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From the archives: David Grand, PhD · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Are Today we even another episode from the archives with
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Speaker 1: one of my incredible guests. Enjoy. Welcome to the Trauma
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Speaker 1: Thepists podcast, a show about the incredible people dedicated to
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Speaker 1: helping those who experienced trauma. My name is Goy macpherson
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Speaker 1: and my mission is to raise awareness of trauma and
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Speaker 1: to inspire each of us to help those around us.
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Speaker 1: All right, Welcome to the Trauma Therapist podcast. My name
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Speaker 1: is Guy McPherson. This is the podcast where we interview
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Speaker 1: master trauma therapists from all over the world to learn
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Speaker 1: about what inspires them and the steps they've taken to
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Speaker 1: become masters in their field. If you're trauma therapists or
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Speaker 1: if you're interested in trauma therapy, this is it today.
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Speaker 1: I'm so excited to introduce my guest, doctor David Grand. David,
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Speaker 1: are you ready to go?
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Speaker 2: I'm right here, all right.
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Speaker 1: So, Doctor Grand is a licensed clinical social worker with
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Speaker 1: a PhD from International University. He's a writer, lecturer, performance coach,
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Speaker 1: and human tyrian, famous for the discovery and development of
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Speaker 1: the internationally acclaimed brain spotting method UH. Doctor Norman Deutsche,
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Speaker 1: author of The Brain That Changes Itself, says this of
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Speaker 1: our guests David Grand is one of the most important
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Speaker 1: and effective psychological trauma therapists now practicing, and his development
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Speaker 1: of brain spotting is a very important leap forward in
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Speaker 1: helping people resolve trauma. All right, David, So just giving
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Speaker 1: our listeners just a little bit about you. Take a moment,
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Speaker 1: give us something personal about yourself, you know, we want
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Speaker 1: to get to know you, and then we'll head on
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Speaker 1: over to the topic of trauma and what's going on
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Speaker 1: with you.
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Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I'm a combination of different factors and then
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Speaker 3: our in the trauma field sometimes so you say parts
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Speaker 3: and parts can be having to do with our woundedness,
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Speaker 3: but parts also have to do with our different sides
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Speaker 3: of ourselves that are non wounded and that are even
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Speaker 3: healthy and very alive. And I'm a regular person. When
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Speaker 3: I do therapy with people, They're not sitting there with
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Speaker 3: somebody with a shrink mentality or attitude.
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Speaker 2: I'm just there as a regular person. But at the same.
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Speaker 3: Time, I'm sort of half scientist and half artist, and
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Speaker 3: the scientist in me is always looking to understand on.
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Speaker 2: A fact basis.
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Speaker 3: You know, what's going on, where things are coming from,
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Speaker 3: and the main fact basis I use is the brain
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Speaker 3: and the body and neurobiology.
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Speaker 2: The artist's side.
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Speaker 3: For me, I mean, I happen to be a writer
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Speaker 3: and a playwright, and I work a lot with actors
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Speaker 3: and singers. But for me, while I'm doing my work
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Speaker 3: and even while I'm developing new theories, it's also very
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Speaker 3: much a creative process.
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Speaker 2: So my scientist and my artists sort of.
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Speaker 3: Work together to help people to heal in my office
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Speaker 3: and also helped me to develop BRAIND spotting and to
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Speaker 3: continue developing BRAIND spoding.
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Speaker 1: Awesome, that's awesome. It's really exciting to hear too that
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Speaker 1: the artist and the scientists coming together, and I'm excited
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Speaker 1: to kind of delve deeper into that. I know you've
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Speaker 1: got a lot of resources, a lot of kind of roles,
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Speaker 1: if you will, that you're really interested in. But let's
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Speaker 1: kind of transition and get to our next topic, which
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Speaker 1: is a quote. This podcast is really about getting to
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Speaker 1: know master trauma therapists with the goal of inspiring other clinicians.
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Speaker 2: You know.
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Speaker 1: In order to do that, we want to get to
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Speaker 1: know you, find out what's inspired you. Share with us
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Speaker 1: a quote or a mantra, something that's inspired you or
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Speaker 1: guided you throughout your journey a professional or personal career.
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Speaker 3: Well, most recently, the quote is it's all brain stuff.
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Speaker 3: In other words, everything that goes on has to do
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Speaker 3: with the brain. And back when I was trained in
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Speaker 3: the seventies and eighties, we didn't really think brain. We
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Speaker 3: thought the mind. But now I think brain all the time.
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Speaker 3: But the other quote is you don't.
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Speaker 2: Have to know what it is to know that it is.
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Speaker 3: In other words, just because you don't understand something or
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Speaker 3: don't know where it's coming from, doesn't mean you can't
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Speaker 3: work with it. And that goes back to its all
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Speaker 3: brain stuff. Also because the brain is so complex as
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Speaker 3: to be infinite and to be infinitely mysterious to us.
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Speaker 3: So what I've really learned, you know, in my decades
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Speaker 3: of practice and developing practice further, is that most of
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Speaker 3: what we think is going on is not really going
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Speaker 3: on because we don't have access to it, or we
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Speaker 3: don't have direct access. But that doesn't mean that we
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Speaker 3: can't work with it. So that second, you don't have
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Speaker 3: to know what it is to know that it is.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So let me ask you to break that down
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Speaker 1: just a little more, and how has that kind of
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Speaker 1: resonated with you personally obviously you know you're making we're
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Speaker 1: making the listeners are making the jump right away to
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Speaker 1: brain spotting because you mentioned the brain. But get more
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Speaker 1: specific with us. You don't have to know what it
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Speaker 1: is to know that it is. How has that kind
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Speaker 1: of impacted you specifically?
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Speaker 2: Well, I have a good memory, and I remember.
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Speaker 3: What it was like for me to be a graduate
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Speaker 3: student and to be a learning or a psychotherapist in training.
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Speaker 3: And you know in supervision, you know it is my supervisors,
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Speaker 3: Well what is it that we do and how do
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Speaker 3: we know what to do? And and way back then,
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Speaker 3: this is in the mid seventies, you know, into the
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Speaker 3: late seventies, they gave most of them the wise ones
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Speaker 3: gave me answers that really didn't say satisfy me at
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Speaker 3: the time, which is okay, which is that you know,
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Speaker 3: you really you don't have to know everything. In fact,
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Speaker 3: there's a lot that that you don't know and can't know.
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Speaker 3: But that doesn't mean that you can't sit with a
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Speaker 3: person and listen to them and be open to them
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Speaker 3: and to receive them and you know, to attune to them,
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Speaker 3: and so that it's not just the information, it's not
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Speaker 3: just the knowing but it's the being, the state of being,
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Speaker 3: and that if you provide the person you're working with
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Speaker 3: with really a witnessing, mindful, compassionate presence, that that will
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Speaker 3: provide more healing than anything else that will, and that
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Speaker 3: will give the people you work with something that they
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Speaker 3: likely have never had before and certainly not with that
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Speaker 3: that that purity and consistency. So in that sense, you know,
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Speaker 3: you don't have to know what it is to know
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Speaker 3: that it is. It's there in the person. And if
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Speaker 3: you know it's there, some a lot of things you
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Speaker 3: literally just by being with the person will start to
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Speaker 3: either come out or work themselves out inside of the
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Speaker 3: person in a way that you never even find out
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Speaker 3: what it is or you know.
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Speaker 2: That that it was going on.
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Speaker 3: This this is a term that we use in brain
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Speaker 3: spotting and a lot of other therapi is called processing,
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Speaker 3: and processing is really a focused form of mindfulness, uh
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Speaker 3: and and literally it's it is sort of the expression
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Speaker 3: of the deeper subcortical or deep brain processes of just
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Speaker 3: information moving down the neural pathways.
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Speaker 2: But but it's really so out of.
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Speaker 3: Access to us consciously, you know, you know, thinking wise,
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Speaker 3: But it doesn't mean that it's not accessible to us
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Speaker 3: in a deeper way, and that's that's what the presence
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Speaker 3: gets to.
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Speaker 1: Okay. I love the way you kind of broke that down.
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Speaker 1: And again, you know, we keep hearing David this theme,
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Speaker 1: if you will. Of yes, obviously knowledge and skills and
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Speaker 1: education are important, but beyond that, or even the foundation
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Speaker 1: of that, is the ability to sit to witness, you know,
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Speaker 1: use that word, and to have that presence to listen
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Speaker 1: to the person who's sitting before us. That is so powerful, right,
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Speaker 1: that is so powerful? And how did you develop that?
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Speaker 1: How did you develop that?
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Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure.
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Speaker 1: I mean, is that something that just comes.
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Speaker 2: To some degree?
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Speaker 4: Yeah?
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Speaker 2: I mean I was influenced by others.
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Speaker 3: Something I've had the benefit of mentorship throughout my career,
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Speaker 3: and some mentors that been, you know, really more involved
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Speaker 3: with me, and some were just very brief contacts with
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Speaker 3: people here and there where I just took something special
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Speaker 3: away from it. But it's it's interesting that I've never
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Speaker 3: really studied mindfulness. I've never studied Buddhism or Hinduism or
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Speaker 3: zen h But what I've ended up discovering in my own,
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Speaker 3: in my own healing journey, and which is helping others
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Speaker 3: to heal, and healing myself is just this is just
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Speaker 3: a sense of presence, and if it sounds a little
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Speaker 3: bit spiritual, I have no hesitation to sort of go
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Speaker 3: there because things we kind of know that there's more
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Speaker 3: than just than we know.
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Speaker 2: And it kind of goes back to my quote, but.
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Speaker 3: It's sort of found me more than I found it,
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Speaker 3: and it's it's hard to articulate it beyond that. But basically,
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Speaker 3: you know, everything is always in press, nothing stays the same.
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Speaker 3: Everything's moving. When we look at a river, we can
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Speaker 3: see that very obviously, but if you look at a mountain,
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Speaker 3: you can't see that it's moving, and it just looks
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Speaker 3: like it's there and it's been there forever and it
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Speaker 3: will be there forever. But if you go to the
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Speaker 3: rocky mountains, there are plenty of places where you can
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Speaker 3: see find fossils and shells and so on that tell
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Speaker 3: us that it was at the bottom of an ocean
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Speaker 3: or a vast sea. And I believe it's called the
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Speaker 3: Bonneville Sea that hundreds of millions of years ago the west,
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Speaker 3: you know, before the uplift was covered with water and
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Speaker 3: then it slowly came up because everything in physics and
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Speaker 3: nature and life is always changing.
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Speaker 2: Nothing stays the same.
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Speaker 3: So I guess if you really are open to things
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Speaker 3: you know, and if you're really observing and curious and
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Speaker 3: even fascinated, you'll find the things that changing all the time,
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Speaker 3: and you'll find that whatever you think is can't really
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Speaker 3: be what it is because you're learning more and discovering
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Speaker 3: more and your journey as a person and as a
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Speaker 3: healing therapist all the way through.
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Speaker 2: I mean, I've been doing this work.
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Speaker 3: I just passed my thirty eighth year as a therapist,
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Speaker 3: So a lot of it is just really life.
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Speaker 2: And experience and wisdom, but being open and being curious.
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Speaker 1: Right, I mean beautifully said, and I I just hear
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Speaker 1: the breadth of experience of compassion in your voice, and
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Speaker 1: it just seems to me that you bring that wealth
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Speaker 1: of presence and fascination and curiosity to the work you do.
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Speaker 1: And I'm sure our listeners are picking that up as well. Awesome.
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Speaker 1: Let's move on to our next topic, which is and
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Speaker 1: I'm really excited to get into this with you specifically,
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Speaker 1: is specialization of trauma. How you got here? This podcast
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Speaker 1: is about highlighting your journey, you know, to become a
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Speaker 1: matter therapist in this field. People get into this field,
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Speaker 1: the specialization of trauma for a variety of reasons. You know.
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Speaker 1: For me again had to do with my brother being
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Speaker 1: in the Special Forces returning from war with PTSD and
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Speaker 1: me not knowing what to do, so excited to talk
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Speaker 1: to him, engage him, and him not wanting to deal
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Speaker 1: with it at all, and really me screwing it up
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Speaker 1: pressuring him to do it. Tell us a story, David,
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Speaker 1: break it down for us. What got you into this specialization,
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Speaker 1: this field.
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Speaker 3: Okay, well it's it's not a one part story. But
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Speaker 3: my original training after graduate school was psychoanalysis, and it
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Speaker 3: was a full analytic institute and I was in analytics
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Speaker 3: supervision and my own analysis. And I mean it's analysis.
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Speaker 3: Although there are pluses and minus doing there's a lot
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Speaker 3: of critique about it, holds a great deal of wealth
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Speaker 3: of wisdom to it. Freud and his journeys actually discovered trauma.
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Speaker 3: I mean, he wasn't the only discovery. You go back
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Speaker 3: to Jane and other great forerunners. He discovered trauma, and
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Speaker 3: he went into it, and at certain points, at a
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Speaker 3: certain point he started to back off from it and
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Speaker 3: go away from actual trauma to fantasize trauma. But it
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Speaker 3: was still there in my original trauma studies. But I'll
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Speaker 3: be honest with you, going back to the seventies and eighties,
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Speaker 3: there was there was very little traumatology around, very little coursework.
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Speaker 3: You could go through graduate school and even postgraduate training
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Speaker 3: and never take a course in trauma.
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Speaker 2: But what happened that actually is in the early.
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Speaker 3: Nineties, I studied EMDR and EMDR again, which is a
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Speaker 3: very powerful and effective technique in other ways in some ways,
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Speaker 3: but in other ways has certain problems at the same time,
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Speaker 3: when I brought it back to my practice and I
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Speaker 3: started using it, I started to see not only amazing
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Speaker 3: healing happened, but I started to see some amazing decompensation,
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Speaker 3: the destabilization happen. And what I discovered from this is
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Speaker 3: that there were a lot of my clients who were
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Speaker 3: much more traumatized than I knew, which was a.
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Speaker 2: Real eye opener for me.
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Speaker 3: I even had a couple of clients who really went
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Speaker 3: into crises that lasted six months and need a tremendous
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Speaker 3: amount of extra help during that time. And beyond just
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Speaker 3: you know, having trauma revealed to me just the deepest
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Speaker 3: kind of trauma and the traumas that lead to people
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Speaker 3: having more dissociative kind of symptoms.
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Speaker 2: So, you know, it was sort of a baptism by
14:52
Speaker 2: fire for me.
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Speaker 3: And this was really I was already fifteen to eighteen
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Speaker 3: years into my career, but with that, it was right
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Speaker 3: under my eyes and it became sink or swim and
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Speaker 3: I had to figure out what to do when I
15:03
Speaker 3: of course got supervision and went for training and did
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Speaker 3: a lot of reading. But that really started my journey
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Speaker 3: as a traumatologist, which was seeing trauma emerged that I
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Speaker 3: didn't know was there, and see trauma heal that I
15:18
Speaker 3: didn't know could heal, and see trauma come out that
15:21
Speaker 3: needed a lot a lot of time and healing and help.
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Speaker 1: So what what it specifically about seeing trauma emerge and
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Speaker 1: seeing trauma heal kind of lured you into it? Was
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Speaker 1: it just what about trauma? Wow, I'll go ahead, And
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Speaker 1: so I was just going to say, why trauma?
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Speaker 3: Well, you know, once you become a traumatologist, you start
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Speaker 3: to understand the ubiquity of trauma as part of the
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Speaker 3: human experience, and trauma starting preverbal in the first few
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Speaker 3: years of life. I mean, for me, now I couldn't
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Speaker 3: be a therapist without knowing about trauma and knowing what
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Speaker 3: it is and when it starts, and how it's just
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Speaker 3: part of the human journey, as well as how it
16:14
Speaker 3: imprints certain people even more than others who have more
16:19
Speaker 3: severe traumas, more repeated traumas, especially in the context of
16:22
Speaker 3: abuse during childhood. But it really kind of revealed to
16:27
Speaker 3: me a lot of things that I intuitively knew before.
16:29
Speaker 3: But then now I start to informationally learn, and I
16:33
Speaker 3: started to hear and see and feel certain things I
16:37
Speaker 3: hadn't before. And of course that leads for any person
16:40
Speaker 3: who is sensitive and introspective, it looks for you to
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Speaker 3: look within yourself and to find your own trauma history
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Speaker 3: beyond what you knew it was. So it's the ubiquitous
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Speaker 3: nature of it in the human experience, and it is
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Speaker 3: the compelling nature of it in the client experience right
16:59
Speaker 3: in front of us. And there's no client I see
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Speaker 3: now who doesn't have trauma in any way affecting them.
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Speaker 3: I work a lot with athletes, and I'm working with
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Speaker 3: a college catcher now.
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Speaker 2: Who lost the ability to throw the ball back to
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Speaker 2: the pitcher.
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Speaker 3: But it turns out that three years ago, he was
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Speaker 3: stabbed in the stomach by another teenager, a stupid, random
17:23
Speaker 3: kind of event, and no one ever looked back to
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Speaker 3: that trauma to see that that might have something to
17:30
Speaker 3: do with him having trouble throwing the ball. But for me,
17:35
Speaker 3: it was I mean, it was fascinating. But it was
17:37
Speaker 3: also the opportunity to give this kid his talent back
17:40
Speaker 3: and give them, in some ways his life back. And
17:42
Speaker 3: I find that over and over and over again. I
17:45
Speaker 3: think the thing about trauma also is the fact that
17:47
Speaker 3: it is in the brain, it's in the body, and
17:49
Speaker 3: that in the past it was really seen as something
17:52
Speaker 3: that was almost untreatable, and the notion that if somebody
17:56
Speaker 3: had seen something horrific in front of their eyes, that
17:59
Speaker 3: they have to live with that image the rest of
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Speaker 3: their lives was something that was pretty much commonly believed,
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Speaker 3: when in truth, it doesn't have to be that way,
18:08
Speaker 3: and there are times when we can intervene with it
18:10
Speaker 3: technically as well as humanly and actually dramatically reduce those
18:15
Speaker 3: kind of trauma symptoms.
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Speaker 2: So go ahead, I'm sorry, I mean, so it's just
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Speaker 2: so compelling.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I like what you said. I mean, the ubiquity
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Speaker 1: of trauma and the compelling nature of it and witnessing
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Speaker 1: that you know in the office with clients and that
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Speaker 1: beginning to affect you and impact you and make you
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Speaker 1: feel essentially so well said, thank you for that. So
18:42
Speaker 1: let's focus on an early clinical error and what you
18:45
Speaker 1: learned from it. You know, how we learn from failure,
18:48
Speaker 1: obviously is crucial. Tell us a story, David, about an
18:51
Speaker 1: early clinical error you made that's had a significant impact
18:55
Speaker 1: on you and the work you've done and what you
18:58
Speaker 1: learned from it.
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Speaker 3: Well, and this goes back to my early EMDR days.
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Speaker 3: There was a client who I had worked with her
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Speaker 3: for about three years and she was making good incremental
19:14
Speaker 3: progress and I knew she had a trauma history. But
19:20
Speaker 3: when I did EMDR with her, literally she what I
19:26
Speaker 3: discovered is that she had bipolar disorder, and the EMDR,
19:30
Speaker 3: again being so powerful and so incisive, actually kicked her
19:35
Speaker 3: into a first day a manic state and then a
19:39
Speaker 3: horrific depressive state. And literally this became a management a
19:45
Speaker 3: severe management issue for me with her in my practice
19:48
Speaker 3: for six months before I could really help her get
19:54
Speaker 3: a feedback on the ground. So the mistake in this
19:59
Speaker 3: case was at least twofold number one was not diagnosing
20:03
Speaker 3: her properly. And I'm a pretty good diagnostician, and I
20:06
Speaker 3: guess I missed.
20:07
Speaker 2: The clues of that.
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Speaker 3: But then secondarily because I hadn't diagnosed it properly to
20:13
Speaker 3: apply a power therapy to her that really just absolutely
20:18
Speaker 3: overwhelmed her defenses.
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Speaker 2: If I had.
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Speaker 3: Diagnosed it correctly, I would have been much more judicious
20:25
Speaker 3: about how I applied the emd R, I might not
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Speaker 3: have used it at all.
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Speaker 2: But here here's the unusual thing about this.
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Speaker 3: After those six months, which was horrific for her, and
20:40
Speaker 3: it was pretty horrific for me. And I mean this
20:43
Speaker 3: is being on the phone every night and her becoming
20:46
Speaker 3: suicidal and you know, just totally overwhelmed. Once she got
20:53
Speaker 3: past that, she actually was way ahead of where she
20:57
Speaker 3: was when she went into it and actually made some
21:03
Speaker 3: major life changes that she hadn't been able to make
21:05
Speaker 3: in the three years of therapy with me. Now, I
21:08
Speaker 3: don't recommend, uh, you know, the course of treatment for
21:13
Speaker 3: that outcome by any means. But but but the lesson
21:17
Speaker 3: in this is that sometimes you know, you can make
21:19
Speaker 3: a serious mistake or serious of mistakes, and that somehow
21:23
Speaker 3: through hanging in there with the person all the way
21:25
Speaker 3: through there can be a positive outcome as well.
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Speaker 1: So thank you so much for sharing that. The last
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Speaker 1: the last part of what you said was really interesting
21:37
Speaker 1: to me. You know, sometimes you can make a serious
21:39
Speaker 1: mistake and yet uh, you know, the client can maybe
21:44
Speaker 1: benefit from that in a sense. Was that, well, let's
21:50
Speaker 1: let's bring it back, first of all, to the you
21:52
Speaker 1: said you didn't diagnose properly? What what happened there? Was
21:57
Speaker 1: that just from an experience? Was that from was it
22:02
Speaker 1: difficult to make the diagnosis obviously or what? What do
22:05
Speaker 1: you think that the error was there?
22:08
Speaker 3: I think when we make an error, it's never because
22:11
Speaker 3: of one factor.
22:11
Speaker 2: I think it's a confluence of different factors.
22:15
Speaker 3: I have to admit that I was not as good
22:18
Speaker 3: at diagnosing bipolar as I was other conditions.
22:22
Speaker 2: I didn't have enough experience with it.
22:25
Speaker 3: I mean that would be probably the primary thing, right,
22:27
Speaker 3: But secondarily, she had a concurrent.
22:33
Speaker 2: Associative disorder, so the.
22:36
Speaker 3: Nature of her dissociative defenses were such that they were
22:41
Speaker 3: pretty you know, comprehensive and powerful. So I actually didn't
22:50
Speaker 3: even diagnose the dissociative aspect of it either.
22:53
Speaker 2: Had had I done that, I might have.
22:55
Speaker 3: Had a better shot at looking at what was, you know,
22:57
Speaker 3: beyond those tremendous walls of the fence. But you know,
23:04
Speaker 3: the other another thing is, you know, we you never
23:08
Speaker 3: hit one one hundred percent, you know, so to say,
23:12
Speaker 3: in baseball we have to be diagnostically a lot more
23:16
Speaker 3: accurate than this. But in baseball, if you if you
23:18
Speaker 3: hit three hundred, which means you're out seven out of
23:21
Speaker 3: ten times for fifteen years, they put you in the
23:23
Speaker 3: Hall of fame, you know.
23:26
Speaker 2: But as as.
23:27
Speaker 3: Therapists, you know, for another aspect of this is you
23:34
Speaker 3: really can't and I want the young therapist to really
23:36
Speaker 3: take this in. You cannot accurately diagnose every person right
23:41
Speaker 3: away just from the symptom cluster and the history and
23:45
Speaker 3: all the DSM five kind of stuff.
23:47
Speaker 2: I mean, it's helpful and valuable.
23:50
Speaker 3: But a lot of times what you think is that
23:52
Speaker 3: you diagnosis changes during the course of treatment, a because
23:57
Speaker 3: a deeper truth comes out that you couldn't have acted
24:00
Speaker 3: as to right away or be actually because the diagnosis
24:03
Speaker 3: changes during the course of treatment, which is what happens
24:06
Speaker 3: during effective treatment. But and looking back on it, you know,
24:12
Speaker 3: on the one hand, I could say, well I missed
24:14
Speaker 3: certain things.
24:15
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, I could say there are certain.
24:17
Speaker 3: Things that I really just couldn't couldn't pick up at
24:19
Speaker 3: that time, they really didn't show themselves, and that that
24:23
Speaker 3: happens to us at all levels, but it happens to
24:26
Speaker 3: us certainly earlier in our careers when we have less
24:29
Speaker 3: less exposure to all they diagnostic you know, stuff that's
24:34
Speaker 3: out there.
24:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. And you know what's
24:38
Speaker 1: coming up for me, David, is the pardon me, the complexity,
24:42
Speaker 1: the complex nature of the work we're doing here. You know,
24:46
Speaker 1: I think a lot of clinicians, you know, there's so
24:50
Speaker 1: many new therapies out there, you know, em dr and whatever,
24:54
Speaker 1: that there's this thought you know that well if we
24:57
Speaker 1: just learned that, that will be the answer. And I
25:01
Speaker 1: think what you've shared with us is, you know how
25:05
Speaker 1: challenging this work can be and how attuned and where
25:09
Speaker 1: we have to be to our own presence. Right. It
25:12
Speaker 1: kind of continually comes back to that and taking the
25:14
Speaker 1: time to sit with our client and not think that
25:19
Speaker 1: we know everything right away.
25:22
Speaker 4: Yeah.
25:23
Speaker 3: But well, I want to say master therapists not only
25:27
Speaker 3: have a lot of experience, but are usually trained in
25:30
Speaker 3: many different techniques, and a therapist who has trained just
25:36
Speaker 3: in one technique and doesn't.
25:37
Speaker 2: Know any other technique.
25:39
Speaker 3: Really, we have a hard time becoming a master therapist,
25:43
Speaker 3: no matter how long they worked for, right, because the
25:46
Speaker 3: human brain has one quadrillion connections. That's one billion multiplied
25:52
Speaker 3: by one million. Okay, how can one technique cover all
25:57
Speaker 3: of that? You know? And that's why we have We
26:00
Speaker 3: have over a thousand different therapy techniques and some are
26:04
Speaker 3: better than others. But the reason we have so many
26:06
Speaker 3: different ones is because the human the human brain, the
26:10
Speaker 3: human body, and the human experience is so infinitely complex.
26:14
Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome news, awesome information for I think all of
26:17
Speaker 1: our listeners to take home. So let's move on. We
26:20
Speaker 1: get to one of my favorite questions. You know, we
26:22
Speaker 1: talked about the challenges of the specialization. For me, I
26:26
Speaker 1: believe it's also important to know why we're doing something,
26:29
Speaker 1: you know, the answer to that kind of drives us
26:32
Speaker 1: along in what we're doing day to day in our work.
26:34
Speaker 1: And this is a little different from the question about
26:36
Speaker 1: what led you here, But what's your why? David? Why
26:40
Speaker 1: are you in this field of trauma therapy? What keeps
26:42
Speaker 1: you going day to day? Again, tell us a story.
26:45
Speaker 1: Break it down for us.
26:48
Speaker 3: Well, the why for me is because I see miracles
26:53
Speaker 3: in front of me every day, and I see happen
27:00
Speaker 3: that are not supposed to happen. And I have clients
27:03
Speaker 3: come to me who have been to other therapists, sometimes
27:05
Speaker 3: many therapists, sometimes from periods of time, and that I'm
27:11
Speaker 3: able with my experience and with the tools I have
27:13
Speaker 3: from you know, from the technique that I've developed to
27:17
Speaker 3: see change.
27:18
Speaker 2: Happen right in front of my eyes. You know, one
27:23
Speaker 2: of the issues we.
27:24
Speaker 3: Have is trauma therapist is the vicarious or secondary exposure
27:27
Speaker 3: to the trauma, and that does affect us. And people
27:30
Speaker 3: will say to me, well, how can you how can
27:33
Speaker 3: you handle hearing all that stuff? You know, client after client,
27:36
Speaker 3: day after day. And my answer is is because I'm
27:40
Speaker 3: able to see healing in front of my eyes and
27:43
Speaker 3: that is the counterbalance.
27:45
Speaker 2: For me for the traumatic exposure.
27:49
Speaker 3: But I will say to get specific about the why.
27:55
Speaker 3: First of all, we can we know things about trauma
27:59
Speaker 3: and healing trauma that we didn't know ten years ago,
28:01
Speaker 3: let alone you know, thirty years ago. But the technical
28:05
Speaker 3: things that are available and are still being developed, you know,
28:08
Speaker 3: what we have now five to ten years from now,
28:11
Speaker 3: we're going to be way beyond where we are right now.
28:15
Speaker 3: It's growing and developing all the time. For me, as
28:20
Speaker 3: someone who's developed a method and who also teaches that
28:24
Speaker 3: method around the world, it's really important that I still
28:28
Speaker 3: have a private practice and I'm still doing the work,
28:30
Speaker 3: you know, all the time. And occasionally people in trainings
28:33
Speaker 3: will last me, well do you still work with clients?
28:35
Speaker 3: And I say, actually, want to go back to New York.
28:37
Speaker 3: I'm going to go back to my practice. So that's
28:43
Speaker 3: my proving ground, and that's also my healing ground. But
28:49
Speaker 3: when people come to me who have been suffering for
28:53
Speaker 3: five months or five years or forty years and literally
28:58
Speaker 3: can see change happening during a session, that they the
29:02
Speaker 3: person who walks out at the end of the session
29:04
Speaker 3: is not the same person who walks into the session.
29:06
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's compelling, that's amazing, and that's that
29:10
Speaker 3: provides my why.
29:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that is awesome, David. You know, I'm
29:14
Speaker 1: just listening to you. There's a there's just a groundedness
29:19
Speaker 1: in your tone, in your words, and I just think
29:23
Speaker 1: it's awesome. And I'm sure our listeners are picking up
29:25
Speaker 1: on that as well. You know, you said, I see
29:27
Speaker 1: miracles in front of me every day, and I'm able
29:30
Speaker 1: to see healing in front of my eyes, and that
29:33
Speaker 1: acts as a counterbalance to you know, the potential vicarious
29:37
Speaker 1: trauma that that's there, that is so powerful. I just
29:42
Speaker 1: want to thank you for sharing that with us.
29:44
Speaker 4: Yeah.
29:44
Speaker 3: Another quote popped into my head that I say to
29:47
Speaker 3: my clients all the time when they sit down, I say,
29:50
Speaker 3: let's get to work. Let's get to work, okay, and
29:54
Speaker 3: what and specifically when I say that to my clients,
29:57
Speaker 3: this is not in a first session, but after they've
29:59
Speaker 3: been working with me for.
30:00
Speaker 2: Well, they know that.
30:01
Speaker 3: They know that when they sit down, we're going to
30:03
Speaker 3: get to work right away, and we're going to max
30:05
Speaker 3: out that session from beginning to end and all the
30:07
Speaker 3: way through. So, uh, you know, we now can do
30:11
Speaker 3: that kind of work instead of the more open kind
30:14
Speaker 3: of endless talk therapy that you know has value and
30:18
Speaker 3: it's helpful, but you can't really focus in and say
30:21
Speaker 3: let's get to work, all right.
30:25
Speaker 1: So many of our listeners, you know, are just getting
30:28
Speaker 1: into trauma therapy. There are others with more experience. David.
30:32
Speaker 1: Obviously you've been honing your skills for a while. What
30:35
Speaker 1: advice would you give those of us those clinsions out
30:39
Speaker 1: there were maybe just getting into this field. We're interested
30:41
Speaker 1: in trauma therapy. What would you say?
30:46
Speaker 3: I have two three word quotes. The first one is
30:50
Speaker 3: don't be afraid. The second one is hang in there.
30:54
Speaker 1: Okay, grad and hanging there okay?
30:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, Because and I remember the first time someone I
31:01
Speaker 3: was working with a client early in my career who
31:03
Speaker 3: had dissociative identity disorder d ID, and she all of
31:08
Speaker 3: a sudden went into a part in front of me,
31:10
Speaker 3: and like, all of a sudden, I was with somebody
31:12
Speaker 3: totally different. It's like, if that'll freak you out? You know,
31:16
Speaker 3: a novist therapist, and the biggest issue for the novice therapist.
31:21
Speaker 2: Was well, what do I do? I got to do something,
31:23
Speaker 2: what do I do? I don't know what to do.
31:26
Speaker 3: But that's where don't be afraid and hang in there
31:30
Speaker 3: is just you be with the person you go with them.
31:35
Speaker 3: If a person has a powerful app reaction, it gets
31:38
Speaker 3: completely overwhelmed and gets associative.
31:43
Speaker 2: Again.
31:43
Speaker 3: The feeling is, well, a therapist who hasn't been there before,
31:47
Speaker 3: you young, or a novice therapist is the idea, will they're.
31:50
Speaker 2: Gone and they'll never come back.
31:52
Speaker 3: But the fact is, if you stay with there with them,
31:56
Speaker 3: if you hang in there with them, if you ground
31:58
Speaker 3: them just by your and by your words, sooner or later,
32:04
Speaker 3: they do come back. And you'll see actually that whatever
32:07
Speaker 3: you were so afraid of happening doesn't happen. So the
32:12
Speaker 3: first few times again, when clients went into altered states
32:15
Speaker 3: in front of me, or when clients went into overwhelming,
32:18
Speaker 3: you know, associative reactions, I didn't know what the outcome
32:23
Speaker 3: was going to be because I didn't have that experience,
32:25
Speaker 3: no matter what anybody told me. But I hung in there,
32:28
Speaker 3: you know, and I faced my fear, and I got
32:32
Speaker 3: past my fear, and I saw that I saw that
32:35
Speaker 3: I was able to help to bring them back, and
32:38
Speaker 3: I was able to figure out what to do, and
32:41
Speaker 3: whatever I was so afraid of didn't happen.
32:44
Speaker 1: So don't be afraid and hang in there. Obviously, you
32:48
Speaker 1: know there's so much behind those three word quotes, but
32:53
Speaker 1: very powerful, I think for any level therapists. So David,
32:57
Speaker 1: what I want to do before I ask you about
33:01
Speaker 1: two books that have influenced you and for our listeners,
33:04
Speaker 1: everything we're talking about here is going to be available
33:06
Speaker 1: on David's show notes page at West Coast Trauma Project
33:09
Speaker 1: dot com. Hit on the podcast tab and David's page
33:13
Speaker 1: will come right up. I want you to kind of
33:17
Speaker 1: give us the summarized version of brain spotting. I mean,
33:22
Speaker 1: you've got so much going on. We're gonna have a
33:24
Speaker 1: link to your web your website and everything, your books,
33:28
Speaker 1: et cetera. But you know, how does one go about
33:32
Speaker 1: developing something such as brain spotting.
33:37
Speaker 3: Well, you have to be completely open. You have to
33:42
Speaker 3: be not only curious but fascinated with what's going on
33:45
Speaker 3: in front of you, and you have to really observe.
33:49
Speaker 2: You have to observe very closely.
33:51
Speaker 3: And observing closely is multitasking because you're observing the client physiologically,
33:57
Speaker 3: you know, and brain spotting is the eyes and the
34:00
Speaker 3: face and the whole body, but at the same time
34:03
Speaker 3: observing their process, observing what they talk about it and
34:08
Speaker 3: where it starts and where it goes to. And with
34:14
Speaker 3: brain spotting, it really was.
34:15
Speaker 2: That something just kind of happened that was unexpected.
34:19
Speaker 3: I was doing slow eye movements and then I hit
34:21
Speaker 3: one spot that just all of a sudden kind of.
34:23
Speaker 2: Exploded out in a very good way.
34:25
Speaker 3: That just and I stopped the eye movements and I
34:28
Speaker 3: held my finger right at the spot where that powerful
34:32
Speaker 3: response was. And so, I mean, the first thing was
34:36
Speaker 3: when it happened, I could have kept on moving my finger.
34:38
Speaker 3: I could have kept on doing eye movements, fiering, well,
34:40
Speaker 3: that's what you're supposed to do. But when something totally
34:46
Speaker 3: out of the ordinary happened, totally surprising happened to me,
34:49
Speaker 3: I was willing not only to notice it, but to
34:51
Speaker 3: kind of go with it. And by doing that and
34:53
Speaker 3: just holding my finger there and having the client stare
34:56
Speaker 3: right at my finger, right on that spot, she was
34:59
Speaker 3: able to in ten minutes go on a journey I've
35:02
Speaker 3: never seen before that and I've only seen rarely since then.
35:07
Speaker 2: But from there then it was a matter of being
35:09
Speaker 2: able of being able to think scientifically, which is.
35:13
Speaker 3: To say, Okay, was this a single event or was
35:17
Speaker 3: this something that's general general generalizable to other people. And
35:23
Speaker 3: then you have to start to explore that, you know,
35:25
Speaker 3: and really to look for these other manifestations and try
35:29
Speaker 3: to repeat what happened and see.
35:32
Speaker 2: What happens there. For me, because I had been in
35:35
Speaker 2: the field at that point for.
35:38
Speaker 3: I would say twenty eight years. Twenty seven years, I
35:45
Speaker 3: had a lot of experience, and I had a lot
35:48
Speaker 3: of exposure, and I'd learned not only e MDR, I
35:50
Speaker 3: learned somatic experiencing on top of psychoanalysis and other.
35:55
Speaker 2: Techniques as well.
35:56
Speaker 3: So the question that hit me was really a scientific question,
36:02
Speaker 3: which is is this a new paradigm or is this
36:05
Speaker 3: just another version of an existing paradigm. And I tested
36:08
Speaker 3: it out, you know, with client after client, and then
36:11
Speaker 3: taught it to some other therapists or showed it to
36:13
Speaker 3: some other therapists and they tried it out too, So
36:15
Speaker 3: we started to see the universality of this response and
36:19
Speaker 3: this way of accessing deep into the client's brain and body.
36:24
Speaker 1: Wow. So we're going to link up to your book
36:27
Speaker 1: Brain Spotting in the show notes page, and thanks so
36:30
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to do that. So can
36:33
Speaker 1: you recommend to go to books for our listeners which
36:36
Speaker 1: have had a major impact on the work you do.
36:40
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to give two books, but before that,
36:44
Speaker 3: I'm going to go back to my analytic days. Freud
36:50
Speaker 3: was the father of modern psychology, and there is a
36:54
Speaker 3: vast amount of information in his writings, his collected works
36:57
Speaker 3: are I think there's.
36:59
Speaker 2: Twenty one volumes. It's amazing. The most challenging of.
37:03
Speaker 3: His works, and I think that the most valuable, valuable
37:06
Speaker 3: of his works is Interpretation of dream the Interpretation of Dreams, And.
37:11
Speaker 2: I'd say that that's.
37:12
Speaker 3: Worthy to be read whether or not you are a psychoanalyst,
37:17
Speaker 3: or whether you're even interested in cycling psychoanalysis, because there's
37:21
Speaker 3: a treasure trove of information there and you have that's
37:25
Speaker 3: not a quick, easy read. You got to really work
37:27
Speaker 3: your way through that. But coming up to some more,
37:30
Speaker 3: you know, modern day books. Most of my reading is
37:35
Speaker 3: in books that have to do with the brain, and
37:40
Speaker 3: Robert Scare's book The Trauma Spectrum, which really looks at
37:44
Speaker 3: trauma from a from a neurobiological point of view and
37:48
Speaker 3: sees a lot of physical conditions like whiplash and other
37:52
Speaker 3: things and shows how it's directly linked to early traumatic
37:58
Speaker 3: experiences that a person is, whether they get over whiplash
38:02
Speaker 3: or not, and whether they get a very bad case
38:04
Speaker 3: of it or not. I mean, this is sort of
38:06
Speaker 3: the link into it. But there's you know, because we
38:12
Speaker 3: not only work with emotions, we work with body experience.
38:16
Speaker 3: For a client, this book provides a great linkage with that.
38:19
Speaker 3: So it's you know, the Trauma Spectrum by Scare sca Er.
38:24
Speaker 3: And another one which is a breakthrough book is by
38:26
Speaker 3: Norman Deutche.
38:27
Speaker 2: You quoted him at the beginning, but the.
38:30
Speaker 3: Brain that changes itself, This is like one of the
38:34
Speaker 3: master works on neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity meaning the brain's capacity to
38:39
Speaker 3: change itself and to change throughout life, which we.
38:42
Speaker 2: Used to think was not possible.
38:46
Speaker 3: But what he does in this book he recounts, I
38:50
Speaker 3: don't know, at least twelve or fourteen different people who
38:54
Speaker 3: had profound issues that were neurologically based, whether it's psychological
38:58
Speaker 3: or physical, that were able to through the right kind
39:01
Speaker 3: of treatment, and not just psychotherapeutic treatments, but sometimes physiological treatments,
39:06
Speaker 3: to literally overcome certain things, certain conditions, certain symptoms that
39:12
Speaker 3: are not possible to be overcome, or at least we're
39:14
Speaker 3: thought that way. So what his book, you Know, Deutsche's
39:19
Speaker 3: book reveals is is the kind of changes that are
39:22
Speaker 3: possible for people, which gives us a lot of information
39:26
Speaker 3: about the brain and about neuroplasticity, but also gives us
39:29
Speaker 3: a lot of information about the potential for change that
39:32
Speaker 3: goes beyond our expectations.
39:35
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've got Freud's interpretation of dreams, Robert Scare's
39:39
Speaker 1: the trauma spectrum, and finally Norman Deutge's brain changes itself,
39:44
Speaker 1: the brain to changes itself. David, We're going to be
39:48
Speaker 1: providing links to all of these at your show notes
39:52
Speaker 1: page at West Coast Trauma Project dot com. I'll have
39:54
Speaker 1: your book linked up there. I know you have DVDs.
39:57
Speaker 1: We're going to link up to those, you know, before
40:01
Speaker 1: we close out. I want to say earlier on in
40:03
Speaker 1: the interview, you kind of drew upon a metaphor, the
40:05
Speaker 1: mountain and the river, and as you've been talking, that
40:10
Speaker 1: has kind of kept coming up for me. In the
40:14
Speaker 1: words you've used, in your presence, the way you speak,
40:18
Speaker 1: there's just this strong confidence that you know comes through.
40:25
Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much for taking the
40:27
Speaker 1: time to do this. It's been awesome and I'm sure
40:30
Speaker 1: our listeners have really appreciate appreciated it as well. Thanks again,
40:35
Speaker 1: and we will speak soon.
40:37
Speaker 4: Thank you guy.
41:00
Speaker 1: Though the Homo s