Why Talking Isn't Always Enough: Brainspotting Can Help!
By Amy J Gartner, LCSW and Certified Brainspotting Therapist
If you've experienced trauma — whether it came from abuse, neglect, the death of someone you love, sexual trauma, or the slow, grinding toll of a chronic illness — you already know that pain doesn't just live in your mind; it also lives in your body.
You are good at understanding and explaining what happened to you. You talk about it, describe it, even explain it clearly to other people. You wonder, "Why does my body react as if it's happening right now?" A certain tone of voice, a smell, a medical waiting room, an anniversary on the calendar — suddenly you're flooded with emotion, frozen, or far away. You feel yourself reacting before you can "think" your way through the moment.
This is one of the most confusing and exhausting parts of trauma: knowing you're safe now, but not feeling safe. And it's exactly why traditional talk therapy sometimes isn't enough on its own.
That's why you can talk about a traumatic experience in therapy for months and still feel your chest tighten every time it comes up. The story has been processed by your thinking brain. The felt sense of your experience often hasn't. Your body is still holding the trauma.
What Is Brainspotting?
Brainspotting is built on the realization that where you look affects how you feel.
Brainspotting is built on the realization that where you look affects how you feel.
Certain eye positions correspond to where your body reacts strongly to a memory. Emotion is being held in the brain and nervous system. In a Brainspotting session, we locate a "brainspot" — an eye position connected to whatever you're feeling in your body at that moment. You continue to look at that spot and allow your body to feel what it feels, your emotions to surface, your thoughts to go where they go, and images may come or not. This creates a deeper level of processing of your emotions and experiences, allowing you to digest and heal at a new level.
You stay present and supported throughout. I won't be analyzing you, interpreting your experience, or directing what comes up. My role is to hold a safe, steady, compassionate, and open space for you, while your own nervous system does the deep work of healing — you will be in charge of exactly how much you say or don't say.
Why This Works for So Many Kinds of Trauma
Brainspotting doesn't require you to have a single, definable "traumatic event" — which is part of why it works for such a wide range of experiences:
Abuse and neglect — When trauma happens repeatedly, especially in childhood, it often isn't stored as one clear memory but as a felt sense: a chronic wariness, a hard time trusting, a body that stays braced. Brainspotting can access and release that stored activation without requiring you to relive or even fully articulate what happened.
Grief and loss — Grief lives in your body as much as it does in your heart. You can accept a loss intellectually while your nervous system still reacts to reminders — a song, a date, an empty chair — with a wave of pain that feels brand new. Brainspotting helps that grief move through your body rather than stay frozen in place. Grief doesn't end; it becomes more manageable as it moves through us.
Sexual trauma — This kind of trauma is often held with overwhelming shame and a strong instinct to avoid talking about it. Brainspotting doesn't require you to describe what happened in detail. You can process your body's reaction while staying in control of what you want to share.
Chronic illness — Living with an unpredictable or serious illness is its own trauma: the fear, the loss of control, the grief for the life or body you expected to have. Brainspotting can help process the emotional weight of illness alongside its physical experience.
Across all of these, the common thread is the same: your pain is held in a deeper part of the brain, somewhere words alone can't always reach. Brainspotting will give you access to it, so that healing can happen.
What You Might Expect in a Session
A slow, paced process — we move only as fast as your nervous system can integrate.
No requirement to describe your trauma in detail if you don't want to.
A felt sense of relief, lightness, or resolution that builds over time, rather than being "talked out" every session.
You are always in complete control of the session; you can always look away from the spot if things become too intense.
Tools you can use between sessions to manage triggers and feel more in control of your own nervous system.
You Don't Have to Keep Coping — You Can Heal
If you've spent years managing your trauma symptoms — bracing for triggers, explaining your reactions to yourself, staying one step ahead of your own nervous system — please hear this: that is not the same as healing, and it is not the end of the road.
Brainspotting offers a different path forward — one that works with your brain and body's natural capacity to heal, rather than asking you to think your way out of something that was never stored in thoughts to begin with.
I recently relocated my practice from Chicago to Nashville's Music Row, and I'm now welcoming new clients in person here in Music City, as well as virtually across Tennessee. If this resonates with you, I'd love to talk with you about whether Brainspotting could help.
Reach out now if you need help or want to know how to get started. (815) 307-6056. Serving Nashville, Music Row, and all of Tennessee via telehealth.
Written by: Amy J Gartner
LCSW, Certified Brainspotting Therapist
Specializing in Grief, Trauma, Brainspotting, Life Transitions, and Emotional Eating
Now practicing in Nashville, TN