What Is Brainspotting Therapy?
Updated: Aug 26
3:32 PM
What if where you look has something to do with how you feel?
That question is at the heart of Brainspotting, a therapeutic approach developed by psychologist David Grand in 2003. Brainspotting uses a person’s visual field, focused attention, awareness of bodily sensations, and the attuned presence of the therapist as part of the therapeutic process. A Brainspot is a particular point in a person’s visual field that feels connected in some way to the experience they’re exploring. Sometimes that connection is subtle. Other times, finding a spot is accompanied by a noticeable shift - a change in emotion or sensation, a deeper breath, or simply a sense of there.
The idea that eye position may be related to internal experience is central to Brainspotting. Exactly why a particular gaze position can sometimes feel significant, however, is not yet well understood. Brainspotting has proposed neurological explanations for this phenomenon, but those mechanisms remain theoretical rather than established.
What we can do in therapy is stay curious about what happens.
How a session works
There are different ways of locating and working with a Brainspot. Traditionally, a therapist may use a pointer to help identify a particular position in your visual field. In my practice, I often use a form called gazespotting, which tends to emerge naturally from the work we're already doing.
As we explore what feels most important about an issue, I may invite you to notice where you feel it in your body. As your attention turns inward, I also notice where your eyes naturally orient. Together, we check whether that gaze position feels connected to what you're experiencing.
Once we've found a spot, I'll generally encourage you to keep your gaze there as long as it feels okay to do so while noticing what unfolds. That might include changes in physical sensation, emotion, breath, memories, images, thoughts, or associations. Sometimes there are visible shifts too - a swallow, blink, twitch, deeper breath, tears, or a change in expression.
There’s no need to make anything happen or figure out what each response means. We stay curious about what your body is telling you and follow what emerges. If you feel the impulse to close your eyes, look away, look at me, move, or change position, we make room for that too. The Brainspot gives us a place to focus your attention, while your own experience helps guide the process.
People sometimes describe what happens as a kind of unwinding or release. I use those words too. They can capture the felt experience of something shifting - the intensity of an emotion changing, a sensation moving or settling, an unexpected association arising, or seeing something in a different way. We don't need to assume that something is literally being “released” from the body to take those experiences seriously.
My role is to stay present and attuned, help us follow what emerges, and offer other approaches when they seem useful. I may integrate parts work, tapping, mindfulness, or other somatic and experiential methods rather than treating Brainspotting as an isolated technique.
Why Eye Position Matters
One of the most intriguing aspects of Brainspotting is that a particular gaze position can sometimes feel noticeably different from another. A sensation may intensify or shift, an emotion may arise, a memory or image may appear, or there may simply be a felt sense that this is the spot.
In my own work, I sometimes notice a change before a client says anything. Something in their expression, gaze, breathing, or body shifts as we arrive at a particular spot. These responses don't tell us exactly what is happening, but they can help us notice where something has become more salient.
Why eye position matters in Brainspotting is not yet fully understood. Research more broadly suggests that eye movements and visual attention interact with memory, attention, and internal experience. But that is not the same as demonstrating that a particular Brainspot corresponds to a specific memory or neural network.
Brainspotting has proposed neurological explanations for why particular gaze positions may be significant, but these remain hypotheses. For me, what matters most in the therapy room is staying curious about what happens when we pay attention here.
What This Can Help With
People come to Brainspotting for many different reasons. In my practice, I use it as part of therapy with people working with trauma and difficult past experiences, anxiety and chronic stress, grief, anger, emotional overwhelm or shutdown, relationship and attachment patterns, and places where they feel stuck despite understanding the issue intellectually.
Brainspotting is also used by some practitioners for performance-related concerns, including creative or athletic blocks. The research on Brainspotting is still developing, however, so I think it's important to distinguish between the range of ways clinicians use the approach and what research has actually established about its effectiveness.
What I find particularly useful is the opportunity to work with an experience through more than explanation alone. You may already understand why you react a certain way, why you keep repeating a pattern, or where an anxiety began - and still notice that the reaction continues. Brainspotting gives us another way of staying with that experience, including what is happening in the body, and seeing what emerges.
What It Feels Like
Every person's experience is different, and I want to honor that before naming any common themes.
Some people become more aware of sensations in their body - warmth, tension, tingling, pressure, movement, or even discomfort. Emotion may intensify and then settle. Tears may come. Memories, images, thoughts, or associations can arise unexpectedly. Sometimes there are very physical responses: a change in breathing, swallowing, trembling, sweating, burping, or other shifts in the body.
Some people process quietly, without needing many words, while others talk through much of the experience. Sometimes what emerges is a new way of understanding something they've been struggling with. People may describe feeling calmer, lighter, less activated, or simply different by the end of a session. Some people feel tired or want more quiet than usual afterward.
There isn't a particular experience we're trying to produce. We pay attention to what is happening and follow the process from there.
Is Brainspotting Right for You?
Brainspotting may be worth considering if you find yourself returning to patterns or reactions that you understand but still have difficulty changing, or if you notice that anxiety, anger, or other emotional experiences show up strongly in your body. It may also appeal to you if talking has been helpful but you’re curious about working in a more experiential way.
I don’t think any one therapeutic approach is right for everyone. Brainspotting is one of several methods I draw from, and whether we use it - and how we use it - depends on you, what we’re working with, and what emerges in the process.
What does the research say?
Research on Brainspotting is still limited, and I think it's important to be transparent about that.
A small number of studies have reported promising results, including reductions in distress and trauma-related symptoms. However, the current research base is not yet large or rigorous enough to draw strong conclusions about Brainspotting's effectiveness or to establish that it works through the neurological mechanisms that have been proposed.
There is broader research that helps us understand some of the processes involved in this kind of work. Research on interoception - the awareness of sensations within the body - suggests that attending to bodily experience can be relevant in psychotherapy. Studies of eye movements and visual attention also suggest relationships with aspects of memory retrieval. These findings are interesting in the context of Brainspotting, but they do not prove that a particular Brainspot corresponds to a specific memory or neural network.
Brainspotting researchers have proposed neurological explanations for why gaze position may matter, but these remain hypotheses rather than established mechanisms.
For me, that distinction matters. I can take seriously what I observe in the therapy room and what clients report experiencing while also being honest about what the science has - and hasn’t - established.
Interested in Brainspotting?
If you're curious about whether Brainspotting might be useful for what you're working with, I'd be happy to talk with you about it.
Learn more about Brainspotting therapy with me
References & Further Reading
Hildebrand, A., Grand, D., & Stemmler, M. (2017). Brainspotting – the efficacy of a new therapy approach for the treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in comparison to Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, 5(1), 1–15. DOI: 10.6092/2282-1619/2017.5.1376.
D’Antoni, F. (2021). Brainspotting reduces disturbance and increases Heart Rate Variability linked to distressing memories: A pilot study. Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, 9(3). DOI: 10.13129/2282-1619/mjcp-3055.
D’Antoni, F., Matiz, A., Fabbro, F., & Crescentini, C. (2022). Psychotherapeutic Techniques for Distressing Memories: A Comparative Study between EMDR, Brainspotting, and Body Scan Meditation. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(3), 1142. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19031142.
Corrigan, F., & Grand, D. (2013). Brainspotting: Recruiting the midbrain for accessing and healing sensorimotor memories of traumatic activation. Medical Hypotheses, 80(6), 759–766. DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2013.03.005.
Gautier, J., & Gonthier, C. (2025). A systematic review of eye movements during autobiographical recall: Does the mind’s eye look at pictures of personal memories? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 32(4), 1487–1503. DOI: 10.3758/s13423-025-02641-5.
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