Some things don't resolve by talking about them. Brainspotting is for the stuff that's stuck somewhere talk therapy alone hasn't been able to reach.

What is Brainspotting?

Brainspotting is a focused-attention therapy that uses eye position to access and process places where trauma or emotional distress is held in the brain and body. The idea is that where you look affects how you feel — certain eye positions correspond to unprocessed experience, and by holding attention there with support, that experience can actually move and settle, rather than just being talked around.

How is it different from talk therapy?

Talk therapy works primarily through the thinking, narrating part of the brain. Brainspotting works underneath that — it accesses the deeper, non-verbal parts of the brain where trauma actually gets stored. You don't need to have language for what happened, or even fully understand it, for the processing to happen. A lot of clients describe it as reaching places that years of talking never touched.

What does a session look like?

I help you locate a "brainspot" — an eye position connected to whatever we're working on — and then we hold there together while your brain does its own processing. My role is to provide focused support and attunement, not to direct the content; you stay in control of what comes up and how you talk about it, or don't. Sessions run longer than a standard 50-minute hour, since the processing itself needs room to unfold.

What is this useful for?

Single-incident trauma, complex or relational trauma, anxiety and panic, grief, performance blocks, and stuck points that haven't shifted with other approaches. It's often what I turn to when someone knows exactly what happened and can talk about it clearly, but the felt experience of it hasn't actually changed.

How does this fit with your other training?

I'm also trained in EMDR, which shares some of the same trauma-processing logic — using eye movement or positioning to access and reprocess stuck material. I use whichever fits better for a given person and moment, and sometimes both over the course of the work. Brainspotting tends to be more open-ended and somatic; EMDR follows a more structured protocol. Neither is "better" across the board — it's about what your nervous system responds to.

Do I need to have a specific event to work on?

No. Brainspotting works well with clear, defined trauma, but it's just as useful for a general sense of being stuck, chronic anxiety, or distress that doesn't trace back to one identifiable moment.

I offer Brainspotting in-person at my Agoura Hills, CA office, and virtually for clients throughout California.