NeuroFeedback for Anxiety
For some, anxiety is a temporary alert system to warn the body about a potential threat that may occur. Your heart races after after you just miss hitting a car while driving, but after a few moments, you're breathing normally again. For others, however, it feels as their alert system will just not turn off. This can result in an ongoing, overwhelming, and sometimes uncontrollable feeling. This response system of anxiety is on overdrive for an extended period of time. When anxiety becomes persistent to the point where it is interfering with your daily activities, an anxiety disorder may be present. Anxiety disorders come in all shapes and sizes; they can be triggered by events or memories, expressed as large debilitating panic attacks or smaller more controllable feelings (among others). The difficulty in dealing with anxiety is that it is your body’s natural response to a potentially dangerous (physically or emotionally) situation. Neurofeedback for anxiety is a great, non-medicine way of calming your body's over-active nervous system.
To deal with this, neurofeedback re-trains your brain’s anxiety network(s) to no longer be over stimulated, bringing the activation down to an average level. To do this, the brain is trained via a positive feedback stimulus loop which enhances top-down regulation of the anxiety network. The stimulation (music) is received when the targeted anxiety network is within an average range. By using the brain's own reward system, we can slowly push the network so that it is only falling within the average range.
Neurofeedback is a practice in a calm, relaxed state.
Because we get good at what we practice, neurofeedback for anxiety allows for the creation of new neuropathways toward this calmer way of being.
Studies have demonstrated that neurofeedback in patients with anxiety result in an increase in new top-down neurological connections within the targeted network. Throughout the training sessions your brain regains more and more top-down control of your anxiety network. This means that you are no longer over-activated, with your feeling of anxiety returning to normal levels (alert when needed, calm when not). By retraining your brain to essentially ‘re-wire its self’, these effects are typically long lasting and do not require constant maintenance.
Call Harper Therapy today to find out how neurofeedback therapy can help with your anxiety. 813-434-3639. Or use the form below to contact us and schedule a free consultation with our neurofeedback specialist, Ben.
