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Why Talking About It Isn't Always Enough

Talking helps a lot of people. But some feelings don't have words yet, and that's where I've seen how much more there can be.

By Wen Fan, MA, LMFT · October 2026

I thought I had nothing to process

My wife jokes that I never cry and never have feelings. For most of my life, I would have agreed with her. I don't usually feel sad, and I don't show much.

She thinks it's a little weird that I don't cry or feel moved when we watch a sad movie. Part of that is culture. As an Asian man, I was conditioned to stay away from sad feelings, and I got very good at it.

So when I started my Brainspotting training, I figured I was the one person in the room with nothing to work on. I was fine. I had already cried and worked through things in my earlier Brainspotting training, so surely there was nothing left. Right? Then, again and again, I was proven wrong.

What came up

I found feelings I didn't know were in me. I cried. I felt emotions in my body that had no words and no story attached to them. There was no memory to explain them and no meaning to make sense of them. It was just raw feeling.

That experience convinced me of something I hadn't fully understood from reading about it. Understanding a feeling and feeling it are different things, and talking about a feeling doesn't always reach the place where it's held. I can only speak for my own experience, and everyone's is different. But it changed how I think about my work.

Why words aren't always enough

Talk therapy is valuable, and I use it every day. But a lot of what we carry is stored as sensation first: tension, heaviness, a tight chest, a restless stomach. Those sensations don't come with an explanation. The thinking part of us adds the story later, and sometimes it adds the wrong one.

This is why some people say, "I know why I feel this way, and it still hasn't changed." Insight is useful, and it's often not the whole picture.

How Brainspotting works with this

One big reason I turned to Brainspotting is how often it brings these feelings out, session after session.

Brainspotting is built on a simple idea: where you look affects how you feel. We start with what you want to work on. Then we find a spot in your field of vision that connects with it, and you stay with that spot while paying attention to what happens inside, in your body, your emotions, your memories or images.

You don't have to explain what you notice. One line from my training has stayed with me: "You don't have to know what it is to know that it is." The sensations come first, and meaning can come later or not at all.

I'll be honest: I often question whether it's just the placebo effect, and I still do. But when something happens this consistently, and to this many people, it makes me think there's something to it. The neuroscience offers possible explanations for why, and I find that interesting, though it's still being studied.

What the research says

Brainspotting is a newer approach. Early studies and clinician reports are encouraging, but the research is still developing and is not as extensive as it is for longer-established therapies such as CBT. I hold some of that doubt myself, which is partly why I'm careful about what I promise. I can't promise a specific outcome, and we check in regularly on how it's going for you.

Is it right for you?

It might be worth exploring if you:

• feel stuck even though you understand your story
• notice feelings in your body that you can't name
• would rather not retell painful experiences in detail
• feel "fine" on the surface and tired underneath

It isn't right for everyone. If you prefer a more talk-based approach, or if something feels overwhelming, we can choose another path, such as DBT skills or CBT. We'll talk through the fit in your free consultation.

Learn more about Brainspotting, trauma therapy and anxiety therapy. See all articles.