Unconventional Strategies for Growth: Neurofeedback Training

Upgrade your brain's hardware just like you would upgrade your phone's.

If you’ve never heard of neurofeedback training, you’re not alone. I only learned about it two years ago, by a total accident, and I wish I had known about it sooner. It would’ve saved me from unnecessary struggles in life (such as depression, anxiety and excessive stress) stemming from inefficient wiring of my brain.

So how did I stumble on it?

I was pregnant with my 3rd kid, worrying about incoming postpartum depression (PPD) that I had experienced with my previous two kiddos, and to be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to experiencing it yet again.

So when I randomly binged this documentary on Netflix, called (Un)Well, on my sofa on a Tuesday evening, the Ayahuasca episode really caught my attention. Specifically, when towards the end of the episode, in a lab, one of the neuroscientists measuring the psychedelic effects on the brain, says something like:

“That one experience can feel like 10 years of therapy”.

Talk therapy is what helped me out massively the first time I had PPD.

And so that testimonial got me hooked—the benefits of 10 years of therapy, and I could do that in one experience, over one weekend?!

Sign me up!

But I was pregnant. I could not and would not consume any psychedelics in that state. I could, however, educate myself on this intriguing topic.

As an analytical, problem-solving and full of interdisciplinary knowledge kind of engineer that I am, I dove into conducting thorough research.

Over the next couple of days, I watched some more documentaries, and read up on the risks of taking psychedelics, and it became more and more clear to me that in order to make an informed decision about whether or not I was going to do it in the future, I’d have to scan my brain somehow and see if I was at risk of having a psychotic outbreak.

I continued my research and stumbled upon neurofeedback training.

The first step of the training?

Doing a brain scan and a map!

General Overview

I’ve scheduled an initial free call with Melanie, the director of a local biofeedback clinic located in beautiful North Carolina, about 30 minutes from my house, on the following Wednesday.

In that call, I learned that neurofeedback, also called EEG biofeedback, has a wide range of applications. Starting with sleep issues, ADHD, depression, anxiety, pain management, PTSD, learning disabilities, migraines, memory issues, brain fog, addictions, etc.

But it’s not just used for problems stemming from dysregulated brain activity.

Turns out, top athletes use neurofeedback to improve their peak performance! While students, as well as older people often use it to enhance their cognitive abilities (such as improved attention, focus, memory, information processing, executive function, etc.).

Neurofeedback works in these various cases because it improves brain functions. It essentially trains the brain to regulate itself better and work more efficiently.

So, it sounded like if I did the neurofeedback training, I could not only improve my brain’s function to avoid having postpartum depression alltogether, I could also use it to become a much better performer, and my cognitive abilities would get a boost!

My inner overachiever got really excited.

And yes. Based on my brain scan and map, Melanie was also able to share with me if I’m more likely or less likely to experience a psychotic outbreak after consuming psychedelics. There were no guarantees, but I wanted to know my odds.

So I pulled the trigger.

I enrolled in the brain mapping process and the neurofeedback training.

Here’s How It Looked Like For Me

I’ve done therapy and coaching prior to doing the neurofeedback training.

And it felt very complementary—in therapy and coaching, I updated the software of my brain (thoughts, beliefs, and various patterns of behavior), while neurofeedback helped efficiently update its hardware (since it targeted the brain’s actual physical structure, helping it rewire itself).

It really seemed like upgrading my phone. Not only did I install new software updates, but I also got myself a better hardware. And, especially, the hardware update part was soooooooo easy. All I had to do is show up to my sessions. Unlike therapy, there's no need to talk about the past! Literally, I’d just pick a movie, get the sensors on my head, and watch the movie I picked. That’s it. Easy.

It took about 40ish sessions of neurofeedback training to address and improve 10 out of 55 Brodmann areas that were initially not optimal, as well as improve the overall efficiency of my brain. 

Brain Efficiency

I could tell my brain wasn’t as efficient anymore, as I’d get these headaches in the evenings. In college, I was able to focus and work at night, no matter the workload during the day, but since having kids, my brain has changed, and I wasn’t able to focus on work at night anymore.

Based on my brain map, it turned out that the front of my brain worked at 7Hz (7 bits of information processed every second) and the back of my brain worked at 14Hz (double the speed of the front), and so since the information wasn’t moving across my head at the same speeds, I was essentially wasting mental power.

According to research, most optimal adult brains operate at 10-12 Hz (across the entire head). So, part of my brain was kinda slow, and the other part was overworking itself and processing a lot of noise (unnecessary information).

Another thing I learned was that my brain’s wiring was set up in a way that would overstimulate my amygdala (the fight, flee, or freeze response center). And because of that setup, instead of having a resilient and thought-out response to what was happening around me, I’d be triggered most of the time, which further led to the mismanagement of energy and a waste of resources.

And then, on top of that, based on my brain map, my brain tended to be in an excessively high beta state (associated with stress) rather than an alpha state (associated with relaxation and calmness). There was basically not enough relaxation in my brain.

These were the reasons why, on some days, when I exerted a lot of mental effort during the day, I would then feel brain-dead in the evening. The inefficient processing, the non-optimal wiring, and the high beta states all contributed to the gross mismanagement of energy. That mismanagement left my brain depleted and unable to work in the evenings, and I’d get a headache.

Problematic Brodmann Areas

Out of the 55 Brodmann areas, here were 10 of mine that were causing issues and came up in my brain map. Now, keep in mind that every one of these brain areas has a much more complex set of functionalities than what I describe here. I only focus on a few specific examples of how the non-optimal wiring manifested in my life:

• 5L (negative self-talk and self-boundaries): THIS IS partially WHY I would wallow and get stuck in my head instead of taking action to pull myself out. THIS IS also WHY I used to have negative days and wouldn't allow myself to shift my attention; I'd just sit in shitty feelings for days until they passed.

• 6R (verbal expression and boundaries with others): THIS IS WHY sometimes I had a hard time finding the right words to respond immediately in a conversation. THIS IS also WHY I used to put myself last and prioritized doing things that mattered to other people, sometimes feeling over-responsibility for others.

• 7R (reaction to the external environment): THIS IS WHY I had trouble adapting to big changes in my life and experienced complicated grief when moving abroad, and perhaps that's what triggered PPD after the first pregnancy.

• 7L (reaction to the internal environment): THIS IS WHY I used to drop everything when I was hungry and I’d eat.

• 7R & 7L combo (crucial for adaptability): THIS IS WHY I had trouble sticking to a routine, and I loved a flexible, always-changing schedule.

• 9R (letting go and self-soothing): THIS IS WHY I wasn’t able to easily let go, and also, THIS IS WHY I wasn’t able to self-soothe easily and fell into depression or depressive states in the past.

• 10L (procrastination and sequencing steps to plan things out, starting and getting stuck): THIS IS why I used to feel overwhelmed, slowed down, exhausted, and flat and wasn’t able to pull myself together to take action on important things I wanted to get done (this area was particularly stress-sensitive, and so even just stressful thoughts would trigger procrastination).

• 11 (following urges): THIS IS WHY, without negative mental whip (mean and negative self-talk), I would just do whatever I felt like doing, regardless of the consequences, be it bingeing shows or eating a whole pack of chips by myself.

• 19R (getting stuck or fixated on an idea or way of thinking): THIS IS WHY, after a fight, I wasn’t able to stop thinking about how it went. I was unable to switch my gears and think about something else.

• 38L (being bothered by little things, but also anxiety and lack of belonging): THIS IS WHY I overreacted with my kids when I was tired or stressed, and THIS IS WHY I would blow up and get very defensive in fights or conversations in which I felt attacked. THIS IS also WHY I felt like I didn’t exactly fit into and belonged to any sort of community.

• auditory L (misinterpretation of intent, irritating sounds): THIS IS WHY when my husband said something that would rub me the wrong way, I’d start a fight. THIS IS also WHY certain sounds would drive me mad, and I was unable to ignore them.

Melanie and I reviewed my results and discussed in detail how my brain worked. Understanding how my behaviors were linked to the hardware of my brain and why certain scenarios kept repeating in my life allowed me to pay attention to these sorts of situations. I wanted to see if my response after the sessions had changed.

For example, based on my Brodmann area 38, as Melanie explained it, I was initially a canoe in the ocean, easily flipped over by little waves, little things would get to me quickly. My goal in neurofeedback training was to become a cruise ship instead—resilient and not bothered by tiny waves.

With a clear understanding of what needed to be addressed, I followed the roadmap laid out for me by Melanie and did the sessions she recommended.

My sessions

I did three kinds of neurofeedback sessions. The first one used the hemodynamic method to fix specific areas, the second type used the infralow method (ILF) to improve the brain's overall efficiency, and the third one was alpha-theta crossover sessions that offer psychedelic-like states without consuming anything.

The hemodynamic sessions basically encourage blood flow to the specific parts of the brain that were underperforming (that I listed above) so the brain could then repair these parts during sleep’s repair phase at night. Melanie mentioned it was like bringing building materials to a building site. Once the materials were provided, the master builders could fix what wasn’t working.

Before switching to the infralow sessions, I wanted to know how various areas of the brain responded to the neurofeedback training, so I requested a follow-up brain map. 7 out of 10 areas dramatically improved after 20 sessions, and only 3 areas (the auditory L, 7R, and 38L) needed some more hemodynamic sessions and training.

The infralow sessions focused on training the brain by using extremely slow brainwaves (below 0.1 Hz, in my case around 0.007Hz). These waves are thought to underpin the brain's foundational regulatory processes.

In these sessions, as Melanie explained to me, we were training my brain’s conductor of the orchestra so that all parts of the brain could function in harmony, be synchronized in their activity, producing a coherent, stable, and efficient background music of the brain (rather than a dysregulated cacophony of sounds creating incoherent signals, which seemed to be my brain’s case).

By harmonizing brainwave activity across different regions, the infralow sessions trained my brain to be more coherent, synchronized, and efficient in processing information. These sessions teach the brain how to regulate its overall activity, be efficient, and keep everything in balance.

Then there are the alpha-theta crossover sessions, also called deep state. I did 3 of them. Alpha-theta crossover is a type of session in which the brain is encouraged to transition between alpha and theta brainwave states. This crossover is associated with profound relaxation, creativity, and introspective experiences similar to those reported during psychedelic experiences. This way, I could satisfy my curiosity and experience how a psychedelic trip feels without having to consume anything.

In the first alpha-theta crossover, I didn’t experience the crossover part. It was really hard for me to turn off my internal mental chatter and relax, let go, and immerse myself in the experience. Part of it was that I scheduled this session early on (around my 10th session out of the 40ish), so my brain had a whole lot of issues to fix before I could really benefit from the deep-state sessions. So, with the 2nd and 3rd sessions, which I scheduled much later in the process, I was able to experience more of the expanded state of consciousness. In my 2nd, it was maybe 20 seconds. In the 3rd, it was about 2 minutes.

The 2 minutes, were not much compared to the 4 hours I spent tripping on a psychedelic (which is what my next article is going to be about), but it gave me a good insight into what to expect (on top of really valuable insights I got from those particular sessions themselves).

My results

It’s hard to summarize in detail how the improved hardware of my brain affected my life.

This is partly because I’m still discovering the positive effects it had on my life, its quality, my relationships, and my overall health (both mental and physical). Another part is that it compounded the positive effects of other things I’ve done in my life to improve it (like talk therapy and coaching), so it’s hard to separate the effects and attribute them to neurofeedback only.

However, here are some specifics that I noticed immediately following my sessions.

My blood pressure dropped from 120/80 (which it had been throughout my entire adult life) to 100/60. My hands aren’t shaking after coffee like they used to. I don’t drop things randomly as I used to. My neck and shoulders don’t tense up as they used to.

I became much calmer, less stressed out, and less anxious. My patience (especially with my kids) has increased dramatically, and that’s definitely due to how much more efficient my brain has become in processing information.

For example, I used to feel a visceral response to certain sounds, like my baby crying. It felt like an adrenaline rush, so I'd immediately drop everything and take care of the crying baby. But since the neurofeedback training rewired my brain, reducing the reliance on my amygdala, my body’s response was no longer that intense. I don't feel the alarm sounding in my body anymore.

As an experiment, I stopped drinking coffee, which I'm pretty sure I was just addicted to. Stopping it was unbelievably easy because I haven't had any cravings for it like I would in the past, which felt incredible. Since the neurofeedback, I've been making much healthier dietary choices with relative ease (and I've tried this before, but it definitely wasn't easy, and new healthy eating patterns didn't seem to stick).

Also, my auditories definitely improved ‘cause even my husband (without me asking!) noticed and complimented my “sudden lack of bitchy-ness”.

Last but not least, I have my brain back in the evenings! I can do things in the evening that require focus, attention, and mental effort because my brain’s resources are no longer being wasted throughout the day.

This neurofeedback training has been transformational, so much so that I decided to send all my kids in for it. (Once I write it, I will link to an article describing how the neurofeedback and it’s effect looked like for my 5-year-old son, who we suspected might have ADHD.)

Summary

Discovering neurofeedback training was a game-changer for me. Even tho I learned about it by accident (while researching psychedelics), I was very deliberate about going through the sessions and improving my brain’s function.

After all, the brain is at the center of everything you think or do, so if you can improve the brain, everything else improves, too.

And, indeed, improving my brain’s hardware positively affected so many aspects of my life! From the physical changes (like less muscle tension in my body) to increased mental well-being (because I’m not constantly triggered anymore) and becoming more efficient (and able to use my brain at night).

But most importantly it was easy. Just like upgrading my phone’s hardware (you pay, show up to the store, set it up, and it’s done!). All I had to do was pay for my sessions, show up, and watch a movie (while my brain was trained to improve itself).

Neurofeedback is a powerful tool.

If you had gone through neurofeedback sessions, let me know in the comments how it looked like for you? If you haven’t, I’m curious, what’s stopping you?

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