Using your right brain in therapy

To optimize counseling, you need to work from both the left and right sides of the brain.

Counseling that includes the following strategies and treatment modalities gives you the best chance of making fundamental changes because they engage the right brain in the process:

Being in the Here and Now

You've probably had a "moment" in your life. You know, a moment of awareness, of being totally in the here and now. Well, you were in your right brain. Our present moments are right brain based. That's because all our sensory information comes through the right brain.

It's the right brain that gives us that sense of being connected to one another. It's called the relational right brain for a good reason. From PET scans and neuroimaging technology, we have learned that the right brain regulates or influences many aspects of our behavior. And, it's often those aspects that we're trying to change through psychotherapy.

Those things often have to do with our relations and connections with others:

• Self-awareness,
• Empathy,
• Identification with others,
• Trust,
• Emotion,
• Non-conscious communication,
• Attachment and,
• Recognition of emotional faces.

Other right brain functioning includes visuo-spatial recognition (imagery), autobiographical memory, stress modulation and holistic thinking. The right side of the brain also has an integrative map of the body.

The right brain in counseling

When you're in counseling it's often useful to understand the role that the right brain plays in the process. Because it's the center for processing emotion and of our sense of identity, it has a huge influence on how we feel about ourselves and how we manage our relationships.

Modifying the habitual patterns of feeling and behavior that are "encoded" in the right brain is the primary goal of all therapies, although many don't say this explicitly. But because these changes can be made more readily in a working relationship with the right therapist, we suggest a new approach to counseling.

Let me give you an example of how a right brain approach might work in counseling.

Terry is the kind of guy that you have trouble reading. When he speaks there's very little emotion in his voice so you can't always tell when he's upset. He also tends to hold the space until he's finished his "monologue".

He was telling an acquaintance about the time that he had to speak in front of his fourth grade classmates and parents at an awards ceremony. He described who attended (his folks, Granny, Uncle Joe and Daniel, his buddy who lived at the end of his street . . . the world essentially), what he had to say (the honour, the gratitude . . . big concepts for a little tyke), and he smiled slightly as he recalled being grateful that day was over.

His version of the event, as he spoke to the guy, was essentially an objective description of his experience. There was little tension in his voice. We could describe his thoughts and reflections as a product of left brain functioning.

If he were relating this story in his counseling, he would describe verbally what happened and how he felt, but with his counselor's help he would also try to experience the same emotions and body sensations that occurred back then, moment by moment.

For example, he might feel his stomach tighten, his heart pound, and all the other sensations that he experienced on that day.

His counselor might draw his attention to these sensations, encouraging him to recall the experience as it was actually lived, moment by moment (i.e. to use his right brain's capacity).

To deepen his learning the psychotherapist might encourage him to visualize (i.e. using a right brain strategy) how he would have liked the event to unfold.

He replayed the "reconstructed" event moment by moment in his imagination. As he did so, his body relaxed. Reflecting on it later, he felt a little less intensely about this event than before.

The right brain defined.

We use the term "right brain" to refer in a general way to those brain systems responsible for regulating our ability to interpret, navigate and thrive in the world. In particular, these systems also determine the quality of our relationships with others, including the ability to form secure emotional attachments.

Technically speaking, the right brain encodes the implicit procedural memories which accumulated in the earliest years of life, well before the analytical left brain came online.

Developmentally....

Not all areas of the brain are online when we are born. What's significant is that areas in the right hemisphere become active in the first two years of life, whereas the left hemisphere doesn't come online fully until 18 months to two years. Although the right brain develops first before any verbal or conceptual ability appears, an intense amount of learning happens in those first years.

We learn about ourselves and the world through direct experience, not through words. Our experiences, especially with our caregivers, will be encoded in procedural memories that form the basis of our emotional life.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of procedural memories is their non-conscious operation. Analysis, thought, and language are all conscious operations of the mind and are characteristic of "left brain" abilities, whereas the influence of the right brain occurs largely outside of our awareness.

This is the achilles heel of psychotherapies that take a verbal, investigative approach to personal change. The procedural memories that fundamentally condition our emotional lives are laid down long before the rational mind appears and are unaffected by intellectual efforts to change them.

Only by recreating as much as possible the initial conditions in which the procedures were encoded can these deep neural structures be modified.

This is the primary insight of somatic therapy.

Which side is dominant, the left brain or the right?

Note that both concepts are fictions--there is no such thing as a right brain, separate and independent of a left one. They are not in conflict, nor is one "superior" to the other. For example, when you're having a conversation, your left brain will focus on the meaning of the words exchanged, while your right brain will observe whether the other person gets what you're saying.

We use the terms "left brain" and "right brain" to refer to the two basic ways the brain processes information. Thus, when we say that someone is "in their right brain" it simply means that they are processing their experience in a holistic, "big picture" way.

In fact, no one functions on one side or the other all the time, as you will see. It's just that distinguishing these two brain functions helps you to understand how some counseling techniques work and why they are effective.

Counseling and the Right Brain

This is why we emphasize an understanding of the crucial role of the right brain on myShrink. It turns out that we're born already wired for connection, and we strive for it from the very beginning. Without connection with another person (another brain), the brain literally can't grow. That original connection has consequences, good and bad, that can persist for a lifetime.

Most importantly for counseling, it means that if you want to change the deep, non-conscious patterns that determine your reactions to life's events you need an attuned connection with another person. In effect, you need to recreate the original conditions (as much as possible) in which those patterns were laid down in the past.

And there's no one better equipped to take you through this process than a professional counselor who has worked hard in their own therapy to develop a high level of integration and empathy. That enables the right therapist to create an environment where it's safe to feel and stay with your emotions and body sensations (i.e. affect regulation) as you explore them in your sessions.

Why right brain-based counseling is important

The right hemisphere is dominant in the first three years of life; it's the first to mature, before the left brain. Emotional experiences, especially those involving caregivers, are unconsciously stored and processed in the right brain during those first years.

What gets encoded is an ability to handle social relationships as well as knowledge and expectations about how others will react to our efforts to communicate and connect.

The right brain is central for counseling because it regulates all the crucial conditions for establishing a successful therapeutic relationship: attunement, empathy, resonance, sense of safety, and unconscious communication and processing.

So when we talk about brain plasticity, "rewiring" the neuropathways, and restoring healthy, implicit self-regulation, we're referring to the right brain.

Although you don't need to know anything about neural anatomy, brain plasticity, flight-fight responses and the rest in order to take advantage of counseling, we believe that knowing how the mind-body-brain works can reduce the mystery (and the fear) out of going to counseling.

It will also help you maximize your counseling sessions because when you understand what the therapist is getting at, you will:

• reduce anxiety and misapprehensions,
• enhance and solidify your connection with the therapist, and
• increase your courage and determination to stay with the emotions and body sensations that arise.

References

Mastering Emotional Triggers:
The Key Role of Your Nervous System

Introduction
What's with the Reptile?
The Right Brain
Activation
Implicit Memory
Procedural Memory
Joy