Medicine Health

BRAINSPOTTING

the revolutionary new therapy for rapid and effective change

by David Grand Review by John Kapp, April 2020

Published: 2013
Publisher: Sounds True
Format: Paperback
Pages: xx pp.
ISBN: 9781604079432

Publisher’s description

Brain-based therapy is the fastest-growing area in the field of psychological health because it has proven that it can immediately address issues that talk therapy can take years to heal. Now Dr. David Grand presents the next leap forward in psychological care—combining the strengths of brain-based and talk therapies into a powerful technique he calls Brainspotting. In Brainspotting, Dr. Grand reveals the key insight that allowed him to develop this revolutionary therapeutic tool: that where we look reveals critical information about what's going on in our brain. Join him to learn about: The history of Brainspotting—how it evolved from EMDR practice as a more versatile tool for brain-based therapyBrainspotting in action—case studies and evidence for the effectiveness of the techniqueAn overview of the different aspects of Brainspotting and how to use themBetween sessions—how clients can use Brainspotting on their own to reinforce and accelerate healingWhy working simultaneously with the right and left brain can lead to expanded creativity and athletic performanceHow Brainspotting can be used to treat PTSD, anxiety, depression, addiction, physical pain, chronic illness, and much more “Brainspotting lets the therapist and client participate together in the healing process,” explains Dr. Grand. “It allows us to harness the brain's natural ability for self-scanning, so we can activate, locate, and process the sources of trauma and distress in the body.” With Brainspotting, this pioneering researcher introduces an invaluable tool that can support virtually any form of therapeutic practice—and greatly accelerate our ability to heal. “David Grand is one of the most important and effective psychological trauma therapists now practicing, and his development of Brainspotting is a very important leap forward in helping people resolve trauma. Brainspotting is a remarkable, sophisticated, flexible addition to the therapeutic toolkit of any psychotherapist. I know because I use it regularly, and find that, combined with the psychoanalytic approaches I normally practice, the results are astonishingly helpful. Using it, one becomes amazed at the extent to which our traumas can be detected in our ordinary facial and eye reflexes, and how, by using these windows to inner mental states, many traumas and symptoms can be rapidly relieved. Grand writes clearly, and the cases, dramatic as they are, are not exaggerated.” —Norman Doidge, MD, FRCPC, author of The Brain That Changes Itself; faculty, University of Toronto, Department of Psychiatry, and Columbia University Department of Psychiatry Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research

The problem with most talking therapies is that they tend to take months or years of sessions for relief or change to occur. Brainspotting is one of the increasing number of what are known as brain-based therapies, which are treatments that use mindfulness to go beyond the mind to gain direct access to the brain. It harnesses the brain's natural ability for self scanning, so we can activate, locate and process the sources of trauma and distress in the body, accelerating our ability to heal and cure any mental problems.

The motto of Brainspotting is 'where you look affects how you feel.' The eyes are the window to the soul. Trauma can overwhelm the brain's processing capacity, leaving behind pieces of the trauma, frozen in an unprocessed state. Brainspotting uses our field of vision to find where we are holding these traumas. Just as the eyes naturally scan the outside environment for information, they can be used to scan the inside environment – our brains- for information.

Brainspotting uses the visual field to turn the 'scanner' back on itself and guide the brain to find lost internal information. By keeping the gaze focussed on a specific external spot, we maintain the brain's focus on the specific internal spot where trauma is stored, in order to promote the deep processing that leads to the trauma's release and resolution. There are no problems except those that we make into problems, but the mind can make a problem out of anything. We can be conditioned (brainwashed) to believe almost anything.

Brainspotting is built on a 'dual attunement' model, where the therapist simultaneously attunes to the client (meaning the relationship between themselves and the client, and mirrors and reveals the client's experience with the primary caregivers in their childhood, especially their mother) and the client's brain processes.

The left side of the brain controls the right side of our body, and the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body. Our left brain thinks, uses language and solves problems. Our right brain is intuitive, emotional and involved in body functions. When we are overwhelmed with emotion and can't think straight, our right brain has taken over. When we are overly analytical and cut off from our emotions, we are stuck in our left brain. (Men tend to be left-brained half wits, (cold, aloof, unfeeling) and women tend to be right-brained half wits, (hysterical, weepy, can't keep themselves together) Brainspotting helps balance the left and right sides, so that integrate and self-regulate.

Brainspotting developed from Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) in which the client is asked to focus their attention on a disturbing issue, and measure the intensity of pain or emotional distress on the 0-10 'Subjective Units of Disturbance Scale' (SUDS) Thinking about painful subjects is counter-intuitive, and we normally avoid doing this, but the therapist holds the space for the client to maintain this focus, with the object of allowing the brain to process it from implicit to explicit memory, when the SUDS level decreases. When this is reported as 0, the issue is no longer distressing, and we may then 'squeeze the lemon', by provoking the client to think again about the issue, to check the activation, and see whether it is really healed, until the client reports that they are cured.

The most impressive statistic about Brainspotting is an evaluation dated 2016 of the 20 trauma therapies given to those affected by the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut USA in 2012. Brainspotting was voted the most effective intervention, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) was almost the least effective. www.brainspotting.org. I believe that Brainspotting would help those traumatised by disasters (like the Grenfell tower fire in June 2017, who received little or no psychological support). I believe that it deserves to be clinically trialled, so that it could be recommended by NICE for use in the NHS, and I am willing to help organise a trial.

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