How Brainspotting Can Help Queer People Heal
Written By: Emma Costa, LMFT-A
Talk therapy is powerful, but sometimes talking about the event can lead to re-living.
This can lead to overwhelm, shutdown, and re-traumatizing responses. For many queer and trans people, healing requires more than insight or reflection. It often means returning to parts of the self that had to be hidden or shut down in order to survive. Traditional therapy can help with understanding what happened, but the emotional pain and survival strategies shaped by trauma often live deep in the nervous system.
That’s where Brainspotting comes in, by offering a doorway into the body’s own ability to survive.
Brainspotting is a brain-body therapy designed to access and process emotions that might be out of reach through language alone. It works by identifying specific eye positions that correspond to where distress, memory, or emotion is held in the brain. When your gaze is directed to a precise spot, the body begins to process material that has often been buried or stuck for years. Instead of talking through every detail, you are allowed to simply notice. You can be quiet. You can let your body take the lead. For many queer and trans clients, this can feel like a deep breath after years of needing to explain, defend, or translate their pain.
This approach can be especially powerful for LGBTQIA+ individuals, whose trauma is often layered and chronic. You might be someone who has learned to constantly monitor your behavior, adjust your voice, or shrink parts of yourself in order to feel safe. You may have experienced invalidation in your own family, erasure in school or medical settings, or quiet panic every time you enter a space and wonder, “Will they see me for who I am?” Over time, these moments collect in the body. They do not always form one obvious traumatic event, but they add up. They shape how you breathe, how you carry yourself, and what you believe is possible in relationships. Brainspotting offers a way to slowly unhook from the pressure of survival and begin to reconnect with parts of yourself that have been pushed away.
You do not need to have words for everything that happened. You do not need to relive your most painful memories or perform your pain to be believed. Brainspotting gives space for your healing to be quiet, internal, and deeply felt. This is especially meaningful for queer and trans people who have learned to intellectualize, over-explain, or minimize what they have gone through. Here, your body gets to speak its own language and for once, it is listened to without interruption.
For those who feel stuck in traditional talk therapy, Brainspotting can help when things feel unreachable. If your trauma feels more physical than logical, if you find yourself shutting down during conflict or flooded with anxiety without knowing why, Brainspotting might offer a path forward. If you carry the weight of religious trauma, family rejection, or the slow burn of identity erasure, you deserve a way to process that pain without having to revisit it on someone else’s terms.
In this work, affirming care is not a bonus. It is the foundation. At Sparks Between Us, Brainspotting is always provided through a queer-affirming lens. You will never be expected to justify your identity, translate your experience, or educate your therapist. You can bring your full self into the room and be met with warmth, clarity, and respect. You deserve support that honors who you are and what you’ve been through.
Healing does not have to mean forcing yourself to talk about things you are not ready to say out loud. Sometimes, healing begins with simply being still, holding your gaze, and noticing what begins to shift inside. Your body already knows what it needs. Together, we make space to listen in Brainspotting Therapy.
