Brainspotting Therapy Experience – Session 1
Brainspotting Therapy Experience – Session 1
My first brainspotting session was trippy. It was like being hypnotized with my eyes wide open and I saw all kinds of strange wispy things. I saw soft orange glowing balls of flames and wisps of smoke floating around for most of the hour session. I had a belly full of anxiety that I would measure at level 6. Then there was this black bat-like object that kept trying to hit me in the face! Weird shit. I had no idea what to expect during or after this first session. The therapist administering the brain spotting said my brain would continue to process the experience further after the session ended. She asked me to be curious about what I saw and see what I could make of it. I was at a loss for several hours. What was I supposed to make of little glowing flame balls and smoke? Was I processing something related to fire, or was the fire symbol with a deeper meaning? Then, it hit me! The only thing I could make of seeing the glowing flames and smoke was that I was in two “house” fires about a year apart in my early twenties. I’ve not thought about either event in decades. I hate any fire that is not properly contained to this day. This includes all candles. I don’t like talking about these events anymore it has been 24 years, and here they are! Healing PTSD is definitely interesting.
Fire at Carthage College – Fall 1998
Fire#1 – It was the beginning of my junior year at Carthage College in 1998, the floor my dorm room was on caught on fire the night before classes started. It was later in the evening, but not late enough where everyone was asleep. I remember standing outside on the sidewalk in front of the dorms wearing only my Victoria’s Secret pajamas they were an orange and red striped one-piece shorts deal, and the only thing I had with me were my car keys. No shoes. No purse. I could not find my purse in the chaos. They wanted the girls from our floor to find somewhere to stay for the night. I had just transferred from a community college. The only girls I knew were in the sorority on my floor. Of course, the boys in the opposite dorms were offering girls places to sleep, but I’m from Chicago, we just don’t shack up with random strangers. I don’t care what the situation is. That is just asking for trouble. I had my car keys, so I drove back to my parent’s house.
I hate the smell of Febreze to this day because of that fire. Every mattress, futon, and couch on that dorm floor was masked in Febreze. I never again wanted to live in a dorm with morons that light candles and leave them unattended. Candles were not allowed in dorm rooms to begin with! How did the fire start? The sororities at Carthage didn’t have their own houses. Each sorority was given half of a dorm floor where they could all live together. Well, a sorority pledge binder fell on a sorority pledge candle which completely destroyed that dorm room. The rest of the 3rd floor had major smoke and water damage, my room included. It took months for the smoke smell to fade. I couldn’t live there. I became a commuter student after that.
Fire at Pierce Avenue Apartment – Summer 1999
Fire #2 – Then, in the summer of 1999, I moved back to Chicago. My cousin and I lived in the 4th-floor apartment of 2127 W Pierce Ave. There was a crazy heat wave that summer and the city was having revolving brownouts for energy reasons. It was so hot in our apartment. We would go to the movies just to sit in air conditioning. We saw the Blair Witch Project the first brownout. Remember that movie? I think that is the only movie that made me physically ill from the camera work. The building we lived in was built in the 1920s and had a boiler room with radiant heat. We had one window air conditioner unit in the living room so we slept in there.
One random scorching hot day my cousin and I were up talking until 3 or 4 in the morning. We both kept hearing what sounded like running water. It was a trickling-like sound and would change in volume and intensity. It was a beautiful spacious two-bedroom apartment. There was no door to the living room of our apartment, only an open archway. We had draped blankets from the ceiling to close the living room off from the rest of the apartment to contain the cool air. After looking for the “trickling water” sound for what seemed like hours, it became sort of a joke. We would take turns looking for where the sound was coming from.
It was all fun and games until we were looking for the sound just outside the living room in the hallway. The light switch cover exploded off the wall followed by flames and smoke coming out of the hole it made. I don’t remember calling 911. I don’t remember how long it took the fire department to arrive. I don’t remember exactly what I was wearing. We were two 21-year-old girls standing outside of our building in our pajamas with my cousin’s cat, Dharma. Dharma had fallen out the 4th-floor window a week or so before and broke her back leg. She was in a full-leg cast. The cat’s leg was cast straight back like a stiff neon tail. It was quite humorous carrying the cat with her giant leg cast pointing straight back behind her body. We would have to be careful not to wack walls with it while we were carrying her around. The last thing I remembered hearing the fire chief say that night was that the building wasn’t safe for habitation. The wires in the wall were the sizzling/running water sound we heard. We moved immediately. We lost our security deposit. That was the end of Pierce Avenue. It’s too bad too. I liked that apartment the best aesthetically out of the other 5 apartments we had over the years.
How Could I Forget About the Fires?
I completely forgot about the fires. Maybe they did leave a lasting impression on my brain and nervous system. All I know is I do not like candles, or open flames indoors, to this day because of it. I’m always super cautious about plugging things in all the way and I panic when electronics and devices get too hot. If I hear any noise coming from inside any wall, I’m likely to bust a hole in it just to see what’s in there. More likely a mouse than sizzling wires, but still.
5 Hours After Brainspotting Session #1
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
I did have a huge spike in my anxiety level 5 hours after my first brainspotting session. I would say the anxiety attack was a level 8. Chest pains and a nervous stomach. I had the same thing after a few of my EMDR sessions. I journaled and breathed through it. I can handle this level. I’ve been here before. The anxiety lasted about an hour. I’m just taking this as a good sign that something is processing and on its way out.
1 Day After Brainspotting Session #1
Thursday, September 20, 2023
Thursday I was nice and relaxed all day. I worked 8+ hours. I went to my weekly talk therapy session. During the therapy session, we discussed my experience during the brainspotting session. I felt good. Do I like the anxiety attacks? No, they suck. They are a sign of processing and feeling again, so I will take it. I went home and made dinner.
2 Days After Brainspotting Session #1
Friday, September 22, 2023
I woke up Friday and the day was good until I had a second bout of anxiety. This anxiety attack was a level 5. Chest pains and a nervous stomach. It started at work around 3 PM and lasted for 90 minutes. Around 11:00 AM I did have a conversation online with a young woman from Colorado who had a very similar trauma experience to mine. I think that is what triggered the anxiety. She had a year-long lawsuit with an unpredictable outcome. There was a possibility that she would have to stop producing a product that was providing all of her income, same as my situation. I lost my job which prompted my lawsuit, and then my former employer was constantly coming after the new business I had built for over 10 years. It was ridiculous! It’s hard to go forward and grow a business when someone has it out for you and is trying to shut it down constantly. I was so curious as to why the opposing party just didn’t go live their life, and leave mine alone. Unfortunately, the legal system is not always fair. I lost some legal battles and won some that I thought for sure would have gone the other way.
My lawsuit recently “officially” ended after 15 years and 7 days on Friday, September 15, 2023. Everything is still very fresh for me. It has only been a week of not being bothered or harassed in any way in well over a decade. This past week has been different for sure. I don’t remember what it’s like to just live and not have a big fight going on in the background of life. It is hard to explain if you have never been through something like it. I could relate to the financial anxiety the girl from Colorado had and how hard it was for her to focus on life in general. When someone legally messes with your income or business, it shakes your world hard! At one point during the lawsuit, in December of 2014, 17 months after our trial was over, we almost lost our house. The judge had made his decisions regarding the outcome of the trial in July 2013. Our family’s assets were going to be released and returned, but now it’s 17 months later and the other side was not capitulating and dragging their heels.
Almost losing my house was the absolute worst. Ironically, the girl from Colorado was in the exact same boat. In my case, the delay in dispersing assets was all done out of spite. We had to go to court and explain our situation which made it even worse. When you have to tell the judge that you are financially suffering in front of the person who wants you to suffer, that feels like absolute shit. I had to forget about the money coming to us and borrowed money to avoid the house being sold for taxes. We had to borrow $24k and fast. We borrowed $14k from my grandmother and another $10k from my dad’s friend. That was only slightly humiliating. After almost losing the house, I changed my entire financial outlook. Never again would we be in so much debt and have no accessible savings that a loss of income would cause us to be homeless so quickly. Hence, my debt-free journey started in January 2015, and I took my parents with me. They had never been debt-free. Our money situation and the amount of non-liquid assets we had just screwed us all big time.
Back to my brainspotting stuff. Having anxiety attacks is new to me again. Prior to starting EMDR in the spring of 2023, I hadn’t had a panic attack or anxiety spike since the summer of 2017. I’m sure the lack of anxiety was from being more in a state of shutdown. I will share that story later. I did take a walk around my warehouse and focused on breathing through it. It’s supposed to be good to feel things. Even if the feelings are not pleasant. If I can’t feel, I can’t process. The point of going through EMDR AND Brainspotting is to work through all of my past trauma. I am working to reprocess my trauma so it no longer affects me emotionally, physically, and mentally. How is this possible? By reprocessing the traumatic event. EMDR does involve talking about and reliving the traumatic events. Brainspotting processes the trauma in silence. The only downside to brainspotting for me is that I don’t know what trauma is actually being processed. I can’t think of any more events to go through EMDR with, so here I am. I did forget about the fires, so maybe there is something to all this. I’m not sure yet.
4 Days After Brainspotting Session #1
Sunday, September 24, 2023
Most of Sunday was peaceful and uneventful. I had a slightly nervous stomach in the evening. It didn’t last long. I took a super long walk and went to bed early. Brainspotting definitely has me sleeping better. I cannot remember the last time I slept so soundly several days in a row. When my head hits the pillow, I am out.
I can’t wait to see what comes up in session #2
