Dr. Gabor Mate:
I have personally experienced the benefit of Brainspotting. Just with one session, I was able to relax the grip of a burdensome perspective and its associated emotions, both of which I had carried for a long time.
Back in 2004, I remember having a conversation with a friend, who was a professor of counselling and a practicing therapist, how intuitive it felt that psychotherapies advancement was somehow stored in our bodies and not limited to our cognitive process. I was a younger therapist then and decided to explore this through different modalities. I soon signed up for a hypnotherapy training called Cellular Release Hypnotherapy. After that, I gravitated towards getting trained in forms of body centred psychotherapy which utilised methods that went beyond cognitive processing. This evolution of therapy enhanced the client’s therapeutic possibilities with added pathways to form collaboration within their sensorimotor systems to identify and deactivate their pain and confusion. Brainspotting is the latest technique I employ that has evolved from the variety of neurologically based therapies I’ve explored and learned in the past.
We know that there are two pathways to working with clients’ challenges: the top-down approach and/or the bottom-up approach. Working from the top down is demonstrated with therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy. We start with our thoughts and connect them to the feelings and consequently to the behaviours that are presented. From a neurological point of view, we operate from the front cortical region of the brain, the conscious part. This cause-and-effect area is what we do to check ourselves in how our faulty thinking can cause undue stress or negative patterns of behaviour. Through talk therapy we may explore these patterns through the client’s own unique history or narrative. Puzzling together the ‘why’ and ‘how’ identify those unhealthy patterns. And as a matter of good practice, the client’s wellbeing will be best served with healthy behaviours to complement their therapy like exercise, good diets, healthy sleep routines, and other stress reducing activities. All body-based components to their wellbeing.
There was an article I read once about cellular biology and slowing down the aging process. It simply discussed that the body was built to move. And in that movement, it allowed cells to be restored which consequently allowed the body to slow down a person’s aging. At the end of the article, without elaborating, it mentioned that it was being discovered that emotions, too, had the same principle. ‘E’ and ‘motion’ can represent its own form of energy much like physical energy. Therefore, if the body depends on its wellness to be promoted with physical movement, emotions also depend on its own form of mobilisation. This is where the advancement of neurobiology is improving therapeutic practices for people to utilise both the top down approach and the bottom up techniques when addressing their emotional well-being. Our body is one body that have an extraordinary number of parts that seeks to function together.
The autonomic nervous system is comprised of two important sectors that are directly impacted by our experiences or emotions. The sympathetic is our fight and flight part. This is what allows us to manage the variety of challenges in our daily lives. The other part is the parasympathetic which can be broken down in two directions that lead us to rest/connection or the opportunity to replenish our needed resources or energy to get back into pushing through to the next challenge and a return to the sympathetic part of the nervous system. The parasympathetic serves to allow us to ‘catch our breath’.
The Polyvagal Theory (Poly vagal diagram Nervous System.pdf) breaks down the parasympathetic nervous system to the Ventral Vagal which where we can feel safe and connected. Meanwhile, the Dorsal Vagal, leads us to shut down from a place of depletion or the freeze part of our brain/sensory motor system. This often is a place of isolation, confusion, and hopelessness.
Brainspotting, an implicit form of reprocessing trauma or information, with some similarities to EMDR, is a tool that sets up a frame for clients to access information from their own experience to light a path. When I first learned of this method, not knowing much about it, my gut instinct was curious and self-reflective of a modality that can create some change. I did some research citing experts in the field of trauma endorsing its benefits. Brainspotting is a ‘brain/body-based’ relational therapy.
Brainspotting was first discovered by psychologist David Grand. Like, EMDR and its founder, Francine Shapiro, both techniques were almost stumbled on. Because of the openness and curiosity of these seasoned clinicians, both modalities offer this bottom-up approach to traumatic stress and memories. Grand says it can benefit anyone with an active nervous system. It can be used with children and adults, those with deep trauma and those experiencing negative thoughts. It is for those people who feel stuck in therapy, people who want to make progress quickly, and those who are easily overwhelmed. One complaint against EMDR is that it can be too stimulating for some. With Brainspotting, there are more options for resourcing and controlling the intensity of processing.
Here are a few of the possible benefits:
- The flexibility of Brainspotting allows us to find the specific iteration that works best for each individual.
- Deeper, accelerated resolutions with longer-lasting impact than other techniques.
- Can be used to process implicit trauma without a specific memory attached.
- Brainspotting can be used as an add-on to your current therapy or as your sole therapy.
Brainspotting can address any of these:
- Abuse
- Trauma
- Developmental Trauma
- Attachment
- Grief and Loss
- Anxiety and Depression
- Athletic or Creative Performance
- Anger Management
The eyes are often a beneficial place to work with because this is where there is a sense of aliveness. Before people cry or laugh, it’s interesting to observe how the eyes soften. Blocking the ocular muscle will cause the eyes to deaden, freeze, avoiding any expression. Going deeper in that defensive posture will make the eyes look like ‘no one is home’. This can often be present in someone’s nervous system as a dissociative response. Eyes are known as the ‘windows of the soul’ and therefore much emotion is held in them. Brainspotting utilizes these characteristics when it helps the client find a spot to gaze towards as they reprocess the topic or distressful event in their mind and bodies. The therapist and clients work together with a variety of resources to best identify the spot to focus on. Theoretically, this helps access the midbrain through the optic nerve to treat symptoms caused by traumatic memories. The Brainspotting process can stimulate the body’s own natural ability to heal itself from trauma.
Somatic Experiencing, another bottom-up approach to treating trauma, is very similar to the BSP experience. The therapist works to ‘stay out of the way’ of the clients’ natural healing process but will help them stay with the sensations they feel in their body. As these memories are reprocessed it’s very common that the body sensation will move about in different places in the client’s body as there may be releases of different emotions. It might start with a feeling in the head or throat but moves down the chest, gut, hands, or legs. This is fascinating in respect to the fact that the autonomic nervous system regulates involuntary physiological processes including heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, digestion, and sexual arousal. So, we enter the body to help move the emotions that get stuck or develop an impasse in our unconscious. Implicit memories are retrieved, and that sense of internal mobilization helps release energy associated with the feelings and a path to restoration is ignited. Many of my clients start working with me after reading the book The Body Keeps Score which describes in detail these elements highlighted in this blog post.
And this brings us back to the core biological and neurobiological truth: The body was built to move! Neuroscience tells us that the right brain brings context to the left brain. The right brain represents the emotional, creative, and curious part of our brain. This process, facilitated by therapies like Brainspotting and EMDR, can offer the client access to the subcortical region or midbrain to release, move, and connect with that truer more present part of ourselves. When you are gently led out of linear thinking into the sphere of the subcortex, or “deep brain,” with Brainspotting, you might be somewhat disoriented and spacey. But over time with the attuned support of the therapist, clients begin to reclaim their narratives and recalibrate their nervous systems so there is a healthy dose of balance.
Instead of (what often trauma causes) helplessness and feeling stuck you can move towards a place of peace that doesn’t neglect the grieving process or devaluing a forming melancholy. Melancholy represents a deactivating space where one can discover an authentic form of vulnerability that embodies compassion as opposed to shame. Moving out of the shame we develop from our pain we encounter something gentle but also fierce. Reflecting on this deeper I found this passage on melancholy that I felt resonated with what the experience of Brainspotting can cultivate:
Melancholy is not rage or bitterness, it is a noble species of sadness that arises when we are open to the fact that life is inherently difficult for everyone and that suffering, and disappointment are at the heart of the human experience. It is not a disorder that needs to be cured; it is tender-hearted, calm, dispassionate acknowledgement of how much pain we all must inevitably travel through. (The School of Life)
And similarly, as Scott Peck wrote in his book The Road Less Travelled, ‘Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it’s accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.’ And paradoxically this transmission of reflection seems to lead us to a rekindling of joy.