Brainspotting, A New Approach to Treating Trauma
Our highly experienced staff continues to stay aware of current trends and best practices. Brainspotting is a powerful new technique used for treating trauma utilizing eye movements, mindfulness, and traditional cognitive behavioral strategies to address trauma memories, emotions, and re-experiences.
What is Brainspotting?
Brainspotting is a cutting-edge therapeutic method that taps into the brain’s natural ability to heal itself. Developed by Dr. David Grand, this revolutionary technique recognizes that where we look affects how we feel. By identifying and focusing on “brainspots” – eye positions associated with unprocessed emotional experiences – Brainspotting helps access and process unresolved emotions, memories, and traumas.
How Does Brainspotting Work?
The exact science of how eye movement relates to trauma is still a mystery. However, it’s relevancy has not been missed and is being used effectively in both Brainspotting techniques as well as the popular EMDR techniques to trauma treatment.
At its core, Brainspotting is rooted in the mind-body connection. During sessions, your therapist guides you to find your unique brainspots using guided eye movement and your emotional feedback. These spots often correspond with the areas where your brain holds onto emotional or physical distress. By gently exploring these points, you’re able to unravel core tensions and eventually release the emotions or memories that are causing you distress.
Benefits of Brainspotting
Efficient Healing: Brainspotting can often yield faster results compared to traditional talk therapies. This is because it directly accesses the brain’s self-healing mechanisms, facilitating quicker resolution of emotional challenges. Some clients report significant progress in as little as three sessions from Brainspotting alone. Other times, Brainspotting can be used in conjunction with traditional talk therapy for added benefit.
Trauma Relief: Brainspotting has shown exceptional effectiveness in treating various types of trauma, including complex traumas. It helps to reprocess traumatic experiences in a safe and controlled environment, allowing you to regain a sense of emotional balance.
Enhanced Self-Regulation: Through Brainspotting, you’ll develop heightened self-awareness and self-regulation skills. These skills are helpful for mitigating the powerful emotions associated with trauma memories but also for navigating day to day stress, relationships, and challenging emotions.
Unlocking Resilience: As you free yourself from the confinement of your trauma experiences, you will discover a renewed sense of confidence. You will learn to trust your intuition and your ability to keep yourself safe. These re-discovered feelings will naturally lead you to feeling more grounded and centered in all areas of life.
Is Brainspotting Right for You?
We offer brainspotting for adolescents and adults currently. Brainspotting may be a great fit for you if you have experienced a traumatic event and notice that you are frequently remembering the event, have shifted your personality or actions as a result of the event, feel less like yourself, feel guilty or ashamed, feel persistent worry or fear, or are otherwise routinely negatively impacted by the event. Brainspotting may be used as a singular treatment, but is often combined with traditional talk therapy strategies.