Author Archives: Tamera

When Is One Hypnosis Session Appropriate?       

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Almost all hypnosis professionals will say that one session of hypnosis is not enough to achieve permanent change. In my philosophy of work, we usually tell people to expect four-to-six sessions. However, sometimes there are reasons to only do one session:

Because They Want to Explore Hypnosis. Some folks are not convinced that they can be hypnotized and want to experiment with the process by scheduling just one session before mentally committing themselves to proceeding with a full round of hypnosis work. (Note: I never obligate anyone to do more than one session at a time, but I do explain that multiple sessions are usually necessary to make significant and lasting changes.) I am happy to do a one-time session for those who want to see what it’s like before jumping in to deeper work. Dabblers are welcome, as long as they are serious.

Because They Want to Release Stress After a Rough Patch. Sometimes, people just want to relax after a bad day or stressful season in their lives. Hypnosis can be a way to achieve deep relaxation. If a person does not want to do further work, that is okay with me, even if it is not my preferred way of practicing.

Because They Are Exceptions to the Rule. I have worked with a few people–though really only a few people–who have achieved their goals in just one hypnosis session. I do not encourage people to stop after just one time, but I also have to admit that these individuals got what they hoped for quickly. In checking with them later, they also hung on to their changes. These folks are the exception to the rule. They were already pretty high-flying in terms of their self-care and lifestyle habits, so their bodies only needed a slight push to make big changes.

If you are interested in trying hypnosis, give me a call or schedule a consultation. We can talk about what your needs might be. Keep in mind that unless you meet one of the above categories, you can expect that changes through hypnosis will involve multiple sessions.

Can Neurons Rewire Themselves?

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Neuroscientists from Johns Hopkins University and Cambridge University say that our understanding of brains rewiring themselves may be incorrect. According to an article published in Science Alert, current research does not prove the theory that the brain rewires or reorganizes itself by repurposing regions of the brain. Instead, these two argue in eLife, the brain changes by relying on neural connections that either are under-utilized or lay dormant.

This fascinating argument does not undermine the idea that neurofeedback may be learning for the brain, but it does make more fragile the notion that neurofeedback causes the brain to create new functions that were not present before.

More research will be required on this subject, and it is guaranteed to be exciting for those who are interested in neuroscience.

You may read the interesting Science Alert article here and the eLife article here.

Depression Does Not Cause Depression

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A Finnish study, published in the journal Psychopathology in June 2024 and summarized in Neuroscience News, indicates that health organizations contribute to the mistaken idea that depression causes symptoms rather than simply describing them. The study argues that inaccurately portraying descriptive psychiatric diagnoses as causes creates confusion and has harmful consequences.

Here in the United States, a committee of psychiatrists created the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, or DSM. Mental health and medical professionals use the manual as the basis of diagnosing their patients and clients. Each category is a description of symptoms that the committee has reached consensus upon, and if a person meets enough criteria for a particular descriptive label, then the provider can issue a diagnosis using that category. In other words, depression is the word we use to describe a collection of symptoms such as low mood, low energy, loss of interest in daily activities, etc.

However, depression is not causative—depression does not cause depression—and the authors of this study are calling out this misleading practice.

If this confuses you, consider depression as the word we’ve all decided upon to use when we mean someone has a collection of symptoms, just as we use the word fever to describe elevated body temperature. Having a depression diagnosis does not mean that your depression caused you to feel depressed, just as having a fever isn’t the cause of the fever–something else was the cause.

It’s easy to imagine this confusion relates to most mental health criteria, but the study only explored public health organization usage of the word depression.

You may find the Neuroscience News summary here. An abstract of the study is here. A description of depression criteria is here.

How Many Hypnosis Sessions Do I Need?

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Usually, one of the first questions I am asked when someone calls to inquire about hypnosis is how many sessions it will take to help them achieve their goals.

People tend to have this idea that hypnosis can—practically miraculously—create changes after just one session. It is true that changes can begin immediately. That is one of the things I love best about hypnosis; one can begin to feel differently or better right after their first session.

However, I believe that long-lasting change almost always requires more than one session. I personally adhere to a methodology called 5-PATH, or Five-Phase Advanced Transformational Hypnosis. Using this proven system to provide huge changes, I find that most clients need four-to-six sessions to create change and have it stick.

There are times when clients may require more than six sessions, but that is almost always for more complex situations.

Hypnosis sessions are best done sequentially, and closely together. I usually recommend a 5-7 gap between sessions to allow the gains one has made to show up in daily life. It is not usually a good idea to have too much space between sessions. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but I discourage gaps of two weeks or more.

There are limited times when one session might be enough, but they do not involve making huge changes. I will discuss those special situations in my next post.

If you are thinking of doing hypnosis with me and are committed to making a big change in your life, plan on four-to-six sessions. I offer in-person and online sessions, so even if you’re not in the metro-Washington, DC area, you may work with me.

Theta Brainwaves Associated with Depression

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According to research out of Beijing Institute of Technology that was summarized in Neuroscience News and published in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, a Science Partner Journal, activity in the brain’s amygdala is associated with depression. The Chinese researchers found that increased theta-wave activity in an area called the basolateral amygdala is associated with anhedonia, a core symptom of depression. The research was done on rats but believed to be promising for treating depression in humans.

Not included in the study but of note is that training the amygdala is a standard technique in the type of neurofeedback that embraces whole-brain training.

The Neuroscience News summary is available here. The journal article is available in English here.

Neurofeedback for Entrepreneurs and Business Executives

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The online magazine Fast Company recently posted an article about how neurofeedback is becoming a popular tool for entrepreneurs to use to enhance their work performance and reduce stress.

For some, regular, twice-weekly sessions get them where they want to be in just a few months. Others are more impatient and looking to enhance their skill set and dial down their stress responses almost immediately. For them, intensive training–usually five days a week–can get them where they want to be in just a few weeks.

Some neurofeedback practitioners market to entrepreneurs and offer very expensive training packages. While nice, it is not necessary to pay tens of thousands of dollars for what can be an affordable tool.

If you are an entrepreneur seeking to keep your functioning positive or wish to optimize your performance in any way, set up a consultation with me to find out more about how neurofeedback works and whether it might be the right next tool for you to use.

Brainwaves Help Clean Brain During Sleep

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A study published on Feb 28th in the journal Nature and reported on in Neuroscience News indicates that electrical brainwave activity plays a key role in flushing waste out of the brain during sleep. We have long known that during sleep, the brain clears out metabolic waste through a process called autophagy, but scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have found that neurons themselves help with this process.

Cerebrospinal fluid collects brain waste as it flows through the brain. Researchers found that neurons firing in coordinated, slow ways create waves that propel the movement of cerebrospinal fluid and therefore help with the cleansing process. It is believed that this process helps prevent neurodegenerative diseases.

You may read the Neuroscience News report on the study here. The study’s abstract is here, where you can also access the full study behind a pay wall.

To learn more about the importance of cleaning waste from the brain during sleep, you may find an open-access study, Impact of Sleep on Autophagy and Neurodegenerative Disease: Sleeping Your Mind Clear, here.

Neurofeedback and ADHD

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Dutch researcher and neurofeedback practitioner Dr. Martijn Arns is well-respected internationally for his work on creating more methodologically sound examinations of the efficacy of neurofeedback. As long ago as 2009, he published an analysis indicating that neurofeedback benefits those who have focus and attention problems. He and his co-authors wrote: “we conclude that neurofeedback treatment for ADHD can be considered “Efficacious and Specific” (Level 5) with a large ES for inattention and impulsivity and a medium ES for hyperactivity.”

Since then, of course, more work has been done to underscore neurofeedback’s benefits—including NIH-funded work—but Dr. Arns’s work continues to stand out. You may access the abstract here, and the entire text of the meta-analysis is available behind a paywall.

Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind

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Although I’ve written and rewritten an appropriate first sentence for this blog several times now, I cannot get past some version of, “You guys! You gotta read this book!” I like to talk, and I like to write, so if I am struggling to find the superlative words to express how important a book is, you know something monumental is afoot.

Truly, I wish I could persuade everyone I know to read or listen to Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Georgia Ede’s new book, Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind: A Powerful Plan to Improve Mood, Overcome Anxiety, and Protect Memory for a Lifetime of Optimal Mental Health. It teaches that nutrition matters when it comes to brain health, and that changing one’s diet can dramatically improve one’s mental health.  Dr. Ede doesn’t simply assert that one must give up the Standard American Diet of ultra-processed foods in order to attain better mental well-being, she explains the hows and whys in ways that are interesting and easy to understand.

Practically every chapter had new information for me, but here are a few points that were particularly striking:

Most of us are aware that nutritional information available to the lay person is often confusing and contradictory. Dr. Ede explains that this is because too many nutrition studies are based on survey information—asking a person how many servings of broccoli they ate in the past month, for example. They are notoriously unreliable, but they are simple to conduct. Better-constructed studies still have methodological flaws. For example, testing whole-wheat flour against white flour instead of testing whole-wheat flour against no wheat at all leads to different results on the value of whole-wheat flour.

What this means is that when one removes epidemiological studies (the survey type) and biased or poorly constructed studies from the literature, there is no contradiction in what the optimal human diet should be. Many popular dietary approaches simply are not evidence-based and rely instead on emotions and popularity. Learning this was definitely a light-bulb moment for me. I’ve always wondered why there is so much noise, so much emotion and political posturing, and not enough factual information when it comes to nutrition.

There is also a growing understanding of what a healthy diet should not be, and a healthy diet should not be heavy on sugars that help create insulin resistance in the body. Dr. Ede explains that so many mental health issues are the result of insulin resistance in the brain and body.  In fact, the concept that reversing insulin resistance can result in improved mental, not just physical, health is the key idea in her book. If you take nothing else away from this blog post or her book, hold on to the idea that reversing insulin resistance and becoming metabolically healthy (only 10% of us are metabolically healthy) will resolve so many health issues

There is no such thing as superfoods; it is all marketing hype. Common sense tells us this, but again, so many articles suggest that superfoods will save us. Not so, says Dr. Ede. For example, Dr. Ede indicates that the idea of polyphenols (plant chemicals) and antioxidants aren’t scientifically solid as a way of improving human health. Blueberries may be delicious, for example, but there are no good studies that show them to be super or exceptionally beneficial in any way. In fact, Dr. Ede points out that the USDA quietly debunked the idea that antioxidants are important to human health back in 2012.

Another non-superfood example she provides is the story of and controversy around red wine. Dr. Ede notes that the antioxidant resveratrol slows skin cancers in mice, but in human studies did nothing to help people with mild to moderate dementia. And, those studies about the benefits of red wine? Well, humans would need to drink 500 bottles of wine to get the lowest dosage used in any of the mice studies.

I could go on and on with fascinating bits of information, but the bottom line is that Dr. Ede shows us that eating real, mildly processed food (chopped, cooked, pressed) is the way to go. Seriously, if you want to know how to lessen anxiety or depression, or to minimize symptoms of more serious mental illness, read or listen to what Dr. Ede has to say on the subject.

P.S. If you really want to dive deep, another Harvard-trained psychiatrist, Dr. Chris Palmer, has also written on the subject of food and mental health. You can learn more about his book, Brain Energy, here: https://brainshapeva.com/brain-energy/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Connection Matters

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Neurofeedback is a challenge to learn to do and takes years to master, but its essence is straightforward: learn the sites on the scalp where training is conducted and what brain functions lie beneath each individual address, learn the software, then discern where and how to provide training for each individual.

It’s straightforward enough that dedicated people can learn to do neurofeedback at home for themselves or a loved one when, for whatever reason, coming to an office for training is not an option.

Here’s the funny thing, though: I’ve had people come to me for training after working with other providers, and they get different results when training with me. I’ve had home trainers who are perfectly smart and capable at brain training tell me they don’t get the same results at home as they do when coming to my office for a few sessions. (I see photos and videos of what they’re doing, so I KNOW it’s right.)

There shouldn’t be a difference. It’s the same or similar technology. The same spots on the scalp. The same set of rewards.

Yet, the outcomes are not the same.

The reason why eluded me for a while, but I think I understand now.

When in graduate school for counseling, one of the things I learned was that no matter what type of counseling was done under what theoretical umbrella, the key factor that led to client improvement was the client-therapist relationship. That doesn’t mean that theory and practice do not matter; of course they do. But, human connection is the common thread that leads to progress in psychotherapy.

Even though they are not the same, I suspect that the same thing is true for neurofeedback as it is for mental health counseling—relationships matter.

In theory, neurofeedback works based on holding an electronic mirror up to the brain, then allowing the brain to make adjustments based on what it “sees.” This involves attaching electrodes, using an EEG device to measure brainwaves, then using software to reward change. It all sounds mechanistic and without a human element.

Increasingly, I’m not so sure about that. I think the person doing the training matters. I think their connection and encouragement matters.

Why wouldn’t it, when human connection matters in most other aspects of life?

I don’t want to overstate the idea. It doesn’t mean that an unskilled practitioner will get good results just because you like them, and it doesn’t mean that a skilled practitioner won’t get good results simply because you don’t connect with them well. It’s that a good relationship can help optimize good brain training.

I mentioned this to a colleague recently, and her response was to share with me that she’s had people tell her that they start to feel better as soon as they sit down next to her.

She and I don’t have clinical studies to prove this, but it makes sense.  At a time when so many people in our society feel disconnected from each other, a little connection—the feeling that another person truly cares about you and your well-being—matters.

The Ghost in My Brain

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Last week, I had the interesting experience of a book making me mad. I mean, really mad. The title of this remarkable story is The Ghost in my Brain: How a Concussion Stole My Life and How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Helped Me Get it Back, by Clark Elliott, PhD. It’s the memoir of a highly intelligent professor who was rear-ended in a car accident and developed a severe concussion. He had to live with that concussion for eight years before finding the right people to help him heal.

The first thing in the book that made me upset was that first responders told him he was “messed up” and needed to go to the hospital, yet he refused medical treatment, because he thought he was okay. I have first responders in my family, and they know how to assess what’s going on in an emergency situation. They aren’t in a rush to take anyone and everyone to the hospital, so if one of them says you need medical treatment, please listen to the expert and not the stubborn voice in your own head (I say this as a rather stubborn person myself.).

The next thing that made me upset was that I wasn’t reading anything about what neurologists told him to do, and for many pages, I presumed he still wasn’t taking action to get medical care. I thought this because it took him awhile to mention in the memoir that he eventually did seek medical treatment, but when he did, the doctors had no answers for him. More than one neurologist told him that he was just going to have to live with his symptoms, that nothing could be done.

The trouble is that Professor Elliott’s symptoms were debilitating. He had motor difficulties to the point that it sometimes took him hours to walk a block or two. He couldn’t recall his children’s names without significant effort. The mildest of mental effort exhausted him for days, if not weeks. The man functioned at a basic level only because he was incredibly well-educated before the accident, and his intelligence smoothed over the worst effects of his problems.

Finally, I was mad when, at the end, he found the help he so desperately needed. This time, I was angry because it was a chance encounter at a party that led to referrals to a cognitive restructuring specialist and an optometrist who specializes in neuro-optometric rehabilitation. It made no sense to me that he finally got the help he needed due to luck and not due to support from the medical community. These women and their staff rescued Dr. Elliott. They evaluated him and took him through multiple phases of vision therapy, phases that require him to continue to wear specialized glasses but empowered his brain to compensate for the damaged neurons. Why couldn’t anyone have suggested this to him earlier?

I found it frustrating to realize that it took many years, many dead ends, unending determination, and a little luck to help Dr. Elliott find the right fix for his problem. What uplifted me was that there WAS help for him. Twenty years ago, there would’ve been no solutions.

I share this book with you, even though it’s now almost a decade old, because in the end, it’s a message of hope—on one level, that brain science is advancing quickly, and on another level, that no matter what one’s injury might be, there is the possibility that one is not just stuck with the symptoms and problems forever. It’s also a cautionary tale about both listening to first responders and not listening to fatalistic and negative prognoses without getting multiple opinions.

I encourage you to read this book. I am not sharing details of the author’s vision therapy so that you might just read it for yourself. It has a happy ending, but don’t blame me if you get annoyed when you reach the chain saw story about halfway through!

(As always, I am willing to share my books with clients, and I encourage readers who cannot borrow from me or the library to support their local indie bookseller.)

How Long Does Neurofeedback Last?

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In the early 1990s, researchers in Australia were among the first to explore the question of how long neurofeedback training lasts. They assembled a group of 10-year-old boys with a diagnosis of ADHD and provided them with 40 sessions of neurofeedback. Pre- and post-training testing showed that all the boys made great strides in their ability to focus on tasks.

One year later, the researchers re-tested the boys to find out how much backsliding occurred over the course of a year. They were surprised to discover that after 12 months, every one of the boys not only held on to their gains, they performed even better on attention tests than they did in the immediate aftermath of their 40 sessions.

This led researchers and practitioners alike to believe that neurofeedback is a form of learning for the brain. For example, when one first learns to read, sight words are among the first words memorized:  rat, sat, mat, hat, cat. As one continues to practice reading, the reader does not forget those learned words and instead builds on the learning, figuring out more sight words, then two-syllable words, and so on. A typically developing reader makes progress; she does not forget those first words unless there is some kind of emergency that interferes with memory and continued learning.

We believe that it is similar for neurofeedback—people hold on to their gains once they have finished training.

Finish Training. Don’t Stop too Soon.

The assumption behind this, though, is that a person has finished training.

Researchers over the past decade or so has performed testing with fewer and fewer neurofeedback sessions, reporting back that after eight or ten sessions, some sort of change occurs. Unfortunately, that has led to a similar trend over time among practitioners who assert that a trainee can be finished with all neurofeedback training in just a few sessions. The problem with that is that these people have just begun to experience changes and have not necessarily fully integrated them. This means that they require what the field is calling “tune-ups” of 10-20 sessions to re-set the gains that were previously made.

I disagree with this approach. I believe that training should continue until the learning is entrenched and the person can hang on to their changes. As a general rule, I tell any prospective client to plan to work with me around 40 sessions. If it takes less than that, we will stop, because I do not believe that anyone should do more training than is necessary. My goal is to ensure that you don’t need to come back for additional training or “tune-ups” while also ensuring that my clients do not waste time and money by doing training for too long.

Does this work? Does a full course of training lead to a lifetime of benefits? The scientific literature is mostly silent on this, but in my almost 20 years of practice, I have only had a few people who needed to come back for additional training. Those individuals had significant issues, such as experimentation with street drugs, complications from surgical anesthesia, uncontrolled thyroid issues (stable thyroid conditions seem to be fine), and autism. I have also either contacted or been contacted by a few former clients. These individuals have all reported that they held on to the gains they made.

This does not mean that the effects of neurofeedback last forever. They might! But, no one really knows for sure how long results last, and anyone who asserts that they are permanent is missing the nuance that we just don’t know, because neurofeedback hasn’t been popularly used for that long.

What I can say for sure is that when one finishes a full course of neurofeedback, the results typically last for a very long time.

 

Who’s the Boss?

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People seem to have a lot of misconceptions about hypnosis. I am consistently surprised by the number of people who think that doing hypnosis means that someone else is going to make you do something different. Nothing could be farther from the truth; no hypnotist can entrance someone in such a way that they’d ever do anything that they did not already want to do.

I like to use the grocery store behind my office to illustrate this point. During our initial conversations, I will sometimes explain to people that even if I told them to go rob that grocery store after our session (which of course I would not), there is no way that they’d violate their morals or desires to go do such a thing.

Hypnosis is not like that. It simply does not and cannot work that way.

Even if you get to see a stage show where a hypnotist is getting audience members to do ridiculous things, it’s because the audience member wants to participate in something fun and not because the hypnotist has some kind of special power over people.

You are the boss of yourself!  In theory, you do what you want to do.

Sometimes, though, you do things despite what your conscious mind thinks you want to do. That’s because the true boss for most of the time is the unconscious part of you. Your conscious self may walk around wanting to lose weight, work out more, feel less stress, be more confident, or achieve certain goals. However, our unconscious selves sometimes get crossed wires and drive us to feel and do things that our conscious mind doesn’t really want. That’s because our unconscious self is focused on keeping us alive, and in doing so, it sometimes gets really silly notions.

In the end, most of us don’t want runaway bosses that lead us astray. We want to be better bosses to ourselves. We want to set a goal and be able to achieve it without getting in our own way. We want that subconscious mind that is in charge most of the time to be in alignment with what we consciously desire. That’s where hypnosis shines—it helps us tap into the power of our subconscious mind so that different aspects of ourselves can agree upon and achieve a personal goal. It helps us begin the process of alignment and change rather quickly and efficiently, too.

If you’re interested in finding out how hypnosis might help you begin the process of achieving your goals and being a better boss of yourself, please call or email.

Scarcity Brain

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Even on the off chance that you don’t know someone who engages in “too much” behavior, the book Scarcity Brain, by Michael Easter, is an interesting read, with enough stories and anecdotes and reporting on peer-reviewed studies to help you feel informed and entertained. For most of us, though, the concept that there is a scarcity loop that keeps us stuck in repetitive behavior is important information that may help us change our lives.

The premise of Easter’s book is the well-accepted concept that there is a three-part loop that keeps us trapped in unwanted behaviors. The first part is opportunity (making something easy to do/acquire). The second is unpredictable rewards (sometimes you win a little on the slot machine, sometimes you don’t), and quick repeatability (keep scrolling and you might run across another interesting video on your social media).

Knowledge of this loop informs gambling casinos and social media, with experts hired to integrate these concepts into business structures. It’s also involved in things like over-eating, over-drinking, and over-shopping.

Easter also integrates ideas on breaking these habits, which essentially involves disrupting one of the three parts to the scarcity loop.

As usual, clients and former clients are welcome to borrow the copy in my office. Others can find copies through local bookstores and national outlets.