In case you did not know, I am not a full-time blogger and most of my time is actually spent working as the Marketing Director for a cool tech start-up in the HR space. More specifically, we help employers assess their people so they can get a deeper understanding of what makes them tick and how they can best develop them. We do this through a science we call behaviourmetry® (non-verbal behaviour) and through elaborate psychometric assessments.
So while I work largely with tech gurus and a sales team, I also get access to hard core psychologists, which makes for very interesting office conversations! Jola Vorfi is one them. Jola is a Managing Consultant, as well as an accredited executive coach with a Master’s degree in organisational and clinical psychology. Last year, she also got accredited as a BWRT® therapist. BWRT® stands for BrainWorking Recursive Therapy and it is an innovative form of therapy based on the latest research in neuroscience that works with the non-conscious brain. I had never heard of this, but the success rates that people are seeing for the cessation of bad habits, anxiety, depression, low-self-esteem, etc are off the charts. So, this week, I decided to pick her brain and find out more and now, I definitely want to try it….
WM: What is BWRT®? How does it work and what is the science behind it?
JV: It is a new model of psychology and psychopathology that fits with current thinking on neuroscience. It is very solution-focused and evidence-based, thus fulfills the requirements of modern therapies. It was invented by Terence Watts, who got particularly interested by an experiment done by Benjamin Libet in 1983. Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment where he concluded that a human’s brain shows signs of being about to produce muscle motion about 0.4 seconds before they report being aware of having made a decision to move their muscles. So, although it feels as we make a conscious decision to do something, the pathways and the neurones that lead to that decision have been active before our awareness. The reason why this is relevant for BWRT® is because this “cognitive gap” that Libet discovered could be due to the time that input data takes to go through old pathways, similar to what our primitive (reptilian) brain used to do without us being conscious. With BWRT®, the idea is to input a preferred response in this half a second gap before the brain finds old preferred pathways of response. So it seems that in reality we don’t have a “free will”.
For example when someone throws a ball in your direction, you will automatically try to catch it and you don’t even think about it. This is so automatic that it would be really difficult not to do it. When we suffer from something like for example social anxiety, it works almost in the same way. Something’s happening that makes us do something that we’d rather not, or that stops us doing something we’d like to. This is because of the speed of the nerve paths in the brain and they work much much faster than we can consciously think. That’s how instincts and reflexes work: the reptilian complex – responsible for the most basic survival functions, such as heart rate, breathing, body temperature, etc – works out in a split second what action to take and starts it off. It doesn’t matter what we consciously want because by the time we actually start to think about that, the speedy part of the brain has already made its mind up and the brain is doing something that it has somehow learnt fits with whatever’s going on.
To recap, BWRT® works with the reptilian brain to rewire what it does automatically. It makes changes in this primitive part of the brain and reconditions the automatic response that happens in that half second gap to instead become a preferred response. It is almost content free, meaning we don’t try to get to the cause of the issue. All the client needs to know is how they feel and how they would like to feel instead. BWRT® is much more efficient than many other therapies because instead of trying to find the chronological time of when the issue started – which could take weeks, months or years without a clear result – it focuses on the worst memory that the client has (reactive rather than active state for the client) and freezes it to replace it with a preferred response.
WM: How did you get interested it?
JV: I studied Clinical Psychology as my Bachelor’s degree in university and was really passionate about it. However at the time, I felt too young to pursue my studies in it and instead, opted to do my Masters in Organisational Psychology. For some reason, I knew deep down that one day I’d want to come back and do a Clinical Psychology specialisation; and sure enough I did. Many years later, just around my 30th birthday, I was asking myself a lot of existential questions like what my purpose on this earth was and how I could continue helping people. Having had family members who suffered from psychological issues, I had seen the stigma associated with it and how there were no clear solution-focused approaches to therapy. It seemed like anyone who had “issues” had to go through a cycle of years and years of therapy with no sure or clear outcomes. By nature, I am very solution-oriented so I felt like there had to be alternative approaches out there to treat phobias, depression, anxiety and other such problems. One day, I came across a psychologist profile on linkedIN who was a BWRT® therapist and got curious. So I began doing some research and was really fascinated by the explanations. My cousin, who is a therapist in Albania happened to have also just started a training in BWRT®. It was such a coincidence, as if everything was aligned for me to discover this new therapy. I am so grateful that I did because it has changed my view on life 100%.
WM: How does it differ from hypnosis, behavioural therapy or other healing techniques?
JV: BWRT®. is completely different from any other therapy out there. It is so unique that even highly experienced therapists who have utilised different approaches will be surprised the first time by how different this is. It does not use hypnosis and the patient is totally conscious during the session. Even if other therapies have never worked for a patient, BWRT®. can perfectly work in just a few sessions. It is completely logical, practical and down-to-earth and can be surprisingly magical to clients that might have tried many different other approaches without success. We don’t need to discharge fear, anger, guilt or any other form of arousal because we re-route the neural pathways that would have found it and it is no longer engendered or encountered. The main difference is that with BWRT® , we don’t need to go into the details of things that might be difficult to talk about or to find the “why” of the issue. Although bringing awareness to reason of why we feel what we feel might help with solving it, a lot of the times this process takes ages and might ultimately not end in the patient knowing how to react differently. For example, I had a patient who was extremely scared of birds. It might sound to a lot of people like something small but to her this was terrifying because she couldn’t watch birds even on television without screaming. It impacted her travel decision, her way of living life etc because let’s face it there are birds everywhere. She had been to so many psychologists who had been trying to always find the “why” but the issue is, she knew why she was scared. She had had a tramautising experience when she was 3 years old and since then had developed a phobia towards all birds. The more she would think about the why, the more she would actually be scared. All she wanted to know is how not to be scared. How to replace her fear with calmness. And that’s why BWRT® was extremely effective. It had taken her 25 years of therapies after therapies to finally do ONE session with me and she messaged me the next day to say: “Jola I am in the park in the middle of birds and I actually find them pretty!” This was unbelievable for her, almost magical. And that’s why BWRT® feels like it because it’s such a natural and quick change that it feels magical.
WM: What happens in a session? Does it need to be in person or can it be done online?
JV: The sessions can happen face to face or online. I work mostly with adults but can also work with teenagers and younger children. Kids are actually extremely receptive to it. It’s one of the few therapies that can be done online and be extremely effective. During the first session, we spend some time understanding the issue and asking some generic questions in order to understand if the issue that you are coming for is actually what you want to treat. Sometimes people will think their problem is one thing, and in reality it’s something completely different. For example, you could think that you are scared of flying and we try to solve the fear of flying but in reality, you are not scared of flying but you are scared of being around people in a closed environment or you feel anxious about the hygienic aspects of the flight. After we have clarified the issue and any things that could come in the way of the therapy being successful, we get into the therapy process. The actual therapy can be effective in 1 or 2 sessions. We start by ‘freezing’ the troubling thoughts then we employ a technique called ‘Recursive Looping’ to condition the way the brain responds to triggers. BWRT® is the first and only therapy known to work exactly in this manner, making it one of the fastest and most effective therapies around. The patient won’t have to tell their story or share any “secrets” that they might have. The therapist will work on those secrets but without any content if needed. Of course, if the patient wants to share, he/she is more than welcome to but it’s not necessary in the session. All the therapist needs to know is : how are you feeling and how would you like to feel instead. Example: I feel anxious when I have to speak in public and I would like to feel happy and relaxed.
WM: What are some of the issues that commonly get resolved with it?
JV: Pretty much anything but some issues might require a level 2 practitioner or level 3 of BWRT® while others just require level 1 training. Here is a list of things we can treat but it is not exhaustive:
- Anxiety and stress
- Fears and phobias, no matter how long you’ve had them
- Public speaking
- Social anxiety
- Weddings, graduations or other ‘public’ events
- Low self-worth
- Generalised Anxiety Disorder
- PTSD
- Addictions, dependencies and obsessions
- Depression
- Physical Illness – the psychological aspects of many physical conditions. So, while BWRT® therapist are not a medical organisation and do not work directly with physical illnesses, practitioners can provide help to minimise the anxiety and distress that is so often a part of serious physical illness.
WM: Do you need to believe in it in order for it to work?
JV: I wouldn’t say that you need to believe in it for it to work. A lot of people who come to BWRT® therapy are convinced there is no way they will find a solution to their problems that they have been living with for many years. For example, I did a session with a patient that had been fearing public speaking all her life. It is hard for her to believe that this therapy would work as fear of public speaking has become part of who she is and her personality. So believing in the therapy is not a must for it to work. Like any other therapy, it cannot work for 100% of the people but it works for over 95% of them. What is possible however is that some people might be in therapy because someone else told them to. But they don’t want to do anything about their issues. It is important that the patient is focused during the session and the therapist will do their best to gain that focus. However, if someone is clearly not keen on solving the problem and is not putting the effort to focus on it, nothing will work!
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