Is Neurofeedback Therapy Helpful for Reducing Panic Attacks and Anxiety?
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Is Neurofeedback Therapy Helpful for Reducing Panic Attacks and Anxiety?
For more information about Neurofeedback, go to http://www.NeurofeedbackBook.com Dr. Clare Albright is a psychologist (CA License PSY11660) and a Neurofeedback practitioner and can be reached at (949)454-0996
If you struggle with increasing anxiety or severe panic attacks, you already know how debilitating these things can be to your life. Physicians and therapists have tried for years to help patients cope with problems like anxiety and panic attacks, but they have not found a way to actually cure their patients.
In the past, physicians and therapists have treated these patients with prescription medications such as Valium and Xanax. These drugs work well for most patients, but still, they do not treat the underlying cause of the panic attacks and anxiety; they only mask the symptoms. Once the drugs are gone, the symptoms return, so patients may have to continue taking the medications for the rest of their lives.
Other forms of therapy are currently available that do not involve medication. There are several behavioral-type therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy, breathing techniques, energy psychology, and visualization. These treatments can offer some relief on their own, or when used in conjunction with medication to teach patients to keep their anxiety and panic attacks under control. Still, these treatments may not resolve the underlying neurological problem.
Neurofeedback therapy, on the other hand, may address the problem at its source. Like many common disorders, anxiety and panic attacks originate in the brain. Hormone imbalances in the brain and body can cause emotions to run amok, and these imbalances inevitably begin and end with brain function. To put these systems back in order and restore normality to a patient’s life, the problem must be treated by changing the way the brain works.
Neurofeedback therapy may do just that. You may be somewhat familiar with other types of biofeedback, which uses feedback to improve a person’s overall physical health by alerting the brain when the body is suffering from an imbalance. Biofeedback has been used to treat conditions like asthma, epilepsy, and hot flashes. Neurofeedback is a form of biofeedback that uses the brain to treat itself, and may reduce problems such as panic attacks and chronic anxiety.
During a neurofeedback session, the therapist will comfortably attach thin leads to your scalp. These leads are connected to an EEG machine that can read and respond to the signals that your brain transmits. The therapist then helps your brain to “read” its own signals by assigning it an activity, such as using its own brain waves to move an object on a computer screen or to make an auditory signal become louder. In order to complete these activities, the brain must stay within the desired frequencies.
When the brain experiences this positive feedback from using these different brainwaves, it may begin to use these brainwaves out of habit. When dealing with panic attacks and anxiety, a therapist will help you to steer your brain away from harmful, panic-inducing brainwave patterns toward the patterns that help you stay calm. When your neurofeedback sessions are complete, the changes may be long lasting, leaving you free panic attacks and anxiety for the long haul. For stress-related conditions like anxiety, which respond especially well to neurofeedback, these results may be seen
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