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Brainspotting

What IS Brainspotting (BSP)?

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Brainspotting (BSP) is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing, and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation, and a variety of other challenging symptoms.

BSP makes use of the natural phenomenon of where you look affects how you feel through its use of relevant eye positions. Together the therapist and client pair a fixed eye position and body sensation to an unresolved issue. This rapid, highly effective mind/body-centered therapy technique appears to go beyond cognitive awareness and connects one to their body's innate wisdom to heal itself.

 

How does it work?

BSP moves beyond the “thinking” cortex of your brain and engages parts of your brain that are involved in regulating emotion and processing traumatic stress (e.g. the limbic system, the brain stem – the parts of the brain responsible for “fight or flight”). Basically, more parts of your brain get involved in the healing process, yielding faster and deeper results from therapy. BSP feels similar to a guided meditation, but occurs in the context of therapy and is tailored to your specific goals.

Possible Benefits

Emotional Regulation

This therapeutic method helps enhance emotional regulation and resilience, equipping individuals with effective coping strategies to tackle difficulties. Participants often find that they perceive their emotions in a new way addressing their challenges through Brainspotting.

Relationship Challenges

Many people find it difficult to connect with others and feel secure in their relationships, which can often be challenging. Brainspotting can help foster a deeper understanding of oneself and transform old patterns, paving the way for safer, more authentic, and intentional connections.

Reduced Trauma Activation

During sessions, concentrating on the brainspot can aid in addressing and healing from distressing experiences, beliefs, and bodily memories that hinder progress. Brainspotting has proven to be highly effective in enabling individuals to process and recover from trauma, alleviating the emotional and physical effects of past events without requiring detailed verbal explanations or reconstructions of the experiences.

Self-discovery

Many people experience temporary benefits from verbal processing in talk therapy. In contrast, Brainspotting offers a broader and more integrative method, allowing your brain and body to intuitively identify what to access and how to navigate through those experiences.

Goal Achievement + Expansion

Brainspotting can help athletes, artists, public speakers, and others break through mental barriers and enhance their performance. With Brainspotting, change can occur rapidly, allowing many individuals to achieve their goals faster than anticipated with their experience of talk therapy.

Anxiety & Depression Relief

Brainspotting can alleviate anxiety and depression by targeting and addressing their root causes, ultimately fostering emotional wellbeing. This method incorporates mindfulness and acceptance as essential elements in the healing process from these conditions.

More about Brainspotting...

Can Brainspotting help me?

Brainspotting is a therapeutic tool for everyone with a variety of issues. If you are new to therapy and are looking for a way to change patterns of behavior, Brainspotting can help resolve the emotional and physical pain that keeps you stuck in those patterns. If you have been in therapy before, but have the sense that your work could go deeper, Brainspotting can take therapy to another level of healing. If you are uncomfortable with talking about your past traumatic experiences, this modality will enable you to heal without having to tell or retell your story. Lastly, Brainspotting can be used to enhance performance, creativity, and create regulation in your brain and body.

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How long does it take to work?

Brainspotting can be a rapid, effective type of therapy. In contrast to ongoing talk therapy, you can expect BSP to be more short term. The more healing that needs to be done, the longer therapy will take, but you should expect to start feeling better quickly. Most of my clients feel significantly better within ~2 to 4 months, even if they are still working on their treatment goals.

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What is Brainspotting commonly used to treat?

  • Physical and emotional trauma, anxiety, phobias, OCD Depression

  • PTSD

  • Recovery from injury and accident

  • Trauma resulting from medical interventions and treatment Stress and trauma-related medical illness

  • Performance and creativity enhancement

  • Fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions

  • Addictions (especially cravings) Environmental Illness and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Preparation and recovery from surgery

  • Mass trauma including war and natural disasters

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WANT TO LEARN MORE? More information can be found on the Brainspotting International website: https://brainspotting.com/

    Land Acknowledgement

    My home and practice are physically located on the ancestral territory of the Nooksack, Lummi, Semiahmoo, and other Coast Salish peoples. With gratitude, I acknowledge and honor the importance of tribal sovereignty for all Indigenous People, to whom this land belongs.

    ©2023 by Transmute Therapy, PLLC

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