174 Brainspotting Basics For Therapists

Most therapists are not stuck because they lack insight. They are stuck because insight alone does not create change. In this special replay of a live training with Carolyn Robistow, we unpack Brainspotting basics and explore a bigger question many clinicians are asking right now: how can additional training increase your value without increasing your workload?

This conversation is not just about a modality. It is about embodied knowing. The kind of shift that happens in the nervous system first, and shows up later as clarity, relief, or behavior change. Carolyn explains why the goal of Brainspotting is not symptom reduction, not understanding, and not a better reframe. Those may happen, but they are not the target. The target is deeper integration.

We also talk about what changes for the therapist. Brainspotting requires a different kind of discipline. Less explaining. Less rescuing. More attunement. More patience. More trust in the client’s system to do what it already knows how to do.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why insight does not automatically create change, and what “embodied knowing” actually means in clinical practice
• The three skills clients are practicing during Brainspotting: noticing, observing without managing, and staying curious
• The practitioner shift, including WAIT, why am I talking?, and how the dual attunement frame protects the process
• How specialized training like Brainspotting can support sustainability by reducing overfunctioning instead of adding more to your plate

If you have been wondering whether advanced training could be part of a smarter income strategy, this episode will help you think about it in an ethical, grounded way. Not as a quick fix. Not as a shiny tool. But as a way to deepen your clinical impact without burning yourself out.

Want to learn more about brainspotting? Check out Brainspotting.com.

For more from Carolyn, check out her Self-Brainspotting Mini-Course (and optional Guided Audio Series add-on), as well as her free Brainspotting Consultation Group for Phase 1 practitioners or higher.

Wish you’d gotten a CE for this? You could have if you were in the Step It Up Membership. Assets mentioned in the episode are available here, too! 

Download our free resource: Stop Working For Free: The Therapist Fee Reset.

Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit. 

Transcript

Embodied Knowing Over Insight

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When we talk about embodied knowing, all I'm trying to point out to you is that the outcome of brain spotting is not insight, it is not understanding, and it is not symptom reduction. These are things that happen as a result of this embodied knowing.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome to Badass Therapist, building practices around. It's all about working smarter, not harder. And here's your host, Dr. Kate Walker.

Free February Resource Mentioned

Meet Carolyn Robisto

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Today's episode is a special replay from a live training with Carolyn Robisto on brain spotting basics. But this conversation isn't just about a modality. It's about something a lot of therapists are thinking about right now. How additional training can increase your value, not your workload. If you've been wondering whether specialized training could be part of a smarter income strategy, this episode will get you thinking in a grounded, ethical way. And if it does, make sure you grab our free February resource, stop working for free, the therapist fee reset at KateWalkertraining.com slash bonus. And our guest, Carolyn Robisto, also has a freebie for you as well. So listen carefully for that. And now here's Carolyn. So Carolyn, yes, she knows brain spotting, but that's not how I know Carolyn. I know Carolyn because she's a business coach who teaches counselors how to scale their businesses from their practices to these one too many offers. And so that's how I got to know Carolyn because she knows her stuff regarding business. So it's super cool that she's going to teach us about brain spotting tonight as well. So, Carolyn, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you so much for being here.

What Brainspotting Is And Isn’t

Why Choose Brainspotting Over EMDR

Positioning For Client Buy-In

Sustainable, Profitable Clinical Work

Defining Embodied Knowing

Neuroexperiential Change Explained

Limbic Language And Felt Sense

Boat Life Story As Knowing

SPEAKER_00 1:59

I am super jazzed to be here. Like, welcome back, happy new year. Love that we're getting CEs for it or that y'all are getting CEs for it. So I'm super jazzed to talk about brain spotting with business builders. This is my jam. Good luck getting me to stop. Yeah, great. Well, and I also love just a really interactive conversational style type thing. So if at any point, because I'm going to be sharing my screen and I've got these slides and then I've got like things I'm going to be drawing, it's a little bit all over. We're just going to watch my brain dump into this Zoom room here. I'm not just going to like overload you with information. I'd rather you walk away having questions answered and understand your own stuff. Temperature check. How many people are already trained in brain spotting versus not like considering it or like what's your what's your brain spotting status? Are you are you brain spotting curious? Are you brain spotting trained? Like what who do we have here? How many of you are trained in a bottom-up modality like EMDR or somatic experiencing hypnotherapy, anything like that? So some of the things are gonna be familiar and you're gonna nod along and be like, yes, this makes sense, especially trained in EMDR. And if you're not, let me tell you, I was I'm not trained in EMDR. I came to so a little bit of backstory about how I came to brain spotting. I was starting, I was, you know, brand new baby therapist, not a baby person, because this is my I was a teacher for we'll go like 16 years and a school counselor for a couple of years as well. And then I was met with this very real situation where I was like, on nuts. It turns out that my clients need a little bit more than what I anticipated them needing. And they were getting stuck in ways, and it was like we could talk about it until they were, you know, blue in the face. And then they go and they'd be like, yes, I'm gonna do the things different and I understand and I've reframed it, and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna enact this, you know, healthy boundary. So I specialize in my private practice with anxiety and OCD and scrupulosity, but back then it was mostly just anxiety. And so they would reach this point where they just knew what to do, but weren't doing it. And I don't want to call anybody out, but I will say for myself, like, what a familiar feeling. Like the number of times I know better, but don't do better, it's too many to count. And so a friend of mine on a brain spotting consultation group actually shared something with me the other day that I was like, oh, and I was running her through this presentation, quite honestly. I was like, ooh, tell me what you think. And she gave me this little snippet. So I cannot wait to share it with you. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start sharing. I am a 4-1 projector in human design, which means I have a propensity to overexplain. So I have to keep myself on track with things. So as we dive in, I want to just kind of do the standard thing of like, this is not a technical training. I am not a brain spotting trainer. After this, you are not considered a brain spotting practitioner. This is more like, what the heck is it? And do I need it in my life? And the answer is yes, and here's why you need it in your life, is kind of what we're here to inside the bench. Really, all we're gonna do here tonight is you're brain spotting curious. You've got some training in EMDR, which is almost like an adjacent bottom-up therapy. And if you don't, that's totally fine. I was there too. Let me finish that story real quick. So then there I was in the woodlands, Texas, with my little baby therapy practice with my clients. And I met this friend named Judith. She came to me and we talked about how we both wanted to get trained in something that we felt like was going to really help move the needle a little bit better because we were just sort of feeling like, is it me? Like, am I just not a good therapist? And I knew I was because I'd had Jennifer as my supervisor, and she was so good, and I knew, you know, more than enough to help these people, right? And so Judith is the one who said to me, Well, if you're thinking about getting trained in EMDR, have you heard of brain spotting? And I was like, no. And also, it sounds a little bit weird, and I'm not sure that's really my thing because I'm very much like a rule follower. And if EMDR is like the standard, I kind of feel like I want to go that way. And she said, Well, maybe just like look it up and see what you can figure out about it, because I'm going to get trained and I would love for you to come with me. And so I started looking into it, and then I had this aha moment where I realized that my clients at the time, and still quite a few of them, are such high performers and they're also Googlers, especially like when you work in OCD, right? Like they're on Google. Google makes their annual budget just on them Googling their symptoms, right? And so these people are Googlers, and I knew that they were gonna Google anything I brought to the table. And I knew that when they Googled EMDR, they were going to see PTSD veterans, and we collectively here in the profession, we know that ain't it. Like that's not EMDR is not limited to that, but I just had this really strong feeling that they were gonna be like, that's not for me, because that doesn't match my story. And I thought, no one here for knows anything at all about brain spotting. Like there wasn't anyone in the area who was trained. When Judith and I went, we went with another friend and we were the first three kind of in the area that we knew of who were even talking about it. Not that like it was a new thing, but it was just kind of new-ish to our area. And I thought, if I can be the first person to speak it to them and explain it through their experience and why I think it's helpful for them, I might be able to get their buy-in more. So I did not necessarily choose brain spotting because it was better than any of the other modalities, but more so because I wanted to be the person to give it some language so that it would feel like it landed a little bit better. So that's what I'm also hoping to do for you tonight. And so, like Kate mentioned, my current sewbox in life is making our work more sustainable and profitable so that we can continue serving in these critical ways that we serve without losing our creativity and without burning out. So I, my name is Carolyn Robisto. It's like stealing from a store, Robisto. And I share that joke lovingly because that was how my husband told me to pronounce it when we first met. And so I am who therapists and life coaches call when they're ready to break the mold of the traditional one-to-one work and the one-to-one income ceiling, using a one-to-many offer so that we're not adding more individual clients to our caseload. And so I teach this series of three prefunnel playgrounds to go from the brainstorm of an idea for potential group offers to a full program that's validated and ready to automate. But like I said, I do also have a virtual private practice that used to be housed straight out of the Woodlands, Texas. It is fully virtual now, and I'll explain a little bit more about that in a bit. And I'm in the process of getting uh licensed in North Carolina because I have some clients who are long-term clients who are relocating there. And I'm like, yeah, like, why not? I might as well. And so brain spotting is my main flavor of treatment, which is why we're here today. And so part of how I serve my own calling of making our work sustainable and profitable is using brain spotting. And it's like I eat, sleep, and breathe it. And these are the things that I wish I had known when I first found out about it. So embodied knowing. This is the outcome of brain spotting. And when we talk about embodied knowing, all I'm trying to point out to you is that the outcome of brain spotting is not insight, it is not understanding, and it is not symptom reduction. These are things that happen as a result of this embodied knowing. So when we focus on embodied knowing being the goal, the other things naturally fall in line. Insight will come, understanding will come. My EMDR people, you recognize, you understand this, right? Like it's like it happens in the bottom, it happens in the brain and body, and then it works its way up to this top part of the brain. And clients have what last night a client described to me as an epiphany, which could very well and often is about something that we have talked about ad nauseum. Like this is something that they know, but it just means something different when we it's like the difference between knowing a thing and knowing a thing. And so on your individual screens, one thing I love to do in groups is I love to remind everybody that you actually have a slider where you can make the slide, the slides themselves smaller or bigger, and me smaller or bigger, um, and the whole group smaller or bigger. So if at any point you're tired of looking at a slide, you have control over that. Because if I take the slide down, I'll have to read mirror it. So embodied knowing, David Grand is Dr. David Grand is the initial person who put words in research to this phenomenon of brain spotting, which is where you look, affect how you feel. This is kind of like that, like if brain spotting had a line of t-shirts and mugs, this is what would be written on it. And so the word he uses for this embodied knowing is neuro experiential. This is kind of like the newest way that in the brain spotting world we're using to describe things, neuro experiential. And what that means, it means the same thing as embodied knowing, is this another way of saying this is different, not because I know something different or have learned something different, but the experience is just different. Like the difference between knowing something and knowing it deep in your being. And it's it's this really critical but regularly overlooked discrepancy in our field. And it's because I think here's my theory it's because we as humans struggle to pinpoint it. It's one of those, like, if you've experienced it, you know what I'm talking about. And if you haven't, it's just hard to like here in the US, in our culture, we tend to say things to try and put words to it. We say things like, I can't explain it, but I like I just feel it in my gut. Or when you know, you know. Or we say things like, you know, I met my future partner and I just knew. But what we don't have is the languages say, what does it mean to just know? So maybe you can just take a moment for yourself and think like, have I ever just known something? This is what happened to my client last night when she had what she called her epiphany. So in 2023, my husband and I sold almost all of our worldly belongings and we moved on to a boat and we are nomads now. And that's part of why I'm here in Key West. So we live on travel full-time on a boat. It's a motorboat, not a sailboat. We would love to be on a sailboat next. This is going to connect to what we're talking about here. So we told everyone we're leaving for a year and we're gonna do what's called the Great Loop. And if you've never heard of the Great Loop, like if this is the US, you can get like obviously. So here's the Gulf, you can get around Florida up, you know, obviously the East Coast is the East Coast, but then through a series of locks and channels, you can get into the Great Lakes in Canada and then down in Chicago, and then you come down all the Midland rivers and it spits you back out in the Gulf, and then you come back around where you started. And so this is it's just this circumnavigation of the eastern half of the United States. Most people who are gonna do it take about a year to do it. So we told everyone, we're going for about a year, we're gonna do the great loop. But when we left, we knew boat life is for us. There was this sense like we are called to live on the water, it's why we just sold everything and people were like, Aren't you coming back? And we were like, Yeah, like we're keeping a little bit of furniture, but in our minds, we were like, just because it feels weird not to, it feels weird to say we know for sure boat life is for us, but we did know. But when you know, and there isn't language for it, how do you explain to your friends and family that you love them, but you're gonna zip off and not come back? Like people want explanations for this. And we do visit, like it's not like we fell off the face of the earth. But we as humans, we want these facts, we want this data and we want things to be tangible. And when it comes to embodied knowing, the data is hard to pinpoint, but it's there and it is tangible. So let's agree that embodied knowing or having something be neuroexperiential is a kind of knowing that lives in the nervous system. It's hard to pinpoint, it's hard to find language for, but we're gonna talk about it. In fact, I teach my clients what's called limbic language. And so when we think about the limbic system, it doesn't have words, it has actions and it has feelings. But even when a feeling comes up, our limbic system doesn't provide us with, oh, we're gonna be sad. It experiences the emotion. So the limbic system doesn't speak in naming it as sadness. We experience sad. Is it making sense how that's different? How there's not really this language, but it does talk through emotions and body sensations. Okay. So that's how this knowing communicates to us. It communicates to us through bodies' levels of regulation and dysregulation and our emotions. And then we put the words on it. So here's how we make that a little more tangible. When we talk about neuroexperiential, we're talking about change happening through the experience, not through explaining. So we're not teaching the brain something new with brain spotting, we're creating the conditions where it's gonna finish something or kind of come to its own conclusions. And so this is where I was saying the other day, my friend and peer said something and she was like, Oh, yeah, you can use it. Because I was like, I'm taking this. So her name is Dr. Barbara Levinson, and she's a sex edition specialist and brain spotting practitioner, and she's in the Houston area. So maybe you've heard of her. And she put it this way insight doesn't mean change. She said, and this is me putting my own words on it too. I have the insight and understanding that eating more ice cream gives me a stomachache. I know enough to know that if I eat the tub of ice cream, I'm gonna have a stomachache. But it doesn't necessarily knowing it doesn't change my behavior. And back in 2019, I quit drinking and I did this using brain spotting because I had this experience. And from that point on, after this experience with brain spotting, I knew I did not want another drink. And it doesn't mean that I didn't have a period of relearning how to socialize or what is it like to go through the holidays or be with friends who are all drinking, or, you know, having to figure out what I really enjoy that doesn't revolve around wine o'clock. So I had this learning curve, but what this knowing, this embodied knowing did is it took away having to question if I actually wanted to drink or not. And it was like, no, I just know that I don't want to be a person who drinks anymore. And so I didn't have to count days. Like it's just that powerful. So the point of this slide is it's the difference between thinking about a thing and feeling about a thing. So if embodied knowing is the outcome, the next question becomes how does brain spotting get us there? And so rather than this is where most of us, we want to know the technique and we want to know like what are the steps. And a lot of bottom-up processes like EMDR are very protocol heavy. There's a series of steps to follow, and you kind of just get to like pull out your script, or eventually you like memorize the script and you know how to do it right. And with brain spotting, we don't have that. And so what I am gonna offer for you today is the lenses through which you can think about brain spotting to decide for yourself how is the best way for me to bring this into my life? Because I'm not even gonna throw it out there that at the end of this, you might not be interested in brain spotting. I'm just convinced you're gonna be. So we're just I'm just manifesting that for you. So this is where rather than use this little triangle that weirdly, like, look, Chat GPT like didn't even finish the triangle. So it lost its job. We're firing it. It's fired from this process now. We may or may not go back to it. And I'm gonna get the lighter blue because it's dark here. So now my screen is black. So we're gonna think about it through these three lenses. These are happening simultaneously, whether we name them or not. And those three lenses. Okay, so here we've got the embodied knowing. And if you're like me, you want to grab a little notebook and this is we're gonna do this graphic together and take these notes, but you don't have to do it. So we've got the client, and so the client has a really specific role in brain slotting. Our clients are not passive and they're not absorbing and integrating psychoeducation, but they also aren't figuring out or reframing. Those tools do have a place, and we're not throwing like the baby out with the bathwater, we're not getting rid of all of the tools that we all have master's degrees in and have spent hours learning. Those things happen later. They are for afterwards. So the client, their job is to learn, enhance, or strengthen these three skills. So it's almost skills-based. The client, their job is to notice, to observe without managing. This is the hardest one for a lot of my clients and for myself. Brain spotting changed my life in so many ways, and then stay curious for what's next. So when you first have a client come to you and you're trying to kind of assess is this the client appropriate for brain spotting? And if so, like what how much support do they need? What do we need to do ahead of time? I all of the time on the regular will brain spot with a client during our very first session, even the intake. So there's not any sort of thing they need to do. It is actually we assess their nervous system and are they, do they have this ability comfortably and within their window of capacity to just do a body scan? Like if I were to say, what are you noticing in your body? Are they like freaked out by that? Are they going, I don't know, there's a lot going on? Are they saying, like, well, I mean, I guess I feel like like my jaw is tense or like I can tell my shoulders are up by my ears? And so with some clients, they don't like we just we don't live in a society that notices. And so all have to, you know, sometimes we have to teach our clients how to notice something. And that does look like things like body scans. Like, okay, well, what do you notice if you pay attention to your head? What do you notice if you pay attention to your shoulders? And so the kind of the key giveaway with a client for this, if we need to like take a break and do more like that learning piece of how to notice, it's still not education, it's like practicing in a sense. So, for example, if I were to say to you all, what do you notice when you pay attention to your left hand? Is there a sensation? Is there not? Can you feel whatever it's touching? Can you feel the temperature of the air? So sometimes we have to walk clients through this because they'll say, Here's what happens. We're tempted to say, Can you like, can you feel your body? And they're like, Yeah, and we're like, Great, we should go. And then you're like, what do you notice in your body? And they're like, It's my body? Like, I don't know. So, even just like that broader question of do are they in touch with their body is still like kind of surface level. We want to know, but like, can you tell the difference in your body? Like, are there things that feel differently? Can you tell what feels grounded? And can you tell what doesn't feel grounded? So sometimes we have to. Take the time to help our clients figure out what does it even mean to notice, then to ask them to look at it and not try and change it is so counterintuitive to a lot of the messages, right? Like, oh, if I feel X, I should do Y to change it. And I know you all know this, right? Because we're therapists and we're like, no, we just got to sit in the feelings. But sometimes we have to teach clients a little bit of like what we mean when we say, let's just notice that. And then staying curious about what's next, which means when, so if your nervous system is doing this little wave, and honestly, if they're coming to you with something, odds are they've got like more like a pshing, ring, and it's like pinging, like really, and then it'll maybe go back. What we want to do is even after something happens and we're on the down, we want to wait and see because another thing's gonna come and we just want to wait and see what it is. So a lot of times when nothing's happening, that's really good information for us too. It's very like we can almost assess clients in the process. It's very great to have this real-time information because that ability. This is what came up with someone else today. This was a coaching client, not a therapy client, but she said, I noticed that when nothing was happening, my system was more activated. Like the idea of just being still was really activating. And so sometimes clients would be like, okay, well, it's going down now. So I guess I solved that problem. When this thing better, get on out. And that really is just the flight response, right? And so the analogy I use to teach this to my clients is I say, you know how when you go to the movies and someone in the movie, like you're there and you've got your popcorn, and someone in the movie is doing something in your like, I cannot even, this is terrible. Why would you even make that decision? Like, or you want to yell at Adam, like, don't open the door, there's someone in the closet, or whatever kind of movie it is, you know? And or if you're me, it's like, no, Hamilton, don't go to the duel. Burr is gonna change my like. You're yelling at the screen, but you're not, you can't change the way the story's gonna play out. So you can feel how it feels to want it to go differently, and you can notice the sensations in your body, but you're not actually changing the script of how it plays out.

How The Nervous System Communicates

SPEAKER_02 24:20

If this episode is hitting close to home, I want to point you to a free resource we created specifically for this month. It's called Stop Working for Free, the therapist fee reset. It helps you identify where your practice might be quietly costing you money and whether the fix is a simple boundary reset or a sign that your model needs to change. You can download it right now at KateWalkertraining.com slash bonus. It's quick, practical, and designed to give you clarity, not more homework.

Client Skills: Notice, Observe, Curiosity

SPEAKER_00 24:56

So that's observing without managing. I tell them, like, just notice what your limbic system, what your body is doing, what are the emotions and the feelings and the physical sensations as your brain thinks about this? This is the language of the limbic system again. It's like me noticing that when I think about my sweet dog, this one right here, my sweet little Freya, who was just like my soul dog. She was my little spirit animal, and we lost her really unexpectedly and in this really like not cool way last January. And I practiced saying this earlier because the whole my whole point is when I even look at this little picture or her little paw print or the like I had a friend who sent me a blanket with her face on it, like I will tear up. And I don't need to explain why I tear up. I don't need to rationalize it or understand it or make sense of it or even say, like, gosh, seems like I've still got some grief to deal with, which obviously I do. But my job in brainstotting is just to notice, like, oh, my limbic system is telling me about this by tearing up. This is it talking, this is evidence, the language of what my internal world is going through when I think about losing my sweet friend. So it's just really different from narratives making meaning. And I had a really hard time with that when I was first learning it. Yes, grief of pet loss. I know. Okay. So that's the client's job or what the client is doing during brain spotting. Next is the practitioner. This is you. You're the practitioner. And so this is often where people feel the least confident, quite honestly. So I want to normalize that. There is a lot of unlearning that I had to do when I became a brain spotting practitioner. And like I said, it's not that our old skills aren't important and they are meant to be woven into the treatment, but the brain spotting experience itself can be easy to like fall back on our trusty old skills of reframing and redirecting and you know, rescuing. Cause like I'll be the first to admit, like sometimes I really just notice my system wanting to get in there and rescue my clients from their big feelings. And so sitting with people as they heal is no small task. And to then go and say, oh, good, you're getting trained in brain spotting, you're also gonna sit with them and not verbally support or reframe or mirror something back to them. But it's not because you're not supposed to talk, it's because our job is to hold this frame for the neuroexperiential process to happen. And so there are three ways that I'm gonna talk about tonight. So there are nine principles of brain spotting, and we're kind of like touching on each of these in different ways, but these three are the ones that are specific to our conversation tonight. And so the first one is the three legs of brain spotting. The three legs just means if in brain spotting, what we're doing is we are finding a relevant eye position, which effectively means where you look, that your system has the most access to the thing we're trying to find, whether it's the activation or the resource, we're looking for a specific eye position. And the bummer of it is it's not like one of those things where it's like if you look up into the left, you're telling a lie. Like it's not that. There's no left means this, right means that, forward means that, this distance means that. Each individual client and each individual issue that client has is gonna have its own brain spot. So the big lift when you learn brain slotting is learning how do I even find the right eye position. And so there are three ways we find the eye position. Let me, I gotta erase my little sine wave. We have outside window, and these are all what you learn in phase one. Outside window means I, without you telling me anything, can find a brain spot for you. Now, I need to be able to see you, but without you telling me where it is, I can find it. That's outside window, because I'm outside the client and I can find the brain spot. Inside window is when you find the brain spot. You help me, you tell me where it is. I do it looks like this in my pointer up and it'll look like this. Like, is it here? What do you notice if I move it here? Oh, go back here, and this is where the client will be telling me, no, it's over here. Okay, no, go, oh, it's down a little bit. Okay, and the client intuitively will tell me where to put it. That's inside window. And then we have gaze spotting. Gaze spotting is when they're already on it. And if you've ever watched someone tell a story and they're just like stare or like they're like lost in their own thought and they're just like thinking about something, I do this all the time, um, especially now that I'm menopausal, right? Like your brain's on a tangent, and someone's like, What are you looking at? And you're like, nothing. But I am looking over there. It's not what I'm looking at, it's the direction of my eyes that are is accessing that information in in the midbrain. And so those are the three ways that we find a brain spot. Every other frame setup, which is how to find a brain spot, is a variation of one of these three. These are like the foundation. And so that's why in phase one, you learn outside window, inside window, gaze spotting. And then you also learn resource brain spotting, which is a type of inside window brain spot. So those are the three legs of brain spotting, and that's what makes them different from each other. The next thing is weight. Carolyn, can you explain one more time when you say the brain spot? Like if you pen the brain spot is the same as saying the eye position, it's just the word David chose for it. Okay. So it's an eye position that correlates to your brain's ability to access the thing you're trying to process. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Awesome.

Observing Without Managing

Practitioner Role And Unlearning

Three Legs: Outside, Inside, Gaze

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Thank you. So here's an example. Watch, it just happened. When I was trying to think of an example, I could tell I looked over here and I was like, hang on, let me grab an example. And like my eyes went there so that my brain could grab the file, pull it out, and go, oh, here's an example. So our brains do it all the time. Like we're just doing it all the time. Get ready. I challenge you all now. From now on, just start noticing where people look when they're talking. It's just kind of weird. You can't unsee it. It's like the blue and red pill in the matrix. Like you can't, you won't be able to unsee it. You're gonna, especially after you get trained in brainstotting, you're gonna have you're gonna notice that you're always clocking into where people look. Is it similar to opening up a certain neural pathway to get, yeah. Yes, it is. And that is kind of like the general explanation because we don't yet have there, are research projects going where we've got like the beepers and the MRIs and all that to look at what happens in the brain. So it's still very new in terms of this. It's still kind of like a baby little thing. But yeah, that is another good way to say it is that it's like the eye position connects to the neural pathway. So wait stands for why am I talking? This is the biggest unlearning that I had to do, and that many of my consultees have to do with brain spotting, which is back to that whole, well, listen, we're not gonna do any reframing and we're not gonna do any tell me more about that or say more about that. We could do that later when they're back in their neocortex, but when they're in their subcortical brain, when they are brain spotting, we are relinquishing the steering wheel, which I don't know about you, but it's like scary AF for me because I like to be in control and I like to know that things are going well, and I like to know that my clients are not going to go out of their window of tolerance, which I now know how to do with brain spotting. But so why am I talking becomes this practice of inward reflection of am I talking because I'm uncomfortable? Or am I talking because my attunement to this client is letting me know that they need me to say something or they have asked something that warrant, like that actually they are legit asking me? Because sometimes when people are brain spawning their subcortical, you just kind of like think out loud and nobody thinks like, well, why would I even do that? And it can be very tempting as a therapist to be like, Well, let's explore that. Why would you even do that? But really, it's just their limbic system putting some like verbal words to why would I even do that? They're not asking, they're just thinking it out loud. So why am I talking? Means if it's not because my attunement has let me know this client needs me to step in in some way, then if I say something, I'm actually because let's think about it. When you're lost in thought and someone says something to you, what do you have to do? You have to go, what? And then you have to figure out what they've actually asked of you. And so when someone is subcortical, for us to do that, we're pulling them out of the process. And this is a major difference from what I have heard from other EMDR practitioners, or we call ourselves practitioners. I EMDR providers, we'll call you all, we're all practitioners. And it's that in EMDR, we do a set and then we break. And we do a set and then we break. And so what's happening is we're getting subcortical and then we're coming up, and we're getting subcortical and then we're coming up. And I don't know if that's because initially there was this worry that if we stayed subcortical for too long, it would be problematic or unbearable. Or if it's because we as therapists just want to know, like, hey, check in, what's going on? Tell me where you're at, and then I'll go back and we'll do some more and then tell me more. And again, like I'm not knocking EMDR, I'm just not trained in it. What I know about brain spotting is we don't pull them out until either they say, I'm out, like it's not hypnosis. They, it's not like we have to get them out, but we don't stop the brain spotting until we're at a stopping point, which is either that situation has resolved, or we're coming to a close on our time here today. So let's come back into the room and get grounded and get you ready to go out with your adult brain online before you go get behind the wheel of a heavy machinery. And so, why am I talking is because we don't need to interject and get, you know, like kind of like interrupt the process. So that's why we use weight. Why am I talking? And then the third skill of the practitioner, the third weak thing we do is called the dual attunement frame. And this really is just like such an overview of these things. You go so in depth in phases one and two, but especially in phase one. And so with the dual attunement frame, there are two. One of them we're going to talk about down here. That's why it's dual. But one of them is this neurobiological attunement. Biological attunement. And remember when I said with outside window, I could find the brain spot for you. That neurobiological attunement means I'm attuned to the language of your limbic system, of your neurobiology, not the words you're telling me, but what is your body telling me? Where are you taking really deep breaths? Where are you blinking a lot? Where is your body tensing or relaxing? Or a lot of times, even where is there like a little? And again, this is the fun, like have fun with this. Get ready to start watching not just people's eyes, but also like when they do like a little head tilt or like a little, a little shudder or something like that. The body is always talking to us. So that's the practitioner piece. And then the second piece of the dual attunement frame is the relational attunement. And the three pieces of the relationship are consent. And what I mean by that is, yeah, our clients have signed their consent forms, right? Oop, there I went, blurry. Our clients have signed their consent forms. We're covered on that. But also, and you do this naturally, so much of this you're already doing, but it's that experience of saying, so let's say that we have found, oh, blurry again. Let's say that we found the eye position and it's like right up here. And I would say, I'm gonna invite you to look here and see what you notice if that feels comfortable for you. And if there's another place you need to look, we can do that too. But I'm gonna hold this spot because this is the brain spot for this issue. And so it's not like, okay, we found the spot, look here, and I'll tell you when time is up. There's consent. There's this, and so that brings us to the next piece is this collaboration. It's collaborative, especially with inside window. And I'm saying, can you help me find your brain spot? It's just collaborative because we're working together. And then the last piece in the relationship is that curiosity. If we're both being curious, especially if we're modeling curiosity, it means that their system is having this really cool place where they can practice curiosity and get used to it. We operate under the uncertainty principle in brain spotting, which is the only thing I know is that I know nothing. And the relationship follows the nervous system and not the other way around. So the next question, and it becomes okay, if these are the three lenses, the three pieces that we need to be using to build the frame for a brain spotting session, what are the containers? How do I offer someone brain spotting? And so let's talk about how brain spotting is not limited to one format, although you do get trained in one format primarily. So I'm gonna do another triangle here and then we're gonna start to wrap up. This is brain spotting. And brain spotting can happen one-to-one. We can do self-brain spotting or we can do group brain spotting. And nine of none of these are better or worse, they're just different. So let's talk about them. One-to-one brain spotting tends to be most supportive and most appropriate when a nervous system, the client's nervous system, needs a higher level of oregulation, which means my calm nervous system has to be really only dedicated to this one person. So that they just need this happens with like really complex PTSD. Honestly, I grew brain spot lots of things, so I don't want to like name it where it's like this is what's the best for this, or this is what's the best for this. Really, it is case-by-case basis. One-on-one is just kind of like the main way we do brain spotting. And I think that's just a byproduct of because traditionally most of us work one-on-one. And so one-on-one is how it's taught in phase one, all the way up through phase five. And the majority of the specialty workshops in brain spotting are going to be focused around one-on-one. So there's no shortage of information out there. If you have questions, we can talk more about that. I tend to find most of the questions come around self-brain spotting. So self-brain spotting works well for integrating, resourcing. Sometimes this happens. And some of my favorite things to self-brain spot that I also teach my clients to self-brain spot are things like overthinking or like imposter syndrome or procrastination. These things that are not like DSM level things, we can self-brain spot them. Now, working with clients with OCD, I also do teach them self-brain spotting because it is a part of the resource toolkit that I build for them so that they can go not do their compulsions. But I don't teach that right off the bat. I would not say to a person with OCD, just go self-brain spot your OCD chief. And the truth is, a lot of what our clients are healing from happened alone. So they need that healing in the presence of a loving, witnessing, present, attuned nervous system like your own. So we can't take the practitioner out of it for lots of things. But there are things we can take the practitioner out of. And so it's things like this. And I love self-brain spotting so much. Um, I'll actually give you a way to do some self-brain spotting at the end here. But it is something I do and my coaching clients do and my therapy clients do, basically, like in between sessions. Like, okay, well, between now and the next time we get together, maybe do a little bit of self-brain spotting on that. But self-brain spotting, when you're doing it, obviously for yourself, there is that like duality of your role. Like I am the brain spotter and the brain spottee. So even I use guided audios to walk myself through it. I can do it without a guided audio, but it's just nice to have someone else keeping time so that I don't just like get subcortical and stay there, you know, through lunch. And it's my own voice doing it because I recorded it for my clients. And so now I just use my own guided audios. And then group brain spotting offers something really unique, which is this like multiple nervous systems. And this is true for all group work, not just brain spotting. But a lot of times groups get this like we assume that brain spotting in a group is like one-on-one with an audience, where it's like, yeah, we'll do brain spotting in this, like, there's multiple here, but like I'm just gonna brain spot Tessa and we're all gonna watch it, right? Tessa and I can do brain spotting together. You don't ever, that goes back to that consent piece, right? But so a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that brain spotting with a group is the same as like then it's like, oh my gosh, now I've got to like attune to all these nervous systems and I've got to like follow everybody's body and their limbic systems and all of that. And that's actually not the case. Can you have it be the case that way? Sure, if you wanted to, but it's like really exhausting to do it that way. And that's just brain spotting with the same oxygen. When we're actually group brain spotting, we the group has its own nervous system. Like all of our nervous systems together create one, and then that is the the nervous system that we're doing the brain spotting on. And everybody is experiencing this one thing in their own way. So I love I'm applying for approval for a specialty brain spotting workshop for doing it with groups. There are already specialty workshops that exist, but I just love it. I teach four frame setups, which is kind of like the closest thing to a frame setup would be like an EMDR protocol. Not just because that's like the closest thing in language, but they're not really similar. A frame setup is how do I find the freaking brain spot? How do I find the right eye position? That's what a frame setup is. It's how do I find the eye position? So these are the three containers that brain spotting can be done in. None of them are any better or worse than any others. It's just which one's the most supportive and you know appropriate at the time. So, what I want to do is just invite you to think for yourself, what is the next thing? Like, what is my next right step with brain spotting? And so I'm gonna go through a couple of options for you and think of it like a choose your own adventure book. Okay. And so if you're sitting here and you're noticing, you know what, I just want to like try self brain spotting. I want to strengthen my relationship with self brain spotting because, and this is one of the questions I'll get to here. And I know I'm wrapping up soon. Is like, how does it help me as a practitioner? Well, it can help me regulate my own nervous system after a tough client or do my own work, right? And so self Self-brain spotting is something that, like I said, I do all the time. I love it. And I do have a here is a link. And this is just like a self-brain spotting school mini course that I share normally. I've never once sold it outside of my big container. So this is the first time. We'll see if you all are interested in it and if you find it helpful or not. But there is the link for that. There is an option to add on the guided audios, but you don't have to have the guided audios to do self-brain spotting. So self-brain spotting is cool. It's a quick and easy little mini course if you want to get your hands on that and put it for 27 bucks. The next option is you might be interested in, well, I like this idea of one to many. And I want to know more about working with groups in these really healing ways. And I'm actually doing a free training on how to create and build a group experience. And it's not specifically about brain spotting per se, but we do use brain spotting in the process. So if you're interested in the group aspect of it, I'll still send you the replay, two links to go, and then I'll be done talking at you. If you want to get trained in brain spotting, phase one, I'm assuming most of us are in central time. You're gonna go to brainspotting.com, which is just brainspotting.com. But some of our central time zone trainers who I love assisting at their trainings are Pi Fry and Melanie Young and Joy Myung. And so they all have trainings coming up. There are multiple other trainers who are available. But I love when I go to assist at brain spotting trainings and people go, Oh yeah, Carolyn, I remember you from you know Kate Walker's community. And then we can geek out together as you're learning this modality. And then the final link is once you are through phase one. So once you do phase one, you're a brain spotter. You don't even ever have to get certified if you don't want to. Now we do encourage it in a trait to do more trainings and things like that, but you don't have to commit to anything past phase one if you want to use this modality. And once you are trained in phase one, I do run a free monthly consultation group for brain slotters. And so that's the link if you want to get on the email list where I just send out the link, like, hey, we're getting together. And that's it for links. That's it for the information. I'm gonna start running through some of the questions that people had thrown out for me, but this is really where we're gonna start wrapping up. We've got four minutes. How can brain slotting help us as clinicians to level up or increase and meet our goals professionally? And my answer to that is truly, it is less work. We get to improve our skills and do better as clinicians because it's just so much easier when the client is like I don't have to do anything for brain spotting to work. I have to do those three things, which is I have to wait and make sure I'm not talking for my own good. I have to help them find the brain spot, which is really, really easy once you get it down. It takes practice, but at the end of the day, now it's like a no-brainer. And I have to be attuned, which attuned, let's not act like it doesn't take energy, but you're already attuned. If you aren't attuned, your clients would not be seeing results with any modality. So if you're already attuned and you know how to wait and let the client do what's best, really all that's left is to learn how to find the brain spots. And then I just can't tell you enough about how much easier it is and how much more quickly clients move through when we're not trying to figure things out. And then the self-brain spotting piece is the other thing of like, yeah, it helps me as a clinician because professionally I can work on my own stuff and I can go to my own provider and say, like, hey, I need to brain spot this. And then we just like get it done and dusted and move on. And because I know the person who asked this question also works with kids a lot. I did want to throw out that there are trainers that our trainer Monica Baumann and our trainer Brooke Randolph, they both work with kids. Brooke specializes in using brain spotting with families and adoption, and then Monica Bauman uses it with kids. The youngest I have heard of anybody using brain spotting is a nonverbal infant, but that's not me. That's the youngest I've used with brains, I've done brain spotting with is I think eight, but it is it's you can use it with kids. It's actually a lot faster with kids. The next question that came up was I want to renew my brain spotting certification, but the what are the requirements and everything just changed. And since not many people here were already in brain spotting, this one isn't going to apply to most of you, but it's good to know. They did just change the certification pieces, but the recertification they actually made easier. We used to have to submit 100 hours, and now we do not. We just have to submit nine hours now, one of each of the brain spotting setups. But the other conditions for recertification have not changed. The last was a request for plugging some of our uh we have an organization called Brain Spotting Help that helps internationally when people are in crisis. And I'm also on the board of directors for the Rocky Mountain Brain Spotting Institute, which I will plug everywhere and anywhere, because we have a scholarship treatment fund where people can get free brain spotting if they are under or uninsured. And that and not smash field. What questions do you have left? I think you do. I was gonna say either I said the exact right amount or everyone's nervous system is so flooded and they're just like, I like need to go brain spot this just because I have so much going on in my brain.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

This takes me back to the days. I mean, I've been a counselor a long, long time. It reminds me of trance and hypnosis, but that's always so bossy, right? You're always being so controlling when you're trying to help people through trance and hypnosis. This seems very just you step back and you just let the work.

WAIT: Why Am I Talking

SPEAKER_00 49:53

I like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it, you know, we're working in the same areas of the brain as trans and hypnosis. So it's it's that limbic system bottom-up processing. Like, let's get in and work where the hitch is in the get along. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

That make a t-shirt like that. Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye. See y'all later. Good to see you. Thanks for listening. Before you go, don't forget to grab the free February bonus. Stop working for free, the therapist fee reset. You'll find it at KateWalker Training.com/slash bonus. And if this episode sparked questions about fees, boundaries, or supervision, you don't have to figure that out alone. That's exactly the kind of conversation we continue inside the Step It Up membership. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time. If you love today's episode, be sure to leave a five-star review. It helps other badass therapists find the show and build practices that thrive. Big thanks to Ridgley Walker for our original fun facts and podcast intro, and to Carl Guyanella for editing this episode and making us sound amazing. See you next week.