🎙️Navigating the Landscape of the Past and Future of Trauma Therapy: A Conversation with Samuel Blanchette

Samuel reached out to me as a therapist in the same world as Taproot to have a conversation about therapy and we had it on the air. We talk about Brainspotting, trauma, Emotional Transformation Therapy, Meditation, Mysticism, Jung and the past and future of therapy. 

🔊 Join us in this enlightening episode as we sit down with Samuel Blanchette, a therapist in the field of trauma therapy. Samuel brings a trauma-informed and humanistic approach to his practice, emphasizing the uniqueness of each individual's journey. With his rich experience working in diverse environments and with hundreds of people, Samuel has developed a deep understanding that one method doesn't fit all. In our conversation, we delve into the evolution of trauma therapy, exploring various modalities and how they can be tailored to individual needs.

🌱 Samuel passionately believes in validating every person's experience and pain, and he shares his insights on how he walks alongside his clients on their path to healing. Whether you're a professional in the field, someone dealing with personal trauma, or just interested in the human psyche, this episode offers valuable perspectives on the history and future of trauma therapy.

#TraumaTherapy #MentalHealthAwareness #HealingJourney #HumanisticApproach #IndividualizedCare #TherapyInsights #MentalWellness #TraumaInformed #PsychologyPodcast #HolisticHealing #SelfDiscovery #EmotionalHealth #MentalHealthMatters #TherapeuticInnovation #EmpathyAndHealing

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Transcript: Transcript
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Joel Blackstock: All right, this is the Taproot therapy podcast. I'm Joel Blackstock, and I'm here with a man that truly needs. No one introduction.
Joel Blackstock: Philosopher king, rock star of published author World traveler collector of rare artifacts as a tearing magic specialist now, so it's Samuel Blanchette I'm saying that there's another social worker who reached out to me and we know we were both kind of in a similar world and a ton of the stuff that I've done. I think it's just because our website is a little bit more visible his people see ideas and they're kind of looking for people in their world, we've talked a little bit about how academic psychology is going in a different direction and clinical practice because the market is wanting things that are not having in the hospitals by and large which is not a great place for the profession to be in and anyway, I have a lot of these conversations on the phone with people that want to connect and they're fun and they're interesting and I learned a bunch of stuff and so decided I'm just gonna start doing that on the podcast one because I'm out of time. All I do is
Joel Blackstock: therapy podcast and play with my kids and sleep. And so yeah Samuel's a really interesting nice guy who reached out and wanted to connect and I'm sure we'll have a fascinating conversation. thank you so much for being here. Can you introduce your actual biography?
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, so aside from my arcanium of esoteric skills and my treasure seeking and…
Joel Blackstock: know I should come up with as a terror more like Antiquated titles like alienist,…
Samuel Blanchette: so forth.
Joel Blackstock: nothing. It's like Haberdasher.
Samuel Blanchette: sure, right the
Joel Blackstock: Yeah farrier
Samuel Blanchette: All of those things in the progression of learning how to be a human, Yeah. So yes, I'm a random human being that reached down to you because I saw that you had found a really kind of lovely way of integrating some of the modern neurological approaches with some of the cool more philosophical approaches what I don't think there's really a distinction there, but just to make discrimination between as…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: if we could do that to ourselves, which we try Yes,…
Joel Blackstock: romantic distinction only really
Samuel Blanchette: and so, I am a master's level clinician with licensed Associates clinician. So I'm working towards my ultimate end goal of whatever that is.
Joel Blackstock: just here because here the sea is the terminal license.
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, so I'm in Arizona and it is different across all the states and my degree is actually in counseling, so I'm not coming from the social working Realm.
Joel Blackstock: Okay, when you said LCS because here it's ALC LPC and then search is counselor and then social worker is lgsw which they just changed to lmsw and then it turns into Li csw which used to be LCSW that in our board and it's infinite wisdom. there's some others around
Samuel Blanchette: Absolutely. I'm really appreciate some of the states that are working on doing kind of interstate compacts as far as that goes. I think that's kind of a really cool. right
Joel Blackstock: the counselors are so much better at it than the social workers and I think there's pros and Constable both ones, but overall it seems like the social workers have a little bit less self-esteem or something. I don't know what it is and the boards seem like we're during the pandemic at the counseling boards are getting together in the clinical boards are making everything APA. It's like making everything so much easier for the license to practice across state lines and meet this need in a mental health crisis and our board is making it harder and being like actually there's these hoops because we have to make extra sure which I mean there's maybe ways to do it but it's just like they keep raising the number of Ethics hours because they're like, people keep sleeping with their patients. So maybe that they're doing that because they haven't heard it for eight hours instead of four and it's that. don't think no one told him not to do it as the problem.
Samuel Blanchette: That's right very much like introduction to you want to be a mental health professional number one,…
Joel Blackstock: They're gonna be so bored that we're gonna build a little Beetle of the entire profession.
Samuel Blanchette: please don't.
Joel Blackstock: No, I mean it's like you need to kind of catch that and the education level and…
Samuel Blanchette: mmm
Joel Blackstock: the support level and the licensure level which for some reason it's only we'll just tack on the cease and that'll fix these problems retroactively which supposed to be the system's professional social workers are supposed to understand the system and that actually works not as we wish it did, the stereotype is the lpc's kind of in a vacuum being like symptomology, which is always true and the social worker is more like person in an environment food racism culture, But for some reason those are not the ones that they make the loss about social work.
Samuel Blanchette: And that's an interesting point that you make about coming into this field. Right and I think to some degree. it seems that human beings have an interest in how their minds psychees Souls work right how this thing functions because we all experience suffering and so we try to create method Of managing whatever that is, right, and I think that that's such an interesting point about this creating education of so many hours to try and inform you of information and there's such a huge difference between the experience of sitting with somebody in an intensely emotional space and the theoretical constructs around sitting with somebody in emotional space.
00:05:00
Joel Blackstock: And everybody who doesn't do that seems to want to tell you how to the theatrist that has never been in therapy and doesn't practice therapy and…
Samuel Blanchette: All right, and
Joel Blackstock: the insurance board and the state legislature have all these opinions about things. They don't teach children or do counseling.
Samuel Blanchette: Yes, all of those pieces and I think I mean you used to really I mean explicit example, right this idea of they keep on engaging in relationships with these, people that's outside of the framework and the boundaries of the holding container, right? And at the same time…
Joel Blackstock: mmm
Samuel Blanchette: if you don't know how to work with the energy of human connection, right like intensity of that on the levels that are necessary to some degree to healing
Joel Blackstock: for multiple types of people you kind of got to be a chameleon. You need to be what they need. what you want?
Samuel Blanchette: Absolutely and to stay with that is interesting. I think that's a huge part of what our field does we create mental constructs in order to feel safe when we're journey into the unknown and I brain spotting. I think that the author makes a really interesting point about this quadrillion Connections in the human brain,…
Joel Blackstock: mmm
Samuel Blanchette: and I think that that's lovely to be aware of because I think one thing I've noticed as a struggle is They boards and other Trends try to dictate. What is the right way of doing therapy and boy, I've had so many internal conflicts or
Joel Blackstock: you can do the wrong thing for the right reasons, it's there's some people who use exercises and avoidance, so if they're processing trauma with brain spotting stop exercising, it's not that that's a bad thing to do, but it's like so a lot of times I think when you Put more control at the top level. You're just making providers. Sort of have a different aesthetic about doing what they're doing. Anyway, it doesn't actually practice that much if anything it makes it worse. Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, I think. this idea of having to change the language that you express the thing that you're going to be doing naturally anyway.
Joel Blackstock: And the whole profession, I mean, I think that's like why mental health is such a weird spot is it's like because that you see it if you're a social worker and you're working with grants and things so there's all these assumptions baked in to the way the rules are written that there's services that exist and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yes.
Samuel Blanchette: Mm-hmm
Joel Blackstock: connections and things that have not been around for 30 years. So half of it is ticking boxes that are fake just because it used to work this certain way and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: and it's not quite a catch 22, but we need to word for that. and one of the things is it's like psychiatrists know how to do therapy. It's just this assumption because I know…
Samuel Blanchette: 
Joel Blackstock: how to read research about CBT and it's like no we used to think that because it used to be true because they used to do therapy and they used to be in there therapy. And now the vast majority of them are not but for some reason they're the one that calls me, from an insurance panel that I'm no longer in it says you should be able to treat the associative identity disorder in Greece sessions with CBT or drugs are mandated and a more therapy will be paid for and also brain spotting is in
Joel Blackstock: Based and neither is EMDR and neither is some other long list of stuff. She wanted me to it's like hey,…
Samuel Blanchette: reason
Joel Blackstock: have you done this? Like I asked would be I left the panel and…
Samuel Blanchette: Why?
Joel Blackstock: then they were fine, and now they call me every year and ask me to go back in I never will but they're like I don't know does it was your dream to be the member of a 15 person, fake referral insurance thing. That's local to this ZIP code. what are you doing? Why are you telling me how to do therapy? You've never done it
Joel Blackstock: I don't know.
Samuel Blanchette: yeah, that divide is a curious one because on something in some cases it actually Bears really Pleasant fruit, right some of the really cool neurological studies and some of the neurocy stuff what I really love about it in all honesty is it gives Credence to a lot of historical and traditional methods of working with people and now we can just label it with scientific terms and say it's good an example that I really like so memory reconsolidation I think is so lovely. That's really been encouraging to me this idea that there is a way that the brain changes things damentally permanently emotional, Love that. It's very encouraging to me. And in my process of doing therapy, I deeply fell in love with Gestalt therapy at the very beginning of things. I've done the book Eagle hunger and aggression and I'm like, my goodness. I really love the depth of this thing.
00:10:00
Joel Blackstock: Rich pearls he was an interesting guy.
Samuel Blanchette: He was I think a lot of and we have videos and we use that to interpret a certain total system of philosophical approach, which it is what it is and that's what people do but his wife Laura pearls contributed so much good men all these different thinkers into this really really lovely existential approach to their and yeah.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: One I think it's downfall was kind of two things too. It's like one he was kind of a little bit more of a showman. He was probably kind of like me he was like you're not I want to show you how well this thing works by demonstrating it. And so people thought it was too productive.
Samuel Blanchette: Sure.
Joel Blackstock: No not reductive. They thought it was too much of
Joel Blackstock: I don't know just some kind of a trade technique or something and said he was showing them part of the system and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: then also east and west coast Charlotte and I got in a fight. I mean it's like the middle of California people were like this should be therapy and…
Samuel Blanchette: all
Joel Blackstock: the other people it should be religion, I guess you're therapy modalities successful. If it accidentally forms like a religion / cult, I don't know.
Samuel Blanchette: A philosophical life approach and yeah, I think that you're absolutely right though about that thing and I think the challenge that happens the unfortunate thing is when certain people take things to their extreme, especially when part of the whole thing is trying to keep ideas alive to some degree letting
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: let me show you something cool. Right and I think what that winds up doing though is especially in the case of stole therapy. here's this beautiful in a theoretical field Theory dialogical approach. I inval phenomenology relationship in between bracketing all these brilliant really lovely existential Concepts kind of like flowing into this approach and then we wind up with I do empty chair work therefore I'm using it.
Joel Blackstock: yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: and it's like
Samuel Blanchette: that's saying all young and therapy is active imagination. Right? it's like let's take a technique.
Joel Blackstock: We don't even give actual unions that are trained. It's like a ton of time. especially I think it's more of an American Union thing where they just sanitize it so much and it's just therapy plus Jesus or it's like therapy. You can bring to church or it's like a sand trade but there's not I mean it happens with all modalities same thing you're talking about. It's like people mistake the technique Or the lens of the modality…
Samuel Blanchette: foot
Joel Blackstock: which is how you're understanding a person which is how the conceptualization is so much more important than what you're doing in the room,
Samuel Blanchette: I agree so fully I think and the hard part is how do you describe being a human right like this? It's so the potentially new ones.
Joel Blackstock: The problem is psychology there,
Samuel Blanchette: again, and how do we turn this into something that creates transformative change and I think again out of all the things that sort of young jungian slash Youngs love of alchemical ideas and that framework of thought I think it's so beautiful because it's at least language that's not dependent on time. Right? So it's the taoists or ayurvedic Traditions or these different things. They're all drawing from this concept of transformation. And now my experience especially when we're looking at things like Parts work and stuff. Everybody's labeled these things in their own way with their own conceptual lens. Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: Especially ifs is him just putting which I don't dislike. I guess if I had a giant treatment center and I needed to Train everybody to be able to do the best work with it …
Samuel Blanchette: absolutely.
Joel Blackstock: but he put Yugi and archetypes together with dished out therapies experience will component. and maybe some DBT skills, but That's what it is, and the language of it is kind of dogmanic. You…
Samuel Blanchette: It yeah.
Joel Blackstock: I think it's so much easier to just say protective part. You kind of feel how this one's a physical protective part. That one's kind of unconscious one or whatever then getting in a fight with a client about is something like a firefighter or…
Samuel Blanchette: Sure.
Joel Blackstock: protector what I personally like, I mean, it's people who do it do great work. But you…
Samuel Blanchette: Yes.
Joel Blackstock: I'm not as wild about the language of All that also they think it's family therapy every time you say ifs people think your family there.
Samuel Blanchette: Sure, what do I have to bring my mother in? the mother lives in you,…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah. He's already here. Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: whether that's an object or at least he's in the space part of your phenomenological field like how we're doing this.
00:15:00
Joel Blackstock: what did you work with Gestalt, but what are the kind of broad Strokes of your practice now or the stuff that you
Samuel Blanchette: So, I'm not an official anything right? Because unfortunately there's a pace wall that inhibits people from becoming certified in anything and I understand that to some degree because people want purity of systems possibly or they don't want to be misrepresented or whatever that means and that's okay and I understand that, I think unfortunately that again diminishes the free exchange of information and ideas and then you wind up with like you said this dogma's that have to approach existence in a very fixed pattern and that's neurotic traditionally anyway,…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: so I would say the collection of things right so I do really like primarily because it makes me feel confident and science is important to people and myself So this sort of neuro biological piece, especially poly Bagel Theory. I really like that and again all of those are still constructs built on our current understanding of medicine and biology, but I really like holy legal Theory. I like like I said memory reconsolidation, I like the idea that there are fundamental processes that mammals use to make adaptation. And that just makes sense to me and then sort of more of that the Gestalt oriented humanistic type of thing. So kind of like nazloe kind of existential stuff. And then I did a real deep dive into Parts work and things because
Samuel Blanchette: if you've ever sat with anyone whether you're a therapist or otherwise there is a transition of Consciousness between aspects of themselves. However, you want to Define that right. And people have been exploring that from the beginning of time. In fact, I movement and all of these things have been deeply announced analyzed by taoists and in ancient Arabia Arabia and all these different kinds of things people have been playing with human observation and how we do what we do but one thing that constantly shows up and I met it first in Gestalt work right doing empty chair. It's like, my What is this? We have two fundamentally different states of Consciousness and he's Consciousness to define the whole being right? It's not a thought process, but it's a total representation of Self in the world right with environment. and it's just so fascinating there and I really
Samuel Blanchette: fell in love with that and started strongly believing in it in a sense. However
Samuel Blanchette: that's an interesting space to go because it's very unknown right and so I was looking for framework to understand this and I first got some deep framework in Psycho synthesis, right assagioli really going into all these details about sub personalities and the alchemical process of transmutation of self and then I started kind of playing around from there and it's interesting to see now what my work kind of shows up as after I've been exposed to all these different methods voice dialogue, internal family systems. All these different ones. There's a gentleman John run.
Joel Blackstock: there is voice dialogue have purchase out there. I mean, it seems like there's not a ton of places still doing it much.
Samuel Blanchette: So I had to look to find all of these things right ego States is super fun enjoyable for folks…
Joel Blackstock: mmm
Samuel Blanchette: because it's derives from a currently utilized processes that are popular.
Joel Blackstock: That's like The Last Remnant of transactional analysis. It's still out there.
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah this which all have roots in this Gestalt thing which I'll have roots in, psychoanalytic processes,…
Joel Blackstock: Mm-hmm
Samuel Blanchette: right ego and superego are parts, I mean to find them how you will There's something right. yeah, and…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: I think finding out how to work with parts and Also, my own process has looked like working with parts and also realizing more of this kind of again this field oriented idea or kind of this Buddhist idea of this local non-duality. So it's like parts and no parts can both mutually exist. And what's meaningful is how it applies in the field of Exchange in that moment with the person at least that's where I'm sitting at. I'm kind of wondering for you for yourself. How have you integrated that do you stick kind of sharply to a process of the way of working with parts or how have you integrated this because you have a lot of really cool neurobiological techniques, And then you have this other stuff too and kind of like, I'm very curious about that.
Joel Blackstock: But I mean, I think probably what you're responding to is when I'm looking at the way that a lot of these models are younger pearls or whatever. I…
00:20:00
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah. Yes.
Joel Blackstock: they're written in phenomenological language. It's like this is just how this feels and so they're kind of intuitive which is the reason why a lot of people they won't die. A lot of people are called back to them and a lot of reasons why they're never going to be institutionally. there is that it's not an objective thing.
Samuel Blanchette: Monday
Joel Blackstock: It's kind of an intuitive concept about don't you understand this part of your own experience, if you're chasing the academic thing and you don't understand that part of your experience, that's not going to speak to you, because it's not real.
Samuel Blanchette: yes.
Joel Blackstock: You can't see it take you to touch it. This is about subjective kind of felt State and in the parts of self that you can feel and work with and I mean frankly I think to do certain kinds of trauma therapy, you have to bury a certain amount of trauma that you've worked through or…
Samuel Blanchette: yeah you
Joel Blackstock: you don't really understand it.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, but then now there's neurology and neurobiology that is able to explain or we can make guesses. I'll still get a nasty email from a clinical psychology student. But we can make guesses about what these parts of the brain do and…
Samuel Blanchette: right
Joel Blackstock: that's always been my interest and so it's like because I was always frustrated with just how bad Academia is it admitting that it's wrong? it's the same people publishing these papers that are like you doesn't know unconscious isn't real and this is whatever and…
Samuel Blanchette: Behaviorism it's hard.
Joel Blackstock: trauma is trendy. So the same guys like riding a paper. That's like there's tertiary secondary and primary levels of consciousness, but the tertiary levels are only, symbolic function and show up in the body and you're like what it dude like you're wrong. just right. I'm sorry, that's the paper that you should be published. What?
Joel Blackstock: So my thing is going back and saying look. Yeah these philosophies are Perennial meaning they pop up independently because there's people sort of feeling themself and discovering the same thing about how we work and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: but then a lot of times, I don't really have a friend anywhere because I'm saying no, I'm not just in this club. I'm trying to say that all these clubs share functions and that neither one of them is they all have pros and cons. They all have drawbacks people don't like that.
Samuel Blanchette: Yes.
Joel Blackstock: They like me for the extent of me saying what you're doing is interesting and here's a cool way to articulate it and here's some techniques there. They like that and then I say, okay, but here's where the limitations are and where you can pivot if no don't do that, and that's the, people kind of like the stuff online until I won't even get a chance to respond to the email. Sometimes it's just like this is great. and this is great. I used it. wait, you said this thing that's threatening the way that I practice so I don't think you understand like I haven't said yeah I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if that answers.
Joel Blackstock: that video that I have where I'm talking about I think the breakdown of these models is how experiential they are and how cognitive they are. And so the person who comes in and says that they want existential therapy and they're like, I didn't know my PhD in Sartre and I use that existential therapy and I'm called to whatever I'm like in a bag my hand. I'm like, that's the last thing that you need, it's not that other people are hell,…
Samuel Blanchette: it's right because this
Joel Blackstock: it's that you are in hell because you feel that in here. Don't need to the same thing with the person who comes in that's just totally in their feeling State and their feelings all that's real and they want to dump all this emotion. I mean really what you need is to kind of get out outside of that and see a bigger picture and have some kind of, spiritual or philosophical ones to analyze your life, which young says that in his book that the kind of therapy you come and…
Samuel Blanchette: I love
Joel Blackstock: wanting is usually the last one that you need.
Samuel Blanchette: And it's that young and function of opposites, right or…
Joel Blackstock: To tension of opposites. Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: this enabled from Yeah, there's Yeah, we want to come in this way. So it's likely that the other side of that is probably where we're gonna get the most yields. However, how do we…
Joel Blackstock: mmm
Samuel Blanchette: how do we get you to feel comfortable walking into that space because we have to build structure and some different scaffolding to step into the Known, right. So if I am loaded with a certain perspective it's easy for me to walk in that world until I dip my toe in the reality that I don't perceive then it's like my goodness and then we get all of the functions of adaptation that threatens my self-concept and do all this lovelyness.
Joel Blackstock: I mean that's if you just listen to conflict or politics or whatever. It's half of the fights that people get into or where they become the most reactive. It's just where somebody saying. Hey, my behavior doesn't line up with myself image and you're pointing that out to me, …
Samuel Blanchette: what?
Joel Blackstock: which is one of the reasons why I can do therapy, but probably not anything else very well is that I don't quit doing that ever. if you say something I'm gonna take it at face value and…
Samuel Blanchette: mmm
Joel Blackstock: because of that, people come into therapy. There's kind of a buy into that process of but it makes you Miserable, person to be around at Thanksgiving. maybe we'll drop this episode then.
Samuel Blanchette: right
Joel Blackstock: What was in a hospital? I couldn't turn it off. I mean they would have this thing where they're like, hey, we really want to continuously improve and we want to know what the problem is and we want your all input and we want you to be honest and then I'd be like, then here's the thing that you could do easily. It would save you money and it would make reduce burnout and it would reduce errors and the downside is it might threaten somebody Ego or we would just have to admit that there's a problem which is what you're asking. no, don't say that. That's not what you're supposed to. Okay fine, then you don't want what you said. don't do this meeting give me three hours of my life every six months or Say I want you to give me your honest feedback. Where it's what I mean as long as you're saying it I'm gonna continue to take it at face value, even though I know you don't mean what you're saying and…
00:25:00
Samuel Blanchette: And that's the phenomenological approach right?
Joel Blackstock: I'm not gonna stop doing that. I mean that's all that I'm gonna die.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: You literally cannot know anything other than what is happening in the immediate now, It's like everything else is extrapolation or some sort of projection or something. So it's like This is what you mean, right and they're like no. Okay. So this is not…
Joel Blackstock: mmm
Samuel Blanchette: what you mean, but this is what you're saying. Is that correct? And I love that this memory reconsolidation like the fundamental initial tenant is just creating this explicit awareness and then a juxtaposition of so this and this yes, and that's
Joel Blackstock: Can you talk a little bit about memory reconsolidation for people who may not be familiar the technique there and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, absolutely.
Joel Blackstock: the assumption?
Samuel Blanchette: Let's see. If Bruce Ecker was a physicist before he started getting into the whole therapy situation. And I love that people have passions because passions create they take people down. Holes that lead to information I would never find because my passion doesn't lean in that direction. And so
Samuel Blanchette: they really did a lot of work looking at this idea of how we fundamentally change our memories right? There was this idea up until the early 2000s or so that once it's in long term memory storage. You're stuck with it. And even we have in a vendor coax book like that body keeps the score. It's like no once It's in there you're stuck and then that leads right that necessitates creating processes where we're doing a counter development of a strategy, So we're looking for extinction, which is let me build up this neurological pathway that's contrary to this one so they can battle it down and hopefully my pretty fun little cortex wins down against my limbic system and my sub cortical areas when I'm threatened and we can do that through some desensitization and building up strategies, right which is fine and that also building strategies is how we learn grow and develop, however,
Samuel Blanchette: The fundamental sense of emotional pain when I access a historical piece of my existence. That's not very fun. And that's what drives most of us to seek change. right and…
Joel Blackstock: 
Samuel Blanchette: and this idea is really lovely because They were going off this model. you can't erase long-term memory once it's in it's in but whoa. All sorts of cool experiments they're using mice and then they're putting in certain chemicals that inhibit the consolidation of certain kinds of neurological processes and bad Bang. Now we're not having the long-term memory affect them on an emotional level, but they still theoretically hold on to that information in a chronological fashion, right? So
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, and anything like with brain science because there are billions of connections. It's gonna be reduced to some kind of metaphor. I mean, there's no way to talk about it without being reductive unless you're super computer, …
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: but I mean that's another thing a lot of the research is showing is the pair sympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system are out of sync. They're not acting in the same way which I mean to me with brain spotting and a lot of the pupil dilation stuff that we do you can't fake those reactions,…
Samuel Blanchette: yeah. No.
Joel Blackstock: when your people's like doing this you're having a brain bleed or you're maybe brain spotting works and it's doing something that's neurologically reproducible with a reducible effect. Even if it's not past a zillion randomize controlled trials and isn't 30 years old yet, something I can recreate in the room.
Samuel Blanchette: right
Joel Blackstock: I hear the same thing from the patient. It cures the same thing. that's Health Science works, even it starts here, you research it later and there are a lot of studies on it now being more effective and embr and some other things but the parent sympathetic and sympathe.
Joel Blackstock: Nervous system fighting each other one dilates the eye. It has kind of a sphincter like muscle that tightens and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, right.
Joel Blackstock: the other one has a pulling muscle that opens the eye so I hit my mic and that when you usually don't drive with your foot on the gas and the brake, you…
Samuel Blanchette: Right. Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: but what I can do is hit those to be intention, with color light frequency eye position, all the different techniques that we have now eye movement sometimes until they Sink in my body is assuming the same thing that the front of my brain is assuming about…
Samuel Blanchette: I love that and…
Joel Blackstock: how the world works not something that is 15 years old, traumatic.
Samuel Blanchette: and this even speaks to Peter Levine the oscillation between felt senses right even going back to earlier stuff of self-observation.
00:30:00
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: We're looking at ben Eugene gendlin in this focusing. here's a felt sense. I experience it. I look I put words on it and then there's this curious thing. I'm speaking back to this memory reconsolidation piece, which I love because it's non-theoretical right? it is theoretical in the scientific sense, but it's trans theoretical in the sense that it doesn't belong to anybody nobody can I think they say this is my method pay me my Right.
Joel Blackstock: You can't really consolidate memory only I can do that.
Samuel Blanchette: I have it all it's mine. Let baby thousands of dollars to learn my strategy which is fine and…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, that is kind of even the models that I like.
Samuel Blanchette: I understand.
Joel Blackstock: It's kind of off-putting or they're like look you use this word. Then you're whatever. It's like man. Come on. why are you doing this
Samuel Blanchette: we have to and some because it's marking territory and it's validating philosophical processes and trying to differentiate that from something else and all the things. So what I love though, and I'm very curious especially with brain spotting and various other eye movement type things whether it's NLP and the different ways of accessing or looking in the visual field or any of these things or even just staying with the micro Tremors and neurogenic tremoring that happens during certain kinds of activation all the good stuff, The lovely thing about So the concept here for the memory reconsolidation is that It is theoretically not and sometimes that feels kind of powerful but it is the way of creating.
Samuel Blanchette: Forever emotional change and the way that it works is memory is Consolidated during event of high emotion, right? So boom.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: I have stored that in my system. However, we do that. We have no clue, we have always ideas on how memory works but it's way too integrative to just be reduced to neurons. It's memories stored with emotion, In order to change that the process is really really simple, but it's also challenging because the process is this I need to activate that as a felt experience that memory with the emotional component.
Samuel Blanchette: Once I activate that memory and it felt experience. I need to create an explicit juxtaposition as the word that they use something that fundamentally on a felt sense disconfirms. The fact that that is that be whether I'm using an eye thing and I'm in a safe space or whatever that is and what that does is it unlocks all of the patterns of how that's held because now just like an animal right? I have an explicit fact that contradicts the emotional content. And once that opens then we have a process of five hour window where if we continually repeat the Discerning event one consolidates, the evidence says that what should happen is that should no longer elicit anything you can call it back up and it will be a historical. Piece of information but it will not be emotional charge to it.
Joel Blackstock: It sounds like a lifespan integration is doing that too. I'm not training that one. I've read the book and one of my supervision candidates is really into it but it sounds similar and…
Samuel Blanchette: with you
Joel Blackstock: that you're kind of taking these things that are felt experiential pretty strong activating memories, but they are contradictory and then ramming them all through so quickly that you can't continue to have all of that stored semantic memory be on challenged and then the brain let's go.
Samuel Blanchette: And the timeline and lifespan stuff is really interesting because we look at NLP they've been using timelines and things for a long long time.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: And this is one of the other things that I struggle with as people will take ideas that are explicitly described in older therapeutic modalities. They will not give credit to the line of thinking and…
Joel Blackstock: yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: they will need it to their own process. That is one of the things that
Joel Blackstock: Then sometimes they don't even know when they're doing it. I mean you can kind of tell when people know that they're doing it when people don't like Joseph Campbell bringing young to America.
Samuel Blanchette: but that's
Joel Blackstock: I mean, I feel like he knew what he was stealing and he was a union he didn't give credit to it. You…
Samuel Blanchette: mmm
Joel Blackstock: he said that but yeah, there's other people where I think they've just heard something and then they start doing something and then they decide they can I mean like that.
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah. Yeah, that's fair what I really loved though about this process. So this idea memory recall it somatically in a felt way. Juxtaposition of experience something that completely explicitly confronts that create the unlock which then allows new information to be encoded in the memory to go away and what's really kind of need is though. This is very dependent on each situation. So you can remove the emotional charge of a certain thing. But if it has other connections or other parts are attached to it each of those would also need to go through this process of reconciliate memory reconsolidation in order to get the full effect of when I think of that in this context it no longer elicits that strong necessary emotional survival response.
00:35:00
Samuel Blanchette: and what I like about it is because it's kind of like It just a concept neurologically. It means that every therapeutic modality could theoretically work and if they worked it means they follow this natural biological process. and if…
Joel Blackstock: yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: what I really love about Concepts like that is that it gives a lot of freedom back to the clinician to trust their artfulness their own and…
Joel Blackstock: their intuition Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: They're intuition. Yeah, so it says This is generally how it works. Even if you was probably Bagel Theory I think was also beautiful for that. This is generally how it works. Now knowing that within the confines of the biology let's use our creative playful curiosity to generate new outcomes.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah and that's the thing that you can't teach, it's like I love it if there's an interview candidate that fights with me because they understand something and they believe it and they know something they're not just trying to figure out what somebody wants from them. Those are the clinicians that take years to get better the ones that have coming from the hospital or something and it's almost like they were trained not to think for themself and…
Samuel Blanchette: We
Joel Blackstock: justify everything they do in this thing and the question that you can't fake and interview. if you're early in your therapy education remember this one, I mean just absorb a ton of podcasts and a ton of current material on that and then go in with a fresh perspective like this, I think it's headed this is where it's not because you can't fake that question. I mean when we do Executive coaching and people are talking about hiring always just ask them the last thing that they learned and…
Samuel Blanchette: 
Joel Blackstock: independently that they apply to their job if somebody's telling you about what they learned in college 20 years ago. Don't hire them if they're like, I kind of think this and I think this way even if it's
Joel Blackstock: And don't have to be therapy you can't teach curiosity but it's pretty good indicator of one,…
Samuel Blanchette: No.
Joel Blackstock: self-awareness a conscious relationship with intuition and a drive to be better. You…
Samuel Blanchette: mmm
Joel Blackstock: Which is what you want in the room,
Samuel Blanchette: I like that with that phrase. He said curiosity can't be taught and that other thing because it can't be taught. It means that it's a biological function. ventral vagal thing. It's like and everyone uses different languaging higher self. Maybe the self or these things but the neat thing is
Joel Blackstock: I think it can be healed. I'm not saying that some people are born with it. Some people it's genetic. I'm saying that your relationship to your trauma and your life and your sense of self that is a really good indicator of whether or not those things are in a good place, because it's like a ton of people. That's why EI infj types are so dangerous. you get Jesus you get Jesus and…
Samuel Blanchette: yes.
Joel Blackstock: you also get healer because you're intuition is so strong in order to see what people want to hear and then get them they're doing their own language you go somewhere which can make you really capable is a therapist but also as a leader and a some are grifters but a lot of the people who are doing bad work like it's not that they're Meaning to it's that they're mistaking trauma for intuition because they come from the same part of the brain and they're actually having this trauma response, but it feels like the spirits in me and I'm giving the sermon,
Joel Blackstock: I don't know and the early days of charismatic Christianity in the old west. I mean, it really was wild that it was just up in the mountains everybody with the dopamine disorder needs. They've got the calling now, let's we people would scream and…
Samuel Blanchette: and it's our says yeah.
Joel Blackstock: cry and see things and lay on the ground and buttoned up Victorian society was like this slaps man. this is the coolest thing like and they were feeling something like that.
Samuel Blanchette: Just profound.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, that's But you want your intention to be conscious is the point,
Samuel Blanchette: I like that and I think that being able to and even speaking to that piece. Right? The neat thing is that humans when given a safe container and given permission to be appropriately expressive and to feel especially with others because we do all this really cool neurological connection, this mirror neurons in the distribution of emotional tension, whether that's electromagnetic through whatever that is is we're doing all that fun stuff or whatever but The neat thing is when we have a community of people that are coming together and ideally with full intention and understanding of what they're doing and then they create a space for exchange and support Those are the most beautiful healing environments the Tim notes right this container and
Joel Blackstock: Yeah. Yeah, that was a title will summon's book about the spirituality of urban planning a guy. He was on our podcast earlier. He's a really nice guy. He may know.
00:40:00
Samuel Blanchette: 
Joel Blackstock: Know the tenemos is the name.
Samuel Blanchette: Mm- guys and the thing I think. the disempowering part of information right and some respects I think Theoretically it's neutered right? It's just information and we have the freedom to exit connect with that. But another battle that I thought one of my own internal oppressors or tell it what you will right. It's like Trying to do things the right way, and…
Joel Blackstock: in It reduces anxiety…
Samuel Blanchette: I've been in enough in.
Joel Blackstock: if there's a right way, and…
Samuel Blanchette: Absolutely.
Joel Blackstock: and therapy gets to a point where somebody's being like. No, I know that you don't know. I know it's up to me, but I'm worried that I'm doing me wrong, and it is this thing that it's such a silly idea or a silly statement, but it's a real thing and that we have this insecurity about if we're doing us right, I mean I had somebody one time that told me okay. Yeah, you're saying that if I get rid of this then I'll sit down I'll know exactly who I am and I'll be able to connect with people in a way that's good. but what if I do that and I don't like you that guy is I started laughing. It's just like what am I supposed to say and what if I like myself and the self that I am right now is Rebels right itself that it could be in the future of all my potential.
Samuel Blanchette: What?
Joel Blackstock: It's like but it's so human. It makes a Sense, it's not like that person. I'm not making fun of them just saying we all do that right?
Samuel Blanchette: Yes. I don't like that guy,…
Joel Blackstock: I just never heard it said
Samuel Blanchette: but I don't like the authentic me.
Joel Blackstock: yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: and I think the challenge with all of these structured ways of trying to get it right and somebody saying I have the way and all of the stuff the things that I think get hamstrung by those things in particular are the power of our own and impressive creativity the beauty of our intuition and then the other thing is this and I think this is something that earlier young and some of the shelters and folks the aesthetic value of beauty and felt sense like congruence with beauty. I don't think there's any objective way of measuring what feels congruent right good and beautiful. So let me
Joel Blackstock: That's We read a lot about architecture and I've talked to a couple I'm supposed to be on the Australian Institute of architectures podcast a little bit later on but that's one of the things is it's an archetypal thing and not a lot of people apply Young's theories visually, I mean some artists sort of did that in the 70s and he generally did not like that art because he thought there was supposed to be a descent and then a return you were just supposed to be enamored with the unconscious and become a psycho not you're supposed to solve your ego and…
Samuel Blanchette: That's it. Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: then come back and have learned something from it and have been transformed but also go back to being how were you. a better version of that
Samuel Blanchette: Right here was Journey piece.
Joel Blackstock: But yeah architecture is getting in touch or filmmaking, so many of those things. I mean, that's what you're saying is it's finding the beautiful isn't just I came up with it. It's almost like intuition is like a radio wave that you tune into and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: channel this thing or you don't I mean and you can say that you could use spiritual language about that or you could use second language of just this kind of deep genetic programming that we're getting in touch with but only you can run your experiment to the end. your choice is you do that or Are you ignore it?
Samuel Blanchette: And it's again that called The Adventure. I like that kind of languaging around this thing. and there's a beautiful book by Piero. Ferrucci I guess is his name and he's a psychosynthesis, right and…
Joel Blackstock: What is that?
Samuel Blanchette: he has I'm psychosynthesis.
Joel Blackstock: I'm not familiar with them.
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, so psychosynthesis was near the end time of Freud's process. I said you only was a psycho analyst and he worked closely with young as well. I'm down in Italy and he created a beautiful beautiful model. He was informed by theosophy, which is a really cool amalgam of a lot of different spiritual conceptsky in these types of folks brought all that in and
Joel Blackstock: a lot of those flying around Vienna around that point.
Samuel Blanchette: yeah. Yeah during that time period right there's a lot of this really.
Joel Blackstock: If Freud is kind of more of an inevitability than we give him credit for me. There's other people or they're not giving credit more than we think we give him too much credit, it's kind of like Columbus you have enough ships going around there. Somebody's gonna bump into it and realize you can't sell the India if his strip sink somebody else does it and you look at what's going on in Vienna with clamps everybody, people were going to apply this idea that maybe we are not only…
Samuel Blanchette: 
Joel Blackstock: what we think maybe there's forces beneath the surface. to medicine to psychology and They probably would have done it a little bit better than Freud, the random guy, or gentler.
Samuel Blanchette: right and unfortunately, he had to create a modality that he could sell to a community which believed in the world in a certain kind of way, some of the earlier ideas and…
Joel Blackstock: mmm
Samuel Blanchette: even the archetypical imagery that comes in this Thanos and Eros and all these
Joel Blackstock: Which he abandons? He puts the Thanatos back,
00:45:00
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, this existential requirement of this death thing, right and then even libidinal energy. I love that whether it goes into Wilhelm Reich and talking about the embodied memory system how the unconscious is the body or otherwise, I think that there's a lot of really neat stuff there and then of course, you can see a lot of this cultural overlay and then we had all this beautiful stuff pre that time even like mentalism and these different kinds of Hypnotic type Concepts that use a lot of alchemical concept and ways of defining the world, right? The world is MIND in using the Emerald Tablet and these different theorems of alchemical transformation, right? So
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, I think really set a really cool space and gave words and language to it to start playing around with it. And I love that people dissented explicitly. I think if anything right that is what mental health is about is you've created a construct and I love that you've done that. Thank you so much for putting words out there. I disagree on some of these levels and that's important. Because if we all collude we definitely uphold the delusion.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah. Yeah,…
Samuel Blanchette: 
Joel Blackstock: and I think one of my things is always been like I don't want to just get trained in any kind of therapy and then be the expert I want to be in that kind of therapies of patient before I do it with another patient because there's of learning and then there's the AHA of feeling and…
Samuel Blanchette: mmm
Joel Blackstock: So I'm a huge advocate. I mean, sometimes people are kind of sheepish and they've love come here for a while and it's like you don't need therapy anymore. You're fine. if you're unsettled something come back but you should go try something else, …
Samuel Blanchette: Yes.
Joel Blackstock: you've probably heard my perspective you've heard the way that I think
Joel Blackstock: And you've internalized what you need to internalize you've filtered out what you don't and somebody else is gonna tell you something different, and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yes.
Joel Blackstock: that there's gonna be useful too. So I mean Union analysis was a totally different experience for me than CBT was totally different experience been kind of a more psychodynamic…
Samuel Blanchette: mmm
Joel Blackstock: but you learned that language and it's why I can wear that hat now, if you just try and learn all of it intellectually and…
Samuel Blanchette: right
Joel Blackstock: then you're like, I read all the books. That's why you don't know how to apply it and you end up just picking the one you like the most, and only doing that because you haven't really been in it as a patient enough to know how to do it as a provider. I think.
Samuel Blanchette: I agree with that. I think I've struggled with that too. Because again, there's this price wall That's constructed in order to access certain types of approaches. Right unfortunately…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: if I label it with something I can charge you another $50, right? It's like
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, and that's when you're saying that people are coming up with these new models and then changing the name and not giving credit half the time. it's the institute's fault that is charging you $200 to have this on your website…
Samuel Blanchette: mmm
Joel Blackstock: because we copy right at a phrase,
Samuel Blanchette: right that makes sense. Yeah having to create language in order to not be copyright that
Joel Blackstock: I mean there's to my movement therapies that are combinations of ett. And LP and bsp that we worked on and we're kind of doing with other therapists and…
Samuel Blanchette: yes. Yes.
Joel Blackstock: we've tried our spouses and it's interesting but it's like, where do you go with that? If I call that ett? I got to talk to Dr. Vazquez. If I call it brain spawning I got to talk to if I call it Fusion I got talked about what do I want to do? I don't really want to be the guy going to conferences being like here's a new thing, for 10 years. I just don't want to or do you just make up a new thing and then have everybody be like, so you just hold this out of nowhere and it's not evidence-based at all. I don't…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: and
Samuel Blanchette: I hear that. Yeah, for instance we have sensory motorcycle therapy. We have hack Homie. We have all these really kind of nifty things right where people are labeling their personal approach to and oftentimes rooted in a lot of these traditional things. So we have Vegeta therapy oriented will help Reiki and stuff like whether people want to buy into it or not or the outcome of Wilhelm writes life or any of those things like you you're probably deriving some of your breath methodology your observational awareness and phenomenology from Old School body armoring right through by energetics like
Joel Blackstock: yeah, yeah. right didn't do himself any favors either. I mean he was trying to shoot down UFOs with orgasm energy by the end of his life and that
Samuel Blanchette: right This person like it rain clouds and things and that's yeah.
Joel Blackstock: And…
Samuel Blanchette: Look, who knows.
Joel Blackstock: the FBI just took all the equipment too, which even for the time was kind of an overreaction. I mean, he really made some people mad or…
Samuel Blanchette: me
Joel Blackstock: maybe they just wanted all the orgasm energy for themselves. I don't know I mean, but I think it's funny too is like any Psychotherapy lens like what you're talking about that kind of perspective when you go so far into it and then you extrapolate it becomes a cosmology, again analysis is…
Samuel Blanchette: It has to be.
Joel Blackstock: wow, there's archetypes. So what does that mean and Freud's but I'm right, going nuts kind of was somebody making a free and mesophysics like a classical Freudian metaphysics and then being it's sexuality is the energy ever under everything maybe sexuality is also the energy of the cosmos and atoms are respond to orgasms or what
00:50:00
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, So this Oregon energy which is taking from the idea of the original liberal energy libidinal energy is just life energy, which is sexual or otherwise, it's projection whatever that is, but it lives right?
Joel Blackstock: You Freud usually applied it in the public sex more than other places.
Samuel Blanchette: Yes. Yes he did.
Joel Blackstock: Okay.
Samuel Blanchette: However, the neat thing though is let's say if we change our lens and we look at Contract Traditions from Tibet or India right now. We have this idea of the interplay of this duality of relationship between energies of masculine and feminine when they use sexual language to describe the fundamental workings between polarities, right and so in the alchemical marriage,…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: So this idea of creating a total self using this sort of languaging so
Joel Blackstock: I was gonna say the resolution chemical marriage but I mean even just it's access kind of, a big forest and part of our Humanity but it also is just a pretty obvious metaphor when you make metaphors, even like I mean, there's Psalms in the Bible that you're talking about the love of God you loving God is the same of the love of the man or…
Samuel Blanchette: Right. Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: woman, it's like…
Samuel Blanchette: absolute
Joel Blackstock: what does that mean? That's out now or they're like, somebody invents like a clock and then they're like, God is a watchmaker and then somebody in advance architecture and they're like God is an architect and then somebody invents an AI and they're like, we're in a simulation, it's just the easiest way, Yeah, yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: That's true. It's not too far removed to create metaphor that incorporates that I think though the nice thing that when we're starting the neat thing about that is when we connected these qualities like psychic qualities or libidinal qualities or whatever to the body. what we can do at that point though is now we have some language to explore the phenomenology of my felt experience. thats ment. How does excitement work? I experience it in this fashion in this way. And then now we're like, how does my body produce energy, which Need to engage with this world and…
Joel Blackstock: yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: then we have all the kind of ways that we create creative adaptation to all the things and that's another thing that I really love from sort of this memory reconsolidation. I stuff coherence therapy. Is this Bruce Ecker and Lauren Holly's
Joel Blackstock: I am familiar. It's like somebody trying to make a solution focused brief treatment of psychoanalysis. Just kind of interesting. Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: it's interesting because it's following the memory reconsolidation thing. So theoretically right and I have always loved this and it always baffled me that a moment of explicit trauma can indelibly burn in a learned experience for life. If that's true using kind of this Duality process. It must
Joel Blackstock: it lets the brain is thinking about it in a different way and almost religious or spiritual way. why other moments are not being experienced all the time, but traumatic moments are so that's telling you that that's a different kind of memory.
Samuel Blanchette: So this idea that it does this but my wondering is this right and I've always wondered this from the very beginning of every time the first somatic oriented therapy, I think it was sensory. Yeah. Anyway, Peter Levine. I was looking at Peter he's working.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: I was like, this is curious. Is that if a memory?
Joel Blackstock: Did this kind of experiencing is over here?
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, not experience. So if a memory can be created so powerfully in a moment. it should be able to be uncreated in a moment, right it just
Joel Blackstock: Which you making contact with the somatic memory in a way that is not reach traumatizing,
Samuel Blanchette: in and it always kind of tickled my mind to think that because if it can be created it should be unable to be uncreated in that kind of way. Now we've talked about not wanting to be traumatized people and kind of titrating those experiences which I understand. however
Joel Blackstock: which was certain things you can't do, it's why you have to be able to take appropriate risks at a certain point but there's not always a way to eat some of those memories in this bite sides way that some of the models are designed to do,
Samuel Blanchette: And I think you're right in my experience working with people and in my own kind of self-processes I go through that there are some memories that must be experienced as a Gestalt the whole fixed experience must be digested in the moment it not
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: Brain spawning does that if you have somebody who's pushing enough to take you all the way in I mean, I've said, I'm kind of pressed everyone that I've ever talked to that has had a bad experience with brain spotting the provided in look at the people at all. They didn't really map the trauma at all. They were just like What do you feel here in the person was nothing but it pulled everything up at once which is kind of spiritually profound and interesting to have this two three gay process where you're expering all these things mastering them and at the end, memory comes back. Are you kind of realize what it was your processing either yourself or working with therapist, ET which is newer thing that Is trained it.
Samuel Blanchette: yeah, using the light.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, it can bring up incredibly specific parts.
00:55:00
Joel Blackstock: Surgically, and I loved brain spotting. I still love it. So but it's not appropriate for everything. I don't think any one thing is and it's wild with EtG. There was one of the eye movements we had the color frequency and the person said can you do something with acid reflux and as I mean it's not really how it works. But I got what was supposed to be for kind of throat lungs breathing like top neck that area which is kind of a blue green color a certain flicker rate whatever and he was looking at it and then immediately started remembering when she was eating as a kid and she was shame.
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: And then her whole stomach kind of shutting down and then this whole thing just came up, but it wasn't this whole memory about your whole relationship with this child like everything it was this incredible around that one somatic emotional thing in this specific way.
Samuel Blanchette: very specific Yeah, and I think that's speaking to this kind of memory reconsolidation thing. that's what that also looks like. It's like every single moment that is created a pattern. It has that creative adoption started because of a reason right so it's like and if we attend to that whether again we're focusing on a Feeling whether we're looking at a space in a visual field, whether we're moving our eyes to inhibit our amygdalas whether we're stomping our feet whether we're psycho, whether we're dancing whether we're doing any of the modalities that exist that our human modalities of expression, right whatever we track and whatever we stay with if we were to stay with it. Enough and give language to it. Even if we were doing some just fill in the blank sort of word association stuff. It is likely that all those roads would lead to a story right?
Samuel Blanchette: And once the nice thing about knowing what the story is.
Joel Blackstock: And sometimes our body remembers it in a way that are the front of our brain can't which is where a bunch of those modalities get stuck. I mean if you're drugged or pass out during an experience, it can be traumatizing that the memory is not written right? It's like a corrupted file on the hard drive where maybe all you're gonna get is the bodies response to it. and that's what you have to go. Through and process it but you're never going to be able to do this stuff because you didn't see it. You didn't perceive it.
Samuel Blanchette: right and I
Joel Blackstock: Maybe if you're very young the damage is written in a different way kids. Don't make narrative memory until kind of three or four. Yeah and…
Samuel Blanchette: right yeah,…
Joel Blackstock: a cognite way.
Samuel Blanchette: and I think and what I like to is the narrative that we experience doesn't have to be The Experience itself, right so Consciousness accessing something in a way that my total brain can experience…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: which involves language components often, right? When I can conceptualize it, even if it's a theme for instance, I have to not eat because I will be hurt now that doesn't have to have as explicit memory but that's a felt sense that I'm giving words to and once I can hold that with the experience in my conscious awareness now and then I create these moments that contradict Those are the things that unlock those old patterns and you're right we can do that without eliciting that cognitive piece. However, It seems in my experience. At least that that part is very useful for having. I guess a total Gestalt a whole story, right?
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: The Narrative piece is a really lovely part of me understanding myself in the world. Whereas if I do a purely somatic exercise, let's say I do a holy traffic breathing or I go through something like thing that can be really awesome.
Joel Blackstock: .
Samuel Blanchette: However, without the right framing I think those things can also be the disempowering. we're attributing it to some other something instead of acknowledging that it's a us thing.
Joel Blackstock: Mm-hmm
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, even I think that it's not that the narrative is unimportant when you don't remember the Evander it's not able to be perceived. It's that you don't have an intellectual cognitive memory there. It becomes part of a bigger narrative,
Samuel Blanchette: Yes.
Joel Blackstock: a bigger story and you're still linking it to that but figuring out what happened or who or whatever I mean, even if you do knowing is Colonel Mustard in the green room with the Rope doesn't heal,…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: right now
Joel Blackstock: it's experiencing physically and then going through the crisis having the crisis resolve and then letting my heart and my body feel safety, that the thing
Samuel Blanchette: I love that and I love that pattern and I think that animals are such a brilliant exposition of that. we have these systems because they're designed to deal with the world and when we get to a place of completion, I activate my sympathetic responses. they discharge appropriately to create the safety that I need and then I take in the environment of safety, which is a completely different thing and then it allows my body to dissipate or discharge or complete that cycle And the huge part and I think in most of the somatic type work is it never gets finished, It's the unfinished business story, right? It's like I never got to feel like it worked and I never got to know that it's over and I never get to feel safe. So my body's Gonna Keep On generating that.
01:00:00
Joel Blackstock: What I don't want to admit that and accept that framing because I know that so I shouldn't have to feel that. Is the fight that you get into with the more kind of St. In a sensory thinking type patient?
Samuel Blanchette: and I think that's an interesting space And again, you have to move that into that feeling frame, right? It's like Yes, you're right. It is absolutely over and yet here you are in your body is still exhibiting behaviors necessary for that condition to be met. so how do we create an experience now where that can be done right And yeah,…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah. Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: and I think that's the art of therapy right? it's a very curious thing.
Joel Blackstock: it sounds like you're doing amazing work when you're practicing and where you are. I mean you have kind of longer term career plans or what. Do you see yourself?
Samuel Blanchette: So I just love doing therapy and I love reading all these things and trying to make sense of because I'm a human in the world trying to make sense of that. The thing that I would love to do at one point, which is something I deeply appreciate what you're doing and there's a lot of people doing this is putting information out for people to have access to it without any paywalls or any kind of things like that.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: I think giving people free access to information so that they can experiment with what works for them. So if I were to create a Fantastical future adventure for myself, right, it would be to continue to learn and use mediums how long hopefully as I feel a little bit more grounded and confident in my own process and just share those things always with the condition of this could or could not be true and please experiment with it within the appropriate context using the appropriate supports that you need in order to achieve those outcomes,…
Joel Blackstock: Mmm Yeah
Samuel Blanchette: .
Joel Blackstock: Mmm, I think it would be something that would be down the road if I was doing it, but I'd love for Tapper to be able to host almost like a Dev psychology Library that's free because there's so much stuff that's out there in the common domain or…
Samuel Blanchette: mmm
Joel Blackstock: that people professors are retiring or whatever and they're just likely to be like, hey, you can have all of my papers and make them available and it's stuff that you can't even get through there. that journal was gone 12 years ago or…
Samuel Blanchette: Right. yeah.
Joel Blackstock: whatever and even if you pay 600 dollars a month, you still can't read it. But yeah, I'd love to put together something like that. our website or Collective is just kind of we're all trying to we think we can build something that is better together than we can individually and you could cost sharing and everything that goes with that. But yeah, if you're ever interested in working on something that if we could help if I can give you the access to the website to build something on the back end like I don't know some kind of electronic.
Joel Blackstock: Anything if that's ever anything they're interested in doing.
Samuel Blanchette: Something. Thank you so much for taking some time to kind of explore some Concepts around the therapy. It's lovely to explore and have these conversations and I think It helps kind of flesh out and…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: build some deeper understanding for myself. thank you very much for taking some time with me.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, I mean and I got to pick my daughter up in just a minute. But I've got 15 20 minutes or so. I mean what is there anything else because I don't want to you had reached out and I think initially with some Questions or things you wanted to discuss and I would like to get all that stuff.
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: I don't know how much of that was included when we already done
Samuel Blanchette: I think a fair bit was if you're yeah, so we have another about 15 minutes. Is that right? so
Joel Blackstock: you call I can try and get in touch with you later. This week. November's The last three months have been just the most wild ever. I mean, but it's coming relatively bounce.
Samuel Blanchette: So some things that I wonder that I would like to bring up or explore with the time that we have left. because I'm not officially trained in any of these things.
Joel Blackstock: Sure.
Samuel Blanchette: And also there's these paywalls to get exposure and therapy through these things.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: Hopefully wind up being the subject of my own experimentation, right? So I apply these things the methods and Concepts to myself as all as possible Right whether it's using brain spotting,…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: right and I kind of like feeling that felt sense and associating with that or it's short work or otherwise, So I definitely understand the value of having another person. I think that fundamentally changes
Joel Blackstock: You can't always do it. You can always afford it or…
Samuel Blanchette: right
Joel Blackstock: there's not somebody local or what. I mean, sometimes the self work is the only option for certain things.
Samuel Blanchette: And absolutely. I agree with that. So one thing that I was wondering about and I did some more research and things when I first saw brain spotting said, my goodness. This looks really interesting. I like this idea. And this is also the floor I ran into memory reconsolate.
01:05:00
Joel Blackstock: It's uses with any kind of therapy too, even cognitive behavioral people like it. I mean, there's somebody in the training usually it's kind of less cognitive providers and somebody he was one of the trainers and one of the things was like, my cognitive therapy. Person those friends fighting and was like, wow and I was listening and she was like, brain spawning does the thing we're cognitive therapy can actually work because the body calms down and then they can learn all this stuff. it's like, wow, that's a neat way to think about Behavior, but that's what my problem with behaviorism is that they think you can change Behavior by talking about it, most times people know what they're supposed to do. They just Do that. Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: right Right, and that's that experimental needing to experience that's experiential therapies that we're in the 1970s when they were doing really good stuff.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: Then we get into these ethical quantities that have created what we have today to some degree,…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: but is what it is that but I've really deeply appreciate living now in that there's so much beautiful. There's a thousand waterfalls pouring into the Zeitgeist right this current space and…
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: if I want to and I'm open to it and I can check my prejudices against certain conceptualizations and methods like a lot of really beautiful stuff.
Joel Blackstock: mmm
Samuel Blanchette: That's very transformative. so one thing as I was doing these kind of experiments right kind of like playing with that up down using the zxy accesses different kind of like checking different points and…
Joel Blackstock: I can do brain sweating on myself at…
Samuel Blanchette: moving between different points what I noticed,
Joel Blackstock: There's inside and outside window and you get training and outside windows where they're providers. Just looking at people and…
Samuel Blanchette: yeah, it's
Joel Blackstock: inside windows when you're trying to see what the person feels and…
Samuel Blanchette: yeah.
Joel Blackstock: for me so outside window is a lot more effective in my experience because a ton of my patients are such Associated they don't know what they feel anyway, so I don't notice anything there and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: I'm like, no just hang out a minute you're gonna feel it. But when I do brain spotting with my therapist, I'm just like, I don't know. I think I felt something here and she's like and then I'm gone, so sometimes I'm particularly bad at it.
Samuel Blanchette: So I'm wondering in your processing so when I did this thing and I'm kind of playing around with this and as I'm holding this space, I'm kind of noticing my natural responses right? Maybe some swallowing maybe some rapid blinking maybe the eyes start to agitate,…
Joel Blackstock: work
Samuel Blanchette: maybe I start feeling kind of those little neurogenic Tremors that we're getting from this body discharge stuff. And I love that. It makes total sense from a biological standpoint, everything starts with orienting right here everything started with an orienting reflex. That's Front that's just how it is right and so I find this place. I hold that in space right holding that and what I've noticed in my own process as I've been playing with that in certain cases.
Samuel Blanchette: I'll start there with a feeling right there's a felt sense. I'm experiencing that I'm with it and then my mind will automatically start populating that with parts. So what I've seen happens is here's My finger is there I'm attending to this and then my finger becomes a part right? So now I'm noticing that there's me a self apart there and then it has dialogue and concept that starts playing out in my mind and then my active other parts are starting to play out there. And if I hold that space my processing right my primary modalities, and otherwise, that's what they like to do. They create a dialogue oriented story because I'm very auditory. And then they'll play that through to a sense of completion.
Joel Blackstock: 
Samuel Blanchette: However, that story wants to kind of close itself up. I'm kind of curious though. and that's what really drew me to this is like because also the other pieces like if you have your eyes closed and you do this as well, right your eyes still move if your eyes closed because that's just what we do to access information and then no linguistic program folks talk about this deck. It's in Dickens and decades ago, right, but I'm kind of curious.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: Is that a normal?
Joel Blackstock: They didn't have the neurology though. I'd like the problem is they don't distinguish for training prefrontal Med and sub brand and so that's why it doesn't work. It's like that. I'm moving NLP stuff is neurologically very interesting but your eyes gonna drift there when you're really feeling like you could just look here and lie. So saying constructed audio memories there that's not the best metaphor about…
Samuel Blanchette: he
Samuel Blanchette: right
Joel Blackstock: how the brain works because it can do different things. you
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, this location I think is interesting but they using And discussing the visual field and how track side from different areas of visual.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: Super fascinating. I think I'm sort of wondering what's been your experience. You don't have to give any explicit information, but when you've worked with folks and you're doing this brain spotting type methodology. Even fixed points or you kind of like jumping between points or tracking between things or whatever.
Samuel Blanchette: Does it often have a narrative component? do people often express to you that they're experiencing an internal story with parts? Do you and there's a whole branch of brainstorms?
01:10:00
Joel Blackstock: Hard space therapy is fuses. So with brain spawning it's almost becoming part of the training most the trainers will train you and I'm not certified and I've done phase wanted to consult with a lot of people that have done a lot of the different new ones…
Samuel Blanchette: and phase 3
Joel Blackstock: because there's a lot of Splinter ones now, but it sounds like…
Samuel Blanchette: Yep.
Joel Blackstock: what you're asking is there a pattern with eye movement from an LP IQs that is relevant with brain spawning or are you saying do people see a story when they hit the eye position?
Samuel Blanchette: I think if I were to distill that it would be when people are holding an eye position. Are they accessing a awareness or is it part? inevitably is that if
Joel Blackstock: Sometimes Parts base therapy can get you there. But when you're there with brain spotting, you're so deep in a lot of the time you're losing time I dissociated for 20 minutes when I did the training and I was expecting nothing is EMDR didn't do anything for me. I was like …
Samuel Blanchette: right
Joel Blackstock: but I saw it worked for some patients. I was like take some of the things from this training and it was during covid. We're on a screen. It wasn't even a person. I was like, I know how far the thing is away. And I mean, I felt like I just needed to move my head. I was in water kind of and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: I was just silent and if it takes me and not everybody goes in that deeply with processing, but if you do
Joel Blackstock: You usually lose time so the person thinks the session was 10 minutes and it's at the end of the hour because it took me 10 minutes to get them to go down. So when you're really deep in it's more about the difference with Etc and brain spawning and EMDR is brain spotting. Most of the processing is not in the room. You're like opening this box and throwing all this stuff from the subbrain up into the midbrain but the front of the brain,…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: hypothetically, I mean don't see many email and say I can't prove that I can't but like you don't even know…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: what you're thinking about for two days. you don't know…
Samuel Blanchette: interest.
Joel Blackstock: what it is. And you also don't really get to pick what you hit as much I like it…
Samuel Blanchette: right
Joel Blackstock: because the processing so much more predictable with the MDR.
Joel Blackstock: Very few people do this, but it's still terrible when it happens and it's possible with complex trauma, sometimes somebody would come into process like a car wreck and you do it and they feel great and then they're thanking you and whatever two days later totally decompensate.
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: I just remembered this thing from when I was a kid, I'm totally shutting down. I'm totally whatever okay learning process that and…
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah.
Joel Blackstock: Dad did this thing? Okay, and then you compensate again. but Mom was watching I thought she was my protector now and they can't work and that decompensation just doesn't happen with brains funny in that way.
Samuel Blanchette: interesting
Joel Blackstock: It's not that do you compensation? I said, it's so predictable. if you'd either doesn't work it's like you can knock the ball over the hill and it's gonna roll down or you can keep knocking the ball up the hill if you didn't get it to pop if you didn't go all the way through it just nothing happens they feel kind of weird but you didn't open it. If you open it then they go all the way through this thing for usually two three days, if you're obsessive if you're compulsively trying to figure out what it is if you're smoking a lot of marijuana if you're drinking a lot alcohol if you're doing anything obsessively you're gonna slow processing down.
Joel Blackstock: but it will still work. It's just don't do that because it will make the bad part last longer but your dreams are very weird. Usually they're kind of like letting you know what you're chewing on they're kind of archetypal. They're just weird. They're not normal Dreams A lot of times. There's very photo real sleep moments in it, It's happened for one my patients with and brain spawning or with ET. The processing is five six hours. And it's very specific. You don't have that huge. Thing is that kind of answer your question. So saying is it activating a part or not?
Joel Blackstock: You can use Parts work to be okay, I'll use it to be map that defensive part of you. what is your spine want to do and the period person's like you no, really listen, you're feeling this they're big you want to curl up into a ball. I kind of a Bend. Okay you wanting to crop into a ball like you're protecting yourself. Are you covering something up? you don't want to be seen you want to be invisible. Do you want to just train spotting look back into the carpet and disappear in that way.
Samuel Blanchette: he
Joel Blackstock: You tense you're bracing for impact you're a foot you're gonna be tackle like that's all and interesting information getting them to go into the experience. That would be Parts based and mapping this part and what it somatically is and ideologically what is the world around you feel like if you feel small that means everything around you must be bigger. Do I look intimidating? do you feel smaller than the room? Wait you feel lighter than the room heavier than the room you feel it could be green.
Samuel Blanchette: grab it
Joel Blackstock: You can feel great that doesn't have to make sense. you could feel VCR static, what is that and then that lets the eye open and you go in,
Joel Blackstock: But when you're going in you're never I'm fighting the inner critic. This is what I have to like. It's a pretty deep brain thing. generally there's not much talking.
Samuel Blanchette: Yeah, I think that that's useful to kind of hear. I think so in different forms of Parts work, right it covers a lot of different ones. It's just a strategy you're working with somebody in their accessing these things If this were to be in the room here, where would it be now in inherently? They do gay spotting, right? So they will know they will naturally do so the question.
01:15:00
Joel Blackstock: yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: I wonder and this is a philosophical question as it isn't there's no neurobiology to Define it, I wonder whenever we do that we are looking at something that's inside of us that we've projected. So if on a creative construct level we are always looking at something. Right because you can another thing.
Joel Blackstock: It's So you're saying is that how the brain works or is that where you're looking to a specific experience
Samuel Blanchette: Where I'm wondering if that's just a normal function of how the brain does this right? So if I find a space right and we have the other examples working with kids, you put a little fluffy top of it or on I mean traditional sand trade therapy right there. I gazing down in their fixating on certain areas.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah.
Samuel Blanchette: These are just naturally occurring processes that are pre-existent because they're human rights you're working with somebody and then naturally Fixate on a specific location and then they'll just start. However
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, what is the thousand yard stare in PTSD at somebody looking at something that isn't there because their eyes going to this memory from past,…
Samuel Blanchette: They're looking.
Joel Blackstock: Yeah, I mean if I'm understanding your question, I think it's a little bit of both. I mean what David Gran would say the brain spawning guy is that you can't know anything about other brain works. So that's making an assumption and you can't do that. So just get out of the way and let the patient's experience. Thank you somewhere,…
Samuel Blanchette: Right, right. Yes.