Ah-ha and BrainSpotting

I have written before about the value of the ah-ha experience. The spontaneous insight that is gold to the therapeutic process.

The ah-ha is more than insight. Sit and contemplate long enough and you will likely get some insight. Sit and talk with a skilled professional and you will likely get greater insight than you could alone.

​The ah-ha is a significant insight that shifts reality in a profound way. Once you have had a true ah-ha, you can never go back to the old way of thinking or being.

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Ah-ha's are individually driven or therapist assisted.

Therapist assisted insight usually occurs when the therapist has insight about a persons issue. They may present it immediately or sit on the insight until the right time, perhaps confirming or refuting along the way and then presenting it when the person is receptive. The combination of timing, receptivity and, of course, accuracy can create a profound shift in the individual. However, this shift cannot happen with out the individual being open, unguarded and trusting of the therapists interpretation. If poorly timed, off the mark or simply inaccurate then there is no moment.

Within the ah-ha moment a connection is made between previously disconnected internal information in a way that synthesises a new understanding relevant to the problem of concern. Once you've ah-ha'd, you can never go back to the old way of thinking or being.

Individual driven insight is preferred.

Individuals can have their own ah-ha's but I have found this is most often in relationship to another. You know the phenomena. You have a problem you are considering, you speak to someone (sometimes not even about the issue) they say something and then it hits you. You see the connection between what they say and what you are considering. Solutions are ah-ha's also. Good therapists who are patient, knowledgeable and insightful themselves can gently guide their clients toward insight and ideally ah-ha's. 

But it has to really hit the person in a way that almost makes them proclaim AH-HA! 


The most meaningful moments are when someone stumbles across this moment on their own, The ah-ha happens the clients head, it means nothing if it doesn't connect up two otherwise disparate pathways in the mind. And this is a neurological event.  Like a goat taking a different track and all the other goats following it thus forming a new goat-track path, the neurological network is changed forever when an ah=ha occurs because the action creates new connections between previously related yet disconnected pathways of information or experience.


Imagine if this could happen, over and over, in a single session. 
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BrainSpotting can be a stream of ah-ha's

What I have observed in some (not all) brainSpotting sessions is the individual has a series of insights, some known, some new and some big enough to make them really go - "AH-HA"! That's why I do x.y.z..."

This individually driven series of insights is therapeutic gold. Sometimes its just one big ah-ha, sometimes its a series of little ones, but the ah-ha events are spontaneous, timely, relevant to the issue of concern and often connecting information that a therapist could spend months even identifying as relevant. 
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