I am particularly interested in and trained in treating medically unexplained symptoms.
Note: I am a Brainspotting practitioner, fully trained in Brainspotting and I completed the Phase 3 training with David Grand which focuses specifically on working with performers and athletes.
Performing Artists, Creatives, and Athletes often struggle psychologically due to societal expectations and pressure (e.g. from family, coaches, sponsors, publishers or commissioners) to do the work they do as perfectly as humanly possible. They often experience social comparison, rejections, loses (e.g. not making it to or through an audition or a competition) and psychological or physical traumas, which, if not handled with care and compassion, may impact emotional wellbeing in the long term.
Dealing with setbacks and rejections seems to be seen as a part of the job, but performers are only humans, and their resilience can suffer. Some of the knock-backs may be public and humiliating/ shaming experiences. Being presented with feedback, where their mistakes are pointed out and corrections are requested time and time again can serve as a negative loop.
They may be told to do what they love better, faster, slower, differently… – it never seems to stop. When, after often long years of committed effort and practice, a performer is, for instance, judged harshly by subjective jury or unable to perform to the best ability due to conditions beyond one’s control, he or she may feel hurt, or even traumatised.
As their performance improves or excels, they find themselves working with and often competing against people with greater talents. Being surrounded by a community of excellence can create pressure as well as competition. On top of that, being under financial pressure to ‘win’ and can affect their self-esteem and love of the activity.
In addition, many performers and creatives may put their body under a lot of pressure, often due to repetitive strain of movements, and this can lead to substantial or repeated injury.
Moreover, seeing emotional and physical hurt in others can result in secondary (vicarious) trauma.
Such trauma and performance issues can include:
Trauma, dissociation, and conflict block creativity, put pressure on performers’ relationships, overwhelm the body, and can lead to further problems such as self-sabotaging behaviours, anxiety, emotional pain, depression, addictions, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, focal dystonia and other somatic disorders and medically unexplained symptoms. Ultimately, these experiences, can undermine the performer and may result in their inability to do the one thing they loved and gave their life the most meaning.
are expressions of extreme somatisation in the body of a mental blocks, and traumas.
It is important to understand that involuntary movements and many so called medically unexplained symptoms or conditions (MUS) come from our reflexes and deep subcortical structures and not from our logical thinking brain (neocortex). We connect to subcortex through our body and not our thinking / logical brain.
Research and clinical experience show that
Traumatised systems simply become petrified and more rigid with each trauma experience and instigate survival mechanisms such as fight, flight, freeze, please and appease, cry for help or collapse/ submission is often the source of MUS, including focal dystonia.
When performing we often re-enter the survival mode and this can impede our fluidity, enlarge muscles and inhibit your fine motor skills.
Moreover, being part of a disadvantaged group because of institutional racism, gender privilege and discrimination on the basis of sexuality and other intersectional factors can make this even worse.
Beliefs about pain being the source of creativity may also act as a stumbling block for many creative people.
Some artists believe that if they were to heal and let go of their past traumas or difficult experiences, they would lose their creativity or a part of themselves that made them who they are.
The fear of losing certain feelings or emotional experiences that they see as necessary to the creative process is real for many artists.
But, in my experience, working with artists and creators, this is not only untrue but it can truly inhibit creativity and constrain inventiveness.
It may be that some artists use their pain as the source of initial inspiration to create but ultimately their creativity will be dulled with ongoing unnecessary suffering.
Healing the underlying emotional pain and trauma results not only in a relief but can lead to growth, expansion, fulfilment, more intimate and authentic relationships and greater ability to navigate the professional career.
When we heal, we stop being narrowly motivated just by past traumas and distress. Instead, we have access to the wider spectrum of creativity and our imagination is open, flourishing and flowing with ease. For me this post-traumatic growth and flow is the ultimate goal of any trauma work!
~ David Grand
Once traumas are released, a performer, creator or artist is able to unleash their full potential. Therapy is not just about remedial work. Certain types of therapy, such as Brainspotting, can be used to access and fine tune inner creative genius and move an individual into creative expansion work.
This involves expanding beyond our current state and toward growth using the physiological network. Accessing the subcortical areas of the brain and neuroplasticity allows for getting back to feeling more present, confident, and creative, while processing any trauma or blocks that appear in performances.
Traditional talk cognitive and behavioural therapy and coaching can help us understand the problems, make plans to address certain aspects and identify and change some behaviours but these approaches do not tap into deeper subcortical structures of the brain and rarely are responsible for long lasting neuroplastic changes.
Traditional talk therapy and coaching do not offer the necessary neurological supports to overcome trauma which is held in the body. Therapies that are both somatically and brain based offer a way for performers to connect with experiences which often happened outside their conscious experience, using reflexes to help process injury, disassociation and trauma.
Body-brain therapies, such as Brainspotting, enable us to work with performance anxiety and trauma in radical new ways bringing together relational therapy, state of the art neuroscience and mindfulness.
~ David Grand
‘Writer’s block’ refers to the inability to begin or continue writing for reasons other than a lack of skill or commitment. A writer or creator of any work can get stuck in the process and feel paralysed.
In Brainspotting, we can access the ‘stuckness point’ and process it mindfully.
We can work with perfectionism, insecurity, anxiety, or just a sense of not being able to get something started, moving or finished by accessing deeper information about what is truly affecting us on a subcortical/ unconscious level.
We can use Brainspotting to delve deeply ‘experience’ the character’s ‘felt sense’, to ‘get under their skin’ in a neurobiologically attended way.
This involves setting up a visual brainspot to anchor yourself as the character you are developing or playing
Rather than being you pretending to be someone else, it can be transformative to experience yourself as that character and gain an insight into the character’s inner world, which then allows you to build/ expand it further.
Many athletes’ psychological or physical injury is held in their nervous system as a memory they may not even be consciously aware of.
Whether we are or are not aware of the source of our pain, our system will act to protect us from further hurt, pain or risk of re-injury.
This can often have disastrous consequents for athletes of performers leading to the inability to fully express the required movements.
Within Brainspotting we can work directly with the nervous system to ‘let go’ of the impact of the injury so that our brain and body can process the impact of the trauma.
Oftentimes a memory of rejection or humiliation can be a source of trauma but equally a physical injury has an element of emotional pain.
Head injuries and concussion seen in contact sports respond especially well to Brainspotting as the impact of the head trauma is held unconsciously. In other sports, repeated small injuries or impacts may compound over a lifetime of practice and competition and affect athletes personally and professionally without them being aware that the route cause lies in smaller traumas stacked over time.