What Is Brainspotting?
Brainspotting is a brain-based trauma therapy developed by psychotherapist David Grand in 2003. It is built on a simple but powerful observation: where you look affects how you feel. Specific eye positions — called brain spots — correspond to areas in the nervous system where trauma, emotional distress, and physical tension are stored. By locating and holding attention on these positions, brainspotting allows the brain to access and process material held at a subcortical level, below the reach of conscious thought and language.
While brainspotting shares theoretical ground with EMDR, the two methods work differently. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation — typically side-to-side eye movements — to facilitate processing. Brainspotting identifies a fixed eye position and holds it, allowing the brain’s natural processing capacity to work without directional movement. Many clients describe brainspotting as a quieter, more internally focused experience, with significant emotional and physical shifts arising without the need to verbally narrate what is happening.
How Brainspotting Works
The therapist uses a pointer to slowly scan the client’s visual field, observing for subtle neurological cues — changes in blinking, eye tremors, shifts in breathing, or changes in facial expression — that signal a position of neurological significance. The client’s own sense of physical activation or emotional resonance also guides the search. The brain spot is found through a combination of the therapist’s external observation and the client’s internal signals.
Once a brain spot is identified, the client holds their gaze there while the therapist maintains dual attunement — staying attuned to both the client’s process and the therapeutic relationship. Bilateral sound through headphones is often used to support the brain’s processing during this time. The client does not need to talk, analyze, or explain what is arising. The processing happens largely beneath the level of conscious language, which is one reason brainspotting can reach material that talk therapy alone has not been able to resolve.
What Brainspotting Is Used For
Brainspotting was initially developed for trauma and PTSD, where it remains most commonly applied. It is also effective for anxiety and panic, depression, grief, phobias, performance anxiety, and physical pain that has an emotional or trauma component. For people in addiction recovery, brainspotting can help process the underlying pain or trauma that substance use has been managing.
Athletes, musicians, and performers have used brainspotting to address performance anxiety and to work through the psychological dimensions of injury or setback. It can be used as a standalone treatment or integrated with other approaches — including cognitive-behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, and EMDR — depending on what each client needs.
What to Expect in a Brainspotting Session
The first brainspotting session begins with preparation. Before approaching any difficult material, the therapist helps you establish a sense of safety and identify a resource — a memory, image, or felt sense associated with calm or strength — that can be returned to during or after processing. Brainspotting does not require you to describe your trauma in detail or narrate what is happening during the session. For clients who have found traditional talk therapy re-traumatizing or have struggled to put certain experiences into words, this can be a meaningful shift.
Sessions are typically sixty to ninety minutes to allow adequate time for processing to complete. The number of sessions needed varies. Some clients experience significant shifts within just a few sessions; others with complex or longstanding trauma benefit from an extended course of treatment. Brainspotting is generally well-tolerated and can be combined with other therapeutic approaches as part of a broader treatment plan.
Rita’s Approach to Brainspotting in Sioux Falls
I trained in Brainspotting because I kept seeing clients who had done meaningful work in therapy — who could talk about their trauma calmly and understood it intellectually — and yet still felt it in their bodies, still found themselves hijacked by certain triggers or flooded in ways that insight and language alone had not resolved. Brainspotting reaches the deeper layers of the nervous system where that kind of residual material is held. I use it primarily for trauma and PTSD, though I have found it effective for anxiety with a strong somatic component, grief, performance concerns, and other conditions where something feels stuck below the level that words and reflection can access.
My approach to brainspotting follows the same preparation-first principle I use with EMDR: before we approach difficult material, I invest significant time in stabilization and building a sense of genuine safety. The depth of processing that brainspotting enables depends on the client feeling grounded enough to let it happen. Both in-person sessions at my Sioux Falls office and telehealth appointments for South Dakota residents are available.
Call 605-610-9228 to schedule a free consultation.