What Is Brainspotting?
What Is Brainspotting?
How It Works, What to Expect & How It Compares to EMDR
Maybe you've heard a therapist mention Brainspotting. Or perhaps you've come across the term while looking for trauma therapy and wondered:
What exactly is Brainspotting?
Am I literally supposed to stare at a spot?
Is it basically EMDR?
And does it actually work?
Brainspotting is a psychotherapy approach developed in the early 2000s that uses a person's visual field, focused attention, and awareness of internal experience as part of the therapeutic process. During a Brainspotting session, a therapist may help a client identify an eye position, or “brainspot”, that appears connected with a particular emotional, physical, or internal experience. The client then maintains attention around that position while noticing what emerges.
Brainspotting is used by some clinicians when working with trauma, anxiety, performance concerns, and other experiences. However, its research base is still developing and is substantially smaller than the evidence base supporting established trauma treatments such as EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy, and Prolonged Exposure.
At Hidden Trails Therapy, Brainspotting therapy [INTERNAL LINK → Brainspotting page] is one of several approaches that may be considered based on a person's needs, preferences, goals, and therapist's clinical judgment.
What Is Brainspotting Therapy?
Brainspotting was developed by psychologist David Grand, PhD, in 2003. The approach emerged from Grand's work with trauma and EMDR and is based partly on the observation that where someone looks may correspond with changes in their internal experience.
In a Brainspotting session, the therapist and client may identify an eye position associated with a particular issue, memory, emotion, sensation, or area of activation. Rather than requiring the client to continually describe or analyze what is happening, the therapist may encourage sustained attention while the client notices thoughts, emotions, memories, sensations, images, or other experiences that arise. Brainspotting practitioners sometimes describe this process as accessing deeper brain processes.
It's important to distinguish that theoretical explanation from established neuroscience. Researchers do not currently have sufficient evidence to say that a particular point in the visual field directly accesses a specific location where trauma is “stored” in the brain. That doesn't mean the therapeutic experience is meaningless. It means we should be careful about claiming more about the brain than current research can establish.
What Happens During a Brainspotting Session?
Brainspotting sessions can vary based on the therapist, client, and reason for treatment. Generally, a therapist may begin by helping you identify something you'd like to work with. That could involve a memory, emotional experience, physical sensation, recurring reaction, or other concern. You may then be invited to notice what happens internally as you think about the issue.
The therapist can help locate an eye position associated with a noticeable change in your experience. Depending on the Brainspotting technique being used, this may involve the therapist slowly moving a pointer across your visual field or allowing you to identify a position yourself. Once the position is identified, you may maintain your gaze around that area while noticing what arises.
You might experience:
physical sensations
emotions
memories
images
thoughts
shifts in intensity
moments of stillness
associations that initially seem unrelated
very little at all
There isn't a particular experience you are required to have for the session to be “working.” The therapist remains present throughout the process and may check in, reflect what you're noticing, or help you stay oriented to the present.
Do I Have to Talk About Everything During Brainspotting?
Not necessarily. One feature that some people find appealing about Brainspotting is that the process doesn't always require detailed verbal description of everything that emerges. That can be different from therapies that rely heavily on conversation, cognitive restructuring, or detailed discussion of an experience.
But Brainspotting isn't completely nonverbal either. You and your therapist may talk before, during, and after the process. And therapy still involves a relationship between two people, not simply staring at a point until something changes. How much you talk should depend on what feels clinically useful rather than on a rule that talking is somehow less effective than body-based or experiential work.
Is Brainspotting a Somatic Therapy?
Brainspotting is often described as incorporating body awareness because clients are encouraged to notice physical sensations alongside emotions, thoughts, images, and memories. There can therefore be overlap with somatic therapy. But “somatic therapy” is a broad umbrella rather than one single treatment. Different somatic approaches have different theories, techniques, training pathways, and levels of research support.
At Hidden Trails, body awareness may be integrated into therapy when it is appropriate for the client rather than treating every emotional difficulty as something that needs to be “released from the body.”
Is Brainspotting the Same as EMDR?
No. Brainspotting and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) share some historical and clinical similarities, but they are distinct approaches. Both may involve visual attention and awareness of thoughts, emotions, memories, and physical sensations.
However, EMDR follows a structured eight-phase treatment model and uses bilateral stimulation as part of its established protocol.
Brainspotting typically involves identifying and maintaining attention around a particular visual position while allowing internal processing to unfold with comparatively less structured direction.
There is also an important difference in research support.
EMDR has a substantially larger evidence base. EMDR is recommended as a trauma-focused psychotherapy for PTSD in major clinical practice guidelines, including guidelines from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense.
Brainspotting has preliminary research suggesting potential therapeutic benefit, but there are far fewer studies, and additional high-quality research is needed. So asking whether Brainspotting is “better than EMDR” isn't currently a question research can answer.
A better question may be: Which therapeutic approach makes sense for this person, this concern, and this stage of treatment? If you're specifically seeking treatment for trauma, you can learn more about trauma therapy and discuss treatment options with a qualified clinician.
Does Brainspotting Work?
There is a nuanced answer. Early studies of Brainspotting have reported promising findings in areas including trauma-related symptoms, but the body of research remains relatively small. That means it would be premature to describe Brainspotting as having the same level of evidence as treatments such as EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy, or Prolonged Exposure for PTSD. Research quality matters. A few promising studies can tell researchers that an approach is worth investigating further. They cannot automatically establish how effective the treatment is across populations or whether it is superior to other treatments.
At Hidden Trails, we believe clients deserve both openness to emerging approaches and honesty about what the evidence currently supports. Brainspotting can be a therapeutic option without requiring exaggerated claims about what it does.
What Can Brainspotting Be Used For?
Brainspotting practitioners use the approach with a variety of concerns. These may include trauma-related experiences, anxiety, stress, emotional distress, performance concerns, and experiences that feel difficult to access through conversation alone. However, the fact that therapists use an approach for a particular concern does not necessarily mean research has established its effectiveness for every one of those conditions.
That's an important distinction.
Rather than starting with: Can Brainspotting fix this?
It can be more helpful to begin with: What am I experiencing, what are my treatment goals, and what approaches might reasonably help? The modality comes second.
Do You Have to Have Trauma to Try Brainspotting?
No. You don't need to have PTSD, or identify an experience as traumatic, to discuss Brainspotting with a therapist trained in the approach. Therapy may involve experiences such as anxiety, emotional patterns, relationship experiences, difficult memories, performance concerns, life transitions, or other areas someone wants to explore.
At the same time, Brainspotting isn't automatically appropriate simply because someone wants an experiential therapy. A therapist should consider your goals, symptoms, history, current stability, preferences, and whether another approach may be more appropriate.
What Does Brainspotting Feel Like?
There isn't one universal Brainspotting experience.
Some people notice strong physical sensations or emotions.
Others experience memories or unexpected associations.
Some notice gradual shifts.
And occasionally someone may spend part of a session thinking:
Am I doing this right?
That's okay too. Therapy isn't a performance. You don't need to produce an emotional breakthrough or dramatic physical response for your experience to be valid. A good therapeutic process should allow room for curiosity rather than pressure to make something happen.
Can Brainspotting Be Combined With Other Therapy Approaches?
Yes. Brainspotting doesn't necessarily have to function as a stand-alone treatment. A therapist might integrate it within broader psychotherapy alongside approaches such as EMDR, parts-informed work, mindfulness, somatic therapy, attachment-focused work, or other therapeutic approaches according to their training and the client's needs.
For someone working through trauma, Brainspotting might be one part of broader trauma-informed therapy.
How Do I Know Whether Brainspotting Might Be Right for Me?
You don't have to figure that out before contacting a therapist.
You might be curious about Brainspotting if you:
are interested in experiential or body-aware approaches
notice that talking alone sometimes feels limiting
experience emotions or physical responses that are difficult to put into words
are exploring treatment options for trauma or other distressing experiences
have previously tried therapy and are interested in a different approach
simply feel curious about whether Brainspotting could fit your goals
A consultation with a Brainspotting-trained therapist can help you discuss what you're experiencing and whether Brainspotting, or another therapeutic approach, makes sense.
Brainspotting Therapy at Hidden Trails Therapy
Hidden Trails Therapy offers Brainspotting therapy as part of our broader integrative and trauma-informed approach to mental health care. Our clinicians recognize that there isn't one therapeutic modality that works for every person.
Depending on your needs and your clinician's training, treatment may incorporate Brainspotting, EMDR, Somatic Therapy, mindfulness, parts-informed approaches, or other evidence-informed therapeutic methods. We also believe you deserve honest information about the therapies you're considering, including what we know, what we're still learning, and how an approach may fit into your individual treatment. You don't need to know which modality you need before reaching out. That's something we can explore together.
Explore Brainspotting Therapy at Hidden Trails Therapy →
Sources & Further Reading
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD Overview of Psychotherapy for PTSD
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs / Department of Defense Clinical Practice Guideline for the Management of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Acute Stress Disorder
American Psychological Association Clinical Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Adults
Grand, D. Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change
Additional peer-reviewed Brainspotting research should be evaluated according to study design, sample size, comparison conditions, replication, and other indicators of research quality.
