Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Constructed Awareness - Guest Host Christina Kantzavelos interviews Tyler Orr

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Constructed Awareness - Guest Host Christina Kantzavelos interviews Tyler Orr · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the special guest host series of the Trauma
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Speaker 1: Theaver's podcast, where I'm going to be handing over the
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Speaker 1: mic to some incredible guest hosts. In each episode, you'll
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Speaker 1: hear fresh perspectives and unique insights to inform and inspire
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Speaker 1: you in all the while keeping the heart of this
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Speaker 1: podcast alive. So sit back and enjoy.
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Speaker 2: Hey Tyler, Hello, thank you for being here today.
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Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. I'm excited me.
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Speaker 2: Too, Me too. And it's really funny because when I
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Speaker 2: was initially on this podcast, I think years ago now,
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Speaker 2: I spoke very highly about constructed awareness, and so many
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Speaker 2: people wrote to me interested that they were interested about it,
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Speaker 2: they wanted to find out more information about it. And
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Speaker 2: here we are with the person behind it all, who
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Speaker 2: created it. It gets to share the origin story, the talk
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Speaker 2: more about its efficacy and all of that. And what
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Speaker 2: I want to share first is that, you know, I
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Speaker 2: found constructive awareness because I found limitations in some of
1:01
Speaker 2: the other modalities traum and form modalities I was using.
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Speaker 1: And I.
1:07
Speaker 2: Knew I needed something more specifically for my population I
1:11
Speaker 2: work with, which was chronic illness and folks with chronic
1:14
Speaker 2: illness healing from it. And I found an EMDR for
1:17
Speaker 2: chronic illness course that you had you had done, and
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Speaker 2: it was really really helpful because it was able to
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Speaker 2: bring more of the somatics into EMDR, which I feel
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Speaker 2: is definitely lacking. And then I later met Destiny Winters
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Speaker 2: who told me about constructed awareness, and it just blew.
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Speaker 2: It just blew my mind. And I'm so grateful that
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Speaker 2: this approach exists because I've seen it literally work wonders,
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Speaker 2: not just for my clients, but for myself as I
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Speaker 2: continue to be curious with it an experiment with it.
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Speaker 2: So for those for those who are listening and watching
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Speaker 2: who have no idea what construction and awareness is and
2:02
Speaker 2: how it works, do you mind explaining that to us?
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Speaker 3: Well, I thought I would just talk about it like
2:06
Speaker 3: I do, like I would with a new client, because
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Speaker 3: I probably spend about that long talking about it like
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Speaker 3: in the first session. Is that okay? If I just
2:13
Speaker 3: dive in, Yeah, okay. So the easiest way that I
2:16
Speaker 3: found to talk about is to talk about it's three principles. Okay.
2:20
Speaker 3: So the first principle is if you bring awareness to something,
2:23
Speaker 3: it changes it. And this is like we see this
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Speaker 3: all the time. We just don't notice it, Like little
2:28
Speaker 3: kids behave differently if they're being watched versus if they're
2:30
Speaker 3: not right. There's so many examples, like that's why they
2:35
Speaker 3: put mirrors in gems. It's not just so that people
2:38
Speaker 3: can watch their form. It's like it subconsciously makes you
2:41
Speaker 3: work outd because you know everyone in their room could
2:44
Speaker 3: potentially see you. So there's so many examples, and like
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Speaker 3: kind of an obvious one, it's we behave differently when
2:50
Speaker 3: we're alone than we do around other people. So those
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Speaker 3: are like external examples. But what we found is through
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Speaker 3: my journey is that awareness itself has the power to
3:02
Speaker 3: change our internal experience. Because I, you know, I'm sure
3:05
Speaker 3: we did counseling school the same way or similar way.
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Speaker 3: We learned like the basic CBT sort of stuff, how
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Speaker 3: to develop a treatment plan, and I just session after session,
3:15
Speaker 3: like we would come up with the treatment plan, the
3:19
Speaker 3: client would be super excited to follow through. They come
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Speaker 3: back the next session in work shape, right because now
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Speaker 3: they have the original problem, but they've also got like
3:27
Speaker 3: thoughts of like why I'm not strong enough to follow
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Speaker 3: through with this plan. So that happened just like one
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Speaker 3: too many times for me, and I was like, I've
3:37
Speaker 3: got to find a different way to foster change therapeutically,
3:43
Speaker 3: and through my personal journey, realized that awareness itself has
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Speaker 3: the power to bring about the change that we're looking
3:51
Speaker 3: for in the therapy room. Yes, so much of the
3:53
Speaker 3: more traditional therapies they kind of you know, they do
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Speaker 3: like thought reframing, thought stopping, stuff like that. I mean,
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Speaker 3: to me, that just creates an authenticity, right it I
4:04
Speaker 3: think I hate to say it this way, but it
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Speaker 3: just to me feels like therapeutic repression. You're just teaching
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Speaker 3: the client a new way to cut off from their experience,
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Speaker 3: not a new way to deepen their understanding of their experience.
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Speaker 3: And so we moved away from that with CAA altogether,
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Speaker 3: and so no pressure is ever. I'll tell clients, I'll
4:22
Speaker 3: never tell you what to think or feel. I actually
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Speaker 3: shoot for zero symptom reduction in the beginning, because my
4:27
Speaker 3: goal isn't to change the experience, is to deepen the
4:29
Speaker 3: awareness of it, and then the change just starts to happen.
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Speaker 3: So what are we bringing awareness to? That's the second principle.
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Speaker 3: The second principle CA is that everything you've ever experienced
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Speaker 3: is only made of three things. And we call these
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Speaker 3: the three building blocks of reality. And so the building
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Speaker 3: blocks are your thoughts, so your mental building block, your
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Speaker 3: sensations you feel in your body, your sensation building block
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Speaker 3: in your external senses, that's your external building block. And
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Speaker 3: so according to the model, every experience you ever experienced,
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Speaker 3: that your reality is constructed by these three domains. Okay.
5:07
Speaker 3: And so this is rooted in a theory called the
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Speaker 3: theory of constructed emotion, which was developed by Lisa Felman Barrett.
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Speaker 3: And so that basically her theory goes kind of goes
5:17
Speaker 3: against the classical view of emotions that emotions are like
5:21
Speaker 3: they and like Darwin and different theorists talked about emotions
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Speaker 3: as if they were like these entities that live inside
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Speaker 3: of us, like fear, anger, like they're in there and
5:32
Speaker 3: they're waiting to be triggered by circumstances. The current view
5:39
Speaker 3: of emotion that's coming out is that's not true. It's
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Speaker 3: not something that's just like hardwired in innate and inside
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Speaker 3: of us. It's that emotions are constructed by different internal
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Speaker 3: and external experience. It's also like culture and social norms,
5:54
Speaker 3: that different cultures have different emotional expressions because they construct
5:57
Speaker 3: them differently right, And so I love that theory, but
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Speaker 3: it felt like there wasn't clarity about, Okay, what are
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Speaker 3: the building blocks? What are the things that construct the emotions?
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Speaker 3: And that's where CAA comes in to kind of simplify
6:12
Speaker 3: that theory and say that our emotions are constructed by
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Speaker 3: those thoughts, sensations, and external senses. And I go so
6:21
Speaker 3: far as to say that I don't actually think emotions
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Speaker 3: are real, not in a real tangible way. They're real
6:31
Speaker 3: in a conceptual way. Their concepts are like an emotion,
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Speaker 3: like fear is just a word. It's an umbrella term
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Speaker 3: that describes the collection of the thoughts and sensations and
6:41
Speaker 3: external sensesship. So like with fear, you'll say you see
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Speaker 3: a snake. That's the external building block that triggers your
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Speaker 3: internal parts, your thoughts and sensations. So you have a
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Speaker 3: thought of, oh my god, it's a snake or whatever,
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Speaker 3: and you feel sensation in your body it's tightness and heat.
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Speaker 3: All those come together to create the word that you
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Speaker 3: would lay as fear. And our minds I'll do this
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Speaker 3: all the time. They'll take something that's made of a
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Speaker 3: bunch of parts and put one word to describe it.
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Speaker 3: It's like an example I give a lot. Is it's
7:09
Speaker 3: easier to say I want pizza for dinner than I
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Speaker 3: want cooked dough, tomato, sauce, cheese, pepperoni. If we had
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Speaker 3: to name all the parts that made up something, it
7:18
Speaker 3: would be an arduous sort of existence. So what our
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Speaker 3: mind does is it takes all those parts and puts
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Speaker 3: one puts one word to it. A great example is
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Speaker 3: a storm. There's all kinds of things you can observe
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Speaker 3: with your senses within a storm. There's things you can
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Speaker 3: measure with instruments, like you can see the lining and
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Speaker 3: hear the thunder, you can feel the wind and rain.
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Speaker 3: But where is storm? Yeah, and that's my point, there
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Speaker 3: is no storm in reality. Storm is a concept. It's
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Speaker 3: a word that describes the collection of all those things
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Speaker 3: that we just happen to agree that that collection of
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Speaker 3: things is a storm. Well, the same thing's true for
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Speaker 3: an emotion like fear. Like you can if you're afraid,
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Speaker 3: you can notice the external thing is triggering it. You
8:01
Speaker 3: can notice the thoughts that are coming to mind, what
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Speaker 3: you see and hear in your mind. You can notice
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Speaker 3: the sensations you feel in your body. But where is fear.
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Speaker 3: There is no fear really. Fear is just a word
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Speaker 3: that describes the collection of those parts. So with CA,
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Speaker 3: we're not bringing we're not working with the emotion necessarily,
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Speaker 3: we're working with the building blocks that construct it. That's
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Speaker 3: why it's called constructed awareness, right, because we're bringing awareness
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Speaker 3: to the parts that construct our experiences. And it helps.
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Speaker 3: I'd love to hear what you think about this, but
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Speaker 3: it helps to deepen the client's experience of it because
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Speaker 3: it's one thing to go, oh, I feel fright, and
8:38
Speaker 3: it's like end of curiosity, and it's just like the
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Speaker 3: end of it, right, Okay, I'm afraid. But whenever you
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Speaker 3: take that, okay, let's break that down into its parts.
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Speaker 3: What tells you that it's fear? What's coming to mind?
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Speaker 3: You know, what do you feel in your body, what's
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Speaker 3: happening outside of you? It just deepens the experience. So thoughts,
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Speaker 3: I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. I've been
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Speaker 3: talking from.
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Speaker 1: No.
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Speaker 2: I think that you're able to delve, delve into the
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Speaker 2: actual experience of an emotion, so within within the body,
9:12
Speaker 2: within the mind, externally. I mean, it's it's a little
9:15
Speaker 2: bit of of everything. So I know you'll you'll speak
9:19
Speaker 2: more to kind of how this works. And I call
9:22
Speaker 2: it I call changing changing the channels when years when
9:26
Speaker 2: we're tuning. But like all of that kind of builds
9:30
Speaker 2: builds into the experience. So as we as we dive
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Speaker 2: in and it's like, oh, this is I'm feeling this
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Speaker 2: in my body and this is happening in my mind
9:39
Speaker 2: right now, and this is happening outside of me, you
9:42
Speaker 2: start to relate to an experience and to a feeling
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Speaker 2: much differently than before, Like there's no it's like all
9:51
Speaker 2: of a sudden, it went from there's a dead end,
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Speaker 2: for example, I feel fear. That's a dead end, the fear. Okay,
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Speaker 2: that's That's what I'm experiencing. And that's it too, Like, oh,
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Speaker 2: I'm actually experiencing this because I'm feeling it here in
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Speaker 2: my body and it relates to this event that happened
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Speaker 2: to me when I was this age.
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Speaker 3: There's a there's this mental building block up.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yep.
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Speaker 3: And so I just ask people a lot of times
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Speaker 3: like does it ever feel like your internal experience is
10:14
Speaker 3: just like a tangled ball, like of it's messy, you
10:18
Speaker 3: can't make sense of it. And they're like, yes, like
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Speaker 3: every time they're like, yes, that's my experience, and it's
10:22
Speaker 3: like that ball is made of thoughts and sensations and
10:25
Speaker 3: external sense perceptions, and we're going to unravel them one
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Speaker 3: at a time to where it's like it lays out
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Speaker 3: in front of you instead of like this chaotic thing
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Speaker 3: you can't make sense of, there's clarity about what the
10:35
Speaker 3: experience is. And when that happens, there's countless opportunities to
10:40
Speaker 3: do something different because you're doing it, your your experience is,
10:46
Speaker 3: you're aware of it. You're getting all this information from
10:50
Speaker 3: like what's happening inside and outside of you, and that
10:52
Speaker 3: creates like opportunities for change that weren't there before because
10:55
Speaker 3: now you're operating through consciousness, not unconsciousness, and when it's unconscious,
11:00
Speaker 3: you're going to repeat patterns. You're an autopilot. Things are
11:03
Speaker 3: just going to nothing's going to change, right and so
11:07
Speaker 3: at least in my experience. So that's what we're trying
11:09
Speaker 3: to do. We're trying to bring that clarity. We're trying
11:11
Speaker 3: to help them also we'll talk a little bit i'm
11:13
Speaker 3: sure about resourcing how we do that, but we're helping
11:15
Speaker 3: them develop a vocabulary to describe their experience. So once
11:20
Speaker 3: they've become more aware and they can communicate about it,
11:23
Speaker 3: things really start to happen.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that. I always use that example of
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Speaker 2: everything feeling really tangled up in the brain, and this
11:34
Speaker 2: kind of allows us to sort of start almost braiding
11:37
Speaker 2: it out in like in a really like soft and
11:40
Speaker 2: sweet way. I mean, they're doing it themselves. But you know,
11:43
Speaker 2: when we avoid that tangled mess that we feel like
11:47
Speaker 2: is in our mind, in our bodies and our souls,
11:49
Speaker 2: you know, it just continues to get more and more
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Speaker 2: tangled as we as we avoid it, and we hit
11:55
Speaker 2: that dead end sometimes of like this is just too much.
11:58
Speaker 2: I can't go there. I don't even want to go there.
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Speaker 2: So like, oh wow, like little by little, I can
12:05
Speaker 2: actually braid this out. And this is a lot easier
12:09
Speaker 2: than I thought it was, and I understand this a
12:12
Speaker 2: lot more. It's it's really cool to witness that.
12:16
Speaker 3: I love the braiding idea. That's correct, don't you Like
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Speaker 3: normally with a braid you need three right, It's kind
12:21
Speaker 3: of works out pretty well.
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Speaker 2: It actually wow. Yeah, I didn't think of it like that,
12:25
Speaker 2: but that's what I use. I use that specifically, that
12:28
Speaker 2: analogy to Yeah, yeah, we turned into this beautiful braid of.
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Speaker 3: Instead of just a you know, dreadlocks and you know
12:38
Speaker 3: just when their tangles there, you know, just wild here. Yeah,
12:41
Speaker 3: that's what it is. Like, we're just sort of unraveling
12:44
Speaker 3: that thing that was like hard to understand and hard
12:46
Speaker 3: to connect with, and I'm showing people like you can
12:49
Speaker 3: connect with it in all of these different ways, just
12:52
Speaker 3: this one really confused way. And that's where it's like,
12:56
Speaker 3: and it's like a stall therapy, be like Fritz Pearls
12:58
Speaker 3: talked about like fattening the moment. It's like we're flashing
13:00
Speaker 3: it out into these different domains rather than just this
13:03
Speaker 3: one confusing conceptual experience.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, totally. And I was going to say, like, also, shame.
13:12
Speaker 2: Shame dies when we tell our stories in safe places.
13:15
Speaker 2: So I think, you know, being with a therapist, do
13:17
Speaker 2: you feel safe and comfortable with and you can truly
13:19
Speaker 2: co regulate with and then start start the breeding process
13:24
Speaker 2: of realizing how how this experience was constructed in the
13:28
Speaker 2: first place, and how you continue to relate to it,
13:31
Speaker 2: and how you'd like to continue relating to it.
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Speaker 3: It's now there's choice because you're aware of it, right
13:37
Speaker 3: and you can choose like how you relate.
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Speaker 2: To it, where well you go from feeling disempowered over
13:41
Speaker 2: it to feeling empowered over it. It's like, okay, yeah, this
13:46
Speaker 2: is a part of me, this is into me. I'm
13:48
Speaker 2: not hyper identifying with it anymore.
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Speaker 3: That's great cooling. You'll talk about the third.
13:54
Speaker 2: Principle, no, please, you go ahead, you go ahead, we.
13:57
Speaker 3: Can take it further. Okay, So we have the three
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Speaker 3: building blocks, so the third principle kind of helps us
14:03
Speaker 3: understand how to use that clinically. So the third principles
14:06
Speaker 3: that people tend to rely on, or the term we use,
14:09
Speaker 3: is they orient to one building block more than the
14:12
Speaker 3: others in different situations. So that means that there are
14:16
Speaker 3: people who tend to be more mentally oriented, sensation oriented,
14:20
Speaker 3: or externally oriented. So like with each building block, there's
14:22
Speaker 3: an orientation. Does that make sense to say it that way? Yeah? Right, So,
14:27
Speaker 3: like I'm mentally oriented most of the time. What that
14:32
Speaker 3: means is I rely on my mental building block to
14:34
Speaker 3: regulate myself to connect with others. I like to connect
14:37
Speaker 3: more intellectually. I regulate through like planning and rationalization and logic.
14:42
Speaker 3: And my wife's very different from me, because she's sensation oriented.
14:47
Speaker 3: So whereas I'm like a mine moving through life, she's
14:50
Speaker 3: a body, right, So she regulates herself through her body
14:54
Speaker 3: and through like expressing her feelings and through movement in
14:56
Speaker 3: ways that I don't at all. She prefers to can
15:00
Speaker 3: more physically, right, likes to share space and touch and
15:05
Speaker 3: things like that. You we figured out from the podcast
15:09
Speaker 3: that we just did need ca and Pain that you're
15:13
Speaker 3: externally oriented, right, So you're a great example of that.
15:17
Speaker 3: So your your awareness is focused usually more outside of yourself,
15:21
Speaker 3: and you regulate yourself by regulating your environment and the
15:24
Speaker 3: people in your environment. So it's like if the people
15:26
Speaker 3: are okay and the environment it's okay, then I'm okay.
15:30
Speaker 3: Does that sound accurate?
15:32
Speaker 2: Yeah? So from the first Yeah training I went to,
15:35
Speaker 2: it was like, wow, that's you know, I never I
15:39
Speaker 2: was never able to realize I related to the world
15:42
Speaker 2: in myself that way and the importance of you know,
15:46
Speaker 2: having an organized, beautiful space, how that makes me feel
15:50
Speaker 2: internally safe and ensuring people around me are also doing
15:55
Speaker 2: all right, that that brings me safety. I mean, it's
15:59
Speaker 2: it's just incredible to have that information and that self
16:02
Speaker 2: awareness and that insight yep.
16:04
Speaker 3: Because what it does. Let's stick. Can we use you
16:07
Speaker 3: as an example. Okay, so if you are the client
16:11
Speaker 3: and I'm the therapist and we're working together and we
16:13
Speaker 3: figured out, okay, you're more externally oriented. We could put
16:15
Speaker 3: your building blocks in order from like most used to
16:18
Speaker 3: lease use most of the time. I'd say in most
16:20
Speaker 3: situations you're external mode like most, and then second place
16:24
Speaker 3: would be mental and insensation. Yes, right, so we would
16:29
Speaker 3: call that e MS. There's a whole typology. We don't
16:33
Speaker 3: have time to get into that at all on this,
16:35
Speaker 3: but there's a typology in CA where you put the
16:38
Speaker 3: building blocks in, you arrange them in every combination that
16:40
Speaker 3: you can, from least most to least, and it creates
16:43
Speaker 3: six orientation styles as what we call them. So you
16:47
Speaker 3: would be primarily most of the time e M S,
16:51
Speaker 3: which we call adapting. So that's like the easy, breezy
16:55
Speaker 3: kind of social butterfly. I mean, everything I know about you,
16:57
Speaker 3: they usually good at like networking and connecting people well,
17:01
Speaker 3: very kind of out in the world in a way.
17:03
Speaker 3: That's different for me because I'm very like in my
17:06
Speaker 3: head most of the time. But if we know that
17:08
Speaker 3: you're external first primarily well, that tells us we might
17:13
Speaker 3: not need to spend much time focusing on external resources
17:17
Speaker 3: because you're already so good at that, So we would
17:19
Speaker 3: focus on the mental and sensation resources, whereas for me,
17:24
Speaker 3: if I was a client, we wouldn't focus too much
17:26
Speaker 3: on the mental, we would focus on the sensation and external.
17:29
Speaker 3: So it kind of creates a framework for how we
17:33
Speaker 3: can develop the resources that are most useful for our clients. Yeah, right,
17:38
Speaker 3: and CAA teaches resource. There's specific sources you learn in
17:42
Speaker 3: level one that are focused on each building block. So
17:46
Speaker 3: we learned like mental based resources, external based and sensation
17:50
Speaker 3: based resources, so that you have the skills to help
17:53
Speaker 3: the client. So what we're trying to do is take
17:55
Speaker 3: like so let's say my mental's way up here, my
17:59
Speaker 3: sensation external are down here. We're trying to bring the
18:02
Speaker 3: awareness up so that the person then has access to
18:07
Speaker 3: all parts of their experience.
18:09
Speaker 2: Oh well, I was going to say too, so for myself. Right,
18:14
Speaker 2: using these other modalities with like for E M, d
18:17
Speaker 2: R and other trauma formed modality somatic experiencing, I found
18:23
Speaker 2: limitations because they were really just focused on just one
18:27
Speaker 2: one of those one of those things and being externally oriented.
18:32
Speaker 2: What sea HASX I've been able to use it now
18:34
Speaker 2: on myself for some time, is that I found more
18:38
Speaker 2: more balanced within myself. I'm able to whereas before I
18:42
Speaker 2: was a bit. And this happens with chronic illness, which
18:46
Speaker 2: is what I you know, what I specialize in, which
18:48
Speaker 2: is some disembodiment can happen. And constructive awareness allowed me
18:53
Speaker 2: to safely come into my body and be with my
18:55
Speaker 2: body and feel those sensations and locate them. I would
19:00
Speaker 2: hyper intellectualize what I was experiencing or what's strange, as
19:06
Speaker 2: I would almost see what I was experiencing from an
19:11
Speaker 2: objective point of view before, and now I can actually
19:15
Speaker 2: be with my sensations first person, which is, I know,
19:19
Speaker 2: a bizarre thing for someone who's not externally oriented. I
19:22
Speaker 2: just want to share what benefit it has personally had
19:25
Speaker 2: for myself in creating that balance and new found awareness
19:31
Speaker 2: and understanding.
19:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, and for me it's kind of the opposite because
19:35
Speaker 3: like all I understood of external it was like a
19:37
Speaker 3: conceptual understanding of that, but now it's an experiential understand
19:40
Speaker 3: I can be in the environment, I can be in
19:42
Speaker 3: the space, which is, you know, I had a professor
19:47
Speaker 3: at one time, and my master's tell me that I
19:48
Speaker 3: lacked empathy, which I didn't understand. I was very upset
19:53
Speaker 3: about that, and I called my wife mad because I
19:56
Speaker 3: was in Colorado. It's kind of a hybrid thing. So
19:59
Speaker 3: I had to go out, you know, to Colorado to
20:01
Speaker 3: the school and was so upset. She's like, oh, I'm
20:04
Speaker 3: so sorry, that's so awful. But then it later I
20:06
Speaker 3: started thinking about this building block stuff and it's like,
20:09
Speaker 3: seems like that like being externally connected and connected with
20:13
Speaker 3: my body or important ingredients for empathy, like how do
20:15
Speaker 3: I know what somebody else is feeling if I don't
20:17
Speaker 3: know what I'm feeling? And how can I really connect
20:20
Speaker 3: with someone if I'm not ever out here in my space.
20:24
Speaker 3: So I told my wife like, yeah, maybe maybe that
20:27
Speaker 3: professor was onto something, and she was like, well, I
20:29
Speaker 3: didn't want to say anything at the time because you
20:31
Speaker 3: were really upset, but you could probably stand to have
20:33
Speaker 3: more empathy. So developing this has helped me so much
20:38
Speaker 3: as a therapist, as a husband's father that you name it,
20:41
Speaker 3: because it helped me learn to be in these parts
20:44
Speaker 3: of myself that I was disconnected from, which sounds very opposite,
20:49
Speaker 3: totally your experience and what you needed to learn to
20:52
Speaker 3: become more full a whole.
20:55
Speaker 2: Right, I'm having one of those moments right now, hearing
20:58
Speaker 2: that the inverse of my own experience. It kind of
21:01
Speaker 2: makes sense because I was, Yeah, I was so external
21:05
Speaker 2: that I I wasn't able to experience that within myself.
21:09
Speaker 2: It was very conceptual.
21:12
Speaker 3: But what we do is once, like so we focus
21:14
Speaker 3: on in therapy, We'll figure Okay, what's what does the
21:16
Speaker 3: client need more help with as far as awareness, and
21:19
Speaker 3: we build resources with that. And then once that the
21:22
Speaker 3: awareness of all three building blocks are established, then we
21:25
Speaker 3: start practicing something called tuning, which is shifting awareness between
21:29
Speaker 3: the three building blocks. And that's what you were saying
21:31
Speaker 3: earlier about changing the channel, and so that helps them
21:35
Speaker 3: to begin to shift and move and like, Okay, here's
21:38
Speaker 3: what I'm thinking, this is what I'm feeling, this is
21:39
Speaker 3: what's happening, and that's where it all starts to come together.
21:43
Speaker 3: And so in twenty twenty we did the first CAA
21:47
Speaker 3: Level one and that was it at the time. But
21:50
Speaker 3: after that I figured out, oh, I can take tuning
21:53
Speaker 3: that shifting between the building blocks and process trauma. So
21:58
Speaker 3: I developed a new way of processing trauma. And we're
22:01
Speaker 3: both the MDR trained, right, you're EMDO train, Yeah, so
22:05
Speaker 3: you can speak to this too, But it just feels
22:07
Speaker 3: like such a softer process than EMDR, more of a
22:12
Speaker 3: I think it's because it's like we're not asking that
22:14
Speaker 3: big like what are you noticing now? A question which
22:17
Speaker 3: is too much for a lot of clients. It's more like,
22:19
Speaker 3: what do you notice when you look at this one
22:20
Speaker 3: part of the thought? Or what do you notice when
22:22
Speaker 3: you connected this one sensation? What do you notice when
22:24
Speaker 3: you look at this one thing in the room. And
22:27
Speaker 3: we always describe it in CAS like it keeps like
22:29
Speaker 3: the goldilocked zone of activation, right, because that's shifting. And
22:35
Speaker 3: so there's a kind of a structured way of processing memories,
22:38
Speaker 3: and that's level two CA training. In August, we're starting
22:43
Speaker 3: the Level three training, which is going to focus on
22:45
Speaker 3: something called responsive processing, which is a completely unscripted, unstructured
22:50
Speaker 3: way of processing. You're responding to what the client is
22:54
Speaker 3: saying and then moving into tuning for kind of smaller
22:58
Speaker 3: spurts of processing. And it seems like that's just the
23:01
Speaker 3: natural way that CA therapists are have war starting to work.
23:05
Speaker 3: So I was like listening to me too, and I
23:07
Speaker 3: was like, well, let's just develop this as a thing,
23:09
Speaker 3: so we have that coming out and.
23:11
Speaker 2: Then for therapists out there who are interested, they're like, well,
23:15
Speaker 2: let's let's get into this. Let's get into this training.
23:19
Speaker 2: When will your next CA one training take place?
23:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, it starts in June. In June, all three trainings
23:26
Speaker 3: are four days, so they're all thirty hours each. We
23:30
Speaker 3: just kind of approved as aswb ace CE provider, so
23:37
Speaker 3: moving forward like that training is coming up will come
23:40
Speaker 3: with thirty hours of ASWB CES, which is super exciting.
23:45
Speaker 3: We'll also have APA covering through a co sponsoring company,
23:47
Speaker 3: so APA ces can be can be delivered for that.
23:52
Speaker 2: Okay.
23:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you want to learn more about that
23:57
Speaker 3: or just CAA in general, you can go to Constructed
23:59
Speaker 3: Awareness if.
24:01
Speaker 2: You're Yeah, if you're a therapist listening to this, I
24:03
Speaker 2: cannot recommend this training enough. It has been just so
24:10
Speaker 2: so life changing for so many of my clients that
24:14
Speaker 2: I have the privilege of working with and getting to
24:16
Speaker 2: use this with. So that's why I'm just I was
24:19
Speaker 2: very stoked to be able to interview you for this
24:21
Speaker 2: so people can learn a little bit a little bit
24:24
Speaker 2: more about it because we hear constructive awareness and we're like,
24:27
Speaker 2: what what how what? It's trauma informed, but what does
24:30
Speaker 2: that mean? And and here we are and yeah, making
24:36
Speaker 2: this world just a little bit lighter. That's how I
24:40
Speaker 2: see it, all right. Thank you so much, Tyler, Thank
24:44
Speaker 2: you appreciate it.