Brainspotting therapy, also known as BSP, is a speech-based therapy that unveils the unprocessed traumas a client has through fixed eye positions. Every specific eye position is linked to a “brainspot”–a region of the mind that holds on to emotions and thoughts. Brainspotting clients fixate on problematic brainspots to reveal mental challenges that have been covered up. If you want to understand what brainspoting is, this article will shed light, and if you feel this could be an ideal therapy type for you, reach out to Serenity GTrauma and one of our therapists will give you an assessment.
How Brainspotting Helps in Addiction Recovery
When brainspotting is used as a therapy, the brain’s limbic system is exercised–the area of the brain that controls impulse control and motivation. These are the key factors that play into addiction, as well as cognitive thinking skills, emotion and long-term memory. Addiction impacts the mind and body, so it is only natural to use a therapeutic method that targets the physical and mental components. Brainspotting is advantageous for treating addiction because it is critical to fight for survival on both of these fronts.
When an addict’s mind is being traumatized, the body absorbs that trauma and becomes dependent on a substance or a behavior to cope. This in turn creates a lack of motivation to stop. The goal of brainspotting is to kill the negativity and psychological distress, and stop the unresolved trauma that fuels one’s need to self-medicate. At Serenity Trauma our therapists use brainspotting to treat addiction and the PTSD that might be associated with it by linking specific eye positions and bilateral auditory stimulation that enables the therapist to locate the mental trauma and “rewire” the response. Therapists help patients in a treatment setting go through life-changing works through these three fundamentals:
Desensitization – patients learn to tame automatic, irrational reactions to emotional or physical triggers.
Identification – Identifying the root of craving and addictive behavior is achievable via brainspotting. Usually, addiction is an over-emphasized reaction to an unresolved thing of internal injury. Low frequency thinking and ideas about one’s self can take over and a variety of brain spots might be present that are stuck in the addicted region of the brain. Brainspotting aids in the location of these and helps to alleviate suffering.
Reprocessing – Addicts seek brainspotting therapy to reprocess. Those suffering from addictions can find relief and freedom from their deep cravings and the trauma associated with them, as the brain is no longer trapped or fettered by the previous way of correlating troublesome emotions to destructive behaviors.
Brainspotting and the Continuum of Addiction Care
When one enters recovery, they come face to face with a lifelong commitment to sobriety. The continuum of addiction care (CoC) functions as a bridge for lasting recovery. This ongoing operation of treatments denies gaps in one’s care that could garner a relapse. Your brainspotting therapist will assess you and create a chain of treatment programs that will transition you into full independent sobriety.
Brainspotting therapy can also pair with intense intervention. Some patients may need protective care so they can first be stabilized before entering the first step towards their independence.
Brainspotting treatments can also begin once someone has entered the state of sobriety, and there are even sessions that compliment brainspotting like cognitive behavioral therapy. In fact, most patients receiving brainspotting therapy are well on their way to sobriety and are stable enough for additional accompanying therapies. However, they run the risk of relapsing if there isn’t a continued therapeutic pattern of sessions.
How Efficient is Brainspotting in Treating Addicts with PTSD?
According to a study by Anja Hildebrand, David Grand and Mark Stemmler in ‘The Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology’, clients were treated with three 60-minute sessions of brainspotting according to a standard protocol. The participants showed significant reductions in PTSD symptoms. The study evaluated brainspotting patients for a course of six months and concluded that the treatment was an effective therapeutic approach for clients with trauma-based addictions.
At Serenity Trauma our brainspotting therapists use this innovative therapeutic approach for addicts enabling them to access deep emotions in which healing can begin to heal the physical and mental effects of the trauma rooted in the foundation of the behavior.
Call Serenity Trauma for a Consultation with a Brainspotting Therapist Today
Our caring and qualified healthcare professionals are standing by to pair you with a brainspotting therapist who can help you, through mind and body, defeat addiction while entering the path towards cognitive and physical independence and full sobriety. If there are any PTSD symptoms your brainspotting approach will gently take you to the root of the problem, and enable you to have a healthy comprehension of all emotions and thoughts associated with the pangs currently nipping at your state of being. Call today, and start living the best version of yourself.