Christy Goldstandt

Licensed Professional Counselor, MS, LPC

Individual counseling that utilizes an integrative and holistic approach, by working in the present moment. I believe nurturing counseling relationships are built together.

Specialized Experience

Comprehensive Resourcing Model & Brain Spotting are focused treatment methods that work by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma & dissociation. Hakomi Method is a mindful approach to integrate the mind with the body by learning how to connect with self from an experiential & present place.

Spirituality & Health

Brainspotting and Other Therapeutic Approaches

Author: Becky Garrison

Utilizing “brainspots” and resource-eye positions, a therapist helps clients navigate thoughts and emotions that have kept them stuck. “Thinking becomes knowing.”

Psychotherapist and trauma expert David Grand developed a therapeutic technique called “Brainspotting,” describing it as “a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing, and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation, and a variety of other challenging symptoms.” Brainspotting therapy essentially locates points in a person’s visual field in order to help them access unprocessed trauma in the brain.

Christy Goldstandt, is a licensed therapist who employs Brainspotting along with other experiential and somatic therapeutic approaches, including the Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM) and a mindfulness approach called Hakomi. “I teach people how to pause, notice, and breathe, so they can identify and connect with what they’re feeling in their present moment.”

Brainspotting Therapy vs. EMDR

Similar to Brainspotting, CRM accesses the left and right hemispheres of the brain. While EMDR  (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing) involves tapping from left to right or the use of sound to activate the brain, Brainspotting uses so-called brainspots, while CRM uses resource-eye positions. The intention with all these approaches is to identify and desensitize the cognitive and somatic (meaning of, related to, or affecting the body) triggers that hold people back from thriving in their lives. Here Goldstandt teaches her clients somatic resources that can help them connect their body with a focus on how to get calm and centered via breathwork. In this grounded space, they can see and know their life experiences differently.

She finds most people are really insightful, aware, resilient, and smart. At the same time, they feel incredibly stuck. The somatic work or the integration of the body within the therapeutic approach allows them to negotiate that conflict from a different perspective. “Somatic work is like doing an archeological dig and going into a portal of yourself,” Goldstandt observes.

Therapist’s Role

In her capacity as a therapist, she feels it’s not her job to tell anyone what they should do. Rather she helps the client to identify what they need and then helps guide them in the process towards their goals. When Goldstandt first starts working with a client, she builds a relationship with them before diving into a somatic session. Here, talk therapy can be beneficial to establish a connection, build attachments, and provide validation.

Next Goldstandt teaches mindfulness. As she guides clients, she finds the session turns into a guided visual meditation. She meets her clients where they are and encourages them to learn how to become the observer of their thinking, breath, and bodily sensations, encouraging acceptance of the present moment. The intention for that session is to help them connect with their breathing and to notice things in their environment. The breath becomes a place for the mind to focus when it wanders, along with an anchor for the body.

Goldstandt also teaches her clients how to live in gratitude by helping them feel this sensation in their bodies. “We can’t be in gratitude all the time. But at any moment we can choose to move into a moment of gratitude.” Being in gratitude, she contends, changes one’s mental and physical state, and helps us feel happier and more connected to even seemingly simple things like a pet, an exercise bike, or an awesome cup of coffee.

Tuning in to Brainspots

According to Goldstandt, stepping into the work from a somatic perspective allows her clients to notice their minds from an “internally tuned-in state.”

Here she gives her clients space to explore what they’re feeling while serving as a guide when they encounter uncomfortable sensations. This safe therapeutic space gives them the expansiveness to explore and move out of their darkness. “Utilizing brainspots and resource-eye positions helps clients move through and discharge thoughts and emotions that have kept them stuck, so they can be free,” Goldstandt says.

After they meet and work through the darkest parts of themselves, they feel reconnected with themselves and the world. In this awakened state, they can experience compassion towards themselves and others. “They have remembered who they really are, and thinking becomes knowing.”

 

 

Treatment Approaches

Bodhi

Therapy Dog

Acceptance and Commitment (ACT)

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a type of psychotherapy that helps you accept the difficulties that come with life. ACT is a form of mindfulness based therapy, theorizing that greater well-being can be attained by overcoming negative thoughts and feelings. Essentially, ACT looks at your character traits and behaviors to assist you in reducing avoidant coping styles. ACT also addresses your commitment to making changes, and what to do about it when you can’t stick to your goals..

Attachment-based

Attachment-based therapy is form of therapy that applies to interventions or approaches based on attachment theory, which explains how the relationship a parent has with its child influences development.

Brainspotting

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Coaching

Life coaching is an increasingly popular profession that has no specific licensing or academic requirements. Though psychologists also often consider themselves life coaches, these therapists don’t focus on treating mental illness. Instead, they help individuals realize their goals in work and in life. An executive coach, for example, may be enlisted to help a chief executive become a better manager, while a “love” coach may map out a plan to help a client find romantic fulfillment.

Comprehensive Resourcing Model

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Dialectical (DBT)

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is the treatment most closely associated with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Therapists practice DBT in both individual and group sessions. The therapy combines elements of CBT to help with regulating emotion through distress tolerance and mindfulness. The goal of Dialectical Behavior Therapy is to alleviate the intense emotional pain associated with BPD.

Existential

Existential psychotherapy is based on the philosophical belief that human beings are alone in the world, and that this aloneness can only be overcome by creating one’s own meaning, and exercising one’s freedom to choose. The existential therapist encourages clients to face life’s anxieties head on and to start making their own decisions. The therapist will emphasize that, along with having the freedom to carve out meaning, comes the need to take full responsibility for the consequences of one’s decisions. Therapy sessions focus on the client’s present and future rather than their past.

Experiential Therapy

Experiential therapy is a therapeutic technique that uses expressive tools and activities, such as role-playing or acting, props, arts and crafts, music, animal care, guided imagery, or various forms of recreation to re-enact and re-experience emotional situations from past and recent relationships. The client focuses on the activities and, through the experience, begins to identify emotions associated with success, disappointment, responsibility, and self-esteem. Under the guidance of a trained experiential therapist, the client can begin to release and explore negative feelings of anger, hurt, or shame as they relate to past experiences that may have been blocked or still linger.

Hakomi

Hakomi

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an approach to psychotherapy that identifies and addresses multiple sub-personalities or families within each person’s mental system. These sub-personalities consist of wounded parts and painful emotions such as anger and shame, and parts that try to control and protect the person from the pain of the wounded parts. The sub-personalities are often in conflict with each other and with one’s core Self, a concept that describes the confident, compassionate, whole person that is at the core of every individual. IFS focuses on healing the wounded parts and restoring mental balance and harmony by changing the dynamics that create discord among the sub-personalities and the Self.

Mindfulness-Based (MBCT)

For clients with chronic pain, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, and other health issues such as anxiety and depression, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, or MBCT, is a two-part therapy that aims to reduce stress, manage pain, and embrace the freedom to respond to situations by choice. MCBT blends two disciplines–cognitive therapy and mindfulness. Mindfulness helps by reflecting on moments and thoughts without passing judgment. MBCT clients pay close attention to their feelings to reach an objective mindset, thus viewing and combating life’s unpleasant occurrences.

Person-Centered

Person-centered therapy uses a non-authoritative approach that allows clients to take more of a lead in discussions so that, in the process, they will discover their own solutions. The therapist acts as a compassionate facilitator, listening without judgment and acknowledging the client’s experience without moving the conversation in another direction. The therapist is there to encourage and support the client and to guide the therapeutic process without interrupting or interfering with the client’s process of self-discovery.

Psychodynamic

Psychodynamic therapy, also known as insight-oriented therapy, evolved from Freudian psychoanalysis. Like adherents of psychoanalysis, psychodynamic therapists believe that bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness promotes insight and resolves conflict. But psychodynamic therapy is briefer and less intensive than psychoanalysis and also focuses on the relationship between the therapist and the client, as a way to learn about how the client relates to everyone in their life.

Somatic

Somatic (from the Greek word ‘somat’, meaning body) psychotherapy bridges the mind-body dichotomy recognizing that emotion, behavior, sensation, impulse, energy, action, gesture, meaning and language all originate in physical experiences. Thinking is not an abstract function but motivates, or is motivated by, physical expression and action. A somatic approach to trauma treatment can be effective by examining how past traumatic experiences cause physical symptoms (e.g. bodily anesthesia or motor inhibitions) which in turn affect emotion regulation, cognition and daily functioning.

Strength-Based

Strength-based therapy is a type of positive psychotherapy and counseling that focuses more on your internal strengths and resourcefulness, and less on weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings. This focus sets up a positive mindset that helps you build on you best qualities, find your strengths, improve resilience and change worldview to one that is more positive. A positive attitude, in turn, can help your expectations of yourself and others become more reasonable.

I Have Experience With…

  • Anger Management
  • Anxiety
  • Career Counseling
  • Codependency
  • Depression
  • Divorce
  • Emotional Disturbance
  • Family Conflict
  • Grief
  • Life Coaching
  • Mood Disorders
  • Peer Relationships
  • Relationship Issues
  • Self Esteem
  • Spirituality
  • Stress
  • Trauma and PTSD
  • Weight Loss
  • Woman’s Issues

My Approach & Philosophy

 

Individual adult therapy that utilizes an integrative & holistic approach, by working in the present moment. My intention is to offer a nurturing & compassionate place to share & grow, while exploring what you need. In session, I will help you consciously wire in cognitive thought patterns that correlate with somatic (body) states, that connect you with your strengths. I teach experiential, mindful practices that cultivate insights & awareness that will help you notice, pause, & breathe. When we remember to tune into practices that build & support resilience, it is easier to maintain a healthier well-being.

Get In Touch

Call

(503) 444-9720

Service Area

Hillsboro OR 97124

Hours

Tue- Fri: 1:30pm - 8:30pm