Phase 4 slides

Brainspotting Trainings Inc.

Phase Four

Training manual

David Grand, PhD · developer and trainer

brainspotting.com

“Where you look still affects how you feel.”

The Evolution of Brainspotting: Healing through a Neuroexperiential Lens

David Grand, PhD

Sandy Hook

Report of findings from the community survey, September 2016. The Foundation addresses the short and long term unmet needs of individuals and the Newtown community arising from the events at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.

nshcf.org

Brainspotting was found to be the most effective mode of therapy used in Newtown–Sandy Hook, Connecticut for survivors of the 12/14 school shooting.

Brainspotting: the efficacy of a new therapy approach for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in comparison to EMDR

Hildebrand, Grand and Stemmler · Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, Vol 5 No 1 (2017)

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Dubai, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Ireland, Latvia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Samoa, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, U.S., Ukraine, UK, Uruguay

Three days

Brainspotting Phase 4

Day 1

Dreamspotting and Projected Image Spotting

This Phase 4 training is designed to be highly interactive.

Question

What is the frame in Brainspotting?

Question

Why do we use a frame?

Question

What is the shape of a frame?

Perhaps the shape of the Brainspotting frame is like an amoeba, which constantly alters its shape based on circumstance.

Question

Is the Brainspotting therapist outside the frame, inside the frame, or in the frame?

Facing the uncertainty of the client’s 1 to 4 quadrillion synaptic connections, we set and hold a frame around the somatic and affective activation of their experience.

The purpose of the frame is to provide neural and experiential focus for the client.

Thus the frame activates and potentiates focused mindfulness that leads to systemic change.

Microanalysis of a Brainspotting session 1

Dreamspotting and
Projected Image Spotting

Client memories, fixed images or flashbacks can be, or are, projected on to the wall behind the therapist.

The image that is spontaneously projected positionally creates a simultaneous eye position, or Brainspot.

Projected Image Spotting

Dreamspotting is the application of Projected Image Spotting to dreamwork.

Freud called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious”.

The whole brain is active during dreams, from the brainstem to the neocortex.

Question

How often do your clients bring a dream to their sessions?

Question

How often do dreams come up in your clients’ sessions or during their processing?

When the client presents a dream for processing, the therapist first asks if the client is visualizing it.

The therapist then asks the client, “Where do you see the dream on the wall behind me?”

The client is guided to gaze at the Dreamspot and follow their processing wherever it goes.

Periodically the therapist guides the client to go back to the dream to see what it looks like and feels like.

The dream may have faded or gone away, and something else may have arisen.

The end of the Dreamspotting process is organically determined.

Dreamspotting

Dreamspotting

Brainspotting Phase 4

Day 2

The Expansion Model

Question

What therapist exposure generates the most intense limbic countertransference?

As trauma therapists we are exposed to cruelty such as perpetration against children, as well as domestic abuse including assault and murder.

We are also exposed to existential traumas, both natural and man-made.

All therapists hold their own personal vulnerability, both conscious and unconscious.

Question

What exposure triggers you the most?

Microanalysis of a Brainspotting session 2

The Expansion Model
of Brainspotting

Expansion can be used when the client reaches a squeezed lemon zero.

The therapist guides the client to return awareness to the site of the original body vulnerability. As it has been cleared, it becomes a site of body possibility.

Processing from this expansion spot can be done for a brief or extended period of time.

Brainspotting Sports Performance and Creativity Enhancement are examples of the Expansion Model.

Clients can come in solely for expansion work. This can include performance, creativity, personal growth, spirituality and raised consciousness.

The therapist explores the experience of expansion in the client’s body and then guides the client to locate the expansion spot. Multispotting is common in Expansion work.

The therapist and client hold the Expansion Frame together and openly follow wherever the process leads.

The Expansion Model

The Expansion Model

Brainspotting Phase 4

Day 3

Bodyspotting

Much attention is given to body memory, while less attention is given to emotional memory.

Emotional memories and body memories can be felt together or separately.

Emotions felt in adulthood may actually be memories. Powerful emotions may be unrecognized manifestations of flashback.

This is especially the case with sadness, grief, anxiety and panic.

Panic attacks and phobias may be unrecognized flashbacks of traumatic experiences, perhaps from preverbal development.

Brainspotting can be used to frame powerful, abiding emotional states and gain access to early traumatic experiences.

Microanalysis of a Brainspotting session 3

Bodyspotting

I handed the pointer to a client to do some selfspotting with proximity. He asked if it was okay for him to use the pointer to touch and press a spot on his body.

The client went into deep somatic processing which he found very helpful. I also observed that as soon as he pressed the pointer on a bodyspot, his eyes immediately locked on a gazespot.

In sessions, the client and I continued to use this approach, at times employing two or more pointers on different bodyspots.

Bodyspotting appears to be different than acupressure or energy tapping, because the bodyspots were found solely intuitively and were matched with spontaneous eye positions.

Although highly experimental, I have found Bodyspotting to be very effective with a variety of clients. It reflects that beyond eye positions, there are many sensory avenues for accessing the neurobiology and releasing trauma.

Bodyspotting

Bodyspotting