Brainspotting Therapy Helping you Keep your Past in the Past.
By Kassidy Veness, LPC-IT
Most of us experience some form of trauma in our lives but often we aren’t really sure what trauma is. We hesitate to label our experiences as trauma because “others have it worse” or “I am able to function”. In reality, trauma is individual to us. Something that might be life-altering for one person, won’t always have the same impact for another.
Although all traumatic experiences are stressful, not all stressful experiences are traumatic.
Trauma is different from stress in that it is based on your response to a threat. Our view of a threat is determined by a lot of things: age, past experiences, attachment, temperament, and emotional intelligence. The younger we are, the less perspective we have - developmentally that is normal and helpful. And it helps us understand why a child may be traumatized by something that an adult wouldn’t.
If our ability to respond to a threat is overwhelmed, we become traumatized. Even if the the event is not life threatening, when considering what is trauma, the main factor is the perception of a threat and the inability to regulate in that moment.
Unresolved trauma is often stored in our body rather than in our thinking brain.
When we get overwhelmed in a traumatic situation, fragmentation can happen. This means there are bits and pieces that go unresolved and have not been processed. Trauma shows up somatically and in a lot of different ways including chronic fatigue, headaches, stomach issues, aches, back pain, and immune system problems.
These sensations and often internal alarms – tell us something is not right. If we can listen to these warnings, we may be able to recognize there is healing that needs to happen.
Brainspotting is a tool that allows us to access the subcortical brain.
This part of the brain is directly connected with our bodies, moves us into automatic functioning, and often goes untouched in talk therapy. One of the main principles of therapy in general should always be the connection and attunement to your therapist. If we felt alone when we experienced the trauma, it is vital that we feel a sense of connection and safety while we heal. Attunement is a main principle when utilizing Brainspotting.
The motto of Brainspotting is, “Where you look affects how you feel” and certain eye positions are connected to unconscious emotional experiences (aka trauma). When we are able to access these emotional experiences, the trauma that has been stuck in our body has the chance to be fully processed.
Fragments of traumatic experiences are stored in the nonverbal parts of our brain. Meaning we need to go beyond the verbal parts of our brain and get connected with our body. This is why it might feel like in talk therapy you hit a wall. You are not broken, therapy can work for you AND you might need a different kind of processing to really reorganize your past so it is no longer affecting your present.
Sources:
Grand, D. (2013). Brainspotting: A Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change. Sounds True.
Levine, P. (2008). Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body. Sounds True.