Yesterday marked the 1 year anniversary of the first COVID case in New Hampshire. And not surprisingly, similarly to other disasters (9/11, Sandy Hook), everything changed that day. There was now a “before” and an “after”. My clients started cancelling like wildfire, afraid to be in “that area”. I remember panic setting in, fear, not knowing the roadmap or steps necessary to navigate this new thing called “Global Pandemic”. I felt very small and alone. I look back on posts and see the confusion, the waves of information heading towards us and the lag in fully digesting their meaning, the impact, the changes that lay ahead. We have new nomenclature like PPP, stimulus checks, mask-ne, social/physical distancing, mRNA, pods, Zoom-fatigue, quarantinis and the like. Who knew.
I was privileged to receive a PPP Loan, and it mattered quite a lot to me. Much of my caseload scattered to the wind as so many of my clients needed to a) suddenly be home with children full time or b) suddenly lost their low-paying hourly (sans benefit) jobs and were scrambling and panicking with the rest of us or c) stop spending completely as they saw their savings and portfolios flung into chaos and havoc, disposable income was no longer a thing.
And then it came – the huge tidal wave of need, of support, of seeking clarity in the universally bewildering murkiness of pandemic, lockdowns, closures, the re-imagining of countless aspects of our lives. For many, the steady reliability of sessions with a therapist offered a dry patch of rock in the swirling crashing wavy sea. (and all the while, the therapists were also navigating that very same swirling crashing wavy sea). Clients asked for ever more time. 90-minute sessions, multiple times per week. The wait lists became ethically unsustainable. Calls, e-mails for ever more sessions felt like stabs by tiny arrows from hearts seeking something to soothe their pain, and I had no ability to help ease their suffering as there were just no more hours in the day, the week. But that’s my job! To help ease suffering and pain of others. And I just couldn’t do more.
I was also re-tooling my practice, shifting overnight from in-person sessions with maybe 3-4 telehealth sessions sprinkled in per week to 100% telehealth. Plus teaching other therapists how to do this. Plus learning how to train colleagues online on how to work online. And believe me, I fought it as long as I could.
I miss my hair. Yes, I have lost quite a bit of it during this past year. I miss my reliable balance as I also have bouts with vertigo. Now, here I sit before my laptop stand with conferencing microphone and external speakers in a room, all alone. No tissues to refill or water bottles to restock. No hugs. No casual meetings in the hall with building colleagues. No lunches, no spontaneous “let’s meet at x for dinner tonight”. Everything is scheduled, formal, official. The pace and demands have been unrelenting, unparalleled.
For therapists there haven’t been any holidays, weeks off, vacations or breaks. I MISS SNOW DAYS! Working in telehealth means that weather is never an issue anymore, no more fun “free” days off, just shuffle down the hall, launch Zoom, and off to work you go. I now have clients that I believe I may –never- meet in-person. How strange is that? Unprecedented. (I think that is the word of the year). And every spare second of every day there is another “opportunity” for learning: a webinar, a seminar, a podcast. There aren’t enough hours in a day, even if you doubled them, to fit a fraction of everything in. I have stopped saving links and am leaning more towards quiet stillness at home.
But wait – there have been lovely gems that have gratefully appeared as well. I learned how to train colleagues well online and have now expanded my collegial pool to the entirety of the US, Canada, the UK and Europe, something that would probably never have happened if I had only been training in-person. I mean, New Hampshire isn’t a huge draw for travel. I have also been invited into so many clients personal spaces and am better able to witness systems and changes that I never would have been privy to in the traditional office visit model. Likewise so many clients have been able to access many more sessions due to the convenience of just switching screens versus needing to get dressed, drive to my office, wait in the waiting room, have a session, drive home, etc. I am also licensed in 4 states now, again expanding the reach of support I am able to offer.
Yesterday I had a tough day. I made mistakes, had technology snafus, and basically found myself strongly desiring a cry and a break, and a meal out at a restaurant. And yet here I am, in front of the laptop, launching the next Zoom session, a good therapist trying to do a good job.
Please join me in welcoming 20 more Brainspotting Practitioners to our community!
What a 3-day weekend. 20 trainees from coast-to-coast and Canada, 17 assistants (also from coast-to-coast and Canada!) and the amazing Amanda Perez as our pilot. We faced snowstorms and power outages and embraced pets (thank you Lily!) and processing.
The overwhelm and burnout we all face is hopefully smaller and lighter as we move back into our systems and continue to support our communities in navigating these very strange and difficult waters.
Well done everyone!!
I cannot exclaim enough about how fabulous Dr. del Monte’s videos are, how well he explains just how things like PTSD happen and hopefully in doing so, gives validation and comfort to the suffering with such experiences.
Watch, learn, share.
https://www.lecturio.de/medizin/brainspotting-special-saving-package.kurs
I am very excited to announce the dates are set for the next Northern New England Phase 1 Training. And we are being hosted by the elite Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, NH! What a wonderful location, a spectacularly beautiful time of year to be in New England, and the amazing generosity of KUA offering extremely discounted lodging and meals as an option!
We will also be addressing the particular challenges that both adolescents and young adults face when away from home for what may be the first time, as well as the particular challenges that the front-liners face in being immersed in these emotional rollercoaster settings. Limbic countertransference will be addressed.
If you encounter adolescents or young adults in a school or college/university setting, this is one you don’t want to miss!
21 CEs available from R. Cassidy Seminars for $30, payable directly to them: https://www.academeca.com/CEUReg/SeminarInfo.aspx?seminarId=2385
For more information or to register, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
I have been accepted as a presenter in this year’s Dismantling Rape Culture Conference at the University of Vermont on April 11, 2019.
I am proud to be a part of the healing aspect of the Conference for those impacted by sexual assaults and violence, introducing Brainspotting trauma healing therapy and educating how the brain receives and responds to threat and trauma. Brainspotting is uniquely suited to assist both the recipients of such assaults in their healing, and equally to assist the front-line caregivers in processing their limbic counter-transference in witnessing with such stories.
Please join me this April 11 at the 14th Annual DRCC at UVM! Bring colleagues and anyone whom may benefit from learning how to heal from these kinds of assaults. Registration opens on March 1, 2019.
I am so happy to share this resource with you. I was introduced to this book through the closed Brainspotting with Veterans Facebook page. This book is a true gem. It is short, clear, straightforward. And although it is written by a veteran for veterans, it is adaptable and applicable to most humans with PTSD, trauma, triggers, addiction, performance blocks – it is such a great tool. And it’s only $0.99!
There is a tool I use to keep myself in as non-judgmental a stance as I can – and that tool is none other than my keychain. Yep.
Here’s the story. When I turned 30, my best friend gave me a birthday present. It was a sterling keychain from Tiffany’s. Pretty nice, right? But as I looked at the gift I noticed that the initials engraved on the tag were not mine, “KA” but instead were as pictured, “BS”. I look quizzically at my friend… ummm, a scratch-and-dent sale?
She says no, that she had the “BS” engraved on purpose. So I bite…, and she says it’s a tool she learned in Social Work school. That each and every one of us has our own “bullshit” and that no two people’s BS looks the same. And for each of us, our own BS is huge and difficult, personal and burdensome. It’s a tool to keep me (or anyone) in a place of empathy and non-judgementalism. Because if I judge someone else’s “stuff” as not a big deal, then I can’t see it from their perspective, and we lose connection. If I define their stuff to be “too”-anything, then I’m in judgement, and probably in a should-mindset that again keeps me disconnected.
It doesn’t mean that I have to understand or commiserate with the other person’s BS, just to be in acknowledgement of it. I think at the time there was a supermodel who was suicidal because they couldn’t lose 5-lbs. And I was very dismissive, saying things like “oh, come on now, really?” when my friend looked at me and I started to get it. To the supermodel, 5-lbs meant everything – like the cover of Vogue vs. a Sunday paper department store circular – whereas to me it meant nothing. But their BS is theirs, I need to acknowledge and witness it, and not judge.
And so still today, I carry this keychain with me every single day, for 20 years now, to remind me and to ground me as to how each and every one of us has our own BS and never to compare, minimize, or “should” all over someone else’s stuff. It actually works very well!
This powerful video from the Sandy Hook Promise foundation elegantly and powerfully demonstrates that where we look does in fact impact what we see.
I recently had the amazing opportunity to spend 3 days of learning and training with David Grand, Ph.D., and 14 local therapists, courtesy of the Resiliency Center of Newtown. They invited the local area therapists who have been working with the tragedy of 12/14 to further hone and deepen our trauma healing skills in Brainspotting™.
One of the most important take aways from those 3 days was the basic education of how anyone’s brain reacts to and handles trauma.
First of all, we all have experienced and will experience trauma in our lives, there is no escaping it. Rather than fearing it and suppressing it, though, I would like to share this educational bit to help everyone see how the brain works and can be served in getting through life’s unexpected events.
It is amazing to see how the 12/14 event brought everyone instantly back to the 9/11 event even though they are separated by 11 years. One wouldn’t think that an event so far removed would trigger an older one, but that is in fact exactly how the brain works.
When the brain is confronted with a traumatic event (and this can be anything from a national tragedy to a scheduled surgery to a personal assault to watching the bloody nightly news), it “self-sacrifices” a bit of itself and encapsulates that event, storing it in the back of the brain. It knows that the event is too much (personally) to handle at the moment so it protects you and finds a way for you to get through the immediate steps needed to function. But now there’s this capsule in the brain that is holding this terrible experience. Over time we fear touching that capsule, we go to great lengths to avoid it, yet it is still there.
Then another trauma occurs and it’s instantly as if the old capsule has been opened and added to the new event, making it seem vastly worse and unmanageable. In my office I call this a “sympathetic explosion,” meaning the new event has dislodged an old event and both are feeling immediate and overwhelming simultaneously.
In the above example I have only mentioned the 12/14 and 9/11 events, but what if someone has had multiple traumas in their life, possibly stemming as far back as early childhood? How then might a new event feel based on this capsule-opening premise? One can hopefully see how each and every individual has an utterly personal and unique reaction to a trauma.
We learned that even within the community, there are factions of “us” and “them” between folks with different experiences of the tragedy. Rather than comparing and judging someone else’s experience, can’t we come together and recognize that each and every individual has a personal and powerful reaction to such a huge and horrific event. There is no one experience that is more or less than any other seeing as we are all carrying our own unopened capsules of prior life events. As a community, we must become better at understanding this phenomenon and find ways to increase the compassion for one another rather than make it a competition.
As a Brainspotting therapist, I have a passion and a commitment to providing a safe and nurturing space for my clients to safely and planfully open and process old capsules so when a new trauma comes along, it can be a solo event and not one consisting of many capsules being jostled.
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