BRAINSPOTTING

WHY USE BRAINSPOTTING?

“Brainspotting encourages you to take back the permission that was taken away from you.”

- David Grand

WHAT IS BRAINSPOTTING?

It’s a type of therapy that accesses a client’s natural resources for processing, healing, and expanding by locating points in their visual field. It activates and utilizes the body’s innate ability to heal itself and includes a blend of somatic work, neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology, and polyvagal theory in practice. Most importantly, it’s void of Western colonialist perspective which is crucial for the BIPOC community.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Brainspotting uses the neuroscience finding that where you look, affects how you feel. Clients are helped to find a visual “spot” with the aid of a pointer that increases or reduces the ‘felt sense’ of an experience or overall arousal. With the use of a visual “spot”, the client’s optic nerves provide easy access to the inner brainstem. Experiences are processed by observing changes in bodily sensations and any thoughts that come naturally. In addition to the use of a pointer to assist in finding a visual spot, biolateral sound is used to enhance the effects of Brainspotting. Biolateral sounds consist of specific music that is hand-panned in a side-to-side pattern from one ear to the other through the use of headphones. 

Brainspotting works by attuning the brain’s autonomic and limbic systems located within the central nervous system. This accounts for the physiological nature of Brainspotting. It utilizes the Interpersonal Neurobiology of Dual Attunement which is simultaneously relational and neurobiological attunement between the client and therapist. Simply, talk therapy occurs in the largest and most outer part of the brain, the neocortex. This is where attention, thought, perception, and episodic memory is computed. Brainspotting occurs deeper within the subcortical brain where trauma, experiences, and desires are stored. By attending to the subcortical areas of the brain, the client is able to access and process older memories, embodied trauma, and felt experiences that were previously forgotten. In addition, spirituality, instinct, creativity, and original thoughts become available in a way that isn’t accessible during regular talk therapy.

It looks and feels different from talk therapy in the sense that your inner self guides you where you’re meant to go while your therapist honors and witnesses your process. The therapist may appear to engage less because they are talking less, however they are not engaged less. They are engaged with you differently.

WHAT WILL IT FEEL LIKE?

Everyone is different! There is no such thing as “always” when it comes to how you’ll respond to Brainspotting. Brainspotting promotes coherence between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and so we’ll see and you’ll experience bodily sensations of all kinds.

Some experiences have been reported as:

  • Visual changes- flashes of light, seeing spiritual beings, the sense of objects fading into the background

  • Feeling a trance-like, calm state of being

  • Limbic transference - you and your therapist feeling each others somatic symptoms

  • Sleepiness

  • Headache

  • Twitches in your body or your eyes

  • Tightness in your body

  • Feeling like you just meditated

  • Burping

  • Increased saliva or a metallic taste in your mouth

  • Mental numbness/dissociation

  • A connection to ancestors, loved ones who have passed, and an inner knowing

I can attest to the culturally sensitive and validating experience that is felt during shifts of regulation. I highly recommend Brainspotting for anyone searching to connect with themselves in a deeper, loving manner.