Experience Healing Through Brainspotting (with Dr. David Grand)

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Welcome to the Husband Material Podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn.
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Why?
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So you can change your brain, heal your heart, and save your relationship.
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My name is Drew Boa, and I'm here to show you how.
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Let's go.
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Y'all, I am so excited about this episode.
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You are in for a treat.
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You are going to hear from the man himself, Dr.
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David Grand, about brain spotting, which he discovered and developed into an incredible movement with thousands of therapists and brain spotting practitioners around the world who are seeing miracles in healing, freedom, redemption, unbelievable life change.
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Brain spotting has changed my life.
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I first received it a little over a year and a half ago and then got trained in it, as well as a couple of our other Husband Material coaches, including Doug Carpenter and Mike Chapman.
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Brainspotting is now part of what we do in Husband Material Academy.
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And I am so, so excited for you all to hear from the founder of Brainspotting, Dr.
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David Grand.
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This episode explains what brain spotting is, how it works, and how it can particularly help men in the process of outgrowing porn.
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You're going to hear about creativity, spirituality, neuroscience.
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This is a feast, and I can't wait for more of you guys to hear about this and experience it.
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Enjoy the episode.
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Today is really exciting because we get to hear from Dr.
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David Grand, the founder of Brain Spotting, which is an incredible method bringing about life-changing breakthroughs.
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I have been receiving brain spotting and I just got certified in it.
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The book Brainspotting is awesome.
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And it's just called Brain Spotting, the revolutionary new therapy for rapid and effective change.
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This is the fastest growing area in the field of psychological health because it has proven that it can immediately address issues that talk therapy can take years to heal.
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David, welcome to the show.
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Thank you, Drew.
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My pleasure to be here.
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It's really cool to be talking with you.
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And yet, I feel like we maybe need to start with the basics.
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What is brain spotting?
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Brain spotting is a relational, brain-body, mindfulness-based approach to healing, in particular trauma healing.
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Again, I said relational first because most technical therapies don't really give much direct attention to the relationship.
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It's sort of assumed.
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But in brain spotting, it's the foundation we build on.
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But it's also a somatic therapy, a body-based therapy.
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It deals with not only just the entire body, it looks deals with the entire body, but especially the visual systems.
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We say in brain spotting where you look affects how you feel.
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And what that means is if you're thinking about something that's upsetting to you, and you look off to your left, it feels one way.
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And then if you look off to your right, you'll actually see it feels differently.
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There may be a quantitative difference, you know, how much you're feeling upset.
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Or it may be a qualitative difference, this may be anger, and this may be sadness.
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So where you look affects how you feel.
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And we make use of the person's field of vision to locate in their nervous system, deep into their nervous system, where the unprocessed trauma is held.
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And we know that for so many of us, our relationship with porn and other compulsive behaviors is based on that unprocessed trauma.
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And brain spot, and this is not our term, this is the term of the field.
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We say it's based on developmental trauma.
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What does that mean?
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It means from our development going right back to the all the way back to the beginning.
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The first traumas human beings have are usually called attachment traumas.
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And they happen in relation to chaos or other problems that go on in the relationship with the primary caretaker or caretakers.
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And it's before we have words, before we have thought, and so on.
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But we have feelings and we definitely have body sensations.
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Any addiction has an attachment aspect, you know, developmentally, and porn addiction is no different.
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Addictions are all about how we feel, you know, and people get drawn into addictions because it helps them to feel a certain way.
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Of course, not for healthy reasons and and with all kinds of negative consequences.
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But it's a matter of trying to feel some kind of self-soothing or some kind of grounding, you know, uh some sort of relief and so on.
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The problem is it it doesn't work and it continues on, and oftentimes it's progressive, and there can be negative consequences to it.
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But it's a matter of trying to regulate your emotions, your your emotional state, which is also your your body state.
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So that all goes back to early development.
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And brain spotting helps in working with an addiction to not only get to the underlying causes, but to really help the person's emotions that are held in the body to kind of relax and not be so driven because the driven feeling is what you know leads somebody to go right for the porn.
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How do you see the relationship between our eyes and our brains?
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I have to get a little technical here, you know, to answer that question.
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In utero, you know, when we're in the womb, literally our eyes grow out of our brains.
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And and as such, the eyes are part of the brain.
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They're inseparable from the brain, you know, even though they're involved in vision, but they're involved in a lot more.
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The retinas and the optic nerves are made up of brain cells, neurons.
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They have a nerve, a cranial nerve, which is a special kind of nerve that goes right into the brain stem and right in into the body.
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The muscles, we have six muscles that hold each eye in place and that move around like this.
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And every time we move our eyes, there's an immediate defocus, defocus.
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And these eye muscles are so sensitive, they immediately correct it so that we don't even see it.
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And these, again, these extraocular muscles, these eye muscles, are loaded with reflexes, loaded with cranial nerves, with peripheral nerve endings, all this stuff.
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And taking this into account, and there's more, the eyes are wired right in into the nervous system, right into all parts of the nervous system, not just the brain, but the spine, the peripheral nerves that go throughout our body.
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And most people don't know that the digestive system is loaded with neurons, you know, the heart has neurons.
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So these you call it the ocular nervous system.
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Okay, it's a pretty interesting way of looking at the eyes.
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Get direct access into the rest of the nervous system.
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And it goes as deep as our toes.
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And it's interesting to me that porn addiction is very visual, engaging the eyes.
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Good point.
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It's interesting when we think about brain spotting and accessing the brain through the eyes.
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Yeah, I mean, you've given me something to think about, Drew.
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It reminds me of that saying, the eyes are the windows to the soul.
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Yeah.
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It's Shakespeare.
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It seems like brain spotting has proven that or harnessed that power a really phenomenal way.
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Why do you think brain spotting and accessing our midbrain and our nervous system through our eyes can accelerate the healing process?
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We talk about unprocessed trauma in the nervous system.
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This goes for everybody with a porn addiction, has their own version and variety of unprocessed trauma in their nervous systems.
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Talk therapy goes to the conscious thinking language brain.
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Okay.
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And it doesn't go much further because this part of the brain doesn't network back into the deepest parts of the brain, the brainstem and down into the spine and the rest of the body.
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So people will say after they've been in talk therapy, they say, you know, I understand myself very well, but I still feel the same.
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Yeah.
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That's because you've only accessed this conscious thinking brain, you know, the prefrontal cortex.
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You have to be able to not only access it, you have to be able to bypass it.
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Once you get hung up here, you're just going around in circles when it comes to accessing the body.
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So in brain spotting, we we go through a setting up process where we ask a person, what would you like to work on today?
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Which person can give whatever aspect of their lives and any aspect of a porn addiction.
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Are you activated around it now?
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Yes.
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How much zero to ten?
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If zero is none, and ten is the highest.
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Well, it's actually yesterday it was a ten right now to nine.
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Okay, where where are you feeling that nine activation in your body?
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Well, right in my gut.
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And then from there, we have a variety of ways of finding the eye positions that match up with that activated feeling in the gut, you know.
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So it's all connected up.
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And then the person goes into what we call focused mindfulness processing, where, again, literally, you don't try to make anything happen.
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You just kind of let it happen.
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You see what comes up, you see what comes up next, and what follows, and you follow it wherever it goes.
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And sometimes it seems like it's related to the issue, and sometimes it goes far afield, and it seems like it's not related to the issue.
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It doesn't matter because this processing that that the person experiences is not in the thinking parts of their brain.
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It's not in the story parts of their brain.
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It goes deep into the body parts of the brain, of the nervous system.
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And as this processing happens, the person's nervous system is first, now that it's found where the unprocessed trauma is, is actually working on it on a very deeply systemic basis.
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A lot happens in every session, but again, if you have some really significant issues that have a lot behind it, one or two sessions is just the beginning, you know.
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But you don't have to be in decades and decades of therapy as so many people are.
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Every session counts and then and and every session you know accumulates.
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Yeah.
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And I've experienced it.
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It's incredible.
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During that focused mindfulness, anything can happen.
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Images, memories, thoughts, body sensations, burping, yelling, sobbing, yawning.
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I'm sure you've seen it all.
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All that and and much more, yeah.
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And and all of it is relevant.
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It's not relevant on a conscious thinking basis, but it's relevant on a deep nervous system basis.
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As you think about some of the other approaches out there, what makes brain spotting unique?
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Well, I've pretty much covered a good part of it.
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You know, um, I'm being a little facetious with that.
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There are a lot of really well-developed, very effective somatic therapies, body therapies out there, but none of them pay attention to the visual processes.
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The eyes and the visual system are part of the body, they're somatic, and yet it's kind of like ignored.
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So this makes it unique.
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But I'm I'm gonna just touch on two other things.
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One is what we call the uncertainty principle, and and that's and that is based on the fact that the human nervous system has somewhere between one to four quadrillion synaptic connections.
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What is a quadrillion?
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If you take a billion and you multiply it by a million, you get a quadrillion.
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A million billion, yeah.
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And if you multiply that by four, then it just becomes even more exponential.
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Because of this, in brain spotting, we recognize that a therapist sitting in front of a client, no matter what they're coming for, is in what we call a state of uncertainty.
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How can a therapist know what's going on in the one quadrillion synaptic connections in the person in front of them?
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You can't know.
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But yet, therapists are trained as if you can know, you should know, and you must know.
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You know, that's where the therapist is coming in with their own agenda.
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And the therapist's intentions are good intentions, carrying intentions.
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But if you think that you can know who this person is and where they've been and what they're carrying, and how they need you to help them, you can't possibly know.
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Now, of course, a therapist hearing that, or even a potential client hearing that said, Well, if you can't know, then what can you do?
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Well, we say in brain spotting, in the face of uncertainty, all we have is the frame.
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What is the frame?
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The frame is what the client brings with them.
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It's what drives them to come the first session and every session afterward.
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And the therapist knows this, and the therapist receives that frame that the client brings in.
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You don't have to know what it is to know that it is.
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You receive that frame and you hold it with the person.
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And as you hold it with the person, that's where things start to happen that wouldn't happen otherwise.
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And where the person looks, the eye positions are part of that of that frame.
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Right.
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So, going back to your question about the uniqueness of brain spotting, no other therapy has identified the uncertainty principle, although it applies to every therapy.
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Yeah.
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And the idea that in the state of uncertainty, that there is something you could do, which is to totally receive the client for who they are and where they are and be with them in that way, you know, including body awareness and awareness of visual processes, again, that's that's very unique as well.
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It's unbelievable.
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And when I'm using other modalities like inner child work or IFS or healing prayer, I find myself drawing on these brain spotting principles because they're just so helpful for any type of healing work.
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Well, inner child work is actually part of brain spotting, you know, even though it's IFS is a model that's built on that, and there are other models too, because we're a developmental model, which means a model that is aware of the importance and the inevitability of trauma in a person's development, and then dissociation, which is parts that you get cut off from yourself, which actually leads to the formation of parts, developmental parts.
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We have our own way of working with it in brain spotting, which is you find the part in the room and then you look at that part and you have the the part and the eye position together.
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Models like IFS are very developed.
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They're highly developed, they're very effective.
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And as we say in brain spotting, we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
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If there's an effective model out there like IFS and many other models, brain spotting is developed to be able to integrate with those models.
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Yeah.
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With one caveat.
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If a model has certainty in it, okay, which means that you can and should and must know something that you can't possibly know in the face of uncertainty, you can't integrate certainty into uncertainty.
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But you can take any model that's out there and ground it in uncertainty and find the aspects of certainty that are in it and be able to set them aside.
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That seems so important.
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Healing and recovery always has some level of risk and uncertainty involved.
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And we need to learn how to tolerate uncertainty and to lean into it.
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And that's exactly what brain spotting is about.
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Yeah, I do want to say about porn addiction.
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The internet, social media, and everything like this has created opportunities that are prop problematic opportunities that never existed before.
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You go back decades, and all that was around was a stag film.
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And most people, you know, like who had access to that, and then you get a projector to watch it and so on.
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Now, the the issues, people had the same issues, but the outlet wasn't there.
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And then when it came online, it was like very expensive at first, and you had to register and all this stuff.
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And, you know, again, that's it started to really spread out from there.
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But then when it became free access, then the whole game was over.
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And anybody who was vulnerable could could fall into that.
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Yeah.
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Including kids and boys in our early development.
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Especially everything turned upside down with that.
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And it goes along with all the other problematic aspects of social media and online access and things like that, you know, where there are benefits, but there's some real detriments.
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And this is where people who are vulnerable fall into that.
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You've created brain spotting, trained thousands of therapists and coaches and professionals around the world.
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And most recently, you've created this neuroexperiential model, and one of the key aspects is global, not Western-centric.
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We say culture comes before science.
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And what we mean by that is culture comes before Western science.
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But it's really quite interesting that that's a radical statement to make when there's nothing radical about it.
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It's quite fundamental.
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Western science goes back three, four, five hundred years, and Western medicine goes back, you know, two, three hundred years, and Western psychotherapy goes back like a hundred years, you know, maybe a little bit more.
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But culture is something that has been around as long as there have been human beings on this planet.
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Culture has been around thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
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There's one billion people in the West in this planet, and seven billion people who are not in the West.
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So healing has been around for thousands and thousands of years embedded in culture.
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But somehow the one billion people on this planet think that not only they know better than the other seven billion, but they think that the other seven billion have to follow what this one billion in the West thinks and believes.
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And unfortunately, you know, these ideas have been exported around the world, and you know, there are people who are setting aside their Their cultural wisdom, you know, for the Western Western idea.
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I'm not saying the Western ideas don't have a value, because they do, but in a global context, not as the idea like the West is the world.
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We have done trainings in every part of the world, and in in places where there is cultural healing wisdom, it has been infused into brain spotting.
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And for us, this is a wonderful thing.
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Yeah.
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That's why culture comes before science.
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Right.
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And there's nothing radical about it.
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It's like it's as obvious as the sun coming up in the east and setting in the west.
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And in a similar way, more men from our community can also infuse Christianity and your own spirituality and your own traditions into this process.
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Yeah, and Christianity and really every other uh religious tradition as well.
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Sometimes during a brain spotting session with a client who is a Christian, Jesus will show up and enter into the process.
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I will say to my clients who practice religion, oftentimes, what's your favorite prayer?
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What prayer is the most meaningful to you?
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And we'll use that as a frame.
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And again, this is not looking to see where you feel upset or activated in your body.
00:21:29.039 --> 00:21:35.279
This is to see where you feel the presence of God or Jesus or higher power from that prayer.
00:21:35.519 --> 00:21:39.759
And then with that prayer, we find the spot that goes along with it, you know.
00:21:40.079 --> 00:21:46.480
So it becomes a direct link, you know, between uh the spiritual and the brain spotting healing.
00:21:46.720 --> 00:21:49.279
Also, we have what's called the God spot.
00:21:49.519 --> 00:21:53.519
Where do you see or feel the presence of God the most?
00:21:53.680 --> 00:21:58.079
You know, sometimes you say that to a person, their eyes will jump right on a spot.
00:21:58.240 --> 00:22:05.279
And sometimes they their eyes need to kind of flow around a little bit before it lands like a butterfly on a flower.
00:22:05.599 --> 00:22:17.279
Historically, in Western science, and then going into psychotherapy, coming from Western science, there's been no place for culture and no place for religion.
00:22:17.519 --> 00:22:22.640
In fact, religion has been seen as that can't be part of this.
00:22:22.799 --> 00:22:24.160
We're scientific.
00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:25.039
You know?
00:22:25.359 --> 00:22:37.680
Well, if that was the case, how come religion and spiritual beliefs and practices has been around for thousands of years before Western science and then Western psychotherapy?
00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:39.200
Doesn't make any sense.
00:22:39.440 --> 00:22:47.920
But when someone is a believer and a practicer in a religion, I always see that as an asset to the healing.
00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:49.680
Totally.
00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:50.880
A resource.
00:22:51.519 --> 00:22:52.960
It's definitely a resource.
00:22:53.200 --> 00:23:08.799
Also, people who are who've suffered traumas or are suffering or fallen into into addiction oftentimes have what I call a spiritual crisis of confidence, where they start to question their own beliefs.
00:23:09.039 --> 00:23:19.920
Even start to question the belief of God or Jesus or whatever, which is that kind of crisis of confidence is a trauma for someone who has historically believed.
00:23:20.240 --> 00:23:39.680
So we work with that, not to try to get somebody to do something, but that as the healing goes on, a person and as the healing of their of their spiritual crisis goes on, they find their way not just back, they find their way forward into their spirituality.
00:23:40.240 --> 00:23:41.359
That's beautiful.
00:23:42.160 --> 00:23:55.279
I so appreciate the openness to spirituality, to multiculturalism, to science, and also self-healing.
00:23:55.440 --> 00:24:00.160
I mean, for some of our listeners, that might be an uncomfortable concept.
00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:03.680
Is it really true that our brains can heal themselves?
00:24:04.319 --> 00:24:05.519
Absolutely.
00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:15.440
We know that the immune system works by picking up anything that is off from the way it should be in all of our body systems.
00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:19.599
First it picks it up and then it goes into correction mode.
00:24:19.759 --> 00:24:22.160
And the immune system doesn't operate on its own.
00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:24.720
It's very much related to the brain and the nervous system.
00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:37.680
So the nervous system has its own version of what the immune system has, which is that it knows how to how to go from being dysregulated, out of regulation, towards being regulated.
00:24:38.079 --> 00:24:54.880
But what happens is when you have trauma, especially developmental trauma, these areas of unprocessed trauma in your nervous system, when it gets to a certain point, is not able to find it or figure out what to do with it.
00:24:55.279 --> 00:24:58.720
This goes back to what I was saying that with the brain spotting frame.
00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:06.480
The client brings their frame, we receive it, hold it, shape it with them, and the processing happens from there.
00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:21.279
That is the process, especially finding that eye position, where we're helping the person's nervous system find where the unprocessed trauma is, hold the attention on it, and then the self-healing comes online.
00:25:21.920 --> 00:25:24.720
And then the nervous system figures it out.
00:25:25.359 --> 00:25:28.240
And God made our bodies to be able to do that.
00:25:29.119 --> 00:25:30.240
So cool.
00:25:30.799 --> 00:25:39.599
Our bodies and our brains and our nervous system and all our organs and everything working together is an impossibility.
00:25:41.119 --> 00:25:42.720
It can't be random.
00:25:42.880 --> 00:25:46.319
It's not some kind of strange, complex accident.
00:25:47.119 --> 00:25:52.079
It if you step back from it, it has to be a greater design.
00:25:52.480 --> 00:26:01.920
Just like where we fit in our environments and other forms of life, animal life and plant life and so on, in our environments.
00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:04.480
Nothing like that happens on its own.
00:26:04.960 --> 00:26:06.000
It's a miracle.
00:26:06.240 --> 00:26:06.640
Yeah.
00:26:06.799 --> 00:26:09.119
And it's a miracle and a mystery.
00:26:09.519 --> 00:26:19.039
And I love how brain spotting has increased my awareness of that mystery and ability to just sit with it and allow it to happen.
00:26:19.279 --> 00:26:24.319
I feel like a lot of it is just getting out of the way and letting the brain do its thing.
00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:26.400
It's almost all of it.
00:26:26.640 --> 00:26:39.519
See, in most therapy models, instead of getting out of the way very mindfully and strategically, most therapy models inadvertently subtly, sometimes not so subtly, get in the way.
00:26:39.759 --> 00:26:45.440
When you go to see a therapist for anything, but especially a porn addiction, you know, you're very vulnerable.
00:26:45.759 --> 00:26:52.319
You are relying on the expertise and the wisdom and the experience of the therapist.
00:26:52.640 --> 00:26:56.240
So that you can't say, oh, no, that's not what I need.
00:26:56.319 --> 00:26:57.039
I need this.
00:26:57.200 --> 00:27:01.119
You know, if if you knew that, you wouldn't have to be there in the first place.
00:27:01.359 --> 00:27:04.319
You know, so so you become reliant on what the therapist says.
00:27:04.400 --> 00:27:12.960
And if they speak with great authority and belief and confidence, who who is a person going for help to not believe that?
00:27:13.279 --> 00:27:32.160
But it goes against the fact that the human nervous system is virtually infinitely complex and that nobody can know it from the outside, no matter how well trained they are and how talented they are and how much experience they have, you know.
00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:36.000
The experience teaches the therapist humility.
00:27:36.240 --> 00:27:41.440
In the face of uncertainty in the nervous system, there should be humility.
00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:55.359
And instead of trying to have all the answers, allowing the other person to discover their own instincts and intuition and internal wisdom.
00:27:56.319 --> 00:27:57.359
And that's huge.
00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:11.440
One of my favorite quotes ever came from you, and it relates to this because brain spotting also really promotes and encourages creativity.
00:28:11.680 --> 00:28:17.920
You said there is no healing without creativity, and there is no creativity without healing.
00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:19.200
Absolutely.
00:28:19.519 --> 00:28:21.680
Humans are endlessly creative.
00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:28.319
Even people who don't believe they're creative or don't appear creative, their nervous system is a symphony of creativity.
00:28:28.480 --> 00:28:34.799
And when you tap into it, then it then that creativity just really gets gets liberated.
00:28:35.440 --> 00:28:40.319
So the healing process is a very creative process, you know.
00:28:40.559 --> 00:28:45.440
But it's not creative like you sit there and you pick up a paintbrush and you start to paint.
00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:51.680
You know, it's every different type of creativity coming together all at once.
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:54.559
So there is no healing without creativity.
00:28:54.720 --> 00:28:58.400
You know, creativity is foundational to healing.
00:28:58.720 --> 00:29:04.799
On the other side, people used to go to theater to see Greek tragedies.
00:29:05.119 --> 00:29:15.119
Going back a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, and they'd go to these prosceniums and sit there, and it would be this it would all be about catharsis.
00:29:15.359 --> 00:29:22.400
There'd be a huge catharsis, you know, and uh of feeling and and an expressing and a letting go of emotions.
00:29:22.799 --> 00:29:30.000
And that was the therapy, you know, that was the group therapy of the day and a lot of other things like that.
00:29:30.319 --> 00:29:47.119
So historically, creativity has been very much related to providing healing for people who who are able to do the creativity, express the creativity, and those who are able to be to to receive it and appreciate it and experience it.
00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:54.720
So in that way, anytime somebody has a healing, a creative process, there's healing in it for them.
00:29:54.799 --> 00:30:00.000
And when it's witnessed by somebody else, there's there's healing in it for them as well.
00:30:01.039 --> 00:30:03.039
And the healing is multiplied.
00:30:03.519 --> 00:30:07.759
It's very relational, it's very imaginative.
00:30:08.880 --> 00:30:16.720
And the openness to imagination has so much power.
00:30:16.960 --> 00:30:23.839
In many cases, our imaginations have been hijacked sexually from when we were kids.
00:30:24.079 --> 00:30:32.480
And the way that brain spotting unlocks creativity and imagination, I think, is reclaiming that part of the brain.
00:30:33.519 --> 00:30:38.880
In what ways have you applied brain spotting to working with men with porn addiction?
00:30:39.119 --> 00:30:41.359
And what kind of experiences have you had?
00:30:41.920 --> 00:30:54.880
Primarily, we find the ability to process whatever is underneath our sexual fantasies, urges.
00:30:55.920 --> 00:31:13.279
Whenever those things feel disproportionate or extremely strong, it's just the surface level of developmental trauma, unprocessed emotions, wounds, fear, shame, loss.
00:31:13.519 --> 00:31:19.680
And so brain spotting goes straight to the core of whatever is really going on.
00:31:20.559 --> 00:31:30.640
I'm also interested in continuing to learn from people like Roby Abels and more of the specialization in how brain spotting can help with addictions.
00:31:31.039 --> 00:31:44.400
But then, as you described, also just being able to experience the presence of God and being able to step into your own power and confidence as an adult is also really powerful, too.
00:31:44.720 --> 00:32:05.200
And especially with so much shame and self-contempt that can be part of this, brain spotting is a breath of fresh air in welcoming everything going on within us, no matter what it is.
00:32:05.440 --> 00:32:19.519
So the lack of judgment, the total acceptance and self-compassion is often very powerful for me, for the men who are brave enough to try brain spotting.
00:32:20.160 --> 00:32:26.400
And also, I think as you said, it's a developmental model.
00:32:26.799 --> 00:32:29.759
We have a saying, heal the boy to free the man.
00:32:31.680 --> 00:32:33.839
Brain spotting seems to really help with that.
00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:43.279
Yeah, by the way, the the shame and the self-contempt just are part of the vicious cycle of the addiction.
00:32:43.519 --> 00:32:54.400
You know, it's like there's this belief, well, if if I'm ashamed and I beat myself up, then then that'll cause me to stop doing the behaviors and sometimes primitive belief.
00:32:54.640 --> 00:33:00.480
But in fact, again, the the shame and the self-contempt only drives a person deeper into it.
00:33:01.039 --> 00:33:06.160
And so so that cycle needs to be addressed and and and be interrupted.
00:33:06.640 --> 00:33:23.599
You know, we teach in brain spotting that you know the relationship is the foundation of it, and that the therapist provides the client with an attuned, empathic witnessing presence.
00:33:24.319 --> 00:33:36.960
Again, for for the men that you're talking about, this is incredibly powerful because because of all the shame and self-contempt and the and the guilt and self-loathing and so on.
00:33:37.200 --> 00:33:55.839
When they tell their story and they come out with who they are and and what they do and where it comes from, and the response is that the person, the therapist is just listening, sitting with them, listening, following, following them wherever they go, curious, trusting that person, you know.
00:33:56.000 --> 00:34:01.039
And again, all of this is attunement in the context of presence.
00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:08.000
Person coming with those circumstances, experiencing something they have never experienced before.
00:34:08.239 --> 00:34:13.920
And then there's a sense of not trusting it because you know, how could this person really be that way with me?
00:34:14.079 --> 00:34:14.559
You know?
00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:28.239
But it continues and it continues, and and it it only deepens, you know, and it it's the beginning for a person to start to be empathic with themselves.
00:34:28.719 --> 00:34:29.280
Yes.
00:34:29.679 --> 00:34:37.199
And feel like they have a right to to heal, they have a right to reclaim their lives.
00:34:37.519 --> 00:34:37.920
Yeah.
00:34:38.239 --> 00:34:42.159
That's exactly our vision for husband material.
00:34:42.400 --> 00:34:48.239
It's learning to receive that and be that with others.
00:34:48.559 --> 00:34:51.519
David, what is your favorite thing about brain spotting?
00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:54.159
So that's a long list to choose from.
00:34:54.480 --> 00:35:03.840
One is it takes the responsibility off of the therapist's shoulders for being the expert who's going to make make things happen.
00:35:04.159 --> 00:35:13.440
It's not like it's not hard work, but it isn't the kind of hard work it is when you when you're expected to be the expert who has the answers for for the client.
00:35:13.679 --> 00:35:21.599
So there is a freedom and a relief from that when really the most important thing is for you to do is to just show up and be there.
00:35:21.920 --> 00:35:28.480
But as when we do this and as the processing goes on, it's to watch the connections happen.
00:35:28.719 --> 00:35:44.880
Like all of a sudden, a per and this could be 20 minutes into a session, it could be halfway through through the fourth, fourth or fifth set session, all the persons, person will say, Oh, I just made a connection, or something just came to me.
00:35:45.119 --> 00:35:48.079
We call it a brain spotting, waiting for the surprise.
00:35:48.480 --> 00:35:57.440
And if you wait and and trust the person and follow them and are curious about their process, that surprise always always happens.
00:35:58.639 --> 00:36:09.119
There are usually a few mini surprises in every session and occasionally a bigger surprise in a session, but they always come and they come in the right time in the right in the right way.
00:36:09.360 --> 00:36:21.599
And sometimes an accumulation of these surprises becomes a miracle where you'll see something happen, a shift happen for a person, and this is where the spiritual comes into it.
00:36:21.760 --> 00:36:32.000
You'll see the person makes a spiritual shift, and all of a sudden they regain faith and they regain their capacity to believe.
00:36:32.239 --> 00:36:44.960
And it's it's almost like you see their eyes, if if they don't literally open up, they metaphorically open up, and something happens that might have taken a long time and probably would have never happened.
00:36:45.199 --> 00:36:51.039
And you get to see this when you work with a lot of people, you get to see these miracles all the time.
00:36:51.280 --> 00:36:59.119
That's the most, you know, rewarding and and renewing thing that that I get to experience and that you've you've gotten to experience.
00:36:59.519 --> 00:37:00.719
Absolutely.
00:37:01.039 --> 00:37:07.840
And when a person has a faith basis, you know, and a prayer basis, it's like pre-wiring for all this.
00:37:08.079 --> 00:37:08.719
Yeah.
00:37:10.320 --> 00:37:12.639
And God wants us to succeed.
00:37:12.960 --> 00:37:14.800
God doesn't want us to fail.
00:37:15.119 --> 00:37:19.440
God is on our side, no matter how lost we've gotten.
00:37:20.239 --> 00:37:23.199
And God is always waiting to embrace us.
00:37:23.519 --> 00:37:26.880
All we have to do is get out of the way.
00:37:27.199 --> 00:37:29.280
Yeah, which goes along with believing.
00:37:29.599 --> 00:37:29.840
Right.
00:37:29.920 --> 00:37:35.760
It's an act of faith, hope, trust, and as you said, presence.
00:37:36.719 --> 00:37:40.239
He's always present to us, and we're becoming present to him.
00:37:40.880 --> 00:37:46.159
So, guys, if you want to learn more about brain spotting, go to brainspotting.com.
00:37:46.239 --> 00:37:52.559
You can also go down to some of the links in the show notes if you're interested in doing brain spotting with us here at Husband Material.
00:37:52.800 --> 00:37:55.199
David, thank you so much for being with us.
00:37:55.679 --> 00:37:57.360
Drew, thank you for having me.
00:37:57.599 --> 00:37:58.480
You're welcome.
00:37:58.719 --> 00:38:04.480
And gentlemen, always remember you are God's beloved son, and you, he is well pleased.