What Is Brainspotting?
In Brainspotting, the therapist helps the client find a “brainspot”—a specific point where the eyes feel a strong connection to the emotions or memories they want to work through. These spots are usually found by the therapist asking the client to notice where they feel tension or emotion while looking in different directions. If the client has difficulty connection to their sensations, the therapist can use their training to locate the activation for the client.
Why Does This Work?
Here’s the science part: Our brains store memories and emotions, and sometimes when we go through something very stressful or traumatic, our brain puts these emotions in a "locked box". (It’s important to remember that this is not the brain and body working against you - these systems are always working to keep us feeling safe.) Even tucked away, these feelings are still there (even if we don’t remember them clearly) and they can affect us in ways like feeling anxious, getting upset easily, or even having physical symptoms like headaches, stomachaches, and/or chronic pain somewhere else in the body.
The brain is connected to eye movements. When you look in different directions, your brain accesses different parts of itself. So when you focus on a specific point (a brainspot), it can help unlock the emotions or memories that were stuck, and allow you to process them.
How Does Brainspotting Help With Healing?
Eye Movements and the Brain: The eyes are directly connected to the part of the brain that controls emotions. By guiding the eyes to focus on a certain spot, Brainspotting helps the brain access and process emotions and memories that may have been hidden away for a long time. It's like opening a door to an old room in your brain where the feelings are stored, or shining a lighthouse on a feeling that, until now, your brain may have been keeping in the shadows.
Releasing Unprocessed Emotions: When you’re focusing on a brainspot, you might feel physical sensations or emotions that you didn't even realize were there. These feelings could be fear, sadness, anger, or other emotions tied to past events. By feeling these emotions safely in the therapy room, in the presence of a safe and trusted therapist, your brain can start to release them and let go of the stress or pain they've caused.
Regaining Control: Often, when people have trauma, their body and mind get stuck in a “fight or flight” mode, where they’re always on alert. Brainspotting helps the brain calm down and shift from this stress response to a more relaxed, balanced state, which makes it easier for the person to feel in control again and safe enough to move back toward connection to themselves and others.
Healing Trauma: Over time, Brainspotting helps clients reprocess traumatic memories in a safe and gentle way. This allows the memories to become less emotionally painful and more integrated into the person’s life story. It's like taking a scary or upsetting memory and changing how it feels, so it doesn’t take over the person’s life anymore. The past situation may not be erased, but the memory of it (and engaging with things that remind you of it) won’t have to feel so tender.
