What Is Brainspotting Therapy? A Powerful Tool for Trauma, Sensitivity, and Breaking Old Cycles
Brainspotting is a powerful, somatic-based therapy that helps process trauma and emotional overwhelm at the level of the subcortex (the part of your brain that stores unprocessed experience, instinct, memory, and body-based emotion.)
Rather than focusing on verbal insight alone, Brainspotting gently bypasses the “thinking brain” and accesses deeper healing pathways.
It’s not about figuring things out. It’s about letting your body lead.
Through visual and felt sense cues (often where you’re looking), we locate “brainspots,” which are precise eye positions that correlate with the storage of trauma or emotional activation in the nervous system. When we stay with that spot with attunement and presence, the brain begins to release, rewire, and integrate in ways words can’t reach.
How Brainspotting Helps Highly Sensitive People Break Free from Emotional Overwhelm
If you’ve ever felt like a burden for needing more quiet, more space, more gentleness… please know this: you’re not doing life wrong.
You’re just wired for depth and attunement. For a kind of sensitivity that’s not a flaw, but a way of being. And while it can be powerful, it can also feel like too much to carry (especially in a world that doesn’t slow down).
When your nervous system is constantly processing more than it can integrate, emotional overwhelm sets in. Over time, that can lead to burnout, anxiety, shutdown, or stress patterns that feel impossible to escape.
This is where Brainspotting can help.
Can EMDR Intensives Help with Anxiety, Trauma, or Burnout?
If you’ve been in therapy for a while and still feel like you’re stuck in survival mode…
If your anxiety keeps looping despite all the insight you’ve gained…
If burnout feels like your baseline and not a season…
You’re not doing it wrong. You might just need a different kind of support.
For many sensitive, high-achieving women — especially those navigating trauma, ADHD, or deeply wired patterns of fawning, perfectionism, or people-pleasing — traditional therapy can feel slow, fragmented, or hard to drop into.
This is where EMDR/Brainspotting intensives come in.
The Fear of Being Too Much: Anxiety, Boundaries, and Relationships
If you’ve ever felt like you’re “too much” for the people around you- too emotional, too sensitive, too intense- you’re not alone. Many women and highly sensitive people carry a fear of being “too much,” especially in close relationships. This fear often doesn’t come out of nowhere. It can be a response to early experiences where emotions weren’t welcomed, boundaries weren’t respected, or vulnerability led to rejection or punishment.
As a somatic and trauma therapist who specializes in working with sensitive, neurodivergent, and intuitive women, I hear this fear all the time. It shows up in the quiet moments before a boundary is spoken, in the racing thoughts before sending a text, in the shame that follows an honest expression. So many of us have been conditioned to believe that emotional needs are burdens—and that being ourselves might cost us connection.
Is Anxiety a Trauma Response? What You Should Know
Many of my clients come to me exhausted. Not because they’re falling apart, but because they’re done pretending they’re fine.
They’ve already done some therapy. They’ve read the books. They can name their patterns. But something still feels stuck. Underneath the surface, there’s a constant hum of worry, pressure, tightness. That quiet panic that never really goes away.
And most of them carry a secret fear: What if I’m just too sensitive? What if this is just who I am? What I’m just broken?
Here’s the truth: if you feel anxious all the time- especially in relationships, in groups, when resting, or when you're alone- it’s not a flaw in your personality. It might be a trauma response. And that means there’s nothing wrong with you. It means your body has been working overtime to protect you.
Burnout and the ADHD Brain: Why So Many Women Are Exhausted
There’s a specific kind of burnout that lives in the bodies of women with ADHD. It’s not just mental fatigue. It’s nervous system depletion. It’s a full-body no after years of masking, overfunctioning, and trying to keep up in a world that doesn’t see the effort behind your every move.
You might be the one everyone counts on. The one who remembers the details, carries the emotional labor, keeps the plates spinning. You’re praised for your sensitivity, intuition, or brilliance, but underneath all of that there’s a quiet overwhelm no one else sees.
What Is a Therapy Intensive? A Guide for Deep Healing in Less Time
A therapy intensive is a longer, immersive session—usually 2 to 3 hours—designed to help you move through more in one sitting than traditional weekly therapy often allows. It’s like giving your healing journey a quiet, focused retreat. One that’s fully centered on you.
How Can Therapy Help Women with Late-Diagnosed ADHD in Bend, Oregon?
Many women with late-diagnosed ADHD spent years masking their struggles, working harder than everyone else, and blaming themselves. They often believed they were the problem when really the problem was that their needs were unseen and unsupported. Therapy can be a turning point. It can be the beginning of reclaiming who you truly are, beyond all the ways you learned to survive.
Signs of ADHD in Highly Sensitive Women in Bend, Oregon
If you are a highly sensitive woman living in Bend, Oregon and you have been wondering if ADHD could be part of your story, you are not alone. Many women go through life sensing that something feels harder for them, but they cannot quite put a name to it. They may feel deeply intuitive, creative, emotional, and easily overwhelmed, yet keep pushing themselves to meet expectations that do not match how their brain and body naturally work.
In women, ADHD often looks different than the traditional signs people associate with it. It can be easy to miss, especially if you are sensitive, empathic, and high achieving. You may have learned how to mask the signs of ADHD by becoming hyper-organized in some areas, while still secretly struggling with things like memory, emotional regulation, or executive functioning.
“You Seem Fine”: The Hidden Struggles of Women with Late-Diagnosed ADHD
At first glance, she seems fine.
She’s thoughtful. Capable. Maybe even a little too responsible.
She remembers your birthday. Holds it together at work. Keeps it all afloat, even when she’s drowning inside.
What you don’t see?
The unread texts, the dishes in the sink, the forgotten appointment that sent her into a shame spiral. The sensory overload after a full day of pretending to be okay. The nights she stays up too late, scrolling to soothe her buzzing brain, or working twice as hard to make up for how scattered she felt that day. This is the reality for many women with undiagnosed or late-diagnosed ADHD. And for years, they didn’t even know it.
Brainspotting and Sacred Becoming: A Journey Back to Wholeness
As a sensitive cycle breaker, you’ve probably learned to function in high-alert mode—always scanning, always doing, always bracing. But your nervous system wasn’t meant to live in fight, flight, or freeze. You deserve more than survival. You deserve to feel safe in your body, not just in your thoughts.
Brainspotting is gentle, intuitive, and trauma-informed. You stay in control of your process at all times. There’s no need to perform or explain. Just your presence is enough.
Brainspotting: A Gentle, Deep Way to Heal Trauma (When Talk Therapy Isn’t Enough)
Brainspotting is a gentle, body-based therapy that helps you process trauma without needing to re-tell the whole story. It works deep in the brain and nervous system—beyond what words can reach.
Brainspotting uses your eye position to access where trauma, stress, or emotional pain is held in your body. A trained therapist helps you find a “brainspot”—a point in your visual field linked to an unresolved experience.