How Brainspotting Can Help You Prepare For Birth
Pregnancy can often be an exciting and joyful time but for many the anxiety, fear, and overwhelm are at the forefront of the experience. Memories or apprehensions you weren’t expecting to revisit can lead to more overwhelm.
If you’ve experienced trauma in the past, whether it was a difficult birth, medical procedures, or even something from your childhood, those emotions can resurface during pregnancy , especially as you get closer to labour and delivery.
These feelings are more common than you think. We have often learned to keep quiet and dismiss our experiences.
As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Brainspotting Therapist supporting women with birth trauma, I work with clients who want to feel more grounded, empowered, and emotionally prepared for birth, and I have found that Brain-Body Based modalities, such as Brainspotting and Somatic therapy approaches can be helpful.
Pregnancy can reactivate early experiences.
Pregnancy is such a transformative journey, and the intensity of it can often bring forward old wounds, especially if they involve your sense of safety, your body, and your identity. Sometimes this can look like remembering previous experiences such as miscarriages or birth trauma. Other times, it can look like unresolved relationship issues, childhood experiences or medical traumas that can show up in physiological and physical manifestations.
You might notice yourself snappy, unusually anxious, or even disconnected from the reality. Maybe certain thoughts or images send you spiraling, maybe you find you can't talk about certain things with your closest friends or partner, this can be a sign that your nervous system is perceiving threat and working hard at protecting you — even when you logically know you are safe. This is where Somatic Experiencing and Brainspotting can help you move through these experiences.
Making space for your experience as you prepare for birth.
What Is Brainspotting, and How Might It Help During Pregnancy?
Brainspotting is a brain-body approach that offers space to explore experiences that may be difficult to put into words. Using a fixed eye position , we gently bring curiosity to sensations, emotions, and thoughts you notice. You do not need to retell every detail of what happened prior to workign together or even when we are working together.
When working together, we follow your pace, supporting you to notice what feels manageable and when you need to pause. Rather than forcing anything, we gently create experiences that help build more connection to self and in turn build self-trust.
Pregnancy can be a vulnerable time, and we tailor the pace of Brainspotting sessions to what feels manageable for you.
We are making more space for your emotional experience during pregnancy, therefore there is no set timeline or particular way you need to feel, just greater capacity to meet what arises as you prepare for birth.
Brainspotting can also be offered online, allowing you to be comfortable in your own private space, respecting that you have different needs during pregnancy.
Reasons why you might seek Brainspotting support:
Process a previous birth that felt traumatic with or without medical interventions
Working through fear of medical procedures due to past medical trauma
Processing anger after stillbirth or loss
Working through childhood trauma that resurfaces when becoming a parent
Supporting panicked or scared feelings around physical changes or loss of control during pregnancy or labour
Building confidence in yourself
You do not need a clearly defined concern to reach out. We can start with what you are simply noticing, trust yourself— your body knows.
You don’t have to carry this alone. If you are curious, I offer free 15 minute consultations.
With care,
Kimberly Castle, MTC, SEP™, RCS, CC-BRT
Reclaiming presence, fostering resilience, and returning to our amazing biology that knows what to do when given time and space.
Kimberly Castle is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner® and a registered counsellor with a private practice in beautiful Kelowna, BC. She focuses on Kelowna Counselling She and her team specialize in Somatic Therapy where sessions are gentle, non-invasive, and guided at your pace.
