Let’s start with some information about the brain.

The neocortex, which is often targeted in talk therapies, is responsible for being the thinking center, problem-solving, rational thought, day-to-day tasks region of the brain. This is the part of the brain that thinks it knows everything about you (but it does not).

The subcortex, sometimes referred to as the limbic system, is the deeper region of the brain. This is the part of the brain that DOES know everything about you-it even remembers the day that you were born! The subcortex is also where your emotions are located. Sometimes when we go through negative experiences, the brain does not want to consolidate these memories into the long-term memory storage. When the brain does not consolidate those memories to the past, then they are sitting in this part of the brain. The brain wants to protect those memories, so it holds onto them. Sometimes the brain wants to protect them so badly that it puts those memories in a sort of “time capsule” (analogy-not an actual time capsule in your brain) and then buries it, so as not to think about it again.

 The brainstem is located at the base of your skull. This part of the brain “pushes” information that is floating around in the subcortex (that is not properly stored) into your body, affecting you physically. If you have ever heard of a doctor saying something like “I can’t find anything wrong with you, so your symptoms must be stress-related” then those symptoms are likely coming from this area of the brain. This can also cause stomach issues, headaches, muscle tension and pain.

 You also have synapses in your brain. You were born with over 4 quadrillion synapses in your brain. If you can imagine EIGHT Olympic sized swimming pools filled with sand and each granule of sand represents a synapse in your brain, that is a good visual representation of how many synapses our brains have. Synapses fire and wire together through experiences and create neuropathways in our brains. Let me use an example to describe how that works. Let’s say you are three months old and you wake up hungry and needing a diaper change. You cry because crying is what babies do. No one comes to you, but you hear yelling and screaming between your parents in the room. In that moment, you cannot explain what you feel at three months old, but your brain may be wiring together for fear, worry, and anxiety, connected to the stomach pain from being hungry and the uncomfortable feeling from your dirty diaper. So, the next time you feel these feelings, your brain has already started wiring for this, so your brain goes back to that three-month-old experience. If you feel afraid when you are 16, 25 or yesterday, it will connect with the same pathways in the brain of the three-month-old experience.

What does Brainspotting do?

Brainspotting helps to unwire those pathways so that the trauma network is disconnected from everything that has ever happened in your life. So that when something makes you afraid TODAY, it is no longer connected to everything in your life that has caused you fear. Brainspotting also causes the brain to take the traumatic memories and consolidate them to long term memories, moving them into proper storage in the subcortex.