Session 6 | André Monteiro, Paige Roberts e Stephen LaMotte

This presentation systematizes the partnership between Ego States and Brainspotting. It starts with a brief presentation about the ego states approach and its adequacy to Brainspotting with patients with dissociative disorders. We then develop the idea of the importance of multifocal Brainspotting to attend the complexity inherent to these clinical cases.

Two original case studies of brainspotting applied to a 23 year old Men’s United States Freestyle Mogul Ski Team member and a 24 year old Woman’s United States Freestyle Moguls Ski Team member. Both athletes were trying to make the United States Freestyle Moguls World Cup Ski Team. The male in this study had already made the U.S. World Cup team 3 seasons earlier and had lost his spot as a result of a sports injury induced performance decline. The female in this study had literally “fallen” over the finish line at USST selections competition 3 seasons prior. As a result she had experienced a mental block around selections and felt she would fall over the line again. Both athletes sought out a sports psychology intervention fall 2014 in an attempt to be named to the 2014-2015 USST Team. Both participated in Brainspotting prior to and throughout their 2014-2015 competitive ski season. The male in this study completed 39 BSP sessions and the female in this study completed 19 BSP sessions. Both athletes made the 2014-2015 United States World Cup Freestyle Moguls Ski Team. This is an on-going case study and will continue to grow as the athletes build on their 2015-2016 competitive season.

Different eye positions, identified as brainspots, yield clinically relevant emotional valences that play a significant role in psychological processing. The 9-point Brainspot Mapping protocol can be used to identify the rich “emotional architecture” of the client, identifying resources and trauma spots. The client listens to bilateral audio stimulation and is asked to focus their gaze on a pointer at nine positions within the visual field, identifying body sensations and emotional reactions. 51 psychotherapy patients consented to have their brainspot mapping protocols be included in the current study. The eye position responses were coded using QUIRKOS, a qualitative data analysis software that allows the clinician to identify positive, negative, neutral, somatic, intellectual/evaluative, and dissociative feeling states that were reported with different eye positions. Results: looking to the right generated more negative affect, looking left generated more positive affect, looking upward center was more emotionally neutral, and looking lower right and center was associated with stronger negative affect, dissociation, and somatic activation. The most significant finding, however, was that within each subject, the clinical information was extremely rich and varied depending on right/left eye position, suggesting that standard EMDR may be activating brainspots that are highly preloaded for a profound integrative process.