High Beta

When a person is anxious and can’t stop thinking, you’ll usually see high beta.  High beta or beta 3 is 23-38 Hz and should not be trained up.  It’s not a frequency brains ordinarily make much, because it’s tremendously wasteful of energy and not particularly useful unless you are in a seriously threatening situation. Many people can cover their fear when they have something to pay attention to, but when their eyes are closed, internal issues, or frustrated vigilance, can trigger the amygdala and appear as high-beta in the temporal.  With eyes closed, clients can feel very vulnerable, and the fear comes to the surface.

High beta is 23-38 Hz–a 15 Hz band–compared with beta 15-19 Hz–a 4 Hz band.  That’s nearly 4 times more frequencies, so it’s not at all unusual to see high-beta above beta a little bit.  Just looking at the right side of the spectrum doesn’t help much anyway, because there are such great differences in alpha levels and it’s possible to have very high slow-wave activity as well. That’s why I look at the percent of total.

I would train to reduce it with eyes closed.

High beta in left temporal lobe

This pattern of very high left side often relates to lack of nurturing during early childhood–emotional neglect or abandonment instead of abuse.  I think that finding something that reduces the activation at T3 will likely have the most positive effect.  Chances are pain and sleep will improve with this training as well.