Transcript

English (auto-generated)

00:00
Christie: I'm so excited to have you. One of the things that I think is really valuable that I'm excited to hear more about is how when you struggle with trauma often it's like, "where do I go? Like what is the right path?" And you know people throw out EMDR, IFS, brain spotting and it's like I don't even know and so I'm just really excited to hear your path in how you decided to become somebody who offers brain spotting as a therapist and give people more resources so that they can make an informed decision in their healing.

00:39
Atara: Yes great. Yes I'm so excited. Yeah this would be great. I'm obsessed with talking about brain spotting and it was actually perfect this week I had two clients in particular that we really honed in on being parentified as a child and I was like oh my gosh so perfect for this week what we're going to talk on Friday. So yes. 

Christie: Well I want to start off with–just so people can get to know you– the first thing I want to ask is what makes you, you? 

01:13
Atara: Yes it's such a great question. I was thinking about that before I hopped on and it's really this accumulation right between my personality and my lived experiences. And so as just an individual I've always been um very much a humanitarian, meaning I love and it brings me so much joy fulfilled my purpose to help people. I am clearly an extrovert and so connecting with people you know brings me joy. Therapy is this really unique place where I get to engage with people in some of the hardest parts of their lives but also some of the biggest joys in their lives get shared with me too and you know it always makes my heart happy and to know I'm this special place this really unique weird relationship right where I'm so involved in your life and also not. Yeah and but when when people say to me like, "wow I've never said that out loud" or "I've never said that to another human" I just like oh like the weight of that really sits with me. So that's kind of a little bit about who I am like personality wise and then my lived

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experiences are you know being in a household with domestic violence um as a child and the healing that had to happen from some of that. And then just some wonderful experiences I'm really passionate about cross-cultural work um and working with the second gen population that's a new focus for me because I just I kept finding children of immigrants in my practice and like really connecting with those. And so that's a little little uh part of my life and then the other part would be this connection

02:57
between the body and mind which brain spotting hits on and particularly in my life as well onboarding nutrition and minerals uh was life-changing for me uh to talk about trauma again I had my first three babies were both all three in the NICU and unexpectedly they were full-term they weren't premies and for various reasons and so that really left a lot of scars and baggage and things to work through and so that also really informs part of who I am and part of the journey that I've been through.

Christie: Yeah I feel you on that both of our kids were

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in the NICU and I just remember it feeling like this holding place where you're like will this end and you know I think yeah there's such a special place for the nurses in our lives too just like I feel like they were our therapists like it was amazing.

So you started to touch a little bit on this but what led you to wanting to offer brain spotting in particular as a therapist?

Atara: Yeah so I had never been terribly interested in you know like trauma work it always seemed like too heavy um because you know I do have a

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young family and so I always wanted balance in my practice but when I I even I can't even remember when I first heard about brain spotting but something instinctively in me went I need to know more about that and so I started studying and reading I read David Grant's book and started watching you know YouTube interviews and I knew because of my own background right that the the body brain connection was so important and I knew from working with clients that it also felt like occasionally we would get so far and

04:50
then get stuck and I was really looking and hoping for something to help in you know that process I knew something was going on and I couldn't explain what at the time and so when I started up upon brainspotting I went oh my gosh that's it and the way that we talk about that is in therapy world right we have a bottom up approach or a top down approach and typical or traditional talk therapy is a top down modality and what that means is that we're engaging with our mind our brain our cognitions our thoughts and

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then you know hoping really essentially that then there's other change right what we now know thanks to like the last really 20 years of lot heavier focus in neuroscience is that that is not it's not going to work often because the body the nervous system is having a physiological response based on right our mind and so that's where we engage the body that bottom if you will to have a top um impact right to impact the brain and mind and essentially that is why I am obsessed with grave spotting it's because I can see that happen uh so

06:05
effectively even one in one session with a client amazing like even in one session yeah yes and I think it it does get really discouraging for people when they'll spend like months in therapy pouring out their story in their heart and then like really like there's so much emotional investment in that and financial um and then to feel like you just get stuck and yeah incorporating that body is the body is the most important aspect of this like we can't leave it out and right um I love that as therapist we're

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moving in that direction now um for people who have no idea what brain spotting is can you just kind of give us a basic overview of what it is how it works and maybe how it's a little bit different from other trauma therapies yes so brain spotting and essentially the really fun phrase We use is where you look impacts how you feel and so brain spotting is a fixed gaze uh modality and what we mean by that is we find that's the brain spot a a point in our visual field which is directly correlated to a literal physical spot in

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our brain I just always get mind blown every time I say that like just so amazing so wild to think about that yeah so it it does make sense because we know that our our vision our eyes are the outermost parts of our brain essentially and so there's a direct correlation between a spot in our vision field now what it might look like at a session is when we get talking around something and a client might say something like God I keep doing this um or you know I had such a big reaction or this keeps coming up for me you know that's kind of where

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I'll sometimes suggest do you want a brain spot around that sometimes the answer is no and that's okay um but more often people are like yes like let's do it and you know I always laugh I'm like the worst that's going to happen is we waste 20 30 minutes of a session right and and there's no impact but I've only really had that happen once where this client left he's like H like you know that I don't know that didn't literally yeah exactly literally the you know dozens if not you know at this point

08:23
like 20 to 50 other times I've done this in sessions there is a huge impact and I love to see that so what we do is we are talking about this issue and then we'll get the client what we call activated meaning that there's an a visceral response to what they are talking about and we'll slow them down and have them sense where that's showing up in the body and typically what I get will be like my jaw is really tight or there's this heaviness in my chest there's huge knots in my stomach or butterflies in my

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stomach these are just a few examples and then we'll rate that we'll say okay where how heavily is that showing up for you and you know like oh it's an eight like it feels super intense great okay then what we'll do is we will help the client find a point on in their vision field where that feeling even intensifies or it feels very um strong or they're very connected to it and that is what the brain spot is and then what we do is we get we again hold our vision on that spot and I'm just quiet for a couple minutes

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which is wonderful and the brain we go from using this neocortex right this thinking logical brain that you and I are using right now and we actually drop in or drop down into allowing space for that midbrain subcortical brain to take action and it's yeah it's really cool um seems a little theoretical right or it's hard to even imagine that but when you do it or when you see people in it I mean you could just you can feel it there's something that shifts um as you're sitting with them so I'm quiet and it's funny you

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know in brain spotting there's kind of like a time warp it it I'm only quiet for a minute or two but it can feel like ages and I'll then I'll check in and we'll kind of talk about where did that take you where did you go and I I want to make sure to say Christy there's no really right or wrong way to do brain spotting I think we can get caught up in um oh am I doing this right or I don't know my brain just went somewhere really weird that's bizarre that is that right I'll often have clients ask and I'll say

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actually no there's no right or wrong if intuitively your body is saying close your eyes do that right if you are if you're too flooded and you need to take a break I had that happen this week one client said can we be done now I said of course right cuz she intuitively know this was too heavy for her at that moment and so that's the beauty in brain spotting is you're always in control um you you're never you know like in this other altered state where you feel like you're out of control and that's really

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cool as well so I think really empowering for clients and then as we you know do a couple rounds um people will pretty quickly um as I said kind of find resolution or what we'll call a resource their mind or brain will kind of go through these these steps and it looks really different for everybody but it eventually um almost I'd say like 95% of sessions end with then this resource for clients whether it's um you know I did the best I could whether it's I'm safe I'm okay um one client right this

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will give you an idea of how different it can look had at the end of this the brain spotting had these she's like and now these bunnies and um birds I'm sitting in this field and these bunnies and birds have come around me and they're comforting me and I was like okay like I don't I don't know what that meant exactly to her but it her brain did exactly what it needed to do and Dr Grant talks about the brain intuitively knows about itself yeah and also knows how to heal itself and I think those are

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really powerful concepts for people to understand.

Christie: Yeah I mean there's so much there in what you just said but one of the things that's coming to mind is just how like especially for trauma survivors this is a way of practicing trusting yourself. Like it is so scary to let yourself feel and to enter into those memories or those sensations but I think for a lot of us it's like it's so scary we want to avoid it and to have this other person there who can help you stay grounded and help facilitate it and for you to see you can

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experience those sensations and then your brain is going to and your body is going to naturally bring you to a place of resolution is just so profound because you know even when it comes to crying I think so many of us are like who grew up with trauma is like if I cry will I ever stop crying like will it totally derail me if I let myself cry and the truth is that crying has a natural rhythm to it it it does rise and rise and then it does resolve but if nobody ever let you cry to the point where you got to resolve it naturally it's scary and so I

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love this idea of just like tapping into the body's innate wisdom and trusting that and building that trust in yourself and I'm also hearing just this like you're also practicing becoming aware of your body which is like connecting the two hemispheres like as we're practicing so yes seems like even if you didn't get something profound out of it like the act of practicing itself is part of healing that trauma.

Atara: So true so true yeah Dr Grant also says you know like it's a mindfulness experience so you're

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absolutely right and to talk real quick about the nervous system right what we know is like green zone yellow zone and then at the bottom here of our nervous system lder would be a red zone a Red Zone would be disconnection disassoc ition we typically label this as depression but essentially it's a disconnection from ourselves and sometimes in often from those around us as well or the world around us and so really brain spotting is also helping to reregulate that nervous system which I think is so powerful

14:49
Christie: Amazing so when you think about that versus EMDR how would somebody think through like the differences and what they might want to consider if they were wanting to do brain spotting?

Atara: Well EMDR is beautiful and brain spotting was actually born out of EMDR um Dr Grant was practicing um EMDR when he discovered brain spotting so EMDR for sure yeah pretty cool really powerful tool um what I have heard and I I want to be really transparent I have never practiced EMDR that is not anything I've been trained

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on so this is not something I can say from my personal experience but what I have heard others say is that twofold EMDR can feel because what you're doing in EMDR is eye movement versus fixed gaze and at times I've heard other practitioners say that the ey movement because if we think about it I need to back up real quick in in brain spotting we find one spot that does not mean it's the only spot and how I'll describe this is let's and I like to use my own example I had a group of friends that I

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they were my world my life here fall apart and yeah I lost that group of friends and it was really devastating and from that I left with several layers of beliefs then about for example myself right how do I view myself now then there's this layer of how do I view and Trust other women in life now and then there was like a a spiritual relig component and so like wow what do I think about the church or God because of this experience so you could see these layers right to an event and I'm going to use the word traumatic um and what I

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mean by that is any experience that has left a a residual effect meaning it's impacted how we then engage in our life okay um and so it was traumatic in that way for me so but with brain spotting you're going to have different spots in the field of vision for those different issues so while yeah so while one spot might be you know over here I'm looking because I've brain spotted around this and there's my spot around this issue right um that might be maybe my self-concept over here on the complete

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opposite side of my field of vision might be the one with trust in people again right so going back to EMG emgr when you're moving your eyes to your field of vision you might be hitting all of those spots for a moment simultan or not simultaneously but one at a time and then that could feel really flooding or overwhelming for a clients and that's what I've heard from practitioners who have practiced both EMDR and brain spotting and what what this also connects to is the concept of complex trauma yeah and complex trauma would be

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what I was saying there's these layers to the event where another client that did EMDR she had a boating accident and for her there was the the boating accident and then obviously the fear of getting in the boat again being on the water that's a pretty clear correlation and she's like EMDR was amazing for that right I did EMDR I had no no problems again getting in the boat great wonderful but then there was these some other issues where EMDR we don't know but possibly weren't as effective or

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wouldn't be as effective because there were there's these layers to it that she would maybe get flooded or overwhelmed with so those are some of the differences um both are wonderful tools um you know in ideal world I would love to be trained in both right and you' be able to utilize both but that's not always reality

Christie: That's really helpful and I think you know especially when it comes to complex trauma there are so many memories but also implicit memories and it's like I don't even know where to

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start you know it's it it can be it can be a lot and um you know as somebody who's done EMDR as  the client it was very flooding for me um and I did experience that and it yeah so it's like okay we have to think through like what what makes sense for our specific story and I'm wondering if you can speak to for people who had a lot of childhood trauma and there's a big gap in time that's just missing but like viscerally they have this feeling that like something was really wrong and as

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therapists we know like when you have a big gap in memory like that's a pretty clear sign there's some trauma there um how does brains spotting help support somebody healing that part of their lives?

Atara: Yes yes great question and answer that we need to understand a little bit about what happens in the brain with trauma and that is something I always do with clients before we jump into brain spotting because I do find it is a little bit relieving and helpful as well to know um like what actually is happening and I'm not just Weir right

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for experiencing this or so really trauma I describe it as like a hallway or Corridor right imagine a long hallway and when we have a traumatizing experience where we um you know Gabor mon has a wonderful book out the myth of normal and oh it's such a great read and he says it trauma is when we do not feel seen or heard and so again this could be a really tea trauma like a a sexual assault we talked about carens earlier but also these could be moments kind of what you're saying where we didn't feel connected we felt

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disregarded as a child or emotional experience felt disregarded and what our brain does Christie is essentially takes that memory or experience and puts it behind a door and closes the door because can you imagine if we had all of those memories and thoughts just running around in our brain throughout the day yeah we we wouldn't make it very far we would couldn't survive so this is a survival protection mechanism which our brains does right in an effort to support us um and so it says s for survival we're not going to think about

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that all the time we're going to put it here and close that door okay however we also know and Trauma survivors also know that there are times when that door is open and we are essentially what the buzzword right in society triggered we're triggered and so something in our memory and again this can be on a cognizant aw we're aware of this or it's a unconscious thought where it's filed away not in our cognitive world um and I I love to use this example I think this is helpful for people in a second our

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brain is capable of taking in 11 million pieces of information 11 million – yeah hard to even fathom yeah yeah so so overwhelming and you know when we think about this it's like I'm talking about like a smell a feeling a taste right um again our visual field can take in a lot in one moment so all of this in a in a seconds this is happening we're able to cognitively think about between seven and 30 pieces of those of that information which that means there's a lot filed in there that like on a you

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know awareness level were not even taking it so sometimes these triggers can be you know um a smell that we didn't even realize right was is connected to something um and so the brain then gets flooded and the left and right hemisphere struggle to communicate okay and what brain spotting does is it helps access this other part of the brain to gently slowly interact or open that door so that and again in a very controlled fashion so that we can relate to that information um but not in a way that feels like whoa I'm totally overwhelmed

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by this and if there if you're out there and you have a big tea trauma right like this is oh my gosh I can't even touch this I will typically start with someone in session around something smaller right around something yeah like you know I went and I my social anxiety kicked up and I you know felt really triggered by that we'll just start with that and brain spot around that so someone can get comfortable with the process and see how powerful but also how in control you still are and then we'll start diving into maybe some of

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the bigger heavier things

Christie: Amazing. I want to ask you a little bit about like the before and after process. So what are some ways that you prepare people to be able to handle that level of distress in their body while they're brain spotting but also how do you help them contain it afterwards when they leave your session and they have to go do normal life?

Atara: yes so prep is education prep is talking about what this is going to look like prep is reminding client like you are

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completely in control of the situation we're only going as far as you can manage um and like I said this week I had a client we were dealing with some big big self-concept big depression thoughts and she was like can we stop now I this is this is too much for me I I and I said absolutely okay let's just close your eyes take a breath right and kind of help her come out of it and I always always leave time to debrief right to talk about again moving back into that Neo cortex what just happened for you what was that experience like

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let's talk about it and ideally Christy in a session we're getting to some resolution and to some resource and then that actually becomes a um tool for the client that they can use leaving the session um and for that client it wasn't so we talked about some other nervous system techniques they could use if they were to feel um you know flooded after session or really overwhelmed how can we help the nervous system regulate um but most of the time someone is coming down from maybe like a eight even a 10 to

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ideally one two or zero and then that spot yeah it's really cool um that spot then becomes a resource for them because now when they look at that actually feels calming it feels reassuring that point in Vision because we process through that and so that's what I'll say to a client as well is utilize that spot after right throughout the week you can you use that stare fix fix your Gaze on that spot and give yourself a few minutes to again just tune into your body ah help bring yourself down right

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and remember that sense of calm or reassurance that you felt in the session

Christie: Amazing and I think that's such a beautiful example of like what used to be so traumatic and so triggering has become a resource that you can lean on yeah yeah so I want to transition a little bit um a lot of people who might be listening to this grew up with emotionally immature parents or in a very dysfunctional family and they're noticing that along with their complex trauma is this collection of survival skills that are

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really sabotaging their life their relationships their career um and I guess we can start by kind of defining what a survival skill is for anybody who doesn't know but you know survival skills being um you know examples might be perfectionism or people pleasing or even just going into rage or self-criticism you know there's a whole collection of ways that we learn to adapt to our trauma so that we can make it through our childhood and I'm curious how brain spotting helps people unlearn those survival skills so that they can be in

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their relationship and not find themselves totally tearing it apart involuntarily but instead be able to actually show up from a grounded place that's true to them?

Atara: Yes yes so if we think back to a classic the cognitive behavioral right what we have there is thought feeling and action and actually I'll even add belief belief thought feeling and action and so what we're talking about is that action part but there we have to also understand that there's this whole slew of thoughts emotions and beliefs behind that action

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that guide and dictate it so I think understanding that first is really important and empowering usually for individuals but then the question becomes well okay now what do I do about that or what can I do about that right and so I really love talking to people about before we jump into brain spawning what is that belief right can you identify that that was formed and I love that you brought up some examples the one I worked on uh twice this week was perfectionism yeah right and and I had to be uh perfect I had to not have my

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own emotion because in my household there was so much going on and I couldn't um I I wasn't allowed to have that when I did have that my experience was always being belittled um being disregarded being put down and then we can see that that action right is leading to the set of behaviors of then you know I operate belittling myself all the time right or I withhold all the time or I don't uh let people into that part me and essentially we're seeing a disconnection from self and what the what brain spotting does is again we're

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kind of David Grant talks about as a capsule we're kind of opening that trauma capsule looking inside um so that we can be more integrated so our brain can be more integrated and work effectively uh the visual I often give for clients is like a telephone wire all tangled up and this message just trying to go through right we're trying to say it's okay you're safe with this person it's okay to connect and show your feelings but it's getting caught in that bundle right and brain spotting

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essentially unravels that bundle so that message that we're trying to send cognitively can get through effectively without that capsule blocking and that's what I mean when I say integrated

Christie: I love that so much because I find you know I work a lot with couples and I find that a lot of them it's like gosh like mentally I know but every time my partner says something or does something I see it through this like warped lens and it's so hard to be able to hear or experience them without having these

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instinctual reactions that are so damaging in the relationship because my body and my brain are like totally reliving something that's not really them and you know a question I often ask clients is like who else is in the room right now like are we reacting to your partner and if so like let's work on that or is there something else that's coming in and it sounds like with brain spotting we're kind of clearing that path so that we can actually reach each other in a clear and effective way

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Atara: yes and I love what you're saying Christy I'm thinking of a couple in particular too that I've because she was kept reacting to an issue that they had had but also that was connected to some stuff in her family of origin and we did a couple brains spotting sessions just her and I and yes it opened up a whole new world of communication for them and a level of trust that had really um been broken or severed for them and it was so yeah

Christie: so beautiful to see yeah wow so in the context of couples are you doing

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brain spotting with couples or are you simultaneously or are you like meeting with–

Atara: yeah yeah not simultaneously I work with a lot of the trail um so that's a passion point of mine yeah and what I love doing with the trail is is intensives meaning like they're in crisis and an hour just ain't gonna cut it right so like we come in maybe we spend two weekends with three hours on two days and then the next weekend and then we kind I kind of give them some space a few weeks to see you know how they can apply what we talked about and

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then we'll come back but the beautiful thing is in that time period perod sometimes I will see an individual uh that's like really identifies okay I'm also recognizing what you said which is like this isn't just what's happening here there's also some other stuff tied into here so we can do some individual brain spotting sessions in that time

Christie: amazing yeah love that so cool so as we're thinking about like this fragmented self that comes from having trauma um and this might look like

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having difficulty with boundaries because we just abandon ourselves in order to people please you know that being a survival skill um how can brains spotting help kind of bring those fragmented pieces back you've talked about integration you've mentioned that a few times um how does that help us like really rebuild that connection that's been fractured?

Atara: yeah yeah so yeah if we think about the brain and trauma we know that and the body body for that matter but in the brain specifically we know that trauma essentially is a

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disconnection and a disconnection from self right and the pieces are parts of our self but also a disconnection with you know maybe my partner maybe my my kids right if I had Trauma from my the parenting that I was given right I know that then there's a likelihood that that's going to impact my parenting and so I might start to overcompensate and like you're saying survival skill I might just start to really withdraw right in my parenting because I'm fearful I'm gonna oh my gosh I'm going to engage in yelling or

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belittling like I was parented right and so brain spotting really is going to help again to use that word integrate or reconnect with the whole brain and how the brain um and and heal I love to use that concept too of like we know that really a lot with the body you know if I break my arm or I get a cut I know and I trust that my body is going to do what is needed to restore and repair well the brain's actually the same the brain has that ability sometimes we just need like you we mentioned earlier Attunement or

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someone to help us slow down give space for that process to happen and that's the honor we get as therapists yeah yeah

Christie: thank you um I guess one of the things that I'm thinking through right now is for people who maybe experienced a lot of sexual trauma or there's just been a lot of like um trauma to the body like physically and they a you know even domestic violence like being exposed to that we know that kids you know when they see it they experience it as if it's happening to themselves but also

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maybe being physically abused too how do you navigate helping them feel safe enough with their body to be able to even engage in such a somatic type of therapy?

Atara: Yeah yeah it's a great question and I think a lot of it is going back going slow um we don't have to like dive into some of these super intense and by experiencing you know maybe like a smaller issue in brain spotting we start to rebuild trust and because we see the process happen and we can understand them really I kind of I'm imagining like

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a rewiring right we talk about like yeah um oh I'm blanking on the word but you know neurotransmission right and that there's these paths in the brain that get built and I I liken it to the orgon trail right a path that was gone over again and again and again and then that becomes our belief right and then we start to say things like you mentioned like well I I can't trust my body because my body has betrayed me and here's all the evidence I have for that right that's that neural pathway it's

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been treaded on treaded on and what we are essentially doing is like let's start and consider a new neural pathway and it might be as simple as um how do how has your body come through for you how has your body protected you and some of that is education right and the way that we just talked about the brain look what your brain is doing right in an effort to protect or to be there be present for you um to talk real quick about the physical side I just wow it amazes me how much abuse really we do to our body and that's just I'm just

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talking about like food lifestyle nutrition I'm thinking of myself you you know going through grad school working full-time doing my classes running marathons um and binge drinking like that's so much right so much um really abuse I was giving to my body and and you know my body responded but also then my body when I was able to start to switch um and and pay attention and be connected also healed and my body was also like okay all right you're on board we're on board right and we do want to

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not just survive but also to thrive um and so our body and brains are capable of that and really desire that

Christie: yeah I love that I I can identify a lot with that abuse of the body for sure and yeah it's like we need to learn to like as we learn to show up and be responsive to our body that body starts to trust again and it's like it's a two-way street and I think part of that is listening to our bodies and then the other part is we have to respond too

Atara: yes um absolutely it's a relationship like any other relationship yeah exactly yes

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Christie: well you know we've been talking about like integration and I'm curious for you what does it mean for someone for someone to come home to themselves to like really feel like they can rest in themselves?

Atara: yeah that's beautiful and I I'm reminded of you know what I talk about with my betrayal couples and you know if we talk about like the top of the the ladder is love we want to be able to love and you know we can put that back back to ourselves we want to be able to love ourselves love our body that I think for me is the definition of

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home but there has to be some rungs underneath that that are required and that would be trust right that would be respect of one another yeah um and and of ourselves and so those rungs have to be in place in order to get to the rung of love or feeling at home and so when we're able to start to reconnect to trust ourselves to respect ourselves maybe it's respecting a limitation I'm too tired right I'm too tired right now I know that I need um support in this way before I can add more onto my plate and

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I'm really proud to be in an era where we are looking more at hi what's happening here in my mind is very connected yes you know to perhaps how my body what is happening in my body what what am I lacking maybe I need more magnesium in my life so that my brain could do the processes it needs for example um so I I'm so proud that that is what our field is really respecting and moving into is not there's no longer this like image of a line across our neck and one person works with the brain and mind and another works with the body

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no actually we really need to have a thorough understanding of both of those and how they're interacting with one another yeah so that to me is coming home yeah like building that trust building that responsiveness and respect and then being able to actually love ourselves I forgot one Christy forgiveness oh yes can you speak a little bit to that oh yes forgiveness is actually the Bottom Rung and forgiveness is so essential it's freeing I heard someone say it allows us to see clearly and so sometimes that

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forgiveness is a forgiveness of ourselves of you know what we did in a situation what we weren't capable of doing in a situation but we didn't have the capacity to understand I worked a lot this week with a client you know she was really sad because she had an issue with a sibling um who was going through a lot and she really disconnected and she was grieving that and we really started to look at how can you forgive yourself now and also forgive that kiddo right who was dealing with it and didn't

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know how to deal with it then so forgiveness and then respect and trust and then love and that is how that's the path essentially to home

Christie: wow I love that what a beautiful image too yeah yeah really it's filled with hope right yeah yeah yeah and I think we all just want to be able to truly love ourselves and um when we've grown up in homes where that was we were invalidated or we were taught to believe that we were unworthy it's so hard to reach that top rung and I love that you know you're even saying

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like it comes in stages like you don't have to get there all at once this is about not convincing yourself but instead like taking the baby steps to get to a place where you can come home to yourself absolutely

Atara: yes and I like we're all work Works in progress right right we're all striving I think no matter you know if I don't want to say and I don't think anyone's had a perfect life but even if you've been through a lot of trauma or you've had maybe a really rosy um upbringing uh you still

42:53
we're still working towards that we're still working perhaps towards that trust so know that I love talking with kiddos about this even if someone looks like that calm duck just know yeah going across the surface of the water that there perhaps is that feverish feet going underneath of just trying to figure figure this out too and I feel like there's a comfort in that that knowing that regardless if you look around and you see I we're bombarded right with these perfect images on social media but that actually is not

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really reality uh you know probably 100% of the time i' say yeah not reality

Christie: yeah yeah and to be able to feel surrounded and even thinking about your um client's imagery of like the birds flying around and just like this idea of like I think we all want to feel surrounded and held and I think being able to expand our awareness to the fact that we are surrounded by all these other people who are also on a path and trying to figure it out nobody knows what we're actually doing we're all just figuring it out as

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we go and how comforting it is to just be like like okay I don't have to have it all together it's okay to be in the middle of this process right now yep what a relief what a relief yeah well speaking of Journeys when the healing Journey feels really long for you specifically what do you hold on to to keep yourself going what gives you hope?

Atara: yeah oh great question well for me personally this is grounded in my spiritual beliefs and for me that's understanding that there is um a source for me I call that source God and Jesus

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right and that that is foundational and I can trust in that um and I know know that God the universe has my best intention and hopes in mind and um wants me to succeed is how I'll say it too and tuning in to I started this conversation with my mission right what is my purpose for being here and I kind of end on that too is as I reconnect or I stay grounded in that then it's amazing to me especially this last year than how God and the universe have responded in opening up opportunities um for me to go deeper

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with that to fulfill that um and so that really has been that's my Foundation right that is what I can cling to that is the Hope um that I have eternally um that that this world ultimately um not to say there's not evil out there But ultimately that I I do believe that love wins um that the goodness and the hope that exist in this Dimension that that will succeed

Christie: I love that yeah yeah just this idea that the world's not against you life isn't against you um there I mean we look around I'm in Colorado and you

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know it's and you were just on the Pacific coast and you know like we look at even just nature and how everything is so interconnected like things are made to support each other and when we can look at it from that perspective of everything is here to be interconnected and to build us up to be whole like that's the natural path like when we can see that it's like H okay I'm on a path where I am held

Atara: yeah yeah I think of um Dr Kurt Thompson has a wonderful book called The Soul of Shame and he talks about that what comes

47:03
before shame and guilt is a doubt that leads to the shame and guilt and the result of Shame and guilt is isolation and so you're so right the I think the tendency for people especially having gone through a traumatic or really intense experience is to withdraw yeah is to pull within ourselves and ironically the antidote to that is connection and sometimes hey maybe that's the safest place or the first step to that is connecting with nature or connecting with an animal that you have close to you um then that can feel you know more

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approachable and know that that's okay if that's where you need to start to go outside to lay in the grass to go on a hike to go swim in a river or Ocean or lake that's okay that again is a type and form of connection and you're making steps in the right direction

Christie: yeah yeah beautiful well thank you so much Atara like this has been just so wonderful and um yeah how can people get in touch with you if they wanted to connect with you and you know do some brain spotting work or just connect with you in general?

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Atara: so I love always pointing people to my Instagram because there is a lot of free information out there and I just realized oh my gosh I don't have a single post on brain spotting so I'm going to go do that this week because I love it so much oh my gosh that site um that space is really dedicated to the holistic uh Psychotherapy or holistic mental health um and talking about the impact of minerals and nutrition on our brain so I love pointing people there because that has so much good free information um but also you can just

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reach out to to me directly at my email which is [email protected] and we can talk about getting something on the calendar that's another spot um but if you're not ready for that um please feel free to just look at my it's also on on Facebook my Facebook business page is Atara Parkinson you can find me there as well and I'd love to just hear and connect

Christie: awesome and what states are you licensed to practice in?

Atara: good point I'm licensed in the state of California um so that I do the health coaching work

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um yeah through a broader coaching lens because we're not uh so you know limited by location um just to be really clear therapy and coaching are not the same thing so if you're wanting to do the brain spotting you could still reach out to me if you're in a different state I actually have a pretty broad network of people across the country um that engage in somatic practices so even if you just need support connecting please still reach out awesome

Christie: yeah thank you that's so helpful and we'll have to have you

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back for talking about health and minerals and how we can use that to support mental health cuz yeah that's such a um just such a unique area that I think we don't talk about enough

Atara: it is it is yeah and the way that I basically summarize that is minerals make your mental health resilient so if you're looking for more resilience yep if you're looking to have a quicker um you know bounce back you need minerals if that's where you are on your journey you that's the next step for you you're like

50:26
okay I'm implementing this stuff but like I just something's missing it's it's your physical health it's the body and minerals and so yeah I'd have I'd be thrilled to talk about that too

Christie: awesome thank you so much

Atara: yes of course thank you yes this was wonderful