Brain Working Recursive Therapy: How BWRT Has Found Success Where Other Therapies Haven’t

Mental health issues are steadily increasing. Humans are facing more stress than ever before, and while working through these concerns in a therapy session is often beneficial, today’s most common techniques can be intimate and take a long time to work. Fortunately, brain working recursive therapy (BWRT) offers individuals the same benefits that come with traditional treatment, but with a must faster approach.

Many psychology and medical experts would agree that a lot of mental health conditions arise out of a response to a traumatic or difficult situation. How an individual responds to their situation will often shape their mood. This is why two individuals who go through the same situation could have drastically different thoughts and behaviors. BWRT practitioners use this knowledge to adjust and control our natural and automatic thought processes in a way that is more acceptable to our conscious awareness.

What is BWRT?

Brain working recursive therapy also referred to as BWRT, is a relatively newer form of therapy in the psychological industry. BWRT combines techniques from traditional psychotherapy with ones in neuroscience. There are many benefits to using BWRT over other types of therapy, including:

  • Short-term treatment: Many of the most common psychological treatments can take numerous sessions until you notice an improvement in symptoms. BWRT, however, offers rapid results and can begin to help after just one or two sessions. This makes BWRT a cost-effective and timely solution for individuals.
  • Content-free: One of the biggest barriers to seeking therapy for some is the fear of sharing your most personal secret and intimate thoughts with a stranger. Because BWRT works by changing the brain’s response directly, you can receive help without talking or sharing your life story.
  • Ease of access: Meeting with a therapist multiple times weekly can be difficult to fit into a busy schedule. With BWRT, you can undergo your sessions over Skype, right in the comfort of your own home.
  • Success rates: BWRT has high success rates among patients and is also considered a long-term treatment. Unlike other types of therapy, this method reprograms your thoughts, which means that it tends to last much longer. Individuals undergoing BWRT can enjoy long-lasting relief from psychological concerns.

BWRT was first introduced in 2011 by Terrence Watts. Watts came from a background in and clinical hypnotherapy. He drew on studies from Benjamin Libet, a Virtual Noble Prize Winner, to design a new type of therapy that was faster and more effective in treating certain disorders.

Benjamin Libet is known for his research in neuropsychology, specifically with human consciousness. He found that the brain makes decisions at a rate much faster than we even become aware of them. The research shows that we make decisions within .5-.75 of a second before we ever become aware of them. 

When presented with facts or conditions, our brain quickly comes to a decision or emotional reaction, removing the need to consider the consciousness in our decision-making process. As the rest of the brain catches up, we begin to form emotional responses based on external factors. BWRT works to design, and implement, new response patterns to these decisions.

This process has shown promising treatment results for some of the most common psychological difficulties, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

Is BWRT Safe?

BWRT practitioners are required to become certified before offering treatment. Terrence Watts often trains certified BWRT practitioners at the Essex Institute of Clinical Hypnosis, and many come from a background of mental health, such as psychology or counseling. Currently, there are just a limited number of certified BWRT therapists in the world.

While BWRT is relatively new to the psychological and medical industries, it is already showing promise in numerous studies. Because BWRT is touchless and content-free, it is considered to be a safe practice. There are no electrical stimulants, medications, uncomfortable travels through your childhood, or the sharing of personal information. BWRT has also recently begun its first round of clinical trials in 2020. BWRT therapists abide by a strict ethical code to first do no harm to their patients.

Currently, BWRT is used in many countries and is regulated by top accreditations. It is used as a preferred treatment method for post-traumatic stress disorder in many areas, especially when working with front-line workers—many view BWRT as a hopeful treatment in reducing the increasing PTSD statistics.

BWRT Versus Other Forms of Therapy

Individuals often wonder how BWRT compares to other, traditional forms of therapy, including hypnosis and CBT.

Hypnosis is one of the most controversial forms of treatment, and while it has shown improvement in many disorders, it has also proven to work with fewer people than other forms of therapy. Hypnosis and BWRT both work to access the subconscious, but BWRT has had success rates with a greater number of people. BWRT also tends to work, and last longer, than hypnosis does.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has become one of the most widely used theories used in treatment because of its solution-based approach. Whereas both CBT and BWRT follow the theory that our thoughts and reactions to the environment shape our feelings, the treatments are drastically different. CBT works by identifying irrational thoughts and working to restructure or challenge irrational thoughts.

BWRT does not require that you dive deep into your thoughts and reactions regarding painful life events. CBT has been one of the most promising treatments for disorders like anxiety and depression recently. Still, it does tend to have higher relapse rates as patients forget resources learned and need additional therapy sessions to refresh these techniques.

How Is BWRT Done?

BWRT works by interrupting our unique brain processes, the automatic responses that our brain forms, to an event and creates a new one, one that is more acceptable to your completely conscious state.

BWRT looks at an individual’s core identity, the responses you create to already-made decisions, and explores things like a human’s inability to think before taking action, the inability to complete an action, even when we innately want to, innate limitations to our goals, and frequent urges to give up on things.

BWRT reconditions the neural pathways in the brain to encourage it to respond more acceptably. BWRT can be used in the treatment of many disorders, including:

  • Depression
  • PTSD
  • Anxiety and panic attacks
  • Family and marriage problems
  • Phobias
  • Unwanted habits
  • Health concerns (Chronic conditions and weight management)
  • Stress response (Binge eating or substance abuse)

BWRT is a unique form of therapy that offers many benefits. It removes a lot of aspects of the traditional therapy process that patients find to be uncomfortable. While BWRT may be newer to the mental health care industry, it is already showing promising results. It can induce change in just a few sessions, often lasting long-term.