Brainspotting for Anxiety: A Therapy That Speaks to Your Nervous System
Have you ever felt like your anxiety lives in your body - tight chest, racing thoughts, tension that doesn’t go away? Maybe everything looks fine on the outside, but inside, your nervous system is stuck on high alert.
If you feel anxious for no clear reason or if traditional talk therapy hasn’t helped as much as you hoped, it’s not because you’re doing something wrong. Anxiety often lives beneath the surface, in places words can’t always reach.
That’s where brainspotting therapy comes in. Developed by Dr. David Grand, this powerful, brain- and body-based form of therapy helps you process and release the distress that’s often stored in the brain and body, even if you can’t quite put it into words.
In this article, we’ll explore:
The benefits of brainspotting for people with anxiety
What to expect during a brainspotting therapy session
How this approach supports emotional regulation and self-awareness
Why it may be the missing link if talk therapies haven’t worked
If you’re ready for a gentler, more body-informed approach to healing anxiety, keep reading—this might be the pathway you've been looking for.
-
Brainspotting therapy for anxiety calms the sympathetic nervous system and helps release tension stored in the body. It's great for anxiety disorders when talk therapy isn’t enough.
Understanding Brainspotting for People with Anxiety
If you’ve struggled with anxiety that doesn’t respond to traditional talk therapy, or if you feel like your body is holding on to something you can’t explain, brainspotting therapy offers a different way forward.
Brainspotting is a therapeutic approach that helps individuals access and process emotional pain, trauma, and anxiety that may be stored in the brain and body. This form of therapy uses specific eye positions to unlock deeply held patterns of distress. Unlike talk therapy, brainspotting doesn’t rely on finding the “right words”—it connects directly with the nervous system, where many symptoms of anxiety actually begin.
Grounded in neuroscience, brainspotting activates the brain’s natural ability to heal. It’s especially helpful for those who experience:
Chronic anxiety or panic attacks
Obsessive thoughts or overthinking
A history of PTSD, complex trauma, or stress
A sense that their anxiety is “stuck” or physiological
Here’s how brainspotting therapy for anxiety works:
You’ll sit with a trained therapist in a safe and supportive environment
The therapist will use a pointer to help you find a brainspot - an eye position connected to an unresolved emotional sensation
While holding your gaze there, your brain and body begin to process and integrate what’s been held beneath the surface
There’s no pressure to talk; you’re simply allowing the brain’s natural healing process to unfold
Research shows promising results: in a 2013 study, brainspotting significantly reduced anxiety symptoms, stress, and depression in participants after just a few sessions.
For many people, especially women navigating life transitions, brainspotting provides a vital component of healing anxiety—one that traditional therapies may not fully reach.
-
Your therapist helps you find an eye position linked to stress or emotion. From there, your brain starts to process and release it, supporting mental health and healing, similar to EMDR.
Brainspotting as an Anxiety Treatment
When anxiety becomes more than just worry—when it feels like your mind is racing, your body is tense, and you can’t seem to calm down, no matter how hard you try—it might be time to stop thinking your way out of it and start feeling your way through. That’s where brainspotting therapy comes in.
Unlike traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on thought patterns, brainspotting works with your nervous system, where anxiety often begins. Using a specific eye position to access brainspots, brainspotting helps individuals process and release stored distress on a deep, subconscious level.
This method doesn’t just mask symptoms. Brainspotting provides a unique way to regulate your emotional response at the root, helping the body and brain restore balance.
In other words, brainspotting helps when talking isn’t enough.
-
It helps with panic attacks, social withdrawal, and overthinking by targeting where negative emotions are stored in the brain.
The Benefits of Brainspotting Therapy
This gentle, neuroscience-backed anxiety treatment can support your healing in ways many people haven’t experienced before. Some of the most common benefits of brainspotting therapy include:
Relief from chronic anxiety and stress hormones
Increased emotional regulation and nervous system resilience
Healing from past traumatic experiences and unresolved grief
Reduction in perfectionism, people-pleasing, and burnout
More calmness, clarity, and access to your thoughts and emotions
Improved self-awareness and connection to your body
For those who’ve felt stuck, brainspotting therapy is a great next step—a vital component of healing anxiety from the inside out.
Brainspotting Therapy for Social Anxiety
If you often replay conversations in your head, avoid speaking up in meetings, or feel uncomfortable in social situations, even with people you know, social anxiety might be playing a bigger role in your life than you realize. Many women in midlife also experience a growing fear of judgment, especially when stepping into new roles or facing big transitions.
Brainspotting therapy can help by gently working beneath the surface of these reactions. Instead of overanalyzing what you should say or do, brainspotting helps your nervous system process the fear itself, creating new pathways to heal the emotional responses that trigger avoidance or shame.
Whether it’s the anxiety of being seen, speaking up, or simply showing up, brainspotting creates space to move past the fear, not by pushing through it, but by helping your brain and body resolve what’s underneath.
Additional Reading: You might also want to read about The Emotional Side of Perimenopause: What We’re Still Not Talking About.
-
Yes. Brainspotting provides deep emotional relief, especially for PTSD, chronic stress, and stuck anxiety that hasn’t improved with talk therapy.
Why Brainspotting Might Be the Missing Piece in Your Anxiety Healing
If you’ve tried talk therapy, medication, or mindfulness, and still feel stuck in cycles of stress and overwhelm, you’re certainly not broken. Sometimes, anxiety isn’t something we can think or talk our way out of, because the root of it lives deeper, in parts of the brain where emotions are stored.
Many of my clients come to their first brainspotting session after years of trying everything else, and finally feel like something is shifting.
With brainspotting, you can:
Access deep emotional material through eye movement and brainspots
Begin treating anxiety without having to rehash every painful detail
Create new pathways toward healing, calmness, and clarity
Experience profound shifts in your relationship to anxiety and yourself
Brainspotting offers something different—and deeply effective.
-
Absolutely. Using brainspotting can reduce overwhelm and support better emotional regulation by helping your brain create new patterns of calmness.
Let’s Work Together to Gently Rewire Anxiety at the Root
I work with women in midlife who feel overwhelmed, stuck in anxiety, or burned out from always being the strong one. Using tools like brainspotting therapy, I help you access the deeper layers of emotion and stress that talk therapy can sometimes miss.
This gentle, body-based approach allows individuals to access unresolved tension, intrusive thoughts, and past experiences held in the areas of the brain linked to survival and emotion.
Whether you’re dealing with anxiety, past trauma, or a difficult life transition, I offer a safe space to slow down, reconnect, and begin to heal.
I see clients both in-person and online, so support is always within reach. If you’re curious about how brainspotting therapy helps, I’d be honored to walk that path with you. Get in touch.