Brainspotting: What It Is and Who It Helps

David Grand was doing EMDR with a figure skater named Miki Andō who was struggling to land a jump. During the session, Grand noticed that when Miki’s eyes moved to a certain spot in her visual field, she paused. Her face changed. Something was clearly happening neurologically, even though they weren’t doing anything dramatic. Grand held a pointer at that spot and kept it there. Something released.

That observation, made in 2003, became the seed of brainspotting.

Brainspotting is a relatively new trauma therapy, developed by psychotherapist David Grand, that uses specific eye positions to locate and process stored trauma, emotional pain, and other difficult material held in the subcortical brain. It’s become one of the more talked-about approaches in trauma treatment over the past two decades, and for people who’ve tried it, the results are often described as unexpectedly profound.

The Core Idea Behind Brainspotting

The central premise of brainspotting is captured in Grand’s phrase: “Where you look affects how you feel.”

This isn’t metaphorical. It reflects something real about the relationship between the visual field and the brain’s processing centers. Eye position correlates with activation in different regions of the subcortical brain, the deeper, older structures that process emotion, survival responses, and stored trauma. When you access a brainspot, a fixed eye position where activated trauma or emotional pain is held, you’re essentially accessing the neural network where that material is stored.

This is different from traditional talk therapy, which engages the cortex, the thinking, narrating part of the brain. Trauma, however, is often stored subcortically, in areas that don’t respond to explanation or insight. Brainspotting works in a different direction, going below the cortex to find and process material at its source.

The brain is understood to have a remarkable capacity for self-healing when it’s given the right conditions. Brainspotting is designed to create those conditions: find the spot, hold the attention there, and get out of the way so the brain can do what it does naturally when it’s not flooded or defended.

What a Brainspotting Session Looks Like

Before anything happens with eye positions, the therapist establishes a resource. This is usually a physical sensation or image associated with safety or calm, something to return to if the processing becomes overwhelming. Brainspotting works with the window of tolerance: you want enough activation to do meaningful processing, but not so much that you’re flooded.

The therapist then asks you to bring to mind the issue you’re working on, whether it’s a specific traumatic memory, a persistent anxiety, a stuck emotional pattern, or a performance block. You’re asked to notice where you feel that in your body. This body sensation becomes a guide.

Using a pointer, the therapist slowly moves through your visual field while you track the sensations in your body. At some eye positions, the sensation might increase. At others, it might shift. At a certain point, the sensation will often intensify or become more focused. That’s the brainspot. The therapist holds the pointer there and invites you to stay with whatever comes.

What comes can vary widely. Some people experience waves of emotion. Some see images, memories, or fragments of experience. Some feel physical sensations moving through the body. Some have what feel like insights or realizations. Many experience a gradual release of activation over the course of the session.

Throughout, the therapist is present but relatively quiet. Unlike talk therapy, where the therapist’s verbal engagement is central, in brainspotting the therapist’s role is more about holding the space and monitoring the process. Attunement matters enormously; the therapist tracks your nervous system and paces the work accordingly.

Sessions typically run 50 to 90 minutes. Bilateral sound, alternating audio through earbuds that switches between left and right, is often used alongside the eye position work. This bilateral stimulation supports the processing in ways that aren’t fully understood but are consistently reported to be helpful.

After a brainspotting session, it’s common to feel both lighter and tired. The brain has done significant work. Processing can continue for days afterward, as the neural network continues to integrate and reorganize. Some people notice shifts in their sleep, their dreams, or their automatic reactions in the days following a session.

Brainspotting vs. EMDR

Since Grand developed brainspotting partly from his EMDR practice, the comparison is natural and comes up often.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is the more established of the two. It has decades of research behind it and is endorsed by the World Health Organization and the American Psychological Association as a first-line trauma treatment. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, typically eye movements, paired with a structured protocol that involves bringing up trauma memories, processing them through sets of bilateral stimulation, and cognitively restructuring associated beliefs.

Brainspotting takes a different approach. Rather than moving the eyes back and forth, it holds the gaze in a fixed position. Rather than following a specific protocol, it creates conditions and allows the brain to process in its own way. The therapist’s role is less directive than in EMDR.

Neither is objectively better. They suit different clients and different presentations. People who find EMDR’s structured protocol helpful tend to stay with EMDR. People who feel constrained by structure, who process in a more organic way, or who haven’t responded fully to EMDR sometimes find brainspotting fits them better. Some therapists use both, selecting based on what a given client needs in a given session.

What Brainspotting Helps With

Brainspotting has been used with a range of presentations:

Trauma and PTSD. This is its home territory. Brainspotting was designed for trauma and it’s where the most clinical experience exists. Both single-incident trauma (an accident, an assault) and complex developmental trauma respond to the approach.

Anxiety and panic. Anxiety that’s rooted in stored physiological responses, which is most anxiety, often responds well to brainspotting because the therapy reaches the subcortical activation that underlies anxious patterns.

Depression. Particularly depression that has a strong somatic component or that’s connected to unprocessed loss or trauma.

Grief. The body often holds grief in ways that conversation doesn’t fully resolve. Brainspotting can access that held grief directly.

Performance issues. Brainspotting has been widely used with athletes, performers, and creatives to resolve the “yips,” performance anxiety, and the kind of psychological blocks that interfere with skilled execution. This was, after all, where Grand first noticed the phenomenon.

Addiction. Brainspotting is used adjunctively in addiction treatment to address the underlying trauma and emotional pain that often drive substance use.

Chronic pain. There’s growing clinical evidence that brainspotting can shift the experience of chronic pain, which like trauma is often maintained by subcortical processes.

What the Research Shows

Brainspotting is newer than EMDR, and its formal evidence base reflects that. There are controlled studies, particularly in Europe, showing positive outcomes for trauma, anxiety, and depression. A study published in the Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology found brainspotting to be effective for trauma symptoms. Other studies have shown comparable outcomes to EMDR for PTSD.

The research is still developing, and brainspotting doesn’t yet have the extensive evidence base of first-line treatments like EMDR or trauma-focused CBT. But the clinical literature is consistent and growing, and the mechanism is grounded in sound neuroscience. Grand has trained thousands of therapists worldwide, and the accumulated clinical experience is substantial.

Who’s a Good Fit

Brainspotting tends to work well for people who:

• Are working through trauma, particularly when other approaches haven’t gone far enough
• Experience their emotional pain strongly in the body
• Are comfortable with a less directive, more internally focused approach
• Have hit a ceiling with talk therapy
• Are curious about approaches that work at a neurological level

If you’re in York, PA and you’re researching trauma therapy options, brainspotting is worth putting on the list. It’s not magic, but it’s doing something specific and real with the way the brain holds and processes difficult experience. For a lot of people, that specificity is exactly what they needed.

This article is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health treatment. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please reach out to a qualified mental health provider or call 988.