Episode Transcript
Hi, this is Rachel in recovery. We're here with Brooke and she's going to tell us a little bit about herself and then she's going to answer some questions. Hi, Rachel. My name is Brooke Braylove. I'm a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker in Bethesda, MD, right outside Washington, DC And I'm an ASEC certified sex therapist and I am an Accelerated Resolution therapy practitioner. And I work with individuals, couples and groups in my private practice, going on 19 years. OK, How did you get into this type of work? So I have been practicing for a long time before I even heard about accelerated resolution therapy. I have just been doing kind of psychodynamic talk therapy, relational psychotherapy. And I went through a really bad breakup in 2017 and I tried a bunch of different kind of therapies and. I wasn't kind of really moving through it or getting better. So one person suggested this thing I'd never heard of called art. And so I did two sessions of art with a therapist here in Maryland and I got better, and I really felt like this was a super exciting, very different kind of treatment. And it worked. And it worked quickly. So I immediately figured out how I could be trained. And then I did that, did the training in 2018, and have been practicing ART ever since. OK, what is art
slash accelerated resolution therapy. OK, so art is a brief treatment modality that. Uses rapid eye movement and voluntary image replacement to change the way the brain stores distressing images and sensations. I'm sure you've heard of EMDR. Yes. So EMDR is kind of the birthplace of art, Laney Rosenzweig, who was a psychotherapist and took an EMDR training. And came out of it and thought that was great, I can make it better. And so she, you know, started art and is still doing it. And she's really been just an amazing, amazing person in crafting this really fabulous and incredibly healing type of treatment that only requires one to five sessions. I think the average, the research shows that the average is 3 to 4 sessions only. I often can see someone for one to two and they get all better and and and that's it. So ART is actually a really great treatment both as a standalone but also in adjunct to other top therapy, group therapy, CBT exposure or really any kind of treatment, OK.
How does the accelerator resolution therapy work? So basically the client comes in and they have identified a problem they want to work on and Art really works on a number of different issues. So I'll just kind of name those so you have a sense of the sort of. Depth of what it can treat. It's really known for trauma and PTSD, but it doesn't just stop there. So it can work with complex PTSD, phobias, OCD, addiction, eating disorders, and really kind of anywhere you might feel stuck in your life. With traumatic, upsetting images or if you're easily triggered, you have body sensations when something happens and you just notice that that keeps happening. It can even work if you don't like, you know, this sort of an ongoing dynamic with someone. So I had a woman come in and she would binge eat every time she visited her mother. So we did one session on it, and she went to visit her mother a couple weeks later and there was no binging. So that's really a dynamic, but it stopped the behavior that she really didn't want to do anymore. So, so client will come in and I will help them identify again an issue they want to work on specific incident or maybe it's you know a history of childhood abuse. And then we we basically asked them to come up with what art calls a scene, which is really an incident that they can recall in their mind like a movie. And so they basically take that scene and they imagine it in their mind while they're doing rapid eye movements. And the rapid eye movements can be done with the therapist's hand. I like to use a light bar so that I don't have to physically
use my hand for long periods of time and I can kind of stay more connected to the client in front of me. But basically the eye movements themselves are extremely calming. So if the patient client is imagining a really difficult scene, maybe an assault or something. They do the calming eye movements and whatever difficult and upsetting sensations come up, begin to calm within a matter of a few minutes, so I've had people having pretty much a full blown panic attack feeling like they just really didn't want to continue. About two to three minutes later, their body is completely relaxed. Sometimes they have a smile on their face. So it's really different in terms it's not exposure therapy because it's not retraumatizing. And then we take this scene and we replace it with a scene they wish had happened and we replace all the negative images and all the negative sensations. With positive images, positive sensations, and then we stored that in the brain. So while you will always remember the facts of what happened, you will not have the associated sort of trauma response or vivid distressing. Images or sensations in art, we say keep the knowledge, lose the pain. So it is not hypnosis. The client is fully in charge of the entire session. There is a protocol and that protocol works extremely well and you can be flexible with it. But in general we really follow the same kind of pattern, so. After the first session, the client kind of
gets it and I I think that's also very sort of healing in that there are no surprises and they're fully in charge and it is not retraumatizing at all where a lot of trauma treatment is.
Tell us the history of art. Well, as I said. In 2007, Laney Rosenzweig did an EMDR training and then just felt that she could do it better. So she has been developing and fine tuning the art of art and it's. It's not as well known as EMDR clearly and it it mostly because it's it's just much newer than EMDR, right. So a lot of treatments have been around have 2025 years, this doesn't. So there are about practitioners in the country and Canada and I do think it's going to spread and spread and spread and I can't wait. And that's part of the reason I really like doing podcasts. I really want more people to know about it, both as clients, but really as therapists want people to get trained in this because it is such a bright light to have this in your back pocket when someone is extremely stuck. So there's a lot of healing, you know, sometimes a trauma therapist will call me and say. You know, I've got this client, we've done work, talk therapy for years. She's so much better than she used to be. Let's say it's, you know, childhood sexual abuse or physical abuse. And we've talked and talked and talked, but you know, when she sees X or Y, she gets extremely triggered and shuts down
and gets really stuck in a pattern. And So what I usually say is send her to me for a couple sessions. And we'll get her unstuck and then I'll send her right back to you. So again, it's a really great thing in terms of other therapists feeling maybe at the end of their rope with someone especially who have, like complex PTSD that again, that just last step of getting better hasn't happened yet. And So what is really cool about art is there's very little talking. I do an intake session where I find out what the client wants to work on and a little bit about their background and what treatment they've already had. And then I spend the second-half of that session telling them about art and the protocol so they know exactly what to expect. And then I tell them at the end of the session that's the most we're ever going to talk. So I can actually treat someone and not even know. What they're specifically working on, I think we had one client decide that she just didn't want to share. I think it was too traumatic and she really couldn't bring herself to talk about it. But I don't have to know any details. As long as the client can see the scene, the event, the issue in their mind, that's really all they need to be able to do.
Okay, who would be a good candidate for this treatment. So it's a great question and I do this screening you know on the first phone call, so artists for everyone, there are three kind of screening questions that are very important to figure out so. One, you need to be able to move your eyes back and forth. So if you have any eye problems or history of major seizures, or you're actively having a migraine or something you know, anything that you'd be worried, worried about, you would talk. Consult with your doctor first. So you need to be able to move your eyes back and forth. You need to be able to hold a thought in your mind. And the third is the trickier one. The third is the question, are you motivated to change? And of course every single person who comes in and says, well, yes, of course I want to change. And that one's a little more complicated because I do think it's really scary to change and it's scary to have hope. So occasionally it I can feel some resistance with clients who it's it's just scary to hold any hope, especially someone with chronic illness, chronic pain. It can be hard for them to even imagine a life where those things are not constant. And
so sometimes I'll have to work with that a little bit and try to talk with them about. Giving themselves permission to change. Giving themselves permission to get better, to have some hope that one is a little less straightforward, but the other two are pretty straightforward. And you know, the answer is pretty much always yes for those first two. And what's amazing is art actually can work on young children. The youngest person I've worked with, I think is 11. But. Kids as young as I think 5 and six can do art. It's a little bit different. Obviously there's, you know, some things you do differently, but children are very visual and they remember things in images, so it can work really well for them too, OK? And I know they used the light bar and EMDR, so.
How would this be different than EMDR? Yeah. So that's a really important question and certainly one that a lot of people ask because they've heard of EMDR and maybe not heard of art or only a little bit. They, you know, want to know why would I choose art over EMDR? And look, I am am. The art is wonderful and fabulous. So yeah, I think everyone, I think they're both amazing treatment modalities. The the the things that are a little bit different. First of all, EMDR doesn't have a very specific kind of scripted protocol, so it can kind of go where the client goes during the session. So art is much more structured, while EMDR focuses usually on thoughts and changing thoughts into more positive thoughts. Art focuses on changing images and then corresponding sensations, so it is a little bit different there. The other thing is that art is really only one to five sessions and EMVR can be anywhere from about 10 to 20. So it's a bit more rapid and I think that's a bit of an important piece only because it's called Accelerated resolution therapy for a reason, which is. What you start with will be resolved by the end of the session, so I have never had someone leave session feeling worse. It just doesn't happen unless they were to, you know, quit the session, which hasn't happened unless they weren't going to complete the protocol. But there really is a resolution and everyone feels better. To what extent obviously varies client to client. But there is a resolution at the end of
every session. The other piece that I think is important is a lot of the EMDR uses a light bar, but a lot of people actually don't use the eye movements in the MDR and use, you know, hand buzzers or the sound, you know, the alternating sound headphones and what makes art art. Is the calming eye movement. So we always use the eye movements and sometimes I might add some hand buzzers for people who are tactile or who kind of want something to do with their hands. If they can be a little anxious and and feel like it's also sort of more bilateral brain stimulation at the same time. But what makes art art is the eye movements OK?
How did somebody find this type of treatment? Yeah, so there are two places that you can go and find an art therapist. One is acceleratedresolutiontherapy.com
and then the other is the International Society for Accelerated Resolution Therapy IS dot Art and. You can search the listings by state to see who works in your state and who can provide art. It's really just a psychotherapy session. So the coding is the same for people who submit for insurance. It's it's really just a type of therapy. So we just code it as a, you know, an outpatient mental health, you know, session sessions are. I I do my art sessions in 60 minutes, the first session can be a little bit longer, so I will often leave 75 minutes. Because again, it it's a little bit of an odd process, right? Holding an image in your head and moving your eyes back and forth for, you know, sets of eye movements while you're thinking about something really distressing. And so occasionally it can just take people a little time to kind of just adjust to the eye movement. So I usually leave a little bit of extra time. Some art therapists I know do 90 minute sessions. I find that's a bit long. It can be quite tiring. What's really fascinating, actually, is that the eye movements themselves are so relaxing that often people get very sleepy. So you'll see people's eyes closed. I had one person pretty much fall asleep, and so that's really interesting too. So sometimes at the end of the session, I'll say would you like to take a nap and wake up refreshed? And they just imagine themselves taking a nap, waking up refreshed
while they're doing a set of eye movements. And it works.
What advice, which do you have for trauma survivors?
Well, I think every trauma survivor is different and I think that it's really important to trust your gut about what will work for you. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all treatment. I think there's lots of different kinds of trauma. There's big tea trauma, little tea trauma, There's complex, you know PTSD. There's single incident traumas and and I actually think that just our brains process things really differently. So what I might consider to be traumatic, someone else doesn't. So I really think it's important that you trust your gut about what it is you want to do to try to heal and. One thing I would say, and again, this is new for me, I'm a talk therapist. I did that for a lot of years. So I do believe that at certain points, talk therapy is truly not enough and it won't necessarily get you over a hump. I love talk therapy. I love doing it, I love being in it. But I think that there are times. Where the approaches that are more brain and body focused like art, EMDR,
you know any of the, you know, soothing kind of methods, deep breathing, deep relaxation, meditation, I really do think that those are a huge component. So I think that idea of, you know, the top down, bottom up approach, I do feel like a lot of the healing comes in combination of those two things. OK, this is a this always takes a lot out of most therapists. What do you do for self-care? So what's really fascinating, which is also a huge selling point for being an art therapist, is it's actually. Much there's less burnout doing art because I'm not going to be receiving traumatic, you know, images and myself and I'm not listening to trauma all day long other than the intake. I'm not, as I I don't have as much compassion, fatigue or burnout, so. Doing art actually has made me more invested, more committed to practicing psychotherapy. It has really sort of breathed new life into my practice. So I've found that I actually need less self-care than I used to when I only did talk therapy. But of course we all need self-care, so I have a. Therapy dog that I bring to work every day and he is actually a lot of myself care just playing with him and being really present. I also make sure to have community therapists, make amazing friends and I have a great community of therapist friends and just getting together. Sometimes talking through cases but but mostly just being together. And certainly walking, some sort of physical exercise movement occasionally dancing in front of my mirror is great self-care. And you know, meditation. I don't do it as much as I should, but
also incorporating that, even if it's 5 minutes a day, I really do think that makes a huge difference. OK, I think that's it. Is there anything else you'd like to add for our listeners?
I think the only thing I would want to say is give it a try.
It doesn't make a ton of sense when you first sit down, but what happens is that a lot of people at the end of their very first art session sometimes say what just happened? Where did those negative images go? I can't see them anymore and. I think this is magic. And So what I think happens is that people are a little bit less trusting of something that we say works in one to five sessions, and that makes total sense to me. So Laney Rosen's Why has a book, and it's called Too Good To Be True. And that's because it really does feel that way, that art is too good to be true. But I have. A lot of people who would tell you otherwise, and you know, I have testimonials on my website for people who have found this to be the most healing therapy they've ever ever done and can let go of things that have been haunting them for 20-30 years. So do something different, Try it. If it's not for you, you move on to the next modality. OK? Alright, thank you. All right, guys. Thanks for listening to Rachel on recovery. We will be back next week at 10:00 AM. Always follow us on your favorite social media platform and podcast platform. And if you have any question, always reach out to Rachel on recovery.com and we have a YouTube channel and you can always subscribe there. Thanks.
