Neurofeedback Therapy

Hi Koru_Kiwi,

Thanks for the hugs. I think I'm doing OK (re: old therapist). In the moment, it was pretty horrifying - it's the only time I've ever left in the middle of a session! But, we clearly weren't on the same page, so even though it's sad, I'm coping. I think it helps to realize that I was probably *never* going to feel safe enough to open with up with her, so she sort of did me a favor. But *yikes* - I definitely wasn't expecting that going in!

I'm still working on the NF. We're still struggling to figure out what will actually work for me. That's frustrating. I just did a session last night... and ugh. Headache, a little nausea, and lots of trouble sleeping. Still feeling a bit wonky today - I had to get up for an appointment, but ended up back in bed for a few hours after that.

My sleep has been terrible this last week, and I'm starting to get really... distracted/forgetful? Like... I started driving out of the grocery store with my parking brake on... I drove through the entire parking lot, a block down the road to a red light, SAW the light on the dashboard that says "brake" (and thought it was telling me that I had my foot on the brake! Argh!), then drove a little bit further before I realized! I'm usually a little distracted, but it's been happening a lot more than normal, and bigger things (like the car, missing part of a work meeting b/c I forgot to check my calendar, left a meatball - just one! - out overnight after cooking!) - so that's frustrating too.

re: The nausea... I'm not entirely sure at this point (re: how long it lasts) - but definitely longer than 30 minutes! Everything's starting to blur together. I did go back and try the original protocol one time (but only for ~12 minutes) and still had problems, no magic there!

Thanks for pointing that out though. My provider said something similar - he's not too worried about me feeling bad right after, but more interested in how I feel the next day, and in particular how I sleep. He said sometimes, right after, you might not feel good because you're brain is tired from having to exert itself, but it's more important to look at the effects on your sleep and how you feel later on...

One interesting thing - in my last call with him, he said that I'm reacting more strongly than he would expect, but also my reactions don't really match what he'd expect to see for the sites we're working on. So, for now, he's assuming my brain is "a little bit different" - but if that continues, he's going to throw that theory out, and assume my brain is "totally different" from everyone else - and give me a bunch of other protocols to start trying, so we can pin down what works.

I'm not sure what to think about that. Honestly, I'm starting to wonder/worry if it has to do with trauma in my past - if my brain is wound up really tightly, because it's busy repressing stuff so I can function and trying to just hold everything in balance and keep me from falling apart. That might explain why any kind of poking seems to feel bad?

Do you remember how long it took before you and your trainer figured out what would work for you, when you were first getting started? (Apologies if I asked this before)? I'm now in week 4... I'm sticking with it, because I don't feel like I've got any good alternatives (my life otherwise kind of sucks, and therapy hasn't helped at all!) - but I really wish my brain made more sense!

Thanks!

i'm glad you had the courage to do what felt right for you in the moment. i almost walked out on my ex-T one time when he was becoming quite defensive and was completely on another planet and clearly mis-attuned to what i was trying to get across to him. i felt so frustrated, misunderstood and angry in that moment, but i was too scared to fully leave because i was too fearful of imagining my life without him in it. i was quite attached (unhealthily) and enmeshed with him during that period. but similar to what you said, i never could fully trust my T either, partially because of his own insecurities that he brought into our relationship, often mentioning how he felt like he 'had to walk on eggshells', so not to upset me or the 'delicate' balance of our relationship. as much as i tried to make it work and come to trust him, things like this and also his inconsistencies got in the way all too often to where i couldn't feel safe enough in myself to fully let him in.

sorry to hear that your sleep has not been good. improvements in my sleep was the first positive improvement for me and it started happening within the first two weeks of starting NFB. prior to the NFB, my sleep was quite broken and i maybe got a total of 4 hours of sleep a night. i always woke in the early AM (3am was the musing hour for me) and my mind would race and race for an hour or two. plus i was so hyper-vigilant, any slight noise, movement, or light would startle me awake with panic and a racing heart.

hopefully, if you can get your sleep sorted, it should help to improve other aspects of your life.

just wondering, and i'm hoping that your practitioner would have asked you this prior to starting your NFB, but have you ever had any physical head injury, maybe a severe knock to your head or did you suffer any physical abuse as a child where you may have been hit on the head? i recall Sebern discussing that people who have physical/traumatic brain injuries do not respond well or can have odd reactions to NFB in those regions where the injury occurred.

as i said above, i started seeing positive results in the first two weeks of starting and i was doing 3 sessions a week in the begining. we started with C4 to find a frequency that felt calming and good and did this for about 6 sessions. then we soon moved to T3-T4 and P4-T4 and would do a little training at both those sites for a session. of all the sites i did training at, i responded very well at either P4 alone and at P4-T4. i felt that these were my 'sweet spots' and probably did the most training overall at these sites.

i hope your practitioner can help you find something son that will begin to work well for you too. glad to hear you are not giving up hope yet.

hang in there

I trained last night, and didn't feel sick or have a headache! When I trained earlier in the week at C4 again, I was still getting headaches and feeling sick for most of the next day, which really sucked. I was preparing for that again today...

This time it was C3, and a slightly lower frequency again.

I am incredibly tired though... still not sleeping great, and I had trouble falling asleep last night, I think because I was so excited to not feel terrible after the training !

re: Your last T... oh yikes. I understand, about not being able to imagine your life without that connection. Although I don't think I had a good connection with this T, I had thought about quitting, and worried that it would leave me without anyone to talk to. So, I was sort of trying to hang on to that, at least until the NFB could work.

But in that moment, I just realized that... nope, this isn't going to work.

I'm still thinking through it though, mostly because the thought of trying to do therapy with the threat of abandonment ("if you don't meet the goals, in the time frame, I'll refer you out") - seems insane to me. I don't know how anyone can have a healthy therapy relationship like that?

I also wish that I could figure this stuff out faster... it sucks to have spent the money for a year and a half of therapy and to have it end like this, I wish I could get to the point where I can confidently figure it out in the first few months.

Wow! Yes - this is so familiar to me! I had a previous T, my very first T, who thought that I hated him, because I wasn't really "opening up". It was so frustrating, because me not being able to trust him and dive into my stuff wasn't really about him, it was about me, and he just didn't get that. And, looking back, I don't understand how a therapist could not get that - it seems really basic!

This is the stuff though that gives me hope for the NFB! I feel like some of this has to be... brain-based? Because of the way my brain reacts when I get anywhere near thinking about the trauma, it just doesn't lend itself to talking through... but if I can strengthen the resiliency in my brain so that it doesn't feel like walking through a minefield of triggery stuff... that's got to be helpful.

Thanks for telling me about your experiences with sleep and NFB! I still feel like things got better... at some point in that first week or two... there was definite improvement, so I hope that I can get back to that!

Did you also ever have... I think they're called "hypnogogic hallucinations"? It's when you think you hear a sound (or sometimes see or feel something) right as you're falling asleep or waking up (in that "in between" state) - that is alarming, so you jolt awake?

I get those sometimes, though now that I know what they are I don't panic as much and try to just go back to sleep. It's a really weird experience, but I'm totally expecting that to decrease/disappear with the NFB.

He asked about it when we talked through the QEEG, because the QEEG showed something like a 95% chance that I had some sort of injury (???) which is kind of alarming, but he said that it's overestimated and unless I had something specific, or a history of sports, that he tended to not believe it.

I'm really not sure re: childhood stuff, lots of holes... there are a couple things that could have been problematic, and a couple falls as an adult. Nothing that's ever been enough of a problem to get diagnosed though.

And, you're right! I remember reading that too...

Thanks again for sharing how your experience started and progressed! It's really helpful to be able to hear another perspective on it... I haven't tried P4 yet or T3, T4. Hopefully those go better.

I think my next protocol is to combine the two that I just did (C3 first, then C4). I'm probably going to ask him about that though - since C4 didn't feel great last time, but C3 didn't cause any problems. I'd rather just repeat the one that didn't leave me struggling to function the next day

Thanks!