The breakthrough of the Brainspotting method, a modern approach to in-depth treatment of a wide range of emotional and physical symptoms, occurred in the psychotherapy practice of Dr. David Grand in 2013. Since then, it has expanded greatly around the world; numerous studies and successful client stories speak of its effectiveness.
In the following, I will answer the most common questions and clarify dilemmas about Brainspotting that I encounter in my therapeutic practice.
- What is Brainspotting?
Brainspotting is a scientifically proven method and one of the modern approaches to treating the traumatic response in the body, which:
- Enables access to repressed contents in deeper areas of the brain, where the origin of today’s symptoms that affect your functioning is hidden.
- With Brainspotting, you can access any experience that limits your life that you carry at the level of body, emotions, cognition, or spirituality.
- Is an approach based on the body-brain connection and allows the body to return to its natural state – the one before the traumatic experience.
- Works in a safe therapeutic relationship, if the client is open to experiencing their inner world.
- One can perform it on oneself if one feels secure enough with one’s physical sensations.
- It is a method that follows a certain procedure, but the body and its needs are always in the foreground.
- The process is like a drop in the sea, which swells up and affects all areas of life.
- Misconceptions about Brainspotting
Known as a method that enables healing of the trauma response, Brainspotting can be mistaken for a protocol that one follows and automatically experiences change without being personally involved in the process. In practice, we often hear the question of whether the person is hypnotized in the process and whether they will know what is happening to them.
Brainspotting does not heal the trauma in the body because of the procedure but rather creates the right conditions for the body and the brain so that the healing of the trauma response can begin.
Healing takes place in your body, during which you are fully present and open to this bodily experience, which is also a key condition for the healing process to begin.
Brainspotting is not a shortcut to solving long-term problems you are dealing with; it allows you, however, to address current problems at their source.
- When should you opt for Brainspotting?
- When your symptoms, in the form of physical sensations or thoughts about yourself, continue to appear despite your understanding of them and prevent you from following your desires and needs.
- When your body reactions are too intense and do not correspond to the real situation. For example, you want to express your opinion in front of others, but you cannot speak, because your body feels paralyzed, and you cannot utter a sound.
- You have already done a lot of personal work, maybe you have attended psychotherapy, and you understand why feelings arise in certain situations, but they still hinder your life and because of them, you cannot move in the desired direction.
- When you want to be fully connected to the life energy within you and use it for your proper functioning, but you feel limitations within yourself that remain despite intense personal work.
- Which of your qualities will support you during the Brainspotting process?
- Being in touch with yourself, your body, and emotions; being open to yourself and your inner world.
- Active care for your well-being and related supportive strategies (mindfulness, meditation, etc.).
- Openness to your vulnerability and the desire to heal it.
- Internal motivation for change.
- Personal qualities such as perseverance, courage, and empathy.
- All personal work you have done so far.
- Why is it important that the therapist conducting Brainspotting has personally experienced in-depth Brainspotting psychotherapy?
With Brainspotting, we return to painful contents that in the past were pushed into the unconscious deeper areas of the brain due to the need to survive. On the way back to emotional pain, we re-encounter the fears and defenses we put in place to avoid experiencing it again. The entire nervous system will, as a good guardian, check whether the surroundings are different from when this content had to be suppressed, i.e. whether the person who is with you is safe, present, and stable enough.
If the deeper parts of the brain perceive the therapist’s state as safe, stable, and present, this will support the client, they will feel enough security and stability within themselves to connect more deeply with the body and physical experience. Therefore, it is very important that the therapist who conducts Brainspotting actively takes care of their inner well-being and heals their painful contents, as this will allow the client a more open, safe, and pure space for their process.
- How does the process work?
When a sense of security is ensured in the relationship between the therapist and the client, and the client feels safe enough with the sensations in their body, it is time for the internal process.
The client chooses a difficult topic that they want to address in the process. The topic can be anything that feels burdensome and/or overwhelming: pleasant or unpleasant feelings, thoughts, dreams, negative ideas about themselves, memories, and the like.
When choosing a topic, the client connects with the body and the feelings that arise. At the same time, they can choose the optimal eye position intuitively or with the help of a therapist, which allows them to connect even more with the topic and feelings. They can thus access a frozen region deeper in the brain where the painful experience that causes current symptoms is trapped.
The client brings their presence into the body and is curious and open to the process. The client and the therapist are in a state of ignorance, openness, awareness, and trust in the body’s ability to heal itself.
The process is non-linear: memories, feelings, or physical sensations may appear that travel through the body. We follow the process and support the body in recovery.
When the emotional pain is released, the body calms down and the client feels peace, freedom, openness, and security. By freeing itself from painful, repressed content, the body returned to its equilibrium.
The initial content is no longer burdensome after the process, and the client only experiences it as a part of life.
- What are the specifics of Brainspotting?
The main feature of the in-depth process of Brainspotting is that it does not take place exclusively in the cognitive part of the brain. The process takes place in the body and the brain, so we fulfill all the necessary conditions for both.
The main guideline in this process is to follow the needs of the body and thus support the healing process. For example:
- At the beginning or in the middle of the process, the client may feel that they want to close their eyes, yawn, and move, shift the position of the eyes, or shake their body.
- In this process, we talk significantly less than in talk therapy. The client tells the therapist only as much as they feel is right for them and does not disturb the internal process.
- The therapist supports the process with her presence where the client needs it.
- Tools used in Brainspotting
In this process, we can use the following tools:
- Pointer: a stick that helps us find the optimal eye position for a specific symptom you want to work on
- Bilateral music: the client listens to it with headphones, as it is designed to regulate the functioning of the left and right brain hemispheres.
- Goggles – special glasses used for regulating the processing of trauma in a certain part of the brain.
All tools are intended to support the client’s body in processing painful emotional content. They are only used if the client feels that they would be helpful in the process.
- How do you prepare for a Brainspotting session?
Prepare for the Brainspotting process by being in touch with your body, and with your feelings, and be open to where your body wants to take you. Clients often say that they started to feel differently a day/a few hours before the therapy, or that something happened to them in the past week that is weighing heavily on them, following them, and they want the process to focus on this specific issue.
For the body, this process feels very organic and natural, so that when it senses that the time for the session is approaching, it begins to express its distress with various symptoms.
- What clients say after the Brainspotting process
- Clients often report feeling tired after the process, but it is a pleasant tiredness, like reaching the top of a hill or running a marathon. So they are tired but deeply relieved and satisfied. These feelings are completely understandable and normal because the process in the deeper parts of the brain is very fast and intense and affects the whole body.
In practice, we say that the brain and body run a “brain marathon” during the process 😊
It is important to take enough time after the procedure to take good care of yourself, for example with rest, walking, water, and food intake, and thus allow your body to regenerate.
- Although the process has ended in therapy, it continues to take place in the body and brain. Clients often say that in the week following the session, they experienced powerful insights in the area they were working on, or that pleasant feelings deepened. They report positive changes and improvement in symptoms even after they have already completed the therapeutic process. This is confirmed by research on the effects of treating generalized anxiety disorder with Brainspotting, EMDR, and cognitive behavioral therapy.
- Clients are positively surprised by the change that occurs during and after the process. For example, they came with feelings of extreme fear, which was not founded in reality, but after the session, they felt a deep sense of peace and connection with themselves.
- They are proud of themselves, of what they faced in the process, and what this confrontation brought them. After the process, they feel deeply empowered and more assured that they can cope with strong feelings even outside the process.
- Can Brainspotting take place online and is it of the same quality as live therapy?
For high-quality Brainspotting, a safe environment is crucial so that the client feels safe enough in the therapeutic relationship and with their feelings within the body. In online therapy, a sufficiently good Internet connection and a calm environment deepen the feeling of security.
When these conditions are met, the online process is as effective as live.
- How many sessions are needed for the client to feel better?
The answer to this question is very individual; it depends on at which point you are in life, what you are facing within yourself, the duration and acuteness of the problem, your capacities, and ways of dealing with feelings, and what you expect from change.
If the problem is related exclusively to your adult life and the therapeutic process is focused on this problem, your inner experience can change after only a few therapies.
If you want to achieve a deeper change in how you experience yourself and deal with the consequences of developmental trauma, then a longer process will be necessary.
- What inspires me as a therapist about Brainspotting
I am constantly inspired by the body’s wisdom that we carry within us and its inexhaustible ability to heal both physical and emotional pain. The path the body chooses to process trauma inspires me. This path is incomprehensible to the mind at first, but later everything makes sense. Of course, I am most inspired by the stories of clients who say with joy and enthusiasm that they make changes that they have never dared to make before, or that they are finally walking the path that is right for them.
I hope I answered your dilemmas and questions. If you have any more questions, send them and I will be happy to provide answers.