Brainspotting Therapy in Roseville, CA — Heather Moore, LMFT
Brainspotting is a powerful body-based therapy that accesses where trauma, painful emotions, and negative patterns are actually stored in the brain, below the level of conscious thought and language. I'm Heather Moore, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Roseville, CA, and Brainspotting is one of the core tools I use with clients healing complex trauma, childhood wounds, and generational patterns. I offer Brainspotting sessions in person in Roseville and virtually throughout California.
What Is Brainspotting and How Does It Work?
Brainspotting uses your visual field to locate the specific area in your brain where a negative emotion, memory, or trauma is stored. By identifying the eye position (called a Brainspot) connected to what you want to heal, we can access and process that stored experience at a neurobiological level.
Your brain already knows what it needs to heal. Brainspotting gets out of the way and lets it do exactly that.
How Is Brainspotting Different From Talk Therapy?
Traditional talk therapy works through the frontal lobe, which is the part of your brain responsible for language, reasoning, and problem solving. That's useful, but it's not where trauma lives.
Trauma lives deeper in the subcortical brain, where your nervous system stores unprocessed emotional experiences as survival responses. Brainspotting bypasses the talking brain and goes directly to where the pain is held.
You don't have to talk about what happened. You don't have to relive it. We focus on what you feel in your body, and let your brain do the processing.
"Brainspotting isn't about talking your way through trauma, it's about finding where it lives in your body and letting your brain finally release it."
What Can Brainspotting Help With?
Brainspotting is effective for anything that carries an emotional charge:
Complex trauma and PTSD
Childhood and developmental trauma
Anxiety and depression
Grief and loss
Phobias and fears
Negative relationship patterns
Low self-worth and confidence
Performance blocks
Emotional eating and body-based patterns
What Does a Brainspotting Session Actually Look Like?
Sessions are 90 minutes. We begin by identifying what you want to work on and where you feel it in your body. Using a pointer, I help you locate the eye position connected to that experience. From there, you follow your own internal process with bilateral sound supporting your brain's natural healing response. Most clients describe it as the first time something actually moved rather than just being understood.
Frequently Asked Questions About Brainspotting
Is Brainspotting evidence-based? Yes. Brainspotting was developed by Dr. David Grand in 2003 and has a growing body of research supporting its effectiveness for trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and performance issues. It is used by licensed clinicians worldwide.
How is Brainspotting different from EMDR? Both are somatic, body-based approaches that process trauma below the conscious level. EMDR uses bilateral eye movements in a structured protocol. Brainspotting uses fixed eye positions and follows the client's internal process more organically, making it especially effective for complex and developmental trauma where structured protocols can feel overwhelming.
How many Brainspotting sessions will I need? It varies depending on what you're working on and how long you've been carrying it. Some people notice significant shifts in just a few sessions. For deep complex trauma, it's typically part of an ongoing treatment plan. We assess together as we go.