Brainspotting Therapy Helped Me Find My Blind Spots—and Face Them Head-On

Brainspotting Therapy Helped Me Find My Blind Spots—and Face Them Head-On

- By Wolf Terry

I sat cross-legged on my therapist’s couch, just like every other Friday afternoon, except this time she sat on the couch next to me. After years of talk therapy to cope with PTSD, I was trying something different—a supposed fast track to fully overcoming lifelong somatic trauma. I was a little nervous but also ready to heal. To prepare for the session, I had read Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change by psychotherapist David Grand, a recommendation from my own therapist.

Brainspotting is similar to Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)—the goto technique for trauma therapy. The techniques fuse sight, sound, and traditional talk therapy to trigger, discover, and safely resolve trauma. EMDR functions on the underlying principle that where you look with your eyes can affect how you feel. The therapist asks the patient to look at different focal points while recalling emotionally provocative memories. The visual distraction helps the patient create new associations to long-standing painful experiences.