Most people who have heard of Brainspotting therapy know the basic premise:
“Where you look affects how you feel.”
It is a deceptively simple idea.
And, like most deceptively simple ideas, the depth underneath it takes time, training and clinical experience to properly understand.
Brainspotting (BSP) was developed by psychologist Dr David Grand in 2003. The approach uses a person's visual field alongside focused attention, body awareness and therapeutic attunement to work with emotionally activating experiences.
A particular eye position associated with activation is referred to as a brainspot.
But finding that spot is only the beginning.
My advanced BSP training has increasingly taught me that the deeper work isn't simply about where somebody looks.
It's also about what happens when we stay curious about what emerges there ~ without rushing to explain it, change it or pull the person away from it.
What is Brainspotting and how does it work?
Brainspotting (BSP) emerged from David Grand's clinical work with trauma and from his earlier experience with EMDR.
The official BSP model describes the approach as using relevant eye positions within a therapeutically attuned relationship to focus on emotional and bodily experience.
The often-quoted phrase “where you look affects how you feel” comes directly from Grand's description of the approach.
There are also proposed neurobiological explanations for why eye position and focused attention might influence emotional processing.
Dr Robert Scaer, for example, has described BSP in terms of somatic cues, autonomic regulation and homeostasis.
David Grand and psychiatrist Frank Corrigan have also published papers proposing possible pathways involving midbrain and thalamocortical processing.
It's important to make a distinction here, though.
These proposed neurological mechanisms remain theoretical models rather than established explanations of exactly how BSP works.
That doesn't make the clinical experience irrelevant.
It simply means we should be careful about presenting theory as settled neuroscience.
What happens when you follow the eyes?
During BSP, I may help a client identify an eye position associated with a particular feeling, memory, physical sensation or area of activation.
Then something quite different from ordinary conversation can happen. Focussed Mindfulness.
Rather than continually asking:
What does this mean?
Why do you think you feel that way?
Can you explain what happened?
There can be space to notice.
A tightening in the chest.
An image.
A memory fragment.
Heat.
A shift in breathing.
An emotion that doesn't yet have a name.
Or perhaps nothing obvious at all.
BSP does not require you to construct a perfect narrative about what happened or find exactly the right language before therapeutic work can occur.
For people who are highly articulate, analytical or accustomed to understanding themselves through thought, that can feel very different.
I wouldn't say BSP simply “bypasses the analytical mind”, because the brain doesn't divide itself quite that neatly.
What it can do is place less emphasis on explanation and more emphasis on sustained attention to what is unfolding emotionally and physically in the present moment.
That distinction matters.
Particularly when you already understand your pattern remarkably well ~ and understanding it hasn't changed what happens when the pattern is activated.
What does the research say about BSP?
BSP has a developing research base, but it is important to put that evidence in context.
A 2017 study involving 76 adults affected by traumatic events compared three sessions of BSP with three sessions of EMDR. Participants in both groups reported reductions in PTSD symptoms, with improvements also examined at six-month follow-up.
The researchers concluded that BSP showed promise as a therapeutic approach for people affected by trauma and PTSD.
More recent research has also investigated integrating BSP with cognitive behavioural therapy following stressful or traumatic experiences, with encouraging early findings.
However, the BSP evidence base is still relatively small.
That means it would be inaccurate to present BSP as having the same depth of research evidence currently available for established PTSD treatments such as EMDR and trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapies.
I think you deserve to know both things:
there is emerging research supporting BSP, and there is still considerably more research to be done.
For me, advanced training is therefore not about becoming more certain about what the brain is doing.
Quite the opposite.
It has taught me to become more comfortable with not assuming that I know.
Beyond basic BSP: why advanced training matters
I completed my foundational Brainspotting Phase One and Phase Two training with Noula Diamantopoulos through the Brainspotting Training Hub.
Phase One taught me how to begin locating and working with brainspots within the therapeutic process.
Phase Two taught me something harder:
-
how to stay with what emerges
-
how to trust the process when it goes somewhere unexpected
-
how to hold the space without filling it
-
how not to assume that I know where a client's processing needs to go
That second lesson turns out to be the more important one.
The official BSP model describes this in part through concepts including dual attunement, the uncertainty principle and the “tail of the comet.”
The therapist isn't supposed to be the person standing outside the process with all the answers.
There is a different kind of attention involved.
Less I know where we're going.
More I'm here, I'm paying attention, and we can follow what emerges.
But foundational training ~ even excellent foundational training ~ is still a beginning.
An important note about how I practise
BSP is not something I use instead of EMDR or any other modality.
My approach is integrative throughout.
In any given session, I may draw on whichever tools best meet what is present in the room, including:
-
Brainspotting
-
EMDR
-
parts work
-
somatic awareness
-
expressive arts
-
the Trauma of Money Method™️
-
Root Cause Therapy
- Compassion Key
The reason I'm writing about my BSP training specifically is because I think you deserve to understand what sits behind the tools your therapist is using, not just the names of them.
Brainspotting with children and adolescents: learning a different kind of attunement
In 2024, I completed specialised BSP with Children and Adolescents training with Monika Baumann.
Monika is a clinical psychologist, systemic family psychotherapist, child and adolescent psychotherapist, senior BSP therapist, teacher and supervisor, and leads BSP Austria.
Her specialist BSP training includes working with younger populations, families, the uncertainty principle and young-parts work.
Working with children asks something different of a therapist.
Children do not necessarily sit down and give you a beautifully organised account of their internal world.
They move.
They play.
They communicate through their bodies.
They change direction.
They show you rather than tell you.
Training specifically in this population sharpened something in me that carries across all of my work ~ not only my work with younger clients.
It deepened my understanding of what it actually means to meet someone where they are rather than where I expect them to be.
And that is relevant at any age.
Brainspotting and relationships: who we look at affects how we feel
In 2025, I completed the BSP with Relationships workshop with Dr Jaegil Lee.
One sentence from that training has stayed with me:
“WHO you look at affects HOW you feel, and WHERE you look.”
That single reframe extends the entire model.
Dr Lee's BSP with Relationships training builds on foundational BSP concepts such as dual attunement, uncertainty and framing, then applies them specifically to relational experience.
It asks us to consider BSP not only in terms of what happens inside one individual, but also what happens between people.
And that matters enormously in trauma work.
Our experiences of safety, belonging, shame, conflict, caregiving, dependence and receiving do not develop in isolation.
They develop in relationships.
The face of another person can carry meaning.
So can their tone.
Their withdrawal.
Their disappointment.
Their approval.
Their anger.
Their silence.
Relational experiences can continue to influence how we respond to other people long after the original relationship has changed or ended.
And this is where my BSP training connects particularly strongly with my work around money.
When money patterns are actually relational patterns
So many financial patterns are not fundamentally about numbers.
They are relational patterns wearing a money costume.
The freeze when an invoice needs to be sent.
The collapse when a fee needs to be raised.
The compulsive giving that leaves nothing in the account.
The inability to receive without immediately giving something back.
The fear that charging appropriately will make somebody think differently about you.
The urge to make yourself inexpensive ~ financially, emotionally or relationally ~ so nobody has a reason to leave.
Money can activate questions that have very little to do with arithmetic:
Am I allowed to ask?
What happens if somebody is disappointed in me?
Can I receive without owing?
Can I have a boundary and still belong?
What happens if someone thinks I'm too much?
This is why a purely financial solution doesn't always resolve money anxiety.
Sometimes the numbers need attention.
Sometimes the relationship underneath the numbers does too.
Trauma, connection and expressive arts
In November 2025, I completed Healing: Trauma, Connection, Brainspotting and the Expressive Arts, Level 1 with Studio Noula.
This training brought together something I had been intuiting for a long time:
Healing does not always move through words.
And it doesn't always require you to sit perfectly still and describe what is happening inside you.
Sometimes expression comes through image.
Colour.
Texture.
Movement.
The simple act of making something with your hands while staying connected to what is unfolding.
The expressive arts dimension can offer another point of access for people who find purely verbal approaches difficult, or who have spent so long being articulate and professionally competent that giving themselves permission to be non-verbal ~ even briefly ~ is significant in itself.
For healthcare professionals in particular, this can be powerful.
If your professional identity has been built around knowing, explaining, assessing, containing and holding things together for everybody else, being invited to make rather than analyse can feel surprisingly unfamiliar.
This is not the same as art therapy.
In this context, creative expression sits alongside BSP as part of the therapeutic process rather than the artistic product being the goal.
There is nothing you need to be good at.
Nothing needs to look beautiful.
The point is not what you create.
It's what becomes possible while you're creating it.
Why the depth of Brainspotting training matters for you
I am not sharing this training history to present a list of achievements.
I'm sharing it because when you're considering working with a therapist, you deserve to understand what sits behind the approach ~ not just the modality name on a website.
BSP was designed as an approach that can be integrated with other forms of therapy.
And that's important to the way I practise.
The clients I sit with are often carrying complexity.
Inherited patterns.
Relational wounds.
Years of over-functioning.
Shame that doesn't respond particularly well to being reasoned away.
A body that braces even when the thinking mind says everything should be fine.
I don't believe that kind of complexity is best served by forcing every experience through whichever modality happens to be my favourite.
Sometimes EMDR fits.
Sometimes BSP fits.
Sometimes parts work enters the room.
Sometimes expressive work makes sense.
Sometimes the most therapeutic thing I can do is stop trying to do something and pay very close attention to what is already happening.
Advanced training hasn't given me a bigger toolbox simply so that I can use more tools.
It has given me more ways to recognise when not to reach for one.
And perhaps that is what I mean by going beyond basic BSP.
It isn't simply learning more sophisticated ways to find the spot.
It's learning how to follow what happens once we get there.
Frequently asked questions about Brainspotting
What is Brainspotting(BSP) therapy?
BSP is a psychotherapy approach developed by Dr David Grand in 2003. It uses eye position, focused attention, bodily awareness and therapeutic attunement as part of processing emotionally activating experiences.
Its central observation is often described as “where you look affects how you feel.”
What is a brainspot?
Within the BSP model, a brainspot is an eye position associated with a particular area of emotional or bodily activation.
The therapist and client may locate an eye position and then maintain focused attention while noticing what emerges.
Is Brainspotting evidence-based?
Yes, BSP has a small but developing research base.
Published studies have reported promising findings for trauma-related distress, but the quantity and quality of evidence are currently more limited than for established PTSD treatments such as EMDR.
More high-quality independent research and randomised controlled trials are needed.
Is Brainspotting the same as EMDR?
No.
Both approaches may use aspects of the visual field and can be used in trauma-focused work, but their procedures and theoretical models differ.
EMDR follows an established eight-phase treatment model and has a substantially larger evidence base. BSP generally places greater emphasis on sustained visual focus, bodily activation, therapeutic attunement and allowing processing to unfold with less structured direction.
Do I have to talk about my trauma during Brainspotting?
No, BSP does not necessarily require you to give a detailed verbal account of everything that happened.
Some clients talk considerably during processing and others use fewer words.
How BSP is used should depend on the individual, the therapeutic relationship, the presenting issue and what feels manageable within the session.
Can Brainspotting be combined with other therapies?
Yes.
BSP was developed as an approach that can be integrated with other therapeutic modalities.
In my practice, BSP may sit alongside EMDR, parts work, somatic awareness, expressive approaches and other therapeutic work depending on what you need.
Wondering if Brainspotting might be the right fit?
You do not need to know which modality you need before you arrive.
That's part of my job.
If you've been wondering whether BSP could be part of what helps you, I hope this gives you a clearer picture of what BSP looks like in my practice ~ and what sits behind the way I use it.
A 30-minute “Let's Connect” call is available to give you space to ask your questions, share a little of what you are carrying, and find out whether working together feels right.
No pressure.
No expectation that you will have it figured out before we speak.
Just a safe enough place to begin.
