How We Do It
“Most people who come to me have already done a lot of therapy. They often know what the issue is, where it came from and what they’re feeling. Many also know how they want to be feeling instead. But, knowing this doesn’t make them feel any better. Why? You can’t think your way into or out of a feeling. It takes more than thoughts to change these feelings, which is where *bi-lateral therapy models come into the picture. At In-Sight, we won’t just talk about it, we’ll fix it.”
Brena Lever LICSW, LCSW, MSW
*using a form of bi-lateral, or “side to side” stimulation, including tactile, audio and visual means.
Brena being interviewed by KING 5 about Trauma Therapy for our returning soldiers and their families.
EMDR
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an advanced “bi-lateral” psychotherapy model that combines psychology with physiology in a way that allows a person to identify and “clear” past traumatic events. These events can be as insignificant as a negative comment from a parent during childhood, or as catastrophic as a life-threatening event. Often, we are blind to the fact that they are even there, having a negative effect on our daily lives. You don’t need to live with these feelings. EMDR takes the process of traditional talk therapy a step further; it not only identifies the problem and its cause, it actually fixes the problem, permanently.
How does EMDR work? Each of us has 2 different memory networks: adaptive and non-adaptive. Adaptive memories are needed to react to current circumstances; for example, you see a car speeding toward you and your body automatically reacts to the fear of being hit. When the accident is over, these memories should get stored away into your non-adaptive memory. A problem occurs when a memory gets stuck, or frozen, in our adaptive memory, causing us to have responses that are no longer fitting to the situation. The simple act of driving shouldn’t produce the same fear and anxiety as that experienced during an actual accident. Instead of reacting to only the current event (driving), our bodies react to the current event plus all the similar or related events from the past (a previous accident). There can also be memories that include situations that don’t seem to have any connection to the incident, but somehow have attached themselves, adding even more to this reaction. EMDR takes those experiences stuck in our adaptive memory, and moves them into our non-adaptive memory, where they belong. EMDR has been successfully applied to many areas, including:
Depression
Anxiety/panic disorders and Phobias
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Relationship issues
Intimacy
Procrastination
Performance Stress and Enhancement
- Sports, the Arts, Business, and others
Chemical dependency
Anything else that is getting in your way
Allow yourself to expect more from your therapy.
Brainspotting
Throughout our lives, we experience events which can cause significant physical and/or emotional injury and distress. It can be a single isolated experience or can occur as a series of small events, which over time accumulate in our body. Either way, these events are traumatic and can leave us with feelings of sadness, anxiousness, anger or other types of emotions. Typically, we aren’t even aware that these past events are affecting us on a daily basis. We may have a degree of awareness as to what might be at the root of a feeling. In other words, we might think we know why we’re feeling a certain way. But there are often additional connections that are typically beyond the reach of our conscious mind and therefore not accessible through talking alone. We can spend years talking about the feelings we’re experiencing and trying to figure out logically where they have come from. We might even develop ways to live with or “cope” with these feelings. By getting to the core issue, we allow our brains to process the material that is causing the emotional or physical reaction. It’s one thing to know why we shouldn’t feel a certain way, it’s quite another to actually be free of those feelings.
Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method that connects current emotional and physical reactions to events that happened in the past. For example, a person who suffered a car accident years earlier might continue to become highly anxious while driving. When we identify a “Brainspot”, we enable the brain to locate and process past experiences that have, for whatever reason, gotten stuck. Once these past traumas are un-stuck, our bodies will no longer react to them. Brainspotting treatment combines psychology with physiology, bridging the mindbody connection.
Brena has received advanced-level training from David Grand, Ph.D., the developer of Brainspotting, who is an internationally recognized trauma expert.