Neurofeedback Training in Treating PTSD.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a condition that occurs after a life-threatening traumatic event. Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is frequently associated with military personnel, veterans, police officers, emergency personnel, and people who have faced life-threatening situations, the disorder can be triggered by any overwhelming experience.
Traumatic events overwhelm the brain’s capacity to cope, resulting in lasting stress injuries on our nervous system. Just as a physical injury to your knee can cause limping, a stress injury from PTSD can result in emotional and psychological challenges.
What are the types of childhood trauma, and what are some examples of them?
Childhood trauma is a traumatic event that occurs before an individual reaches the age of 18. Trauma during a child’s developmental years alters brain development, resulting in problems in many areas of the child’s life. This broad definition can encompass various types of trauma, but Adverse Childhood Experiences are divided into four major categories. Examples of childhood trauma include physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. Each of these experiences can have long-lasting effects on a child’s mental and emotional well-being, impacting their ability to form healthy relationships and cope with stress in adulthood.
Childhood trauma alters a person’s ability to connect with others. It can cause feelings of shame or a lack of self-worth, leading to unhealthy relationships. They may also struggle with mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. These challenges can manifest in various ways, affecting a person’s ability to function in their daily life. For some, this may manifest as unhealthy attachments with inappropriate people.
Others may perceive it as a complete avoidance of relationships. For example, a person who experienced childhood trauma may find themselves repeatedly getting into toxic relationships where they are mistreated, but feel unable to leave due to feelings of low self-worth.
On the other hand, another individual may isolate themselves from forming any close connections out of fear of being hurt or abandoned. Seeking therapy and support can help individuals process their trauma and learn healthy coping mechanisms to improve their overall well-being. It is important for those who have experienced childhood trauma to know that healing is possible and that they are not alone in their journey towards recovery.
In childhood, you learn to process emotions healthily by attaching the appropriate emotional response to an external stimulus. Childhood trauma can make it difficult to form these connections. This can make it challenging for adults to determine the appropriate responses to experiences. Individuals may experience rapid shifts in emotions or feel overwhelmed by anxiety. Childhood abuse is associated with depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders.
Childhood trauma can make it challenging for adults to handle stressful situations due to substance abuse and dependence. As a result, people frequently turn to food, drugs, or alcohol as a coping mechanism. These substances are used to cope with intense emotional reactions triggered by people or situations.
Experiencing a chronic disease in childhood can physically affect the adult body, raising the likelihood of chronic health issues.
Because childhood trauma is extremely traumatizing, some people’s brains “forget” the trauma as a coping mechanism. The brain pushes the memory down into the unconscious so that you can go about your daily life. Even if you suppress the trauma, it can still affect your behaviour.
This can lead to a vicious cycle of dependency and further health complications. Without proper support and coping mechanisms, adults who have experienced childhood trauma may struggle to maintain healthy relationships and engage in self-destructive behaviors. It is important for individuals who have experienced childhood trauma to seek therapy and support in order to address and overcome the lasting effects of their past experiences. By addressing these issues head-on, individuals can begin to heal and break free from the cycle of trauma and self-destructive behaviors.
What are the common adult symptoms of childhood trauma, and how do they manifest in individuals?
Four symptom clusters define PTSD: re-experiencing the traumatic event, avoidance of trauma-related stimuli, general mood and cognition changes, and hyperarousal. Childhood trauma can reverberate into adulthood, influencing your behaviours, relationships, and coping skills. Adults are affected differently by the effects of childhood trauma. It may imply avoiding close relationships or triggering situations for some. Others experience symptoms in the form of addictions or severe depression. The one thing these effects have in common is that they all cause distress to the person who is experiencing them.
What is hidden childhood trauma, and how does it manifest in individuals’ lives?
Relational childhood trauma frequently refers to physical and sexual abuse. Still, it can also refer to covert forms of mistreatment such as abandonment, enmeshment, parent-child role reversal, verbal abuse, love withdrawal, and many other forms of emotional abuse. Relational trauma can be challenging to recognize for children, caregivers, and outside observers. Even parents can see their less-than-nurturing behaviour as “normal” and even in the best interests of their children. This allows the mistreatment to continue for much of childhood and even into adulthood, subtly affecting emotional development. This is when adults repeat patterns of entering an unhealthy or violent relationship without understanding why or how.
Is it Possible for Adults to Overcome Childhood Trauma?
The consequences of childhood trauma can feel overwhelming in adulthood. Fortunately, therapy can help people recover from childhood trauma. Trauma therapy can assist you in identifying potentially triggering events, situations, or people. It can also help you learn to develop coping mechanisms to help you deal with the effects and symptoms of trauma healthily.
Therapy can provide a safe space for individuals to explore and process their past experiences, allowing them to make sense of how their childhood trauma continues to impact their lives. By addressing and working through these unresolved issues, adults can begin to heal and break free from the cycle of unhealthy relationships and emotional struggles. With the support and guidance of a skilled therapist, it is possible for adults to overcome childhood trauma and lead fulfilling, empowered lives.
Treatment for PTSD
Fortunately, there are effective treatments available for people who have PTSD as a result of childhood trauma. Recent research has revealed that the brain is more malleable than neuroscientists believed. Neurobiological pathways that have become disorganized as a result of relational trauma injuries can be reorganized through the use of appropriate treatment techniques. These treatments often involve a combination of therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes.
Therapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, can help individuals process and cope with their trauma. Medications, such as antidepressants or anti-anxiety drugs, can help manage symptoms like anxiety and depression. Lifestyle changes, such as exercise, healthy eating, and stress management techniques, can also play a role in managing PTSD symptoms. Overall, with the right treatment and support, individuals with PTSD from childhood trauma can learn to manage their symptoms and live fulfilling lives. For example, a person who experienced childhood abuse may benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy to reframe negative thought patterns and EMDR to process traumatic memories.
Additionally, medications like SSRIs can help alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety, while incorporating regular exercise and relaxation techniques into their routine can promote overall well-being and resilience.
Neurofeedback Training
Neurofeedback training is a method that helps train your brain. The effectiveness of neurofeedback has been studied for four decades. It is possible to consider neurofeedback training the most successful little-known method to improve brain health. This potent therapy alleviates a wide range of symptoms related to a wide range of conditions by using operant conditioning or reinforcement. The brain is reinforced for changing its behavior through the neurofeedback process. You can use computers to reward the subconscious with visual and auditory cues. But, by using computers, one is reinforced for unknowingly altering their brain waves.
Neurofeedback is a promising alternative or complementary approach for treating PTSD symptoms without causing undue distress. Neurofeedback can improve brain activity by monitoring and providing feedback on brain signals, which help regulate brain functions in real-time. Repeatedly inducing PTSD-related brain activity during feedback sessions may alter the frequency with which it appears spontaneously after feedback sessions.
Traditional neurofeedback primarily rewards the brain with pleasant sounds or images to encourage the brain to have calm, regulated responses. This type of reinforcement can help the brain learn to maintain a state of relaxation and reduce the frequency and intensity of PTSD symptoms. By utilizing neurofeedback, individuals may experience improvements in their overall well-being and quality of life. Additionally, neurofeedback can be a safe and non-invasive treatment option for those seeking relief from the debilitating effects of PTSD.
In other words, a person who has experienced a traumatic event may undergo neurofeedback therapy to help reduce their PTSD symptoms. During the sessions, the individual’s brain activity is monitored and when it shows signs of relaxation, they may be rewarded with calming sounds or images. Over time, this reinforcement can help retrain the brain to respond more calmly to triggers associated with their trauma, ultimately leading to a reduction in their PTSD symptoms.
The effectiveness of neurofeedback training (NFT) on children who have experienced developmental trauma:
Children who have experienced developmental trauma rarely respond satisfactorily to currently available evidence-based psychotherapeutic and pharmacological interventions. NFT is a clinical application of brain-computer interface technology that aims to change electrical brain activity associated with various mental dysfunctions. NFT has shown promise in alleviating the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by using child friendly, no threatening audio-visual rewards in the form of games to teach the person to self-regulate.
NFT has been particularly effective in helping children with developmental trauma learn how to regulate their emotions and reactions to triggers. By engaging in these fun and interactive games, children are able to retrain their brains and develop healthier coping mechanisms. This innovative approach offers a new and potentially more effective way to treat the lasting effects of developmental trauma in children.
Neurofeedback therapy is an alternative or complementary treatment option for symptoms of childhood abuse, complex trauma, and PTSD. It sends information to the brain, which aids in regulating the body’s autonomic stress response. Chronic Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) dysregulation is one of the conditions commonly seen in PTSD, and it means that we have lost the ability to control how we respond to our environment.
When a person’s life is threatened, they experience intense fear or sustain a physical injury. Their bodies react by shifting to sympathetic nervous system dominance, known as the “fight, flight, or freeze” response. When a person has experienced a number of traumatic events in their life, they may become accustomed to living in a constant state of sympathetic arousal or its inverse: chronic parasympathetic response, or shut-down. Complex trauma, such as that caused by subtler forms of emotional abuse and neglect, can be equally destabilizing for individuals.
Benefits of Neurofeedback Training in PTSD
A. Improved Emotional Regulation
B. Improved Cognitive Functioning
C. Reduced Anxiety and Stress
Final Thoughts:
Adult PTSD due to childhood trauma is a condition that can be effectively treated by neurofeedback therapy or brain training. Below is the list of benefits that can be achieved through neurofeedback training in PTSD.
- Improved Emotional Regulation: Neurofeedback therapy helps individuals regulate their emotions more effectively, reducing symptoms of emotional dysregulation commonly associated with PTSD.
- Enhanced Cognitive Functioning: Neurofeedback training can lead to improvements in cognitive function, such as attention, memory, and executive functioning, which may be impaired in individuals with PTSD.
- Reduced Anxiety and Stress: Neurofeedback therapy has been shown to decrease levels of anxiety and stress by promoting relaxation and reducing hyperarousal of the nervous system, common symptoms of PTSD.
- Decreased Hypervigilance: Neurofeedback training can help individuals with PTSD reduce hypervigilance, allowing them to feel more calm and secure in their environment.
- Improved Sleep Quality: Neurofeedback therapy has been found to promote better sleep quality by regulating brainwave patterns associated with sleep disturbances often experienced by individuals with PTSD.
- Enhanced Resilience: Through neurofeedback training, individuals can develop greater resilience to stress and trauma, enabling them to cope more effectively with triggers and traumatic memories.
- Long-lasting Results: Neurofeedback therapy offers lasting benefits, as it targets the underlying neural mechanisms contributing to PTSD symptoms, leading to sustainable improvements in overall mental health and well-being.
At The Insight Clinic in Barrie and Whitby offices, we offer innovative, science-backed neurofeedback treatments, designed to empower you on your healing journey.
Ready to rewrite your story? Contact us now to learn more and schedule your consultation.
