Brainspotting Therapy N.I
Kerry McWilliams
I am a Certified Brainspotting practitioner, having completed a years training, with skills demonstration and clinical supervision. I have also completed additional specialist training in Brainspotting with children and adolescents.
Brainspotting is an advanced form of psychotherapy that combines psychology with physiology, linking mind and body to produce profound healing. Developed in 2003 by Dr David Grand, the creator of Natural Flow EMDR, brainspotting is an extremely precise, rapid and non-verbal technique for the release and healing of traumatic memory.
How Brainspotting Works
We use the eyes to access memories, feelings, and unreleased body trauma. By using Brain spotting techniques, we allow the body to recall, respond and reprocess the memory. We may also use bilateral sound to allow deep implicit memory that has been hidden in the subcortical brain to be shared with the frontal lobes/ conscious area of the Brain. Along with the closely attuned presence of the therapist, this allows even very traumatic and frightening memories to be reviewed and reprocessed successfully.
Traditionally psychotherapy has used talking and analysis to resolve issues – this type of therapy has become well established and can be effective, but it is easy for this type of work to be less precisely focused and it can take a long time for significant progress to be seen.
Brain Spotting combines sound information gleaned through neuroscientific discoveries and the careful attunement of the therapist to allow the client to maintain focus on their thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations.
Trauma and the Mind Body response
When we are in a traumatic situation, our brain affects the changes of fight flight and freeze in our bodies by releasing large amounts of adrenaline and cortisol stress hormones into our blood stream.
When we are highly distressed, cortisol released by the brain interferes with the memory filing process, meaning that after a traumatic or distressing event, free-floating fragments of memories can be triggered by stimuli that were present when the original fragment or time capture was laid down, leaving us feeling like we are reliving the event all over again – in the case of post traumatic stress these potent memories are often termed ‘flash backs’.
References
1 Brainspotting: recruiting the midbrain for accessing and healing sensorimotor memories of traumatic activation.
Corrigan F, Grand D. 2013
Accessable at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23570648
2 Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change
By Grand,D. (2013) Sounds True, Boulder, Colorado.
I am a Certified Brainspotting practitioner, having completed a years training, with skills demonstration and clinical supervision. I have also completed additional specialist training in Brainspotting with children and adolescents.
Brainspotting is an advanced form of psychotherapy that combines psychology with physiology, linking mind and body to produce profound healing. Developed in 2003 by Dr David Grand, the creator of Natural Flow EMDR, brainspotting is an extremely precise, rapid and non-verbal technique for the release and healing of traumatic memory.
How Brainspotting Works
We use the eyes to access memories, feelings, and unreleased body trauma. By using Brain spotting techniques, we allow the body to recall, respond and reprocess the memory. We may also use bilateral sound to allow deep implicit memory that has been hidden in the subcortical brain to be shared with the frontal lobes/ conscious area of the Brain. Along with the closely attuned presence of the therapist, this allows even very traumatic and frightening memories to be reviewed and reprocessed successfully.
Traditionally psychotherapy has used talking and analysis to resolve issues – this type of therapy has become well established and can be effective, but it is easy for this type of work to be less precisely focused and it can take a long time for significant progress to be seen.
Brain Spotting combines sound information gleaned through neuroscientific discoveries and the careful attunement of the therapist to allow the client to maintain focus on their thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations.
Trauma and the Mind Body response
When we are in a traumatic situation, our brain affects the changes of fight flight and freeze in our bodies by releasing large amounts of adrenaline and cortisol stress hormones into our blood stream.
When we are highly distressed, cortisol released by the brain interferes with the memory filing process, meaning that after a traumatic or distressing event, free-floating fragments of memories can be triggered by stimuli that were present when the original fragment or time capture was laid down, leaving us feeling like we are reliving the event all over again – in the case of post traumatic stress these potent memories are often termed ‘flash backs’.
References
1 Brainspotting: recruiting the midbrain for accessing and healing sensorimotor memories of traumatic activation.
Corrigan F, Grand D. 2013
Accessable at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23570648
2 Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change
By Grand,D. (2013) Sounds True, Boulder, Colorado.
