Hi there, I'm Gabrielle Kawashima, a trauma therapist and the owner of Even Here Therapy. I started working with individuals dealing with trauma right away. In my very first role as a therapist, I worked with Veterans who were experiencing homelessness and battling addiction. There was a lot of growth and change that I witnessed, and I became hooked on working with both first responders and trauma.
I also started noticing that there was only so much work that could be done with our thinking brains, especially when it comes to therapy for trauma. I started looking for other modalities that would allow for deeper healing. This is where brainspotting therapy comes in.
What is Brainspotting Therapy?
Brainspotting is different than traditional talk therapy. Brainspotting is a type of treatment that allows both the Client and the Therapist to work with both the mind and the physical body. In a brainspotting therapy session, your therapist will work with you to find and target the root of emotional or physical pain, trauma, or challenge and experience release.
Brainspotting was developed by Dr. David Grand in 2003, and uses components of EMDR and Somatic Experiencing.
When you're brainspotting, you and your Therapist are gaining access to deeper brain regions that we can struggle to get in touch with otherwise.
"Brainspotting works with the deep brain and the body through its direct access to the autonomic and limbic systems within the body’s central nervous system. Brainspotting is accordingly a physiological tool/treatment which has profound psychological, emotional, and physical consequences" (Grand, 2017).
When something traumatic happens, the memory and the felt experience of it become fragmented and stuck in our bodies. Brainspotting therapy allows us to go deeper, taking your thinking brain (our prefrontal cortex) offline so that we can access the feeling brain (subcortex) and where things have become stuck in our bodies.
How Brainspotting Works
Brainspotting uses your eyes as the access point (through our occipital nerve) to the midbrain (subcortex) and the body. In a brainspotting session, the therapist will help the client find a 'brainspot'. This is a point in your visual field where you can get in touch with the emotions, physical sensations, or memories more directly.
The therapist will guide you in spending time in your feeling brain and your body. As the client, you may notice sensations, memories, and visuals as your brain and your body work to create new neural pathways and decrease the intensity of any associated stimuli to what your target. You may observe sensations like tension in your chest, pressure in your head, or movement in your stomach. The focused mindful awareness allows you to re-process and heal these wounds and stuck points.
"Brainspotting is a “body to body” approach. The distress is activated and located in the body which then leads to the locating of the Brainspot based on eye position. As opposed to EMDR where the traumatic memory is the “target”, in Brainspotting the Brainspot is the target or “focus or activation point”. Everything is aimed at activating, locating, and processing the Brainspot" (Grand, 2017).
There's a principle in brainspotting called dual attunement. In a sense, this means using the relationship with your therapist as a safe base. The therapist will guide you as you process as well as serve as a regulated body for you to use as an anchor.
The Mind-Body Connection
Traditional talk therapy is a method that we call top-down, meaning that we're using our thinking brain to making changes with the conscious mind. Some things are stored more deeply than what we have conscious access to.
Brainspotting is bottom-up, which means that we're working with the body and the feeling brain to release stress and emotions. "It is one of a few types of emerging therapies focusing on the brain-body connection, including Somatic Experiencing and EMDR" (Blanchfield, 2024).
When we experience something traumatic or ongoing stressors, our natural response is to fragment the experience so that it decreases the impact. The fragmented pieces aren't just stored in our mind, but in our body as well. Brainspotting allows you to work with your autonomic nervous system and the somatic or subconscious components of unresolved trauma.
The Therapeutic Process
To prepare for the deeper kind of processing that happens in brainspotting sessions, I start off with getting to know what my clients are wanting to look different in their lives and start to map out events, memories, and beliefs that may be important to target in brainspotting.
Once we have a sense of some of the big initial targets, we'll go over ways to regulate your nervous system and build up your healthy coping skills.
The next step is to start brainspotting. I'll explore what my clients want to address in that session and start to get them set up. Many clients will also use biolateral sound to stimulate both hemispheres of the brain. The music is set up with headphones, which allows the sound to sweep from ear to ear.
Then I'll guide my clients in finding and focusing on a brainspot in their visual field. Focusing on the brainspot may involve holding your gaze on a particular point, or simply bringing your awareness to the physical sensations associated with that particular spot.
As the client focuses on the brainspot, I support them in exploring the emotions and sensations that come up to guide them in processing and integrating distressing emotions.
To wrap up the session, I'll help the client begin to bring their thinking brain back online to cognitively process any emotions or insights gained. We explore changes in the intensity of the target, and may talk about things to do between brainspotting sessions to support the in-depth work.
Conditions Treated with Brainspotting
So, what can this mind-body therapy treatment help with? Brainspotting is a great treatment for:
Trauma and post-traumatic stress
Anxiety
Depression
Critical incidents
Low self-worth and self-judgments
Attachment issues
Anger
Childhood and developmental trauma
Negative beliefs
Performance anxiety
Chronic stressors
Substance use/addiction
Grief and loss
Chronic pain
Insomnia
Fears and phobias
As brainspotting is following the client's neurobiology, it can be adjusted to fit a wide array of populations. It can help individuals access things that they may have difficulty identifying or verbalizing.
Benefits of Brainspotting
Brainspotting can allow you to reduce the intensity of difficult emotions and memories, reduce physical pain and somatic discomfort, process traumatic experiences or memories trapped in you body, decrease reactivity or the intensity of stressors, regulate your nervous system (and decrease anxiety and depression), address and release difficult emotions, break old patterns, increase self-confidence, self-compassion, and help you get in touch with your creativity and positive emotions.
As you start brainspotting counseling sessions, you may notice improvements in emotion regulation, increased sense of self and self-awareness, and greater ability to connect with yourself and others.
It's also a treatment method that is very compatible with other therapeutic modalities. I find myself bringing in self-compassion and parts work with my clients to access the deeper processing that brainspotting allows for.
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If you're interested in experiencing brainspotting therapy, reach out today to schedule a free 15-minute consultation call. I've seen the impacts this tool can have for people and I'm passionate about helping individuals get out of that survival state and back to feeling connected.
Take care out there.
References
Grand, D. (2017). What is Brainspotting? Brainspotting. https://brainspotting.com/about-bsp/what-is-brainspotting/
Blanchfield, T. (2024, January 16). What to Know About Brainspotting Therapy. Very Well Mind. Retrieved January 25, 2024, from https://www.verywellmind.com/brainspotting-therapy-definition-techniques-and-efficacy-5213947
Hi there. I’m Gabrielle Kawashima, a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and Brainspotting Therapist. I have a passion for working with childhood and complex trauma, people who've learned to prioritize others over themselves (helpers), and working with emergency and first responders. If you’re interested in working with me, click below to set up a free consultation (:
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