EMDR/Brainspotting
What Is Brainspotting?
Brainspotting (BSP) is a brain-body-based therapy that uses eye movement and
biolateral sounds to heal emotional pain and blocks, making it especially effective for treating trauma.
.Accessing the subcortical part of the brain where our fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses are stored, BSP allows clients to access and process emotional wounds in a way that conventional talk therapy alone simply cannot achieve.
I incorporate Brainspotting into therapy for clients who feel “stuck” or struggle with challenging feelings and emotions. Clients experiencing symptoms of anxiety, depression, chronic pain, relational problems, and creative blocks find BSP and EMDR to be an effective way to address their pain and adjust their outlook.
The History And Development Of BSP
Brainspotting was originally developed by Dr. David Grand in 2003. Having specialized in Somatic Experiencing and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)—both body-based approaches—Grand sought to develop an even gentler, faster-acting trauma therapy. He found that holding one’s gaze in a specific spot for an extended period of time (as opposed to EMDR, where a client’s eyes move back and forth across the visual field) led to deeper, more restorative emotional processing. A new offshoot of somatic therapy, known as Brainspotting, was created.
Since its development, Brainspotting has been proven to work as an effective treatment against distressing memories, uncomfortable sensations, and past traumas. Safe for a wide range of clients across the spectrum of age and diagnosis, BSP promotes repair at the neurobiological level.
The BSP Treatment Process
Brainspotting sessions are oriented around the specific event or feeling that you’d like to process. I will guide you inward to focus on the feelings and sensations that are being activated.
I will then present a pointer in which you can follow with your eyes. As I Draw the pointer across your visual field we will pause in any place that creates a shift in the way you feel. This is called a Brainspot. The Brainspot directs us towards the uncomfortable feelings by intensifying them before alleviating them entirely, which is ultimately the goal of treatment. Fixating on this position and using specially engineered biolateral sounds, we’ll let your body do the work in processing trauma—opening up the possibilities for new insights, experiences, and associations.
Through this process, my clients develop self-awareness and become more attuned to their bodies. While talk therapy provides helpful insight and cognitive exercises, BSP taps into the parts of the brain where strong, visceral sensations are stored. This can’t be accomplished through verbal processing. As an alternative to talking through and intellectualizing challenging experiences, Brainspotting adjusts the nervous system response at the source.
Brainspotting and EMDR At Mindful Self Therapy
When I started my career as a therapist in 2016, I worked with families through a nonprofit organization primarily using solution-focused behavioral interventions. Although the behavioral interventions were helpful to a certain extent I saw it’s limitations. I decided to learned more about trauma-informed techniques, including Brainspotting, Polyvagal Theory and Internal Family Systems (IFS). I appreciated that a combination of these methods could promote healing on a deeper, transformative level in a way I hadn’t seen with other approaches. Since then I have completed training in Brainspotting and am in the process of becoming a certified BSP clinician.
Parts work (also known as IFS) is particularly beneficial in BSP treatment because it makes space for a range of emotions, giving each of them a meaningful opportunity to be processed. When paired with psychoeducation about how the body holds onto trauma (polyvagal theory), BSP and IFS pave the way for clients to understand and identify their felt states: safe, activated, or shut down.
Brainspotting and EMDR have been most beneficial for my clients who have hit a plateau with other interventions or been unsuccessful in changing their emotional responses despite recognizing the effect of trauma in their lives. Since I work with many artists, musicians, and other creatives, I’ve found Brainspotting to be especially useful for combating negative self-talk and overcoming creative barriers.
As a gentle, relatively nonverbal therapy, both new and seasoned clients have embraced Brainspotting as a unique and exhilarating pathway for exploring and understanding themselves
How Can BSP and EMDR Help You?
Brainspotting accesses and resolves stored trauma, allowing you to process difficult experiences, overcome challenges, and free yourself from emotional pain. For more information about how Brainspotting and EMDR can help alleviate symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD, relational issues, or creative blocks, contact me.