Finding Your Certified Brainspotting Therapist in Roseville, CA: A Guide to Deep Healing and Transformation

When anxiety, trauma, or overwhelming emotions feel insurmountable, finding the right therapeutic approach can make all the difference. If you're a high-achiever struggling with perfectionism, people-pleasing tendencies, or relationship challenges, Brainspotting therapy offers a powerful pathway to healing that goes beyond traditional talk therapy.

Understanding Brainspotting: Where You Look Affects How You Feel

Brainspotting is a revolutionary brain-body therapy that harnesses your field of vision to access and process unresolved trauma, negative emotions, and physical tension stored deep within the brain. Based on the foundational principle that "where you look affects how you feel," this innovative approach helps you tap into subcortical regions where emotional memories reside.

For anxious overachievers who often feel disconnected from their emotions despite being overwhelmed by emotional reactivity, Brainspotting offers a unique solution. Rather than requiring you to verbally process every detail of your experiences, this modality allows your brain's natural self-healing processes to engage through focused visual attention.

During Brainspotting sessions, I help you locate a specific eye position—called a "Brainspot"—that connects to your emotional or physical concerns. By maintaining focus on this spot, sometimes with bilateral sound (tones alternating between ears), you can access stored material and support nervous system regulation. This process moves you out of chronic fight-flight-freeze patterns and into a state of calm, with my attuned therapeutic presence providing a safe container for healing.

The Transformative Benefits of Certified Brainspotting Therapy

Brainspotting creates profound, lasting change by helping you break free from patterns that keep you stuck. Mental health professionals who incorporate Brainspotting into their practice observe significant benefits for clients including:

Trauma Resolution: This approach processes and releases the emotional charge of both single-incident and complex trauma, supporting you as you navigate challenges related to past experiences. Whether you're dealing with obvious traumatic events or more subtle chronic patterns, Brainspotting can help integrate these experiences in a healthy way.

Anxiety Relief: By calming the nervous system, Brainspotting eases racing thoughts and physical tension that often arise from ongoing life challenges. Many clients experience significant reductions in anxiety symptoms as their brain learns new patterns of regulation.

Enhanced Emotional Regulation: This therapy increases your capacity to manage emotions effectively, reducing reactivity and overwhelm. You'll develop greater resilience when facing emotional challenges and learn to respond rather than react to triggering situations.

Performance Improvement: Brainspotting clears mental and emotional blocks that interfere with focus, creativity, and optimal performance. This is particularly valuable for professionals, entrepreneurs, and high-achievers who want to operate from their full potential.

Relationship Enhancement: By addressing underlying emotional patterns and trauma responses, Brainspotting helps improve your capacity for genuine connection and healthier relationship dynamics.

Somatic Pain Reduction: Many clients experience relief from chronic pain that's linked to emotional or traumatic stress, especially when physical symptoms are connected to unresolved psychological experiences.

Why Brainspotting Certification Matters: Ensuring Quality and Safety

When seeking Brainspotting therapy, working with a Certified Brainspotting Therapist is crucial for your safety and treatment effectiveness. Brainspotting certification represents far more than a credential—it's your assurance of specialized training, ethical practice, and demonstrated competence.

The Brainspotting certification process requires rigorous advanced training and extensive practice. Certification requirements include:

• Completion of both Brainspotting Phase 1 and Phase 2 training courses through Brainspotting Trainings, LLC
• A minimum of 50 hours of direct client practice using Brainspotting techniques
• Six hours of one-on-one consultation with an approved Brainspotting Consultant
• Successful completion of a formal skills review and application process
• Adherence to a strict professional Code of Ethics
• Comprehensive documentation of all training hours and practice sessions

All certification requirements are thoroughly reviewed by the certifying body before Brainspotting certification is awarded. This ensures that certified mental health professionals have the in-depth knowledge and hands-on experience to guide you effectively while building confidence in their skills.

While thousands of therapists have received initial Brainspotting trainings, only a fraction have completed the comprehensive Brainspotting certification process. This distinction is significant—certification demonstrates a deeper level of experience, supervision, and commitment to mastering this powerful modality.

Understanding Different Levels of Brainspotting Expertise

The Brainspotting community maintains clear standards to ensure practitioners are qualified to provide effective treatment. Understanding these certification levels helps you choose the right therapist for your needs:

Trained in Brainspotting: Mental health professionals who have completed at least Brainspotting Phase 1 training and can incorporate basic Brainspotting techniques into their practice. This specialty training provides foundational knowledge of the approach.

Certified Brainspotting Therapist: Practitioners who have completed both Brainspotting Phase 1 and Phase 2 trainings, accumulated extensive practice hours, received specialized consultation from experienced Brainspotting consultants, and passed comprehensive skills review. This level represents mastery of the modality and demonstrates deep expertise in the certification process.

Brainspotting Consultant: Experienced Certified Brainspotting Therapists who provide consultation and guidance to other practitioners developing their skills. These consultants have completed additional advanced training and demonstrated exceptional competence in Brainspotting practice.

Brainspotting Trainer: Expert practitioners approved by Brainspotting Trainings, LLC to teach Brainspotting to other mental health professionals. These trainers represent the highest level of expertise and have undergone extensive review of their knowledge and skills.

Choosing a Certified Brainspotting Therapist ensures you're working with someone who has demonstrated their competence through rigorous certification requirements and maintains the highest standards of ethical practice.

My Approach: Personalized Mental Health Care for Anxious Overachievers

I'm Audrey Schoen, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Therapist practicing in Roseville, CA. I'm passionate about working with anxious, high-achieving individuals who struggle with perfectionism, people-pleasing, and relationship challenges.

My ideal clients are often successful on the surface but experience internal chaos. You might be someone who has tried self-help approaches or even previous therapy but still feels disconnected from your emotions despite being overwhelmed by emotional reactivity. You value learning and growth but struggle with allowing yourself genuine connection and calm.

If you're tired of constant internal turmoil and want to feel genuinely peaceful, my approach can help. I work with individuals who seek connection but struggle to allow themselves vulnerability, who often stay busy to avoid dealing with deeper issues, and who feel frustrated with their relationship patterns. I also provide support for folks interested in addressing substance use concerns and other mental health challenges.

Comprehensive Assessment and Treatment Planning

My therapeutic process begins with a thorough assessment designed to understand you as a whole person. I use a comprehensive intake process that includes detailed measures to track progress and inform your personalized treatment plan.

During our first session, I focus on getting to know the person behind the challenges—your background, contributing factors to your current struggles, and your goals for our work together. I examine the complete picture of your life—including family dynamics, work environment, cultural context, and other systems you operate within—to create a truly holistic approach.

For clients seeking focused work on specific issues like phobias or single-incident trauma, I may begin by incorporating Accelerated Resolution Therapy art to help you experience early momentum and confidence in the therapeutic process.

What to Expect in Brainspotting Sessions

Once we begin Brainspotting work, I'll guide you through a carefully structured process that has been reviewed and refined through years of practice:

Target Identification: We identify specific concerns such as anxiety, painful memories, unhelpful patterns, or areas where you feel stuck. This helps focus our sessions and develop clear therapeutic goals.

Brainspot Location: Using a pointer, I help you locate the eye position that activates your target concern. This position allows access to the brain regions where relevant material is stored.

Processing with Support: You'll focus on the identified spot while I provide attuned therapeutic presence. We may incorporate bilateral sound to deepen the processing experience and support nervous system regulation.

Progress Tracking: Throughout Brainspotting sessions, we monitor distress levels and other indicators to pace the work appropriately and document meaningful change.

My approach is actively collaborative—I blend reflective listening with direct guidance, ensuring you feel supported while making genuine progress toward your healing journey goals.

Integrating Brainspotting with Other Therapeutic Approaches

To maximize your healing potential, I often integrate Brainspotting with other evidence-based approaches, drawing from various trainings and consultation experiences:

Accelerated Resolution Therapy: This rapid, image-based approach quickly reduces the intensity of uncomfortable sensations and memories, particularly effective for single-incident trauma and specific phobias.

Insight-Oriented Therapy: We explore your internal narratives and belief systems, translating insights into practical changes that improve your daily life and relationships.

Internal Family Systems: This approach helps identify and work with different parts of yourself, supporting trauma recovery and enhancing emotional regulation when combined with Brainspotting techniques.

Relational Life Therapy: For couples experiencing communication breakdowns, I teach specific skills including the feedback wheel and directly address deeper patterns rooted in family-of-origin dynamics that maintain relationship conflicts.

This integrated approach addresses mind, body, and relational systems, helping you move from internal chaos to clarity while we continuously track progress with structured measures and documentation.

Specialized Support for Couples

Many couples seek my help believing they simply need better communication skills. However, what's often happening beneath the surface are automatic unconscious processes and internal narratives that sabotage connection efforts.

I work with couples using a structured three-phase approach through Relational Life Therapy, which represents advanced training in relationship therapy:

Phase 1: Pattern Recognition: We identify your specific conflict dance—the recurring pattern that keeps you disconnected and escalating. I help both partners understand their individual contributions to relationship dynamics while establishing clear goals for change through this assessment process.

Phase 2: Trauma and History Work: We address past experiences and triggers that prevent positive changes even when you want them. This involves understanding how family-of-origin experiences impact current relationship patterns and working directly with underlying trauma using specialized techniques.

Phase 3: Skill Building: We develop practical tools including the feedback wheel—a unique structured approach that allows one partner to bring up issues and provide their partner with a clear pathway to repair, without requiring mutual dialogue or sharing of perspectives.

For couples work, I recommend a minimum of 80-minute sessions, typically every two weeks. I ask for an initial three-month commitment to allow sufficient time for meaningful progress and proper assessment of our work together.

The Role of Consultation and Ongoing Learning

As a Certified Brainspotting Therapist, I maintain ongoing consultation relationships with experienced Brainspotting consultants to ensure the highest quality of care. This consultation process is essential for continued learning and skill development, allowing me to bring the most current knowledge and techniques to my practice.

Consultation with other certified professionals helps ensure that I'm incorporating Brainspotting effectively and ethically. This commitment to ongoing learning reflects the theory that effective therapy requires continuous growth and refinement of skills through collaboration with other experts in the field.

Addressing Common Questions About Brainspotting

Is Brainspotting evidence-based? Brainspotting has a strong neurobiological foundation based on current brain science and theory. While research continues to develop, many clinicians and clients report significant outcomes for trauma, anxiety, and related mental health concerns. If traditional talk therapy has felt limited for you, this brain-body approach may engage your healing process in powerful new ways.

How long are sessions and how many will I need? Brainspotting sessions typically last 60-90 minutes to allow for deep processing. The number of sessions varies based on your goals, history, and individual pace of healing. I use structured measures to track progress and reassess regularly so we stay aligned with your evolving needs throughout your healing journey.

How effective is Brainspotting for mental health concerns? Many clients experience significant reductions in anxiety and trauma symptoms because Brainspotting targets the deeper neurological roots of emotional and physiological activation. By helping your brain and nervous system release stored material, you often feel calmer and less reactive relatively quickly.

What documentation is involved in the process? I maintain careful documentation of your progress throughout our work together, using structured measures and assessment tools to track changes and ensure we're meeting your therapeutic goals.

The Importance of Proper Training and Certification

When considering Brainspotting therapy, it's essential to understand that not all trainings are equal. Certified Brainspotting Therapists have completed comprehensive coursework through Brainspotting Trainings, LLC, which provides the official curriculum and certification process.

This certification ensures that your therapist has:

• Completed all required course components
• Demonstrated competence through extensive practice
• Received guidance from experienced consultants
• Committed to ongoing learning and professional development
• Maintained documentation of their training and experience

The certification process represents a commitment to excellence that goes beyond basic training, ensuring that clients receive the highest quality mental health care.

Taking the First Step Toward Healing

If you're ready to move beyond internal chaos, people-pleasing patterns, and relationship struggles, working with a Certified Brainspotting Therapist provides the specialized, ethical care you deserve. My certification represents rigorous training, extensive supervised practice, and adherence to the highest professional standards.

I offer both in-person sessions in Roseville, CA, and online therapy throughout California and Texas. My approach is personalized and direct—I meet you where you are and create a treatment plan that supports genuine, lasting change.

Whether you're struggling with anxiety, trauma, perfectionism, relationship patterns, or feeling disconnected from your authentic self, you don't have to navigate these challenges alone. If you're interested in exploring how Brainspotting therapy can support your mental health journey and ready to address what's driving your emotional reactivity and relationship strain, I invite you to reach out.

Healing is possible, and transformation is within reach. The world needs passionate individuals who are committed to their growth and healing journey. Contact me today to begin your pursuit of greater calm, connection, and authentic living through expert Brainspotting therapy.