Where you look affects how you feel
That sentence is the whole idea behind Brainspotting, and it sounds far too simple to matter.
Here is what it actually means, what happens in a session, what the research does and doesn’t support, and — because this is a coaching practice, not a therapy practice — exactly where the line between those two sits.
The Short Version
Brainspotting is a way of working with the things that don’t shift just because you understand them.
You bring something you’re carrying — a fear, a freeze, a scene you can’t write. You notice how it registers in your body. Then you find the eye position where that feeling is strongest, and you hold your gaze there while someone stays steadily, attentively with you.
That’s the whole method. No talking it through, no reframing, no worksheets. Your attention rests on one point, and your own brain does the processing.
Where It Came From
Brainspotting was discovered in 2003 by David Grand, PhD, during an EMDR session with a figure skater. When her eyes paused at one particular position, something opened that hadn’t opened before. He followed it.
Grand had already trained in EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, and psychoanalysis, and Brainspotting carries pieces of all three: the eye work of the first, the body awareness of the second, the patience of the third.
His 2013 book, Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change, is still the foundational text. Training and certification are run through Brainspotting International, which is where practitioners — including me — are trained and certified.
What Happens in a Session
You bring the thing
Not your whole history. The specific thing that’s in the way today, in whatever words you have for it.
We find where it lives
Tight chest, hollow stomach, heat in the face, or simply blank. Whatever registers is the right answer.
We find the brainspot
I may move a pointer slowly across your field of vision while you notice where the feeling gets stronger — or you may simply let your eyes settle where they want to. Either way, that position is where we work.
Your system processes
You hold the gaze and follow whatever comes — thoughts, images, sensation, or nothing in particular. My job is steady attention. We ground before we finish.
You stay awake, eyes open, and in charge the entire time. You can pause, take a break, change direction, or tell me a phrasing isn’t landing. Many people wear headphones for bilateral sound — audio that moves gently from one ear to the other — which helps some people settle and does nothing much for others.
Why the Eye Position Matters
The parts of the brain that hold fear, freeze, grief and old survival responses sit underneath the parts that make sentences. That is why you can understand a block completely and still be unable to move through it. Insight lives upstairs. The block does not.
Vision is wired straight down into that lower territory. The midbrain area that tracks where your eyes are pointing sits alongside the machinery that runs those survival responses. So a fixed gaze at one particular spot appears to give the brain a stable line into material that words keep sliding off.
That is the working theory, and it is a theory. What’s observable in a session is smaller and more concrete: move the gaze, and the feeling changes. Hold it, and something moves.
Brainspotting and EMDR
EMDR
- Eyes move back and forth
- Eight structured phases
- More cognitive: beliefs are named and reworked
- Developed by Francine Shapiro, 1987
Brainspotting
- Eyes rest on one fixed spot
- Flexible, led by what surfaces
- More somatic: often very little talking
- Developed by David Grand, 2003, out of EMDR
People who have done both often describe Brainspotting as the quieter one. Neither is better. They are different rooms, and some nervous systems prefer one over the other.
What the Research Does and Doesn’t Say
Brainspotting is young. It has been around since 2003, which sounds like a while until you compare it to approaches with forty years of large trials behind them.
The research that exists is mostly small: pilot studies and early trials with modest numbers of participants. Several are encouraging. None of them add up to the weight of evidence behind EMDR or CBT, and Brainspotting does not appear on the major registries of established treatments the way those do.
Anyone telling you it’s clinically proven is overselling it. Anyone telling you it’s nothing hasn’t looked. If you want to read the studies for yourself, Brainspotting International keeps a running list of research and case studies.
I’d rather you know that going in than find it out later. You should be able to decide with the real picture in front of you.
Therapy or Coaching?
Brainspotting gets used in two different rooms by two different kinds of practitioner, and the difference matters more than anything else on this page.
In Therapy
Licensed clinicians use Brainspotting to treat trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, addiction and chronic pain. That is clinical treatment. It involves diagnosis, a treatment plan, and a licensed professional accountable to a board.
If that is what you need, that is what you should have.
In Coaching
Trained coaches use the same attention and the same eye-position work inside a coaching scope: performance, creativity, the blocks and pressures around your work.
No diagnosis. No treatment of mental health conditions. Not a substitute for therapy.
What I offer through Sparks & Swoons is the coaching one — for romance writers whose blocks feel like fear, shame, pressure, or freeze. If something surfaces that belongs in a therapy room, I’ll say so, and I’ll help you find the right person for it.
Brainspotting in the Press
Three journalists writing about their own experience of Brainspotting. All three describe it in a therapy setting rather than a coaching one, which is worth holding in mind as you read them.
- My Eye-Opening Experience with Brainspotting Therapy
Aileen Weintraub, Oprah Daily, February 2026 - Brainspotting Was Life-Changing for Me. Here’s What to Know About the New-ish Therapy Technique
Kathleen Ferraro, Self, June 2025 - What Is Brainspotting — and Why Therapists and Clients Say It Makes for Faster, More Intense Breakthroughs
Dana Dickey, PureWow, July 2023
Wondering Whether It Would Help Your Writing?
That’s what the free 15-minute call is for. Tell me what happens when you sit down to write, ask whatever you want about the method, and we’ll work out together whether this is the right tool for it.
If you already know you want to try it, a Story Breakthrough Session is one focused hour, and an Author Breakthrough Intensive is three.
Sparks & Swoons Coaching provides personal and creative coaching. It is not psychotherapy, counseling, or a substitute for care from a licensed mental health professional.