Episode 194 Healing Through Brainspotting & Parts Work: Interview With Cherie Lindberg

Chris McDonald: Have you found traditional therapy to be limited in its approach? Are you interested in more cutting edge therapy modalities that can be more effective? On this episode of the Holistic Counseling Podcast, we're uncovering two therapeutic approaches, brain spotting and parts work. Discover how brain spotting with a focus on the visual field taps into the deeper regions of the brain, allowing clients to process trauma and find profound healing.

We'll also explore parts work, a powerful modality that helps individuals understand and integrate the different aspects of themselves and how these two can work together to lead to incredible therapeutic outcomes, offering a holistic path to healing and self discovery. On today's episode of the holistic counseling podcast.

This is holistic counseling, the podcast for mental health therapists who want to deepen their knowledge of holistic modalities and build their practice with confidence. I'm your host, Chris McDonald, licensed therapist. I am so glad you're here for the journey.

Do you have any ethical or legal concerns about blending holistic modalities with traditional therapy? Is this holding you back from integrating these? You are not alone. There are some things to consider to protect your license and practice before diving into holistic counseling strategies. This is why I created my one hour recorded training, The Ethical and Legal Considerations of Holistic Counseling.

In it, we will explore how to protect yourself against liability as a holistic therapist. You will learn more about scope of practice versus scope of competence and informed consent. Also addressed is how you can expand your therapy practice ethically into the holistic realms and where to draw the line.

I also address the ethics of research based interventions and how this works for holistic counseling practices. You get all this plus one continuing education contact hour. To learn more, go to hcpodcast. org forward slash ethics course. That's hcpodcast. org forward slash ethics course. Welcome to another episode of the holistic counseling podcast, where I help therapists deepen their knowledge of holistic modalities and build their practice with confidence.

I'm your host, Chris McDonnell. Today we're diving into two transformative therapeutic approaches that you can integrate together, and that's brain spotting and parts work. We'll unravel brain spotting first, which is a powerful technique using your visual field that taps into the deeper parts of the brain and helps clients to process trauma and other issues and find healing.

Then we'll explore parts work, a unique modality that helps individuals understand and integrate the different parts of self and how this can be successfully integrated with brainspotting for amazing therapeutic outcomes. Here to take us on this journey is Cherie Lindberg. She's a seasoned transformational coach, speaker, advisor, and psychotherapist holding a completed doctorate.

As a brainspotting trainer and consultant, Cherie, She integrates brain spotting and internal family systems or IFS coaching approaches. This unique combination allows her to provide deep transformative experiences that unlock her clients fullest potential. And she also is going to share some amazing transformation that she's seen with some clients that she's worked with.

Welcome to the podcast, Sheree. Hi, thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. So I wanted to start with, what led you with wanting to be a brain spotting trainer and consultant?

Cherie Lindberg: Well, to be honest with you, I didn't even know that that's where I was going. Isn't that funny how life works? Yes, like somebody, it was like divine intervention actually.

I was actually trained in EMDR, right? And I had a very successful practice in EMDR and was actually moving towards becoming a consultant. Really? I took brain spotting and I took brain spotting and this is just for me. I'm just speaking to myself. What, what my personal experience was is that EMDR decreased and minimized my PTSD de symptomology and brain spotting made my soul come alive.

Ooh, that's what it felt like. Yes. I got back in time after that weekend with who I really was, what I had really wanted in my life. And that led me to frustration that I lived in the Midwest and that we are usually the last. to know about any innovative cutting edge theories that are out there. So I started to bring brain spotting trainers with another group.

We created the Midwest Brain Spotting Institute. And this is a fun story. Actually. I friendly stalked Dr. David Grand, watching him, all of his trainings and things like that and bugged another trainer until they, I don't know, they, they may have felt sorry for me or something, but they gave me his cell phone number.

Oh my gosh. I know. This is like crazy. It is crazy. And I called him. I called him and I said, hello, Dr. Graham. You may not know who I am. I introduced myself and I said, are you available to go to lunch this weekend? And he goes, are you going to, are you in New York? I said, I can be. That's so funny. This was on a Tuesday.

You're so brave. Oh, I've never did anything like this ever in my life. My husband was like, do you know how much those flight tickets are going to cost? And I'm like. I'm doing this. So he actually picked me up and another trainer at the airport took us out and then talked about his dream about brain spawning and bringing it to the world.

And I said, well, I want to help you. I want to help you in that dream. I'll, I'll be your Midwest person from there on. He's like, okay, you've got to follow me. You've got to follow the other trainers. This is before, I mean, this was before brain spawning was heard about. Like I was driving around. In the Midwest and having trainings of five people, nobody had ever heard of brain spawning before.

And, um, that was the beginning. And so I didn't know I wanted to be a trainer. It just kind of naturally started to happen. And I just absolutely love teaching and watching people. heal was amazing. And that is why I kept doing it.

Chris McDonald: What a perfect story. I'm so glad I asked. Yeah.

Cherie Lindberg: A lot of people don't know about that.

Wow.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. No, that's so cool though, to think that this is where you are and this is how you got here. And wow. So let's backtrack for a moment for listeners who may not be aware. Can you just talk what brain spotting is and how it was developed?

Cherie Lindberg: Yeah, so, um, brain spotting, we have a tagline for that where you look affects how you feel.

And basically, you can find these spots in your visual field by looking whether you look to something that causes you to feel discomfort. That's how we rework. traumas, or you can also find spots in your visual field that make you feel really good or calm. And so we can harness these spots and help people go inside to reprocess things that have been stuck or blocked and help them unlock them and heal.

Chris McDonald: I love how you describe that too, to unlock and heal. I'm still, I'm still thinking about what you said. It made your soul come alive. It's profound. It really did.

Cherie Lindberg: And it's still happening. This is everything that I have created since then has been because brain spotting helped me release all these old limited beliefs, the traumas that happened throughout my life to where I could get back in touch with that little girl inside that was like, I can do anything.

Right. And, um, she's been guiding me ever since anything that really excites me and gives me energy. It's like, Hmm, let's do this. Hmm. Let's do that. Keep sapping.

Chris McDonald: Can you share what a brain spotting session would look like?

Cherie Lindberg: So it really depends on the person that walks into the office and what their desires are, their goals, or what they need maybe to heal.

So it can be, we can use it for performance enhancement. We can use it for helping somebody unlock a block to achieving a goal. But we can also use it for anyone that might be suffering from anxiety, depression, PTSD. So that's why the sessions can look so different, but basically you're going to go inside yourself.

You're going to find a spot in your visual field and let's say we're going after trauma. So I'm going to find this spot in this visual field. When I think about. Maybe it's a trauma. I'll, I'll use an example of my, my own life where let's say my dad came home a lot and was angry with me a lot. And because of that, I'm aware that I never feel good enough.

Maybe that's a belief. I tell myself, well, I can find a spot where I get really in touch with that belief. I don't, I'm not good enough. And maybe I even see my dad's angry face. And I find that spot where I can get access to it in my body. And then I watch inside myself to see what happens. And often you're replaying memories from your past, and you're going to feel different things moving throughout your body until it reaches a resolution.

And for some people that can happen in one session, three sessions, six sessions, or if you have a really long trauma history, it might take months or even years, depending on the person, but it's a way to release these things that have been trapped in our physiology that get in the way of us being our higher selves.

Chris McDonald: And it is just, in my experience, such profound work for us to be able to go so, so much deeper than talk therapy.

Cherie Lindberg: I often call it soul work. Yeah,

Chris McDonald: it really is. It's so much more than regular talk therapy. I think it's, it leads to so much more healing. I don't know if you agree with that.

Cherie Lindberg: I, I mean, I'm a biased Chris, but I'll admit that I'm biased, but it's why I do the work that I do when I see somebody that experienced a lot of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and I work with them.

And now they're opening up their own private practice, or they're a CEO of a big company, or they've overcome that. And they actually experienced joy in their life. Like you get addicted to that kind of results, right? You watch this happening and you really. It strengthens your belief and hope and inspires you.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, for sure. And I know we're going to talk about two things today, integrating with PartsWork, IFS, I'm guessing this is where you're going with that. So can you talk about that? What is PartsWork?

Cherie Lindberg: Yeah, well, we call it parts work because brainspotting is a parts approach, okay? But brainspotting is an implicit parts approach.

What does that mean? Implicit means inside of you. So when we're holding up a pointer and somebody is inside. Of themselves, they're focused on the spot. We hold the pointer so that they can stay focused on that spot. And then they go inside and mindfully, we call it focused mindfulness, watch where their system naturally takes them.

So as they're going through images and thoughts and everything. We believe that you're going through all the parts of yourself, different developmental ages, different thoughts, things like that. Now for some folks that works like a charm and it helps them shift really quickly. The more complex the situation is for the client, the more they might need a little bit of an additional, what we call explicit work.

And this is where the therapist. For the most part in brain spotting, we stay out because we trust the client system and we do to do the work. Every once in a while, the client's system might need a little nudge or might need a little, we call it seed planting from the therapist where I might say, and what age does that feel like now?

Something as simple as that can help the client recognize, oh my goodness, this is a four year old part of me that's seeing it from a four year old point of view. And. Internal family systems is 1 parts approach. Uh, April steel has imaginal nurturing out there. Um, Shirley Jean Schmidt has developmental needs meeting strategy and there are many other ego state.

Um, you can call it ego states. You can call it parts work methods out there. And when I do, when I combine them together, we talk a lot about implicit versus explicit. So I only go explicit and plant a seed if the client system is asking for help. It's like, okay, they, they, they'll say things like it's not going anywhere.

I feel stuck or I don't feel like anything is moving. Or, Oh, this, this little kid inside of me needs nurturing, and I don't know how to do that. So then I might give them a little menu of things that might resonate with them. That's called explicit work. So we only do that if the client system is asking for it.

And how do we know if the client system is asking? It is through sitting in uncertainty with that client, strong attunement, tracking moment by moment, and listening. listening to my own clinical intuition, listening to the client, that we co create this process together. And it's going to look different per individual as, as they come in, what their needs are and what might show.

And there's always surprises, some wonderful and some like, Oh, didn't see that coming. Um, when you're holding space, cause we're really sitting there. Like, you know, you said this earlier, we're really sitting there with a beginner's mind, like, who is this person? What have they been through? What is it that they need and how can I hold this beautiful holding space for them so that their system can go because we, in brainspotting, we believe it naturally goes towards healing and it wants to heal and it knows intuitively how to, it's just that we often get in the way of that.

Chris McDonald: I love that you said that because I've had clients.

How would you respond to that? I'm just curious for listeners to because clients can have a lot of resistant parts to

Cherie Lindberg: well, we don't believe that there's resistance there. We believe there's conditioning there. Oh, they've been conditioned to believe that they can't do it. They've been conditioned to believe that they're not good enough or that they don't have what it takes or, or whatever.

And we're here to let them know, like you absolutely do. I would validate it. I'm like, it makes sense to me that you think you don't given everything you've shared about your history and what you've been through. It makes a lot of sense that you don't believe in yourself. And this is an opportunity to see that that's a myth.

That that is not true, that you are wise and more powerful than you even know.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. So it's like planting that seed too, that as an opportunity. Yeah. And then let them discover and

Cherie Lindberg: explore what that means for them.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. Cause they may discover in the process. That could be a brain spotting session right there, couldn't it?

That's

Cherie Lindberg: right. It's much more powerful if the client discovers it on their own versus anything we do as the healer or the therapist or the coach.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So can you talk about different kinds of parts that people may have?

Cherie Lindberg: Yeah. So some people might listening, might not even know what is a part of what we're talking about.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, all those different voices you might hear in your head, like your, your husband comes home from work and says something and your, your brain goes, Oh, he's in a bad mood or your brain goes, Oh, I just love him so much. Or, you know, those are, can be different parts. Like I have a part of me.

That's a mother. I have a part of me. That's a healer. I have a part of me. Yeah. That's a wife, you know, a friend, and maybe I show up differently in, in different places, right? And a lot of these parts have been conditioned from society, culture, um, our family of origin or trauma responses. Like we learn all of these different ways of, of showing up to keep ourselves safe, to keep our, to get our needs met.

And sometimes those things are healthy ways of coping and sometimes not. And so often people come to me who are struggling, uh, in relationships and things like that, and they don't have adaptive coping strategies that are helpful. So, so they'll come in and what we often discover. Is, Oh, they have a part of themselves that was frozen in development, like at five years old or younger than that, even where something happened in their family of origin and the family did not recognize that it was trauma and this client absorbed it.

And it got stuck in their body, and then their body adapted by creating certain beliefs, behaviors, and so forth to keep themselves safe. And those are the same strategies that now they're using in their adulthood, in their 30s and 40s. And it's not working anymore. So we discover that with each other, and they get a chance to reprocess.

You know, that trauma and come out with new insights, new belief systems and new ways of being. So different types of parts, we can have infant parts, we can have child parts, we can depends on the client and how their system labels them. You know, IFS has their own system where they have certain labels in brain spawning.

We don't label, we let the client decide for themselves. So sometimes I'll have clients that this is an angry part. This is a 12 year old. Just to give some context, I have a part that I call Chicago because I grew up in Chicago. She, she's kind of a teenager. She's kind of got an attitude at times, right?

So I know when that part's up, she's the fighter inside of me. That wasn't the survivor. She helped me survive everything I went through growing up on the south side of Chicago. So I call her Chicago. Other people might, some people call them protector parts or angry parts, my passive aggressive part, you know?

So we really ask the client, well, to build a relationship with whatever is arising and emerging inside of them and help them discover and talk about it in the way that they want it to.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I love how you're open about the parts because I feel like a lot of people do tune in that it's only IFS is the way to look at this, but there's different ways, right?

As far as different theories and ways to work with that, but whatever comes up for them. So I, I guess, cause I've had some clients and I'm sure listeners as well that really struggle with connecting with this whole idea of parts. So how do you help them to understand that a little clearer? Do you just go through the education of it or?

Cherie Lindberg: Sometimes, again, it really depends on the client that's in front of me. Oftentimes, I use the relationship I'm building with the client, and I'll give them concrete examples of like, what is arising right in the office. Like, if they start to get really defensive with me, I'm like, for example, Right in this moment right now, this is what they would call protection happening.

And protection usually happens when we get scared. So I will explain it in the context of an experience and that tends to help clients understand. Or the other thing I will do is I talk about some of my stories, right? So when I was Newly a therapist, I was doing my own work and didn't realize I had a Chicago part and I used a lot of April Steele's work and her work is all about attachment and nurturing.

Well, I didn't even realize. What I needed, what my parts needed was internal nurturing because I was from Chicago. I was that tough, like, don't look at me that way, you know, kind of personality. Well, I listened to some of April Steele's guided visualizations on meeting my inner child and oh my gosh, my, I heard a voice and I'm just going to be honest here.

It said, what is this Mamby Pamby shit? And I was so struck by such reaction, I got really curious, why am I so angry? And so I agreed, I made an agreement to listen to the CD. This was many years ago, like 15, almost 20 years ago. And I listened and over time, what ended up happening, I'll just cut to the chase here at the end, is I, inside myself, saw my adult self nurturing my younger self.

And telling her how amazing and beautiful and how proud I was, right. And so that was a whole six month process to getting there. But that part softened because that is what needed. She had never been nurtured. That's so powerful. Yeah, so I say I share some of those stories to help clients. We don't even realize we need that, but it is a human need to be nurtured and connections and human need.

But sometimes we have to learn this stuff because we're not taught and it's not our parents fault. Sometimes they didn't get it either.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, and I have found that most of the time there is a lot of that nurturing that's needed. Like you said, sometimes it just comes up in brain sputting that parts will come up, a child part often.

Sometimes I just ask the question, what does that part need right now? And usually it is, there's some kind of nurturing. I've had, you know, one man, he just went and just was hugging his younger self and giving that. And so much healing can come from that. It's just, I've never seen anything so powerful, you know.

Cherie Lindberg: Yeah, it's beautiful to witness. And sometimes you ask that question and the client just blinks at you and kind of freezes because they don't even know what they need. Exactly. So being aware of all of that and letting all of that arise and just being really gentle and nurturing even in that moment.

It's like, it's okay if you don't know, we can discover together.

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Check it out at hcpodcast. org forward slash workbook. That's hcpodcast. org forward slash workbook today. So I know you mentioned giving a menu of options. So what would that be like if you share?

Cherie Lindberg: So one woman in particular I was working with, she had the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder, which in brain spawning, we say we don't like the word disorder.

We like to say adaptation. Uh, these, this is how you adapted to survive. And we came across this infant and she's like, I don't even know what infants need. And I said, okay, well, here's a menu. Infants need to be held. They need eye contact. Sometimes they need to be fed, or their diapers changed, or they need to be rocked, or they need to take a nap.

And then I say it in that tone of voice, I said, Does any of that resonate with anything inside of you? And most of the time when I give a menu like that, they're like, Oh, she needs me to hold her and rock her. And I've even had people say, What does that look like? So I always have a pillow and I pick up the pillow and I role model, and I role model rocking back and forth and looking into the baby's eyes.

That's what this would look like. And then they take that and they go inside and they mimic what I just did with their parts.

Chris McDonald: Hmm. Yeah. This is all new for me. I've not heard of some of these, this menu idea. I love that because I can see how clients could get stuck on that. Like, what do you mean? What do they need?

Or

Cherie Lindberg: it's

Chris McDonald: right. Sometimes they do. Yeah. Is there other challenges that come up when You introduce parts work with clients.

Cherie Lindberg: Yes, some people don't want to use the word parts. And so I use their language. So some, I've heard people say, well, this aspect of myself. So we're like, okay, well tell me more about this aspect of you.

Right. They don't like the word parts. So we, we use their language. You might have somebody that is really defensive. And, and angry. And why should I trust you? And because, again, they've been physically, sexually, emotionally abused, and now they're supposed to be vulnerable with you. They've learned it's not safe to be vulnerable.

And so it may take up to a year or more, depending on the person, to really assistant and build up that relationship with them. So that they know that they can trust you.

Chris McDonald: That doesn't come quickly, especially with extensive trauma histories.

Cherie Lindberg: Exactly. So we, you can run into those, you can run into parts of self that chronically dissociate.

And so helping the client learn how to be present. So we might have to do embodiment exercises for a while and learn how they can be present and that this environment is safe to be in and that they don't have to keep going back to the past. That can take some time, you know, as well. The system has to have some time to learn all these things because it's been conditioned and it has adapted around trauma.

Chris McDonald: Yes, true. So it's, it's not going to be a simple process to get them to that place. I'm sure.

Cherie Lindberg: And sometimes I luck out, I get somebody that has done a lot of work, but for some reason, there's still these like little remnants of connection that their system hasn't made and I get to do the ending work with them.

Like I get to help them make those connections and then all the years of work that they've done. All of a sudden, like the Christmas story, you know, Christmas vacation together and everything lights up and they shift and, and change can happen pretty rapidly for them. And that's always amazing too.

That's a gift to be able to be there at the end of their life.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. Can you talk about the resource spots? Um, so listeners can understand more about that and what that's like. Yeah.

Cherie Lindberg: So in, in brain spotting. For those folks that maybe have very complex histories, regular brain spawning, where we go after activation, what dysregulates us, what upsets us might be too much.

And so what we can help folks do is teach them how to be in their body and find a place in their body where they feel calm, grounded. Or neutral, and then we help them find like, let's say for me, that calm ground and neutral spot is my feet. Typically, it is my feet for me. I like really plant my feet on the ground and now I'm going to find a spot in my field of vision where I really feel my feet planted.

And for me right now, it's to the left. This is. There's a beautiful, I have five acres and so I'm looking out this window and I can just feel my system like really like down regulate and calm. So we find a spot where I can really feel my feet and that is considered a resource spot. So we teach our clients how to build more resourcing and once they find that, Like really feeling that and imprinting this new normal of, Oh, this is what it means to feel calm in my body.

This is what it means to feel grounded in my body. And then they can practice this because they've adapted this way for so many long. Now we're introducing new ways and they're going to have to practice and build that muscle.

Chris McDonald: And it can take some time

Cherie Lindberg: to do that and yeah, yeah, but it's within every single person and I want everyone that's listening to know it is a skill that can be learned.

It's not you have it or you don't. Everyone has it. It's just a matter of practice.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, exactly. And can you talk about self spotting? Because I know that that's a skill that clients can use as well that even listeners can practice.

Cherie Lindberg: Yeah, that's in David Grand's book. Um, there's a chapter for those that might be interested and it's also on audible, but I use it every single day.

I actually brain spot to future Sheree and this is how, uh, the educational platform you and I talked about came to be like, I get these visions of what I want to bring into the world. And so what I do is I find a spot that feels very. Life giving to me and typically life giving to me is when I, I just feel like my whole chest is opening up and I just feel very calm.

And typically for me, it's when I'm looking out at nature. Nature for me is very relaxing and really inspiring. And so you find this spot. And then you start out with an intention. So my intention typically is like, I'll say, okay, future Sheree, thank you so much for being inside of me. And if there's anything that you want me to know or any information you could share with me.

And then I'm just focusing mindfully and just watching and listening to what's coming up on that spot. And then I often journal. I'll do that for about 20 minutes and then I'll journal any highlights or takeaways from that. So there's a lot of folks that I mentor that we do this every single day. The more that you do this, the more you can use it to shift states from a dysregulated state To a resource state.

So you start to learn how to shift your physiology. Athletes do this all the time. So I just teach this to all my clients. I teach this to the folks that I'm mentoring so that we start to master our biochemistry instead of being hijacked by it.

Chris McDonald: And it's a beautiful thing. And especially if you're interested in brain spotting, this is.

a great tool that you can learn to teach clients. And I love that this is something that clients can learn for themselves to practice.

Cherie Lindberg: Right. And there's different ways, uh, to, we teach about how to stave off panic attacks. That's always helpful to a lot of my clients that have extreme anxiety and so forth.

And again, it's, it's learning about your body and learning how to shift out of dysregulation and into regulation.

Chris McDonald: Is there any success stories you could share in your experience? I

Cherie Lindberg: have so many. Yeah, I would love to share. I had a gentleman that I worked with for a year and he did not want to do brain spotting.

And I, he had a lot of trauma as a young man or a young child, I should say. And when he became a young man, he was like, that, that is not going to define me. I'm never going to let that define, you know, really, me. Had a positive attitude and then lost a job, lost a spouse. I mean, this stuff just started to pack on and then all, it was almost like the straw broke the camel's back.

I don't like that saying, but I maybe I'm a Midwesterner people will understand that saying all of a sudden. It was one too many traumas and it opened up everything that happened to him where his mother abandoned him when he was really young. She would leave him home for hours and he had a brother and the brother would be abusive to him and the father had abandoned the family.

And so there was lots of physical, emotional abuse, and the mother would threaten to abandon him often. So he had a huge fear of abandonment. And of course he lost his spouse and, you know, he had children and he was really, really struggling. And so it took a year. For us working together before, finally, he would agree to do brain spawning.

He wanted to just do talk therapy. And I explained to him, I said, with the level of trauma that you have, talk therapy is not going to get where you need to go so that you can have permanent, sustainable change. But we, you know, we kept building on the relationship, kept practicing embodiment skills. And then finally, after a year, he did a session with me and he's like, all right, all right, I'm ready to try it.

And he connected with his four year old part. Okay. And he could see it very clearly. The part was talking to him and literally in session, it looked like this, like he would go like this to me, you know, he'd be poking up and and I'd be like, I see you like the 4 year old would be looking up at me and I'm like, it's okay.

Keep going. You're doing great. And he would shake and he would shimmy. And then he came out of that and he goes, did I just make all that up? And I said, no, you did not make all that up. I said, that was a brain spawning session. That's what it, that's what it looks like. And he left that day and he came back his next session.

And he said to me, he goes, Oh my gosh, I have to apologize. And I said, well, why do you have to apologize? He goes, that brought me so much relief. He goes, I slept better than I have ever slept in my life. He goes, I feel like this huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. And he goes, if I knew that that's what I was going to feel like, you know, I would have done that along a long time ago.

And I said, well, I said, you weren't ready. And that's okay. But after that, he started to get his. You know, self agency back, he was able to find, I didn't mention this, but he had lost a job. So he was able to find a new job in a place that he really felt valued. He was starting to date again with, with women that were saying how wonderful of a person he was.

So he was starting to be able to turn his life around. That's just one of, of many, I've had people that Have a lot of post traumatic stress disorder, symptomology symptomology has gone away or some folks where it has decreased so significantly because their level of functioning was so low that they're back to being able to hold a job again and go back to work.

So. You know, I could go on and on. There's so many stories. This is why I've stayed with brain spawning for so many years is because I see this over and over again. And I know it works because I used it in my own life. And so I, I often say I have a practice based on evidence because my clients and their lives are my evidence.

Yeah.

Chris McDonald: Cause I I've, I've had recently three clients that I've seen for over a year and they no longer meet the criteria for PTSD. It's just. It's just amazing. Their lives have changed. They are so much more regulated. It's phenomenal. You know, I've never seen anything like it

Cherie Lindberg: from their rooftops and the trees.

It can be different. There are people hopefully that will reach that maybe are suffering, you know, look at, look up on Google. Thank goodness we have the internet. Now we didn't when I first started, right? And you'll find practitioners. All over the country and all over the world. But here's something I would say.

Don't buy the first car you drive off the lot. And what I mean by that is, shop for your therapist. Find someone that really resonates with you. Because if you're gonna be going really vulnerable and deep, into your traumas. Find somebody that really you feel is attuned to you that you're going to be able to open your heart to so that you can go where you need to go so you can heal.

Chris McDonald: Yeah and I agree with that too because somebody I had gone to personally wasn't fully trained or certified and it actually triggered me for like a week because they did not properly resource. So you do have to be cautious with who you go to for sure. I appreciate you saying that. So what is Elevated Life Academy?

Can you share with listeners?

Cherie Lindberg: Yeah, so that, that is a something I just birthed and I'm really excited about. But if, you know, people that know me for a long time have known I always talk about rising together. I talk about conscious community and building a conscious community because, you know, after watching what happened with COVID, even before COVID, but it seemed to just exacerbate the disconnection and suffering in the world.

This is my way of putting out some positive vibes. And so Elevated Life Academy, what I hope it's going to grow into is we're building a conscious community. I meet and speak to a lot of healers all over the world. And so I usually interview them on my podcast. There's an Elevated Life. Academy podcast.

And then some of these folks are, are, I mean, most of them are just so gifted. It's like incredible, but maybe they don't know how to market themselves. Maybe they don't know all this technology stuff. Like I, as a therapist, I didn't know I was going to need a separate degree in technology when I first came on the scene, but you do when you're doing all of this online stuff.

And so I I'm kind of trying to help folks. That are gifted healers that maybe they have a mission or gifts that they want to share with the world, but they don't know how, and so they can come on to elevated life Academy. We have a professional wing and a personal growth wing. Some you can get CEs for and some you can't and this is.

There's going to be also a free page eventually, we're working on that to where people that want to learn how to live an elevated life are going to have access to all these tools that we're talking about. And it's about practicing and building the skills really. That's what it's all about. Everyone can do this.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. So how could listeners access that? What is the website?

Cherie Lindberg: Yeah. The website is elevatedlifeacademy. com. And give me give me a chance here because I'm still trying to get some of the stuff up there because we just launched. So thank you so much for asking and, you know, feel free to contact me if you have questions, like, even drop me a note.

If you're like, Hey, I'd really like to see something like this up here. Let me know. I'd love to hear from people that are on there and are wondering what it's going to be. But my hope I'm sharing the dream here with all of you is to have wellness topics on their spiritual topics. healing topics. I even I brought this up today.

This kind of spontaneously came out of me today and I trust it when it comes out that way. I want to have a video on how to advocate for yourself when you go to see the doctor.

Chris McDonald: Yes, please.

Cherie Lindberg: Yes, because there are so many folks out there that are feeling dismissed and are not feeling heard. And I'm hearing more and more about this.

And so we're, those are the things that we're going to be putting out, um, up there.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. I think that's so important. Cause I've had that experience recently with chronic pain issues and yeah. And I think, I'm wondering if there could be something too about women. Cause I feel like as a woman, sometimes male doctors.

I feel dismissed and I've had some really negative experiences. I've talked to some other women and they've experienced that as well. You know,

Cherie Lindberg: eventually we're going to have stuff up there on menopause because I mean, I won't, I won't speak to, I won't name any names, but I did have a doctor say to me, well, Most women get through menopause just fine.

And I was like, Oh, is that why there's lots of books written about it? And why all these women are on, uh, hormone replacement therapy and they're not really happy is because everyone gets through it so easily. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris McDonald: There's. A lot. I think there's so much benefit to have in that community. And I saw, just wanted to call this out for listeners that you had something, brainspotting and intuition on there as well.

That's so exciting.

Cherie Lindberg: Yeah. We have an on demand class. For those of you that may not be able to join us in person, we have a November training in Sedona where we're going to do brainspotting, spirituality, and intuition. And in that class, we're going to be, you know, a lot of people talk about, Woowoo, like it's too woowoo.

So we jokingly say, well, we're gonna put the science in the Woo. Uh, we want you to know that spirituality and intuition are in the brain and it's scientifically studied. And that actually Lisa's book, the Awakened Brain, she talks about the research behind if you have a belief in something, a power greater than yourself, that that belief, just having a belief.

Is a bumper, an 80 percent buffer, bumper, whatever you want to call it to depression and anxiety because you have a belief. Why are we not telling people this? Oh, for sure. No, that doesn't mean you have to go to church every Sunday, religion and spirituality for many people are separate and that's what they're finding in the research to.

So, but discovering for yourself what that higher power is, whether it's the universe, God, Jesus, Buddha, like whatever the belief is, it is going to help you and buffer you from having depression and anxiety and so forth. And it helps for well being. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. We talk about that and we use that with brain spots.

And, and basically helping professionals get back in touch with their clinical intuition again, which we have been taught to not listen to.

Chris McDonald: I know. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Oh, that's so exciting. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I think listeners check out her podcast too. And we'll have that in the show notes because yeah, it's, I've been addicted to listening to it.

There's so much in there. So much good information. Cause I think you and I are in alignment a lot with our listeners that like a lot of these similar issues and, you know, really want. to learn more and to help themselves as well as helping clients,

Cherie Lindberg: you know. Yes. Well, and I, I mean, I had you on, so you're going to be coming up on mine as well.

So this is, this is the beauty of it is that we can support each other in getting our mission out, you know, together. So thank you again for the opportunity to come in and share. Yeah.

Chris McDonald: Well, thank you for coming on the Holistic Counseling Podcast, Cherie. This has been wonderful.

Cherie Lindberg: Well, I love new connections and I also love The fact that we are on, on similar missions isn't, I find it fascinating.

It's kind of like, why did our souls decide to pair up a very smaller mission here on earth? You know, I don't know.

Chris McDonald: Throw it out there.

Cherie Lindberg: That's right. We're

Chris McDonald: just going to ponder that. We'll go there and we, we can go all in the woo on the Holistic Counseling Podcast. So that's right. Love that for listeners to think about.

Yeah. And thank you listeners for tuning in today. That wraps up another episode. As a gift to my listeners and help support you on your holistic journey, I have a free 30 day Aura Meditation Guest Pass to help you find peace and get restful sleep. Check it out today at hcpodcast. org forward slash better sleep.

That's hcpodcast. org forward slash better sleep. And once again, this is Chris McDonald sending each one of you much light and love. Until next time, take care. Thanks for listening. The information in this podcast is for general educational purposes only, and it is given with the understanding that neither the host, the Publisher or the guests are giving legal, financial counseling, or any other kind of professional advice.

If you need a professional, please find the right one for you. The Holistic Counseling Podcast is proudly part of the Site Craft Network.

Dawn Gabriel: Hi, Don Gabriel here. If you don't know me yet, I'm the person behind soul care for therapist podcast, which is part of the site craft network of podcast. The site craft network is a collaboration of independent podcasters focused on helping people live more meaningful and productive lives. This network of podcasts provides both self help and business building resources to create an impact in the world and change people's lives.

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