Stephen Berkley interviews Brainspotting Trainer Mariya Javed-Payne about how our relevant "brain spots" operate as a portal to unseen dimensions. Mariya shares her deeply personal journey of growing up as a highly sensitive being, navigating trauma, and discovering her innate ability to connect with other realms. As the owner of Awaken Consulting Services, Mariya brings her expertise to light, offering transformative insights into the mechanics of brainspotting. She describes it as an integrative process that harnesses the brain’s orienting reflex to access and process unresolved emotional material. Join this transformative journey and unlock the hidden realms within you.
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Listen to the podcast here
"Brainspotting Can Help You CONNECT With Departed Loved Ones!" With Mariya Javed-Payne
Includes A 12-Minute Exploration Of your Brain To Find Your Brain Spots
Introduction
Our guest is Mariya Javed-Payne. First, a couple of housekeeping issues. I like calling it housekeeping issues. We are doing two episodes a month now. There's one on the first Monday of the month and one prerecorded episode, and we have no schedule for that. I interview somebody without a live audience and we drop it into the YouTube channel. If anybody has not joined the YouTube channel yet, do that so you can see episodes that are not advertised.
The next episode will be on the first Monday of July 1st when our guest will be world-renowned mystic and metaphysical teacher Suzanne Giesemann. The Zoom room holds up to 500 people. We have not needed to buy a bigger Zoom license yet, but if anyone is going to challenge the limits of the Zoom room, it's going to be Suzanne Giesemann.
Also, we now have a Life With Ghosts Community Facebook Group, which is very exciting where we'll be posting these episodes and we'll be sending out an email to make it easy for everyone to join there. Facebook is a forum that's more conducive for having dialogue so it made sense for us to try to migrate a lot of those YouTube conversations over to a Facebook group. That's starting now.
When I was listening to this show while I was editing, I realized that I am better when I'm not rushing to get to my next question. I'm going to try to be in the moment and not rush, because if there were ever a guest that would allow the kind of space for me to be chill, it's this one. Mariya Javed-Payne is a licensed independent clinical social worker, licensed alcohol and drug counselor, and a certified brainspotting trainer and consultant.
She owns Awaken Consulting Services where she offers brainspotting, energy healing, and shamanic work. She's trained physicians in brainspotting and blends a variety of healing modalities when working with clients to get to the core of their suffering. But I invited Mariya here tonight to talk specifically about brainspotting.
Mariya will explain more and help us all find our brainspots but simply put, brainspotting asserts that whether our eyelids are open or shut, the position of our eyes correlates with particular spots in our brains where information, memories, and emotional experiences, both joyful and traumatic, are stored or encoded. For example, Gary, what did you have for breakfast this morning?
A bowl of cereal.
Did you notice what happened just there?
I paused.
Did everybody notice that when Gary thought about what he had for breakfast this morning, he looked up and to the right? Did you see that Mariya?
I did.
There's a reason for that. When we look into the air like that, we are accessing the mental file that's been stored away. The idea behind brainspotting is that if we can achieve the relevant eye position and fixate there, we can access information that lives in our subconscious, which many believe operates as a portal to unseen dimensions of consciousness. Welcome to the show, Mariya.
Thank you for having me.
You're welcome. It's good to see you.
You as well.
Working With Non-Physical Beings
I've learned from talking to you that you've been working with non-physical beings since childhood. Tell me more about that. What's that about?
I was born as a very sensitive being. I was highly aware of people around me, people's emotions, and even beyond that. Also, other beings from other places or realms. From a very young age, I've had the ability to be that perceptive, and growing up with a lot of trauma in my life and having hypervigilance contributed to some of that opening inside of me to be that aware.
Learning to cultivate it, build a relationship with that side of myself over the years, and feel a lot more comfortable is not always the easiest thing to deal with and learn. There's a lot to learn. It's endless about how to work with the different realms and help people who have crossed over and might still need help, etc.
Are you saying that as a child, you're helping people cross over?
I think the first time was probably in my late 10s or early 20s when I actually knew what to do but before I would just be aware of like, “Somebody is here.”
How did they get your attention?
It was clear as day. I'd be at the grocery store and see a person who was there, but my parents didn't see them. That was interesting being told, “You're making stuff up,” or “You have an imaginary friend,” etc.
Were these beings translucent? How did you tell that they were not of this earth?
To me, they show up like a hologram. They are translucent and I can see them when my eyes open or closed looking like a spirit form.
Did they notice that you were noticing them?
This turned big time for me at around the age of nineteen. I think at a young age, I had a perception that these things were there, but I don't think I was communicating. I would have very strange dreams and things like that but I remember in my very early 20s or maybe age 19, part of how I ended up getting sober was having a spiritual experience.
Having done a lot of drugs and being under the influence for 8 or 9 years significantly every day, the day that I stopped using, I heard a voice and I'd been to rehab eight times and hadn't quit doing drugs. The day that I stopped, I was trying to end my life and had used tons and tons for several days. I ended up waking up in the morning and was angry that I was still here.
I heard a voice and I saw being in the corner of the room with arms folded leaning back. I now know this was one of my guides, “You're not going to die this way so you might as well figure out how to live.” It was nonchalant and I was sick of my shit at this point. Ironically, for whatever reason, that was the day that I stopped. That was May 23rd, 2010.
That must have been both exhilarating and a little bit annoying.
I was pissed, to put it mildly, but finally acquiesced because nothing else was working.
This incident where you almost took your own life and you saw your guide, did your ability to connect enhance from that day forward? Is that what happened?
Yeah, it was. I haven't been able to shut it off since then. I became curious and much more interested in my sobriety and my recovery to learn. After doing a lot of stuff with treatments, AA, and a lot of other resources, therapy, etc. was the spiritual path that helped me get sober and stay clean. It was interesting and intriguing, and it was right there. It's not something that I could ignore.
A lot of what I dealt with in those early years was a lot of dark stuff because I was involved in a lot of dark places. Learning how to clean that out, how to work with that, set boundaries, communicate with who I wanted to, and say no to things that I didn't want to have enter my space. I learned early on how to do that, which then when I went into my therapy career. Interestingly, you attract who you are.
I would be seeing people for therapy and they're like, “What do you think about spirituality?” A lot of the work I've done has been through that shamanic perspective or energy work to support people in healing from their pain, grief, sorrows, and trauma. Every time I learn something new, I try to take it forward and help people with it.
Brainspotting
I'm going to ask you a little bit more about brainspotting. You mentioned your addiction. You and I had a couple of pre-interviews where you told me all about that. I very much appreciate that. I don't want anyone to think that I'm insensitive and not asking you about that right now, only because I want to make sure we have enough time to talk about brainspotting. It sounds like brainspotting and the other shamanic work you were doing or the other modalities you were testing and learning, in addition to being a career, it seems like it's a lifesaver for you. Is that right?
Yeah. I was seven years sober when I found brainspotting. I had a session. My friend had told me about brainspotting, and she was seeing a brainspotting therapist. I decided to see the same person. I signed up. I made an appointment. I walked out of that 60-minute session and was like, “I just did six months of therapy in an hour. Where was this all of this time when I was in and out of institutions?” I was in therapy since I was thirteen doing talk therapy and wasn't getting me anywhere. I was instantly like, “This is it.”
I knew it and I still have my own brainspotting sessions on a regular basis but I did three years every week. It put me back together with my PTSD and developmental trauma because I've stayed clean for seven years, but the underbelly of a lot of the traumatic experiences in my life takes time to work through. That process accelerated my healing and put my brain back together. I was afraid to go outside, go for walks, talk to people, and have friendships. That all gets pretty damaged, you’re used, and childhood trauma. Yes, brainspotting and shamanic work in conjunction put my nervous system back together in a way that nothing has.
Let's go a little bit deeper now. I mentioned what it is basically in the introduction. When I'm trying to recall something, I often look up to the left. That is me trying to access either that memory or that emotion or something. I always wondered. What am I doing when I'm looking away? That's what I'm doing. I'm accessing it. Tell me more about that. Tell me exactly what brainspotting is and how its philosophy diverges from other modalities.
In its simplest description, brainspotting has harnessed the orienting reflex. You were sharing that when you're thinking of something, you look over to the left. It's likely that it's not always to the left. Going back to what is brainspotting, in simplicity, it's the orienting reflex that we've harnessed to take it forward into a healing process or modality. I'm going to talk more about what that is.
Orienting, we're doing it all the time. Our brain and bodies are orienting utilizing the senses that we have, our five senses and perhaps more than five senses to orient to information that's in the world around us, but also information that's inside of us. There isn't necessarily a way to separate the outside and inside world. It's all connected.
If I'm looking at my green plant right over here, I'm like, “That's a beautiful plant. I like it. It makes me feel nice inside.” If I'm looking at it, I'm taking in this visual information, and I'm also having an internal experience as I receive that visual information. Our brain uses our eyes to orient to information more than any other sense. It's the strongest sense that we have. The brain devotes probably about 60% of resources to some form of visual processing.
If we think about our eyes, it is connected to our midbrain. The center part of our brain underneath our cerebral cortex is the newest part of our brain where we problem-solve, and have critical thinking, judgment, math planning, and sequencing. That's more cortical processing, but midbrain processing sits underneath that cortex and our optic nerve goes directly into it.
Why is the midbrain important? The midbrain holds our amygdala, our emotional responses, and our memories in the hippocampus. It's connected to our motor reflexes and our motor coordination. Our eyes are used to scan our world. They play a huge role in letting us know about safety and threats. If you're crossing the street and a car whizzes by, your eyes are going to see that. That information is going to go directly through the optic nerve into the midbrain, and you're going to have a motor response to that to either maybe pull back or pull away so that you will not get hit by the car.
These are reflexes. Reflexes are usually outside of conscious awareness. Gary and Stephen when you were talking and thinking of breakfast, you weren't probably aware that you looked up to the left but you did notice that you paused. Subcortical reflexes are access points that are connected to the memories or information that we're trying to access, let's say in a trauma processing modality that brainspotting helps us work with.
Without getting too heady about it, maybe I'll say the first part is accessing what's called a brainspot. A brainspot is hypothesized to be an area of relevance. It's an area of activation that's connected to somatic activation. As you're locating that activation in your body, let's say you're feeling anxious, your hands are sweaty, and your heart's beating a little fast, we're going to be looking for a spot and visual field where you feel, “It's more intense when I stop over here.” It’s that sense of access or resonance when the midbrain goes, “There's something that feels more stimulating in this one spot compared to a different spot.”
If we had a PET scan and we were looking at the brain, we'd be showing those areas of the brain lit up as your eyes are looking in a certain spot, and as you're aware of certain activation in the body or memory, you don't always have to feel things in your body. Some people don't feel things in their body. As long as they have awareness of how it's true or real for them and their reality, we can usually locate a brainspot for it.
A brainspot is a neural network of somatic activation that we're pinpointing. Once we do that, “Why is that important?” We find a brainspot. The second thing we do is create a container for processing that information. As we keep our eyes on that spot, we go into the brain's self-scanning capacity. If you think of your autonomic nervous system, you are being scanned by your brain all day every day all night long.
It's checking for your blood pressure, your heart rate, and insulin when you eat food. If you go for a run, your heart rate is going to increase. If you stop and rest, it's going to decrease. Your body is seeking homeostasis all the time. You're either in homeostasis or you're seeking it. What we're doing in brainspotting is when we tell the brain, “Here's that file, that thing from twenty years ago that we disconnected from because we didn't have the resources at the time,” because that's how trauma works.
Something happened too much, too soon, too fast, not enough and we didn't have the tools then. We didn't have the support. It wasn't socially acceptable to grieve whatever it was that was happening. The brain will disconnect from me. It'll say, “We got to put a little capsule around this, tuck it away, and dissociate. Pretend like this didn't happen and we'll pull this out someday and deal with it when we can.”
The trouble with that is that when the brain has to do that, we lose a part of ourselves or the symptoms show up somewhere in the body. It’s showing up as anxiety, depression, ADHD, or PTSD symptoms. When we give the brain a chance to find that brainspot and be like, “There's that thing from twenty years ago that we didn't deal with, and here are all the neural networks that it's connected to. Here's this person in front of me who's attuning.”
That's a crucial part of brainspotting and how I would say it's different from other modalities. I saw the question here about how is it different than EMDR. I'll touch on that but our job in brainspotting is to offer a container that is deeply both relationally attuned, but also neurobiologically attuned. We're tracking what's happening in the client's nervous system at all times.
Are they in a fight? Are they on a flight? Are they in freeze? Are they in collapse? We are unconditionally in a place of acceptance, and we're letting the client's neurobiology lead the process. It's very organic and natural. Clients heal quickly. Think when you're trying to do talk therapy. You're like throwing darts. You're trying to get at the midbrain where all of the emotional responses live, and talking has very little to do with emotional regulation.
In brainspotting, we don't talk as much because it pulls people out of processing. That self-scanning, once the client's brain starts to scan for that information and they hit emotional material and physiological expression of that material, we allow those truncated survival responses that didn't get a chance to process back then to be metabolized by the body. It's like memory reconsolidation. The brain ends up reorganizing that information where they're supporting it, offering guidance and reframes, but also letting the body do what it knows how to do, which is to heal.
Every single living creature on this planet has an innate capacity for healing and survival. Often we cut ourselves short not giving ourselves the credit that our bodies are designed for healing if we can give them the right ingredients and the right tools. I feel like brainspotting hits each one of those tools and sets out to hold those present for the client so they can have the containment and heal.
Every single living creature on this planet has an innate capacity for healing and survival. We often cut ourselves short, not giving ourselves the credit that our bodies are designed for healing.
Contacting Departed Loved Ones
Mariya, brainspotting is used in conjunction with several modalities but I think what I want to know is how can it be used to have conversations or contact with my deceased loved ones. How does that happen?
Brainspotting is integrative and that's what I love about it. You can pretty much blend it in with everything. When I learned it, I started trying it out with all the other practices that I knew how to do. I found a place in each of those where brainspotting can exist and play a huge part. Going back to spirituality or going back to connecting. When you're looking for a brainspot, that can be something that existed in the past. It can be something that happened to you. It can be an idea in the future. It can be, “I want to be a movie star someday.”
If you can get the somatic activation, that awareness in your body of what that's like, and want to visualize or expand into that potential, you can find a brainspot for that potential. If some of you are here because you want to connect with a loved one that has departed, the idea or I believe the connection or the doorway exists inside of you to them because everything is quantum. Our brain is very quantum.
Our brain has more than four quadrillion synaptic connections. It's infinite the possibilities of where we can go and what we can connect to. They say that anything that is created starts from an idea within us. Without going too far into trying to convince the scientists how this works, I believe that if I have a connection to someone inside of me, I have an eye position for that connection and that is a pathway of opening a door to connecting with their essence, emotions, thoughts, and feelings. Our internal subcortical experiences are all essences. They're all energy of some kind.
Is the first step to find a spot or is the first step to have the intention of communicating with a loved one?
The first step would be to connect with your intention and then we would look for a brainspot that opens that door. Holding your eyes there is going to keep your brain focused on it.
Mariya, you’re going to take us through an exercise so everyone can find their brainspots. It's not going to be the same for everybody. People can have different brain spots and different locations. People have multiple brainspots for different memories or emotions. Let me ask you this. If and when we find our brainspots, what does that mean? Let's say I'm lucky enough to feel like I'm gaining access to someone or something that's not of this earth, in your experience, how long can people hold that?
When I do it in sessions, I have sessions that are 1 hour or 90 minutes long. We're not staring at the eye position the entire time, but I would say maybe a good 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or so. When you find an eye position, it can go either way. Let's say today you locate an eye position that helps you connect to a loved one, and you want to try to do it again tomorrow. Go back to that eye position, go back to the intention, and see if it connects you back into it.
It may be that that's your access point again or it may be that you need to go back into the intention and your eyes will find a different spot that feels more connected to it. I have certain eye positions that I've gone to for years that I've strengthened or cultivated those neural networks. If I look straight up and ahead, it connects me to my higher power. Anytime I'm feeling disconnected, I will move my eyes there and it will help me access the feelings. It can go either way.
That's how I would say that right now. You could continue to work with this spot. Also, having a disclaimer that I don't know all of you and I don't know where you are at in your process. If this is brand new for you to enter into the spirit realm, I will say some things about boundaries. You don't need to talk to anybody that you don't want to talk to. It's the same way that you wouldn't have some random person walk into your house that you didn't know.
You get to say no. You get to have boundaries and also be mindful that this can bring up a lot of emotional content and difficult material. To have self-agency and sovereignty around what you're ready for and not push past that. Maybe you would want to choose to talk with someone that you have a better relationship with or the loss isn't so painful.
I'm going to let you take it in just a moment. I want to make sure people have what they need. In anticipation of this episode, I pre-interviewed Mariya and I asked her to give me a sample brainspotting tour because I want to know what I'm suggesting to my community. Also, I knew I would be busy hosting during this exercise, and I wanted to see what it was like. I won't share with you my experience yet, but I will share with you that this is worth trying.
The audio is a track that moves bilaterally from ear to ear. What it's doing is that it offers a parasympathetic container. Parasympathetic is the calm part of your nervous system. Sympathetic is more of the arousal response in the body. When we offer that parasympathetic support, when you're doing bilateral movement, it's calming to the body. It integrates both hemispheres of the brain to talk more to each other.
You're also able to focus then and be more present here and the now. If you can use headphones, maybe connect the music to your phone. That way, you can still hear on the computer if you're on the computer. If not, that's okay. You don't have to have music. We can work without music. It's not necessary. It's an enhancer.
I did both. I tried it first without and with. For me, I preferred it without the beats, but I know that bilateral stimulation in general, for most people, is helpful.
When I put them in, it's like I go into a whole different space.
If you want to use that bilateral stimulation during the guided tour that Mariya is going to take us on, you could maybe hook up earbuds or headphones to an iPhone so you could still hear this. I don’t know what your setup is at home or wherever you are but if there's a way for you to be able to hear those heartbeats in the background, if you're able to do that, great. If not, it's not a big deal. If I want to think about my departure, I want to speak to them. Would I think of them and try to prompt a joyful state? Is that necessary or could it just be me thinking about them and putting out the intention that I want to speak to them?
It could be any of those things, but I want everybody to think of sight, sound, smell, and the senses and be thinking about the person that you want to call in. I do see a question here about how to protect yourself from entities. That's entirely a whole different conversation but I am going to be in closing the cyberspace right now. I'm doing it right now so that all of you are connected and protected from other entities or things.
If you can make that internal agreement to plug into the circle that I'm creating around all of us, 204 people right now in all of the dimensions that you're all in across the world. We're only allowing communication for our highest good and there is no interference allowed in this space. It's as simple as setting that boundary. If anything tries to get through the boundary, you're just like, “You're in my space so you don't get to be in my space unless I allow you to be.”
Did you issue your full disclosure before we started?
Yeah. I think that was mainly it. Choosing to work with somebody that you feel comfortable with. If you have a lot of unprocessed or unfinished stuff, I'm not saying don't do that, but I need you to be able to manage what might come up if that happens. Also, connect with support and things like that if that's needed for you. There's a question here. “Can you call a person in who's still alive?” Yeah, you could. You could connect with anybody's consciousness.
Brain Exploration
I'm going to let you take charge now, Mariya.
The first thing I also want to get out the way is you're not doing it wrong. I can guarantee you at some level, every single person will be wondering, “Am I doing it right?” If you can give yourself permission to just play and explore versus trying to do it right, that's a frontal lobe activity trying to do something right versus curiosity and being like, “That's interesting. That just came up.” If you can invite yourself to not analyze what's happening and just let it present itself, it helps. Just make it up. I tell people all the time, “You're just making it up.”
If you want to have a little notepad or pen nearby to jot some things down that come up, you're welcome to do that. Sometimes people get into that subcortical place and the writing helps channel or move it out of you. When you're ready, you can get in a comfortable position. You can have your eyes open or close, whatever feels comfortable to you and you can test it out by opening and closing them if you want.
If you tend to be somebody who closes your eyes and gets more access, do that. If it's easier for you to focus with your eyes open, go ahead and try that out. Take a couple of deep, conscious, and connected breaths. We're going to connect to Mother Earth below our feet. We're going to breathe in and breathe out any tension or anything we're ready to let go of. Just letting our bodies cleanse and clear your space.
As you inhale, let the breath travel along your spine, opening your bones, putting some roots down into the ground, saying a gentle hello to planet Earth, planting yourself, and also connecting to the source or creation energy from above. Calling in any guides or protectors, angels, totems, or whatever it is that helps you feel safe and protected, you're welcome to do so and invite them into this circle. Once again, just checking in on your boundaries that we're only allowing information for your highest good.
I know that you're here because you want to connect with a loved one or someone who might not be present here in this physical realm. I want you to just tune in to that person. What did they look like? What did they feel like? What did they sound like or smell like? Making it as alive in the present moment as possible, this memory and this connection. Notice what you're experiencing in your body. The sensations, textures, colors, and temperature.
We're going to intuitively open a door here. Opening that door to the other realms, asking for permission, asking our gatekeepers to be there to support and protect us so that if it's in our highest good and divine timing, we can access this connection to your loved ones. Going back again to that felt a sense of connection to them. I’m seeing some of you smiling and remembrance. I also feel the sorrow in some of you and just welcoming all of that. All of you are welcome.
When you've been able to make this felt sense as alive as possible in you, I want you to move your eyes. If you're looking, you’re faced straight ahead over to the left and notice what happens with that connection. Does it increase or decrease if you look in this direction? Just bookmark whatever comes through. There are no wrong answers. Trust your brain. It's infinitely a genius.
Trust your brain. It's infinitely a genius.
Now, bring your eyes to the center as you're still facing straight ahead and become aware of what this is like. You are more or less connected to your loved one. Noting any information here and then moving your eyes over to the right and doing the same thing, more or less connection. Take your time. There is no rushing. Out of those three areas, I want you to instinctively or intuitively choose which side you have the strongest connection. Stay out of your head. Go with your instincts and trust them and just scan in that section on a horizontal line or X axis. Is there a particular spot where you feel more and more connected to that felt sense?
When you're ready, you can go ahead and rest your eyes there and then you're going to bring your eyes above eye level to see if that connection gets stronger or below eye level. This is the Y axis. Now, that we're potentially honing in on your brain spot, go ahead and rest your eyes where you notice that strongest connection to the felt sense. If you're having trouble with it, go back to the sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch of that memory.
What we're going to do now is notice what comes up without judgment. It might have sensations or emotions, giving yourself permission to be curious. If there are any messages here for you, following your sensations in your body, keeping your eyes where you are just another moment longer, and then when you're ready, you can come back. As you're returning, you can bookmark or note anything that came in. Also, close the portal for now. You did make contact and want to reconnect at a later point with your loved one and let them know that you'll be back.
If you didn't make any contact, that's okay too. There are a lot of different reasons for why that might be but it isn't that something is wrong with you or that you can't. That one I can guarantee. To help pull you out of the subcortical part of your brain, you can open your eyes, wiggle your fingers, and your toes, maybe look around, let your neck and head turn and orient, naming a few objects in the space that you're in, drinking a glass of water, or whatever feels good to you to ground back in.
If you didn't make any contact, that's okay. There are a lot of different reasons for why that might be. It isn't that something is wrong with you or that you can't.
Closing
Mariya, I want to thank you. I feel like you have given me another tool for my toolbox in spirit communication, especially because it's something I explore often and I do a lot of work in this area. I want to thank you for your beautiful energy and for something I had never thought of, but the eye positioning certainly was intensely vivid for me. Many blessings to you and I'm going to turn it back over to Stephen at this time.
Thank you, Gary. The brainspotting is instrumental and you were calling your breakfast this morning.
What did you have for breakfast?
Up and to the right, it was honey bunches of oats with almonds.
I was close. I said Cheerios.
Apparently, breakfast was up to the right but my loved one was to the left. I will give you that.
Gary, thank you so much for moderating and for being my co-host. Mariya, that was tremendous. Thank you so much. I think I could speak for everyone here. We're grateful that you helped us find our spots. Again, even if you didn't feel so connected, that doesn't mean it has to be the end of it. You could try again. If someone wanted to contact you or learn more about your services, what would they do? Where would they go?
If it doesn't work for you now, it doesn't mean it won't. As I said, it can be somebody needing to have another person there to guide, practice, and learn how to get out of our heads. There are a lot of different pathways to getting access. If you have a brain and you have eyeballs, you can brainspot. It's just about finding out how to do that. If you want to learn more about the work that I do, feel free to send a contact form if you'd like to connect.
The site is AwakenConsultingServices.com and people can contact you through your website. Thank you so much. I wanted to reiterate one more thing before we dismiss you. You mention how you have a friend who seems far away right now because of something that's going on that end. That's something that I only uncovered in a series of events that you don't think that maybe they're busy or they have things to do or they can't multitask because you're told that they can multitask by a lot of mediums. There are times when it's not right. Sometimes it's something that's going on with us and sometimes it's something going on with them.
We don't stop evolving after we go, at least, that's my belief. People have jobs and things they have to take care of once they cross over, and they can't always be there for us. Maybe some are assigned for that and some might not be.
I wanted to make that clear because I get a lot of emails from people who are desperate and feel like their deceased loved one is either not interested, they don't like them anymore, or something. They tell themselves a story. I'm in no position to disabuse people of their notions because I'm not a professional psychologist.
I'm an armchair psychologist, but people are coming to me with these questions because they made a movie about this. I'm doing my best to say, “Full disclosure, I'm not a psychologist, but X, Y, Z.” I'm glad that you're here, a professional telling my community that it's okay if you're not getting visits to assure everybody. Gary, you have a hand up.
I wanted to say. Sometimes they are talking to us and we're not in the position. We're not listening.
I would say that's probably more the case.
I agree. That must be more the case.
Before we close, I want to reiterate too that I taught you all how to self-spot and to locate an eye position on your own but be mindful that if it's feeling like it's too much or not healthy for you to do that on your own, that you do that with somebody who can guide you from a professional setting. We don't want anybody to open something that they can't close. If you are at all feeling dysregulated from what we did, ground your body, talk with someone, breathe, or try to move your body so that that stuck energy or emotion can be metabolized. We want to make sure everybody is well.
Mariya, I could tell that you had a lot of experience regulating your nervous system.
Lots of it. I do it all day every day. It’s pretty steady.
I seek people out like you to try to get some of that energy through osmosis. Maybe I could be more like you.
We get it through co-regulation. I think that your nervous system is telling you to do that. Those are the attachment pathways or attachment networks that when we're around someone who's grounded, calm, open, and listening, we can learn how to do that for ourselves and maybe we didn't get that while we were growing up. That's that homeostasis that we’re trying to seek.
That's why I have a reactive family. I'm going to thank you so much again, Mariya, for being here and for taking us through that. Also, for providing us with that extra tool for our toolbox as Gary was saying. It's nice to have that one spare wrench around. I feel like that wrench is going to be my favorite wrench for a while.
I know how that goes. The eyes are the window to the soul. That's not an accident that this phrase is there.