Overcome Yips and Mental Blocks: Discover the Hidden Key to Peak Performance

Written By Cortnee White

As someone who has worked extensively with athletes battling throwing yips, serve yips, and mental blocks in gymnastics or diving, I've seen them try countless techniques—visualization, relaxation, mindfulness, and even intense physical training. While these methods can provide some temporary relief, they often fail to fully resolve the issue, leaving athletes frustrated and stuck in the same performance loop. In my experience, the only approach that consistently delivers lasting results is brainspotting.

By tapping into the brain's deeper emotional and reflexive systems, brainspotting allows athletes to process the underlying trauma or anxiety causing the yips. It offers a breakthrough where other methods have failed, helping athletes regain control and perform with confidence.

Sara Errani, Serving Yips

Brainspotting is useful for individuals dealing with:

  • Mental blocks in Gymnastics and Diving

  • The Yips in Baseball, softball, tennis, pickleball, and golf

  • Shooting hitches or target panic in basketball or shooting sports

  • Fears and setback in all sports/life

  • Traumatic experiences

  • Chronic pain from injuries

  • Enhancing creativity

  • Achieving mental flow states

  • For combat sport athletes, Brainspotting is particularly beneficial in addressing:

    • Concussions

    • Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs)

    • Witnessing injuries

    • Sport-related humiliations

    • Out-of-sport trauma (e.g., car accidents, relationship issues)

This intervention helps athletes process and overcome these challenges.

How does it work?

Brainspotting is based on the idea that trauma can become "stuck" in the body, interfering with the brain’s ability to process and heal from the event. When you go through something traumatic, the memories and emotions tied to that event can be suppressed or "buried" in your mind. This is especially true for childhood trauma, which can resurface or be triggered later in life. In cases like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for instance, people may re-experience those traumatic moments through flashbacks, emotions, or memories because the brain never fully processed or healed from the original trauma.

By activating brainspots and paying attention to what’s happening in your body. The idea is that we store trauma in the midbrain and brainstem, and sometimes these distressing memories, emotions, and thoughts get stuck there. “Through specific eye movements and gazes in techniques like EMDR and Brainspotting, we can help the body reprocess these traumas or difficult emotions, allowing for healing.

Baseball Throwing Yips

Our brain and body hold trauma memories as a way to safeguard us from letting something bad happen again.  Trauma is something that puts your body into one of the responses of fight, flight, or flee, and could be many things.

  • A blindside-hit

  • Physical/ sexual/ verbal/ emotional abuse

  • An embarrassing moment

  • Being yelled at by a parent or coach

  • A bad play or bad game

  • Injury or not physically injured but really scared them.

  • Concussion

  • Seeing a peer get hurt

The brain cannot differentiate between physical or emotional trauma so they are held the same way in our brain. This is why mental health is a critical component of an athlete’s performance.  It is also the reason that traumatic events from all areas or periods of time in life can be addressed for peak performance.

Trauma causes maladaptive neuropathways to develop and if there is no intentional and targeted work done to create a new healthy pathway, your brain will use the trauma pathway, which causes the athlete to lose their finely tuned and practiced movements.  

Brainspotting is the tool that accesses the deep brain in order to clear the maladaptive pathways and memory networks associated with the trauma so the athlete can perform at their best; calmly, with excitement and trust in their training and ability.  

Additionally, Brainspotting can enhance an athlete’s positive performance or help them get into a flow state for an upcoming competition by strengthening healthy neural pathways.


If you are interested in Brainspotting please reach out and schedule a consult with me today. Results are just a few sessions away. Contact me

Disclaimer: While Brainspotting is an unbelievable tool it does not help everyone and may not be suitable for all people and ages.

Cortnee White
Next

Brainspotting for Combat Sports