Brainspotting Therapy Explained

When words fall short, Brainspotting helps the body process what the mind can’t fully explain, offering a path to deeper emotional healing.

When David Grand developed Brainspotting in 2003, he stumbled upon something remarkable: where we look affects how we feel. This seemingly simple observation has evolved into a powerful therapeutic approach that offers new possibilities for healing trauma, anxiety, and other psychological challenges that traditional talk therapy often struggles to resolve.

What Exactly Is Brainspotting?

At its essence, Brainspotting seems straightforward: The therapist guides you to focus your eyes on a specific point in space while processing difficult emotions or memories. Behind this apparent simplicity, however, lies a sophisticated understanding of how the brain processes and stores traumatic experiences.

During a session, as you bring attention to emotionally charged material, your therapist carefully observes your reflexive responses—subtle changes in your pupils, facial micro-movements, or shifts in breathing patterns. These physiological reactions help identify a “brainspot”—a precise eye position that corresponds with neural networks associated with emotional distress.

Once this spot is located, you maintain your gaze while noticing whatever emerges: emotions, body sensations, memories, or thoughts. The fixed eye position keeps the brain’s attention on the activated neural networks, allowing natural processing to occur.

The Brain Science at Work

Brainspotting is particularly fascinating because it engages the brain's deeper, more complex structures. Trauma becomes physically "stored" in subcortical regions, particularly the amygdala (our brain's alarm system) and the limbic system—areas that operate primarily outside our conscious awareness. Brainspotting explains why many trauma survivors find that merely talking about their experiences doesn't fully resolve their distress.

By activating the brain's visual orientation system, Brainspotting creates a direct pathway to these deeper regions where traumatic material resides. The technique bridges the gap between our reflexive, emotion-driven subcortical brain and our thinking and reasoning neocortex.

Perhaps most importantly, Brainspotting helps regulate the nervous system by engaging the

parasympathetic & "rest and digest" response during processing. This allows people to access and work through deeply troubling material while maintaining a state of relative calm, preventing the retraumatisation that can occur when someone becomes overwhelmed during therapy.

What Happens in a Brainspotting Session?

Attunement, particularly dual attunement, is crucial in Brainspotting as it creates a safe and regulated environment for the brain to process trauma. The Brainspotting therapists simultaneously attune to the client's emotional state and neurological body response to facilitate healing.

In a Brainspotting session, the therapist assists you in identifying an issue to focus on and observes where you sense it in your body, then rates your level of distress on a scale from 0 to 10. Using a pointer or their finger, the Brainspotting therapist guides your eyes across your visual field, carefully watching for reflexive responses. When a Brainspot is located, the therapist observes cues, such as blinking or pupil dilation, and you may also report a shift in your body sensations. The therapists asked you to keep their gaze on that specific spot and check with you as necessary. The therapist may guide you to shift when necessary.

From there, the process is largely internal. You don't need to talk unless you want to share

something that emerges. Your brain is doing the work, moving through layers of association and processing the material frozen in the brain-body for years or even decades.

Many people report significant shifts during a session—sudden insights, emotional release, or a noticeable decrease in distress. Others experience more gradual changes that become apparent in the days following treatment. The brain continues processing after the session ends, sometimes for several days.

Who Can Benefit from Brainspotting?

Several groups have found particular success with this approach:

Trauma survivors: Brainspotting excels at addressing both single-incident trauma (like accidents or assaults) and complex developmental trauma. It accesses the non-verbal, implicit memories that often form the core of traumatic experiences.

• Individuals with performance anxiety: Athletes, musicians, public speakers, and other individuals who face challenges in high-pressure situations can benefit from Brainspotting's ability to address and manage performance anxiety at its source.

  
  

• Individuals who experience chronic pain with psychological components: The approach effectively addresses the emotional aspects of pain by accessing brain regions that process both physical discomfort and emotional distress.

  
  

• Individuals who find talk therapy insufficient: For those who have tried traditional therapy without satisfactory results, Brainspotting offers a different avenue to healing that doesn't rely primarily on verbal processing.

Enhanced Healing: Integrating Brainspotting with Other Approaches

Brainspotting works exceptionally well when integrated with other therapeutic approaches, creating a comprehensive treatment that addresses multiple dimensions of healing.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Brainspotting can be effectively combined to address trauma and promote healing. Both modalities focus on the connection between the body and mind. David Grand integrates many brainspotting techniques from Somatic Experiencing, including tracking and regulating bodily sensations. The somatic experiencing technique of pendulation and titration is particularly helpful in enabling individuals to navigate intense material without becoming overwhelmed.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) provides a conceptual framework that complements Brainspotting's physiological method. IFS helps identify different "parts" of the self that may hold traumatic material. At the same time, Brainspotting offers a direct way to access and process these parts. The Self-energy cultivated in IFS work creates a stable foundation for the deeper processing that Brainspotting facilitates.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) David Grand developed Brainspotting out of EMDR therapy. While working with an elite athlete during an EMDR session, David noticed his client would naturally focus on a specific spot in their visual field while processing her traumatic experience, which hindered her athletic performance. Brainspotting and EMDR work well because both approaches focus on reprocessing traumatic memories by engaging the nervous system. Both are brain-based therapies that bypass the talking/thinking parts of the brain to access subconscious memories.

Brainspotting in Singapore

Singapore's multicultural landscape presents unique considerations for Brainspotting practitioners. The therapy's reduced emphasis on verbal processing may be particularly valuable in cultural contexts where discussing emotional difficulties is seen as a stigma.

Singapore's achievement-oriented culture creates specific patterns of stress and anxiety. Performance pressure in academic and professional settings activates distinct brain regions that Brainspotting can effectively target, making the approach particularly relevant for addressing the

psychological impacts of high-achievement environments.

Additionally, shame processing exhibits cultural variations in its manifestation in the brain and body. Brainspotting's ability to work with emotional material without requiring explicit discussion can be invaluable in contexts where individuals feel uncomfortable talking about difficult emotions.

The Evidence Base for Brainspotting

The evidence supporting Brainspotting's effectiveness continues to grow: Brain imaging data shows that Brainspotting activates deeper brain structures, including the amygdala, hippocampus, and brainstem, while engaging prefrontal regions involved in awareness and emotional regulation. This dual activation pattern appears key to its effectiveness.

Physiological measurements during sessions demonstrate shifts from sympathetic (fight-flight) to parasympathetic (rest-digest) nervous system dominance, indicating improved regulation during emotional processing.

Clinical outcome studies show promising results. A study with 76 trauma-affected participants found Brainspotting produced significantly greater symptom reduction than control conditions, with improvements maintained at six-month follow-up.

For those considering Brainspotting as a treatment option, it's worth noting that while the approach has strong theoretical foundations in neuroscience and growing empirical support, it's still building its research base compared to longer-established approaches like EMDR or Somatic Experiencing. However, its grounding in brain science makes it a credible option for those seeking relief beyond the conventional methods.

Conclusion: A Window into the Brain's Healing Capacity

Brainspotting represents a significant advancement in trauma treatment. It utilises the brain's visual processing system to access and heal psychological wounds. Rather than trying to think or talk our way out of emotional distress, Brainspotting creates a direct pathway to where that distress is stored in the brain and in the body.

As neurobiologist Frank Corrigan observes, "Brainspotting appears to recruit the brain's innate capacity for self-scanning and self-healing, accessing neural networks that hold traumatic material and facilitating their integration with regulatory networks."

In the intricate dance between where we look and how we feel, Brainspotting opens a window to healing that words alone cannot reach, offering new possibilities for those seeking freedom from the psychological imprints of challenging experiences.

Restoring Peace is a private mental health centre which provides counselling and psychotherapy services for children, adolescents, youths, adult individuals, couples and groups with anxiety, depression, trauma, grief and various mental health and relationship challenges. For more information, please visit www.restoringpeace.com.sg or WhatsApp at +65 8889 1848. For periodic updates, we invite you to join our telegram group: https://t.me/restoringpeace.

References

Corrigan, F., & Grand, D. (2013). Brainspotting: Recruiting the midbrain for accessing and healing sensorimotor memories of traumatic activation. Medical Hypotheses, 80(6), 759-766. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23570648/

Choosing Therapy. (2023, June 8). What is brainspotting therapy?

https://www.choosingtherapy.com/brainspotting/

Raypole, C. (2021, October 4). Brainspotting therapy: Definition, techniques, and efficacy. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/brainspotting-therapy-definition-techniques-and-efficacy-5213947

Keywords: Brainspotting therapy Singapore, Brainspotting with Somatic Experiencing, Brainspotting, IFS combination, trauma healing neuroscience, Brainspotting EMDR integration, subcortical brain therapy, neurobiological trauma treatment, Brainspotting research evidence, trauma therapy techniques, somatic trauma healing, Brainspotting for anxiety Singapore, performance anxiety treatment, neuroscience, brain-based trauma therapy, Brainspotting neurophysiology, Singapore mental health treatment, brain-body trauma therapy, neuroplasticity trauma healing, Brainspotting for PTSD, integrated trauma therapy Singapore, neuroscience-based psychotherapy, evidence-based trauma treatment