As everyday people, we don’t usually recognize this, unless we typically practice being attuned to our bodies. Also, this way of processing happens at an unconscious level. Unconscious, meaning that we are unaware that it’s taking place. A slight, unrelated comparison would be to think about when you blink, do you notice that it’s happening every single time? You may have started to notice your blinks now, because you’re reading this and are more aware of it, but let’s say 10 seconds ago, you weren’t paying attention, right? Something similar happens with our field of vision (where we look). When we recall something, we often unconsciously look to a specific location or even sometimes various locations to recall what happened.

Let’s try a few more examples to help you gain some insight into Brainspotting. On a daily basis, we’re always absorbing, taking in, and processing information. This happens from the moment we wake up, until the moment we go to sleep. Take a minute to think about what information you would recall if you saw the sun outside on a summer day. Perhaps, your brain might tell you that sun=warm temperature. Next up, think about a dark and gloomy day. Your brain might tell you that cloud=potential rain and potential rain=you might want to wear a raincoat or bring an umbrella. Your brain provides you with this information because it has previously stored past events of what both the sun and rain feel like and your experience with each of those. I want you to think of your brain like a computer. The brain will process the information it receives, label it, and store it in your brain as a properly labeled memory. This organizing process allows you to cope with the event and file it where it belongs.

Let’s try this and take it one step further. I want you to think about how you might physically react if you noticed that the sun was out. Do you feel a sense of relief, like you don’t have to bring extra stuff with you or worry about protecting important papers or devices, the way you might from other weather? If that’s somewhere close to what you were thinking, your body is also a part of this response and this stored information. I don’t want to go too in depth into this explanation and lose you. I’m trying to keep it as simple as I can. 

Key points are that our brains AND our bodies store information and Brainspotting can help identify the stored information and process them, if you’re feeling stuck, scared, confused, etc. How? When you experience a traumatic event, your brain receives a tremendous amount of information at a super fast rate, where you take in frightening or disturbing information. When this is happening, your brain can’t always process, label, and store all that information efficiently, like the sun example above, so it puts it in random places in your brain and usually buries it. You might quickly forget or not even realize that the memories are in there. 

An example of this is if you’ve experienced a traumatic event and people ask you how you are doing immediately after, the next day, or a week later, you might respond with “I’m alright”. You may or may not know that the event happened and you may not be able to associate the fear, sadness, etc with that memory in the moment. The previous response may be because you honestly believe you’re alright, but also the traumatic event that you experienced has gone to a place in your brain where you can’t easily access. However, don’t mistake not being easily accessible, to not being present at all. 

When something happens, we often try to self store it for later, like “I don’t have time for these emotions, I’ll deal with them later”. But does later ever come and if it does, what do you do with those emotions? How do you organize them? When we never tend to those emotions or don’t know what to do with them, they keep showing up and start to get bigger and bigger each time. They start to say “HEY, I’M HERE, DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME!” But you may continue to say you’ll get to them later, but you never do. Those emotions, as previously stated, may start to show up in unrecognizable ways, such as yelling at people, having a short temper, crying uncontrollably, fearing many things, anxiety through the roof, etc. This is where Brainspotting comes in, where it helps to organize and refile those events that took place, so that your emotional reactivity can lessen.