Brainspotting for Sports Performance
When athletes compete in sports, they are constantly being tested physically and mentally. Stressors can range from intense practice sessions, navigating sport-related injuries, balancing sports with interpersonal relationships or the pressure to deliver results in performance situations. Over time, these experiences can have a negative cumulative effect and can lead to issues such as mental blocks, anxiety and depression. The further an athlete progresses in their sporting career, the higher the likelihood that they will encounter such psychological blocks.
Fortunately, there is a cutting-edge psychotherapy technique that holds immense promise for helping athletes with these issues. Brainspotting is a brain-based psychotherapy approach which uses the field of vision to find where an individual is holding any negative experience in their brain. Treatment uses fixed eye positions and mindful focussing to engage the brain's self-healing capacity to resolve these negative experiences and drastically reduce, or eradicate, troublesome symptoms and improve performance.
Many people may not understand how participation in competitive sport can be a traumatic experience but talk to any athlete and they will be quick to tell you about the immense stress that they are under and how negative sporting experiences can stay with them long after a sports event has ended. Whether competing at recreational level or on the Olympic stage, repeated experiences of sport-related stressors can have a lasting impact on anyone's psyche. Sports-related injuries, concussions, losses, sporting humiliations or over-training syndrome are just a few examples of common factors which can cause sport psychological trauma, generating mental blocks and inhibiting performance.
Traumatic experiences that athletes are faced with outside of sport (e.g. car accidents, past surgeries, abusive relationships etc) can also begin to affect sporting performance. The innate stress associated with performance environments such as training a new skill or competing then expose what is 'unresolved' in the athletes mind. This may look like inability to perform a certain skill after lengthy practice, forgetting plays/routines, freeze responses, anxiety/panic or physical symptoms such as nausea, shaking and muscle tension. Brainspotting offers a non-invasive way to interact dircectly with the parts of the brain storing stress and sporting trauma in order to resolve issues and improve sporting performance.
So what can athletes expect when they go through a Brainspotting session?
When an athlete engages with Brainspotting the athlete and Brainspotting clinician will select a specific issue that is causing the athlete distress. Examples of issues could be emotionally traumatic experiences like sports-related injuries, sports humiliations, or anxiety that comes up when an athlete visualizes an upcoming performance. From there the clinician will have the athlete hold their visual focus on a pointer and will work with the athlete to identify a reflex (e.g. a new/notable body tension or significant increase in the feelings of distress) and process from there. The clinician will support the athlete to notice what comes up and process the thoughts, feelings and emotions associated with the brainspot until activation in the body is reduced. Bilateral music can also be used to help deepen the process and provide attentional flexibility. It’s common for the brain and body to continue processing and rewiring for severals days following a session and many athletes report seeing initial improvements from as early as the next day.
Session take place weekly or fortnightly, online and last 1.5 - 2hrs. The number of sessions required varies considerably and depends on many factors including individual response, complexity of symptoms, and personal goals, however many clients addressing performance related issues, see significant and lasting benefits in around 6-8 session.
To find out more about how Brainspotting could support your sporting development or to schedule an appointment Get in Touch.