Integrative Method: EMDR and Brainspotting

Brain-based therapies, such as EMDR (or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and Brainspotting, are tools used to help people process and heal from the emotional distress, somatic pain and limiting core beliefs that can be the result of disturbing life experiences and trauma. These incredible tools prove how the brain and body can work together to heal. By tending to the past, present and future, it allows people to remove blocks and imbalances that prevent them from moving forward, and to activate their natural healing processes.

Brain-based therapies work to target the central nervous system. This means that they help process experiences and symptoms that are typically out of reach of the conscious mind. They are effective modalities to utilize to integrate traumatic experiences, overcome feelings of “stuckness” and emotional blocks, and process a variety of symptoms you have not been able to move past simply by talking about them.

After building resources for safely tolerating the processing of difficult memories, these modalities aim to allow people to regain their power from wounds that interrupted daily living with intrusive thoughts, feelings, and therefore find peace through the therapeutic process.

Traditional talk therapy often requires some time for clients to explore and process traumatic events. Brain-based therapies can more quickly help clients transform the meaning of painful events on an emotional level, shifting from feelings of self-disgust and overwhelm by inadequacy, to “I am strong and I survived it.” Through these modalities, clients can gain insight through their own accelerated intellectual and emotional processes.

EMDR incorporates the following techniques:

  • Creating a safe place that encourages clients to find emotional balance during the process, as well as between sessions.

  • When ready for the reprocessing of events phase of treatment, the client will be asked to focus on a specific event, and attention will be given to a negative image, belief, emotion and body feeling related to this event, and then to a positive belief that would indicate the issue was resolved.

  • While the client focuses on the upsetting event, the therapist will then use side-to-side eye movements, taps or sound.

  • At any time, the client can stop the therapist; eye movements, taps or sounds are repeated until the event becomes less disturbing.

Brainspotting incorporates the following techniques:

  • Scanning a client’s visual field for reflexive responses while client’s are invited to tune into their internal experience (may include experiencing a variety of bodily sensations, thoughts, emotions, or realizations)

  • Therapist and client work together to locate a brainspot, process through them and eventually release them.

  • A brainspot is an eye position that relates to a type of emotional or energetic activation of a traumatic or emotionally charged issue within the brain. In other words, it is a physiological sub-system holding an emotional experience in memory form.

  • Client’s are encouraged to maintain an attitude of curiosity and nonjudgement (mindfulness!)

  • Holding awareness of the brainspot is all a client needs to do, your nervous system will take over and process as it needs to

Benefits:

  • Transform emotional pain through the body’s own healing mechanisms

  • Produce rapid and effective change while maintaining emotional equilibrium during and between sessions

  • Address low self-esteem and feelings of powerlessness

  • Release mental blocks and limiting beliefs of oneself

  • Regain trust in yourself, mind and body

  • Heal from psychological trauma

  • Used to reduce symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, and depression related to trauma; may also be helpful with body dysmorphic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, phobias, and other related reactions to trauma.


Learn more about EMDR: https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/

Learn more about Brainspotting: https://brainspotting.com/about-bsp/what-is-brainspotting/