March '22 - TBI's

March is National Brain Injury Month. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), a form of acquired brain injury, occurs when a sudden trauma causes damage to the brain. The good news is that Brainspotting is tremendously effective in healing not only the trauma from TBI, but can also heal or decrease many of our client’s most disturbing TBI symptoms.

 

This is possible because Brainspotting accesses the deepest regions of the brain where “neuroplasticity” can reawaken neural networks to allow hope and positive change for those who have suffered from strokes, concussions, hard falls on the head, car accidents, violence, sports injuries, combat injuries, or explosive blasts. After receiving appropriate medical attention, Brainspotting can begin.

 

Symptoms of TBI can include:

 

- headaches

- confusion

- fatigue

- lightheadedness or dizziness

- blurred vision or tired eyes

- ringing in the ears

- bad taste in the mouth

- change in sleep patterns

- behavioral or mood changes

- trouble with memory, concentration, attention, or thinking

 

A person with a more severe TBI may also experience:

 

- headaches that won’t go away

- repeated vomiting or nausea

- convulsions or seizures

- an inability to awaken from sleep

- dilation of one or both pupils of the eyes

- slurred speech

- weakness or numbness in the extremities

- loss of coordination

- increased confusion, restlessness, or agitation.

 

One client's story

I remember a profound experience with a beloved male client who, unbeknownst to him, had a very serious stroke two years earlier. He noticed he was forgetting things, had restlessness, insomnia, and involuntary movements at night, uncharacteristic anger, depression, and moodiness. He lost some executive functioning, and couldn’t execute simple accounting at his church volunteer job. He had seriously mismanaged the church finances; he felt shame for costing his church so much money and worthless with his diminished capacities. He made a serious suicide attempt which filled him with more shame as a religious man who believed it was sinful. While he was on a 5150 hold, a brain scan was done that showed he had suffered a massive stroke two years prior.

Rolling Brainspotting with Expansion Brainspotting healed his destroyed self-worth, his dysregulated brain

When he came to me for Brainspotting, in the presence of his wife and adult daughter, I did Rolling Brainspotting on him in the hopes that stopping on every reflexive spot in his visual field would give his remarkable brain the opportunity to heal through neuroplasticity. I also wanted him to find peace with the cognitive losses from his TBI as well as his deep feelings of unworthiness and no longer feeling good enough.

I asked him the Expansion set-up question: “What is the best possibility for you to know that you are still good enough even though you can no longer do accounting for your church? And, what is the best possibility for you to forgive yourself for messing up the church finances and for attempting suicide? (You do have a brain injury you know!)" He immediately said the best possibility for him was to connect with his unconditionally loving God, who he believed loved him whether he could do numbers or not, and would have compassion for his suicide attempt.

I rolled across his visual field while he thought of his 'stupidity' and his ‘sinful’ suicide attempt. I stopped on every reflex and, if got too difficult for him, he would go to his Expansion/God spot. He shook violently, his face contorted, his body rocked side to side, and his face looked paralyzed on one side for much of the session. His body was shaking off the brain injury and the trauma.

At the end of the session, his disturbance about ruining the church finances and about his suicide attempt had both gone from a 10 SUDs to a 0. The next week, his family returned. He was sleeping through the night; the restlessness and thrashing that had kept his wife up for two years stopped. His depression and hopelessness had lifted. He was now a greeter for his church and grinning about it. His shame was gone and his brain had significantly been regulated.

 

Rolling Brainspotting and Basic Expansion Set-Ups

 

You can find the set-ups I used below; I hope you will find success and healing for your TBI clients. Keep in mind that most clients with TBI will not heal in one session, but this case illustrates the power of Brainspotting in addressing the emotional, neurological, and spiritual aspects of head trauma.