Brainspotting

Brainspotting is an amazingly user-friendly, yet highly efficient and effective therapy modality. Brainspotting can be an effective and efficient treatment tool for a wide range of issues, including:

• Physical, emotional, and other types of trauma
• Anxiety
• Panic
• Addictions (especially cravings)
• Recovering from physical injury
• Chronic Pain conditions
• Stress and trauma-related medical illness
• Anger and rage problems
• Performance issues

Similar to EMDR, Brainspotting works to release trauma that is stored in your brain's memory networks. Brainspotting utilizes specific eye positions to stimulate the precise memory networks that contain the traumatic or emotionally charged information relevant to your symptoms (e.g. anxiety, panic, depression, relationship struggles). Another factor that makes Brainspotting so useful is that it integrates extremely well with other powerful modalities, such as EMDR and ego state work.

Brainspotting utilizes two key principles: Resourcing and Trauma Processing. Resourcing is used to connect you to a calm, grounded, relaxed part of yourself (found in your body). This is very valuable and unique because it's an effective way to calm your amygdala (which regulates emotional reactivity) and shift you out of the fight-flight-freeze mode and into your parasympathetic (relaxed) nervous system. This is important for two reasons. First, it helps you to learn how to calm and ground yourself when triggered. Many people can calm and ground themselves, but not when they are triggered. Being able to calm and ground yourself when triggered is highly valuable for dealing with anxiety, panic, stress, and any emotionally charged situation. Second, being in a relaxed state allows for deeper, more effective, gentler trauma processing.

Brainspotting was discovered in 2003 by David Grand, Ph.D. For more information about Brainspotting, feel free to read Dr Grand's article, Brainspotting, a New Brain-Based Psychotherapy Approach.