Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Before we get started, a quick word from our sponsor, Vox Mental Health. Vox means voice, and we believe something shifts when you're safe enough to find yours. Based in Barrie and serving all of Ontario, Vox Mental Health offers trauma informed psychotherapy for individuals, couples and families. Whether you're unpacking old narratives, navigating relationships, or working toward clarity and change, we're here to support your growth, your agency, and your voice. Learn more at Vox Mental Health.
And hi there, officially. Welcome to Awareness, the podcast fostering a more compassionate, empathetic and accepting society. Episode number 25, yours truly here, Rob Daniels. And officially welcoming our next guest on the show. And she is going to bring a lot of detail on several subjects today. So much to learn, including myself. I can't wait for this episode and hopefully you can take something from it as well. From trauma to transformation, we're talking insights with Dr. Sherry Lindbergh. Thank you so much for being here, Sherry, and taking the time.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Thank you so much for the opportunity, Rob. I really appreciate it.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: You're most welcome. And Sherry is a transformational coach and she is a certified brain spotting consultant.
So together we're going to, we're going to explore how trauma affects everyday life, the healing power of brain spotting therapy, and practical tools for building resilience and creating lasting change. So where are you, where are you talking to us from today, Sheri, why don't you give us that awareness on the show?
[00:02:17] Speaker B: I am talking to you from Shy Octon, Wisconsin, which is about 30 miles miles southeast of Lambeau Field. For those Packer fans out there.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Green Bay Packer fans. Very nice. Do you go to many games yourself or.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: I am a convert Packer fan because I grew up in Chicago, so it took me a while to transfer from the Bears to the packers. So after 36 years, I finally succumbed and I am now a Packer fan. And I don't like the cold. I like sitting and watching the games from my living room.
My husband will brave the cold and he's, he's been to many games, but I like just sitting and having chili or popcorn and watching from my living room.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah, okay, I hear that. So have, like, the ones in person, though. I got to imagine they're wild, right? Like, but in your opinion, what do you think is more wild that or, or say, like an NCAA football game? If it's like, Wisconsin against, I don't know who's a rivalry school out there?
[00:03:20] Speaker B: I would actually say, like, college football with, like, Madison against Iowa because those are really, you know, competitive teams. And with students that can get really wild too. Like they. They're jumping around on those bleachers and the whole stadium shakes. So I would say that that is more wild.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: I got to get out to a football game in the US for sure. College or the NFL. But thank you so much for providing that. Now for the. For the task at hand. For. For listeners on this podcast who. Who may not know you can. Can you share a little bit about your journey into trauma healing and. And what led you to specialize in. In brain spotting and transformational coaching?
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I would be happy to.
So, like most healers, we're wounded healers. That's where our, our story begins.
And I didn't even realize in grad school that I had the criteria for PTSD until I was fully through grad school and started to really study trauma and recognize, oh my goodness, I have PTSD and I have trauma.
I at first got trained in eye movement desensitization reprocessing, or emdr. That was our first vehicle to know how to get deeper into the subcortical brain where the trauma resides.
And David grand was one of my instructors.
And then he started to experiment and he moved to what we are talking about, brain spotting. And so brains, I would say EMDR decreased my symptomology of PTSD significantly, but brain spotting made my. My soul come alive. Like, I was able to really not meet the criteria for PTSD anymore. I was able to get excited about life again, be able to feel joy again. And so, of course, having those experiences, and this was when I was going towards becoming a psychotherapist. I was like, I gotta, I gotta become a trainer in this. And so 2010, I met with Dr. Grand, the founder and originator of Brainspotting, and basically was really persuasive and said, hey, you know, I will drive around the Midwest. I'll be your Midwest trainer. Just, you know, give me a chance. And he did.
And from there, my whole life was changed because I became a trainer. I opened up my own private practice. I started traveling the world while also in my practice working with people in the deepest, darkest caves of trauma and watching them heal and watching them rise and watching them transform. And so that's why I'm out speaking about this and sharing and teaching all over the world now with Brainspotting, which is incredible.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, ever since COVID you probably have gained a lot more clients, I would imagine too, just by. By utilizing the. The online forms, zoom or teams, whatever it it may be. Now many of our listeners have they. They've heard the word trauma before, but they may not fully understand its impact.
So how would you define trauma, and what are some of the ways it shows up in people's lives, often without them even realizing it?
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Right.
Well, first of all, we are all capable as human beings to compartmentalize trauma. That's how we survive.
So what that means is we have, like, these little boxes inside of our brain. Like, if something gets overwhelming to our central nervous system, our brain's like, whoa, too much, puts it in the box and kind of seals the box, and we may not even be aware. Like what. Like what you're saying.
So thank goodness we have that, because we live in a very traumatized world right now, unfortunately, and I don't see it going away anytime soon.
But in order to give a simplification of trauma, it's anything in your life when you were a child all the way through to adulthood, that was overwhelming for you to bring into your system, inside your central nervous system. So for little. Little kids, it could be somebody consistently screaming at them.
For little kids, it could be witnessing domestic violence, because they'll absorb that. They'll take it in. Okay.
Repeat, repetitive negative events could also be traumatic. And then we have our big ones that people recognize. You know, big car accidents, a surprise, death in the family, abuse, neglect, you know, those are the big ones. Or sexual assault. Those are the ones that we recognize. But anytime it's repetitive when you're a little kid, those can add up to traumas later on. And so how do they show up in our life? Well, often they show up in our relationships with others. We can't manage the relationship, or we get upset very easily. We can't regulate our emotions.
We have a popular term that's out there. I don't necessarily like the term, but it's, like, triggered, Right? You get triggered by something, and you get all agitated. Well, it's about your central nervous system getting dysregulated, because those traumas leave imprints inside of our body and inside of our central nervous system that years later, get triggered. As adults, we. And we think it's the. The moment that's happening, but really, if you trace it back, it goes back to this memory that could be when we were a child, but it's getting triggered in the present.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah, it's. It sure is something trauma. I mean, and the ones I even think of, too, is.
Or would you classify grief as a form of trauma, too?
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Well, it absolutely can be. It depends on the. On the circumstances.
Complicated grief can you know, there's a lot of exploring around grief right now, but for some, that used to be the term that they would use where it's long. They. They're not moving forward. But there's a lot of curiosity around grief right now, too, because it used to be.
What we used to know is that, okay, you have so much grief here, and then you're supposed to move on. Right. Like, that was the belief.
And Kubler Ross talked a lot about that. Well, now there's some new theories out. And there's a book called Continuing Bonds, and it talks about that. Hey, you know what?
Actually, it is still healthy for people to continue bonds with their loved ones even after they've passed, like, going and visiting their grave site, talking to them during the day.
We used to categorize that as complicated grief. And now people are like, well, let's take a look at this differently. There's a lot of people managing their grief differently. So it really depends on the person, how they define their lived experience.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Exactly. I think it's different for everybody, grief and how they manage it or handle it. Yeah, absolutely. So with you being a certified brain spotting consultant and trainer for those unfamiliar.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: What is brain spotting exactly? If you could. If you could explain it, and how does it differ from traditional talk therapy?
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Yes, it does, because we know that everyone that we come across has the capacity to heal. It's just a matter of the space needs to be held in a certain way. So an easy way of explaining brain spotting is where you look affects how you feel. And so if I think about, like, maybe I'll bring up a car accident again, like, say I had a car accident experience. And when I think about that, oh, I feel it in my chest.
Well, cherie, where do you feel it in your chest? Do you feel it over here more? No.
What about. Oh, yeah, over here. I'm really feeling it. My chest. Okay, well, what about over here? No, not as much. So we find the spot where we feel it the most in our body, and then we go inside ourselves and we see images or sensations. We have body sensations or we have thoughts. So we're reprocessing the memory, the trauma memory, and that's how we get access to it. So where you look affects how you feel, and that's how we help people get access to it inside themselves.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: So you've. You've worked with people from. From different walks of life, obviously. You were saying, all over the world, in the States. And so do you have a clientele in Canada, too?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah, mostly Right now I'm doing more because brain spotting can, is not only for trauma, but it's also for performance enhancement. So you want to expand something like achieve a goal. So I'm doing more of the coaching, the performance coaching now and the expansion pieces of stuff. But I did 20 years of psychotherapy, so it's been the last four years I've been doing performance coaching. And what I also do right now is I teach other healers, social workers, psychologists, you know how to do brain spotting. So I help them learn about trauma now.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Wow, that's incredible. Your schedule must be packed.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: Busy. I am a little busy, but I love it. I, I love it. I love making the impact and I love watching people heal. That's why I just love this stuff.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Speaking of that healing, can you, can you share a client's story without like breaking confidentiality? That, that highlights the power of, of brain spotting or trauma informed healing?
[00:13:40] Speaker B: There's so many. So let me see. I'll, I'll, I'll talk to you about trainings because that's where some amazing things happen too, because I do live demonstrations of this work during a training. And it's a three day training. Phase one, phase two of brain spotting. We teach people how to hold the space for their clients.
And so there's been so many beautiful healing moments in these, in these trainings. One person that's coming to mind right now is they had a son that was murdered and holding space in front of a group. I mean, this was a brave individual that really wanted to heal and had been over 10 years and she had rage, you know, towards the murderer and things like that. And it was affecting her ability to live right, to enjoy her life.
And so we, you know, we held space. And in fact, she felt her son come in who had passed 10 years and she was actually inside of herself having conversations with him, crying and talking to him inside while I was holding the space.
And then, you know, towards the, towards the end, felt very comforted and felt very loved by her son and felt relief. And so checking in with her later after, you know, many weeks after the training, she was like reporting. She felt like she had a new lease on life.
She felt like her son would want her to live, which she was not able. She was doing talk therapy and was not able to get there with the 10 years of talk therapy that, that she had done.
So when you see something like that, that's where it's like, oh my gosh, I got to, I got to share this with the world. I've got to let people know that this tool can really help them heal.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: And how is she doing now? Like, do you catch up with her every, every now and then?
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Because she was a member at the, at the training. Like I followed her about six weeks after the event happened and she was reporting that she had a new lease on life. So that was, that was the feedback afterwards and then got, you know, a lot of folks will leave testimonials because they've had healing experiences. Even though they're there to learn a training, they themselves have had healing experiences at these trainings and they'll, they'll leave testimonials about what it was like for them.
A woman just this week because she found out. I launched my book Sacred Knowing this week.
And as somebody, yeah, somebody that, you know, I wish I could remember everybody, you know, that I teach and train. But she's like, you might not remember me, but she Facebooked me, instant message. And, and she goes, I just want you to know. You may not even know, but you've made a huge impact on my life. I took your training many years ago and just want to say thank you. And I always remember you saying, love and light, dear soul. Love and light while you're holding space for people. And I use that all the time and it helps me stay grounded as a practitioner. And just thank you and I'm excited to read your book. So when you hear those things, then you know everything that you've done and the sacrifices that you've made to be able to do some of this work, some of the time is worth it, right?
[00:17:07] Speaker A: You also, you also mentor high performing individuals like you were saying.
And what would you find are some of the unique challenges that they face? And, and how can resilient practices help them sustain success without burning out, do you think?
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So a lot, what a lot of high performers, they, they tend to overbook themselves.
They also tend to, especially healers, they're scared of being seen, even though they have a desire to be seen. And they often run into imposter syndrome. So these are some of the things that, you know, that we work on. We use self spotting. There's, in the book brain spotting, there's a chapter on self spotting. So that they're connecting with their authentic self on a daily basis.
They align their choices and what they're doing based on their values and who they want to be as an authentic conscious person.
And if there's a goal that they, that they want to achieve, we work together to create the steps to take the Action to move towards the goal. And oftentimes there's blocks, right? Like one example would be, well, who do I think I am to desire this goal?
And they have like an inner critic that we need to respect and, and work with. And oftentimes they realize, oh my gosh, that belief came from cultural programming or that belief came from my family of origin or a really strict teacher that influenced me for a year. So they start to recognize where these old messages came from and realize that that's not serving them anymore. And they start to focus on, okay, what, you know, what is the new message that I want in the new narrative that I want inside that, you know, I'm a lovable, kind person and I deserve to thrive, for example, would be something that they would shift to. And then we work on that and we work aligning their life with that belief. Like, how can I make choices that are aligned with that belief?
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Now, is brain spotting sort of a management tool or can it cure, do you think, certain traumas or is it both?
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Well, I'm going to tell you, for me, it cured my ptsd. And I know for many other people their symptoms are gone. Now that doesn't mean it's that way for everyone. I don't want it to sound like a miracle panacea for everybody.
For some people, it significantly reduces, you know, their, their symptomology. And it really depends on how much trauma the person has experienced. How guarded are they, how open are they will determine the length of time that they need to be doing brain spotting. Right? Because if you're really guarded, it's going to take time to get past the guard so that they can open to the effects of brain spotting.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Brainstorming, you're also, you've integrated yourself into mindfulness from my understanding too, and a preacher of mindfulness, which I'm a big fan of as well, you integrate mindfulness with, with neuroscience. Can you give us a practical example of how this, this combination can help someone create some lasting change?
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. So this might sound woo woo to some of your, your listeners, but my, my colleague and I, Heather Corbett and I created the brain spotting, spirituality Intuition plus manifesting. And a lot of people think manifesting is really out there, right? But there's a lot of science behind manifesting. And so James Doty wrote the book Magic Mind and he talks about practices that you can do on a daily basis to open your mind to focus certain parts of your brain so that you are going after what it is that you want. So for example, vision boards, putting up vision boards and looking at the vision board. Now I had a brain spot with that.
So we anchor, we anchor in the vision board and we feel in our body what it's going to feel like to, to get that. What's on the vision board?
Visualization. Visualizing yourself having the day that you want, whatever it is that you, that you want to manifest. And so practicing on a brain spot every single day. Those are just two examples.
More and more people, their brain starts to focus them there and so they start to take action and see opportunities to get the things that they actually desire and manifest them in real life.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Wow, that is.
That is incredible. And, and makes me kind of think even on a. On another level, I don't know if you. If this is a weird question or not, but the intertwining of, let's say mindfulness and brain spotting, do those two correlate at all? Like if someone wanted to meditate, do a mindfulness meditation and include brain spotting. Is that a thing? Is that an actual thing?
[00:22:36] Speaker B: Well, what we call brain spotting is focused mindfulness.
That's what we call brain spotting. So.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: So you're trying to focus on a song. If you're listening to a song that relaxes you, you're focusing on the lyrics and you're trying to just stay there. You're trying to stay with the lyrics. If your mind trails away from that, come back to the moment.
And that's brain spotting as well.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: That's can be if you're working towards maybe expansion or trying to get a good relaxed feeling like what you're saying. But we use focused mindfulness to go after traumas. We can use focus mindfulness to go after intentions so that you can change habits and you can change how you're showing up in the world so you can be more authentic.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: So that's all that's possible.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: All that. Yeah. So you would say they do intertwine at times.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Absolutely, because it is a focused mindfulness process. So what we're doing is we're mindfully going inside and seeing what, where we go. And we believe that the brain and body naturally goes towards healing. It wants to heal, it wants to live to its highest potential.
So we just hold the space and focus it and then there they go and they start to heal right before your eyes.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: It's fantastic.
If someone today is listening out there, but they're, they're feeling stuck, let's say, in, in past trauma or, or daily stress, what is one simple exercise or tool they could start practicing like right now? Or yesterday.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Well, breath work is always helpful.
What I know about people that are, that are overwhelmed is a lot of them are very smart and they know what they can do to be helpful. But we get lost in our. Our feelings and we get lost in, in the, in the overwhelm. So I keep it really, really simple with my clients.
When I used to be doing psychotherapy, I'm like, let's. And I even do this with the high performers. Let's create a nourishing list.
What nourishes you? For some people, it's going to be a bath in the evening. For some people, it's going to be walking with their fur baby, right? Others, it's going to be being out in nature.
We, as a society and as humanity, we don't do things.
Some of us do, but there's a lot of us that don't even know what nourishes us, what feels good to us, or if we do, we don't do it enough. And so I really encourage people to have balance and to do so one thing, Go for a walk in nature. Feel your feet on the grass.
Feel what that feels like. And then, you know, the breathing is another exercise. The four, the box breathing, where you breathe in for four, you hold it for four, exhale for four, hold again, and then you can go back around.
That automatically shifts. It's a nervous system hack that can help your parasympathetic nervous system come online. So those are simple things that you can do for sure.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: So what, what do you think is the, the biggest misconception that, that people have about trauma healing or therapy in general? And how do you address that in your work?
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the biggest misconception is, oh, you know, I'll go to therapy six times and I need to be cured.
I. I say to people, okay, you're 45 years old and you've had this habit and pattern inside of you for 45 years. Can you. Can you give me, you know, six months, you know, to support you in your, in your healing? Because it takes time. It takes time to get to know yourself, who you really are, because there's so many layers of programming and misconceptions of who you are that it takes, it takes time to heal. The other thing I would say is people want to heal, but they don't realize, okay, there's maintenance that needs to come with that.
So, you know, building an internal muscle inside, just like you would at the gym, right?
Building it inside your brain, too. What are you listening to? What are you Digesting inside.
Is it aligned with health? Is it aligned with love? Is it aligned with the direction you want to go or not? And if it's not, that's probably one of the reasons why you're. You're struggling.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: Yeah. So you've spent all these years helping others transform, which is very deep, purposeful work, and I commend you for it. What. What's one lesson from your own healing or coaching journey that continues to guide you today?
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yeah, Well, I put it out, my whole story, and it's very vulnerable, and it's a little scary, to be honest with you, in the the Sacred Knowing book, because I wanted people to know I've been through trauma, so I understand.
And if I can do it, you can do it. Like, I want to be a voice for hope, and we need hope right now, and I'm all about jumping on the hope bandwagon. So I'm involved in many, many hopeful projects because, you know, that's what I want, that my legacy to be is to bring out hope, to let people know you can do your own personal work that can help you heal and get to the life that you want, but you've got to take action. Nobody is coming to save you but you.
Right. But folks like myself and other coaches and other healers can hold space so that you don't have to do the work alone.
And, you know, that's what I've learned. I've had many mentors, I've had many people hold space for me, and now I'm trying to pay that forward.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Right. It's, you know, commending work that you do. I'm very intrigued. Now, if our listeners could take away one thing from this conversation, what would you want it to be? And. And where can people connect with you or learn more about your work?
[00:29:05] Speaker B: One thing I'd like you all to know is that you are more powerful than you realize, that your brain and your body are amazing, and they know exactly how to heal. You just have to find an attuned practitioner that can hold the space so that you can go inside and do your own work. So that's one takeaway.
If they want to get a hold of me, I'm all over the place. So I am on TikTok. I'm on YouTube.
I'm on Facebook. Cherielenburg.com is my website.
I also help other providers that teach and train get ces. So I also own Elevated Life Academy, where we have free trainings, we have free webinars, because I did not want access to be an issue for folks. And so that's why I created this other wing or another business, basically. So those are the places that I'm at.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: And on social media, like for example, Instagram, would it be like at Sherry Lindbergh?
[00:30:12] Speaker B: I think it's really Lindbergh Coaching is what I think is my Instagram. Yes.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Similar on Facebook.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Yep. Coaching and consulting. Yep. I can send you the links, Rob, too, if you'd like them. I can send them to you.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Amazing. Yeah, that'd be great to spread those around and, and tag you on Instagram for some of this content. And listen, Dr. Sherry Lindbergh, I really appreciate your insight today. I've learned a lot. I hope our listeners have. And thank you for the rewarding work that you, that you provide daily. Really, really appreciate it.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Thank you so much. And thank you for what you're doing, too. Like you're trying to help the world become aware. What, what you know, we're on a similar path, Rob, so thank you so much.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Aware, aware and care, as I like to say, not aware and not care. So that's the, the message I like to, to spread. And thank you again, Sherry, and we'll certainly be in touch. This has been awareness episode number 25, fostering a more compassionate, empathetic and accepting society. Thank you so much for being here. Don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts that mean a lot wherever you listen for producer Mike, the great producer Mike. My name is Rob Daniels and we look forward to catching you in the next episode.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: Sam.
