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The Field of Knowing
Paul Gebka-Scuffins • Oct 10, 2018
A therapist’s experience of Brainspotting:
Monika Gos interviews the psychotherapist Paul Gebka-Scuffins on his experience of using Brainspotting in his private practice.
WHAT IS BRAINSPOTTING?
Brainspotting (BSP) locates points in the client’s visual field that help to access unprocessed trauma in the subcortical brain. BSP was discovered in 2003 by David Grand, Ph.D. Over 13,000 therapists have been trained in BSP internationally.
BSP is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms. It provides a simultaneous form of diagnosis and treatment, enhanced with Bilateral sound, which is deep, direct, and powerful yet focused and containing.
“Brainspotting is based on the profound attunement of the therapist with the patient, finding a somatic cue and extinguishing it by down-regulating the amygdala. It isn’t just PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) activation that is facilitated, it is homeostasis.”
-- Robert Scaer, MD, “The Trauma Spectrum"
"It seemed...as we looked with clarity through the window of tolerance, it revealed an expansive and compassionate field of knowing for both of us.”
M: What drew you to Brainspotting?
P: I am trained in CBT, DBT, and EMDR. Using EMDR enhanced my clinical practice and recovery rates noticeably with clients who experienced PTSD and complex grief. It made me aware that the brain has enormous capacity to heal itself, quicker than traditional talking therapies can keep up with. It challenged me to think that all our formulations and interpretations can get in the way of that healing. It was humbling to realize that I needed to ‘get out of the way’ of the healing process. This led me to explore Brainspotting, which seemed to be the next evolutionary step from EMDR for me.
Brainspotting is a resource model that assumes that the brain has huge resources to heal itself. It is also a relational model that helps the therapist to listen and give feedback faster than words alone can. It is like exchanging enormous amounts of information by wi-fi. But instead of wi-fi, it is transpersonal information being transferred back and forth between therapist and client, i.e. accurate empathy.
M: Can you give an example of how Brainspotting was useful in therapy?
Yes. My very first brainspotting client was a well-spoken intelligent older man. He was seeing me now for perhaps 25 sessions of CBT and EMDR. Initially he came to see me for relationship problems. But in time we identified early life traumas and attachment issues. When our therapy sessions would begin, a flood of frantic self-analysis would flow out of him. He would barely take a breath, and I could barely interrupt.
He seemed immune to the language of CBT: he would throw away distorted thinking styles like children’s letter blocks. Formulations would be rationalized away, just doodles fit for the waste bin. He could think and talk rings around me. He was trying very hard to avoid feeling his most painful memories. Even identifying major traumas in his timeline was too prescriptive and precarious and mentioning a trauma memory could send him into physical convulsions and tears.
He vacillated between the two extremes of hypo-arousal and hyper-arousal. Half of therapy would be him self-analysing and expounding his own theories of his problems (which blocked out him experiencing any painful emotions) and the second half he would physically shake and tremble, begin moaning and weeping like a child. His physical movements would be involuntary, and his face would contort with deep emotional pain. He looked like a lost boy. It was heartbreaking to see this gentleman’s dignity and stature drain away before my eyes.
In trauma terms, my client was vacillating outside the window of tolerance. When a person is within the window of tolerance, it is generally the case that the brain is functioning well and can effectively process stimuli. That person is likely to be able to reflect, think rationally, and make decisions calmly without feeling either overwhelmed or withdrawn.
For our first Brainspotting session, I invited him to put on the headphones immediately at the beginning of the session. Thereby allowing no time for diversional conversation. It played gentle music mixed with auditory bi-lateral stimulation. We identified a recent relationship upset, the emotion and sensation he felt when he thought about it. We found a Brainspot that correlated with the uncomfortable feeling. I asked him to just notice what came up as he focused on that spot, perhaps images and sensations. In silence I noticed mindfully what was happening for him and he was noticing what was happening for himself.
It was uncomfortable initially, because the Brainspot we identified was just right of my visual field and the client would stare directly into my eyes. He began to twitch and shake slightly.
I just looked, listened and nodded, sometimes giving single word encouragements to stay with the reprocessing, “yes”, “good”.
The client then shared that he teleported back to memory when he was 7yrs old, his strict religious father would beat him severely with a belt, for his wrongdoings. His father would say “look me in the eyes, when I punish you”. The client said he remembered that he would see the hate in his father’s eyes and with his mind’s eye look to the left of his father’s eyes to avoid it. In Brainspotting we call that a resource spot. He found a way to look away and not feel the full intensity of the abuse. The shaking and jerking movements were him reliving the beatings.
We stayed with the Brainspotting and I kept looking in my client’s eyes. He could see I was witnessing and feeling compassion for him. We were sharing this wordless knowing together. The client began to cry and shared that he felt deep love and compassion coming out of my eyes and it seemed to soften and change the memory. His involuntary movements began to subside.
It seemed to me, that Brainspotting held my client safely within the window of tolerance and we discovered an important specific memory that would not be found in history taking. The level of empathy was deep, accurate and profound.
There was a principal of uncertainty at work, because I didn’t know where the Brainspot would take us. As Brainspotters say, I followed the client “in the tail of the comet”. I followed his processing closely, feeling where he was going, with minimum words, with no interpretations. A profound attunement occured between the client and I. This is the real skill one learns doing Brainspotting. The fear extinguishes and brings about homeostasis.
The experience, it seemed, as we looked with clarity through the window of tolerance, it revealed an expansive and compassionate field of knowing for both of us.
It reminded me of a poem by Rumi, called The Field.
The Field by Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn't make any sense.
Brainspotting (BSP) locates points in the client’s visual field that help to access unprocessed trauma in the subcortical brain. BSP was discovered in 2003 by David Grand, Ph.D. Over 13,000 therapists have been trained in BSP internationally.
BSP is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms. It provides a simultaneous form of diagnosis and treatment, enhanced with Bilateral sound, which is deep, direct, and powerful yet focused and containing.
“Brainspotting is based on the profound attunement of the therapist with the patient, finding a somatic cue and extinguishing it by down-regulating the amygdala. It isn’t just PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) activation that is facilitated, it is homeostasis.”
-- Robert Scaer, MD, “The Trauma Spectrum"
"It seemed...as we looked with clarity through the window of tolerance, it revealed an expansive and compassionate field of knowing for both of us.”
M: What drew you to Brainspotting?
P: I am trained in CBT, DBT, and EMDR. Using EMDR enhanced my clinical practice and recovery rates noticeably with clients who experienced PTSD and complex grief. It made me aware that the brain has enormous capacity to heal itself, quicker than traditional talking therapies can keep up with. It challenged me to think that all our formulations and interpretations can get in the way of that healing. It was humbling to realize that I needed to ‘get out of the way’ of the healing process. This led me to explore Brainspotting, which seemed to be the next evolutionary step from EMDR for me.
Brainspotting is a resource model that assumes that the brain has huge resources to heal itself. It is also a relational model that helps the therapist to listen and give feedback faster than words alone can. It is like exchanging enormous amounts of information by wi-fi. But instead of wi-fi, it is transpersonal information being transferred back and forth between therapist and client, i.e. accurate empathy.
M: Can you give an example of how Brainspotting was useful in therapy?
Yes. My very first brainspotting client was a well-spoken intelligent older man. He was seeing me now for perhaps 25 sessions of CBT and EMDR. Initially he came to see me for relationship problems. But in time we identified early life traumas and attachment issues. When our therapy sessions would begin, a flood of frantic self-analysis would flow out of him. He would barely take a breath, and I could barely interrupt.
He seemed immune to the language of CBT: he would throw away distorted thinking styles like children’s letter blocks. Formulations would be rationalized away, just doodles fit for the waste bin. He could think and talk rings around me. He was trying very hard to avoid feeling his most painful memories. Even identifying major traumas in his timeline was too prescriptive and precarious and mentioning a trauma memory could send him into physical convulsions and tears.
He vacillated between the two extremes of hypo-arousal and hyper-arousal. Half of therapy would be him self-analysing and expounding his own theories of his problems (which blocked out him experiencing any painful emotions) and the second half he would physically shake and tremble, begin moaning and weeping like a child. His physical movements would be involuntary, and his face would contort with deep emotional pain. He looked like a lost boy. It was heartbreaking to see this gentleman’s dignity and stature drain away before my eyes.
In trauma terms, my client was vacillating outside the window of tolerance. When a person is within the window of tolerance, it is generally the case that the brain is functioning well and can effectively process stimuli. That person is likely to be able to reflect, think rationally, and make decisions calmly without feeling either overwhelmed or withdrawn.
For our first Brainspotting session, I invited him to put on the headphones immediately at the beginning of the session. Thereby allowing no time for diversional conversation. It played gentle music mixed with auditory bi-lateral stimulation. We identified a recent relationship upset, the emotion and sensation he felt when he thought about it. We found a Brainspot that correlated with the uncomfortable feeling. I asked him to just notice what came up as he focused on that spot, perhaps images and sensations. In silence I noticed mindfully what was happening for him and he was noticing what was happening for himself.
It was uncomfortable initially, because the Brainspot we identified was just right of my visual field and the client would stare directly into my eyes. He began to twitch and shake slightly.
I just looked, listened and nodded, sometimes giving single word encouragements to stay with the reprocessing, “yes”, “good”.
The client then shared that he teleported back to memory when he was 7yrs old, his strict religious father would beat him severely with a belt, for his wrongdoings. His father would say “look me in the eyes, when I punish you”. The client said he remembered that he would see the hate in his father’s eyes and with his mind’s eye look to the left of his father’s eyes to avoid it. In Brainspotting we call that a resource spot. He found a way to look away and not feel the full intensity of the abuse. The shaking and jerking movements were him reliving the beatings.
We stayed with the Brainspotting and I kept looking in my client’s eyes. He could see I was witnessing and feeling compassion for him. We were sharing this wordless knowing together. The client began to cry and shared that he felt deep love and compassion coming out of my eyes and it seemed to soften and change the memory. His involuntary movements began to subside.
It seemed to me, that Brainspotting held my client safely within the window of tolerance and we discovered an important specific memory that would not be found in history taking. The level of empathy was deep, accurate and profound.
There was a principal of uncertainty at work, because I didn’t know where the Brainspot would take us. As Brainspotters say, I followed the client “in the tail of the comet”. I followed his processing closely, feeling where he was going, with minimum words, with no interpretations. A profound attunement occured between the client and I. This is the real skill one learns doing Brainspotting. The fear extinguishes and brings about homeostasis.
The experience, it seemed, as we looked with clarity through the window of tolerance, it revealed an expansive and compassionate field of knowing for both of us.
It reminded me of a poem by Rumi, called The Field.
The Field by Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn't make any sense.
