One of the things you will discover when you start working with neurofeedback training is that its effects are often so broad that many of us find the process of diagnosing to be relatively useless. Instead, for those who work with my assessment, we simply look at relationships between the brain activation pattern and the client\u2019s desired changes and let that guide our training.\u00a0 We don\u2019t talk about \u201ctreatment objectives\u201d; we teach training plans and behavioral objectives.\u00a0 Train for what you see and what you want to change, and don\u2019t worry too much about what someone calls it.<\/p>\n
My issue with diagnosis is that most of the DSM diagnostic categories are almost entirely useless in terms of guiding protocol and placement choices.\u00a0 Depression, for example, can show up in a frontal alpha reversal, or extremely high levels of alpha frontally or very slow left-side EEG or low parietal alpha levels or even very high levels of fast activity temporally\u2013and probably a number of others as well.\u00a0 Same for anxiety disorders, attention disorders, all the various sensory processing disorders, etc.\u00a0 I also agree that the tools (the TQ Assess files) are ways of focusing the process of gathering information, and I hope I regularly stress the importance of determining what and where to train based on what the client\u2019s issues and training objectives are.<\/p>\n
I found years ago that it was much more valuable to define your training goals without diagnostic categories.\u00a0 Someone may have told you that you \u201chave\u201d obsessive-compulsive disorder, or maybe you\u2019ve just decided that for yourself based on family history or reading on the internet.\u00a0 The bottom line is the \u201cOCD\u201d is just a name given to a batch of behaviors, moods, symptoms. It really says nothing at all about what is the cause of them.\u00a0 With brain training, you should focus on identifying those issues that are most problematic for you and which you\u00a0 most want to change. Some will fit into OCD, others may not.<\/p>\n
In addition, when you use the word cure\u2013much as when you use the diagnostic shorthand\u2013you are placing yourself mentally in a way of looking at problems which is almost the opposite of brain training.\u00a0 If you \u201chave OCD\u201d, then you have a \u201cdisease\u201d.\u00a0 Nothing YOU can do about that, right?\u00a0 It\u2019s not your fault, and it\u2019s outside your ability to impact.\u00a0 You need to find someone to \u201ccure\u201d the disease, even knowing that mental health disorders aren\u2019t generally curable.\u00a0 If you focus on identifying the behaviors, moods and performance issues that would make your life better or easier or more enjoyable, then you leave the door open to the option that YOU can change those things.\u00a0 Make no mistake: in brain training\u2013even if you work with a great trainer\u2013it\u2019s not the trainer who makes the changes\u2013it\u2019s YOU!\u00a0 Your brain learns new ways of dealing with the demands on it. That\u2019s not a cure. It\u2019s a set of changes you made in your own life.<\/p>\n
There is an old saying, \u201cwhen your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.\u201d\u00a0 Psychologists believe that problems are psychological, because they\u2019ve learned how to deal with them that way.\u00a0 Physicians believe they are chemical and can only be treated with medications.<\/p>\n
There is a great deal of experience and evidence in published studies that psychological problems can indeed be resolved both faster and more permanently by changing the activation patterns in the brain and body that hold them in place.\u00a0 The client does not have to \u201cprocess\u201d or remember traumas.\u00a0 By shifting the way the brain produces and distributes energy (which the client does for himself), problems such as anxiety, depression, addictions, obsessions\/compulsions, inattention, poor emotional regulation and many others simply go away.\u00a0 For most clients, this is much more desirable than digging back through old experiences and feelings to try to find the \u201csource\u201d of a negative habit pattern\u2013still with no assurance that it will change!<\/p>\n
That is not to say that counseling and coaching are not important parts of helping the client adjust to the change.\u00a0 They can work together very effectively.<\/p>\n
In my mind, the goal of brain training is not to make us all fall within X standard deviations of someone\u2019s mean; rather, it is to give each individual a tool to allow him to increase his\/her range of options and make him more fully himself.\u00a0 The best hunters and pioneers are likely to have less activated thalamic activity, because they live on the edge, need to be able to get a lot of information very quickly, respond in ways that others might consider impulsive, etc.\u00a0 The best accountants probably have very different levels of thalamic control to enable them to stay extremely focused on routine detail in the midst of a great deal of information.\u00a0 Which one is right?<\/p>\n
One beginner belief\u2014perhaps fantasy\u2014is that knowing a diagnosis or describing some behaviors\/symptoms will tell us what the brain is doing and thus how we might train it.\u00a0 That\u2019s the holy grail of NF and has been the source of a dozen magic-bullet training approaches over the 20 years I\u2019ve been in this field.\u00a0 My belief, based on working with thousands of people, is that this kind of information may be mildly helpful\u2014certainly needs to be gathered\u2014but only occasionally provides much training guidance.\u00a0 You need to look at the stable activation patterns\u2013the energy habits\u2013that a specific brain has developed over time to deal with its experience of the environment.<\/p>\n
A real-world example involves four cases of highly anxious children\/adolescents from 9-15 years who I worked with simultaneously.\u00a0 The symptoms\/diagnoses looked almost exactly the same.\u00a0 \u00a0In one of the cases, when we looked at assessment data, we found that her temporal lobes were dominated by very fast activity, particularly on the right side.\u00a0 The second had extreme fast-wave coherence across the front of his brain.\u00a0 The third had both right\/left and front\/back reversals of beta\u2013significantly more beta over the right and posterior areas than over the left and frontal.\u00a0 The fourth had no posterior alpha activation and a spike of slow alpha in the left-frontal area (probably related to a head injury).\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean to suggest that these were the only findings related to anxiety in these cases.\u00a0 These were the ones that, when trained, resulted in clear improvements in the symptoms (including several symptoms that had nothing to do with anxiety.) I suppose we could have just tested out the 7-8 patterns that are commonly associated with anxiety to see if anything worked, but the assessment helped us to focus more specifically on those present in the clients\u2019 brains.<\/p>\n
One of the problems with symptom-based work is that we know parents and clients \u201cforget\u201d things\u2013sometimes outright lie. Or we don\u2019t ask the right questions. With NF you may find that the questions are different from those you are accustomed to asking.<\/p>\n
For example, we know that the symptoms of sleep deprivation match those of many mental health categories. NF is often remarkable in resolving sleep problems, and I believe that doing so should always be in the top rank of training objectives. When the client improves sleep efficiency, many other things get easier or go away.<\/p>\n
There are many reasons to train to client goals rather than chasing down specific symptoms.<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 One of the problems with trying to provide neurofeedback approaches to respond to a couple of specific symptoms is that they can relate to a variety of brain activation issues.\u00a0 Without knowing anything about your client\u2019s EEG or more about the other kinds of things that are present in his experience (is he impulsive, what is his emotional character, what kinds of cognitive issues does he deal with, what is his sleep pattern, etc.) we are simply shooting in the dark.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0 In addition, many symptoms are in the eye of the beholder.\u00a0 What feels like anxiety to me, may not feel like anxiety to someone who has been that way his whole life.\u00a0 And many people who are \u201cdepressed\u201d need to be told by others, because they don\u2019t notice the very small changes over time, or they have never experienced anything else.\u00a0 Also, in the brain-trainer system we don\u2019t necessarily consider an activation pattern to be unhealthy.\u00a0 If someone has a left\/right alpha reversal, the chances are very high that they will see the world as a more negative place than a person who does not have this pattern, but the person may be perfectly comfortable that way.\u00a0 Is it unhealthy?\u00a0 Or just different?<\/p>\n
I have certainly seen clients who had reversals or hot temporals or hot frontal midlines, etc. who did not experience any symptoms they wanted to change.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the brain-trainer approach is to start with the client\u2019s objectives and look at the brain through that window.<\/p>\n
My view is to provide the client with a means of developing toward the kind of person he or she wants to be.\u00a0 If Einstein doesn\u2019t mind losing his keys all the time, then don\u2019t train down his theta!<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0 The primary symptom, while it may be what you want to see change most rapidly, can also send you down a wrong or too limited road in terms of training if you don\u2019t look at the whole picture.\u00a0 When the client is dominated by a single issue, he can\u2019t really tell you very well about the \u201cfoundation\u201d issues, because he simply doesn\u2019t know about them.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t dig down to them, you can end up repairing the framing around a window without knowing that the whole house is off square because the foundation is sinking on one side.\u00a0 For example, if someone complains of clenching teeth, my first question would be, \u201cdo you think the fact that someone clenches her teeth this way is completely unconnected to any other issues in her life?\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019d be interested in knowing whether she\u2019s anxious, has sleeping difficulties other than clenching her teeth, has other physical issues, etc.<\/p>\n
All I hope for is that the assessment process aims me in good directions that help move the client where he or she wants to go and which result in those changes becoming stable.<\/p>\n
4.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen a client who had some issue of mood, learning, behavior, performance, etc. they wanted to change who did not have any activation patterns that seemed to fit with that issue.\u00a0 The more you understand about the brain, the more you can make sense of the \u201ctrickier\u201d patterns.\u00a0 For example, a person starting out as a trainer knows that inability to pay attention is related to too much theta compared with beta.\u00a0 A client comes complaining of attention problems with a very LOW theta\/beta ratio\u2013LOTS of beta compared with theta.\u00a0 How is this possible?\u00a0 Perhaps the client has so much beta that there is anxiety or racing thoughts, which make it difficult to pay attention. Perhaps there is slow alpha, or alpha does not block, or perhaps coherences are very low between some sites, or perhaps there is strong delta activity.\u00a0 Any of these could result in difficulty paying attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the things you will discover when you start working with neurofeedback training is that its effects are often so broad that many of us find the process of diagnosing to be relatively useless. Instead, for those who work with my assessment, we simply look at relationships between the brain activation pattern and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"topic":[771],"class_list":["post-39044","answer","type-answer","status-publish","hentry","answer_topic-getting-started"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n