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What is Brainspotting Therapy
Brainspotting therapy is a counseling intervention and trauma treatment developed by David Grand. Brainspotting therapy treats performance anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression and other mental health disorders. Brainspotting therapy combines somatic and body-oriented approaches, interpersonal neurobiology, bilateral sound and relational attunement. Brainspotting therapy works by identifying, processing and releasing trauma, emotional pain, chronic stress and a range of other psychological and somatic issues at a deep neurophysiological level.
Brainspotting therapy is predicated on the understanding that when highly stressful experiences overwhelm the system, the brain is not able to process everything that happened. The primitive parts of the brain take over and stressful experiences become truncated and stored at a sensory level in our implicit memory. The residue stress from trauma that is stored in implicit memory is a source of dysregulation related to trauma recovery.
Brainspotting is Mind Body Therapy
Brainspotting therapy as such is a mind body therapy that treats the root cause of complex trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and many other mental health challenges.
How Brainspotting Therapy Works: A journey into your neurobiology
Brainspotting therapy is based on the premise that ‘where you look affects how you feel’ and proposes that eye positions correlate with neural, reflexive, and emotional experiences. This is due to the fact that the ocular nerve connects directly into the primitive parts of the brain allowing what we see to instinctively activate our survival response if we are in danger. As an individual maintains an eye position while focusing on a stressful experience, they connect to a spot in the subcortical brain (brainspot) that gives them access to releasing and processing the challenging experience. A brainspot connects to unresolved emotional experiences.
The Brainspot: Access to emotional trauma
“A brainspot is a stored oculomotor orientation to a traumatic experience which has failed to integrate. When it is accessed in treatment there is potential for greater healing of the emotional residue of the unassimilated event.”
A brainspot is not just one spot in the brain but rather a network of activation in the subcortical brain that leads to a reflexive, somatic reaction in the body. The focused eye position further allows the brain to stop scanning the room and instead internally self-scan to identify and maintain its presence on the deeper unresolved issue.
According to trauma expert Robert Scaer, “Brainspotting is based on the profound attunement of the therapist with the patient, finding a somatic cue and extinguishing it by downregulating the amygdala. It isn’t just PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) activation that is facilitated, it is homeostasis.”
Reprocess and Reconsolidate Traumatic Memories
The overwhelm that occurs during traumatic experience interferes with the body’s natural ability to process and resolve the situation. Trauma memories become suspended in an implicit holding pattern causing stress and anxiety on the mind and body. This is why hypervigilance, anxiety, shock, depression and other symptoms persist far beyond the traumatic event. The nervous system is unable to regain homeostasis as the trauma residue is suspended until a time when it can be safely processed.
What is Memory Reconsolidation
Brainspotting therapy supports memory reconsolidation, a process whereby old memories are re-encoded with new emotional, sensory and cognitive context. Grand and Corrigan hypothesis that “healing can occur when full orientation to the memory is made possible by the superior colliculi-pulvinar, superior colliculi-mediodorsal nucleus, and superior colliculi-intralaminar nuclei pathways being bound together electro-physiologically for coherent thalamocortical processing.
The brains response to the memory is ‘reset’ so that the emotional response experienced in the body and conveyed through the paleospinothalamic tract to the midbrain and thalamus and on to the basal ganglia and cortex is no longer disturbing.” This allows the nervous system to stabilize, and implicit memories are reconsolidated Through stabilization of the autonomic nervous system, implicit memories are able to be reconsolidated and released.
Clients report a profound shift in their emotional charge on the traumatic memories and are able to let go of the past.
Brainspotting Session: Anxiety relief and healing happens through attunement and safe support
A key component of brainspotting therapy is the therapist’s dual role. Compassionate support is essential for the brain to truly process and let go of trauma. Equally important is the awareness of the subtle somatic cues from the mind and body such as breathing, swallowing, twitching and shaking that allow for deeper healing and release. The therapist holds dual attunement of the clients’ somatic cues, along with their emotional and mental processing. This creates a real-time, nonverbal connection of presence, safety, and embodiment, grounding deep neural processing in a held therapeutic relationship.
During a Brainspotting therapy session, the brainspotting therapist maintains a strong therapeutic presence and dual attunement, observing subtle somatic cues such as breath changes, muscle tension, or shifts in eye movement. This attuned support creates a safe space for processing emotional distress and facilitates the downregulation of the nervous system. As traumatic memories are accessed and released through this focused and embodied process, many clients experience a reduction in anxiety, physical discomfort, and emotional overwhelm. Brainspotting is not only a powerful way to treat trauma, but also a deeply effective method for fostering emotional integration and nervous system regulation—making it a transformative alternative to traditional talk therapy.
A Brainspotting Therapy Session
- The practitioner supports the client to identify an issue that is disturbing or traumatic and mindfully focus on it.
- The practitioner asks the client to connect to the felt sensations related to the issue they are focusing on.
- The practitioner asks the client to rate their level of somatic, felt sense activation in their body on a scale of 0-10.
- The practitioner and the client identify the spot in the visual field associated with the strongest intensity of their felt sense activation. The brainspot connects to neurobiology where memories are stored.
- The client listens to bilateral sounds.
- The client focuses on this visual spot while being mindful of the sensations, feelings and thoughts that arise.
- The practitioner remains attuned to the client noticing any sensory changes.
- The client maintains the eye position while focusing on the body activation, physical sensations and arising reflexive information from the deep midbrain. This taps into the body’s central nervous system. In doing so, trauma residue is released, memories have the ability to be reconsolidated, and a deep healing process ensues.
Brainspotting Treatment
Brainspotting is an innovative therapy that powerfully addresses the full trauma spectrum by accessing where traumatic experiences are stored in the brain-body connection. Unlike traditional talk therapy, which often focuses on cognitive processing, Brainspotting works at a deeper neurophysiological level to help individuals heal unprocessed trauma, emotional stress, post traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, and distressing physical or emotional symptoms. Guided by a mental health professional and a trained Brainspotting therapist within a safe and trusting relationship, clients are able to access and release painful memories in a way that promotes lasting relief. This trauma therapy offers profound anxiety relief and is emerging as one of the most effective mental health treatments for trauma and nervous system dysregulation.
Brainspotting Therapy vs. Traditional Talk Therapy
Brainspotting therapy is an emerging trauma therapy that goes beyond traditional talk therapy by targeting the deep brain regions where emotional trauma and physical discomfort are stored. While talk therapy often focuses on conscious thought and verbal processing, Brainspotting works directly with the brain-body connection, allowing clients to access and heal traumatic memories that are often stored beneath conscious awareness. Though the nurturing therapeutic presence of the brainspotting therapist and the processing of trauma in the deep centers of the brain, the client experiences a clinical healing relationship and reparative experience.
