Brainspotting Quotes

“It was like a dance of connection and attunement between client and therapist, much more than a mechanical process. Clients would often ask how I knew to stop my hand where I did. When I asked if they had any idea why I’d stopped, they seemed to have no clue—even when it was their own nodding head that had stopped me!”
― David Grand, Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change

“Whatever the client was experiencing changed. Images and memories came more quickly. Emotions and body experience went deeper and moved on more rapidly and easily. Clients also got to observe the process while they were in it. The process was fascinating and still is.”
― David Grand, Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change

“The technique was simple, but the response was complex. I also discovered that eye wobbles and eye freezes were not the only reflexes that revealed the presence of traumas held deep in the brain; I observed many other reactions when I stopped my hand movement, such as multiple or hard blinks and eye widening or narrowing. Any reflex of the face (or ultimately the body) seemed to manifest when the eyes arrived at a position of relevance. I experimented with stopping my hand when I observed a cough, a deep inhale or exhale, a hard swallow, lip licking, a head tilt, a nostril flare, or a change in facial expression.”
― David Grand, Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change

“From there, the rapid left-right eye movements begin. The therapist pauses occasionally to see what’s going on inside the client. The internal experience of the client is called processing, and it is actually a focused, powerful form of mindfulness. The client is guided to uncritically observe, step-by-step, what they experience, including memories, thoughts, emotions, or sensations in their body. When the therapist ultimately brings the client back to the original image, to see how it and its emotional charge have changed, hopefully the intensity of the memory has been reduced.”
― David Grand, Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change

“Bob called these goggles “Schiffer glasses.” Harvard psychologist Fredric Schiffer, he told me, theorized that each brain hemisphere almost has a separate personality of its own. For most people, the left brain tends to be more optimistic and the right brain more vulnerable. For about a quarter of the population, the reverse is true. The goggles help isolate these two “personalities” so the therapist can interact with each of them separately. When helping a client process a troubling issue, Schiffer started with the positive side. Then after a while, he guided the client to switch goggles and experience things from the other side. As the client moved back and forth, spending more time on the positive, Schiffer observed that each side began to influence the other. So first you isolate each side, then you effectuate a crossover effect from side to side.”
― David Grand, Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change

“So first you isolate each side, then you effectuate a crossover effect from side to side.”
― David Grand, Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change