Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Slaying The Dragons, and Loving Them, Too with Mariya Javed-Payne
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Trauma Theverist podcast Plus listeners can listen to episodes early
- 0:03Speaker 1: and ad free right now. Become a Plus listener by
- 0:07Speaker 1: going to Apple Podcasts, searching for the Trauma Theverist podcast
- 0:11Speaker 1: and signing up today. Welcome to the Trauma Nevers podcast,
- 0:18Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
- 0:21Speaker 1: who experienced trauma. My name is got macpherson, and my
- 0:24Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
- 0:27Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us. All right,
- 0:34Speaker 1: you ready to do it?
- 0:36Speaker 2: All right?
- 0:36Speaker 1: Here we go five four, three, two and one, our folks,
- 0:42Speaker 1: welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have us back,
- 0:44Speaker 1: not back, but here finally. My guest Mariah Javid Paine.
- 0:50Speaker 2: Mariya welcome, Hi, thank you.
- 0:52Speaker 1: It's Maria, Maria, Thank you. Maria is a licensed independent
- 0:57Speaker 1: clinical social worker, licensed alcohol and trauma counselor, and international
- 1:01Speaker 1: brain spotting trainer and consultant. She's a sematic psychotherapist and
- 1:06Speaker 1: owner of Awakened Consulting Services of private practice and consultancy,
- 1:11Speaker 1: where she utilizes brain spotting therapy and offers training and
- 1:15Speaker 1: consultation on the treatment of trauma. Sematic psychotherapies psychedelic assistant therapy,
- 1:21Speaker 1: anti racism, and other relevant mental health topics. Welcome to
- 1:26Speaker 1: the podcast. Before we get going, shared with our listeners
- 1:30Speaker 1: where you're from originally and where you are currently.
- 1:34Speaker 2: Yeah. Thanks, that's always a tough question for me to answer,
- 1:37Speaker 2: and thanks for having me. I'm originally from India. I
- 1:41Speaker 2: was born in India and I came to the United
- 1:45Speaker 2: States when I was about six years old. Before that,
- 1:49Speaker 2: I traveled and lived in Paris, France and Riodasian Aira, Brazil.
- 1:54Speaker 2: After we left India when I was about two years old,
- 1:57Speaker 2: three years old, so kind of grew up in a
- 2:01Speaker 2: lot of different cultures and environments, and then in nineteen
- 2:05Speaker 2: ninety six, moved to the United States in Lawrence, Kansas
- 2:09Speaker 2: of all places. So yeah, I grew up there and
- 2:13Speaker 2: then came to Minnesota and went to school here and
- 2:17Speaker 2: I've been living here ever since.
- 2:20Speaker 1: Awesome. Awesome. So your bio is very interesting, it's diverse,
- 2:28Speaker 1: it's intense. I mean, for me, this whole topic is intense,
- 2:31Speaker 1: but what you do is really fascinating. How did this
- 2:37Speaker 1: start for you?
- 2:41Speaker 2: Yeah, it truly started because of my own suffering with
- 2:48Speaker 2: trauma and addiction, and I you know, it received a
- 2:55Speaker 2: lot of mental health services growing up to heal and
- 3:00Speaker 2: try and get out of that.
- 3:03Speaker 1: What age are we talking here when we started?
- 3:05Speaker 2: Okay, the addiction was age thirteen to twenty.
- 3:10Speaker 1: Yeah, wow wow.
- 3:12Speaker 2: Yeah. Started with opiates very young, like you know, uh,
- 3:18Speaker 2: starting out with smoking pot or whatever, but it very
- 3:21Speaker 2: quickly went into opiate use and prescription fills and then eventually,
- 3:25Speaker 2: you know, by the time I was twenty, I was
- 3:27Speaker 2: injecting drugs and I'd been injecting for years and very
- 3:31Speaker 2: addicted to crack cocaine and ivy opiates. So it was
- 3:38Speaker 2: it was a dark path. And you know, the addiction
- 3:43Speaker 2: is like the symptom of something deeper and greater, as
- 3:46Speaker 2: we know, like with trauma and how addiction pathways work.
- 3:50Speaker 2: But you know, really the core wound in my life
- 3:53Speaker 2: has been this sense of not belonging and being uprooted
- 3:57Speaker 2: from my culture and my family and the land, the people,
- 4:03Speaker 2: the ancestral homelands where I come from, and coming to
- 4:06Speaker 2: an environment that is very, very different, and being insulated
- 4:13Speaker 2: in my nuclear family and really struggling with integration. And
- 4:17Speaker 2: I think a lot of immigrant people experience this, and
- 4:20Speaker 2: it's it's not talked about enough because on the outside,
- 4:24Speaker 2: the veneer is, oh, we're trying to get to the
- 4:27Speaker 2: American dream, and you might you know, you my experience
- 4:31Speaker 2: has been and healing this definitely now, but you know,
- 4:36Speaker 2: during those times when I was younger and growing up,
- 4:39Speaker 2: the real defining experience of my life has been I
- 4:43Speaker 2: don't belong anywhere, like I don't belong in this culture
- 4:46Speaker 2: because I'm not from here of here, and I no
- 4:50Speaker 2: longer belong to my home either rite where I come from,
- 4:54Speaker 2: because growing up here you're just so different than your
- 4:58Speaker 2: your family members, your cousin the culture, so that no
- 5:03Speaker 2: man's land space is. It was pretty treacherous growing up,
- 5:10Speaker 2: especially with you know, being around parents that were also
- 5:14Speaker 2: really struggling and suffering with the integration process. So I've
- 5:18Speaker 2: spent the last twenty plus years healing and you know,
- 5:25Speaker 2: going through multiple dark knights of the soul. You said
- 5:28Speaker 2: it reading my bio was intense. Yes, life has been intense,
- 5:34Speaker 2: and now there's sort of a new chapter of kind
- 5:36Speaker 2: of softening. Being sober now for going on fifteen years
- 5:42Speaker 2: and being in a position of service to other people
- 5:47Speaker 2: and the interplay of the dark and the light, right,
- 5:50Speaker 2: So I'm grateful to be alive. It's been a journey.
- 5:58Speaker 1: You said, you mentioned the word isolation. So when you
- 6:03Speaker 1: came to the States, you didn't come with a gaggle
- 6:08Speaker 1: of relatives, it was just your family, correct.
- 6:12Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how to speak the language,
- 6:15Speaker 2: don't know how to drive a car, how to have
- 6:18Speaker 2: a bank account or anything. You know, it's it's brand
- 6:21Speaker 2: new for.
- 6:23Speaker 1: Else as you experienced. You do you have siblings, my
- 6:30Speaker 1: brother and I Yeah, okay, okay. And you said the
- 6:35Speaker 1: addiction was six years. Seven years or.
- 6:38Speaker 2: So, yeah, about seven years.
- 6:42Speaker 1: At what point did you say to yourself or how
- 6:50Speaker 1: did it come to be where you were like, Okay,
- 6:53Speaker 1: I need to heal. Something needs to change.
- 6:58Speaker 2: I think when I was I went to rehab the
- 7:03Speaker 2: first time when I was seventeen, So.
- 7:06Speaker 1: How did that happen? Why did that happen?
- 7:08Speaker 2: It happened after my best friend overdosed and died at
- 7:13Speaker 2: the time. So, like, I've grown up in the millennial
- 7:18Speaker 2: kind of community where we've had a lot of deaths
- 7:23Speaker 2: from opiates, right, Like, I'm in that generation where I've
- 7:27Speaker 2: lost lots of people through the opiate crisis that's happened
- 7:31Speaker 2: in the United States. And it was about six months
- 7:37Speaker 2: after he died that I went to my mom and said,
- 7:41Speaker 2: I need help, like I'm addicted. Also, I can't stop.
- 7:44Speaker 2: I can't stop doing what I'm doing.
- 7:46Speaker 1: Were they were your parents aware of what was going
- 7:50Speaker 1: on with you?
- 7:50Speaker 2: No, they were pretty naive in their world. This has
- 7:57Speaker 2: never happened in anybody in their family, Like addiction in
- 8:03Speaker 2: India and Muslim culture is like a very taboo, like
- 8:07Speaker 2: it doesn't on the outside. It's like that doesn't happen
- 8:11Speaker 2: in our family, right, So they didn't have any context
- 8:14Speaker 2: for it or even to look for that. They knew
- 8:17Speaker 2: something was wrong. I was having a lot of strife
- 8:20Speaker 2: with connecting with them, and I was hiding a lot,
- 8:24Speaker 2: and I just as a teenager being torn on the inside,
- 8:28Speaker 2: just torn to shreds of feeling so guilty and so
- 8:33Speaker 2: ashamed with all these feelings. Because again, culture, the culture
- 8:38Speaker 2: in India and around mental health is that that doesn't
- 8:40Speaker 2: really exist. It's changing now, but there was no cultural
- 8:46Speaker 2: container to hold what I was experiencing. I didn't have
- 8:50Speaker 2: words for what I was experiencing. The depression thing, you know,
- 8:55Speaker 2: insane amount of anxiety that I was having constantly, not
- 8:58Speaker 2: being able to sleep was a result of this separation
- 9:03Speaker 2: trauma from our land and family. And even though my
- 9:07Speaker 2: parents chose to come here, we're not refugees, we didn't.
- 9:10Speaker 2: You know, we had it a lot better than a lot
- 9:12Speaker 2: of people do when they migrate. There there's so much
- 9:17Speaker 2: loss that goes into and it's unspoken and there's it's ambiguous.
- 9:22Speaker 2: There's no place for the loss of you're leaving your
- 9:28Speaker 2: land because you're looking for better life and opportunities economically
- 9:33Speaker 2: for your children, et cetera. And maybe on the outside
- 9:36Speaker 2: that seems like, oh, that's you're so lucky. You get
- 9:39Speaker 2: to do that, you get to leave. So you kind
- 9:40Speaker 2: of get heat and flack from your family in India
- 9:43Speaker 2: because they're like, you got away, you got away from
- 9:45Speaker 2: the poverty, you have it so much better. But then
- 9:47Speaker 2: you're over here in the United States and you're really
- 9:50Speaker 2: at the bottom of the barrel. You're an immigrant. You're
- 9:52Speaker 2: not seen as equal to citizen or folks that are
- 9:57Speaker 2: white bodied, like there's a lot of a lot of layers.
- 10:00Speaker 2: And as a child, I had no language for that.
- 10:03Speaker 2: You know, that's only really come in the last four
- 10:06Speaker 2: or five years of study and education and embodiment work
- 10:10Speaker 2: that I've been doing that it has come to consciousness.
- 10:13Speaker 1: So you have a really good way of articulating that experience.
- 10:24Speaker 1: I really appreciate that you go to rehab. How did
- 10:33Speaker 1: that go?
- 10:35Speaker 2: Eight rehabs later, I still didn't stay sober. Yeah, yeah,
- 10:40Speaker 2: that it helped, you know, for periods of time. I
- 10:45Speaker 2: stayed clean for months at a time, but really I
- 10:48Speaker 2: would go back, and every time I went back it
- 10:50Speaker 2: got worse, got darker and darker. I was a sex worker.
- 10:54Speaker 2: I was in all sorts of stuff, homeless, houseless, it was.
- 10:57Speaker 2: It was really gnarly by the time I got clean.
- 11:00Speaker 1: Where was this? Where were you living at this point?
- 11:04Speaker 2: I was in Minnesota at this point? Okay, yeah, okay,
- 11:08Speaker 2: I came here first when I went to rehab, and
- 11:12Speaker 2: that was in two thousand and eight, and I relapsed up.
- 11:15Speaker 2: I got kicked out of rehab and relapsed, and I
- 11:17Speaker 2: was on the streets out here in the Twin Cities
- 11:20Speaker 2: for about a year.
- 11:22Speaker 1: And were you continuing school?
- 11:25Speaker 2: I dropped.
- 11:27Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 11:28Speaker 2: I went to let's see how many times. I think
- 11:31Speaker 2: I had three attempts before I actually could stay and
- 11:34Speaker 2: finish college. So I had to drop out a few
- 11:37Speaker 2: times because of my mental health and my addiction.
- 11:44Speaker 1: Talk about how you got to the point where you
- 11:48Speaker 1: were like, Okay, I want to move into becoming a therapist.
- 11:54Speaker 1: I want to help other people navigate this. What was that?
- 11:58Speaker 1: How did that come about for you?
- 12:02Speaker 2: It came from other voices and people in my life
- 12:07Speaker 2: that reflected that, you know, what I had gone through
- 12:12Speaker 2: could potentially be of use to other people. The story,
- 12:16Speaker 2: the experience, and you know, when you're just just getting
- 12:21Speaker 2: clean and trying to figure out how to tie your
- 12:23Speaker 2: shoes and make macaroni and cheese, like that was just
- 12:29Speaker 2: something to cling to at the time to have some
- 12:33Speaker 2: form of purpose. And so I had some good I've
- 12:37Speaker 2: had mentors and people show up at the right time
- 12:39Speaker 2: in my life, thank goodness, you know, bit by bit
- 12:43Speaker 2: when I was finally getting clean and say to me, like,
- 12:48Speaker 2: we go to school, and you know, I'm like, I
- 12:50Speaker 2: don't know what I want to go to school? Well,
- 12:52Speaker 2: why don't you be a counselor? And I was like, okay,
- 12:54Speaker 2: Like I wanted to help. I knew I always wanted
- 12:58Speaker 2: to help people, but by the time I got cleaned,
- 13:02Speaker 2: my brain was very jumbled. To put it mildly, I
- 13:07Speaker 2: had a lot of medical issues. I had contracted some viruses.
- 13:10Speaker 2: I was really sick. I've been really sick. I've been
- 13:12Speaker 2: recovering for the last seventeen years from chronic illness, things
- 13:17Speaker 2: that I contracted in my addiction. So it's been a
- 13:21Speaker 2: wild ride. And you know, slowly, bit by bit, I
- 13:24Speaker 2: started going through, you know, my bachelor's and then eventually
- 13:28Speaker 2: went through addiction counseling program and then my master's and
- 13:31Speaker 2: then all of the somatic training that I've done afterwards.
- 13:34Speaker 2: And I'm really grateful for it, for the opportunity to
- 13:38Speaker 2: be alive. I can say that now I hated being alive,
- 13:42Speaker 2: you know.
- 13:43Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you know what's really amazing is you know,
- 13:53Speaker 1: usually when I send out an invitation, you know, I
- 13:57Speaker 1: put a little thing in there, you know, what do
- 13:59Speaker 1: you want to talk about? What you know? And you know,
- 14:03Speaker 1: before we started, you were like, what are we going
- 14:06Speaker 1: to talk about? And I'm like, well, it'll come out.
- 14:10Speaker 1: But you know, your bio you have such an incredible story.
- 14:17Speaker 1: I mean, you are such an incredible and really inspiring person.
- 14:22Speaker 1: And your bio that I read is the top of
- 14:29Speaker 1: the iceberg. There's all this below that you know, me
- 14:33Speaker 1: you don't want to what can how much can you
- 14:35Speaker 1: say in a bio, But it's just interesting that there's
- 14:37Speaker 1: so much there, and you know, I can feel what
- 14:44Speaker 1: the work you're doing and what you're giving in this work.
- 14:49Speaker 1: As you moved through this program, your program, your education,
- 14:55Speaker 1: what did you feel? What did you think you could
- 14:59Speaker 1: get or offer? How did you think you could help
- 15:03Speaker 1: as a therapist.
- 15:06Speaker 2: I think I think my gift to offer the world
- 15:11Speaker 2: is that I can sit in the darkness and hold
- 15:15Speaker 2: the lantern for people. I think I'm that person that's
- 15:20Speaker 2: not afraid because I've been I've been there, I've seen
- 15:24Speaker 2: the demons. I've slay them and come out and when
- 15:28Speaker 2: I say sleigh, I mean really love them. So at
- 15:33Speaker 2: this point, you know, doing I've been doing counseling for
- 15:37Speaker 2: about fourteen fifteen years now and nothing scares me because
- 15:42Speaker 2: this just like whatever is showing up inside of someone
- 15:47Speaker 2: and is you know, ends up coming into my office
- 15:51Speaker 2: as part of the human experience all of it. And
- 15:55Speaker 2: to be at a place of non judgment with that
- 15:59Speaker 2: and let the shadow come forward so that it can
- 16:03Speaker 2: be healed. Is I think the gift that I'm here
- 16:07Speaker 2: to offer the world. I'm still cultivating and stepping into
- 16:10Speaker 2: that and trusting that. You know, trauma, as you know,
- 16:13Speaker 2: is not something that just leaves. You know, last night,
- 16:16Speaker 2: I was doing my own therapy session, brain spotting session,
- 16:21Speaker 2: and I had this realization that, like the state that
- 16:24Speaker 2: I'm at right now in my path is one of
- 16:28Speaker 2: finally post traumatic growth. And wow is that scary? You know,
- 16:35Speaker 2: Like it's just been like, Oh, I'm working, I'm working
- 16:37Speaker 2: so hard to be a functional person in society and
- 16:41Speaker 2: not you know, constantly be feeling anxious, depressed, hypervigilant, you know,
- 16:47Speaker 2: moving at lightning speed and then crashing and all the
- 16:53Speaker 2: rage and anger and confusion and periods of psychosis that
- 16:57Speaker 2: I've even had, you know, in early recovery and onward
- 17:01Speaker 2: because I work a lot with the spirit realm, so
- 17:03Speaker 2: I've had very interesting experiences and scary ones too. But
- 17:08Speaker 2: last night to be at this place with my therapist
- 17:11Speaker 2: and be like, oh my gosh, I think I'm like
- 17:14Speaker 2: starting to feel safe for the first time in my
- 17:18Speaker 2: life ever. And wow, it's almost just as hard to
- 17:22Speaker 2: be stretching towards that than it was, you know, working
- 17:27Speaker 2: through activation and pain and sorrow.
- 17:30Speaker 1: So what what me if I can ask what how
- 17:34Speaker 1: did you know you were feeling safe? That sounds like
- 17:37Speaker 1: such a therapist question, Yeah, but really how what? How?
- 17:42Speaker 1: What was that? What did you what was going on
- 17:44Speaker 1: for you?
- 17:45Speaker 2: I felt peace and it was like a softening and
- 17:51Speaker 2: a surrender. You know, I've got a lot of medical stuff,
- 17:54Speaker 2: Like I said, I've got limes, and so I tend
- 17:57Speaker 2: to have a stiff neck all the time because my
- 17:59Speaker 2: spinal cord really inflamed. And I have been, you know,
- 18:05Speaker 2: not only working on my mental health but also my
- 18:07Speaker 2: physical health significantly for the last couple decades. And as
- 18:13Speaker 2: we were processing on the eye position, which you know,
- 18:15Speaker 2: I'll tell you about brain spotting in a bit if
- 18:17Speaker 2: you'd like to hear about it. But I note there
- 18:20Speaker 2: was this sort of like releasing that was happening in
- 18:22Speaker 2: the back of my neck and this spaciousness being created
- 18:26Speaker 2: in my throat. And there's been a big disconnect between
- 18:30Speaker 2: my mind and my body, this separation of like not
- 18:34Speaker 2: wanting to be in the body because it's so pain
- 18:36Speaker 2: It was so painful, has been so painful to be embodied.
- 18:41Speaker 2: And it felt like this highway was being constructed between
- 18:45Speaker 2: my consciousness up here and softening and it's like I've
- 18:51Speaker 2: been leaning into that for a while, but it's like
- 18:54Speaker 2: terrifying to feel the softness. So, you know, like you
- 18:57Speaker 2: kind of pull up again and contract, And yesterday it
- 19:03Speaker 2: finally really was. I called my mom after and I
- 19:05Speaker 2: was like, Mom, I don't know what's happening to me,
- 19:07Speaker 2: but I'm feeling peace. She's like, go for it, baby girl,
- 19:12Speaker 2: Like you've been working your butt off.
- 19:15Speaker 1: Oh my god.
- 19:17Speaker 2: Yeah. So we're talking at a really interesting time in
- 19:20Speaker 2: my life where it's like a turning point.
- 19:25Speaker 1: What drew you to brainspotting?
- 19:29Speaker 2: Yeah, So I love talking about this work and the
- 19:35Speaker 2: reason for that is, you know, maybe it can help
- 19:38Speaker 2: somebody else who is in a similar situation. When I
- 19:44Speaker 2: talk about, you know, all the therapy and recovery processes
- 19:48Speaker 2: that I went through in rehabs. You know, I did
- 19:51Speaker 2: that for eight years, and no one talked about my trauma.
- 19:57Speaker 2: Like we paid some pretty pennies to the rehabs and
- 20:01Speaker 2: you know these places, and no one talked about trauma,
- 20:03Speaker 2: and no one talked about cultural you know, it's like
- 20:06Speaker 2: just you just get plopped into the medical model, the
- 20:09Speaker 2: disease model of addiction, and really wasn't a lot of
- 20:13Speaker 2: conversation around historical, generational, ancestral cultural trauma. And so I've been,
- 20:23Speaker 2: you know, seeing therapists for a long long time. Never
- 20:26Speaker 2: I've always really been connected with somebody. And after being
- 20:31Speaker 2: sober for seven years, okay, so seven years into recovery,
- 20:35Speaker 2: I was talking to a friend and she mentioned that
- 20:38Speaker 2: she had like done this new therapy called brain spotting,
- 20:41Speaker 2: and I was like, well that sounds interesting. That's a
- 20:43Speaker 2: weird word. Okay, Like I'm curious and very very I'm
- 20:48Speaker 2: hungry for knowledge and hungry for learning. And so I
- 20:52Speaker 2: decided to reach out to her therapists and set up
- 20:55Speaker 2: a brain spotting therapy session. I go, and we do
- 21:01Speaker 2: you know, we do the whole session, after the intake
- 21:04Speaker 2: or whatever. And I walked out of that appointment and
- 21:09Speaker 2: thought to myself, I just did six months of therapy
- 21:13Speaker 2: in an hour, Like, where the F was this? You know,
- 21:18Speaker 2: all of these years that I was suffering, that I
- 21:22Speaker 2: almost died so many times that there was no hope,
- 21:25Speaker 2: there was no way out. Where has this been? Because
- 21:28Speaker 2: talk therapy really wasn't getting into any of the deeper stuff,
- 21:34Speaker 2: and I was just entranced by it. Looked it up
- 21:38Speaker 2: on the Internet to find out what is it like
- 21:41Speaker 2: to get trained. I was going through my master's program
- 21:43Speaker 2: at the time, and ironically there was a training schedule
- 21:47Speaker 2: just a couple months later in my town and I
- 21:50Speaker 2: signed up. And I remember the day I went. I
- 21:53Speaker 2: could feel my wise and well ancestors just cheering, like
- 21:58Speaker 2: I could feel them just like, yeah, you're in the
- 22:00Speaker 2: right place. You're in the right place. And I knew
- 22:02Speaker 2: it was going to be a big part of my life.
- 22:03Speaker 2: And you know, fast forward now to twenty twenty five,
- 22:08Speaker 2: seven years later, I'm training people in brain spotting and
- 22:13Speaker 2: the best part is that I had the privilege of
- 22:16Speaker 2: bringing brain spotting to India, So there's this massive full
- 22:20Speaker 2: circle beautiful. We're teaching the training this weekend overnight, so
- 22:26Speaker 2: like I stay up all night and teach, and we've
- 22:28Speaker 2: got about thirty therapists and we have about one hundred
- 22:31Speaker 2: people at this point trained in India doing brain spotting
- 22:33Speaker 2: in the last three years. So yeah, that's how I
- 22:36Speaker 2: got involved. Once I went, I went every week for
- 22:39Speaker 2: years and I've done a lot of my own healing.
- 22:42Speaker 2: I don't believe in doing healing work for others if
- 22:45Speaker 2: you're not doing it for yourself. It's just not part
- 22:48Speaker 2: of my ethos. And you know, how can you give
- 22:51Speaker 2: something that you don't You don't have, So we can
- 22:55Speaker 2: only take people as far as we've attuned to ourselves.
- 22:59Speaker 1: So yeah, for the listeners who maybe aren't familiar with
- 23:03Speaker 1: brain spotting, develop a doctor David Grant, who I've been
- 23:08Speaker 1: interviewed on this podcast. Oh cool, Yeah, how would you
- 23:13Speaker 1: just give us the nutshell of what brain spotting is?
- 23:17Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, brain spotting is a somatic brain body based
- 23:24Speaker 2: neuro experiential approach to trauma treatment or any kind of anything,
- 23:30Speaker 2: any anything that has a resonance in the physical world
- 23:35Speaker 2: and a body. Right, So we use eye positions that
- 23:40Speaker 2: correlate to the sensory information that we're wanting to work
- 23:45Speaker 2: on our process. So, for example, we are maybe talking
- 23:50Speaker 2: about you know, someone comes in and they're like, I
- 23:52Speaker 2: keep having a really distressing memory come up and it
- 23:55Speaker 2: just it won't leave. And I would ask them in
- 23:59Speaker 2: my own okay, let's get the felt sense of that memory.
- 24:03Speaker 2: You know, where do you notice it? What's it like
- 24:05Speaker 2: for you? How is it real to you?
- 24:07Speaker 1: This?
- 24:07Speaker 2: How it shows up for you? And I say, how
- 24:09Speaker 2: I feel gittery, I feel like, my throat is tight,
- 24:13Speaker 2: my heart's beating, And so we would use either a
- 24:17Speaker 2: gaze or we would use something like this pointer that
- 24:19Speaker 2: I have. It's an extendable pointer, and we will scan
- 24:23Speaker 2: the line of sight and look for a brain spot.
- 24:27Speaker 2: That what people feel is when I'm moving across their
- 24:31Speaker 2: line of sight their visual field, that there's going to
- 24:34Speaker 2: be a certain spot that actually like makes that sensory
- 24:38Speaker 2: experience more intense. And why does that matter? Why is
- 24:44Speaker 2: that relevant? What we theorize is happening in brain spotting
- 24:48Speaker 2: is that the eyes are an extension of our subcortical brain.
- 24:52Speaker 2: Our subcortical brain is where all of our trauma experiences
- 24:56Speaker 2: are held. Our fight, flight, freeze, fond responses, are survival reflexes,
- 25:02Speaker 2: motor coordination memories are all stored there, and so the
- 25:06Speaker 2: eyes are really access points to that subcortical information, and
- 25:12Speaker 2: the brain uses the eyes to scan for information out
- 25:16Speaker 2: in the world. I'm looking at you right now, my
- 25:17Speaker 2: brain is seeing you through my eyes. I'm registering, oh,
- 25:21Speaker 2: this is guy. We're on a podcast, right, So that's
- 25:24Speaker 2: outside world coming in. But brain spotting discovered that the
- 25:30Speaker 2: brain also scans and looks for information within itself and
- 25:36Speaker 2: uses the eyes to do that. So if you've ever
- 25:38Speaker 2: like stared off into space, right and you were daydreaming,
- 25:42Speaker 2: where you were looking when you were daydreaming, that spot
- 25:47Speaker 2: is where that information was held inside your brain, and
- 25:51Speaker 2: so it helps us to focus on it, pull it
- 25:53Speaker 2: up and start to process. So the frame that we
- 25:57Speaker 2: create and brain spotting allows people to process that sensory
- 26:02Speaker 2: information that's stuck right, hypervigilance or hypo arousal, whatever, all
- 26:06Speaker 2: the fight flight freeze fawn responses are. We allow them
- 26:12Speaker 2: to metabolize and then go back to homeostasis, and that's
- 26:17Speaker 2: done through deep, deep attunement both relationally with the client
- 26:23Speaker 2: and also being highly attuned to the neurophysical that's what's
- 26:27Speaker 2: happening in the client's nervous system, and tracking it and
- 26:31Speaker 2: trusting that every single living being creature on this planet
- 26:36Speaker 2: has a will for survival. It's deeply intrinsically innately hardwired
- 26:45Speaker 2: in us to survive even through the hardest of things, right,
- 26:50Speaker 2: And so brain spotting leaves a lot of space for
- 26:53Speaker 2: that organic self healing capacity. You know, if you get
- 26:57Speaker 2: a cut on your hand, if it's enough cut, your
- 27:00Speaker 2: body's going to take care of it. That's what I'm
- 27:03Speaker 2: talking about. We all have that, and so the frame
- 27:06Speaker 2: and brain Spotting allows people to process but also for
- 27:10Speaker 2: their brain to go where they need to go, instead
- 27:13Speaker 2: of us as a clinician being very protocolized or strict
- 27:17Speaker 2: or structured, so we really let the client's nervous system
- 27:21Speaker 2: lead the way and reorganizing and reorienting itself to safety.
- 27:26Speaker 1: I can imagine so many listeners listening to you going,
- 27:32Speaker 1: oh my god, I got to work with this woman.
- 27:35Speaker 1: I have to work with this woman's I mean, it's
- 27:39Speaker 1: so much of it is you know who, We respond
- 27:43Speaker 1: to the person, and you have this incredible ability to
- 27:48Speaker 1: share your experience and what you've gone through. So, how
- 27:55Speaker 1: as we kind of wind down here, you mentioned you're
- 27:58Speaker 1: leading workshops or teachings. Is this available to anyone.
- 28:05Speaker 2: If you're a healer, yes, you can go to a training.
- 28:08Speaker 2: We don't in brain Spotting have limits to you needing
- 28:12Speaker 2: to be licensed, but we ask that when you train
- 28:17Speaker 2: that you're working in the scope of what you're training
- 28:19Speaker 2: and your knowledge basis. So yeah, leading workshops. I am
- 28:24Speaker 2: a caseload. It's full. I have a waitlist right now
- 28:26Speaker 2: that's very, very long. And my partner, my husband, also
- 28:32Speaker 2: has trained in brain spotting and he's recently finished his
- 28:35Speaker 2: life coaching certification, so he's taking clients and we also
- 28:40Speaker 2: host retreats a handful of times throughout the year. We
- 28:44Speaker 2: have a lot of other offerings. So there's ways to connect.
- 28:48Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk more about that. How do people
- 28:51Speaker 1: learn more about you and what you're doing. What's the
- 28:54Speaker 1: best way?
- 28:55Speaker 2: Yeah, So if you go to awaken Consulting Services dot com,
- 29:00Speaker 2: you'll have access to our event schedule, our training schedule,
- 29:05Speaker 2: and there's a tab on there for Awakened Roots and
- 29:08Speaker 2: that is the holistic arm of our business as well.
- 29:11Speaker 2: So we have a group, breathwork workshops, reiki training's a
- 29:16Speaker 2: lot of energy work. I'm quite passionate about the metaphysical
- 29:21Speaker 2: aspect of life as well. So those are the.
- 29:24Speaker 1: Ways we didn't didn't really even get into. I want
- 29:26Speaker 1: we'll have to have you back to talk about that,
- 29:28Speaker 1: Yeah seriously. Yeah, all right, So that's Awakened Consulting Services
- 29:36Speaker 1: dot Com. We'll have that linked up here at the
- 29:39Speaker 1: show notes page at the Traumadapispodcast dot com. Look, you're incredible,
- 29:44Speaker 1: you are, and you're amazing and you're so friggin inspiring.
- 29:47Speaker 1: Love to have you back, because I realized there's a
- 29:51Speaker 1: lot to talk about that we didn't really get into.
- 29:54Speaker 1: But it was a pleasure having you on here.
- 29:57Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you for having me.
- 29:59Speaker 1: All right, take care,