I made a decision to become a therapist when I was seventeen years old which was almost sixty years ago. Then I did not realize how few therapeutic processes were available to help clients with traumas. Then were in the “Dark Ages”!
Thirty years later, I was aware of at least three effective trauma procedures. In 1995 I attended a medical hypnosis workshop. A psychologist attendee at lunch mentioned that her client had recently lost a lawsuit against a major fast food chain restaurant. Her client had been raped in the womens restroom in the restaurant two years before.
I asked if her client was ok and she told that she was still traumatized. I asked how often she was seeing her client and she told me weekly for two years. I asked what processes she was using with her client and she said, “ flooding” (Exposure Therapy). I asked if she thought about investigating other trauma procedures and she said, “flooding always works, but it sometimes takes a long time”.
There is an old saying, “a broken clock is right twice a day”.
I had PTSD “Flashbacks” for twelve years back in the 1970s and early 1980s. I believe that the “Flooding Procedure” used by one of my therapists reinforced my traumatic memory.
Today, therapists have many effective trauma therapeutic tools to help their clients and themselves. EMDR, Flash, The In Technique, EMI, the Rewind Procedure also known as the NLP Trauma/Phobia Cure, Brain-Switch, BrainSpotting, the list goes on, and more recently FreeSpotting. All of these will usually make a positive difference for you and your clients.
You can be a more effective therapist if you are flexible by having more than one therapeutic trauma tool in your toolbox. I like having at least five intervention tools on hand. I always tell my clients that if we do an intervention that doesn’t work – we will do something else that will work (there are over six trauma tools on my blog).
If your current therapeutic tool does not make a positive difference for your client in one session, you might find another tool. A hammer is very effective tool for pounding nails into wood; however, a hammer is not effective in unscrewing a small nut onto a bolt. Go find another tool!
Here is a new tool called , “FreeSpotting”which was developed as a spinoff of BrainSpotting. I have successfully tested it on myself and over fifteen clients.
The one of my more recent test on FreeSpotting was on March 15, 2022. The UK client was feeling “overwhelmed “ with financial paperwork, because he never was in charged of the family finances and his partner of forty years had recently passed away.
I had him find a spot on his wall (a Zoom session) focus on the problem with the emotion, and within three to five minutes the emotion dissolved. On a scale of 0 to 10 and 10 being the strongest, my client started at 9 and ended at 0. I did a follow up with this client on April 27. The response to the previous “overwhelmed” state remains as a 0.
In case you are not familiar with BrainSpotting, here is a 4 minute video by Leigh Ann Fernandez on doing BrainSpotting by yourself followed by videos on FreeSpotting by yourself :
The developer’s named for FreeSpotting is Fiona De Vos. These are her and her husband’s three YouTube videos that explain this very easy to learn procedure:
A 3 minute video on background on BrainSpotting:
A 5 minute video on Fiona’s Spin-off Procedure “FreeSpotting”
A 3 minute video on how to do a FreeSpotting session on yourself:
6. Notice the new possibilities!My Favorite Phrase: “Psychology is a science and psychotherapy is an art.” Author unknown 🤔Clint77090(at)Gmail.Com