Journal
What Brainspotting Is, and Why It Suits Birth Trauma
A way of working with a frightening birth that does not start with the story. Here is what it is, and what a session is like.
Most people picture therapy for birth trauma as telling the story of the birth, in order and in detail, until it hurts less. For a lot of women, that picture is the reason they never call. Brainspotting starts somewhere else: with where the birth is still held in your body, and where your eyes go while you notice it.
If you have tried to talk about the birth and found the words came out flat while your chest did something else entirely, you already know the gap Brainspotting works in. The story is one thing. What your body does when you get near it is another.
Where a Birth Can Stay in the Body
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A held breath or a tight throat when you drive past the hospital
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Your legs bracing when you lie back on an exam table
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Nausea, or a wave of cold, at the smell of hand sanitizer
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Gaps in your memory of the birth, alongside a body that seems to remember all of it
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Knowing the birth is over and feeling, physically, as though it is not
Where You Look and How You Feel
Brainspotting rests on a simple observation: where you look affects how you feel. People glance to one side when they search for a memory, or down when something is hard to say. The method uses that on purpose. While you hold a piece of the birth in mind, we find the eye position where your body responds most strongly, and you keep your gaze there while you notice what happens. It reaches the part of you that reacts before you think, which talking gets to only slowly.
Why I Use It With Birth Trauma
Much of a frightening birth happens without words: a hand on your arm, a change in the room, shorthand between staff that you only half follow. What your body keeps is less a story than a set of reactions, and turning them into a narrative, in order, can bring the whole thing up at once. Brainspotting lets us start where the birth is actually held, with one fragment, without having to tell the rest.
What a Session Is Like
We begin by agreeing on what to work on, which can be as narrow as one moment. You bring it to mind just enough to feel it, and notice where it sits in your body and how strong it is from 0 to 10. Then I move a pointer slowly across your field of vision, and we watch for the spot where the feeling sharpens or your body answers with a blink, a swallow or a change in breath.
That spot is where we stay. You rest your eyes there and notice what comes: sensations, images, feelings, sometimes in an order that surprises you. You do not have to narrate any of it. I stay with you, paying close attention, and you say as much or as little as you like. Before we finish, we come back to the room and check that you feel steady.
You Set the Pace
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You can look away or stop at any point, without explaining why.
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If the feeling climbs too high, we move to a resource spot, a place in your field of vision where your body feels steadier, and stay there until it settles.
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We check the number as we go. The aim is to stay with the feeling, not to be swamped by it.
The birth does not have to make sense out loud before your body can set it down.
When Brainspotting Is Worth Trying
It is worth trying if talking the birth through has gone nowhere or made things worse, or if your reactions arrive in the body well before any thought does.
Brainspotting is one of three ways I work, with Internal Family Systems and somatic work, and we can move between them as you need. Sessions are in person in Prince George or by telehealth anywhere in Virginia.
If Talking About It Has Not Been Enough
The consultation is free and it is only a conversation. Fifteen minutes, no pressure, and you decide afterward.