What is Brainspotting?
Brainspotting (BSP) is a relatively new, yet powerful and focused treatment method designed by David Grand, Ph.D. to help people process and relieve suffering from uncomfortable emotions, pain, and trauma. BSP has been utilized as an effective treatment for many challenging symptoms, including both physical and emotional trauma, chronic pain, and stress.
How does it work?
Over the years there has been growing awareness that the body and mind are one and the same. What we feel in the body exists as activity in the brain.
It has been discovered that where someone looks with their eyes connects the feelings in the body with the point in the brain that is being activated.
In trauma our survival mechanism “kicks in” and we respond with the flight-fight-freeze reaction. Excess adrenaline and cortisol is released and our ability to process implicit memory (anything the sensory systems of our body detected during the event.) into explicit memory (declarative memory – autobiographical story) is thwarted.
During a Brainspotting session, a trained therapist will guide your eyes with a pointer in order to find the eye position that activates the specific trauma or pain that needs to be healed.
Within a deeply focused and calming environment, the brainspot is activated by the therapist, allowing access to the trauma on a level deeper than talk therapy alone can achieve, allowing the body’s natural processes to heal the trauma.
Brainspotting allows the trauma patient to sidestep the fight-flight-freeze mechanisms that interfere with resolving the trauma memories.
Please view the following video, and if you wonder if Brainspotting techniques may be of help to you, please call and ask for more information.
What to Expect in BRAINSPOTTING Therapy
- You do not have to try to do anything.
- Allow yourself to feel emotion and various sensations in your body.
- You do not have to try to analyze the problem.
- You may talk as much as you want, or as little as you want during the session.
- I may ask you, Where are you now? This is referring to where you may be in your thoughts or how you are feeling.
- I may ask you, What are you feeling in your body? This is referring to various sensations or pains you may be experiencing such as tightness in your chest, stomach ache, tension in your neck, eye twitching, or anything else being experienced.
- I may ask you on a scale of 0 to 10 how activated do you feel by the issue you are focused on or the emotions you are feeling, 10 being the highest and 0 being not at all.
- Silence is OKAY.
- I may ask you to wear headphones during your session for biolateral stimulation. This is where the sounds you hear bounce back and forth from right to left helping your right and left brain to integrate together while processing which helping you to stay in your inner deep brain.
- TRUST the process and allow your brain to heal and rewire unhealthy connections.
