3 Ways to Calm Your Nervous System as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)

I was a guest on the Highly Sensitive Podcast with Lauren LaSalle.

I shared about how I learned I was a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and gave three tips about how to calm your nervous system as an HSP.

(Scroll down for the transcript.)

My HSP Story

Lauren: What was your experience like discovering that you were highly sensitive? 

Joanne: I heard about it a couple years back during my pre-license years in therapy.  

I think just the lights went on and everything kind of clicked and made sense in terms of just how readily aggravated I get over sensory experiences, especially in my environment.

I used to label myself as being very asocial and withdrawn and things like that. 

I used to live with my in-laws for a good number of years. Being in a household full of vivacious people with all these sounds, I found myself coming home from work, going straight into my bedroom, turning off all the lights, putting my earplugs in, and going into bed.

Or in other times, we would have a big family gathering where they would hangout until past midnight. I would usually be the first to duck out because my eyes were glazing over from all of the activity and energy and I wouldn’t really be listening anymore.

I found out later that my in-laws wondered whether I was okay or thought that I didn’t like them.

Once I learned that I was HSP, how my body felt and what I did all made sense.

I explained to my in-laws that my body needed to decompress from all that happened during the day, and that it wasn’t personal. Because a lot of them were also HSPs, they understood. Now they know how to interpret my reactions.

To smooth things over, nowadays I just tell people, “Hey, I need to go decompress. I’ll be back in 20 minutes” and help my body and brain recharge. It’s a neutral, regular, and routine thing I do these days.

Lauren: Wow. I can't even imagine living with, I mean, even my own parents again, let alone my in-laws. That sounds really tough as an HSP.

Joanne: Fortunately, my in-laws are really great. They're emotionally fluent enough where I can share how I'm feeling and they're okay. 

It's more the sensory experiences of just there being a lot of chatter I hear through the walls and pots and pans clanging and things like that.

I think having agency over my own immediate space has been super helpful. Having my own office space was actually a huge plus for my own personal emotional and mental health, because I get to control the space however I want to and add all kinds of very soothing features to it in ways that I wouldn't have been able to at home.

What is Trauma?

Lauren: Not only are you highly sensitive, but you are also a therapist who works with highly sensitive people. What are some examples of how normal events can be traumatic for HSPs and kind of what can cause this to happen? 

Joanne: I like thinking about things through the lens of our nervous system in terms of how overwhelmed it gets. 

Often when people think about reactivity, they think about the actions people do in response to being stressed. There's less of a focus about how a person gets stressed to begin with.

 I would say there is a general window by which we are supposed to be stimulated throughout the day, like the sun rises or the coffee machine works, et cetera. Generally we're supposed to take those stimuli and use them to kind of wake up and engage the day. 

It's just that for HSPs that window is a lot smaller where we can get readily flooded all too easily and non HSPs they're like, I don't even notice a difference. 

When that overstimulation happens for an extended period of time it really wears away at the body, at the nervous system with cortisol (the stress hormones) constantly coursing through our veins. Cortisol has been shown to actually erode some aspects of our bodily function, it actually impacts some organs. 

It's this deadly cycle where we get overstimulated more readily, our bodies are under a lot of strain, we make reactive decisions that often make hard things worse, and then there's more strain and then it just keeps spiraling through. 

Generally I define trauma more openly than other therapists might. I don't just consider those big dramatic events, like a car crash or assault or things like that as trauma. I define trauma as any event, big or small, that gives people a very concentrated set of feeling out of control, feeling like they're in danger, or feeling embarrassed. 

That last piece would I think give a lot of people more empathy towards themselves. 

If a person when they're growing up in their elementary school classroom gets called on by a teacher to answer a question on the board, some kids might be like, oh, this is super exciting I can finally show off what I can do, and they answer the question on the board, that's taken as a very positive experience. But for a lot of people, especially HSPs, who are called on the spot, they weren't expecting it.  

Getting called on itself is very stressful on top of getting all this attention from everyone in the classroom, and then they might actually turn beat red. Therefore also losing control over their own bodily experiences and would be super embarrassed. They will be socially isolated, or at least internally, that's how they would interpret it. 

That event, which normally will be considered a very normal, day-to-day experience, is a traumatic event.  Later down the line, the person might have a lot of anxiety when it comes to giving presentations at work.

These are the actual kinds of situations that I help my therapy clients with in the present day. 

Lauren: I love that example because as you were talking about it, I started to feel anxious. Because I was one of those people where if the teacher called on me,  even if I knew the answer, it was a total blank. Like, I have no idea what's going on. I feel all hot and like everybody's looking at me and like I just kind of want to disappear. So I can totally relate to that, and I'm sure a lot of people will be able to as well. 

Joanne: Being sensitive not just towards being put on the spot, but also other people's energies and emotions, and also sensitivity towards one’s own bodily functions.t's kind of like a triple, quadruple dose of stimulation. 

It will definitely lead people to shut down and afterwards having shut down then there's a lot of the shame talk. Like, oh, why couldn't I be like Tommy? Or why did I do this? Like, I'm so dumb, et cetera. 

And that's adding several extra layers.

Lauren: I like how you define trauma too, because I think I've done that as well with my clients. I think a lot of people just think, oh, trauma is these big events that happen, but it really can be seemingly smaller events. Just because it doesn't affect one person negatively doesn't mean that it's not going to really, really affect somebody else and have a lasting impact on them. I really like that definition. 

Joanne: What I also like about that definition is that we can also flip it upside down to talk about what kinds of experiences help an HSP heal, or general person, but HSPs all the more.

If trauma is any experience, big or small, that leads a person to feel super out of control, super in danger or embarrassed, then healing would be any experience, big or small, that helps a person feel like they're in self-control, that they're super safe and secure and feeling seen, known and validated.

Finding ways to give ourselves more of those experiences on purpose, integrating that into our day-to-day lives is super important, because in the same way that we would be bothered more readily by different things that come up, we could also be readily soothed then for non HSPs.

It goes both ways. That's the nice thing about it. 

Responsiveness and Attunement

Lauren: I think that's so interesting that research has found that. It's just a really strange thing. I wouldn't have thought that that would be the case. I guess it's kind of sad in a way, but it's kind of nice also that even though we can be negatively affected by things more than the average person, we can actually be more affected by positive things, too.

Joanne: It eventually kind of breaks even, you know?

It's just that neutral stimulation. Less so having a moral charge of good and bad towards it. 

I think for that reason, those who are highly sensitive or are in relationships with HSPs need to be particularly attentive to noticing things in our environment like, five senses. 

Like bringing in more greenery, for example. 

Even those small things can have their own compound interest, if you will. It just keeps snowballing so that even when a person comes home, if their environment is very soothing, then they can actually recharge a lot more quickly than for someone who's not particularly paying attention and they're still getting aggravated along the way.

I would say that the HSP trait prompts one to need more responsiveness and attunement and more intentionality to their daily experiences. 

Lauren: I agree. And I've started to try, I mean, now I have a six month old at home so that's just another added layer on top of everything. As a new mom you hear, you don't have to keep up with the dishes and all of this, it's okay because you're busy, which I totally agree with. But on the flip side, if I don't, it stresses me out. If there's stuff all over the place, I lose my mind. So I know that for my own mental health, I also have to be as much on top of dishes, laundry, and cleaning up clutter as I can be. Otherwise it's going to go rapidly downhill.

Joanne: It's not about being particular or about having high standards or whatnot. The alternative is I'm just going to be irritable all the time. 

We give our nervous systems a chance to breathe more easily.

Using Brainspotting to Decompress

Lauren: So what are some other things that we can do to help our nervous systems other than being really intentional about our surroundings? 

Joanne: There are two approaches that I use most of the time in therapy. One is the Enneagram Personality framework. The other is called brainspotting, which is a derivative of EMDR, another trauma therapy technique. 

Brainspotting is actually what we do naturally, just not on purpose. 

If you've ever seen a veteran who is back in civilian life and they're kind of sitting on a bench and they're staring off into space. That's an example of brainspotting. 

The person doesn't quite know that they're internally processing, but their lizard brain is definitely trying to metabolize some stressful things. Obviously, for veterans, they've gone through a lot. 

HSPs tend to do that, staring off into space a lot more often. It's just that the idea of staring off into space is not socially acceptable. It's as if someone is not engaged or disinterested or whatever. 

Often when someone is sitting, staring off into space, the people around them are like, hey, are you okay?

But in actuality, the person's brain is saying, no, I just need to sit and do nothing and decompress. 

What I recommend for clients who come in, they find out that they're HSP or they've known for some time, but they're wanting to know how can I de-stress as soon as possible. I would say give yourself permission to sit and zone out for at least five minutes uninterrupted. 

The emphasis is on permission. 

Often when we have those experiences, when we're checked out, there's a lot of judgment and shame around it. When our body's actually trying to recover, when we bring in that judgment, then that actually sets up a whole bunch of triggers that ends up adding more stress than even before we start zoning out.

If a person can give themselves at least three to five minutes of zone out time throughout the day.  Great! 

If a person does it five minutes every hour, the five minutes will help decompress whatever happened within that 55 minutes prior, and then again, and again, and again. Really taking advantage of breaks. 

Let's say a person's work environment is not conducive to that kind of stuff. Where it's an open office and everyone's talking all the time. Excuse yourself to go to the restroom and then just sit there for a couple extra minutes so that you can have uninterrupted time where you can just allow your body to metabolize whatever comes up.

Brainspotting traditionally is using specifically one's eye position and zoning out while looking at that particular spot. It's just that a lot of people might do so accidentally where they're zooming in on a negative experience and then end up ruminating. 

My encouragement for people is that instead of focusing on what's bothering them to scan their body. Look for the most neutral or the most pleasant or grounding spot. 

Then while they're focusing on that spot notice where their eyes naturally gravitate towards and then stare there… for not too long because this is originally a therapy approach, so it really should be done with a therapist. Especially when processing difficult things. But because our bodies reflexively do it anyway, it will be good for people to try that on purpose.

An idea with brainspotting is where you look affects how you feel. So it's kind of hacking that towards HSPs. 

Lauren: That's so cool! I'm guessing doing this might help with falling asleep at night. I know a lot of us, if we have trouble falling asleep, it's because our brain won't shut off. I'm guessing if you give yourself breaks during the day to process things instead of leaving it all to when you're trying to fall asleep, then it will help with the time it takes to fall asleep. 

Joanne: Focusing on a very soothed or relaxed part of your body, noticing where your eye naturally drifts to and staring off in that place and just noticing whatever comes up. 

We don't have to analyze or anything. It's better that we don't analyze. 

Another approach is to focus on what you would like to feel. Thinking of either a time in your life, a memory, or if you don't have a particular memory, make up a scenario. 

For some people it might be laying in a hammock with a cocktail in your hand in front of the beach. Focusing on that until you experience the body sensations and then notice where your eye looks and then stare there. 

You can use either of those approaches. No fancy equipment necessary. You could actually do this while you're laying in bed in the dark. It's kind of a nice, handy way to do so.

Lauren: I'm gonna try that. I've heard of brainspotting through working, but I've never, gone further than just hearing about what it is. So that's really interesting to learn about that. I'm glad you brought that. 

Joanne: We don't have one brain, we have three, and they're very much interconnected.

So if someone, having gone through a bad situation, and they have negative emotions and their body shows it. Facial expressions or the posture or whatnot. The reverse is also true as well. 

When people actually simulate a posture that's associated with either positive or relaxed experiences, maybe even power postures, that's something that has been gaining more popularity nowadays, that can also affect how we feel on the inside.

It's just that the highly sensitive person trait often is associated with social experiences of making oneself small or meek or gentle or quiet, caring, et cetera. 

I would actually even encourage HSPs to practice living as if they're not HSPs, at least in their bodies. That can actually create a different feedback loop.

Lauren: I like that. 

Joanne: I might encourage a non HSPs to actually practice being like HSPs. So it goes both ways 

Lauren: I'm so glad you brought all of this to the podcast because I hadn't talked about some of these things before. Your expertise is much appreciated. 

Joanne: It's a great space. I'm really thankful that you have this avenue for people to really learn more about themselves and take good care.

Top Two, Bottom Two

Lauren: Thank you. So is there anything that we haven't talked about yet that you wanted to make sure you brought up? 

Joanne: In terms of the five senses, one thing I talk about with people is in noticing which of the five senses are your top two? Like you notice it all too readily. They either bother you or they please you very easily. 

Then what are your bottom two senses? 

For me, I'm super easily affected by sight and touch. My bottom two senses are taste and smell. 

It actually has been a very healing journey for me personally. I used to dissociate a lot. In actually tapping into those bottom two senses and trying to reconnect with my physical body.

I happen to do so by making cocktails. That's been a fun experience for me because I'm really focusing in on what usually takes more effort. That's helped me to connect with a present versus drifting away into wherever I tend to go in my mind and my feelings. 

Lauren: I like that.

So how can people connect with you?

Joanne: I have my website, olivemecounseling.com. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram. I do also have a side business called Intelligent Emotions and that is an online course where I help people find out how to navigate with their big feelings.

Often if we leave our big feelings as they are, they tend to spiral into a vortex. It's a self paced course where people can find out that emotions are actually very logical and they actually have a system of their own. We're just not ever taught about it. Those two things:

OliveMe Counseling or Intelligent Emotions, that's the name of the course. 

Lauren: Thank you so much for being here. I think a lot of people will benefit from what you shared with us.

---

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© Copyright 2022 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

How to Use Your Triggers for Growth

Change of Perspective

If you're someone who gets frustrated because you feel like you're getting tripped up by the same things over and over again, here's a quick tip for you. 

All of us have triggers, we all have pain points to heal from. That is not an issue. Our triggers are our body's way of signaling that there's an important thing that we need to heal from or important needs that are not yet getting met.

It's really important to pay attention to our triggers instead of taking our triggers as signals that there's something wrong with us. You're already in a lot of pain, you're already in a lot of stress. Don’t add to it!

One way of grounding is by switching from an ALL or NOTHING perspective to a GRADIENT perspective.

Instead of thinking of WHETHER you get triggered (“Yes, I got triggered”, “No, I didn't get triggered”) consider it as HOW you get triggered.

If you think about the how you get a lot more QUALITATIVE data so that, even when things are imperfect (or even when you still have things to heal from), that's a non-issue. You might still actually have made a lot of progress and a lot of movement that keeps you motivated to keep doing the work. 

One way you can consider the HOW or the qualitative data is by observing how your triggers might show up across four different dimensions:

1. Frequency

2. Intensity

3. Duration

4. Direction

Frequency

On a scale of 1 (every once in a while) to 10 (every day), how often did you get triggered around a specific issue?

Before, you might have gotten triggered almost every day on feeling rejected that you were constantly in a state of agitation.

Nowadays, you might still get triggered from time to time, but maybe it's once a week or anytime you interact with a particular unsafe person (sometimes a family member).

Then you can actually give yourself credit that, on the whole, you’re able to retain your balance or take good care of yourself.

It's just that every once in a while (maybe specific times of the year or when interacting with that asshole), you might have to take better care of yourself to be proactive in keeping your balance.

Intensity

On a scale of 1 (barely feel it) to 10 (I can’t take it anymore!), how painful does this trigger feel?

You might have the frequency stay exactly the same (i.e., every day) but maybe the sting decreases over time. Maybe it used to feel at an 8 (I’m so aggravated!), but nowadays it’s a 5 (it bothers me, but I can focus on other things).

You still have to deal with a situation or you still have to deal with how you're feeling, but because it's not as intense, you're able to maintain your footing a lot better.

Or you've learned some tips around how to buffer, take care of yourself, maybe create boundaries, have hard conversations, etc. so that things don't escalate to that same degree.

Duration

On a scale of 1 (5 minutes) to 10 (several weeks), how long does your trigger state last?

Often these dimensions do interact with each other where the more you get triggered (or more intensely you get triggered), the more likely you're going to be staying in a triggered state.

The longer we stay in a triggered state, the more likely it will make reactive decisions — for example, emotional eating, overworking, under working, drinking a lot, Netflix binging — all those things where you might stay in that stressed state so your pain becomes more prolonged. 

Over time as you do your personal work in therapy or in other kinds of inner work experiences, you might find that you don't stay in that state as long.

You found other helpful ways for you to regain your balance once you lose your footing (like going for a run or talking to a friend). Then the duration itself might also change over time. 

Measure your trigger along these three dimensions once a quarter on a gradient 10-point scale instead of a YES or NO metric.

These numbers aren't quite linear. Think of a Richter scale for earthquakes: each number you bump down makes it 10 times easier for you to take good care of yourself or to maintain your balance. 

Direction

When you get triggered, do you tend to direct it to the relevant party or misdirect it elsewhere?

Often our triggers prompt us to express our pain or emotions onto unsuspecting passersby; they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Let's say someone who gets chewed up by their boss at work. They get frustrated but they don't actually bring it up to their boss. Instead, they come home and kick the dog. The dog had nothing to do with it.

Or maybe they take out their (legit) frustration on their uninvolved partner who's trying to load the dishwasher.

When there’s misdirection of pain, hard things get harder. What starts as an issue between you and your boss becomes you + boss + dog + partner.

What happens when you get triggered? Where do you direct that pain or what do you do with it?

Some people might direct towards other people. Others might direct it towards work, exercise, an activity, a substance, etc.

The more we misdirect our pain, the further we get away from healing our pain and getting our needs met.

When that happens, we CREATE stress.

The more quickly we're able to direct that towards an appropriate source, the more readily we can address the core issue.

Appropriate direction might look like processing the topic in therapy, journaling, bringing up the hurt with the involved party (IF they’re not abusive; if they are, best to process in therapy), addressing the problem directly (calling the credit card company to contest the charge).

When we address the initial issue directly, the other three dimensions (frequency, intensity, and duration) will be lowered as well.

Check in With Yourself

Again the issue isn't WHETHER we get triggered. We WILL get triggered. Getting triggered is not an issue, per se — our body is trying to tell us that we have important things to attend to.

The issue is more HOW we get triggered, along the four dimensions: frequency, intensity, duration, and direction.

Check in with yourself regarding how things have been this past year. On the last page of a journal, write down your answers to the four dimensions across four quarters.

(1) FREQUENCY

On a scale of 1 (every once in a while) to 10 (every day), how often did you get triggered around a specific issue?

(2) INTENSITY

On a scale of 1 (barely feel it) to 10 (I can’t take it anymore!), how painful does this trigger feel?

(3) DURATION

On a scale of 1 (5 minutes) to 10 (several weeks), how long does your trigger state last?

(4) DIRECTION

When you get triggered, do you tend to direct it (O) to the relevant party or misdirect it elsewhere (X)?

If the results changed over time, write down what positive events, negative events, or other factors that resulted in those outcomes so you have more nuanced info.

Examples:

• Positive factors: tax issue resolved, left toxic work, started walking

• Negative factors: a breakup, diabetes diagnosis

• Other notes: Year 2 for business

Reflection Questions

• If this were to be projected onto the next year ahead for the next several quarters, what do you think might happen?

• As each of these metrics go down, what have you noticed? 

• How much better can you breathe? 

• How much more relaxed are you?

• How have your weeks looked like? 

• What is one concrete thing you can do differently this week to help bump down your numbers?

---

Do your BIG Feelings always TAKE OVER, ruining important moments or derailing your goals?

Grab this free guide that helps you handle feelings like a pro when they show up at the "wrong place" or "wrong time"!

I want my First Aid Kit!

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© Copyright 2022 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Therapy with Ibi - Anxiety, Insomnia, Relationships

Introducing…Ibinye Osibodu-Onyali, LMFT

Joanne: This week we have a special guest who is sharing about her practice today. Let’s just jump right in. Can you share about yourself, the things you love, what you focus on, a bit about your journey.

Ibinye: My name’s Ibinye. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist for women and couples in California. I like to focus on anxiety and insomnia. I also focus a lot on people who were raised in toxic environments—teaching them how to break those generational cycles, speak up for themselves, be assertive, and just live a life out of the box. I also help couples move their relationship from boring and feeling like roommates to actually feeling passionate and feel like lovers again.

Who Is Therapy For?

Joanne: During this pandemic period with things kind of rolling back, in your work with people, has there been one question that you’ve been getting asked often with that?

Ibinye: Yes, two questions actually.

1. “Can Black women go to therapy?” They usually whisper when they ask. “I’m Black, can I go to therapy? Is that a thing?” Yes! That’s a thing!

2. “Is it okay for Christian to go to therapy?” People want to make sure. And I’m like, “Yes! I’m a Christian! That’s fine. Yes, you can see me; you can talk to me.” There’s nothing unbiblical about therapy.

Joanne: A lot of hush hush. What do you sense that’s about?

Ibinye: It’s about the shame, the rules, the legalities, and the upbringing that says:

• Keep all your business within the church.

• Keep all your business within the home.

• Don’t tell anyone your problems.

With the faith-based shame, it’s this idea that if you have any struggles, if you’re anxious, if you’re depressed, if you’re crying, then you’re not reading your Bible, or you don’t have the holy spirit within you, or you’re clearly not going to church enough. Something’s wrong with you. There’s a lot of shame that I see.

How Therapy Works through Shame

Joanne: The message that something’s wrong with you, you need to be better, all the variations of that. And within your work of the people who reach out to you, how do you help them get unstuck from that? It’s great that they’ve already got unstuck enough to reach out, but how do support them?

With the Christians—for those that want Biblical-based counseling—we go into scripture. My favorite person that we talk about is David. He seems sad a LOT. He was struggling a lot, there was a lot going on with him, his life isn’t perfect, yet we read that he was anointed by God. Then they’re like, “wait a minute, that’s true.” Then it’s okay to seek out help.

For intergenerational stuff, I ask them some questions about their relationships and families. Things like:

• Let’s look at your grandma’s relationship with grandpa, or grandma’s relationship with mom.

• How has that worked out for them?

• How has that worked out for you?

• What you’ve been doing for the past 50 years, 40 years, 30 years, does it feel like it works well for you?

A lot of times they’ll respond with, “No—even though that’s the way I was raised and I’m just trying to walk the line, it doesn’t really work well for me.” I say, “Well, would you be open to trying something that possibly could work for you.” And they’re like, “Yeah, as long as you don’t tell my mom!” Legally, I can’t tell your mom anything anyway, so you get to do whatever you get to do. As they get to start trying new things, they find they start feeling a lot lighter and a lot happier. The anxiety isn’t feeling so heavy anymore and their families get used to their new behavior like, “Okay, I guess this is how she is now.”

Joanne: I kind of imagine that with a lot of these entrenched patterns or ways of experiencing and responding to life, it would be great if families responded well with, “Oh this is how it’s going to be going forward,” but I imagine there are some people who don’t have that experience. For those folks whose families or communities are not as supportive, what would you say to them?

Ibinye: We talk about the depth of tradition and how difficult it is to break from tradition. Everyone is just trying to play this role, whether it’s a church role, cultural role, racial role, whatever that is. I talk to them about finding support from like-minded people. I think that’s so important because sometimes your family or your church or religious body is not your support system. Sometimes they are the ones who are doing harm to you. Sometimes they’re the ones that trigger a lot of the difficult emotions you are going through. I empathize with them and help them understand that those are very common patterns, unfortunately. But outside of that, I ask questions to get them thinking about new connections:

• Who are the people who are adding people to your life?

• Who are the people who are filling your cup?

• Who is helping you feel great?

Those are the people to run to. I don’t say cut off your family or stop going to church, but how about building new relationships? Once they start to experience what those positive relationships look like, it really helps in the healing process. It doesn’t mean that everything is going to end with a bow wrapped on top of it. There’s still a lot of grief work left to be done. But they realize the pain of staying in that tradition is sometimes much greater than the joy of finding this new life and finding your voice and new ways of being, and just being yourself.

What Are Toxic Relationships?

Joanne: In a lot of moments, there are some terms that people have a certain understanding of, and I think toxic relationships are one of those words. They have some idea in their mind of what it looks like, but it might be more much multifaceted and varied. Same with anger—that it’s not just always the rage-y explosive types. There are so many other ways anger can show up. So how would you define and describe toxic relationships? What does it tend to look like in the people you work with?

Ibinye: Toxic relationships FEEL DAMAGING. They are relationships that feel uncomfortable and they often feel like they’re being done maliciously. Very often when clients come to see me, I ask about family relationships, like “how is your relationship with family members?” They say “Fine, everything’s fine.” And then after a while, they describe toxic relationships they’re in without realizing it. Things like:

• Every time I leave this person’s presence, I feel exhausted.

• I can’t wear that to this person’s house because she’s going to make a bad comment.

• I have to change who I am.

• I have to be extra quiet when I’m in the presence of this person or else she’s going to say something negative.

Decorative. A child has duct tape over their mouth.

It’s almost like feeling like you cannot be authentic, you can’t be you in the presence of someone, feeling drained after you leave that person. That’s how people typically experience toxic relationships, and sometimes it’s not even overt. Sometimes people aren’t actually saying direct things or throwing direct jabs. It might be a look, a glance, a whisper, or a passive-aggressive comment that they make constantly. You feel like you’re drowning when you’re around them, and nobody around you can see that. Or sometimes it feels like you’re drowning and they’re the ones who pushed you to the deep end and they’re standing there with their arms crossed like, “Oh well, let’s see if she can get herself out of this.”

Joanne: Are there instances where someone’s in toxic relationships and they don’t know?

Ibinye: All the time. We think that you cannot love someone who feels toxic to you. Sometimes it’s the very people that we love. It could be spouses, best friends, family members, people in your religious organizations, coworkers, bosses you respect—anyone around us can exhibit toxic behavior. So I often say, go by that feeling that you get:

• You can’t hold your head up high.

• You feel exhausted when you’re around them.

• You feel like you have to put up a show or put up an act when you have to be with that person.

If that’s what you feel when you’re around a person, then something’s off about that behavior. But I always say don’t tell people that they’re toxic. Like, don’t walk up to your mom and say, “Dear mom, you’re toxic.” It’s not going to go well.

Joanne: One of the things I’m hearing is one sign that of whether you’re in a toxic relationship is how you feel while anticipating meeting with a person or how you feel during and afterward. Are there people who feel numb?

Ibinye: Absolutely. Some people feel nothing when they’re with toxic people. Other times you find that there’s lots of jealousy and competition in toxic relationships. So there sometimes will not be this spirit of cooperation that we all want to be able to have, that support around us. In toxic relationships, it’s almost like somebody has to be in charge. There’s a dynamic of power and control sometimes where somebody always has to get the last word in; it’s difficult to agree to disagree.

Sometimes there’s this back and forth of:

• “You’re wrong and I’m right.”

• “But are you open to—?”

• “No, I’m not open.”

Or there’s the thing with tradition:

• “This is how it’s always been.”

• “But that’s hurting me.”

It’s shutting down those feelings saying they aren’t real. “It’s not my fault you’re sad. You’re sad because something’s clearly wrong with you and you’re too sensitive. If you learn to stop being sensitive, you won’t be sad when I make these aggressive comments to you.”

Joanne: I’m hearing that one sign that someone might be toxic is that they’re so rigid and one-sided, not open to hearing the other person’s experiences, let alone validating them, controlling, telling the other person what to do, the other person doesn’t have a say, their feelings don’t matter, their emotions don’t matter, etc. What does someone do when they find out that they’ve been doing those things?

Ibinye: Sometimes that’s how we’re raised and that’s what we see around us, so that’s just what we do. It’s not easy because if you’re used to that dynamic of being cutthroat and cutting people down—all of those difficult behaviors—then I say, “Okay, take a moment to pause and think how would you feel if that were done to you.”

The interesting thing is even when you exhibit toxic behaviors, you don’t enjoy it when the behavior is done back to you. You don’t feel warm and fuzzy when someone has that aggressive interaction with you. Even though that’s all you know, it doesn’t feel great on the inside. So take a moment and pause. I ask, “How would you feel if someone did that to you?” And they’ll say, “I’d be upset and I’d attack them back.” Okay, if that behavior triggers that big emotion back in you, then maybe let’s think of another way to talk about this.

We do a lot of practice in assertive communication as opposed to aggressive communication. We also talk about making amends because it’s very important. Not necessarily in the AA way, but it’s okay to take responsibility for your behavior. It’s okay to go back and apologize and say, “I noticed that I’ve been damaging to you, toxic to you, hurtful to you. I noticed that you’ve felt uncomfortable in my presence and I’m sorry.” We also talk about “I” statements. Not “because you’re so sensitive, that’s why I was so damaging to you.” No, we can’t do that. How to really talk and communicate with people and to attune with other people’s emotions we learn how to do some of those things.

Joanne: So some signs of someone who is not toxic and who is safe and quality are those who are able to consider another person’s experiences, their own impact on the other person, being able to articulate their own experiences (those “I statements”), and—I think this is a pretty significant one—taking responsibility for your own stuff. The world would be so different if more of us knew how to do that.

Ibinye: Absolutely. You don’t have to be perfect. So, safe does not equal perfect. Nobody is perfect. We make mistakes and mistakes are quite okay. I find when people are raised in toxic environments, it goes hand-in-hand with perfectionism because if you’re anything short of perfect, you will be attacked or shunned or something will happen to you that won’t feel good. So there’s this idea of “I need to be perfect because I don’t want anyone to say anything negative about me, I don’t want to be the butt of anyone’s jokes, I don’t want anyone to look down on me.” It’s about learning that imperfections are just a part of the human experience. Some things you do great, some things you don’t do great, and that’s okay.

Joanne: So perfectionism can be a way that a person is trying to take care of themselves, but it usually doesn’t lead to that outcome.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia

Joanne: You and I could talk about toxic relationships all day because that’s my jam too. Relationships, emotions, all that. But I noticed you focus on other areas as well, like insomnia and supporting couples in their relationships. Could you share a bit more about each of those?

Ibinye: With insomnia, I do cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for it. The idea behind it is, the way you think about sleep can greatly affect your sleep. The people who struggle with sleep have a lot of anxiety behind their sleep, and all day long, they think, “I wonder if I’m going to sleep” or it’s negative, “I know I’m not going to sleep tonight.” Sometimes they walk into their room, see the bed, and think, “I’m going to be tired tomorrow.” Already thinking future-focus negative thoughts about sleep, which stirs up anxiety and most of us cannot sleep when our bodies are under that kind of sleep. Or you’re laying in bed and willing yourself to sleep. “I’m closing my eyes really tight and I will force my body to shut down.” These unconscious thoughts and behaviors unbeknownst to us are increasing insomnia. With CBT insomnia, I teach clients how to create a great sleep environment, how to change behaviors so they can support sleep, and how to work on those unconscious, automatic thoughts, so we can start to think positive, sleep-promoting thoughts.

Joanne: I should’ve done this Live with you a couple of days ago because I could’ve prevented this last night! Trying harder to sleep makes it worse! I know that you have a useful resource you’ve put together, can you talk about that?

Ibinye: I have a free download and it’s just five myths that are keeping you awake and how you can finally sleep. 5 myths most people with insomnia believe are the golden truths about sleep—those are typically keeping us awake, and then I answer, “let’s debunk this myth” and here’s how you can finally sleep.

Couples Therapy: How to Love and How to Communicate

Joanne: And what’s been fun about working with couples?

Ibinye: I enjoy working with couples because when they come to me, they are like, “we are not communicating, we are arguing all the time, but we want this to work.” Or sometimes one person is like, “I don’t know, I’m on the fence” and one person is like “I really want this to work.” It’s really about teaching them how to respect one another, how to find friendship again, and how to communicate. That is key. How to communicate, how to respect one another, how to see your partner, and how to love your partner how your partner wants to be loved, not the way you think they need to be loved. I think a lot of couples get into trouble with that one.

Joanne: What is an exercise you might do with a couple that comes in having trouble loving the other person well?

Ibinye: I always point to the 5 love languages. They take the quiz on the 5 love languages together so that they can understand what each love language is, and then in session, we talk about the results of the quiz and each partner will explain examples of things that fill their cup. Some questions I ask them are:

• What are some things that your partner does that you truly enjoy? (We always try to play to each person’s strengths and things that ARE working. It’s not about, “You don’t know your partner and you’ve dropped the ball.”

• What are some things that your partner is already doing that really excited you and make you feel seen? (Then we talk about how the partner can do more of that.)

• What are some other things your partner can do?

• Then I go to the other partner and ask, “So, now that you’re hearing their perspective, what are two things things that you think you can do that can make your partner happy and loved?” And then that’s their homework.

Couples are typically busy and cannot find time, so I encourage them to prioritize “couples time” by pulling up their phones and putting it in their calendar. We also set rules together, but I don’t set the rules for them. They set the rules for themselves. Some of those rules might look like:

• No phones

• No social media

• You have to sit with me

• You have to hold my hand

Once everyone is in agreement, I teach them how to speak up for themselves, how to communicate, and then it’s always about validation. We talk about how to validate each other even when they don’t agree with each other. I also normalize that disagreements are going to happen. Because you are a couple doesn’t mean you have to be one mind and love all the same things. But everything doesn’t have to be an argument. If one person loves red, one person loves blue, “It’s fine. Okay, I can see how you love red; I happen to love blue.” It’s fine and doesn’t have to be an argument.

The Five Love Languages

Joanne: Can you go over the five love languages?

Ibinye: Love languages aren’t just for people who are coupled up. They are for kids, for coworkers, friends, loved ones. All humans have love languages, which is just the way they like to be loved.

• Quality time. It’s basically spending time with your partner but in a way where your partner is attuned with you. People who’s love language is quality time, they like people to spend time with them where you’re actually looking at them, you’re chatting with them, listening to them, and that’s how they also love other people.

• Acts of service. “You made my bed for me, you brought my meal to for me, you fixed my bike for me.” Doing things for the other person. They don’t have to be huge tasks, just simple things like “I loaded the dishwasher today.” perfect!

• Touch. That would be people who are huggers, people who love to kiss, hold hands, and things that just feel physically. You can tell kids whose love language is physical touch—they’re the ones who’ll come and give you a hug. Some people when they talk touch your arm lightly or tap you—that’s physical touch.

• Gifts. When we think of gifts typically, when I have a couple do the quiz and one of them gets gifts, the other partner is “Oh my gosh, this is about to get expensive.” no! It doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t even have to be something you buy. Just the thought behind it that knowing your loved one has spent time crafting or getting something for you. It can even be mixing them a drink and giving it to them.

• Word of affirmation. People who want to hear that you love them wanna hear that they’re doing a great job, that you’re proud of them. So, your words are affirming them, loving them, validating their emotions.

Typically I find that couples have different love languages. One could have acts of service and one could have quality time. That’s why it feels like “I don’t feel loved” or “you don’t love me, you don’t appreciate me.” Typically, we love people and show our love in our own love language, so once we learn how to speak our partner’s love language, then they feel like they’re seen and loved.

Joanne: So it’s a way of turning into a person for how they actually are, not how we think they are or how we think they should be. It leads to an acknowledgment and accepting the other person.

Therapy and Therapist Misconceptions

Joanne: So when it comes to the process of therapy, what are some of the myths or misconceptions about therapy that you’ve heard?

Ibinye: I’ve heard a LOT.

• Therapy is judgmental.

• Your therapist will tell you what to do.

• Your therapist will shame you and judge you.

• Therapy is exactly like talking to a friend, so what’s the point? They aren’t going to teach you anything.

• If you go to a therapist, then they’ll put you on medication, and then you’ll be on medication for the rest of your life.

• Therapists just want to stick you to a very strict diagnosis.

I think sometimes how TV portrays therapists, people are surprised that I laugh a lot or they didn’t expect me to be this nice. I’ve heard people be worried that I will tell everyone their business and put it on social media. No! There’s confidentiality'; I don’t do that.

Joanne: So what would you say therapy is?

Ibinye: Therapy is a process of getting you to where you want to be. The reason I’m keeping it so vague is because we don’t tell you where you need to be. The way I work is; I ask what you would like your life to look like in 6 months or a year, they tell me, and we work towards that. We start by exploring different aspects of their lives:

• What would you want your social relationships to look like?

• What would you like to feel when you wake up in the morning?

• We talk about career. What do you feel is standing in your way?

It’s a process of really getting to know yourself. A process of getting to heal difficult emotions that keep us stuck or afraid or stagnant. Learning how to create relationships with yourself and with those around you so we can learn how to thrive. I know it’s sort of nebulous how I’m describing it, but that’s the best description I can come up with.

Joanne: There’s such diversity in individuals anyway. Everyone’s goals and desires are different and there’s no need to pigeonhole people into one way of growing or healing. For example, one person’s work could be how to do anger less or how to have better ways of doing anger, but for another person, it might be how to practice anger more. Either one could be really healing for a particular person and their relationships. What other resources do you have available apart from?

Ibinye: Currently, I am enrolling for the women of color online support group. It started because when the pandemic hit, I kept hearing from women of color say, “I just feel alone. I feel like there’s so much going on and I have no one to talk to.” But they weren’t just talking about seeing a therapist, they were talking about a community of women who knew what they were going through. So, it’s a place where they don’t have to be so perfect and don’t have to be the caretaker all the time.

You get to sit, connect with other women of color who understand some of the struggles you are going through, get to support you through it. We tackle different topics; we talk about race and racism and how to maneuver that. Of course, we aren’t going to solve racism in 8 weeks, but we talk about how to maneuver that so it doesn’t feel like something that’s strangling you all the time. We talk about ways to take care of yourself. What can self-care look like? How to build self-care, self-confidence, and how to ask for help because most of the majority of the women that I talk to do not ask for help ever. It’s an 8-week group, we meet once a week for 8 weeks and you just leave feeling like some of the burdens have been taken off your shoulders. That’s why it’s called Lay Down Your Burdens.

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© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

 

 

JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Moving on from Trauma

Here’s a video about moving on from trauma. Melissa Moore invited me to talk about dealing with trauma on the podcast, Faith Hope Love in the Momentum Series. Scroll down for a transcript. And follow Faith Hope Love on Youtube.

Defining “Trauma”

My definition of “trauma” is broader than how it’s formally utilized in the mental health spaces, and part of that is because a lot of the people I work with haven’t necessarily experienced what people consider to be “big traumas” like car accidents or parents divorcing. Since many of these individuals are internally oriented, a lot of them are Highly Sensitive People, etc.

I define “trauma” more openly, so it’s not just the big “T” “Trauma” like those really big, observable events on the outside, but also it could be a LONG, EXTENDED PERIOD OF IRRITATION OR AGITATION. So for example, someone grows up in a home where nobody really acknowledges emotions, or where there’s a lot of criticism. If a person has grown up living and breathing that as the norm, they just assume that that is the normal experience. It’s not until they interact with someone who’s grown up in an entirely different environment where they’re like, “Oh, wait.” Then they look back on their own experiences and redefine or redescribe what they’ve been through.

If I have a formalized definition of trauma that I use with my own clients, I would say that it’s any experience— either OBJECTIVE (being on the outside or observable from the outside) or SUBJECTIVE (meaning felt on the inside) that stirs up HEIGHTENED, intense feelings of feeling OUT OF CONTROL, TRAPPED, OR ASHAMED.

Different Reactions, Same Event

This definition I use is not according to the bible for therapists, the DSM, so it’s not a mental health diagnosis definition, but the reason I expanded the definition is because two people can go through the same event and have very different takeaways. For example, two people can be in the same car when there’s a car accident, and one person will have a really hard time and that’s going to mark how they move forward for the rest of their lives where they feel really guilty or really afraid, whereas the other person in the car is like, “Oh, I’m so thankful I’m still alive!”

That’s one example. Another is, let’s say for a non-intense event, someone who is called out in the middle of a classroom by their teacher in fifth grade and asked to answer a question on the board. Some kids will be like, “Alright, I’ll rise to the challenge and show off what I can do!” Whereas another kid is going to go bright red, fumble over their words and shut down, and that is what might be driving a lot of the things they do as an adult—working really hard so they are never caught in that position again.

I hope that my definition makes it so that a lot people can consider their own experiences and be like, “Oh, yeah that was a hard experience for me, maybe I do need some more support for that, I’m not the only one.”

Symptoms of Trauma

In terms of trauma symptoms, I can use what the DSM uses as indicators. The four main indicators are:

1. Re-experiencing

2. Avoidance

3. Negative cognitions and feelings

4. Heightened reactivity

Re-experiencing

With re-experiencing, a person in the present is going through a brand new situation with new people, new details, etc., but the situation reminds them or reminds their body of this scary thing that happened in the past. So, this can come in the form of intrusive thoughts, memories, sometimes people may re-experience similar situations in their dreams when they’re sleeping, or they’re in the middle of their workday, and they have a very sudden shift in their thoughts and emotions.

Avoidance

Because it’s so uncomfortable to feel those feelings, people try really hard to avoid anything that remotely reminds them or their body of that situation. So for example, a person experiences a really harsh breakup, and they try really hard to never even drive down the street that they drove down with their previous partner. They are spending a lot of energy and effort trying to not engage with that scary experience or anything that reminds them of it.

Negative Cognitions and Feelings

Understandably, if a person spends a lot of their energy trying to avoid these difficult experiences (even perceived ones), then it’s going to shape how they feel about themselves, how they feel about others, the world, etc. Things like “I’m always going to be in these kinds of relationships,” or “I just can’t trust other people because other people are untrustworthy,” or “the state of the world is not great and it’s always going to be this gloom and doom out there.” Most people who’ve had at least one big trauma or multiple small traumas can live in a way where their perception is colored by their experiences, not reflective of what’s actually happening in front of them.

Heightened Reactivity

With heightened reactivity, the person is generally very irritable, they can be jumpy at different sounds, their moods can change very rapidly. On a nervous system level, their bodies are in this heightened sense of something is going to happen and they have to be extra cautious, which is exhausting to live like that. Even when things are actually okay on the outside, when a person’s body is always tense, even small things may be enough to tip the scale.

Finding Relief for Trauma

It’s helpful for people to know that their well-intended efforts to avoid negative feelings or experiences usually backfire. It’s like trying to stick a beachball underwater. The further down the ball gets stuffed down, the more pressure buildup there is. Eventually, you lose control of it, and it will just pop back up, make a huge splash, everything gets wet and messy.

So, with trauma’s heightened sense of feeling out of control, trapped, or ashamed, our bodies are designed to heal themselves, and triggers are actually attempts for the body to try to heal itself. It’s just that the way by which it’s trying to do so doesn’t always happen at the most convenient moments or in the most helpful ways.

Let’s say a person gets triggered by a word that a friend says. The friend didn’t do anything to cause the pain, but the body is like, “Uh, oh, we’re going to that place again.” When the person gets triggered, if we label that as a bad thing, then yeah, the person should avoid the situation at all costs, but if we re-interpret that as the body’s attempt to try to heal, we get the memo, take it and say, “okay, something inside of me is trying to get my attention. I need to attend to this as soon as possible. It might not be while I’m in the middle of a conversation with my friend or doing work, but I still need to give space to this. Otherwise, it’s going to be that beach ball underwater.”

So part of the way to help oneself heal from trauma is to give more space to the uncomfortable experience, not less. It’s kind of like being on a roller coaster. It’s really intense, there are lots of loops and lots of dizziness, and it seems like it’s going to last a long time, but really it’s two minutes long. The issue is that when people’s bodies get triggered, it’s like being a roller coaster, but the roller coaster gets stuck at the top of the ride. It doesn’t actually make it through to the other side. Because that experience is so intense, people try to get really hard to get off the rollercoaster in the middle of the ride, and it’s just not going to go down well.

Things like brainspotting as a type of therapy is one way for people to get to the other side of resolving the difficult intensity of experience, but there could be many other ways of doing so as well, like performance arts, bodywork like yoga, any kind of journaling exercise where the person is giving intentional space to it. It’s important to manage how much intensity they’re giving to it at a given time, but it’s still important to give more space to it than less. It’s a little bit counterintuitive than what people may expect.

Re-Training our Bodies

The thing is that with trauma, the worst thing has already happened. It’s in the past, it’s one and done. Now, if a person is still in a triggering or traumatic situation, yeah, get out of it as soon as possible. But for most people who’ve had trauma, the trauma is a past event. The worst part has already happened; it’s just that the triggers that our bodies engage in say, “we’re not sure whether that bad thing has actually come to an end.” And so, what’s more likely is that what’s happening right now, the current relationship you’re in, the current work relationship you’ve gotten yourself into, is more likely to be technically better than what’s happened back then, but your body just doesn’t know how to tell the difference.

It’s really hard to make sound decisions when we’re in a lot of confusion. Connecting with a therapist is one way we can have other frames of reference to retrain our bodies to know that what’s happening in front of us should be considered a brand new event, not as an exact replica of what’s happened back then.

I work with a lot of people who are in romantic relationships and their partner has a way about them that ignores emotions. Yeah, the partner has to do their own work for sure. But the way the body interprets what’s happening is as if it’s the same as when they’re getting criticized growing up. Back then, when they were really vulnerable, they really didn’t have any way of soothing themselves. And that’s hard to expect the partner to be able to do the heavy lifting on behalf of those old relationships and previous people.

Body, Mind, and Emotions in Scripture

There’s such intricacy in how our bodies are meant to work together. It’s not just about thinking soundly, addressing emotions, or doing the right thing, all of these are very much interconnected. That’s even reflected in several parts of scripture.

One of my favorite parts is in Romans 12. People have memorized parts 1 and 2. First, it says something like, “Therefore, brothers in view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as holy sacrifices.” And then verse 2 is like, “make sure to renew your minds so that you don’t align with the way the world operates.” The first 2 verses are talking about the body and the mind, and the emotions kind of come in at the end in verses 5 and 6. But even then, it’d be doing a great disservice to us, and in a way, a dishonor to God, to consider that only one part of us is important by ignoring the rest.

So it’s kind of like splitting hair sometimes to think about our thoughts, our emotions, and our body experiences as being distinct. They definitely have different roles, but there’s so much interconnection and so much order to them that I think it does highlight the majestic work that God does. It’s not just about memorizing and reciting the proper verses. It’s not about giving full control and full reigns to our emotions, but that we’re supposed to heal in a very intricate way.

An example of that is Jesus with the Bleeding Woman. There’s a lot of layers of healing in that one particular experience. Jesus could’ve just fixed the physical ailment of it; she probably would’ve been happy with that portion of healing. But there’s this whole interaction with making sure she hangs out a little bit longer in a huge crowd of people—that’s healing for the soul portion.

She has been pushed to the side on the outskirts of society and is now given center stage for everyone to see that she is a beloved daughter. That is retraining the mind on how she sees herself and retraining everyone else’s mind on how they should consider her. It’s also a very heightened, emotional, intense experience.

One of the things I mentioned as a marker for when an event is traumatic is heightened, emotional, intense experiences of feeling ashamed. Well, Jesus put this woman front and center saying, you are beloved, you are worthy. It’s not because your bleeding problem has been resolved, but it’s because she is who she is. If you read through parts of the Bible through that lens that our thoughts, emotions, bodies are CONNECTED, then you won’t just see physical feelings for people. When Jesus interacts with different people, you’ll see that there are so many other aspects of pain that Jesus also healed.

Healing Inside and Outside

God wants our healing more than we want our own healing. It’s not just like, God changing our citizenship status to being citizens of heaven. That’s easy. But it’s us about catching up with what our status really means. Not just technically having access to His kingdom and some perks that go with it, but really being inhabitant.

I think the language around adoption is another example of that. I’ve heard a story of adoptees who technically became sons and daughters of a family. But it took a long time before they were able to live knowing that they’re sons and daughters. It’s an entirely different experience altogether. I don’t think it’s just about having a technical change in one’s status or getting enough trauma therapy that you no longer have a mental health diagnosis of PTSD. There are so many needs that are really important beyond just symptom management. God really wants people to receive His powerful healing from the inside out in all areas of our lives.

Healing with the Enneagram and Brainspotting

One of my favorite techniques is the enneagram. As I mentioned earlier, two people can go through the same event and have very different takeaways because their personalities are very different. They’re focusing on different themes, different needs, different fears. So unless we attune to each person for who they actually are, it’s going to be hard for them to find the deep healing that they need.

They both have anxiety, but for different reasons. One person is because they’re comparing themselves to an unbelievably high standard and they will never find themselves able to hit the mark, whereas another has anxiety because they’re super self-conscious of how other people see them. Unless we really know what is going on internally with a person’s personality—which is the way that the person has coped through life—it’s going to take a while. Otherwise, it’s kind of like throwing a bunch of things at them and hoping something sticks.

The metaphor that I use with the enneagram is that you go to the massage therapist and they ask a bunch of questions like, “what would you like attention around today? Are there any areas you want to avoid? Let’s look for some knots that are built into your body and let’s massage them now so you can full access to your whole body all over.” Otherwise, those knots are just pulling away at different areas for extended periods of time.

Brainspotting, which is a form of trauma therapy, is the actual massaging out those knots. It’s a type of trauma therapy that our bodies naturally know how to do. Imagine having a hard experience, and then you go to sleep, and then in the deep, dreaming process, your brain is coming up with all kinds of weird details and scenarios that don’t really make sense, but then that’s kind of how your body metabolizes and works through a lot of those difficult emotions and situations. Brainspotting is when a person does that while they’re awake in therapy.

Instead of falling into the deep end, the therapist is able to pull them out of the deep water when the session is about to end because time’s run out or when things get really intense. So, those are the main two resources that I use when supporting people with different kinds of traumas—brainspotting and the enneagram. A lot of the work that I do is around relationships and difficult emotions. I also do a lot of teaching too about what each emotion means about the person needs. They aren’t as chaotic and random as people think they are. There is a logic to it; it' just doesn’t follow the same rules as intellectual logic.

Borrowing Hope on the Road to Healing

As I mentioned earlier, the worst part has already happened, so even when we experience reminders of that, they are short. They can be overcome, but a lot of it involves courage and encouragement. We were never meant to heal from our experiences alone. So, really connecting with a lot of safe people where you can take off all your masks, and you can show up as yourself, and you know you’re not going to be judged. It’s a really important, essential factor that people need to do the healing work.

Aside from a therapist, friends, or sometimes a family member, our partners might be a huge agent of healing for us. It’s definitely is possible to work through these super scary experiences, and it’s so worth doing the work, and until then, it might be hard to imagine it. So until that time, your safe people—including your therapist or pastor or whoever—you may borrow the hope they have on your behalf. It’s okay if you feel scared or unsure.

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What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?

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© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Therapist in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Does this resonate?

Nervous System Health: Stuck On & Stuck Off

Not 1 but 3 Brains

This might be new information, but we don’t have ONE brain, we actually have THREE BRAINS.

1. We have the thinking, executive brain that plans things makes executive decisions and implements them, and can think in the past or far ahead.

2. We have our feeling and emotional brain, which is very relational. It tunes into other people’s facial expresses and cues and responds accordingly. It’s also the part that holds our emotions and big events in our lives, both harsh and great.

3. Finally, we have the bottom part of the brain that’s reflexive, called “lizard brain” that regulates all regulated aspects of our being—the things we have no control over, like pupil dilation, heart rate, blood flow, etc.

Give all the things going on in the world, the country, in our local areas, within our relationships, I wouldn’t be surprised if our bodies are being bombarded with all kinds of stress that it doesn’t know how to decompress from. Our habits of thinking, feeling, and doing are on hyperdrive as our bodies are trying to cope and survive.

Healthy Nervous System

Smooth Flow

Credit: Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, Dan Siegel

This is a visual of what happens within our nervous systems. We have what’s called a “Sympathetic Nervous System” (SNS) at the peak, which is the activity and energizing focus dedicated part of our nervous systems where we are alert in the day, we’re trying to get things done, and we’re active. We’re increasing in activity and arousal (stress).

Then we have another part of our nervous system called the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS), which is when our bodies are the opposite—more relaxed, grounded, slow, and deliberate. Imagine having a big Thanksgiving meal and feeling super groggy afterward because you’re in a food coma. That’s the parasympathetic kicking in.

Throughout a normal day, our nervous systems are supposed to be in this particular window (normal range) where there’s a smooth and easy flow between the Sympathetic Nervous System as we wake up in the morning, stay alert in the day, and then after 1 or 2 o’clock hits and you feel the crash coming where you need an extra cup of coffee. Then another burst of energy that slowly tapers off as we finish the work day, to return home, veg for a bit, then do something stimulating (watching TV, hanging out with friends) until it’s time to hit the sack.

On > Off > On > Off - a rhythm that repeats throughout the day in a smooth curve. That’s what’s supposed to help us stay present and connected, not in our reactive autopilots.

(Our Enneagram types reveal what our reactive patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing are.)

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Credit: Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, Dan Siegel

Nervous System Overload

Spikes between “Stuck On” and “Stuck Off”

We’re generally supposed to stay in the normal range. However, when we experience a very harsh situation, either a single, acute event or a chronic series of lower-grade events, it overloads our nervous system and we don’t know how to decompress or heal from that. That’s when we jump into the Un-Discharged Traumatic Stress System.

We can compare the sympathetic to parasympathetic flow of the normal range to how the event (or series of events) overload the system. There’s TOO MUCH STRESS going on and it’s not discharged, which means it’s stuck in our bodies and doesn’t know where to go.

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Credit: Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, Dan Siegel

Some of us may switch into what’s called “STUCK ON” where our nervous systems are on hyperdrive. The sympathetic nervous system—which is the alert and activity part—kicks in really hard, where the person is spinning in anxiety, they’re trying to be really active and get onto tasks. These tend to be the folks who push themselves really hard, have a hard time settling, spin into being hypervigilant, are very irritable, have digestive issues, etc.

Then there are some of us who go down into the “STUCK OFF” position in our nervous system. The systems shut down. People get really slow and sluggish, they have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, they have a hard time focusing because it requires so much energy which they don’t feel like they have, there’s very low activity in the body, low blood pressure, etc.

Some of us might go to the “stuck on” where we go into hyperdrive too long, sometimes people stay in “stuck off” position too long where it’s hard to get ourselves to do anything, whereas some people oscillate between “stuck on” and “stuck off” while completely skipping over the normal range window.

Stuck ON/OFF and Reactive Autopilot

When our bodies are so overloaded, we can’t help but kick into our reactive modes. Our bodies are trying to cope, trying to survive, trying to get by, and early on in life, those habits were super useful. But when we’re adults, those patterns don’t work in the ways that they were intended anymore. Sometimes they generate problems, like being hyperfocused and hyperalert has been useful for some time, but sometimes a person might be really irritable in that place and then they get into a fight with their partner, and now there’s yet another thing they have to deal with. When you are within the normal range, you should recognize a sense of choices and options rather than default reactions.

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Credit: Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, Dan Siegel

The goal is to find ways to come back within the normal range. When someone is “stuck on,” the goal is to try to find ways to down-regulate. If you have a hard time relaxing, it’s about finding ways to simplify things, do things deliberately more slowly, find ways to switch breathing zones (deep, belly breathing instead of the top chest, rapid breathing).

Find out ways you can take care of yourself, especially through this very stressful time with the pandemic. Not only are we experiencing very acute stressors that are very intense and out of nowhere, but we are also experiencing low-grade chronic, drawn-out stressors as well.

If you find yourself resonating with these experiences, you’re NOT ALONE and you’re NOT BROKEN. There’s nothing wrong with you, but it does mean that you’re HUMAN and your limits are actually good. It’s telling you now’s the time to limit all that you’re carrying and focus back on YOURSELF. To help you focus on the self and discover strategies to return to the normal range, check out my blogging series on self-care.

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The BIG Feelings First Aid Kit

Messy feelings spilling out at the WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE, WRONG WAY?

Grab this free PDF guide that shows you how to handle feelings like a pro so that you can keep moving forward in life!

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© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Connecting with Safe People

Prefer listening over reading? Watch my Instagram Live on Safe People!

What are Healthy Relationships?

Everyone has general traits of autopilot reactive patterns that they exhibit consistently over time, much like the traits you’ve identified in yourself using the Life Timeline in a past blog post.

Oftentimes, these traits can indicate whether a person is generally safe or unsafe. Unfortunately, not everyone is good to stay connected with for extended periods of time. It’s important for us to understand who we are making relationships with as we consider our own health and well-being.

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Healthy relationships involve there being enough space for BOTH parties to be themselves. Each person is unique and worthy; therefore, each person gets to have their own values, likes/dislikes, opinions, power, responsibility, and decisions.

It’s totally possible for two parties to DIFFER and have that NOT mean that the relationship is falling apart. DIFFERENCE ≠ DISCONNECTION. Unhealthy relationships say that there’s only space for ONE of you, not both. When that’s the case, each of you HAVE to be the same OR ELSE…

Instead, DIFFERENCE = DEEPER CONNECTION, because y’all are loving each other for who each of you actually are, rather than seeing the other as an extension of oneself.

The goal is to cultivate relationships where BOTH people matter, NOT just one OR the other. You matter JUST AS MUCH AS the other person, and vice versa.

What would it be like to have relationships like THAT?

Who are Safe People?

In their book, Safe People, Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend help identify the general traits of people and categorizes those behaviors as “safe” or “unsafe.”

Here is a chart from their book:

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The left column lists traits of an “unsafe person,” such as “defensive,” while the right column identifies “safe person” traits, like “open to feedback.” Each row corresponds with one another across columns, reflecting opposite traits.

Using the Safe People Chart

Read each row and consider these questions:

• What stands out the most?

• What emotional reactions do you have?

• Do some of these dynamics sound familiar? (e.g., do you found yourself surrounded by gossipers who are unsympathetic to others’ pain?)

• What kinds of bodily reactions occur around “unsafe” dynamics? (e.g., does your heart race? Do you fidget in these situations? This is your body trying to tell you something—listen to it!)

• Do any of these traits remind you of someone you know?

  • While thinking of someone as you go down the chart, check off traits that apply to them. Does the needle lean more towards a safe or unsafe person?

Using the Safe People Chart for Yourself

NOTE: The purpose of the Safe People Chart is NOT to judge someone, but rather to gauge who you may need to have more boundaries with or space from until they have done the work to become safer.

NO ONE on this planet is 100% safe or unsafe, you included. We all exist on the spectrum between those two extremes.

Also, NO ONE is 100% fixed on one side or the other, you included. Just as important it is for you to identify who in your life is generally safe(r) or less safe, it would be essential for you to grow in becoming a safer person for others.

When you scan the Safe Person Chart again with yourself in mind, what are some of your patterns that land in the “unsafe” column? Check them off with a marker. These are your growth areas.

In this way, the chart serves as a roadmap to finding areas where you can focus your self-development to become a safe person for others to connect with.

Looking for Patterns in Connections

Using the Safe People Chart can help audit your significant relationships (past, present, and future).

• What would you like to be different going forward in who you connect with?

• What are some signs in the other person to be on the lookout for?

• How would you yourself like to grow?

Recalibrating Your “Safe Meter”

Many of us have been trained to mistrust our emotions and body reactions to others’ unsafe traits. This is partially why you’d find patterns of unsafe traits in your relationships: since your body has become so accustomed to it, it has developed a blind spot to them.

Sometimes seeing on a chart can help us understand and validate the uncomfortable reactions we have when we connect with unsafe people.

For example, when your heart starts racing and you feel uncomfortable in a circle of gossipers, your body is trying to tell you something. It’s likely that the gossipers eliciting such a reaction point toward “unsafe” on the chart.

Rather than downplaying your reactions, upon seeing some traits appear on the unsafe list, you can recalibrate your “safe meter” to better catch certain signs going forward. Doing so will help you:

• Find and connect with safe people who ALSO care for you and

• Protect yourself when interacting with unsafe people.

---

The BIG Feelings First Aid Kit

Do your Feelings TAKE OVER, ruining important moments or derailing your goals?

Grab this free guide that helps you handle feelings like a pro when they show up at the "wrong place" or "wrong time"!

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---

© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne: “I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Does this resonate?

Life Timeline: A Bird's-Eye View of Your Life

Emotions Running into the Present

In my last blog post, Top 10 List: Using Memories to Change Your Life, we discussed how to identify common emotional themes in a Top 10 Memory List. This list will be helpful for the Life Timeline activity. 

Like the Top 10 List, the Life Timeline will help us discover common themes among our strongest emotional memories, but in a visual form.

Refer to your own Top 10 List, like the example below for this activity.

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How to Create a Life Timeline

Draw a horizontal line on paper and plot years on this line in increments of 2 to 5 years. This is the base of your Life Timeline.  

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Using your Top 10 Best Memory List, plot the positive memories (green) ABOVE the timeline.

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From Top 10 Worst Memories List, plot the negative memories (orange) BELOW your timeline.

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Then, plot the neutral life events (blue) in the middle, such as moving, the birth of a family member, or beginning college.

Evaluating the Life Timeline

As with your Top 10 Memory List, identify common themes that cut through various memories with a bird’s-eye view.

• What themes stand out to you? (e.g., “When problems arise, I feel I have no one to turn to.”)

• Did some of your best and worst memories take place around any neutral life events?

• Did some of your best and worst memories happen during specific periods of your life? (e.g., during childhood or college.)

• What underlying emotions or reactions emerge from these memories?

  • Which periods were generally positive? Which were generally difficult?

• Do you notice any familiar patterns? (e.g., loneliness, work-related stress, etc.)

• Are any people in your life connected to these patterns?

Now that you’ve considered the themes and patterns of your Life Timeline, color code the periods of your life that have a generally positive or negative emotional undercurrent. Which two or three emotions would you use to describe these periods?

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Untying the Emotional Knots

The Life Timeline allows us to visualize some of our most pivotal memories by stretching them over our lives, connecting them to ages and other life events. This visual, bird’s-eye view helps us reconnect seemingly isolated memories into the emotional undercurrent of our lives. As we become more aware of how emotions tie into our memories, we can better anticipate our emotional responses to new events as they arise.

What you feel indicates what you need in order to untie these difficult emotional knots. Identifying these rigid patterns is the first step to clarifying your needs, which makes it easier to get them met. Refer to your discoveries today and allow them to guide you into creating a better future. Now that you’ve defined some of your needs, impactful moments, and emotional undercurrents, we can determine how these build into your behaviors, and how the behaviors of yourself and others in your life can be safe or unsafe. The “Safe People” blog will help gauge your connections and provide a foundation for healthy relationships.

How does your family of origin experiences & patterns shape how you live & love today?

Wanna map out your relationship dynamics as influenced by your family of origin? Check out this blog about genograms, the family tree’s fancy cousin that has so much more info than just who’s who!

---

The BIG Feelings First Aid Kit

Messy feelings spilling out at the WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE, WRONG WAY?

Grab this free PDF guide that shows you how to handle feelings like a pro so that you can keep moving forward in life!

I want my First Aid Kit!

Loading...

Thank you!

Check your inbox for your copy of The BIG Feeler First Aid Kit!

---

© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Does this resonate?

Top 10 List: Using Memories to Change Your Life

The Past is Still Alive

Key moments and memories from years (even decades ago) can still influence our emotions, relationships, and self-esteem today. Memories build into the fabric of our lives, and while we likely interpret memories as “good” or “bad,” we are not always able to identify the themes behind those memories and discover which events could be causing trauma, anxiety, or other difficult emotions. This is where a Top 10 List comes in.

What is a Top 10 List?

The purpose of the Top 10 List is to view these memories as part of a whole rather than random, isolated moments in our lives. Odds are that many of your best memories and worst memories have similar underlying currents that still affect your emotions and relationships in present day. Once you’ve written out what may seem like independent, unrelated events on a single sheet of paper, you may be able to better see the common threads that are still being woven today, whether you like it or not.

For this activity, divide a lined piece of paper into two columns. On the left side, list your Top 10 Best Memories; on the right side, list your Top 10 Worst Memories. Jot just a line or two—enough for you to understand what the memory is—and list the age that this memory occurred. No need to write an essay about each memory - we only need a Table of Contents for your life to use as a reference guide.

Look at the example chart below to help jumpstart your own Top 10 lists. These memories might be about connection, breakups, leisure, achievements, loss, disappointments, etc. Give yourself enough time to explore your positive and negative emotions. You can jot these memories in a notebook or use the downloadable PDF chart.

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How to Evaluate Your Memories

After making your list, see if you can identify some common themes among them.

• What themes stand out? (e.g., “Even if I mess up, someone always has my back.”)

• What seems to matter the most to you? (e.g., success, relationships, money, self-reliance)

• Are there common emotions associated with these memories?

  • What are the positive emotions (e.g., pride, belonging, connection)?

  • What are the negative emotions (e.g., failure, shame, guilt)?

• What pained you the most?

• What did you need that you didn’t get? (e.g., comfort, rest, friendship)

• What are some familiar patterns you’ve found yourself in? (e.g., friendship fallouts, loneliness, thwarted projects)

Now, think about how these emotions and themes carry into the present. Do these themes trigger you emotionally? For example, if many of your worst memories tie in with you failing, it wouldn’t be surprising that the fear of disappointing others still has a strong presence in your life today in your professional life, personal relationships, etc.

The Future is Not Yet Set: What Now?

The Top 10 List gives you a bird's eye view of your life so that, informed by your life narrative, you can intentionally weave the future in alignment with your wants and needs.

• Now that you know what you know about yourself, what would you like to do differently going forward? Keep the same?

• What are some stubborn patterns in your life that seem to repeat against your will? What do you need to do to get unstuck?

The first step at working through these knots is identifying the common threads as revealed by your emotions since what you FEEL reveals what you NEED. Then, you can take this to the next level and visualize these feelings and needs in the Life Timeline.

As you move forward this month, notice which emotions are stirred up, because the present is simultaneously the past in the making and a chance to design the future.

---

The BIG Feelings First Aid Kit

Messy feelings spilling out at the WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE, WRONG WAY?

Grab this free PDF guide that shows you how to handle feelings like a pro so that you can keep moving forward in life!

I want my First Aid Kit!

Loading...

Thank you!

Check your inbox for your copy of The BIG Feeler First Aid Kit!

---

© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne: “I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Does this resonate?

How Does Brainspotting Work?

In my other post, I described what Brainspotting (BSP) is: a way to jumpstart our bodies’ natural ability to process experiences and heal.

That all sounds good, but how exactly does it work?

Where You Look Affects How You Feel

Have you ever noticed where your eyes go when you’re thinking about something painful? Joyful? Sad?

Try thinking of a recent event that was somewhat upsetting (don’t think of the biggest painful event - pick something smaller for the purpose of this exercise).

• What thoughts come up?

• What emotion do you feel right now?

• Where do you feel that emotion in your body?

• Where are you looking?

• What happens when you look to the left? Middle? Right? Up? Down? Does the body/emotional experience become heightened? Dampened? Move/change?

For me, when I’m reflecting on a past event that’s tinged with sadness, my eyes tend to look to my bottom left. When I’m excited or angry and ready to engage something head on, I tend to look to the dead-center. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I tend to stare off into the distance to my top left.

What is a Brainspot?

Brainspots are the eye positions that give you more direct access to the emotions/body sensations (for better or for worse). Everyone has Brainspots for different emotional states (and corresponding thoughts/beliefs) or for various processing experiences. Our Brainspots aren’t particularly fixed - I can feel sadness when I’m looking elsewhere, too, but it’s just that I tend to more immediately connect to that emotional state when I’m looking in that direction.

When processing through a particular event (e.g., the death of my pet), my Brainspot can change locations depending on what specifically I am sorting through in that particular moment (i.e., I should have spent more time with her, I miss her, what would things be like now? She’s not in pain anymore, so she’s okay now).

Once I find a Brainspot and allow myself to just notice whatever thoughts, emotions, body sensations to come and go, eventually the emotional charge will dissipate because I will have fully processed it. (Mind you, I am better practiced in Brainspotting, so you might not be able to easily do this by yourself.)

Whatever might have been initially upsetting would shift into something more soothing/grounding. Instead of being knocked off balance from having been triggered, I would be able to be more calm and ready to engage whatever is ACTUALLY happening in front of me, not what I THINK or FEEL is happening.

Intentionally noticing where our eyes go when we’re reflecting on something (vs. accidentally finding ourselves doing so) and dedicating focused attention on it until we fully process that experience is what Brainspotting Therapy is about.

Can’t I Just Do Brainspotting By Myself?

It’s entirely possible for us to do Brainspotting on our own. This is called Self-Brainspotting (duh).

Gazespotting (the thousand-mile stare) is one example of Self-Brainspotting, though a lot of people might find themselves accidentally doing it and getting caught in the emotional whirlpool that amplifies their reactions.

For more mild discomforting experiences (feeling jittery about your upcoming interview), experimenting with the steps listed above, then finding an eye position that you can “massage out” the “emotional knot” with might be enough for you to move forward.

However, there is a risk to this: Once you open that barrel, you might find that there’s more stuff tangled up with it that you might not be able to handle by yourself. Once the barrel’s opened, you might not be able to close it easily until everything in there is cleared out.

If you sense that this might be the case for you, it would be best for you to connect with a Brainspotting-trained therapist who can help you process the heavy-duty stuff and can also train you how to safely do it on your own (when appropriate).

Why Brainspotting Therapy?

Imagine that processing significant experiences is like deep water diving. The further down the diver swims (into their nonconscious/subcortical brain), the darker the water gets and the harder it becomes to tell which side is up. When people get triggered, they feel disoriented because the past messily spills into the present.

Deep diving is still necessary to dig through the shipwreck remains (process painful experiences) and excavate lost treasure (gain fresh perspectives and healing), but in order for the diver to go deeper more effectively (and make it back unscathed), they need another person to be sitting in the boat on the surface who’s trained to reliably pull the diver out when it’s time or when things get risky. That person is the Brainspotting therapist.

Sometimes, the sheer knowledge that there’s someone sitting on the boat watching out for their wellbeing may infuse the diver with greater peace and courage to dive even more deeply than they would doing it alone.

What Does Brainspotting Therapy Involve?

In a typical talk therapy session, the client usually shares about whatever they’re experiencing, with the therapist asking questions, supporting them in enhancing self-insight, reframing perspectives, or teaching new skills. However, the benefits of talk therapy can be limited if the client gets so emotionally triggered outside of session that they forget whatever they learned in session.

Brainspotting Therapy involves the therapist intentionally giving space for the client to process out emotional reactions as they come up in session, instead of just talking about them.

For example, if the client is feeling a knot in their stomach at the thought of giving a presentation, the Brainspotting therapist asks them to notice what thoughts, emotions, and body sensations they’re feeling now, then prompts them to find a specific Brainspot/eye position where the client feels it all more directly.

Once the Brainspot is found, the client directs their full attention on whatever is happening inside of them, while the therapist directs their full attention on the client from the outside. The Brainspotting process continues until the client has fully processed the issue or until session time comes to an end.

Since Brainspotting is a subcortical, deep-brained rapid processing method, the client may feel emotionally exhausted afterwards (think of each Brainspotting experience as equivalent to 10+ talk therapy sessions!). The client’s body will also likely be continuing processing for whatever else is left. In the following session, the therapist checks in on what emotional residues seem to remain with the topic, and continue Brainspotting as needed or desired.

What comes next?

Stop getting caught in the emotional whirlpool!

If you’ve tried and felt frustrated with regular talk therapy, or if you’re finding yourself getting triggered often, Brainspotting Therapy might be right for you.

If you’re in California, let’s see if you and I might be a good fit!

If you’re still unsure about Brainspotting therapy and want to try a DIY version, here’s a post about gazespotting.

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The BIG Feelings First Aid Kit

Messy feelings spilling out at the WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE, WRONG WAY?

Grab this free PDF guide that shows you how to handle feelings like a pro so that you can keep moving forward in life!

I want my First Aid Kit!

Loading...

Thank you!

Check your inbox for your copy of The BIG Feeler First Aid Kit!

---

© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

Joanne B. Kim, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Does this resonate?

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What is Brainspotting?

Thousand-Mile Stare

You may have seen people stare off blankly into space, deeply reflecting on something or being emotionally detached from what’s happening around them. They're not really looking AT anything, in particular but just off into the distance in that general direction. Their eyes are directed outward, but their focus is directed inward. That may be an example of Brainspotting (specifically called gazespotting), which is a way by which the body is attempting to process through a memory with the emotions and thoughts related to it.

When we see others doing this, we often wonder, "Are they okay?" and shake them out of it. Sometimes, we might be hurt or offended and say, "Are you listening to me?" because it seems like they're not (to be fair, they probably aren't, so it's okay for you to feel hurt). In shaking the person back to reality, they might be able to "come back" to the present to engage whatever is in front of them (i.e., continue the conversation, work, drive).

However, THAT they're spacing out isn't bad per se. THAT they're often in a daze or daydreaming might indicate that their body is needing an intentional regular space to sort through their internal experiences. The issue is they might:

• Do it at the wrong time or at the wrong place (e.g., in the middle of work)

• Accidentally further upset themselves and make reactive decisions that make matters worse (e.g., they get triggered at work, ruminate on it throughout the day, become more upset, then come home and kick the dog).

Their bodies are TRYING to take care of themselves but are unsuccessful at it. During these times, they probably need someone else who’s steady and grounded to serve as an anchor as they're doing a deep dive into their unconscious. They need someone who's trained to be attuned to them, not interfere with their processing, and pull them back to the surface when it's time.

For these individuals, Brainspotting therapy would be a great resource for them.

What is Brainspotting?

Brainspotting (BSP) is a brain-based processing method that taps into the body’s natural ability to heal itself from overwhelming or stressful experiences that often generate symptoms like anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, and overreactivity. It does so by finding the specific eye positions that directly connect to where unprocessed stress is stored in the brain so that the body can “detox”.

Brainspotting directly accesses our “lower brain” where emotionally charged experiences are stored, far out of reach of the thinking “higher brain.” By doing so, we can process them more deeply and rapidly than we might with traditional talk therapy or with reading books, listening to podcasts, and learning useful skills.

Our bodies pick up stimuli (body sensations, emotions, information, etc.) throughout the day that is supposed to get processed often when we’re in deep sleep (REM cycle) but also when we’re in a reflective, meditative trance-like state (intentionally thinking about something and feeling the emotions that come with it).

However, when we experience something that’s too new, too scary, or too overwhelming, that overloads our bodies’ natural ability to process and heal. These stimuli can get “stuck” in our bodies in splintered form, waiting until the conditions are right in the future for us to deliberately process them. Unfortunately, most people aren’t practiced in going back to process old things, so these old things just sit there, pile up, and fester until something new happens that dumps all that old, past unprocessed stuff into the present and makes things messier. This is what being triggered means.

Think of it as what happens when we have leftovers: because we can’t finish the meal in one sitting, we save it for later. A lot of times, many of us forget that we have leftovers to finish, and we find out only when we open the fridge to see that there’s no more room or when things start to smell.

Brainspotting jumpstarts the body’s natural processing mechanism to sort out the old stuff into different piles:

• What to keep (long-term memory)

• What to process (emotions associated with past events that need to be experienced/expressed)

• What to throw away (old perspectives, irrelevant details)

Afterwards, the “fridge” gets cleared out so that there’s more room to take in new things. When the old stuff is fully processed, the person won’t be triggered as often or intensely, thereby becoming able to be fully present to engage whatever’s in front of them, respond accordingly, and perhaps even to enjoy the moment.

How Do I Sign Up?

If you find yourself often:

• getting stuck on a whirlpool of thoughts, emotions, and memories

• lashing out at others and having to apologize later

• staring off into space or daydreaming, when you really need to pay attention

• having trouble focusing or remembering things

• procrastinating and beating yourself up for it

• easily getting knocked off emotional balance

• feeling like anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, or overreaction is a daily reality

…then Brainspotting Therapy might be a good fit for you.

If you’re in California, let’s work together!

Learn how Brainspotting works in a related post!

If you want to try a DIY version, here’s a post about gazespotting.

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The BIG Feelings First Aid Kit

Messy feelings spilling out at the WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE, WRONG WAY?

Grab this free PDF guide that shows you how to handle feelings like a pro so that you can keep moving forward in life!

I want my First Aid Kit!

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Thank you!

Check your inbox for your copy of The BIG Feeler First Aid Kit!

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© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

Joanne B. Kim, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and a Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Does this resonate?

How to Ground in Uncertain Times

Feeling Like You’re drowning in stress?

The COVID-19 global pandemic released a tsunami of changes throughout all levels of society. With the uncertainties that have been stirred up, to say that people are anxious is a severe understatement, and learning how to ground is a remedy for that.

So many people are:

• Concerned about their own and their loved ones’ health

• Worried about employment and income 

• Trying to figure out how to pay the bills and keep food on the table

• Trying to prevent anyone in the family from killing each other

• Trying to figure out how to just get by each day, let alone be productive or creative

• Feeling deep shame from seeing others carry on with so much ease and fun 

• Feeling trapped and alone 

• Feeling grief and despair

If people have already suffered from depression, anxiety, and strained relationships before all of this, they may be feeling that they’re even more underwater during these times. 

If you’re feeling inundated with overwhelming information and emotions, and numbness is the only way to keep sane during these times, grounding techniques can regulate your nervous system and help you stay in the present and focused to do whatever you need to do. Here is one of those techniques. 

How to Ground:
Top 2, Bottom 2 +
The 5 Senses Method

Our thoughts and emotions can be everywhere and be about everything. Our bodies, however, can only be at one place at one time. Use your physical body to anchor yourself to the present. 

What are Your Top 2/Bottom 2 Senses?

• Check in with how you are with each of the five senses: sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell. 

• Which are your Top 2 senses that you are MOST connected with and feel most readily stimulated/soothed? (Which senses do you feel the most bothered and/or comforted by?) 

• Which are your Bottom 2 senses that you are LEAST connected with and that takes the most effort to notice? (Which senses do you forget the most easily?)

USE YOUR TOP 2 TO GROUND:

• Survey your living environment with your Top 2 senses in mind. What stands out to you, for better and for worse?

• What objects aggravate you that you could replace with something that’s soothing?

• How can you reduce what bothers you and increases what comforts you?
  (This could also be abstract - for example, scheduling some face-to-face interactions at the end of the day may give your body some relief by offering something pleasant to look forward to.)

• Check the table below for some specific examples per sense.

Now that a more grounding environment has been created, focus on the Bottom 2 senses that you tend to not notice as often.

Use Your Bottom 2 to Ground: 

• Distraction is not always a bad thing! Intentionally distracting yourself when you feel overstimulated is a useful self-care skill.

• Check the table below for some specific exercises to do to give your brain something else to focus on.

View fullsize

Looking to help your loved ones how to ground? Check out my next post.

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The BIG Feelings First Aid Kit

Messy feelings spilling out at the WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE, WRONG WAY?

Grab this free PDF guide that shows you how to handle feelings like a pro so that you can keep moving forward in life!

I want my First Aid Kit!

Loading...

Thank you!

Check your inbox for your copy of The BIG Feeler First Aid Kit!

---

© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, lMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Does this resonate?

---

Proudly helping women, healers, pastors, caregivers, and Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) who are EXHAUSTED by anxiety, guilt, shame, and an allergic reaction with anger create VIBRANT relationships where THEY MATTER, TOO!

Enneagram, EMDR, and Brainspotting Therapy in the Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County - San Jose, Los Gatos, Campbell, Cupertino, Saratoga, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Milpitas) and the San Francisco Bay Area. Offering telehealth video sessions in California.

Living Wholehearted: Emotions Help Us Thrive

Me, Age 12.

Queen of RBF (Resting Bitch Face)

"You look pissed."

"Stop pouting."

"Why are you souring the mood? We were having such a good time.

I was born into an immigrant family from a motherland culture who didn't do feelings well. Emotions were avoided, shunned, and buried underground, where they went into the blackmarket and reemerged in not-so-great ways. Tons of people around me labored endlessly, in school or work or church. They plastered happy faces in public and came home to stress and misery. This is how life was supposed to be...apparently. Back then, I didn't know how emotions help us thrive.

Three Cardinal Rules of Shamedom

There are three messages that govern families and organizations where addiction, abuse, and dysfunction run rampant:

• Don't talk.
• Don't trust.
• Don't feel.

Those who grow up in such contexts develop distorted views of themselves, others, and life that in turn influence their decisions, leading to painful experiences that then reinforce those messages. This creates a perpetuating cycle of SHAME.

Without appropriate ways to attend to pain or people to offer care, individuals turn to addictive substances or activities (including overworking, overeating, overexercising, over-anything) that are meant to reduce pain and/or enhance pleasure but end up doing neither. Rather, these very things further drive people into isolation to drown in their chaotic emotions. Such was the case for me.

Suppression, Isolation, & Restlessness,
NOT Silence, Solitude, & Stillness

I was born a deep feeler into a context where feelings weren't welcome. I had been told most of my life that I'm "too sensitive", "too emotional", or "too negative"...as if I was trying to be that way on purpose. I've been taught that our mind and our will are more important than our emotions: we're supposed to push aside what we're feeling and THINK "correctly" and DO "rightly". Mind and Will OVER Emotions.

Without a safe place to go, I dove headlong into things I felt I was good at and had more control over: academics, work, and ministry (with some video gaming and fantasizing on the side).

I kept things stuffed for as long as I could until I just couldn't. My emotions were just bottled up within me, amplifying themselves and becoming messier, nearly impossible to handle, and leaking out everywhere.

Years of depression and anxiety ensued, with strained relationships trailing behind. I didn't know how to smile, even if I tried.

Putting Pieces Together

It was after college that I started going to therapy. All my life, I felt like there was something wrong with me, because I knew deeply how messed up I was inside when everyone else seemed fine (HELLO SHAME). Through these sessions, I learned that, most likely, I'm actually in the vast majority: MOST people don't know how to do feelings and think that others are doing better. When everyone does that, everyone is stuck in isolation and shame. LOSE-LOSE-LOSE.

It's been over a decade since I began this journey of healing and growing. I've learned a lot about how essential emotions are for our personal well-being, our relationships, and life in general. Emotions help us THRIVE and I had no idea.

Becoming Whole and Living Wholehearted

In my personal journey of becoming more whole and my professional track of becoming a therapist myself, I've learned about emotional health, relationships, and neurobiology. There are two resources that I've found useful:

View fullsize

• The Enneagram, a personality framework that reveals our reactive modes of thinking, feeling, and doing

• Brainspotting, a type of body-based trauma therapy that reboots our natural ability to soothe our body’s reactivity

These two things have taught me just how much our thoughts, our emotions, and our bodies are interconnected, NOT mutually exclusive or hierarchical. These aspects of us go hand in hand (or hand -’n-heart-’n-head), so it would be wise to consider and address them as such.

How do you become healthy and whole? You attend to ALL aspects of yourself: mind, will, AND emotions.

Me, Age Grown Up and Glown Up

If you’re finding that you’re having trouble knowing what to do with your emotions (which, by the way, includes numbness), perhaps a professional can help you with that. I specifically help people who struggle with painful relationships and the “difficult” emotions of anxiety, guilt, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create vibrant connections.

Talk, Trust, Feel.

In a world where stress seems the norm and pain begets more pain, let’s REVERSE the Three Cardinal Rules of Don’t Talk, Don’t Trust, Don’t Feel.

Let us all become wholesome, integrated, connected people who makes decisions from wisdom, not reactivity. Let us together make this world spin for the better.

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What are the emotional habits of your Enneagram type?

Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!

Don't know your Enneagram type?

Find yours here!

What are your emotional habits?

Get the Emo Habits Guide!

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"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

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© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, lMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”

Does this resonate?