What Is Brainspotting Therapy? What It Feels Like and How It Can Help

You can understand exactly why something bothers you and still feel stuck.

Maybe you know where your anxiety comes from. You understand how your childhood affected your relationships. You have talked about a traumatic experience multiple times. You recognize your triggers and can identify the patterns you keep falling into.

You understand the problem.

But your body still reacts.

Your chest gets tight. Your stomach drops. You shut down. You become overwhelmed. You feel anxious, angry, ashamed, or afraid before you even have time to think about what is happening.

For some people, traditional talk therapy helps them understand what happened but does not completely change how they respond to it.

This is one of the reasons I use Brainspotting therapy with clients at my practice in Edmond, Oklahoma.

What Is Brainspotting Therapy?

Brainspotting is a therapy approach developed by psychologist David Grand in 2003. It uses specific points in your visual field while you focus on an emotional experience, memory, thought, or physical sensation.

The basic idea behind Brainspotting is that where you look may influence what you feel.

It sounds unusual until you actually experience it.

During a Brainspotting session, I might ask you to think about something we have been working on and notice what happens inside your body.

Maybe you notice tightness in your chest.

Maybe your shoulders tense.

Maybe you feel a knot in your stomach.

Maybe you cannot identify a specific sensation at all. You simply know that something feels uncomfortable.

From there, we slowly explore different points in your visual field while paying attention to how your internal experience changes.

At a certain point, you might notice that the feeling becomes stronger, weaker, or simply different. We can then use that location as a point of focus while you notice what comes up.

What Does Brainspotting Feel Like?

This is probably one of the most common questions people have about Brainspotting.

There is no single answer because everyone processes differently.

Some people experience a stream of thoughts or memories. Something you have not thought about in years might suddenly come to mind. You might make a connection between two experiences that you had never considered before.

Other people experience Brainspotting more physically.

You might notice warmth, heaviness, muscle tension, changes in your breathing, trembling, or another physical sensation. Sometimes those sensations become stronger for a period of time and then begin to settle.

You may experience emotions such as sadness, anger, fear, relief, or grief.

You might cry.

You might talk.

You might sit quietly.

Sometimes a Brainspotting session is surprisingly uneventful.

There is no correct way to do it.

My role is not to tell you what you are supposed to experience. I am there with you while we pay attention to what your mind and body are already doing.

Are You Still in Control During Brainspotting?

Yes.

Brainspotting is not hypnosis. You remain awake and aware throughout the session.

You can talk whenever you want. You can move your eyes. You can take a break. You can tell me that something feels uncomfortable. You can decide that you do not want to continue.

You remain in control of the process.

That is especially important when we are working with trauma. Therapy should not recreate an experience where you feel powerless or trapped.

Do I Have to Tell My Therapist Everything That Happened?

No.

This can be particularly helpful for people who find it difficult to talk about certain experiences.

You may not want to describe every detail of a traumatic experience. You may feel embarrassed about something that happened. You may have difficulty putting an experience into words.

Sometimes you may not even fully understand why something affects you.

We can still work with the emotional response.

You are always welcome to talk during Brainspotting, but you do not necessarily have to give me a detailed account of everything you are processing.

For some people, that makes trauma therapy feel much more approachable.

What Can Brainspotting Help With?

I may incorporate Brainspotting when working with trauma, anxiety, shame, grief, relationship difficulties, attachment wounds, religious trauma, sexual trauma, difficult sexual experiences, negative beliefs about yourself, or situations that continue to trigger strong emotional reactions.

It can also be useful when there seems to be a disconnect between what you know and what you feel.

You can know that your current relationship is safe and still panic during conflict.

You can know that something was not your fault and still feel ashamed.

You can understand that you are no longer in danger and still feel afraid.

You can recognize that a belief about yourself is inaccurate and still feel like it is true.

You can spend years understanding why you react a certain way and still have the reaction.

Insight matters.

But insight and change are not always the same thing.

Sometimes we need another way of working with what is happening.

Can Brainspotting Help With Trauma?

Trauma is one of the primary reasons people seek out Brainspotting therapy.

When people hear the word trauma, they sometimes think it only refers to catastrophic events. Trauma can certainly result from experiences such as violence, abuse, assault, accidents, or other threatening events.

But people can also carry lasting emotional responses from experiences involving rejection, humiliation, bullying, religious environments, difficult relationships, discrimination, sexual experiences, or situations where they repeatedly felt unsafe or powerless.

The important question is not whether your experience was bad enough to qualify.

The more useful question is whether that experience is still affecting your life today.

If something from your past continues influencing your relationships, emotions, self worth, sexuality, confidence, or sense of safety, it may be worth addressing in therapy.

Why Does Brainspotting Work?

There are several theories about why Brainspotting may be helpful, but we do not completely understand its mechanisms yet.

I think that distinction matters.

You may encounter explanations online that make very specific claims about exactly where trauma is stored in the brain or exactly what is happening neurologically during Brainspotting. The science is not developed enough to make every one of those claims with certainty.

What we do know is that Brainspotting involves several processes that can be useful in therapy.

You are focusing your attention on an emotional experience.

You are noticing what happens in your body.

You are allowing thoughts, emotions, memories, and sensations to develop without immediately trying to push them away.

And you are doing that while another person is present with you in a therapeutic relationship.

Brainspotting gives us a structured way to work with those experiences when simply talking about them has not been enough.

How Effective Is Brainspotting?

Research on Brainspotting is promising, but it is still developing.

Studies have reported reductions in symptoms related to trauma and emotional distress following Brainspotting. Research comparing Brainspotting with EMDR has also found improvements among people receiving both approaches.

However, Brainspotting does not currently have the same amount of research behind it as more established trauma treatments such as EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy, and Prolonged Exposure.

That is an important distinction.

I do not believe in presenting any therapy as a miracle treatment.

Brainspotting will not be the right approach for every person who walks into my office.

For some clients, however, it can provide a way of processing an experience that feels very different from sitting in therapy and talking about the same problem again.

The question is not whether Brainspotting is the best therapy.

The question is whether it might be helpful for you.

What Happens After a Brainspotting Session?

People respond differently.

You might leave feeling calmer or lighter.

You might feel tired.

You might notice that something that felt extremely intense at the beginning of the session does not feel quite as powerful afterward.

Sometimes the change is less obvious.

You may leave thinking that nothing particularly dramatic happened and then notice several days later that something that normally triggers you does not have quite the same effect.

You may also notice thoughts, emotions, memories, or dreams coming up between sessions.

Therapy does not have to produce a dramatic breakthrough every week to be effective.

Often, meaningful change looks much smaller at first.

You react differently.

Something bothers you a little less.

You communicate instead of shutting down.

You set a boundary you normally would not set.

You notice that an old belief about yourself does not feel quite as convincing anymore.

Those changes add up.

Brainspotting and Neurodivergent Clients

For some autistic and neurodivergent people, traditional therapy can become extremely focused on explaining and analyzing emotions.

You might be very good at analyzing yourself while still struggling to identify exactly what you are feeling in the moment.

You might understand your behavior intellectually but have difficulty describing what is happening internally.

Or you might simply be exhausted from feeling like therapy requires you to constantly translate your internal experience into language another person can understand.

Brainspotting gives us another option.

You do not have to find the perfect words for everything you experience.

We can pay attention to sensations, emotions, thoughts, images, memories, or whatever else comes up for you.

As with any therapy approach, Brainspotting should be adapted to the individual rather than expecting the individual to adapt to the therapy.

Brainspotting Is Not Just for Trauma

Although Brainspotting is often associated with trauma therapy, that is not the only way I use it.

Sometimes the thing keeping you stuck is not a specific traumatic memory.

It might be fear of rejection.

Shame about your body.

Difficulty with intimacy.

Anxiety around sex.

A belief that you are not good enough.

Fear of disappointing people.

Performance anxiety.

A relationship experience you cannot seem to move past.

Or a reaction that feels much bigger than the situation in front of you.

We can work with those experiences too.

Is Brainspotting Right for You?

Brainspotting may be worth exploring if you feel like you have talked extensively about your problems but continue having the same emotional reactions.

It may also be useful if you have difficulty putting your experiences into words or if traditional talk therapy has helped you understand yourself without creating all of the changes you hoped for.

I use Brainspotting as one part of an individualized approach to therapy. Depending on what you need, our work may also include EMDR, Brainspotting, person centered therapy, motivational interviewing, and skills informed by DBT.

We are not going to use a technique simply because I am trained in it.

We use what helps you move forward.

Brainspotting Therapy in Edmond, Oklahoma

I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and provide Brainspotting and trauma therapy through Pride in Self Counseling in Edmond, Oklahoma.

My work focuses on helping adults address trauma, anxiety, intimacy, sexual health, relationship concerns, identity, and patterns that continue interfering with the life they want. I also specialize in working with LGBTQIA plus and autistic or neurodivergent adults.

If you have spent a lot of time understanding why you feel stuck but are ready to work toward actually changing those patterns, Brainspotting may be one option we can explore together.

Sometimes talking is exactly what we need.

Sometimes we need to understand why a pattern exists.

And sometimes you already understand the pattern.

You are just ready for it to stop controlling your life.

References

Hildebrand, A., Grand, D., & Stemmler, M. (2017). Brainspotting: The efficacy of a new therapy approach for the treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in comparison to Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, 5(1).

Masson, J., Bernoussi, A., & Charlemagne Simplice, M. (2022). Psychotherapeutic techniques for distressing memories: A comparative study between EMDR, Brainspotting, and Body Scan Meditation. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(3), 1142.