Brisbane Brainspotting Therapy
Brisbane Brainspotting
Brainspotting is a 21st Century development in psychotherapy. Brainspotting is relational, highly attuned therapy, which is one of the increasing number of brain-based therapies, that go beyond the mind, to gain direct access to the subcortical brain and process trauma.
Brainspotting developed from a type of natural flow EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) in which slow eye movements are used to access and process traumatic memories.
Brainspotting therapy was discovered in 2003 by David Grand, PhD when he observed one of his client’s getting "stuck" in one spot. As he stayed in this one spot with his client, Grand observed his client going into deeper levels of processing than he had ever seen before. He saw that his client was able to process traumatic material that was not previously accessible. Grand followed up his inital observation with other client’s and discovered a similar patter of powerful processing…Brainspotting was born!
Today over 13,000 therapists across the world have been trained in brainspotting.
How does brainspotting work?
Brainspotting is a powerful, psychotherapeutic approach that uses the field of vision, to locate relevant eye positions known as ‘brain spots’. By locating points in a persons visual field, brainspotting helps people to access unprocessed trauma in the subcortical brain, also known as the unconscious part of the brain. Working directly with the subcortical brain means that we can locate, focus, process, and release experiences and symptoms that are typically out of reach of the conscious mind and its cognitive and language capacity.
During a brainspotting session, a brainspotting therapist will help you locate a relevant eye position that corresponds with a specific emotional response or incident. When a client accesses a memory, they also access a unique eye position aka brainspot for the particular event or memory that is being worked on. A trained brainspotting therapist guides you to maintain focused mindfulness and uncritically observe your internal process so you can process and release a wide range of emotions and bodily-based experiences.
One of the benefits of Brainspotting therapy over EMDR is that a person does not need to “relive” the trauma or have to tell the story of the trauma in order to facilitate its release from the body. An example of brainspottings effectiveness can be seen in the research survey study data compiled here. The data shows brainspotting as the most efficacious therapy following the sandy hook school shooting.
In short brainspotting helps clients to identify, process and release core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms.
Brainspotting is a simultaneous form of diagnosis and treatment that may also be enhanced with Bilateral sound. Bilateral sound is deep, direct, and powerful. It is a form of bilateral stimulation which has been demonstrated extensively in studies to create a greater connection between your mind and your body.
The bilateral sounds serve to create balance between the right and left hemispheres, which creates calm parallel to the activation of distressing memories. This results in a change in brain wiring related to the memory. People report feeling less activated by the memories.
Brainspotting taps into the body’s natural self-scanning and self-healing ability and can also be used to find and strengthen our natural resources and resilience. Brainspotting is designed as a therapeutic tool that can be integrated and used alongside many healing modalities.
What can brainspotting be used for?
Brainspotting is effective for a wide variety of emotional and somatic conditions including trauma.
Brainspotting is particularly effective with trauma-based situations, helping to identify and heal underlying trauma that contributes to anxiety, depression and other behavioral conditions. It can also be used with performance and creativity enhancement. Brainspotting gives the therapist access to both brain and body processes. Its goal is to bypass the conscious, neocortical thinking to access the deeper, subcortical emotional and body-based parts of the brain.
What does a brainspotting session looks like?
Although there is a therapist there guiding you, much of the session is self-directed. You will start with some relaxing breathing and possibly listening to bilateral sound (music designed to move from one ear to the other) in headphones.
Once you have settled into a mindful state, you will identify a place in your body where you feel the most distress around the topic or memory you are wanting to work on and you rank it on a scale of one to ten.
With the therapist’s help, you will then be guided to find your “brain spot,” or, where your eyes naturally focus on when the physical discomfort is the strongest.
You will be guided to focus on this point by a pointer rod and the therapist will help you identify a relevant brain spot where you will focus your attention.
The therapist may take either an “Outside Window” or “Inside Window” approach.In the “Outside Window” approach, the therapist observes the client’s gaze and recommends a point and in the “Inside Window” approach, the client is the one identifying the point to process.
From here, you and the therapist will hone in on the feelings coming up, as you keep focused mindfulness on your somatic and cognitive experience.
You will then take some time to process the experience of what comes up and integrate the meaning of your experience.
Links to research and case studies
https://brainspotting.com/about-bsp/research-and-case-studies/