What is Brainspotting and How is It Different from Talk Therapy?
Written by Emily Petersdorff, APSW. To schedule your free 15 minute consultation with Emily, click here.
What is Brainspotting & Why Would I Try It?
Brainspotting is a type of therapy that allows for deeper healing and greater connection to your body. There are many reasons that people may want to try brainspotting, especially if you have already tried talk therapy without much success. Maybe you have been in talk therapy for years without fully feeling better. You know that you feel better than you did before you started therapy, but you have a feeling that there is more; more healing, more connection, and more embodiment. You are not alone, this is a common feeling! Talk therapy is amazing and extremely beneficial. It can allow you to learn coping skills, manage symptoms, increase self-compassion, increase self-awareness, recognize patterns of unhealthy behaviors, and much more.
But, there can be a point when people start feeling stuck. Maybe you are an extremely self-aware person and feel like you have done everything you can in talk therapy. However, you still don’t feel like your most authentic, embodied self. Or, maybe you don’t understand why you are struggling and have a hard time connecting to your emotions. Some people share that they feel completely overwhelmed by their emotions and struggle to process them through talking. If you can relate to any of these common feelings, you might be a good fit for brainspotting.
How is Brainspotting Different from Talk Therapy?
It allows you to connect to a different part of your brain.
With brainspotting, we are connecting to the subcortical part of the brain, which is a fancy word for the “unconscious”. This part of the brain controls aspects of our memory, emotions, and our instincts. In brainspotting, we also access our limbic system and brainstem. This allows us to connect our physical responses to our emotional processing center. In doing so, we are able to process through painful memories and sensations, both physically, and through our emotional processing center.
Brainspotting differs, because in traditional talk therapy, we are primarily connecting into the prefrontal cortex. This is our higher level thinking, or rational brain. Connecting to this part of the brain is important and helpful, and can cause significant positive changes for people. However, with certain traumatic events, we cannot talk our way to healing. Our bodily responses need to be included in the healing process. We also may not be consciously aware of what is keeping us stuck, so brainspotting helps us to access this more easily.
It helps you to connect to the unconscious parts of yourself.
Brainspotting allows you to go deep internally and access parts of you that you did not know existed. Talk therapy only allows you to access the parts you are consciously aware of, but these are often not the parts that are holding us back. Brainspotting helps you to get to the root of the problem, without barriers and defenses. Brainspotting can be extremely helpful for those who do not have much memory of the traumatic event, or who experience significant dissociation. Many of these traumas may be outside of our understanding, stored in the subcortical area of our brain. This part of our brain holds a lot of information that is not readily available to us, or stored in the unconscious. Therefore, we might not understand why we always feel a certain way in situations; but our body holds this information. Our bodies remember and store away each and every experience we go through.You do not need to talk!
Brainspotting is different from talk therapy in that you do not need to talk to reach healing! Your brain is able to process your emotions and reach regulation and healing without needing to vocalize what you are experiencing. This is very helpful for people who experienced significant trauma that is hard to talk about.
It is a bottom-up therapy versus top-down.
Brainspotting is a bottom-up therapy, which just means that we are paying more attention to the body and emotions, as opposed to paying attention to primarily thoughts. With talk therapy, we focus on how changing our thoughts and behaviors can create healing. But with brainspotting, we focus on feelings and sensations within our body for healing and processing.
How Does a Brainspotting Session Work?
If you decide to try brainspotting, your therapist will help guide you through the process. The first step is to connect to the feelings that you are experiencing in your body, or a sense of “activation”. Then, your therapist will guide you in finding a brainspot that allows you to connect to that feeling or activation. Your therapist will hold a pointer at that spot, then, all you have to do is to keep your attention on that spot! Your brain does the remainder of the processing and healing. Brainspotting allows for the release of trauma, and the ability for your brain to form new neural connections. It also supports your nervous system in reaching a state of regulation.
Why Does Brainspotting Work?
Brainspotting allows you to reconnect to painful, traumatic memories in a calm state, with support. Trauma that was unable to be released and healed at the time is able to be released and transformed due to re-visiting it while you are safe. Being in the presence of a therapist allows you to have support and a sense of safety that was not present during the traumatic event.
Brainspotting can be helpful, because the sustained focus on a certain direction allows us to recall these memories and feelings that are stored in our body. Calling them up allows us to make them conscious and process them at a deeper level. Therapists help clients find a certain eye position that correlates with a specific memory or feeling and guides them through the process.
Many people experience powerful releases of emotions in sessions or are able to recognize patterns in their life that are keeping them stuck. It is such a powerful tool for healing and focuses on our bodies’ own innate capacity to heal. Brainspotting can also help us to regulate our nervous system. Our body naturally regulates between our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, but sometimes trauma can create dysregulation in our nervous system, which brainspotting can help with!
Brainspotting is extremely helpful in healing from trauma and reaching deeper healing. If you are feeling stuck with talk therapy, brainspotting could be a great fit for you.
Here are some research articles on brainspotting if you are curious to learn more!
Research And Case Studies - Brainspotting