What is Brainspotting and how does it work?

Human beings can have countless memories that have marked our lives. Without realizing it, this fact can be a source of suffering, anguish and/or discomfort when we experience new experiences. This may not be strange to you and right now an important moment in which you felt an intense emotion is coming to mind. After all, how many times have we been distressed by the same situation? The intensity of some experiences is so shocking that sometimes it is very difficult to erase it from our memory.

Although it is true that eliminating difficult moments is a practically impossible task, we can try to approach them with some method that gives us innovative and interesting results. There is a therapeutic modality that takes care of this through different conventional therapies, known as Brainspotting. In this Psychology-Online article we explain what is brainspotting and how does it work.

Index

1. What is Brainspotting
2. Who is Brainspotting for?
3. How the Brainspotting technique works in clinical psychology

The word Brainspotting has in its etymology a particular meaning derived from English that means "brain point". Later, psychology took this meaning and implemented it in the approach to traumatic experiences.

Brainspotting was discovered in 2003 by psychologist David Grand, while he was carrying out the EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). In general, this psychotherapist understood that the impact of traumatic events that occurred at some point in life was less when the range of eye movements was reduced.

This leads us to think about the role of the mind's defense mechanisms in situations of great suffering and difficult to process. When a person faces traumatic experiences and does not have the resources to work through them, these experiences become blocked in the brain. In this way, certain neuronal connections linked to anxiety are activated, anxiety or fear.

Now that we know what Brainspotting is, we can move on to talk about the recipients this therapeutic approach is aimed at. It is important to mention that not all people with any of the symptoms that hinder their daily activities will have to carry out sessions of this type of therapy, since the choice will be determined by the objectives they have.

Next, we will show you who it is addressed to in Brainspotting:

• Young people who have experienced abusive situations child sexual abuse, family violence, verbal and/or physical abuse.
• Adults who have experienced traumatic situations that affect their academic, work, social and/or family performance.
• People who present bodily symptoms that cannot be explained due to organic disease.

In general terms, the idea is that the person who seeks the help of a psychotherapist specialized in the Brainspotting technique has been exposed to trauma. However, the decision of the most appropriate type of treatment for the patient will be made by the health professional, after evaluating the patient's personal characteristics.

Finally, in this section we will talk about how Brainspotting works in classical psychology. Next, we will detail how this technique works:

1. Initially, you need a full degree of attention by the patient on his deepest emotions and his bodily state.
2. After a certain period of time, the main focus will be on the patient being able to remember the traumatic event that has marked her life.
3. Once this level of concentration and attention has been achieved, the psychotherapist will look for the person to place your gaze on a fixed point. Next, the patient will be asked to follow the therapist's fingers with their eyes. Overall, this will make you realize that there is an important connection between the person's bodily sensations and the person's traumatic events.
4. When the patient is already aware of the trauma, the therapist will observe your reaction.
5. This process will repeat several times until the appearance of the traumatic moment no longer produces any unpleasant effects for the patient.

This approach has high efficacy and efficiency and many people have seen their symptoms reduce after a few sessions. However, it is important to clarify that the Brainspotting technique does not have a certain time to achieve therapeutic success, since the results will depend on factors beyond our control. the same, such as the frequency of sessions, the degree of acceptance of the person, age, sex, previous therapeutic experiences or pre-existing diseases, among others. others.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to What is Brainspotting and how does it work?, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

• Rodriguez Alvarez, M. (2016). Two techniques to work trauma: Hypnosis and Brainspotting. Hypnological Magazine, 9 (2), 4-10.
• Santana Llerena, B. (2020). Application of Brainspotting in the Treatment of Traumatic Events. Indo-American Technological University. Faculty of Human and Health Sciences.