I am very excited to share the article featuring Brainspotting in the news — Psychotherapy Networker journal in Jan/Feb 2024 – https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/article/turning-the-spotlight-on-brainspotting/.
The article describes the beginnings of Brainspotting therapy in 2003, when Dr. David Grand, who at that time was 27 years into his clinical psychotherapy career, changed his approach in the middle of his EMDR session by being highly attuned to his client, a young woman figure skater unable to complete the triple loop.
“Wanting to know why this intervention had worked, Grand came across anecdotal evidence of a relationship between certain eye positions and brain activity associated with unconscious emotional experiences. By maintaining these eye positions—which he dubbed Brainspots—he speculated that people could access emotional energy trapped deep in the nonverbal, noncognitive areas of the brain, like the amygdala, hippocampus, and orbitofrontal cortex. These were the areas responsible for regulating emotions, motion, consciousness, and learning, but once they’d absorbed traumatic energy—the body’s attempt at maintaining a stable environment—they went into freeze mode, or ‘frozen maladaptive homeostasis’, as Grand called it. If clients could access their unconscious trauma, he reasoned, then they could process it.”
Brainspotting Rewires the Brain
Overtime, Dr. David Grand realized that what he discovered was not just a new EMDR technique, and included many different movements in three dimensions. Healing was also was happening at a much faster speed than EMDR, as follow up studies demonstrated. “It rewired the brain. And unlike with other mainstream treatments, reliving trauma wasn’t a prerequisite to healing. Was it versatile? You bet, said Grand. Brainspotting could help resolve everything from anxiety, depression, and attachment issues to chronic fatigue, substance use, and fibromyalgia.”
“A 2017 issue of the Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, found that Brainspotting could largely eliminate PTSD, anxiety, and depression in as little as three sessions.”
“Grand points to established science about the relationship between the eyes and the brain. “Where you look affects how you feel,” he often says. “If something is bothering you,” he wrote, “how you feel about it will literally change depending on whether you look off to your right or to your left. Our eyes and brains are intricately woven together, and vision is the primary way that we, as humans, orient ourselves to our environment. Signals sent from our eyes are deeply processed in the brain.””
Observing Brainspotting Session
The author of the article gets to observe Dr. David Grand at work, doing Brainspotting therapy with a client processing the traumatic experience that happened to him while doing international human rights work. The article describes in detail what David says and what the client says, but, unfortunately, there is no lens into the client’s brain to actually observe the changes that are happening. The author goes back to the client three weeks later for a de-brief, learning that the client feels more integrated and had a deeper experience than with any other types of therapies he tried before.
Brainspotting with Elaine Korngold
I am a Certified Brainspotting Therapist and an Approved Consultant and would be happy to talk to you about Brainspotting. Brainspotting therapy accesses the genius of our deeper emotional brain. During the healing process I am fortunate to observe how intelligent, inventive, and intuitive all human beings are. Creativity is revealed through their resilience, survival, and recovery. The processing that occurs with clients focused on a Brainspot is deep, rapid, and unpredictable. During each session I wait for the surprise and I am rarely disappointed.
With your focused vision and my attuned presence and verbal guidance, emotional Brainspots can be released in a gentle and non-invasive way. There is no need to be in chronic emotional pain. Please text or email me for a free consultation.