Whether it’s mental health challenges or addiction struggles, our brain is typically the common denominator. This means that the inner workings of your brain can lead to mental health disorders or addiction. In other words, behavior modifications and willpower alone aren’t enough to fix your struggles. With that said, if you can learn how to retrain your brain for the better, you can find healing. But how? Neurofeedback therapy.
What is Neurofeedback Therapy?
To properly understand neurofeedback therapy, you first need to understand how trauma impacts your brain. When a traumatic event happens to you—such as any of the common adverse childhood experiences—it can actually alter the way your brain functions. This change in functioning can interfere with your brain’s ability to manage your emotions. Consequently, when future stress, negative feelings, or traumatic memories occur, you have a harder time regulating and processing your emotions. And emotional regulation challenges can put you at greater risk of mental health disorders and addiction.
This is where neurofeedback comes in. Practiced for over six decades, neurofeedback is a therapeutic intervention that tracks your brainwave activity in real time, explains the International Society for Neuroregulation & Research (ISNR). With behavior modification and learning processes, you can learn how to better self-regulate your brain and central nervous system functioning—leading to improved health and well-being.
With neurofeedback therapy, you can get true insight into your natural reactions, shares VerywellMind.com. Working alongside a mental health professional, you can actually see the patterns in your way of thinking. This allows you to discover why these responses occur. With a better understanding of these patterns, you can adjust your thoughts and feelings in the moment to achieve a better, healthier response. As a form of biofeedback, neurofeedback therapy can be used to treat the following conditions:
- Anxiety
- ADHD
- Depression
- Addictions
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Insomnia
- Anger control
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
How Does Neurofeedback Work?
Your brain uses specific brain waves to communicate between different brain cells, and these brain waves will vary based on what you’re doing (thinking, relaxing, sleeping, etc.). As your brain becomes dysregulated, your brain waves are also negatively affected, leading to mental health and addiction challenges. With neurofeedback therapy however, its purpose is to change these brainwaves for the better through the process of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is your brain’s natural ability to adapt and modify itself over time.
The Neurofeedback Process
As a non-invasive, drug-free form of treatment, neurofeedback therapy first starts with brain mapping. Your brain actually has its own unique “electrical fingerprint”, or brain map, and brain mapping allows treatment professionals to capture it precisely. You typically sit in a comfortable chair while the clinician places electrical sensors on top of your head. These sensors allow specialized software to capture the electrical impulses or brain waves your brain generates, providing a complete picture of your brain’s functioning. From here, your provider or mental health professional will be able to determine which areas of the brain are performing well, and which areas are dysregulated.
Once your provider has your brain mapped out, it’s time to retrain your brain with ongoing neurofeedback therapy sessions. Your clinician will place sensors on the areas of your head to influence the parts of your brain that need to be rewired, so to speak. You’ll experience various visual and auditory stimuli so both you and your provider can see how your brain responds in real time. Through this process, your brain is incentivized to change its patterns in the moment through rewarding stimuli. Over time, your brain develops new, optimal neural pathways while gradually eliminating emotional dysregulation and disrupted brainwaves. As a result of this neuroplasticity, you develop healthier thinking patterns and reactions that can alleviate addiction and mental health disorder symptoms.
The Benefits of Neurofeedback Therapy
Because you’re directly treating addiction and mental health challenges at their source—your brain—neurofeedback can make a profound impact on your healing. The new emotional self-regulation skills you’ve developed can lead to better overall emotional stability in your life. In other words, when you’re faced with negative feelings, stress, or challenging circumstances, you’re less likely to spiral into debilitating mental health patterns or seek out addictive substances to cope.
Neurofeedback therapy can also help reduce the symptoms of mental health disorders like anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Because you’ve learned how to develop healthier responses to stimuli in the moment, you can learn how to overcome the ways of thinking that lead to symptoms associated with these disorders. With these newfound cognitive skills, you can begin to build a strong foundation for healthier emotional well-being in the long run.
Experience Neurofeedback Therapy in Nashville, TN
Neurofeedback therapy works best as a complementary tool in a holistic treatment program. At Integrative Life Center in Nashville, TN we personalize our treatment to your needs, using a variety of evidence-based and experiential therapy modalities—including neurofeedback therapy. This puts you in the best position to achieve long-term healing for your addiction or mental health disorder. To learn more, contact our team today.
