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

Transcript: Transcript This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created. 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