Brainspotting: What It Is and What the Evidence Says

You’ve read about EMDR. A friend swears by something called brainspotting. And you’re tired, because you’ve told your story to more than one therapist and it still sits in your chest the same way. You want to know whether this newer approach is worth your time, money, and hope. That’s a fair question, and it deserves a straight answer.

Trauma often lives in your body as much as in your memory: a tight throat, a racing heart, a pull to look away. Brainspotting builds on that. It asks you to hold your eyes on one fixed point in your visual field, chosen because the distress feels strongest there, and to notice what your body does next. Its developers propose that where you look can help you reach that stored activation with more precision than talking about it. That is a hypothesis, and this guide treats it as one.

The established approach to trauma has a strong track record. The National Center for PTSD summarizes the 2023 VA/DoD guideline this way: prolonged exposure (PE), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) are the most effective psychotherapies for PTSD. They’ve been tested in many trials, against active comparison treatments, with long-term follow-up, and by research teams other than their developers. The results are real, and the science is well established.

Brainspotting grew out of EMDR, and it hasn’t cleared that bar yet. At Siggy, we’d rather show you exactly where the evidence stands than sell you on a technique, so this guide covers how brainspotting works, what the studies found, and how it compares with EMDR. A newer method deserves an honest reading of its evidence before you commit to it.

What This Page Covers

• The Short Answer
• How Does a Brainspotting Session Work?
• Where Did Brainspotting Come From?
• What Does the Research on Brainspotting Show?
• Brainspotting vs. EMDR and Other Trauma Therapies
• What Are the Main Criticisms of Brainspotting?
• Who Might Try Brainspotting, and Who Should Start Elsewhere?
• When to Get Help Right Away

The Short Answer

Brainspotting is a trauma therapy in which you hold your gaze on a single spot while mindfully noticing body sensations, emotions, and memories, with a trained therapist beside you. It was developed in 2003 as an offshoot of EMDR.

A few small studies suggest people feel better after it, but the research is early, mostly uncontrolled or short-term, and often written by people who teach the method. No major PTSD guideline recommends it. If you try it, go in with realistic expectations and a plan to switch if it isn’t helping.

How Does a Brainspotting Session Work?

A session usually starts with you and the therapist naming the issue you want to work on and where you feel it in your body. You rate how activated you feel, often on a 1 to 10 scale. Then the therapist helps you find a brainspot, the eye position linked to that activation.

A 2024 body psychotherapy study describes three common ways to find it:

• Outside window: the therapist slowly moves a pointer across your visual field and watches for reflexive responses such as blinks, twitches, or swallowing.
• Inside window: you track the pointer and report where your felt activation is strongest.
• Gazespotting: the therapist notices where your eyes naturally drift while you talk.

Once the spot is found, you keep your eyes there and observe whatever arises, in what practitioners call focused mindfulness. You report in now and then, but you may talk much less than in traditional talk therapy. Near the end, the therapist often revisits your distress rating and how you feel.

Cleveland Clinic’s overview notes that sessions can last anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes and that feeling tired or foggy afterward is common. Strong emotions can surface, and some people feel worse before they feel better.

Where Did Brainspotting Come From?

A 2022 comparative study traces brainspotting to psychotherapist David Grand, who developed it in 2003 out of his EMDR work and training in somatic experiencing. Its premise is that the direction you look can affect how you feel.

The proposed mechanism is ambitious. In a 2013 Medical Hypotheses paper, Grand and Frank Corrigan set out testable hypotheses: that holding a gaze engages a visual pathway into the midbrain, and that healing occurs in deep structures such as the superior colliculi and periaqueductal gray. The authors framed these as hypotheses to be tested. The studies below measured symptoms and distress ratings, not those brain pathways, so the mechanism remains unconfirmed.

What Does the Research on Brainspotting Show?

Three studies do most of the work in brainspotting’s evidence base, and their designs matter as much as their results.

The first is a 2017 study from Germany of 76 adults who had experienced a traumatic event. They received three 60-minute sessions of either EMDR (23 people) or brainspotting (53 people). Both groups had significant drops in PTSD symptoms, with pre-to-post effect sizes of 1.19 to 1.76 for EMDR and 0.74 to 1.04 for brainspotting, and no significant difference between groups. Clients chose their own treatment rather than being randomized, outcomes were self-reported, and Grand was a co-author.

The second is the 2022 comparative study. Forty psychologists and physicians without a trauma diagnosis each had four distressing memories treated with a single 40-minute session of EMDR, brainspotting, body scan meditation, or book reading. Distress dropped most after EMDR and brainspotting, and stayed lower at follow-up. It’s a useful signal, but this was a healthy professional sample working on everyday memories in one session, and the authors noted that simply revisiting a memory may explain part of the benefit.

The third is the 2024 study above, the one randomized study in this group. Researchers randomly assigned 63 clients with PTSD to five weeks of brainspotting or treatment as usual. Only 27 finished, 14 in the brainspotting group and 13 in the comparison group. Treatment as usual looked better right after treatment, while brainspotting looked better at a 4 to 6 week follow-up. The comparison therapists had no training in trauma-focused CBT or EMDR, and one author is a brainspotting trainer.

Taken together, these studies suggest people often report feeling better after brainspotting. They can’t yet tell you whether the eye position does anything that attention, mindfulness, and a caring therapist wouldn’t do on their own.

Brainspotting vs. EMDR and Other Trauma Therapies

EMDR is the obvious comparison, and its evidence base is far larger. A 2024 pooled analysis of eight randomized trials found no significant difference between EMDR and other psychological treatments for PTSD symptoms, response, or remission. Even so, the 2025 APA guideline places EMDR in its second tier, behind CPT, PE, and trauma-focused CBT. This table draws on the sources above and the National Center for PTSD:

Therapy	Eye Component	Structure	Guideline Status
Brainspotting	Gaze held on one spot	Flexible, less scripted	Not included in VA/DoD or APA guidelines
EMDR	Side-to-side eye movements	Structured, phased protocol	Recommended by VA/DoD, suggested by APA
Cognitive processing therapy	None	Structured, targets trauma beliefs	Recommended by VA/DoD and APA
Prolonged exposure	None	Structured, repeated retelling and exposure	Recommended by VA/DoD and APA

The National Center for PTSD also notes that researchers still disagree about how much eye movements add to EMDR. If that is uncertain for the better-studied therapy, it’s even less settled for brainspotting.

What Are the Main Criticisms of Brainspotting?

The sharpest objection came in a 2024 critique by psychologists Dean McKay and Angela Coreil, published in the same journal as the original hypotheses. They used brainspotting as a central example of how pseudoscientific methods get adopted, arguing that its proposed brain mechanism lacks clear, testable grounding and that the method makes failures easy to explain away. In their view, a poor result can always be blamed on the therapist not finding the right spot.

Other concerns come straight from the study designs:

• Small samples, with 40 to 76 participants in the main studies.
• High dropout, with more than half of participants not finishing the 2024 study.
• Short follow-up, often four to six weeks, with six months in one study.
• Researcher allegiance, with the developer or a trainer co-authoring key papers.
• No independent replication in a large randomized trial.

None of this proves brainspotting doesn’t work, but claims that it reaches trauma other therapies can’t are well ahead of the evidence.

Who Might Try Brainspotting, and Who Should Start Elsewhere?

Some people find talking through trauma in detail overwhelming, and a quieter, body-focused session can feel more tolerable. If you’ve already completed a recommended therapy and want to explore an adjunct with a licensed therapist, brainspotting may be a reasonable conversation to have.

If you have PTSD and haven’t tried a guideline-recommended therapy yet, start there. The National Center for PTSD points to CPT, PE, or EMDR first. When those aren’t available or aren’t a fit, the guideline suggests other structured therapies or medication, specifically sertraline, paroxetine, or venlafaxine.

If you do try brainspotting, these questions help:

• What is your license, and what brainspotting training have you completed?
• How will we measure whether my symptoms are improving?
• After how many sessions would we reassess or switch approaches?
• Are you also trained in CPT, PE, or EMDR if I need them?

For a deeper look at the better-studied option, see our guide to EMDR therapy for PTSD.

When to Get Help Right Away

Trauma work can stir up intense feelings. Some moments need immediate support:

• If you’re having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
• If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911.
• If you’re having flashbacks, dissociation, or panic that won’t settle, contact a clinician today.

For people carrying trauma, retelling the story to each new provider is its own kind of weight.

Brainspotting is an intriguing idea with thin evidence, and EMDR, CPT, and PE are the better-proven places to start for PTSD. Our guide on how to treat PTSD walks through how those options fit together.

Ready to take control of your mental health? Start your anonymous intake with Siggy and get your plan reviewed by a licensed prescriber.

This article is for education only and isn’t a substitute for personal medical or mental health advice. It was reviewed for clinical accuracy and reflects sources available as of September 2026.