In an exclusive interview, Pure Wow speaks with Jennifer Brady, LCSW, to delve into the benefits of brainspotting therapy. This innovative approach offers valuable insights into effective mental health resources that can enhance emotional well-being. https://www.purewow.com/wellness/brainspotting-therapy

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My Eye-Opening Experience with ‘Brainspotting’ Therapy

Uncovering a long-buried memory through this method freed me from decades of crippling indecision.

By Aileen Weintraub Published: Feb 06, 2026 11:41 AM EST

I’m standing in the supermarket trying to decide between Manchego cheese and cheddar, but I’m paralyzed with

indecision. There are too many choices. And, for some

inexplicable reason, I don’t trust myself to make the right one.

Until two months ago, this is how every grocery store trip went for me.

I know the stakes are low: It’s cheese, not open-heart surgery. But that

indecision has plagued me all of my adult life. I even put off bigger, more

important choices—like finding a new doctor or deciding the next step in

my career—as long as possible because I don’t trust myself to make the

right call. And that’s a big deal.

Last fall, it got to the point where I couldn’t even pick an entrée at a

restaurant (prompting some serious side-eye from friends). I knew it was

time to address the problem. My life coach, who had been helping me

figure out some other personal sh*t, suggested I try brainspotting (BSP).

BSP is a newish form of therapy meant to alleviate anxiety, depression,

grief, and post-traumatic stress disorder. It was developed in 2003 by

psychotherapist David Grand, PhD, LCSW, and the concept is that

patients follow an object slowly with their eyes (or hold their gaze in a

fixed spot) to help the brain uncover (and then release) traumatic

experiences. It was possible, my coach told me, that my paralyzing

indecisiveness could be due to some unresolved trauma from my past—

and BSP, which she also practiced, might help uncover it.

Eyes Wide Open

I have to admit: I quite literally rolled my eyes when I first heard about

BSP. It sounded like next-level woo…and that’s coming from someone

who tried hypnotherapy to calm down before a surgery.

Proponents of BSP believe there are areas in a person’s visual gaze—say,

looking toward the ceiling, or out of the left corner of your eye—that are

linked to traumatic experiences, says licensed psychotherapist Elizabeth

Handy. These areas are called “brainspots.” During a session, a trained

practitioner asks you to follow a pointer or their fingers with your eyes

until a painful memory is activated. (Hello, brainspot!) The practitioner

will then verbally guide you through the memory, asking you to stay with

it a little longer than may feel comfortable, and then suggesting ways to

let it go.

Grand first developed the concept after working with a professional

figure skater who was stuck trying to master a triple loop jump. In a

session, Grand asked her to visualize the feeling of coming out of a jump,

while he moved his fingers very slowly in front of her eyes. “When I got

over right next to the bridge of her nose, her eye went into this intense

wobble,” he says. “For the next 10 minutes, she was just looking at my

fingers, and observing that she was seeing trauma after trauma come up.”

The next day, Grand’s client called him from the rink to say she’d

completed her first successful triple loop. “That got my attention,” he

says. “So I started looking at my other clients for those eye anomalies:

wobbles, hard blinks, squinting. Anytime I saw that, I stopped there, and

then the processing went deeper and deeper.” He shared his findings

with other therapists, and the method quickly gained momentum.

(According to Grand’s website, over 20,000 therapists have since been

trained in BSP.)

“

THAT’S THE PAYOFF TO ME:

THAT SOMETHING HAS

CHANGED FOR THE PERSON

IN THEIR BRAIN AND THEIR

BODY.

”

While research on this modality is limited, I did find a 2022 study in

which participants reported significantly reduced distress in the days

following BSP. And in a 2021 survey of 112 therapists, most of whom were

trained in BSP, 82 percent reported that clients on average responded

better to BSP than the more well-known EMDR (eye movement

desensitization and reprocessing therapy), a well-researched, but

intense, trauma therapy based on bilateral sensory stimulation combined

with talk therapy.

That said, brainspotting is not accepted universally in psychiatric circles.

(Some researchers even call it pseudoscience.) Handy, who is a BSP

practitioner, admits that more studies are needed, particularly to

understand what’s actually going on in the brain during a session.

For now, BSP is considered an alternative therapy. But that doesn’t mean

it’s without merit. “When I ask a client, ‘What does it feel like now? What

does it feel like in your body?’ after an hour of processing, on the spot,

the client says the painful memory looks like it’s further away, it’s faded,”

Grand says. “That’s the payoff to me: that something has changed for the

person in their brain and their body.”

I was hesitant, but, after a lot of mental back and forth (shocker!), I

decided to go for it.

Uncovering Lost Memories

My coach and I started by talking about my goals for the session—trying

to understand my indecisiveness—over Zoom. Then she pulled out her

“magic wand” (a pointer) and instructed me to follow it with my eyes as

she moved it slowly from side to side. (This might sound like EMDR,

except BSP uses very slow, methodical movements rather than a rapid

back and forth.) As I followed the pointer with my gaze, she asked me to

focus on where I was feeling pain in my body.

“Umm, everywhere.” I responded as a woman in full-on menopause. But

after taking a few moments to pause and reflect, I zeroed in on a dull

aching sensation in my right hip.

Then she slowed her pointer down, moving it just slightly until the pain

felt even more intense. We had found the “brainspot” in my field of

vision, a little off to the right. As I held my gaze on that spot, I wondered

what my hip pain had to do with any of this.

Apparently, a lot. “There is no separation between what we feel

emotionally, and what we feel in our bodies,” says Grand—referring to the

theory of stored trauma popularized by psychiatric researcher Bessel van

der Kolk, MD, in his bestselling book The Body Keeps the Score.

Once I was fully focused on my brainspot and the hip pain, things started

to get wild. A scene popped into my head.

I was in sixth grade, and the entire class was whispering. None of us had

understood the previous night’s math homework, and we were worried

about getting in trouble. I decided to be the first to tell our teacher that I

hadn’t completed the assignment.

I walked up to Mr. B’s desk. The class’s murmurs died down. All eyes were

on me.

“Mr. B, I didn’t understand the homework assignment,” I squeaked.

My teacher unleashed a tsunami of terror directly in my face, yelling at

me for my incompetence. I turned red, paralyzed with fear. He was

screaming so loud I could see his uvula swinging in the back of his throat

and his spit flying through the air. I started to tremble in front of the

whole class. I had made a terrible miscalculation.

I hadn’t cried that day in sixth grade, but I was crying now, tears

streaming down my cheeks, 40 years later. I wondered if this experience

of a male authority figure, humiliating and belittling me in front of all of

my peers for a simple mistake, had been manifesting itself as lifelong

physical pain in my hip, and through my inability to trust myself to make

even the most basic decisions.

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Doing the Work

Now it was time to try and change the neural pathways in my brain. My

coach asked me to replace that buried memory with a new, future

scenario that made me feel empowered. This was an opportunity to

rewrite the narrative I’d been subconsciously telling myself for years:

that I make bad decisions and get punished for them. I closed my eyes

and imagined being loved and supported by my friends and family. We

were all sitting around laughing, and everyone was content. No one was

yelling at me or putting me down. I didn’t have to overthink the vision; it

just popped into my head.

After the session, I was so emotionally drained that I slept for 10 hours.

But the next day, my hip felt noticeably better. “It feels like you’re

carrying a weight on your shoulders. When that’s alleviated, you can see

the change. You really feel the difference in your body,” says Grand.

I was shocked that one single moment decades ago, that I had all but

forgotten, had seemingly affected my whole life. I could finally move

forward.

Back at the grocery store a few days later, I stood in the cheese aisle—

yes, I eat too much cheese—and this time, I told myself, “Trust yourself.

Nothing bad will happen if you pick the wrong cheese.” As a matter of

fact, I realized, there is no such thing as the wrong cheese! I grabbed a

creamy ricotta and threw it in my cart. Slowly, I was learning to be more

decisive and, more importantly, trust myself. Now, my goal was to take

that confidence and apply it to the bigger decisions in my life that were

holding me back, like saying yes to a risky career move.

BSP has given me a new appreciation of how certain events, even

seemingly small ones, shaped me into who I am today. Armed with this

knowledge, I can work on rerouting those neural pathways. “People, even

in the darkest places, can overcome trauma,” says Handy. I’m learning

how to release mine.