Get into Your Right Brain – Replenishment as a Pathway in Trauma and Mental Health
- Jan 23
- 5 min read
Written by Veronica Hislop, Founder of Em-Powered Pens
As the founder of Em-Powered Pens, author Veronica Hislop aims to empower her readers to heal, grow, and thrive. A trained professional, she is committed to guiding her audience through a transformative journey of resilience and self-discovery, unlocking their full potential.
“Can I stop you there?” the instructor asked. “I sense a heaviness around your heart. If you feel comfortable, I’d like to do some brief energy work with you right now, over the phone. Is that okay?” I was surprised. Curious. And quietly skeptical. Still, I agreed.
What followed was a short process involving breath, imagery, colour, and focused attention. I couldn’t have explained exactly what she was doing, but I knew what I felt afterward. Something had shifted. I felt lighter than I had in a very long time.
What struck me most was not just the physical sensation, but the question it raised. How had she known? She couldn’t see me. We had spoken only briefly. I was thousands of miles away, in another country. And yet she had accurately sensed a level of stress and emotional strain I had barely acknowledged within myself.
That moment challenged the limits of how I had been trained to understand stress, pain, and healing. With years of postgraduate education as a trauma counsellor behind me, I realized something essential was missing from the purely logical, left-brain framework I had relied on.
There was, quite clearly, a different way of knowing and a different way of understanding trauma and mental health that I had yet to learn.
This experience occurred several years ago during an online training program led by an energy healer and business coach. Like many virtual sessions, it was structured, intellectually engaging, and grounded in professional development. Yet this moment became a quiet wake-up call, one that shifted how I understood stress, trauma, and the role of replenishment in healing.
Push energy and the limits of effort
Much of Western culture, including how we approach mental health, is built on what I now recognise as push energy. Push to understand. Push to explain. Push to fix. Push through discomfort.
Push energy is driven by the conscious, analytical mind. It values effort, insight, and control. In many contexts, it serves us well. But when applied to trauma and chronic stress, it often reaches its limits.
You cannot push your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. You cannot force the body to feel safe. And you cannot always think your way into healing.
Trauma is not held solely as a narrative or memory. It is stored in the body, the nervous system, and the emotional brain. When healing relies only on effort and explanation, people often become exhausted, frustrated, resistant, or stuck, working harder without feeling better.
When Western models don’t fully translate
I am often reminded of the trauma teams sent to Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. Highly trained Western professionals arrived with well-established therapeutic models and a genuine desire to help survivors process unimaginable grief, trauma, and loss.
Yet many of the survivors could not connect with the trauma teams and their approach. Talk therapy, based on verbal catharsis and repeated retelling of traumatic events, did not resonate with many of the Rwandans. For people whose trauma was deeply embodied, this approach intensified distress rather than relieving it. The issue was not a lack of compassion or skill. It was a mismatch of approaches.
Trauma is not experienced only through words. For individuals and cultures that are more right-brain oriented, healing often begins with safety, rhythm, connection, and regulation, not explanation. Only in recent years has Western mental health begun to seriously integrate this understanding.
Replenishment and the role of the right brain
Where push energy seeks to override, replenishment seeks to restore.
Replenishment focuses on calming the nervous system first. It creates the conditions for healing rather than demanding outcomes. This is the domain of the right brain.
Right brain practices include movement, meditation, breathwork, energy work, journaling, dancing, chanting, drumming, acupuncture, Reiki, EMDR, and tapping. What these approaches share is their ability to bypass the conscious mind, bypass overthinking, and engage the body directly.
They slow the system down. They reduce stress activation. They restore a sense of safety. They can help bypass resistance.
Rather than demanding insight, replenishment-based practices prioritize regulation. And when the body feels safe again, clarity often follows naturally.
Western mental health has slowly begun to fully acknowledge this approach as therapeutic. Somatic therapies, body-based interventions, and nonverbal modalities are now being researched, integrated, and taught. But this shift in thinking and practice is still relatively new.
Tapping as a replenishment practice
Among the many right-brain approaches I have explored, one stands out for its simplicity and accessibility, Emotional Freedom Technique, commonly known as tapping.
EFT is based on principles from traditional Chinese medicine and can be understood as acupuncture without needles. Gentle tapping is applied to specific meridian points on the face and upper body while focusing on an emotional or physical issue.
Rather than pushing to “get over” a problem, tapping works by calming the brain’s stress response while acknowledging what is present. It sends a signal of safety to the nervous system, allowing the body to release what it has been holding.
Research has shown EFT to be effective in addressing anxiety, trauma, stress, phobias, addiction, and physical pain. It was first practiced with good results with Vietnam vets coping with PTSD back in the sixties.
Today, we are using EFT with refugees from war-torn countries such as Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine. It is perhaps the only weapon these people have to fight back against the atrocities they are experiencing daily. It is non-invasive, painless, and easy to learn. Most importantly, it returns agency to the individual. Rather than relying solely on external interventions, people are given a tool they can use themselves any time as necessary. This alone can be deeply empowering.
In my own work, when clients become caught in a stressful narrative, I often invite them to tap while they speak. Before we analyze or explain, their bodies begin to settle. Replenishment comes first. Insight follows.
Expanding how we understand healing
This is not a rejection of Western psychology, science, or reason. Push energy has its place. Insight matters. Understanding matters. Motivation and goal setting are important. But healing is not achieved through effort alone.
When we integrate replenishment-based, right-brain approaches into our understanding of mental health and wellbeing, we move toward a more complete, holistic model of healing, one that honours the body, the nervous system, and respects their connection and the intelligence beneath conscious thought.
There is a different way of knowing and understanding trauma. There is a different pathway to healing.
And for many of us, connecting more to our right brain by learning to shift from push to replenish energy is where the real change begins.
Read more from Veronica Hislop
Veronica Hislop, Founder of Em-Powered Pens
Veronica is a multi-genre author focused on empowering readers to navigate life’s challenges with grace and strength. Whether guiding adults through difficult conversations, supporting men in grief, or nurturing the self-worth of young girls, her work is grounded in emotional intelligence, psychological insight, and real-world application.
