brainspotting therapy

What is Brainspotting?

Brainspotting is a cutting-edge psychology and coaching modality that bypasses conscious thought, allowing us to directly access the deep brain, activating the body’s innate ability to heal itself from trauma by helping you to reprocess negative events and retrain emotional reactions.

Trauma research shows that trauma not just a mental process; it is “stored” in the body and the nervous system and accessed through what we call the deep brain — the part of the brain that operates below conscious awareness.

Traditional talk therapy uses the conscious brain (the neocortex, the seat of our executive functioning) to analyze and change our thoughts and behaviors. It’s a valuable way of working — and sometimes, when what’s running us is not in our conscious awareness, it can be insufficient as an agent of change.

Brainspotting is primarily used in trauma therapy and for the treatment of PTSD. It has also been shown to assist in injury recovery and help treat physical illness, inattention, stress, and low motivation. Other, seemingly unrelated psychological issues like explosive anger, procrastination, and difficulty concentrating, among others — can be caused by trauma. Therefore, brainspotting might be a particularly effective form of therapy for those individuals who wish to address one or more of these concerns.

How Brainspotting Works

You might be telling someone about an event that happened to you — yesterday or thirty years ago — and suddenly you can feel the event somehow. You might feel like you’re right back in it, living it as you’re talking about it. Or, you might feel your stomach tighten into a knot, or your shoulders lift toward your ears. You might feel a shiver down your spine. You might feel like someone just punched you in the gut.

All of these are physical sensations that clue us in that a past event is still having an effect in the present. We call this activation. Your nervous system is being activated by the memory you’re describing.

Where you look affects how you feel

Research shows that when you think about a troubling event, your eyes will shift to what we call a Brainspot. Notice this the next time someone is telling you a potent story: did their eyes move up and to the right? Did they start “staring off into space”?

Where you look affects how you feel, and that spot that your eyes drifted to is what we call a Brainspot. The brainspot seems to unlock that memory in the deep brain, where it’s being held as an often wordless but felt form of memory.

With the help of a highly attuned therapist, accessing a Brainspot appears to open these memory “files” allowing the brain-body system as a whole to re-regulate and re-orient in an adaptive manner to the present. When this happens, the activation eases, and you’re able to relate to that memory as memory, from the past — not as a felt experience that’s hijacking your present moment.

In short, Brainspotting can help you resolve trauma from the past, so you can live more fully in the present.

What happens in a Brainspotting session?

When we meet, we begin by talking until we identify an issue that you want to focus on. Then we’ll find the Brainspot that resonates with the issue at hand.

Through focused mindfulness, sometimes accompanied by specially engineered music, we’ll give your deep brain space to begin to heal and reorganize itself, releasing the upsetting material.

As you work, you may find that you want to talk, or that it feels right to simply be silent and observe what is happening. Each person processes different and I simply follow your lead.

By the end of a session, clients often report that what felt very upsetting at the start of the session no longer carries the same charge. I often hear something to the effect of:

“It’s like I was in the movie, living it, and the movie was in technicolor. Now it’s like I’m sitting in the back of the movie theatre watching it in black and white. It’s just part of my story now.”

A Sound, Research-Based Therapy

In 2012 the community of Newtown, Connecticut experienced a horrific tragedy when a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing twenty children and six adults. Therapists with all kinds of training traveled there to provide support for the survivors. A few years later those survivors were polled about which therapeutic interventions felt most effective for them; Brainspotting was found to be the most effective mode of therapy. (See graph.)

Research shows that Brainspotting works directly with the deep (subcortical) brain in a variety of ways to improve quality of life. It has been effective in giving trauma survivors more peace and empowerment. People have been able to release the grip of depression, anxiety, or grief. Brainspotting is also used to help athletes, writers, musicians, and other high performers to dissolve performance blocks and achieve their goals with more ease.

Brainspotting understands that the nervous system knows how to heal itself, and will do so if given the right conditions. Because we privilege this innate healing wisdom, Brainspotting can be safely and respectfully utilized with all populations and cultures.

Working with Me

My approach with clients is warm, grounded, and collaborative. In my two decades of work and thousands of client sessions, I’ve learned that most of the time my client knows what’s best or next for them; my job is to hold space, notice patterns, and help them access their own deeper wisdom. Over time they learn to trust themselves more, and to live more authentically.

I bring some unique training and experience to our sessions. I’ve spent 20+ years specializing in cutting-edge therapies for PTSD and everyday trauma, and I’ve sought out this work because I have experienced first-hand how powerful it is — I worked with a Brainspotting therapist myself for a few years, and the healing was profound. That experience led me to train and become certified myself, so I could give others the healing and relief I’ve received. You can read more about my journey on my About page.

But all that training and experience doesn’t necessarily make me the right therapist for you. That’s why I offer a 15-minute consultation free of charge.

Schedule Your Free Consultation

During our consultation, we can talk about what you hope to address in therapy, I can answer any questions you have, and we’ll discuss whether therapy may be a good fit for your goals at this time.

Research shows that the thing that makes therapy most successful is the relationship between therapist and client. So as we talk, you’ll want to check in with yourself about whether or not this relationship feels like it’ll be therapeutic.

How will you know? You might ask yourself some questions, like:

Do I feel like she really gets me?
Do I feel safe to open up with her?
Do I feel like she can actually help me?

If you do, we can talk about scheduling your first full appointment.

Things are about to get better.

Schedule your free consultation today.

George Peckham, LMFT

“Maggie's expertise and experience with many powerful models of therapy have been most useful in my consultation calls with her. She's thoughtful, warm, compassionate, focused and at ease with how she communicates information during case consultation. I am sure her clients feel this same level of presence. In fact, someone I referred to her shared with me these same experiences while working with her.”