Evoking a healing response…

Evoking a healing response… Once in awhile a client, either a child or an adult, will not return to neurofeedback training after experiencing what they see (or their parents see) as a side effect of the training.  In truth, given that we never ever push the brain whatsoever, the brain is MOVING THROUGH a block that has been there, usually the reason why they came in for help in the first place.  This is a healing response (remember neuroplasticity) and has been known my humans for thousands of years- though today, much of allopathic medicine tries to suppress symptoms rather than help support the immune system to strengthen itself by going through the response and thus building immunity.

I recall so clearly a client telling me, ”I don”t want to go back to the past”, when in fact this unresolved issue that she had obviously been carrying around for years and which caused her tremendous anxiety (the reason she came to see me in the first place), was ready to be digested and assimilated so that she could live a fuller and happier life- but she saw it differently.

 

What is a non-linear, dynamical system?

From the Summer 2011 Newsletter
NeurOPTIMAL® Neurofeedback
A Non-Linear, Dynamical Approach to Brain Training…OK! So what is a non-linear, dynamical system?Simple nonlinear, dynamical systems can exhibit completely unpredictable behavior (notice someone who is upset, or a hurricane or an avalanche- all non-linear systems), which might seem to be random.  This seemingly unpredictable behavior has been called ‘chaos’.

We now know that the human brain is a non-linear, dynamical system that lives on the edge of chaos and order which allows for it’s tremendously sophisticated processing capabilities on behalf of our personal survival.  In the linear forms of neurofeedback, the practitioner uses a diagnosis to determine how to proceed with the client.  They will push and/or inhibit certain brainwave frequencies in order to get intended changes; a problem is the side effects that can come about from pushing a persons brain.

 

Stopping too soon…

I get a call from Jack’s mother (not his real name) after only 2 sessions saying that they are canceling his sessions.  He experienced a bit of depression which is why they brought him in originally.  I had explained to them before we started that, although very rare, some people will experience an exacerbation in symptoms that are in their repertoire already.  But the difference is that with NeurOPTIMAL, folks will move through these old symptoms rather then cycle through over and over.  NeurOPTIMAL targets turbulance that the brain is producing based on overload.

Children are delicate…

 

Brain Freeze…

Sharon Begley’s article in the March 7, 2011 Newsweek magazine says it all: “How the deluge of information paralyzes our ability to make good decisions”!

This is what I am seeing from clients, many of them children.  People are contacting me because they or their children are overwhelmed in work and at school and in life in general.  This overwhelm, known as unresolved stress, is causing them to behave in ways that do not make for successful outcomes.  When we become overloaded, our systems can at times go a little ‘haywire’, it appears at first sight, though our Central Nervous System is actually behaving as designed in an intelligent way in order to keep us from blowing up or burning out.

 

TALK ABOUT STRESS…

by David Delaney

I get calls from potential clients on a regular basis who are out of work, have anxiety and need help improving their focus, motivation, and ability to be stay calm in the face of challenge, and present when they interview for jobs.  Another way to say this is that they need improved peak or optimal performance.  This is a very difficult economy for many folks and losing a job can have devastating effects on a person’s confidence and financial worries, on top of family, social obligations, and the pressures of an intense life what we all experience.

 

Approaches to the Treatment of PTSD

authors:

Bessel A. van der Kolk, M.D., Onno van der Hart, Ph.D., Jennifer Burbridge, M.A.

Originally appeared in S. Hobfoll & M. de Vries (Eds.), Extreme stress and communities: Impact and intervention (NATO Asi Series. Series D, Behavioural and Social Sciences, Vol 80). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic. Note that this online version may have minor differences from the published version.
Trauma Clinic
227 Babcock Street
Brookline, MA 02146
Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School

Introduction

Terrifying experiences that rupture people’s sense of predictability and invulnerability can profoundly alter the ways that they subsequently deal with their emotions and with their environment. The syndrome of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can follow such widely different stressors as war trauma, physical and sexual assaults, accidents, and other natural and man-made disasters. Mirroring the confusion and disbelief of people whose basic assumptions are shattered by traumatic experiences, the psychiatric profession periodically has been fascinated by trauma, followed by sudden disbelief in the importance of trauma in the genesis of psychopathlogy. Over the past decade our profession has experienced the third intense wave of efforts to grasp the reality of trauma on body and soul, after the first at the Salpetriere during the closing decades of the 19th century, and the second, spearheaded by Abram Kardiner (1941), in the 1940s. The findings about the consequences of trauma and what constitutes effective treatment have been extraordinarily consistent over these 120 years.

 

What exactly is Neurofeedback?

What exactly is Neurofeedback?

Changing your brain wave patterns, which is the interaction of electrical and chemical activity in your brain, produces changes in how you feel, how you act, as well as how you interact with people and the world around you.

 

NEUROFEEDBACK FOR MUSICIANS

BBC NEWS
Brain machine ‘improves musicianship’
Scientists have created a technique that dramatically improves the performance of musicians. The system – called neurofeedback – trains musicians to clear their minds and produce more creative brain waves.Research, to be published in the journal Neuroreport, indicates the technique helps musicians to improve by an average of 17% – the equivalent of one grade or class of honours.

Some improved by as much as 50%.

Students were assessed on two pieces of music before and after neurofeedback sessions.

Neurofeedback monitors brain activity through sensors attached to the scalp which filter out the brainwaves.

 

Drug Effectiveness: Overblown

As reported in the Psychotherapy Networker Jab/Feb 2010 edition, a professional magazine for the psychotherapy profession:

Erick Turner and other researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University subpoenaed the FDA to release all the studies on antidepressant effectiveness in its archives.  Because science journals prefer positive findings over negative ones, Turner and his colleagues were unsurprised to find unpublished studies concluding that SSRIs are no more effective the placebo*

 

What exactly is flight-or-flight?

by David Delaney, MA, CAR, LPC                 david@boulderneurofeedback.com

Fight-or-flight is the collection of physiological (body) and psychological (mind & emotions) changes that occur when you face a perceived threat–when you face situations where you feel the demands on you outweigh your resources to effectively cope.

When some event in your life triggers the state of fight or flight, a series of changes occur within your body and mind, often without our awareness. They include:

•A quickening of the pulse

•A burst of adrenaline (can mean shaking, feeling queasy, or hyper-alert)

 
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