Brainspotting (BSP) is a brain-based psychotherapy option that utilizes the field of vision to promote your brain’s natural ability to focus and process emotional and physical trauma.
BSP is a highly effective tool that allows you to move beyond your logical reasoning mind and into the areas of your brain that hold traumatic and/or painful unprocessed emotions. When we experience moments in our life that activate our fight or flight response, and we don’t have the tools to process the experience in the moment, our brain encapsulates those moments in an attempt to keep us emotionally balanced. This is what I refer to as a “flashbulb” memory.
Through the access of a brainspot; which is an eye position related to a “charged” experience that has failed to integrate, your body and brain will bypass the thinking part of the brain and allow for the stimulation of healing to take place.
As a BSP trained therapist, I am trained to scan for reflexive cues to gain access to the part of the brain that holds the trauma or painful event. Through the attunement to you as your therapist and your brain’s ability to heal itself; your trauma naturally unwinds itself.
Most of us will gaze in a particular spot intuitively when discussing a traumatic event or area of pain, but in an effort to be relational and make eye contact we often break our gaze and offline our natural ability to attune to the brainspot that holds the memory. Brainspotting is incredibly helpful if you experience emotions that don’t make sense or are magnified in a way that doesn’t match the current activating event.
Brainspotting gives you access to your regulatory system to help your body and brain work together to get to the reflexive core and dismantle the distress. BSP literally gives you an open door to the events that your brain “swept under the rug” in an attempt to keep you regulated.
When we get in conflict our regulatory system tells us whether or not the conflict is worthy of a fight or flight response. Unhealed trauma, when activated, turns on our fight or flight response regardless of how much we logically know.
Depending on the level of trauma experienced, it can be difficult to navigate a response when your regulatory system is in a reactive state. When we are able to move from a reactive state into a responsive state, we are practicing self-mastery. I believe that this is also the daily practice of being attuned to yourself and silencing the noise of learned patterns, societal pressure, trauma, and pain.
Brainspotting is the speed train that will guide you to a neutral state of being.
My experience with brainspotting was the silver bullet I was looking for. You can read about my personal experience here. If you would like to experience BSP, contact me.
Brainspotting can be an effective emotional regulating treatment for a number of symptoms; here are a few:
- Physical and emotional trauma
- PTSD
- Anxiety and panic
- OCD
- Addictions (especially cravings)
- Eating Disorders
Contact me to learn more about how Brainspotting can clear the way to faster healing.