Breaking Through Mental Blocks: How Brainspotting Helps Athletes Find Their Flow
We've all seen it. An athlete who was unstoppable — and then, seemingly out of nowhere, can't execute the thing they've done thousands of times. A pitcher who can't find the strike zone. A gymnast who goes blank on her best event. A wide receiver whose hands suddenly forget how to work.
It's called the yips. From the outside, it looks like a confidence problem. What's actually happening runs a lot deeper.
The Brain Is Getting in the Way
When an athlete experiences trauma — and trauma doesn't have to be dramatic to count — the brain stores it in a network. One bad fall, one missed catch in a high-stakes game, one injury that didn't fully heal emotionally even after the body recovered. These experiences build up in the neurological system.
What counts as trauma? Surprisingly, it's anything that causes a strong adverse reaction. A crushing loss right before playoffs. A public mistake in a big game. Years of being told to push through pain. The brain doesn't sort these by how dramatic they look from the outside — it stores them all.
When the network gets triggered, the brain shifts into the sympathetic nervous system: fight, flight, or flee. The athlete is no longer performing based on their training & physical skill. They're performing based on their brain's attempt to protect them from getting hurt again.
You can't train your way out of that. You can practice the skill 10,000 more times & the neuropathway is still clogged. The body is still muscle-guarding. The brain is still sending the alarm signal.
What Brainspotting Does Differently
Brainspotting is a therapeutic technique developed by Dr. David Grand that uses eye positioning to access the deep brain — the subconscious parts where memories & trauma networks are actually held. This isn't talk therapy. It doesn't require an athlete to verbalize what they're experiencing or analyze it to death.
It works directly with the neurological system.
Here's the plain-language version: when we find the brainspot — the eye position associated with the activation — and hold it, the brain begins to process & release what's been stored there. The neuropathways that were clogged start to clear. Muscle guarding eases. The nervous system returns to the parasympathetic state where flow & peak performance live.
Think of it like a highway dropped from three lanes to one because of construction. Traffic crawls for miles. Then construction ends, the lanes open back up & traffic flows freely again. That's what Brainspotting does for the neurological system — it clears the lanes so your neurons can move the way they did before the trauma built up.
What This Looks Like in Practice
With my athlete clients, we start with a thorough intake — mapping out every significant injury, fall, missed play or stressful athletic experience they can remember. The list is always longer than they expect once they understand what actually counts as a trauma.
Then we identify the specific block we're working on & I help them access the brainspot connected to it. From there, the brain does the processing. Some athletes sit quietly. Some talk through what comes up. Every person is different.
What stays consistent is the result: athletes who do Brainspotting work stop performing based on their history of accumulated stress. They start performing based on their actual training, their actual skill, their actual body. That's the flow state. For competitive athletes, that's everything.
This Isn't Only for Elite Athletes
Whether you're a youth athlete navigating competitive school sports, a collegiate player balancing scholarship pressure, or a weekend warrior who wants to enjoy their sport again — mental blocks are real & they're addressable.
Athletes are an underserved population in mental health. Not because they don't need support, but because therapists often don't recognize the unique therapeutic needs athletes bring. The work I do with athletes looks very different from general counseling — and it should.