Interview with José Martín del Pliego: how brainspotting works

Psychologist José Martín del Pliego explains the keys to how brainspotting works.

The line that separates psychological disorders and brain disorders is very blurred, partly because, technically, any psychological disorder has its reflection in the nervous system of the person who has developed it.

That is why, consequently, there are therapeutic intervention techniques that seek to obtain psychological results through the stimulation of parts of the brain. This is the case of brainspotting.

In this interview, the psychologist José Martín del Pliego will talk to us about the particularities of brainspotting and how it is used in patients.

Interview with José Martín del Pliego: what is brainspotting?

José Martín del Pliego is a clinical psychologist with more than 20 years of professional experience attending patients. He is currently responsible for the psychology area of Los Tilos Medical Center, located in Segovia, and also performs online therapy by video call.

Among the different modalities of psychological intervention that he masters, his experience in Hypnotherapy and brainspotting stands out. Throughout this interview, del Pliego will talk to us about the latter technique, based on the stimulation of different parts of the brain.

How would you explain brainspotting to someone who has never heard of this concept?

The term comes from English, referring to tapping the brain through eye contact. This allows us to access neural circuits, where emotional responses are stored, sometimes of very high intensity, and which may be causing problems in the patient's life.

The brain is continuously checking the information given to it by the body and, at the same time, checking itself. The technique takes advantage of this circumstance to locate and then process and release areas or neural circuits that were misaligned producing maladaptive responses in the person's life.

That is why the technique can also work in physical ailments, since they had a functionality at the time and, by releasing these recordings, in many cases the associated somatic ailment also disappears.

Probably, as a psychotherapist you have seen many cases in which brainspotting can be applied. Is it versatile? What are the main problems in which it is used, concretely?

The technique is relatively recent, but it has already been experimentally proven to have excellent therapeutic results in the following cases: physical and emotional trauma, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, addictions, phobias, post-traumatic stress, impulse control and aggression, emotional problems, anxiety and depression, and sports performance problems (especially striking in this area).

As a psychologist, at what point did you come to the conclusion that brainspotting is an interesting resource worth training in professionally?

David Grand is the discoverer of the technique, in 2003, and since then the technique has been spreading among different trained trainers. It is through other colleagues that information about this new tool, which works in a much deeper way than others, reaches me. When you get into the technique, it does not disappoint you at all.

How is it applied to patients?

The patient focuses his attention on the emotion we want to work on. He/she marks the intensity with which he/she feels it and then, with a simple pointer, the patient's gaze is scanned until the brainspot associated with the reasons for the consultation is found.

From that moment on, the attention will be kept on that point until we go deeper into the emotions, physical sensations or thoughts that come to the patient's focused attention towards himself/herself. We use the brain's capacity for self-healing and the fundamental link with the therapist.

What are the keys to the functioning of the memory on which it is based?

It is based on the access, release and readjustment of these emotional memories, whose origin is sometimes very primitive, inaccessible to our cognitive area, or has to do with an event of high intensity, whose memory our brain avoids as a defense but that causes symptomatology in the life of the person. With the technique the brain generates the necessary homeostasis for the good global functioning.

And how are the results, the therapeutic progress, being produced?

As I indicated, braisnpotting works with the self-healing capacity of the brain, in such a way that not only is an intense emotional response released during the exercise, but it continues to function when the patient goes home; the brain continues to work, repositioning what was worked on in the consultation room. This makes us act in the deepest part of the pathology for which the patient comes to consultation, generating more permanent changes. We act at the root of the problem.