Brainspotting

Rate: $140 - $180 per session

Individual tele-health sessions for an agreed upon length of time with a therapist trained to use a mind-body technique designed to provide relief from trauma by engaging the deeper subcortical brain, which can be hard to access with talk therapy alone.

Traumatic experiences cause lingering stress to store in various parts of the brain and body, and often times our own thought processes and actions can block the brain and body’s natural process of healing itself. Brainspotting works through using a person’s eye position to unblock that natural process to release pent up traumatic stress.

What is it?

  • feels stuck dealing with a certain issue or feeling no matter how much they talk or think about it.

  • knows they’ve experienced trauma and wants to focus on processing specific experiences or problems.

  • someone whose anxiety gets in the way of performance (creative, athletic, academic, professional etc.).

  • has talked or thought through their trauma and understands it, but can’t seem to make themselves feel any differently emotionally no matter how much they try to process it.

  • has a hard time speaking about their trauma, or can’t remember their trauma.

  • is already in individual therapy (with Find Flow or an outside therapist) and wants to try this approach to trauma work in addition to their therapy.

Ideal for Someone Who:

What is the process like?

Brainspotting is a bit different than the traditional therapy experience, and it may be hard to know what to expect. Hopefully this helps.

  • This is a free 15 minute phone call with me, your prospective brainspotting therapist.

    You’re invited to share what brings you to seek brainspotting. If you’ve come to process trauma, you don’t have to go into detail about the trauma in the consultation call (or, at all, in brainspotting!), just share how it’s impacting your life.

    You’ll get to learn about me and my approach. Brainspotting doesn’t work very well if you’re uncomfortable with your therapist, so it’s important to see if you and I feel like a good fit.

    You can also ask any questions you have about brainspotting.

  • You’ll complete some forms to provide more information for your brainspotting therapist so that they know more about your background, where you’re at, and what other therapeutic work you’re doing / have done before getting started.

    If you have a therapist outside of Find Flow, you will have to sign a release to allow your brainspotting therapist to contact your regular therapist. It is important for your therapeutic team to collaborate in your care. Working with two different therapeutic providers who are not connected actually runs the risk of doing harm by duplicating the same services. If you have any questions about this, do not hesitate to ask your therapist.

  • You’ll have your first session with me, which will be 60 minutes long (after this session, each one will be 45 minutes long). You will not brainspot during this session, instead it will be focused on us getting to know each other. I may ask you additional questions about your history, and you’lll discuss your goals for brainspotting.

    I’ll also help you understand the process and what to expect out of brainspotting sessions, including benefits and potential side effects.

    Lastly, we’ll collaborate on a treatment plan, which will include how often we will meet, an ideal treatment timeline, and what in your life experience you hope to see change because of brainspotting. The ideal timeline of sessions can be as few as 5 sessions and can vary significantly. This is a flexible agreement and can be revisited later and extended/abbreviated if needed and agreed upon.

  • In these sessions you will begin brainspotting.

    If it is not the first brainspotting session, a usual session will start with any updates and discussion of observations and how things have been since your last brainspotting session. After that, you will usually brainspot a chosen focus for the rest of the session.

    I’ll ask you to talk about the focus and then invite you to notice any feelings in your body. These feelings are called activation - and this is ideally the kind of feeling that comes up for you in the moment when it’s disrupting your life outside of session. You rate the intensity of the activation from 0-10. Then, I’ll help you find a place in your visual field where the intensity of activation is at the ideal level for you to begin processing. You are invited to become a back-seat driver in your mind, taking notice of any activation, thoughts, feelings, memories, or emotions that come up. While you’re brainspotting I’ll take more of a back seat too, but I’ll be there the whole time and will be checking in with you to support you through the whole process.

    When effective, over time the intensity of activation around your chosen focus will decrease (e.g. going from a rating of a 9 to a 4, then maybe in the next session, from a 6 to a 2, to a 4 to a 0.) This demonstrates a reduction in traumatic stress around the focus. What this translates to is that the problem shouldn’t affect your life as much anymore.

    In the minutes following brainspotting sessions, because deep brain structures associated with body processes are engaged, you’ll be encouraged to take at least a few minutes to yourself after brainspotting before going into another activity. This is because there is the possibility of temporary physiological or emotional disorientation following session.

    The pacing of brainspotting is customized to each client, so it is recommended that you share your reactions with me as we go.

  • This is the term meaning the decision to end your brainspotting work. Whether you have reached your goals for brainspotting, or have had a change in circumstances that motivates you to stop brainspotting, you are encouraged to communicate about this with me. Especially if you are seeking to terminate earlier than the agreed upon treatment timeline.

    You can always come back to brainspotting if you need more support down the line.

Brainspotting FAQ

  • Yes! Brainspotting was actually developed by David Grand, PhD who was himself an EMDR practitioner. He found that for some clients, by holding a single visual focal point rather than continuous movement of the eyes, that trauma could process more effectively. There are a few other differences in the technique but in general, an EMDR session is a bit more structured where brainspotting is a bit more customizable.

  • Yes.

    The old belief that you must talk through your trauma to heal it has been proven false. It can work for some clients, but not everyone.

    Trauma is stored in the body, not just the brain. When you are consciously remembering or talking about something, you are using the neo-cortical brain, which is more on the surface of the brain. Brainspotting bypasses the neo-cortical brain and allows a release of tension in the deeper sub-cortical brain, which is much more connected to your body.

    The process doesn’t really need a lot of participation from your conscious thinking/memory. If anything, when you’re brainspotting, you and your conscious thinking are getting out of the way while your sub-cortical brain does its thing.

  • Yes.

    Brainspotting works on both “big T trauma” (significant traumatic events) and “little t trauma” (developmental trauma, or chronic exposure to situations where maybe you weren’t exposed to imminent mortal danger, but your brain/body became activated with a trauma response to protect itself from stress).

  • Yes! Brainspotting can be integrated into the treatment of other mental health issues as well, because of how other mental health issues can be trauma responses in disguise.

  • Yes.

    You can add brainspotting to your existing self-work program, as long as it is done in collaboration with your current therapist. You make this possible by signing a release to allow your team to communicate with each other.

  • Brainspotting on its own (without being a part of individual therapy with the same therapist) is unfortunately usually not covered by insurance providers.

    Private pay clients can be provided a superbill which you can try submitting to your insurance company for possible reimbursement if you have out-of-network benefits.

    For those interested in brainspotting + therapy, there are a limited number of slots available for clients who use insurance to pay for therapy.

    There are unfortunately no slots available currently. Join the waiting list.

  • There are a limited number of sliding scale slots available to clients who require a reduced fee. If unable to accommodate sliding scale, you may be offered referrals to other service providers.

  • First sessions are usually 60 minutes, and then 50 minutes for each session thereafter.

  • There is a possibility that in-person sessions will be available in the coming months.

    However, at this time services are exclusively offered via HIPAA compliant telehealth platforms, which can be used on your computer or smart phone. Note: When doing therapeutic services over telehealth platforms, you are encouraged to discuss confidentiality concerns with your therapist.

  • On average they occur once weekly, however this can be modified depending on one’s individual needs to be 2 times weekly, or once every other week. If you utilize insurance to pay for therapy + brainspotting, your plan may impact the allowed frequency of sessions.

  • You are asked to reschedule or cancel any time up until 24 hours before the appointment. After this it is considered a late-cancellation, which is charged in full (and not billed through insurance).

I practice through Meridian Counseling, a group practice located in West LA, though due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I currently offer sessions exclusively through tele-health. If after our consultation it seems that my approach isn’t the right fit for you, there are many brilliant therapists at Meridian Counseling who offer Brainspotting and/or a similar technique called EMDR.