About the Episode
Did you know you can use your imagination to rewire your brain and heal trauma? In this episode, Tracy, a leading expert in brain science, explains how visualizing nurturing experiences can create new neural pathways. Learn how the powerful therapeutic approach of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can reduce emotional reactivity and transform your mental health, helping you break free from old patterns and create lasting change.
Episode Guest
Tracy Ryan Kidd is a psychotherapist who has been in practice for over 30 years. She has been the Owner/Director of Virginia Family Counseling, a private group practice in Vienna, VA, for 20 years. At this practice, she leads a group of seasoned therapists who are as warm and engaging as they are highly skilled and trained in helping clients make the changes they are looking to make. In addition to offering couples and family therapy, every therapist also specializes in trauma and uses EMDR (Eye Movement, Desensitization, and Reprocessing) for trauma resolution. Tracy is an approved consultant in EMDR, provides EMDR consultation to several therapists in the area, and has provided various training sessions in the method over the years.
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Episode Transcript
00:00 Introduction
Julie: Hi, everyone. In this week’s episode, we will be diving into the power of the brain. And I’m gonna encourage you to stay until the end, when we’re gonna hear about the 3 best tips for being an empowered consumer when it comes to potentially engaging with and taking advantage of the power of more advanced brain-based work.
Today, I’d like to welcome Tracy Ryan Kidd, who is an amazing leader in the world of EMDR.
Yes, we’re gonna get into that. It’s a type of brain-based therapy and a whole bunch of other cool stuff that leaves you empowered. But she is the owner and founder of Virginia Family Counseling.
She is a leader and a trainer, a supervisor, and a consultant. She’s had a long, illustrious career. They offer not only individual work but also couples and family work. Her staff and the people who work for her are really talented.
And before we jump in, don’t forget to check out our website for free and low-cost resources that can change your life. Thanks so much for joining us, Tracy.
Tracy: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Julie. I so appreciate it. And I love the topic of your podcast.
Julie: Whole by design.
Tracy: That’s so perfect.
03:03 EMDR therapy. What it is and how it works
Julie: Thank you. And that’s why you’re our perfect guest. Not only are you a more than three-decade-long expert in working with not only trauma, but also these exciting, more innovative, results-based, and brain-based types of therapeutic approaches. But I know philosophically that you really understand not only from your training, but from your work in the trenches of how incredibly brilliant our bodies, our brains are and our ability to adapt and overcome life’s stumbling blocks.
Tracy: Yeah, it is so true. I think that was the thing that was just so exciting when I first discovered EMDR, is that the healing comes up from within the person’s mind, body, soul. It’s not directed by the therapist. It’s not that the therapist in the old methods of therapy where the therapist is just having you talk about what your experiences were and giving you advice and telling you what to do or telling you how to change your thoughts. It’s none of that. It’s that the therapist gets to have the wonderful honor of following the brain of the client and the way that the brain is naturally made to heal.
And so the way that it works is that-
Julie: Well, can I interrupt you just for a sec, Tracy? I’ll dial it back just a little bit.
Tracy: Yeah, great.
Julie: What does EMDR stand for?
Tracy: Ah, right, that’s right. That would be the place to start, right?
Julie: But I know you’re on a roll. We’re gonna get into some good stuff.
Tracy: Yeah, yeah, okay, good. It’s kind of a mouthful. It’s Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. And yeah, there’s, you know, for no good reason does it need to have that long of a name.
But basically, what we do is we use eye movement or other forms of like tapping or sounds to kickstart what the brain naturally does in our rapid eye movement sleep state, which is what happens when we dream. And we believe that what’s happening there is that the brain is taking all of the stimuli from the day, all of the things that happened, how you felt about it, what you thought about it, and processing and digesting and integrating that information between the hemispheres of the brain, sort of integrating it with everything else that you know about yourself so that it can make sense of the information and basically you feel better the next day.
So if, for example, you go to bed worried about something, and I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, well, you know, ‘sleep on it, see how you feel in the morning’. And a lot of times you do feel better. And that’s because your brain’s been working on it behind the scenes in your rapid eye movement sleep, moving your eyes back and forth to collect and integrate information from your right hemisphere to your left hemisphere and back again.
But when a trauma occurs or traumatic events happen, because of all the adrenaline and cortisol that gets released, sometimes it gets stuck, and the brain can’t process it as it normally would. And so that’s why people have symptoms of post-traumatic stress is because it gets stuck in its original form in the brain and the nervous system. And it keeps replaying to try to heal, but it needs more help to get going. And that’s why we introduce the eye movement that allows the brain to go back and forth between the hemispheres to integrate and consolidate and heal that trauma that occurred.
So it’s really just using what the brain already does.
Julie: Yeah, I love that. Okay, so beautiful.
Our system is all by design.
That’s right.
Julie: Without us directing anything.
Right.
Julie: At night, we have rapid eye movement, REM sleep. Everyone knows about that.
That’s right.
Julie: Literally designed without our consent, without us in the bus, it’s already working to help us recover.
Yeah.
Julie: Are better rested. We can integrate our stuff.
Yeah.
Julie: That’s very super cool. And you’re saying that EMDR uses this principle in a more targeted way to actually remove things that have been stuck. So cool.
It’s like a super cleaning process.
Tracy: Yeah, exactly. That’s a great way of describing it. That’s right. Exactly. Yeah.
07:46 Natural bilateral stimulation for productivity
Julie: And I know what listeners are interested in is how do I leverage, right? What my body already has in order to get results or to get things to change or to have symptoms go away or to feel good. So tell me a little bit more about your work.
Tracy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and just to speak to that for a minute, a lot of times, people use natural bilateral stimulation just by taking a walk. So if you think about it, executives will say all the time, If I get stuck on a problem and I’ve spent five minutes working on it and I can’t think of something or I get blocked, I go for a walk.
And part of what’s happening there is that while you’re walking, you’re using bilateral stimulation, meaning left, right, left, right, left, right. And the two hemispheres of your brain are integrating and working on that problem. So, people listening to this podcast can know that when you’re stuck on something, go for a walk.
There are lots of natural ways that you can use what the brain does to process and move through blockages, which is just such an empowering thing to know.
Julie: Totally.
Tracy: Without even being in therapy.
Julie: And easy and free.
Tracy: Right, that’s right.
09:27 EMDR for trauma and childhood neglect
Julie: I love it. I always have a pyramid, and I’m like, hey, if the lowest, cheapest, easiest thing on the pyramid fixes what’s going on, do that.
Tracy: Go for it. Yes.
Julie: Go for it.
Tracy: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and then I would just say the other way that we tend to use EMDR is also for traumatic things that not only for traumas that occurred, but also for things that did not occur, for example, in childhood that should have occurred, like proper nurturing and protection and attention and love and secure attachment.
And so much of the time, that is what is driving folks who come to us, driving some of their relationship issues or problems, their anxiety. So, so many times, high anxiety in a client is that they never were able, or their parents did not develop a secure attachment with them. So they feel insecure, and that drives a lot of their anxiety in terms of not feeling good enough and not feeling good enough in relationships or chasing relationships or any of those kinds of things.
And so, there is a way to combine this very powerful form of processing with some of the other imaginal ways of using our imagination to actually redo some of the things that should have happened for us that didn’t happen.
Julie: I’m so excited about this part, Tracy.
Tracy: Uh-huh.
Julie: Imagination, so we’re putting a bookmark because this is super, super exciting. And, of course, for me, as an adopted person who has a history that I wish I could erase and redraw because it involved a lot of kinds of unconscious and unremembered things that impacted my nervous system, the idea of the imagination is super exciting.
Tracy: Yes.
Julie: What I wanted to just mention is that, you shared something really important. When I think about what’s called a trauma-informed approach to healing, which just means seeing the person and the system with compassion, respect, admiration even for what people have to do to survive life’s stumbling blocks and looking at those adaptations, one of the things I always learned was that in terms of stuff that can cause those stuck or blocked things that you mentioned and that’s not just receptive to just sleeping it away, right?
Tracy: Right, right.
Julie: Deeper than that are things that are either, and there’s a spectrum, violent, so trauma, you know, things where someone’s coming into your space. And on the other end of the continuum is neglect where you don’t get what you need. I just wanted to kind of put a highlight on what you’re saying because there is a whole range, and I’ve often thought of it like a flower, like a flower growing needs sun and rain and all the right conditions like all the nurturing just as much as it needs the fence around it to keep predators out and protection.
Tracy: Exactly. That is so, it’s so true. And also that, you know, love and attention as a child is exactly the same as oxygen and food and water. It’s survival.
Julie: Yes.
Tracy: And so, so many times, clients will come, and they’ll say, so I have these issues or problems, but I didn’t have trauma in my childhood.
Julie: White picket fence.
Tracy: Right, right.
Julie: All those kinds of things.
Tracy: That’s right, exactly. And nobody ever hit me. Nobody abused me. Nobody, but what you find out as you explore, you know, deeper is that they were kind of ignored or they weren’t really attended. Or if they were sad or upset, it was, you know, I’ll give you something to cry about. Or, you know, so there’s a lot of what didn’t happen that should have happened that is just as important in terms of a person feeling good about themselves and being able to live, you know a complete and fulfilling life as much as the bad things that, you know shouldn’t have happened.
And so having ways to be able to work on those issues of the neglect or the absence, even when it wasn’t severe, but it was enough to cause the person to feel like, well, I’m not all that important because I don’t get very much attention. Nobody really listens to me. Nobody really cares all that much about how I feel. So I must not be all that important. And then that has, you know, consequences in terms of the choices that they’ll make and how they feel throughout their whole lives.
Julie: Right. And not just the choices but how they interface relationships, right? The assumptions they might have based on that.
Tracy: Exactly.
14:50 The most powerful tool for reshaping your brain
Julie: Wow. So this is really powerful stuff, right? That you can change this. And you can change that story not change what happened in the past but the way it’s held in the body.
Tracy: That’s it. That’s exactly right.
Is that, and we know that you can use your imagination to actually form new neural pathways in the brain that were not there before which is a very exciting concept.
Julie: Okay. Slow that down. Walk me through that. Tell me what you mean when you say something like that that you can use your imagination to form New neural pathways.
Tracy: Yes. So this comes from, there’s been a ton of research and I want to say the past 20, 25 years on the field of neurobiology which is basically studying the brain and how does the brain work? And what are these things called neurons? Which, you know, are the cells in the brain. And we used to believe that once you got to be, you know, maybe in your twenties, low twenties that your brain didn’t grow anymore. That was it. Sort of, you were done. And now we know there’s a new concept called neuroplasticity, which basically just says the brain continues to grow new nerve cells and neurons all the way through your entire life, all the way until old age. And so that is so exciting because to know that you can create new neural pathways which means that your brain’s going to take you down a different direction than the way it’s always gone before. If that was a negative direction, I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough because I didn’t receive the nurturing that I should have received.
If you, through imagination, use imaginal ways, which we’ll talk about in a sec, to provide that nurturing to hurt wounded parts of yourself, you’re actually creating new neural pathways that your brain will now start to go down that say, well, I’ve redone that. I now nurture myself. So I know that I’m important. I know that I’m worthy because I have done this for myself, basically.
And so one of the big neurobiological researchers, his name is Dan Siegel. He’s got incredible books out there particularly for how to raise children knowing with all this new neurobiological research and he said that the greatest discovery we’ve made in this century in terms of research on the brain is that imagination is our most neuroplastic agent meaning using the imagination is what grows those new neurons and neural pathways more than anything else.
So that’s so exciting because we all have an imagination.
Julie: Well, we all have imagination, and no one can control the deck of cards you get that you’re born into.
Tracy: That’s right.
18:37 Neuroplasticity: How your thoughts change your brain structure & function
Julie: You can’t control everything; bad things happen in this world, and it’s hard to feel. I know this. It can feel like a death sentence, like, well, my childhood really stuck. So I’m never going to have good relationships. I’m never going to get out of this depression. I’m never going to whatever, fill in the blank.
Tracy: That’s exactly right.
Julie: We know now that neurobiological things can change.
Tracy: Yes.
Julie: In your 30s, in your 50s, in your 70s. Literally like a get out of jail free card.
Tracy: It really is. It’s just amazing. And so your thoughts can control the structure and function of your brain. The way it works is…
Julie: The structure and function, not?
Tracy: Yes, not just the function. Feeling better, forming new habits. This is one of the ways we form a new habit. If you want to walk every day or exercise every day, what you’re doing is creating a new neural pathway that makes it easier. It takes about six to eight weeks of doing that. And suddenly, it becomes a habit.
And it’s like, yeah, that’s what I do. It’s no big deal. So that’s what neuroplasticity means is that when you focus on something, that’s where the brain lights up and fires your neurons to go in that direction.
Julie: Gonna share a fan quote.
Tracy: Yes, what fires together wires together. And so that means that those neurons line up and become a whole pathway that makes it easier and easier for you to make whatever behavioral change you’re wanting to make.
And your brain will look different in brain scans, meaning the actual structures will get, some areas will get bigger, some areas will get smaller. So, for example, if you learn how to comfort and soothe yourself, your amygdala, the part of the brain that controls emotional reactivity, will get smaller. And the front of your brain, your prefrontal cortex, which controls our ability to soothe and comfort ourselves, will actually get bigger. It’s crazy.
They’ve done studies on folks who meditate, and their prefrontal cortex is bigger than folks who don’t meditate simply because of what they’re doing in this concept of neuroplasticity where you can change your brain. So it’s very exciting. Just one other quick study.
Julie: I think we could talk for hours.
Tracy: Yeah, right, right. But this study just kind of really makes people very excited. They did this study where they attached electrodes to people’s heads and they were doing a brain scan of people actually playing the piano. And then, they did brain scans of the same people imagining and visualizing playing the piano.
And what they thought was that they were gonna see totally different parts of the brain lighting up. But what they found, which was so surprising, is that the same exact parts of the brain lit up just as much when they were actually doing the activity and when they were visualizing and imagining it. And this, part of the brain called the cerebellum, it’s this huge part of the brain that we don’t know a whole lot about, but they used to think it only controlled muscle movement. So, like playing the piano. So they thought, okay, well the cerebellum will only light up when they’re actually playing the piano. But it in fact lit up just as much when they were imagining playing the piano.
And so that discovery was you can create muscle memory just from visualizing. You can actually learn how to play the piano by visualizing playing the piano, which is an amazing concept.
Julie: This is amazing.
22:15 Ego State Therapy: IFS
Tracy: Yeah, so it’s very exciting because what that means then is that we can use imaginal nurturing figures to provide the nurturing and care and love and attention to the wounded parts of us that are still there from childhood that carry the pain of not having been nurtured. And so there are forms of therapy where you bring these parts of the brain mind together so that, and those are called ego state therapies. And one of them is a pretty popular form of therapy called IFS.
And it’s called internal family systems therapy. And so it’s basically considering that we all have different parts of our experience. We’ve got hurt little parts. We’ve got parts that are angry. We’ve got parts that are very nurturing, parts that are wise, a part that’s protective. So we have different parts of us.
And they sort of use this concept in the children’s movies, Inside Out, that are up for an Oscar right now. That’s kind of, they depict the different parts of this little girl in those two movies. And so I think people are beginning to be familiar with this concept that we all have different parts of us and that we can have those parts interact or have imaginal parts.
Like for example, you can imagine the best caretaker in the world who’s very nurturing and warm and has a wonderful voice and what she looks like and feels like and sounds like. And you can, through imagination and using the eye movement that we use in EMDR to strengthen this and grow new neural pathways, bring that nurturing imaginal figure to this wounded part and provide, redo the scene, provide all of the things that should have been provided, say all the things, hold her in your arms, rock her back and forth. All of the things that form healthy attachments as an infant and child, you can redo that and grow new neural pathways for healthy, secure attachment within yourself.
Julie: I love it, Tracy. It’s like pulling it all together because you just said the latest and greatest research shows that by visualizing and imagining something, it’s just as if it’s happening in terms of the function and structure of our brain.
Tracy: Of the brain, right.
Julie: So listen to all this stuff. I think the conclusion is that everyone should go see Tracy because she’s amazing. She probably doesn’t even have time for all that.
Tracy: I don’t
26:15 3 Tips for Choosing the Right Brain-Based Therapist
Julie: But you would believe we’re actually at the end of our time on this podcast. I think one of the great things you could leave our listeners with is those exciting tips on how to really, if this is new to you, all these different concepts, EMDR, IFS, different ego states, imaginal opportunities, neuroplasticity, blah, blah, blah, all the lingo.
And you’re like, gosh, I just want to make sure I’m with someone who’s going to be best for me and can do the kind of stuff that Tracy spoke about. What are the three tips you would give to someone so that they’re kind of an empowered consumer around moving into this exciting and cutting-edge way of working with wellness and healing?
Tracy: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s a great question. And I think for people who are looking for therapy and they’re interested more in these forms of therapy, as opposed to just talking about things, which actually for anybody who’s experienced trauma just makes everything worse.
So I just want to say that don’t do talk therapy if you’re a trauma survivor. It just stirs you up, triggers you, and then you leave the session, and you’ve got nothing to do with that or no place to go.
Tip #1
Ask your potential therapist:
What tends to be your approach? What do you know about brain-based methods of healing?
Tracy: So if you ask your therapist, what forms of therapy do you tend? What tends to be your approach? What do you know about brain-based methods of healing? We call that bottom up, meaning that we’re trying to work directly with the central nervous system and how it stores trauma, as opposed to just talking about something, but actually healing it with one of these brain-based methods. So, asking that question, what’s your knowledge and training and brain-based methods? That would be one.
Julie: So the first question is like, what’s your approach to healing? How do you how do you work with brain-based methods?
Tip #2
Ask your potential therapist:
Do you use brain-based therapies as a technique or do you use this as a full psychotherapy?
Tracy: Then if they do EMDR, you know, or one of the other brain-based methods, another question would be, do you use this just as a technique, meaning you’re just applying it in a kind of a standardized way in a short-term model? Or do you use this as a full psychotherapy where you’re forming a connection and a relationship to your client? So listening for their approach about that, if they’re telling you it’s going to be a quick fix of a couple of sessions, that is generally not the case for trauma unless it’s a very, very, you know, specific adult, you know, trauma like a car accident or something like that. You really want to look for someone who uses these techniques in a full psychotherapy way, where they are forming a relationship and a connection and really getting to know you as a whole human being, not just applying a technique to you.
Julie: OK, great. So it’s asking if you if they answer, yes, I do use brain-based bottom-up approaches. That’s a buzzword, bottom-up, right?
Tracy: Right.
Julie: You’re actually going to process what’s being held in the central nervous system versus just talking about what happened, which is a different part of the brain.
Then the second question would be something like. In what way are you applying this technique, right? Is it a technique, or is it a whole psychotherapeutic approach where you’re actually going to get a more relational experience that incorporates your whole system?
Tip #3
Ask your potential therapist:
What is your approach and philosophy?
Tracy: Yes, yes, absolutely. And then I would say the third one is as you’re asking about what their approach is and their philosophy. This one’s more of like just listen for whether they also talk about wanting to understand your strengths and positive resources that you already possess and come into therapy with so that they’re looking at you again as a whole person and not just looking at you as a collection of problems, but that you come to therapy with strengths and skills and abilities and resources already that you can use to heal your trauma and to fix your problems and to make new choices. And so you want to be listening for whether they talk about that as well as strengths. It’s called sort of a strengths-based approach where they’re going to see you as a whole person with a lot of coming already with a lot of positive skills.
Julie: I love that question and I think it’s so important. And of course, sometimes when people are coming into therapy, they actually feel broken or they actually feel I don’t have anything to offer But you and I know that anyone who’s been through hard stuff and has figured out how to adapt and survive did so with whatever skills they had to cope and to get through it. And so I think that question sounds super, super important to me because if your therapist isn’t connected into that they’re not going to be able to leverage all this opportunity that you’re already coming to the table with.
Tracy: That’s exactly right and to use your positive resources for your own healing, which is what’s so empowering. And that’s really what we’re talking about here today, right? is to feel empowered in the therapy process, that it’s your brain, body, mind soul that’s going to do the healing, not the therapist
Julie: Yes! Oh my gosh, Tracy, thank you so much for sharing absolute wisdom today.
Tracy: I know this was great. I had a great time
Julie: I did, too. Thank you so much learned a whole bunch of things. I’ve been doing this also for 30 years and I know that it’s going to empower other people.
So I want to say to the listeners, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast episode of Whole by Design I hope it left you feeling as inspired as me to toss out the labels, embrace new perspectives, and take one step closer to the joy and clarity you deserve.
As always, visit our website to access our free and low-cost resources that will empower you and your loved ones on health and healing. Let’s spread the message. Subscribe, review, or share the episode with someone who could benefit from a stigmadropping approach to mental fitness today.
