The idea underlying brainspotting is “where you look affects how you feel.” Your brain activity, especially in the subcortex brain, organizes itself around the positioning of your eyes. Once a brainspot is identified in a session, the brain naturally propels the healing process forward. In some cases, brainspotting alone can help you heal. In many cases, brainspotting enables talk therapy to be more focused, more effective, and yield practical improvements in your life rapidly.

Brainspotting has been shown to be effective for the treatment of trauma, PTSD, problem anger, anxiety, depression, phobias, chronic pain, substance abuse, chronic fatigue, and ADHD.

Brainspotting can zero in on the area where you are holding trauma, anxiety, and relational problems. When a “brainspot” is stimulated, the deep brain signals that a problematic memory or experience has been identified.

In therapy, I will be attuned to your reactions, helping you tap into your body’s natural self-scanning, self-healing abilities. The goal is to help you experience rapid, immediate, deep, and permanent change.

A brainspotting session is just you and the therapist.

In a brainspotting session, the therapist holds a pointer, slowly guiding your eyes across the field of vision. When a certain point in the field of vision evokes a stressful memory or activates a physical response (such as tenseness, shakiness, heat, tingling, or increased heart rate), the therapist encourages you to focus on that spot. As you focus on the spot, the physical sensations triggered often decrease in intensity or resolve entirely. As the physical activation resolves, you can create new meaning around the painful memory.

Brainspotting is based on the profound attunement of the therapist with the patient, finding a somatic cue and extinguishing it by down-regulating the amygdala.— Robert Scaer, MD, “The Trauma Spectrum”

Brainspotting can complement other therapeutic techniques as well as for enhancing performance and creativity.

Brainspotting works differently for different people. In therapy, we will be flexible, personalizing the approach based on your feelings and needs. We don’t know where your brain is going to reveal, but we do know that your brain has an amazing way of healing itself. Brainspotting releases the self-healing potential that you already have.

Have you ever felt, “I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but I can’t help it!” Often, we try to think our way out of our problems when the root of our difficulty is in traumatic or other difficult memories that are “stuck” in our brain. Stimulating a brainspot will tap into your natural ability to self-heal, essentially moving the memory into the cerebral cortex where you can process the memory.

The subcortex is the portion of the brain where we process more primitive functions.

Brainspotting interfaces with the deeper areas of your brain, giving your therapist access to deep inside you where trauma is held. Brainspotting skips past the conscious thinking processes of the neocortex and rapidly accesses the deeper, more emotional, and body-based processes of the subcortex.