What is Brainspotting Therapy?

Brainspotting is a therapy  technique that can help resolve many different issues.  Some of the issues brainspotting can help with include  trauma, complex PTSD, performance anxiety, general anxiety, grief over a divorce or grief over the loss of a loved one.  Brainspotting helps identify and heal where the issue is stored within your neurobiology to help you get “unstuck” from the issue and move forward in your life.  So regardless if you are an actor/singer with performance anxiety, a student who has test anxiety, or someone who has had extreme trauma, brainspotting can often times help.

How does Brainspotting work?  Everything we experience as humans, we experience at the direction of our brain.  When we feel an itch, our brain is the thing that directs us to itch it.  There is a direct connection between your eyes and your brain.  Brainspotting uses points in your vision to identify where an issue is held so that we can work on that issue directly.  The brainspotting therapist uses those points to help you heal by utilizing the direct location that the issue is held in your brain to resolve the issue.

I recently read an article titled “The Eye is our Window to the Brain”.  It talked about how the eye is the only part of the brain that can be seen directly.  In brainspotting, we take full advantage of this window to the brain because we know the brain is where bad memories (including trauma) are stored.  When we can access the exact spots in the brain that bad memories are stored, we can work on them therapeutically.

I’m big on analogies, so hopefully this one helps.  Think of a computer mouse that has a rollerball on it.  When you are clicking a button on your computer screen to access the content you want, the rollerball has to be at the exact location for where your mouse needs to be on your computer screen to access whatever you need to access on your computer.  If you are trying to click on a song, if you click a little bit above or below, it might play the wrong song.  Now think of your eyeball being like that rollerball mouse.  Every single position your eyes can have while looking around the room represents an access point in your brain.  Brainspotting uses your visual field to access parts of your brain where uncomfortable memories are held at the same time you are doing therapy.  Sometimes those memories would be severe enough to be considered a trauma, but sometimes they are simply uncomfortable feelings.  However big or small the issue, your brain has stored that issue in it’s “hard drive” and brainspotting helps locate it so that your therapist can help you heal it.

At Long Beach Therapy, we are trained in Brainspotting, EMDR, TFCBT and regular talk therapy.  If you have questions or want to set up an appointment, please call us at 562-310-9741.