of distress, he realized, and they realized together, that there was another experience stored in there, and it was mapped into the way she was focusing for that move. And when they resolved that, she was able to land the move. So, does that sound–
Haley Radke: You didn't see me shake my head and be like, ‘Wow!’
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah! But I can see you!
Haley Radke: You can see me, that's why you're laughing.
Dr. Julie Lopez: But yes, so it's really fascinating. The premise behind brainspotting is that our eye position actually maps to spots in the brain where some of this material is stored, that's in our unconscious. It would seem nonsensical that this distressing experience she had prior would have anything to do with her physical mastery of a move in ice skating. But it was from there that he started to research the way that you could actually work with a brain spot and change someone's here-and-now present day experience.
Haley Radke: It’s pretty amazing to just think about this spot in your visual field being connected to some kind of memory or experience or something. Like, that sounds a little bit woo-woo, but I know this is all scientifically–
Dr. Julie Lopez: It totally does.
Haley Radke: Yes, okay. Go on.
Dr. Julie Lopez: It would be even more woo-woo if we were doing video for this podcast, because I would bring out some of the materials that go with it. Like, there's a wand that you use that has a ridge– it looks like, I don't think you're old enough to know about this, but an antenna off the back of a TV, that you can stretch. So it's a stretchable wand.
Haley Radke: I have seen an antenna before!
Dr. Julie Lopez: Well, it was a major part of everyday life when I was growing up. Anyway, there's this red wand, and you actually use it to hold the spot when you find a spot in someone's range of vision. And theoretically the spot is then correlating back through our brains and accessing a neural network where material's been stored. And so by using the gaze, you're actually accessing some of that material and the processing goes faster.
It's very similar to EMDR in that you're looking to access where some of this emotional and psychological mapping may be stored, and it's particularly effective for reducing physically held symptoms.
Haley Radke: Can you walk us through, so you're working with a client and you found the spot– how do you find the spot, I guess? How do you find the spot? And then what are you doing when you've got their gaze in that one section?
Dr. Julie Lopez: Every question you just asked has multiple answers to it, so I'll give you all those answers. I don't want to confuse people, but I'm just going to start out with this disclaimer that in this interview, I'm basically giving you a commercial– I'm giving the Cliff Notes of a commercial about a show that's for a whole series. So I'm going to really just give you the high level overview. Basically, I'm sitting with you and you say, “Every time I hear my first mother say, ‘I didn't have a choice,’ or ‘I couldn't help it about giving you away,’--” and I'm sharing that because this used to drive me bananas every time. Every time my first mother would say something like “powerless” or wasn't taking responsibility, I would become enraged. And I knew all the logic behind it. I knew about the time period, she was part of, the Baby Scoop Era. I knew about the dynamics with her parents. I knew about the dynamics of the conception. I knew everything intellectually, but my body would just go bananas, and I was so pissed. And there was a time period I just wouldn't see her because I knew I would get triggered every time to that feeling, and I knew I wasn't going to be kind. I wouldn't take it head on –sometimes I did– but it just was very unpleasant for me. And it would really upset me, it would affect my sleep, things like that.
So let's just say, pretending you're me, you've come in and you've said, “Oh, I just can't take it, and it's really affecting my wellbeing, and it's affecting my relationships, and I really wish I didn't have this big reaction. And I know all the intellect behind it, but I'm still having it. My throat closes up, like, my face gets red, my adrenaline starts running.”
I would have already explained brainspotting and you would've already said, “That sounds really woo-woo to me and crazy.” And we would've agreed we're going to try this different kind of approach, and we could find a spot by using an “outside window”, is what it's called. So I would take the wand and I would have you think about that feeling and pull it up, and I would take it across the x-axis of your vision. So I'd have your eyes watching –and actually you just did it right now– I'd be looking for areas of response. So like right here, you had a little response to that. Look, this isn't even real because we're talking about my issue, not yours, but you had a little response.
And I would say, “Oh, okay,” so outside window, I'm looking for where you have a response, where there's some area of agitation. And I would stop there on the x-axis and I'd say, “Okay, now I want you to follow my little wand up and down,” so we'd be looking at the y-axis. And I would be deciding where you had– I would say, “Okay, it looked like right here. Does that feel about right?” I'd be getting your input. And then actually, once you've done the brainspotting level two, there's also a z-axis, so closer, further. So we've done x, y, z, I'd be identifying it: outside window.
Another way is inside window. That's your own experience. So I would say, “Okay, pull up that feeling,” and we'd do it again. But it doesn't matter what I'm seeing in your physical response. You would say, “Oh, right about there. It feels most active,” y, z, right? And we'd be looking at that. So that's how we identify it.
And then I would just hold it there. You'd already be active into that neural network, so I would just let you be in that heightened space with that experience.
I think what's hard when I'm training people –students, or I'm training supervisees– is a lot of healing professionals want to be helpful and they want to be “value-add”. And the challenge with some of these more brain-based therapies is actually the best posture is to get out of the way as much as possible. Because our bodies want to heal. So you're basically opening a window, like a direct hit, into a felt experience and without all the intellectualization or the cultural norms. We're really trying to get into the space where the body's going to do what it wants to do anyway.
So, believe it or not, I don't do anything. I hold the space where we've already accessed an activated spot for you and let you have your process. And people will naturally start to process the visceral experience.
Haley Radke: Like, will they talk about it? Will they say what's going on for them? Or are you just sitting there feeling sick, or what?
Dr. Julie Lopez: It depends on the person. So for some people, they are talking about it or they're even moving. They're like, “Oh my gosh, my neck is killing me.” I basically encourage people to listen to their bodies. So while I'm holding the spot, they might move around. Their processing might be non-verbal. And if you think about the power of being able to process something, and especially for an adoptee that's pre-conscious or pre-verbal, it's not even stored in our system with language. So how in the world are you going to use language to process out an experience that wasn't stored that way? So you’re right, they might not be talking at all. They might be saying –or not saying but just feeling– ‘I'm gonna be sick,’ and I'm watching how they process. And when it looks like they're through a segment of processing, which could be 100% non-verbal, it could be just their eyes are going, or they're crying– and I've told them already, “Once you feel like you want to share something, then share it,” and if it's a very verbal thing that they're processing, they may be just telling me, “Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm remembering this thing,” or that type of thing. People process very differently.
Keep in mind, I'm just giving you a demo, but when you're doing it, you're actually looking for the most activated space. So you're already in that place, and then we let the body do what it wants to do anyway. My job as a practitioner is to help the process keep going, to make sure the person doesn't get flooded in case they need resourcing. Because our ideal on the healing path is that we're stretching, but not torturing ourselves. There is an ideal space to manage healing. We don't want someone to get so overwhelmed or flooded, and I firmly believe the body brings up what it can handle. So a part of it is just helping to provide the container for the person to do their work, and to intervene if it starts looping or not moving through like we would want to.
Haley Radke: How long would that sort-of take? What's the range? I mean, I get it, it's different for everyone, but is this like a–
Dr. Julie Lopez: It is so different!
Haley Radke: Like, a five minute moment, or is it like–?
Dr. Julie Lopez: No, it's not. And I'm a little bit biased on this one because I do work with a lot of adults who've had developmental trauma, and especially with my special connection and interest in working with adoptees. When you have the earlier experience that's hard for your system to take in, or that hasn't been fully metabolized or digested, whether it's having an impact today, the longer it might be to process. And it's complicated because the way that you could have a twin sister that went through everything quote-unquote “the same as you”, but there are so many factors that play a part in how it's stored in your system.
Sometimes people think I have a crystal ball, which I absolutely do not. It's just as mysterious for me, how you as an individual are going to have these experiences stored in your body. So it could be within a normal session kind of timeframe. A little bit of time to set up, and then we're looking to work with each spot. So you process a whole spot and then you might move on to another spot, depending on what's evolving.
I do take some notes while I'm doing the work because things are not linear in our system. They're stacked, in usually a more complex way. So you may be– I gave you that example about working on the anger, and the kind of beliefs held with it might be that ‘I don't matter,’ right? Or that ‘I'm being diminished.’ And in that process, other themes may come up like ‘I'm all alone’ or ‘I'm gonna die,’ or something like that. It might not seem logical, but there's schema that can all be attached to one root target, so it can get complicated. And you would just desensitize each spot as you go.
Haley Radke: That sounds magical.
Dr. Julie Lopez: The other thing is having a center like this where we do a lot of advanced brain-based therapies, we've actually found that a picture's worth a thousand words, and even more so the experience. So sometimes we'll do empowerment-based free workshops in the community, just so people could see, touch the equipment, ask the questions, hear the history, understand the theory. Especially like with something like neurofeedback, which has the big computer system and you're hooking electrodes up to your brain, it seems crazy that you can change your brainwaves by playing a video game where there's no words, and the reward system is helping encourage your brainwaves to operate at a different level. It's very hard to conceptualize without sitting down, having it attached to you and seeing what happens. But it's pretty amazing. So I know you say it sounds magical, and it does, if you saw the equipment. And even us, like, I've been doing EMDR for 25 years, and brainspotting, it's only been a couple years now, two or three? And when I first got the equipment I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ Because I've got these goggles that are half black on the right eye and on the left eye, because you can do single eye training. They encourage bilateral sound, so there are special CDs that do that. I could go on and on. Like I said, this is the Cliff Notes of the commercial about the show that's a series. It's a very short, condensed version. But it does seem pretty incredible. Our brains are amazing..
Haley Radke: Wow, you've definitely inspired me to seek out a practitioner in our area here, so thank you. That was a great explanation. I'm excited to hear from listeners if they try it out and what it's done for them.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Great. And I would just say, too, if I can, there are many different ways to change the way that your brain is mapping information in some of those automatic responses to inputs that we get in our everyday, whether it's relational, or just inputs from the outside environment. And if it works for you, great. If it doesn't, it's not the only way to do nonverbal work on your system. We are exploding with information about different ways to access the nonverbal part of our lived experience.
Haley Radke: That's so important to note, right. There is something that's gonna work for everyone, and we've talked before about how adoptees have stored that trauma non-verbally, and it's important to address it in that same way. So, thank you. Thanks so much. That was so helpful. How can we connect with you online?
Dr. Julie Lopez: My center's website is www.vivapartnership.com, and from the site you can connect. We have a lot of great information that goes out in our newsletter, really empowerment-based. We have a Facebook page and Twitter.
Haley Radke: We'll link to them all in the show notes.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Perfect. Actually. But I will say, I would like to get the word out there about the Resilient Brain Project, which is a free online resource for folks. So another way to start feeling empowered around how to make change as an adoptee is to go to that site. It's www.resilientbrainproject.com.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much for your expertise in this area.
Links to everything we talked about today are over on Adopteeson.com, where you can find all the past episodes of the Adoptees On podcast, links to all of our social media accounts, you can sign up for our newsletter, and you can also support the show at Adopteeson.com/partner. I want to say a big thank you to my monthly supporters. You are literally making it possible for me to continue producing this show for you every single week. Thank you, and thanks for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.
