Healing Insulin Resistance with Brainspotting Therapy
I remember standing in the kitchen, staring at the empty pie tin from the pie I swore I wouldn’t touch. I’d been doing everything right—planning healthy meals, staying active, and trying to keep my insulin levels in check. Yet, there I was, falling back into old habits. But I realized the pie wasn’t the problem—it was just a symptom of something deeper.
I had been sabotaging myself. Despite my best efforts, I kept making choices that undermined my progress. It wasn’t about willpower or discipline—I was carrying emotional baggage I hadn’t acknowledged. This emotional burden was preventing me from making real progress in managing my insulin resistance. It was clear that my journey wasn’t just about food or exercise. I had to address the emotions that were keeping me stuck.
This revelation led me to Brainspotting therapy, a powerful tool for uncovering and processing emotional traumas that impact physical health. Through Brainspotting, I discovered that emotional healing was the key to overcoming insulin resistance. Let’s dive into how emotional trauma, self-sabotage, and unprocessed feelings may be holding you back—and how Brainspotting therapy can help you finally break free.
The Hidden Emotional Roots of Insulin Resistance
We often think of insulin resistance as purely a physical issue—one that can be fixed with the right combination of diet and lifestyle. But that’s only part of the picture. Many women overlook the emotional and mental components of insulin resistance, which can have just as much impact on your body’s ability to regulate insulin as your physical health.
Unprocessed emotional trauma, chronic stress, and negative mental patterns are deeply connected to how your body processes insulin. Emotions like shame, fear, guilt, or unresolved trauma create mental barriers that manifest physically. For example, stress triggers the body to release cortisol, a hormone that disrupts insulin’s ability to process glucose properly. By focusing on your emotional state, you can uncover hidden obstacles that may be preventing you from fully healing.
Common Emotional Roots of Insulin Resistance Include:
Unresolved past trauma that keeps your body in a constant state of stress.
Grief or loss that hasn’t been fully processed, may result in emotional eating or weight fluctuations.
Guilt and shame surrounding body image or food choices, causing feelings of failure that lead to overeating.
Anxiety over failure or fear of success can trigger a cycle of self-sabotage just when you start making progress.
The connection between emotional health and physical well-being runs deeper than we often realize. Acknowledging and addressing these emotional patterns is key to managing insulin resistance.
How Chronic Stress Disrupts Insulin Sensitivity
Stress is one of the primary contributors to insulin resistance. When your body is under stress—whether it’s from external sources or unprocessed emotions—it produces high levels of cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that directly affects insulin sensitivity, making it harder for your body to process glucose efficiently. Over time, this constant state of stress leads to insulin resistance, regardless of how well you’re managing your diet and exercise.
The Stress-Insulin Resistance Cycle:
Cortisol and Blood Sugar: High cortisol levels lead to elevated blood sugar, which makes it difficult for your body to use insulin properly.
Fat Storage: Stress signals the body to store fat, particularly in the abdominal area, contributing to weight gain and worsening insulin resistance.
Emotional Eating: Stress often triggers cravings for comfort foods, particularly those high in sugar and carbs, which disrupt blood sugar balance and reinforce the cycle.
Brainspotting therapy helps to process and release emotional stress, lowering cortisol levels and helping your body restore balance. This allows you to manage insulin sensitivity more effectively and reduce the physical toll stress takes on your health.
Understanding the Cycle of Self-Sabotage
Many women managing insulin resistance, including myself, have experienced the frustrating cycle of self-sabotage. You make a plan, stick to it diligently, and then something happens—you start slipping, making choices that don’t align with your goals. Despite knowing what you need to do, you find yourself reverting to behaviors that sabotage your progress.
Self-sabotage is often rooted in emotional struggles, not a lack of willpower or discipline. Fear of failure, fear of success, low self-worth, or unresolved trauma can all trigger this cycle. When faced with emotional stress, the brain tends to revert to comforting but unhealthy habits—even if those habits are detrimental to your health.
Common Self-Sabotaging Behaviors Include:
Emotional eating during moments of stress or anxiety, despite knowing it disrupts your insulin regulation.
Abandoning health plans after a setback, leading to guilt and frustration that makes it harder to start again.
Brainspotting therapy helps identify and process the emotional triggers behind these behaviors. By addressing the root causes of self-sabotage, you can break the cycle and create lasting, positive changes in your health routine.
Why Willpower Alone Won’t Fix the Problem
For years, women have been told that managing insulin resistance is about willpower—just eat less, exercise more, and everything will fall into place. But for many, this advice falls short. The truth is, willpower alone won’t address the emotional blocks that influence behavior and decision-making. Emotional healing is just as important as physical strategies like diet and exercise.
Why Willpower Isn’t Enough:
Emotions drive behavior: Unprocessed emotions, like shame, guilt, or fear, can lead to unhealthy behaviors no matter how strong your willpower is.
Emotional eating overrides logic: Stress, trauma, or anxiety can cause emotional eating, which willpower alone can’t prevent.
Trauma triggers regression: Even the most disciplined plans can be derailed when past traumas resurface and overwhelm your ability to stick to your health goals.
Brainspotting therapy addresses these emotional blocks, helping you move beyond the reliance on willpower alone. By working through your emotional distress, you set the stage for sustainable, long-term healing.
What is Brainspotting Therapy, and How Does It Work?
Brainspotting therapy is a powerful, therapeutic technique that allows individuals to access and process deeply held emotional trauma. It works on the premise that where you look affects how you feel—certain eye positions, known as “brain spots,” are linked to areas in the brain that store trauma, stress, or unresolved emotions.
During a Brainspotting session, a therapist helps guide you to specific brain spots that correspond to emotional or physical distress. By maintaining focus on these spots, you’re able to access and process emotions stored in the brain and body, allowing for release and healing. This process is particularly effective for individuals who have struggled to process trauma or emotions through traditional talk therapy.
For women managing insulin resistance, Brainspotting therapy offers a holistic approach that goes beyond diet and exercise. It helps uncover the emotional traumas and mental blocks that contribute to insulin resistance, enabling you to manage stress more effectively, lower cortisol levels, and improve insulin sensitivity.
How Emotional Trauma Impacts Physical Health
Emotional trauma doesn’t just affect your mental and emotional well-being—it has a profound impact on your physical health as well. Unprocessed trauma triggers a chronic stress response in the body, which leads to hormonal imbalances, inflammation, and insulin resistance.
When emotions like fear, grief, or anxiety aren’t addressed, your body remains in a state of heightened stress. This constant release of cortisol not only disrupts your body’s ability to regulate insulin but also weakens your immune system, impairs digestion, and contributes to weight gain, particularly around the abdomen.
Signs That Emotional Trauma May Be Affecting Your Insulin Resistance:
Difficulty managing blood sugar despite following a healthy diet and exercise plan.
Persistent weight gain, especially around the waist, even when you’re doing everything “right.”
Emotional eating or bingeing during times of stress, which disrupts insulin regulation.
By addressing emotional trauma through Brainspotting therapy, you help your body reset, allowing for healing on both emotional and physical levels.
Emotional Blocks That Contribute to Insulin Resistance
While insulin resistance is often seen as a physical condition, emotional factors play a significant role in its development and management. Emotional blocks—unresolved feelings of guilt, shame, fear, or inadequacy—can sabotage your efforts to control insulin resistance.
Common Emotional Blocks Include:
Fear of failure: The anxiety of not succeeding can cause you to self-sabotage, even when you know what steps you need to take.
Shame around body image: Feelings of inadequacy or shame about your body can lead to disordered eating patterns, emotional eating, or avoidance of healthy habits.
Unresolved trauma: Traumatic experiences from your past—whether they’re related to food, your body, or something else—can manifest in physical symptoms like insulin resistance.
Brainspotting therapy is designed to help you identify and process these emotional blocks, creating space for emotional healing and improved physical health.
Reducing Cortisol and Improving Insulin Sensitivity
Cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone, plays a significant role in insulin resistance. When cortisol levels remain elevated due to chronic stress or unresolved emotions, it disrupts insulin’s ability to regulate blood sugar. Over time, this leads to insulin resistance and other metabolic issues.
By reducing chronic stress and processing emotional trauma through Brainspotting therapy, you can lower cortisol levels, allowing your body to restore balance and improve insulin sensitivity. This not only helps regulate blood sugar more effectively but also reduces inflammation, improves energy levels, and promotes overall well-being.
Breaking Free from Emotional Eating
One of the most common challenges women face when managing insulin resistance is emotional eating. When stress, anxiety, or unresolved trauma isn’t addressed, food often becomes a source of comfort or control. Unfortunately, this cycle of emotional eating disrupts insulin regulation and makes it difficult to maintain progress.
Brainspotting therapy helps you process the emotional triggers behind emotional eating, allowing you to break free from unhealthy eating patterns. By addressing the root cause of emotional eating, you can develop a healthier relationship with food, one based on nourishment and balance rather than coping mechanisms.
Healing Your Relationship with Food
For many women with insulin resistance, their relationship with food is complicated. Years of dieting, restricting, and feeling guilty about eating can create emotional turmoil around food choices. This constant battle with food can lead to feelings of failure, frustration, and helplessness—feelings that can actually worsen insulin resistance.
Brainspotting therapy helps heal your relationship with food by addressing the guilt, shame, and fear you may have surrounding eating. As you process these emotions, you’ll begin to see food in a new light—as nourishment for your body rather than a source of emotional comfort. This shift in perspective is crucial for managing insulin resistance long-term.
Overcoming Body Image Issues and Self-Sabotage
Body image issues are a common emotional block for women with insulin resistance. The pressure to look a certain way or achieve a specific weight can lead to feelings of inadequacy, shame, and self-doubt. These feelings, in turn, trigger self-sabotaging behaviors like skipping workouts, emotional eating, or abandoning health plans.
Brainspotting therapy helps release the emotional pain associated with body image struggles. By working through these deeply rooted feelings, you’ll develop more compassion and acceptance for your body, making it easier to stay consistent with healthy habits and stop self-sabotaging.
Building Emotional Resilience Through Brainspotting
One of the most transformative aspects of Brainspotting therapy is the emotional resilience it builds. As you work through and release emotional trauma, you’ll find that you’re better equipped to handle stress, setbacks, and challenges in a healthier way. This resilience is key to managing insulin resistance in the long run.
How Brainspotting Builds Resilience:
Reduced emotional overwhelm: Processing trauma and stress helps you feel more in control of your emotions.
Increased coping skills: You’ll develop healthier ways to manage stress, which reduces the likelihood of turning to food for comfort.
Greater self-compassion: As you heal emotionally, you’ll be kinder to yourself, making it easier to stay on track with your health goals.
With emotional resilience, you’ll no longer feel overwhelmed by challenges or stressors. Instead, you’ll have the tools to navigate difficult situations without falling back into old patterns of emotional eating or self-sabotage.
The Link Between Emotional Healing and Physical Health
Emotional healing has a profound impact on physical health. When you address unresolved trauma, stress, and emotional pain, your body can begin to heal as well. For women with insulin resistance, emotional healing can lead to better blood sugar regulation, improved insulin sensitivity, and enhanced overall well-being.
As you work through emotional blocks, you’ll notice physical improvements, including:
Better insulin regulation as cortisol levels decrease and the body returns to a more balanced state.
Reduced inflammation, which helps prevent weight gain and promotes metabolic health.
Improved energy levels as emotional stress and overwhelm lessen.
By using Brainspotting to heal emotionally, you’re giving your body the best chance to heal physically as well.
Experiencing Rapid Results with Brainspotting Therapy
One of the most exciting aspects of Brainspotting therapy is how quickly it can produce results. Unlike traditional coaching, which may take months or even years to see progress, many women experience significant emotional relief after just a few Brainspotting sessions.
As emotional healing occurs, you’ll likely notice physical changes as well. Lower stress levels, reduced cravings for comfort foods, and improved insulin regulation are all common results of Brainspotting therapy. Many clients report feeling a greater sense of control over their health and well-being after just a few sessions.
Empowering Yourself Through Emotional and Physical Healing
Healing from insulin resistance is not just about managing blood sugar—it’s about addressing the emotional barriers that are holding you back. By empowering yourself through emotional healing with Brainspotting therapy, you’re taking control of both your mental and physical health.
If you’re tired of feeling stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage, frustration, and emotional eating, it’s time to look deeper. Brainspotting therapy offers a powerful, holistic approach that addresses the emotional root causes of insulin resistance, allowing you to break free and begin healing from the inside out.
It’s time to stop letting emotional trauma, stress, and self-doubt hold you back. By addressing these emotional barriers through Brainspotting therapy, you’ll improve your physical health and gain the emotional freedom to live a more balanced, empowered life.