History of One Couple in Therapy Prior to Brainspotting
Mary and Dean (names and other details have been changed) and I had been working together for a while. When we started therapy, they had been married for over 17 years. Mary said she wasn’t sure she wanted to stay in the marriage. She said she’d been working so hard, had been to another therapist, but things weren’t getting better. Through us doing EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy) and other couples’ therapy modalities, their marriage improved, but there was still one last big unresolved issue.
Problem
We’d worked through issues including communication, expectations, past emotional injuries, and shared living space. The last great frontier was intimacy. Numerous approaches were used. Things had gotten better but were still not where the couple wanted them to be. Mary wanted to make love with her husband. Both partners understood that making love included more than intercourse. Dean said he wanted to but made few attempts at connecting with her. Mary went through periods of hopefulness and hopelessness. We decided to try Brainspotting.
Brainspotting Treatment
Brainspotting is a non-verbal technique used to reprocess trauma or stuck energy. When I do Brainspotting with couples, the partners decide whether or not they want their mate present. In this case, Mary and Dean wanted each other present during the treatment. Prior to starting, each person talked about their potential triggers that got in the way of intimacy and sexuality. Mary decided she wanted to target depression; Dean wanted to target his fear of rejection. We spent one session on each target. Dean did his Brainspotting first. The next week, at check in (I often do this first thing in a session), Mary reported that Dean was approaching her more and that he was more available. Dean said he “felt like something changed in [his] brain”, and the he “felt lighter in general”.
Next, we brainspotted Mary’s depression. At our check-in the following session, she said the depression lifted pretty quickly after our session, and she felt much better.
Effect on Their Relationship Due to Brainspotting
After our session in which Dean brainspotted his fear of rejection, Mary said she felt like they had their marriage back. She said, “I feel like I have a home again.” After Mary’s brainspotting session, the couple felt like the depression was no longer getting in the way of their relationship.
While our work is not done yet, Mary and Dean feel like Brainspotting helped them get through a stuck spot. The couple said they feel like the Brainspotting was an important step in their process. When asked more about this, Mary reminded me that it was the relationship that we’ve built over time, the trust, that allowed them to Brainspot effectively.
Brainspotting to Help You Get Unstuck
Patterns can form in relationships the are unhelpful and even detrimental. Brainspotting can help you get unstuck and reprocess a variety of patterns that interfere with your relationship including:
- Fear of rejection
- Depression
- Shame
- Anger
- Withdrawal
- Abuse
- Communication issues
- Passive Agression
- Jealousy
Fixing broken relationships is hard work. It takes commitment from both parties and a willingness to openly explore the problems and possible solutions that will enable you to move toward the relationship you both desire.