15 Mar Brainspotting Therapy for Anxiety- New Orleans and Chicago
Living with anxiety, you are constantly in a state of hyper-awareness. Your fight or flight instincts are on alert, you constantly anticipate danger, and your nervous system regularly pumps stress hormones into your body. There is a part of you that feels like it needs to protect you from threats, but it can result in symptoms like a racing heart, sweaty palms, fast shallow breathing, and digestive problems. You can also experience mental symptoms like intrusive or obsessive thoughts, a feeling of dread without a specific cause, difficulty focusing, and different types of sleep disturbances.
Dealing with these mental and physical symptoms is exhausting. Our bodies have been designed to protect us from danger, but when you are dealing with anxiety the danger feels like it is always there. This isn’t sustainable; it costs the body and brain to always be on edge, and it can lead to long-term health problems. The positive news is that anxiety is very common. It’s experienced by over 40 million adults, and there are many ways to manage it. One option is BrainSpotting therapy.
What is BrainSpotting Therapy?
Brainspotting is a therapy style built on the idea that “where you look affects how you feel.” It was developed by David Grand, PhD, in 2003. The therapy focuses on your brain’s ability to heal trauma by connecting to the parts of the brain where emotional regulation occurs. Eye positions, found with the help of an attuned therapist, activate spots in these parts that are associated with traumas and negative emotions, so you can re-experience them in a safe space and work through them. If you want to know more in-depth information about BrainSpotting, read Issa Counseling’s previous blog.
Here are some reasons BrainSpotting is an effective treatment for anxiety.
1. BrainSpotting and anxiety Are Both Physical Connections To Mental Processes
When you get anxious, your sympathetic nervous system flares up and you experience the physical and mental symptoms of anxiety. Distressing emotions and memories come into the present, and it’s difficult to think through the feelings and sensations that accompany them. When we experience trauma, our thinking brain goes offline, and we go into a purely emotional state. Even if we rationally know we’re safe, it’s hard to convince our bodies.
Brainspotting helps by setting a frame to heal that trauma. It connects you to body sensations that are connected to your anxious parts, and allows you to be open and curious about those sensations. It’s an organic process where your therapist Stays in the “tail of the comet” and witnesses your restoration. Issa counseling has found that Brainspotting addresses the underlying trauma, which is a vital component of healing anxiety.
2. BrainSpotting Provides Long-Term Healing
When we use BrainSpotting to manage our anxiety, we create new pathways in our brain that help us process our traumas and triggers, rather than just treating the symptoms. This helps because it lets us access experiences that are locked deep inside. We can’t think our way into these experiences; they happen at a deeper brain level where instincts and sensations lead the way. An attuned therapist who is relationally connected with us on an emotional and neuro-biological level will help us locate the eye positions connected to these traumas and keep us connected physically and emotionally while our bodies process the trauma. According to Grand, our brains know how to heal with the right circumstances, and Brainspotting with an attuned therapist provides those circumstances.
Once a trauma has been processed, it’s no longer stuck in the deep levels of our brain, causing us to feel constantly dysregulated. We don’t just examine the trauma; we actively work through it. After this, our brains can start creating connections based on new growth and healing.
3. BrainSpotting Meets You Where You Are
BrainSpotting is fast and flexible. Just like EMDR and Internal Family Systems therapy, this type of therapy often works much faster than traditional talk therapy, meaning you begin healing and taking your life back from the symptoms of anxiety more quickly. You also direct the process. Your therapist is attuned to you and curious about you and your healing, but you and your body are in charge. Many people who haven’t done therapy before worry about getting a therapist who will push them to places they don’t want to go. No therapist should do this, but BrainSpotting gets rid of this particular anxiety entirely. And while therapies like EMDR have specific phases, BrainSpotting is much more fluid, relying on your body’s natural instincts to lead the way.
4. BrainSpotting Allows Healing Silence
Talk therapy doesn’t work for a lot of people. Sometimes it takes too long, they don’t want to talk through their traumas, or they can’t find the words to make the therapist understand their feelings. Brainspotting side-steps this by connecting to the deeper parts of your brain through a neuro-experiential process that creates healing and expansion of the brain, and does not rely on talking. The therapist is there to witness your healing. They don’t provide the content for fixing your trauma, because they trust that your neurobiology can and will do it. They are the tail of the comet, staying attuned and moving along with you on your journey. BrainSpotting trusts your body to care for itself and understands that healing can happen without words.
If you live in New Orleans or Chicago, or anywhere else in Louisiana and Illinois, the therapists at Issa Counseling can guide you through Brainspotting to heal your anxiety. Please reach out to us at Issa Counseling. Your path to healing is inside of you, and our trained therapists want to support you while you discover it.
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