Brainspotting Therapy
Brain-based therapy to clear your trauma in a non-invasive way.
What is Brainspotting therapy?
If you’re looking for something different than traditional talk therapy to help clear your trauma, Brainspotting therapy is a great alternative. A lot of people are turning to brain-based therapies like this when they have been stuck with little lasting progress in other modalities – is this you? Give Brainspotting a try or learn about it through booking a free consultation.
Brainspotting therapy on the cutting edge of psychotherapy today. It involves identifying spots in your field of vision to help you process trauma more quickly.
It is an experiential therapy that works with your brain and body to target unprocessed trauma in the subcortical (ie: subconscious) part of your brain. This area of the brain stores your distressing thoughts, feelings, and memories.
When you experience trauma, the emotional memories are encapsulated within this part of your brain and can not always be accessed through just talking. Elements of combined somatic experiencing and EMDR help you locate the trauma capsule and begin to process that experience more fully.
The Brainspotting therapy practitioner helps you resolve the problem through identifying “brain spots” which can address and clear the trauma in your brain with precision. This is done by expertly targeting your automatic eye movements and body sensations to release emotional stress linked to the trauma.
Is Brainspotting For Me?
If you’re feeling stuck or unable to heal, brainspotting may help open up stored feelings, memories, and tension that may be stuck in your brain and body. If you have found talk therapy doesn’t work for you, consider Brainspotting therapy.
Since unprocessed memories may come up in Brainspotting therapy, feeling open to exploring that in the safe space of therapy would be necessary.
Painful memories may come up during this process. Prepare yourself for this by having support or self-care practices in place, outside of the therapeutic environment – this can help you further process your experiences.
Brainspotting Can Help With:
- Trauma
- Anxiety
- Attachment issues
- Substance use
- Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD
- Chronic pain
- Depression
Other benefits include:
- Reduction in emotional pain or trauma symptoms
- Less difficult memories
- Reduction in negative thought patterns
- Better sleep
- Increased energy
What Happens in a Brainspotting therapy Session:
MINDFULNESS
Your Brainspotting therapist will guid you through a mindfulness exercise such as deep breathing. Some therapists may use bilateral sound to help ground you at the start of your treatment.
BODY AWARENESS
Your Brainspotting therapist will ask you to identify a place in your body where you are feeling the most distressed. You will then rate this feeling on a scale from 1-10
LOCATE YOUR BRAIN SPOT
Your therapist will help you find your brains spot using a pointer. You will be guided until you reach a place in your line of vision where physical discomfort is the strongest. This helps you identify exactly where you have been stuck and what you would like to work on.
IDENTIFYING “HOT SPOTS”
An outside window may be recommended, which is an observable “hot-spot” by the therapist, or an inside window may be selected, which is an internal “hot-spot” identified by you.
CONNECT THE BRAIN SPOT TO YOUR FEELINGS
You will be asked to stay visually focused on this identified spot and zone in on the feelings that come up emotionally and physically.
REFLECTION & MEANING
Your Brainspotting therapist will provide space and support to process and identify meaning in the experience you had.
Brainspotting therapy: why Does it Work?
By focusing on one spot in your field of vision for an extended period of time, you can experience deeper processing of your trauma. This approach relies on the body’s intrinsic ability to heal and move to a state of equilibrium. It facilitates a process that can allow trauma to be reset in your body and brain.
Brainspotting therapyis for the most part led by the client’s awareness of their internal processes however, it is known that connection to your therapist and a good therapeutic rapport is key in success.
It’s your therapist’s job to remain aware of the changes in the client’s emotional and physiological state and to respond accordingly. This helps to create a safe space for you to make sense of your internal processes so that thorough processing can occur.
Brainspotting therapy is based on the theory that when feelings from trauma become stuck in your body, physical and mental suffering can occur. Often the details and feelings linked to trauma can get buried in the back of your mind and when these experiences are left unprocessed, they may resurface later in the form of feelings, memories or even flashbacks, like with PTSD.
A brainspot is a particular point in your visual field that is associated with an emotion or an experience. When a client’s brainspot is activated, the brain provides a reflexive response that lets the therapist know that a trauma capsule within the brain connected to the particular trauma being worked on has been found. By activating brainspots and honing in on the physical sensations in the moment, this therapy may allow you to process the trauma completely rather than leaving elements unfinished.
It is very common for clients to experience both rapid relief of distress and profound insights from their Brainspotting therapy session.
From the founder of brainspotting
Dr. David Grand discovered Brainspotting by accident in 2003 while working with his clients.
While using a type of EMDR therapy and relational and insight oriented somatic experiencing, he found that people responded immediately when focusing on specific points in their line of vision while thinking of a troubling event.
To learn more about Brainspotting therapy, check out the main website here.
How to get started
Brainspotting therapy may last about 6 sessions for typically 30-90 minutes each time, depending on your needs. However, sometimes it can take some time in therapy before determining at what point in your treatment that Brainspotting should be used.
Booking a free consultation with one of our trained Brainspotting therapists is highly recommended to see if Brainspotting therapy is a good fit for you. Use the dropdown filter on our Team Page to find a therapist offering Brainspotting!
