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A brain-body approach for the things talk therapy can't always reach.
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Brainspotting is a gentle, body-based therapy that helps children and teens release what talking alone hasn't reached, the events and feelings that stay stuck in the nervous system. Your child doesn't have to retell what happened for it to work. At Your Therapy Nook we use it with kids and teens working through trauma, anxiety, and overwhelm, alongside play and talk therapy.
Some of what your child is carrying doesn't live in words.
The anxiety that shows up as a stomachache before school. The thing that happened that they won't go near, or can't. The teen who can explain their feelings perfectly, has been explaining them for a year, and still feels exactly the same.
Insight is real, and insight alone doesn't settle a nervous system. Your kid is not failing at therapy. Talking has a limit, and Brainspotting was built for the territory past it.
Where you look affects how you feel. That's the whole premise, and it's less strange than it sounds.
In a session, we find the eye position, the brainspot, that connects to what's stuck, and your child simply stays with it while their brain does what brains are built to do: process the thing through. I'm there the whole time, tracking, keeping it safe, keeping it slow.
No retelling required. No homework. For a teenager who's tired of talking about it, that's usually the selling point.
From the outside it looks like nothing, a kid gazing at a pointer. What families report afterward is not nothing. The charge comes out of things.
The test panic, the Sunday-night stomachaches, the dread with no explanation. When anxiety has moved into the body, reasoning with it doesn't reach it. Brainspotting works at the level where it actually lives.
Anxiety therapyAn accident, a loss, a frightening experience, processed without your child having to go back through it out loud. For many kids this isn't just gentler than talking it through. It works better.
Trauma therapyThe audition, the game, the frozen essay. The kid who knows the material cold and blanks when it counts. Performance blocks are a nervous system problem wearing an achievement costume, and they respond well to this work.
School stress and perfectionismThe dog they loved until the bite. The food they won't touch since the choking scare. The bathroom fear nobody can trace. When a fear has a starting point, even one your child can't name, Brainspotting can reach the moment it took hold.
Sometimes a loss gets stuck, and a child stays braced inside it long after everyone expected them to be okay. Brainspotting gives grief somewhere to go when talking about the person is still too much.
A year of explaining their feelings, perfectly, and feeling exactly the same. This is the teen Brainspotting was practically built for, because it doesn't need more words.
Teen therapyThe child who can't fall asleep without a parent in the room, the nightmares on repeat, the teen staring at the ceiling. Sleep is where a keyed-up nervous system shows itself, and settling the system is often what finally settles the nights.
Some heaviness has a history. When a teen's flatness sits on top of something that happened, we work with both, and Brainspotting is often how we reach the layer underneath.
Depression therapyIt sits alongside the rest of our therapy, play therapy for younger kids, conversation for teens, not instead of it. The relationship comes first here, always. Brainspotting isn't a replacement for the relationship. It's something we do inside it.
With kids, Brainspotting doesn't look like a clinical procedure, it's woven into play. Shorter moments, inside the session they already know, with toys and games in reach and their therapist right there. Hannah trained specifically in Brainspotting for children, and the child's pace runs the show. Many kids don't experience it as a technique at all.
Child therapyTeen sessions look closer to the classic form: find the spot, often with a pointer, sometimes with calming audio, and stay with it while the brain processes. No script, no forced eye contact, no pressure to narrate. Most teens describe it as surprisingly low-effort, which from a teenager is a five-star review.
Teen therapy
I'm Hannah Ly, LMFT, founder of Your Therapy Nook. I'm trained in Brainspotting Phase 1 through the Pacific Trauma Center, including Brainspotting for children, and it's become one of the tools I reach for most with anxious and overwhelmed teens, especially the ones who have talked about it for a year and still feel exactly the same.
It's not just me anymore. Every child and teen therapist here trained under me and I review every case weekly, so whoever your family is matched with, you're getting someone I'd trust with my own kids. I run every consultation myself, and you can request a specific therapist on the call.
But over time, with Brainspotting in the mix, families describe the charge coming out of things:
The memory that used to spike panic loses its grip.
The body settles.
The kid who couldn't go near something can be near it without falling apart.
Sleep gets easier.
You tell us what's going on. We'll tell you whether Brainspotting fits, and which therapist is the right match for your family.
History first, from you.
With Brainspotting woven in when your child is ready, never as a cold open.
So you know what we're doing and why.
Brainspotting is a newer approach with a growing research base, developed in 2003 out of EMDR, and it's used widely for trauma and anxiety. We use it alongside established approaches, not instead of them, and we'll tell you honestly what we're seeing in your child's case.
That's exactly when we reach for it. Brainspotting processes what's stuck without a verbal retelling, which makes it well suited to kids who can't or won't go near the story.
It's part of a regular session, $200 to $270 depending on the therapist, private pay, superbills provided.
→ RatesThey're related. Brainspotting grew out of EMDR, and both work through the brain and body rather than through talking alone. The practical differences for a child: Brainspotting uses a sustained gaze instead of repeated eye movements, it follows the child's pace rather than a structured protocol, and it doesn't require going back through the memory in words. For kids and teens, that usually makes it the gentler fit.
No. Your child is fully awake, fully present, and can stop at any moment. It's closer to focused noticing than anything trance-like, and their therapist is with them the whole way, keeping it slow and keeping them anchored.
Yes, adapted the way it should be. With young children it's woven into play, in short moments, at the child's pace, by a therapist trained specifically in Brainspotting for children. It's never a cold open and never forced. If a child isn't ready, we don't do it, and the play therapy carries the work.
No, and we want to be straight about why. Brainspotting works inside a therapy relationship, not as a standalone technique, because a nervous system only lets go around someone it trusts. It's part of ongoing weekly work with your child's therapist, woven in when your child is ready.
