Neurofeedback
Neurofeedback is an alternative approach to dealing with certain illnesses that are associated with brain function.
With it we can treat a wide array of conditions such as panic attacks and anxiety, attention deficit disorder, fibromyalgia, post traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and explosive personality disorder. This can allow people to have enough improvement so that they will be able to avoid medication or have less need for medication. (It would never be my intention to stop any medicine or ongoing psychotherapy prior to seeing successful improvement with neurofeedback).
While neurofeedback has been used successfully to treat many of the above conditions for years, it is important that you know it is not officially recognized as standard treatment for these conditions.
The reason why I decided to learn this technique is my overarching concern that while most medicines that we prescribe are considered to be safe and effective by the FDA, there can always be unforeseen short or long-term consequences. In addition, traditional Western medicine has failed to come up with very satisfying treatments for such conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome and traumatic brain injury. It is my belief that neurofeedback is safe and, for some of the above conditions, significantly more effective than typical medical approaches.
What is neurofeedback? Well basically we look at the various electrical waves that your brain puts out. The theory is that our brain has ‘learned’ to function in unhealthy ways due to emotional or physical trauma or infection. This was meant to protect the brain from these nasty insults. Unfortunately, sometimes our brains don’t ‘unlearn’ this protective functioning after the insult has gone.
Neurofeedback helps your brain to ‘unlearn’ this now unnecessary way of functioning. For example, if a loved one dies in your family, it would be entirely appropriate to feel sad and anxious for weeks and even a month or two.
But if you still cannot come close to functioning normally six months or a year down the road, then that is typically a sign of prolonged grieving. Your brain just has gotten stuck in a maladaptive way of behaving. Seeing a therapist and/or taking medication can help and so can neurofeedback.
If you’d like to learn more about this novel approach to mental health please feel free to make an appointment. At that appointment there will be a more detailed discussion about what is involved and there will be some questionnaires to fill out. This treatment is being made available to all my patients who can potentially benefit from it at no additional charge other than your standard copay. I will bill the insurance company and accept their compensation.