In this episode, I chat with my therapist, Susannah Muller, LMFT, about brainspotting for creativity. I have actually chatted with Susannah about brainspotting before for this podcast. That was the first episode I ever recorded for this podcast and was eventually episode 5. Thankfully Susannah was willing to join me again for this conversation. If you’re not familiar with brainspotting, here’s a quick definition from brainspotting.com. “Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotion/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging systems. Brainspotting locates points in the client’s visual field that help to access unprocessed trauma in the subcortical brain.” Some background on brainspotting…
The Newton-Sandy Hook Community Foundation was formed in response to the December 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The mission of the foundation is: “The mission of the Foundation is to devote itself to furthering and supporting operations and activities which address the short-term and long-term unmet needs of individuals and the Newtown community arising from the tragic events at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.”
In their report from 2016, the Newton Sandy Hook Commmunity Foundation surveyed adults in the community, including parents, family members, teachers and staff, first responders to the tragedy and a few other groups. One of the things the survey wanted to find out was which therapeutic interventions were most successful for the adults. The numbers indicate that brainspotting was by a significant amount the most effective with 59% of the people surveyed saying that it was “very effective” on a four-point scale. Traditional talk therapy had a “very effective” rate of 25%.
Susannah is based in San Diego and is currently seeing clients remotely for brainspotting and other therapy sessions.
Susannah Muller online: http://brainspotting2heal.com
Brainspotting study by Newton-Sandy Hook Community Foundation: https://brainspotting.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2016-NSHCF-Community-Assessment-Report.pdf
Brainspotting case studies: https://brainspotting.com/about-bsp/research-and-case-studies/
Eric:
Thanks for joining me, Susannah.
Susannah:
Good to be here.
Eric:
Thank you for taking the time to do this with me again. We had recorded a previous episode. And that was actually the first one that I ever recorded. Thanks for the mulligan.
Susannah:
That was the first time I ever did one also.
Eric:
So, so we both get a mulligan. So today we’re going to talk about brainspotting again. But we’re going to talk about it specifically in terms of enhancing creativity, right? So let’s just start off with the most basic question there is. What is brainspotting?
Susannah:
So brainspotting is a cutting edge neuroscience technique. It is a rapid and effective method of therapy that helps to locate within the neurobiological system where we store trauma capsules. Trauma capsules are the work of Dr. Richard Scaer. He talks about how when we experienced a trauma and the body gets overwhelmed, the brain encapsulates that experience and holds it in the nervous system. Uh, there’s not like a serious capsule in there, but what there is, is a network of neural activity that related to that experience that hasn’t been processed. So brainspotting is a reprocessing brain reprocessing therapy where we locate those using the visual field and we process them and that gives us better coherence. It gives us better creativity. It heals us from anxiety and depression as well as other things.
Eric:
So when you say process, does that mean you’re letting it run its course somehow…?
Susannah:
In a sense, yes. So the first thing we do is to get the person activated around whatever the issue is, say it was um, a rejection. An actor went out for an audition and did poorly, uh, we might get them activated in their body, feeling that feeling they felt at that time. And then we use their vision to locate a spot by reading their body and their neurobiological signals for where that neural network activity is. And once we find it, then we hold that eye position. And when we do that, it’s an instinctive thing. The lower brain, the subcortical brain clicks on and it starts to heal that. And we call that processing. Uh, processing is a unique thing for each individual. People process in different ways, which is kind of the fun part for me cause I see people process and all different ways. I have one client almost looks like she’s dancing when she’s processing, her body’s moving all over the place. I have other clients who get very calm and quiet and their eyes close and they curl up in a little ball and they don’t say anything for the entire session. I have other clients who will tell me afterwards that it was like watching a movie of their life that they saw all these different memories come up and play out. Some clients have a more symbolic or metaphorical kind of experience will they’ll see like I was on the side of a river and my dad was on the other side of a river and we built the bridge, you know, just all kinds of amazing things come out of it.
Eric:
And all of these manifestations are displayed, I guess, displays of emotion or processing that you see. Are they all, um, kind of related somehow to the trauma that’s being experienced? So if it’s something scary, they might show signs of being scared?
Susannah:
They might, yes. Um, it can be intense at times. I’ve worked recently with a woman who had a near drowning experience, um, and as we got deeper into that experience and the processing, you know, she was pretty scared and pretty upset, but it was a finite process. By the end of the session, she had gotten to a place of peace and ended up canceling her next appointment. She only needed that one appointment. She felt great afterwards and all the symptoms she was having in her life had gone away from that experience. Yeah. So it can be intense at times, but the payoff is really great. Yeah.
Eric:
So you mentioned some examples already, but um, what are some more examples of how this is currently being used even outside of creative performance?
Susannah:
Yeah, mostly it’s being used in the general therapeutic world for people suffering with anxiety, depression, anger, PTSD, trauma, other things like that. And what we do is we go into those experiences, we locate those trauma capsules and they process them. Um, once the brain gets started, the brain has what we call the trauma memory network. And within there, there are links to other memories. So all memories around, uh, that actors, uh, auditioning might be linked. We don’t know exactly how the brain will link it. Each individual is different. But what happens often is they’ll start in one place and then they go to another place and then they go to another place and then they go to another place. And we don’t know how long that will take necessarily. We don’t know what will link to that. It might go all the way back to childhood. Second grade, something happened when a teacher called up in front of the class and people laughed at them or something like that. So the brain will take care of that for us in a sense. We follow the brain where it wants to go cause we believe deeply in the innate healing power of the brain and that the brain has what it needs to do that. And we’re just basically just unlocking the door to that.
Eric:
So in the case of someone doing it for trauma, you start with a focal point. And by addressing that focal point, you might unlock further memories that are affecting this individual.
Susannah:
It’s definitely possible.
Eric:
So how, what does that, does that same scenario play out if someone is doing it for creative performance?
Susannah:
Uh, quite possibly. You know, creative people often have a lot of rejection, a lot of being told they’re doing it wrong or they’re not good enough. Um, a lot of being told you have to do it a certain way. And all of those are traumas. They’re not what we’d call the capital T traumas where your life is in danger, but they’re what we call little T traumas where you experienced, you know, that feeling of being overwhelmed or rejected or um, upset, powerlessness, those kinds of feelings. And so it may be that we’re talking about, you know, this current play that you’re trying out for and that you’ve got a call back for, but you’re worried it might be the last call back you had, but once we open that up, we don’t know where that is going to go. Uh, we will definitely process through that, but then it might jump to something. It might be like, oh, well, you know, my boyfriend was yelling at me and for some reason that’s coming up right now. And then we just say, just go with it. Just go with it. Your brain knows what it needs to heal. And so we would just follow that.
Eric:
And when you’re starting out with the, with the person who’s trying brainspotting for creative performance, you mentioned that you try to take them back to that situation of rejection.
Susannah:
It depends. Yeah, it depends. If they’re coming in with a specific goal, like I want to ace this call back, or if they’re coming in and just saying, I’m feeling blocked, I need help. Um, so it depends on how they’re framing their goal. But sometimes people just like, I think I told you I had two writers who’ve come in with writer’s block, um, and they don’t know where to go. They didn’t know what to do, they’re procrastinating, etc. And generally what we do in that is, what I’ve done with them is I start with brainspotting on the procrastination and the delay. And usually what comes out of that is there’s some kind of fear going on underneath, fear of success. Maybe if you feel you’re a failure, if you live rejection, fear of people thinking they are stupid, fear of judgment, you know, those kinds of things. And once we process on that, and we’d probably spend the majority of the time on that, maybe 20, 25 minutes, then we stop and we shift gears and we go to a second brain spot and we have them come up with a time when they felt like they were just in the flow. The creativity was just coming naturally. Uh, you know, the words were flying off as fast as they could type. And then we have them find a brain spot that relates to that and then we have them process on that and that will strengthen that neural connection to that feeling. And in both cases, with the writers that I worked with, they both went home and, you know, call me the next day and said I couldn’t stop writing. Like it worked really great for both of them.
Eric:
So you’re actually creating two different brains paths, one, to address failures in the past and one to whatever’s blocking them now.
Susannah:
And that often can be failures in the past, but it could also be their imagination of what could happen. And then the other is to simulate, stimulate that feeling of strength in it.
Eric:
So this is probably a good point to ask. How does this, uh, how is the same or different than a flow state?
Susannah:
Uh, well, a flow state has a brainspot associated with it and that is what we’re trying to find and to strengthen for them. So flow state is when you’re in your unconscious brain, the subcortical brain, you’re not thinking right, you’re deeply in the moment just experiencing, reacting, creating. Um, and you’re not overthinking, analyzing, worrying about this and that. Um, and so the subcortical brain is what brainspotting does so beautifully, is it gets in touch with the subcortical brain. It bypasses that neocortex at the top of our brain, which is our overthinking brain. It’s where, you know, problem solving, language analysis, all of that stuff is up in the neocortex, um, and a lot of the, um, negative thinking that an artist might have, like, I’m not good enough or I can’t do it, or you know, that that’s going to be up in the neocortex too. So the more you can kind of get down into that unconscious where, um, you’re not as inhibited where you don’t have a lot of these trauma capsules in your way, um, the more you’re gonna be able to be at that flow state.
Eric:
So does this have some similarities to meditation then because of that? That’s one of the goals of meditation is to get out of that thinking brain.
Susannah:
Yeah, the higher brain. Right. It does have some similarities and occasionally people will tell me when they come out of a brainspotting session that it felt like a meditation to them, but it is different because you’re doing a different kind of processing. Uh, but yeah, there are similarities cause you are in that subcortical brain. Um, I have some work here from David Grand who, David Grand is the one who developed brainspotting. He discovered it and has done the research and furthered it. And he, in our training, he had some notes here about the creative process that I thought I might share with you guys. He talks about how the creative processes begin in the subcortex. So that’s the subcortical brain we were talking about and then arise to the neocortex and that’s when you do more of the application. Um, you have your aha moment and he says a brainspot is seen as an eye position that correlates with the physiological capsule that’s in the nervous system that holds any traumatic experience in memory form but brains but can also be seen as an eye position that correlates with physiological network that holds creativity. So trauma, disassociation and conflict will block creativity. Disassociation is when you’re detached, when you feel out of your body or when you feel like surreal feeling or oftentimes people just won’t remember something cause they were disassociated cause it was too overwhelming. Um, so trauma, disassociated conflict are the blocks to creativity and then healing trauma, healing disassociation and healing conflict will inform creativity.
Eric:
So I guess I don’t want to get too off the weeds in this direction, but I am curious. So it is the theory then that to get the creativity from the subcortical brain up into your neocortex. If there’s trauma there, it’s kind of rerouting it in some way…?
Susannah:
The brain is amazing. I think we went over this last time. It’s got 100 trillion neurons in there. It had some like one quadrillion, which is 1 million times the 1 billion possible synaptic connections. So a lot of times people are able to adapt around the trauma capsules. We all have trauma capsules and we all adapt around them. Some people are better at it than others and we’ll be able to go on and on and perform without noticing any hindrance. Um, and then other people, there’ll be more impactful. Um, so it just depends on the individual.
Eric:
Right. And the trauma experienced probably too. So during the session, what is an individual doing while the brainspotting is going on?
Susannah:
Well that’s that processing we were talking about. So we don’t spend a lot of time talking. It’s very different from talk therapy. It takes a while to adjust if they’ve done talk therapy before, um, because they’ll come in and we’ll chat a little bit. We’ll figure out where we’re going to focus. We need to get that set up. And then we just go with the processing. Um, if we’re doing a double spot at some point, then we’ll stop and reset and do it again. And then at the end we’ll check in and kind of debrief about what they experienced and what they noticed. Um, but it’s not, you know, the primary, the primary amount of time is just spent processing whatever that means for them, whether they might be crying, they might be sitting there. Sometimes it’s very peaceful. People, you know, have pleasant memories come up and that’s their brain’s way of healing. Um, so we just go with whatever that is.
Eric:
So it’s a very, um, personal form of therapy. And they’re listening to music, right?
Susannah:
Yes. We use something called bilateral sound, which Dr. David Grand also developed, which goes very slowly back and forth between the left ear and the right ear, which then stimulates the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of the brain and alternating back and forth. So that tends to be very calming for people. Most people really find it very grounding. It also tends to help it get us in that subcortical brain and into that state. We want to be in number processing and then, um, it also helps us integrate changes we’re making in the brain.
Eric:
And during this period, sorry if you’ve already said this, just to reiterate, um, they are actively in their mind as they’re listening to the music and watching the pointer, trying to replicate that feeling that they are trying to process?
Susannah:
Only at the beginning. That’s our door opening. We go through that door and we do that, but then it may go all different places and you let it go. You just let it go. Yeah. And that’s the hardest part for people. The first time they do brainspotting often they want to do well and they want to try hard. And it’s not about trying hard or figuring it out because we’re letting that subcortical brain do its process and we actually want to get that neocortex out of the way. Uh, but our culture is all about like, you know, be positive, think smart, you know, do all this stuff. And so people really want to like be active in the process when in a sense it’s almost a passive process in some ways. You want to just let it happen and let it unfold.
Eric:
So I guess that’s a little different from meditation. In meditation you’re constantly redirecting your mind right back to whatever, nothing, the breath or whatever. And in this case you are actually following the distraction, right?
Susannah:
So the job of the client is to just follow where that goes. So it’s a form of mindfulness. So it is in a sense meditation in that way as you’re being present right here and now, and you’re just seeing, Oh, you know what? My stomach hurts now. My chest hurts. Oh, you know what? This memory is coming up. Oh, you know what? My stomach hurts a lot right now. Um, a lot of times we’ll have people feel nauseous and they’ll tell me they’re going to throw up. But as one trainer told me, he’s like, he’s had 100,000 people tell him that. And no one’s ever actually thrown up. He’s like, I put the garbage can there just in case you know, that they almost never throw up.
Eric:
So for the, uh, the case of doing this for creativity, is this something that typically takes multiple sessions? Is this something that can be addressed pretty quickly?
Susannah:
Um, again, it depends on their goal. You know, if they specifically have this call back then we would, you know, do one session, see how they’re doing. If they’re doing great after one session, great. They might need more, they might not. Um, if it’s a creativity block, there’s probably been an accumulation of experiences over time that have led to that. So it may take a little longer to work through that. Um, you know, one of the things David Grand says is that you need to follow up, follow up, follow up, um, because they’re always going to go be a, going out in life and experiencing more traumas and you’re always going to be need to process them.
Eric:
Something that I’d just like to make an a distinction on is the callback scenario versus the writer’s box scenario. So I get the writer’s block scenario where you’re looking for trauma capsules that might be blocking creativity, the stories you’ve told yourself, failures in the past, what does it look like if someone’s coming in for a specific, they want to succeed at a specific callback or performance?
Susannah:
Well, we would probably start with what their fears are and brainspot on those. And those probably come from past experiences or like we talked about a little bit the imagination of what could happen. Um, and you process on those until that activation goes way down. So if maybe they start, you know, their nerves or their anxieties at a nine, you want to process them down to a zero or one. Um, and then you would go, one of the things David Grand does with actors. He has them find a brainspot for that character because he says what actors are doing when they create a character is a lot in the subcortical brain. And so he’ll have them actually get into character however long that takes whatever that process is for them and then find a brainspot and then brainspot on that and then he’ll have them talk about that character, their backstory. Um, and it was really, I watched him do this once and it was fascinating to watch. Um, and then afterwards they can use that brainspot, that, that eye position, uh, right before the callback, when they’re in character to get them into that deep place. It’s pretty neat to watch.
Eric:
So I guess that goes to another question I had is once someone has established this brainspot with you or another professional, they would want to, they would benefit most by, uh, accessing it right before they’re about to do their performance, right?
Susannah:
They definitely could. And athletes can do this too, um, for being in the flow state or for being calm and grounded. You could have both kinds of states depending on what they need. And you’d have separate brainspots. But yeah, you could definitely access it any time. Um, the trauma memory network and the subcortical brain is always changing part because we’re processing in part because we’re experiencing new things. Um, so it doesn’t necessarily mean every time the eye position will be exactly the same, but generally people can find it and once they are done it a few times, they can find it. So it might be the same and a lot of times it is the same. But then it might also change.
Eric:
Is this something that once you’ve done it the first time it starts to take less time to access?
Susannah:
I think so. I mean, I see with a lot of clients, the brain learns how to brainspot and once you show it how it picks it up pretty fast.
Eric:
So it’s like a skill, just like meditation?
Susannah:
Yeah, in a sense it, yeah, I said it’s almost more instinctive because we’re coming from the subcortical brain, which is instinctive, you know, that’s what’s controlling our heartbeat, our breathing. And all that stuff. Um, your reflexes, um, all that stuff. And that’s where we’re coming from. So it’s, it’s like you break your finger, you don’t sit there and think about, okay, now I’m going to do this to heal it. Now I’m going to do that to heal it. You just let the body do it. Once we opened that framework to the brainspotting the brain just does it.
Eric:
Does the spot wear out?
Susannah
I don’t think wear out is a term I would use. No, I don’t think it would wear out. Um, what tends to sort of go away is the negative activation. Um, the nerves, the fear, uh, maybe the body manifestations, my stomach hurts, my chest hurts, that kind of thing. That will tend to go away. The more you use a spot, but that will only make the positive parts better, stronger.
Eric:
So it’s almost a case where by doing it more, you’re healing your body to a point where you’re not even experiencing the things that were causing you to need to do it in the first place. And then from there it can just become pure benefit, right?
Susannah:
Yeah. Like for example, with athletes, you know, we’ll develop a spot where they feel calm and grounded because to perform your best, you want to be loose and relaxed. You don’t want to have a lot of muscle tension and racing. And that unconscious muscle guarding that we do when we have trauma, uh, impacts our performance. So the more they process on that brainspot that feels good and grounded, they might have some processing around that where they have muscle twitches or discomfort or those kinds of things. But the more they do that neurobiologically, they’re sort of, it’s like if it was not up there, they’re smoothing it out of their undoing those knots and it’s becoming calmer and more grounded.
Eric:
So you already mentioned this, but I want to just touch on it again. So it’s possible to have multiple brainspots?
Susannah:
Absolutely. We all have hundreds of brainspots.
Eric:
Okay. And it’s possible to have one that’s associated with… like, that you access before holidays or something when you’re with your family then a calm and grounding one kind of thing.
Susannah:
Yeah. You could have one for dad, one for mom, one for the whole family.
Eric:
How are these brainspots determined?
Susannah:
So it’s your neurobiological system, so it’s individual to you. Um, and it’s about being activated around it and then sort of watching where the eyes go or how the body reacts. Um, so there are different ways of finding it. Um, there’s basically three ways. There’s the inside window, which is more from the clients inside themselves. Like, Oh, when I look there, I feel tension in my chest. Um, and then there’s outside window, which is more where the therapist is watching for, you know, certain body twitches or certain ways of blinking or certain other things that give us a clue that Oh, there’s a brainspot there. And in that case there’s usually multiple of them and it’s sort of your intuition and your training and experience to pick the best one of those spots. And gaze spotting is when, you know, have you ever been talking to someone and they’re thinking about something and their eyes just go up or they go somewhere?
Eric:
I’ve caught myself doing it twice since we’ve started talking.
Susannah:
Yeah! So that’s a gaze spot. So that’s just naturally happening. That’s just reflexive. And so if you catch yourself doing that about something, you’re thinking about going home to have dinner with mom and your eyes just kind of go up, let your eye just stay there. That’s a brainspot. And just process on that to try to stay out of that neocortex. You know, don’t try to problem solve. Okay, well if I do this, then she’ll do this. You know, try not to go into that. I tried to just see what comes up. Um, you might cry, you might get angry, you might just have a memory come up. You might find your body moving. It’s your neurobiological system reacting and it’s processing out those knots. And that’s just where you go. You just stay there.
Eric:
That’s something that everyone does.
Susannah:
Absolutely. We all do it all the time, but at a much lower intensity. And um, we sort of a big frame like are distracted all the time or going up under neocortex all the time. We’re checking our phone or whatever. Um, so there’s a low grade sort of always going on. But when we do the brainspotting, we’re really bringing in that frame, focusing and doing a much more intense way of processing.
Eric:
It’s like a laser versus a flashlight.
Susannah:
Yes. In fact, I think that’s what David Grand refers to it as laser like precision.
Eric:
So if someone is looking off into the distance and all of a sudden they just feel super emotional and want to curl up in a ball, don’t stop, keep going?
Susannah:
if they can, you know, if you’re in a place where you can process it, go ahead and process it. You know, we can’t do that a lot of the time. We’ve got to, you know, make dinner for the kids or do our work or whatever it is. Um, so we don’t have to have that freedom. But if you do have that freedom, yeah, great.
EricL
Can the processing sometimes be so dealing with such traumatic issues that it is actually traumatic to the person?
Susannah:
That is one thing, uh, important about highly traumatic memories especially is that you do want to do that with a therapist if you can, because one of the main components of that kind of trauma is a feeling of aloneness. And if you can have a person there with you being compassionate, that can aid the healing to a great extent. Um, so again, yeah, we don’t help you don’t necessarily want you to, if you have a lot of trauma and a lot of big or even big trauma that not a lot, just a little, um, you probably want to process that with a therapist, because that’s going to be a lot more healing and safe for you. So we’re taking someone, when they’re processing trauma, their body’s very disregulated. So when your body is disregulated, you’re feeling that physically as well as emotionally. And the brainspotting process helps the body go back to regulation. Um, and having another person there we know about mirror neurons where the person is experiencing the same thing with you. That helps to calm, knowing you’re not alone. That will also help to calm and get back to regulation.
Eric:
Yeah. So it’s probably good to just, if you’re doing this for the first time, maybe just start with a professional regardless.
Susannah:
Yeah. Well, and the other thing as I say is we learned a lot of techniques on how to decrease the intensity. So if the intensity gets too much, there are things we can do while brainspotting to decrease it, to make it more tolerable. So it’s um, a lot more, uh, at the pace the client is comfortable with. But at the same time, um, you know, we try not to interfere too much. Generally speaking, people don’t get overwhelmed when they brainspot. They, they may get close, but most people will say, I’m okay, I want to keep going. But you do get people who are like, Nope, too much. Let’s change this up. Yeah. So one of the things David Grand says is that performance and creativity should be seen as an issue about the entire person’s life history. So we’re not just looking at current related to acting stuff. We might also be looking at relationship stuff, family stuff, stuff like that that can all the brain doesn’t distinguish between, Oh, that was acting really didn’t, that wasn’t, or for an athlete, Oh, that was a sports related thing versus that was something with my mom or my girlfriend or whatever.
Eric:
I think that says a lot about creativity itself too, that all these things can be tied up in its, um, and how it works, you know, and it’s, and it’s efficiency. Like the creativity itself is a very emotional thing and tied into these past things very deeply. So it makes sense.
Susannah:
Yes, it’s unconscious, it’s outside of your awareness. Um, so it’s hard for someone to fix on their own because they don’t know where to start. Right. They don’t know what’s going on in the unconscious, that’s why it’s unconscious.