Brainspotting
What is Brainspotting?
Have you ever experienced a situation where you know what you need to do or say, but somehow you just can’t? It can seem like a tidal wave of emotion floods your best judgment. In these situations we become dysregulated, which can often lead to shame, guilt, and behaviors that sabotage our goals - aka fight or flight responses. Brainspotting is a derivative of EMDR that supports deeper healing in the brain using somatic experience/focused mindfulness.
Dysregulation happens more quickly, frequently, and intensely when our nervous systems are under stress. This can happen from everyday stressors - like hunger, lack of sleep, pain, nausea, or multiple competing demands. Or activated by a singular traumatic event (PTSD), or by a series of traumatizing situations (C-PTSD), such as living with neglect/abuse or experiencing pervasive prejudice. Other examples of systemic trauma include feeling compelled to bury our authentic selves, eg neurodivergent masking, living in stealth, or hiding our gender or racial identity.
What happens in Brainspotting?
The fundamental tenet of Brainspotting is “where you look affects how you feel.” It is a somatically-based technique designed to move past our surface level understanding and get to deeper processing. We work together to determine visual points of activation and/or safety, and utilize focused mindfulness and biolateral sound to process and release past experiences influencing our present-day reactions. Learn more about Brainspotting techniques at brainspotting.com
Watch a demonstration of Brainspotting
Access my mindfulness and Brainspotting resources here
In neurodiversity-affirming Brainspotting, we often start with approaches that don’t assume a clear somatic presentation of an emotion and/or don’t require verbal communication of the experience.