Most people who come in for neurofeedback training achieve at least some of their goals. On the extremes, a few report that brain training has transformed their lives, while others report only a modest impact.  Usually, lifestyle factors play a role in which end of the spectrum any one person falls—it’s unreasonable to expect dramatic changes for a person who burns the candle at both ends and refuses to examine what all those excessive pulls on one’s time do to well-being. To make matters worse, our definition of excessive here in Northern Virginia tends to be skewed a bit. Similarly, if one has a “stuck” brain that goes along with difficult physical or mental conditions (think autism), it can take many, many sessions to achieve small gains. However, for those who are willing to pull on the thread of at least one pressure point in life, neurofeedback can be a worthwhile use of time and resources.

Clients almost always want to know what can change for them, and beyond broad outlines, that is often difficult to predict. Sometimes, the results are downright surprising.  One reason for this is that the philosophy I use in my practice involves training the entire brain and not just one or two locations, and this means that additional benefits sometimes accrue that go well beyond what most people come to training to achieve.  Think of it as deciding to get in shape, then having your gym practice result in your skin glowing and your sleep improving.  I call these results spillover effects.  Here are a few examples of what I have seen:

• I once worked with a teenager whose mother brought her to me for calming because she was constantly stressing out about school and overreacting to many things in her life. The teen wanted a higher GPA than she had and was staying up until 2 am, then arising at 5 am in order to fit in more study time.  After about eight sessions, she came in for a session and was furious with me. She seethed, “This isn’t working. I fell asleep at 11 pm and didn’t wake up until my alarm went off at 5 am. We are going to have stop training.”  I was shocked and responded with something along the lines of, “You slept all night for the first time in close to five years, and you think this is a problem?”  She was too busy thinking that she’d missed out on prime study hours to think about the fact that she had slept well. With a shift in perspective, we continued training, and she was increasingly better rested, despite the fact that her goal had been to become calmer about her homework. (And yes, she started feeling more relaxed about schoolwork, too.)

 

• Another individual had an aversion to bananas that was so bad he even avoided walking near them in the produce section of the grocery store. He, too, had been brought in by his mother for calming, and nothing about bananas was ever raised as a training goal. After about 25 sessions, though, the mother reported that the teen had been in a public area near a trash can that reeked of overripe and rotten bananas. The son seemed not to notice, and when the mother asked whether he needed to move away from the bananas, he looked at her as if she were the one with the aversion. (And yes, when he finished training, he was calmer—still overall a wound-up person, but much, much calmer.)

 

• A senior citizen who was doing neurofeedback with me in order to get her husband to come, too, really expected no results at all. Her sole purpose was to get her spouse to agree to do training. She thought her brain was functioning well, and for the most part, it was. However, after about 20 sessions, she reported to me that she was able to sit still long enough to focus and read. She hadn’t been able to read more than 5-10 pages at a time for years, and suddenly, she could manage 100 or more pages. Each week, she’d show me the book she was reading and how far she’d read without a problem. She was thrilled.

Please be clear that not everyone has spillover effects, and there is no predicting what will happen or for whom—each of the examples above was a happy surprise. In addition, for those who do experience spillover effects, they usually aren’t this dramatic. But, it’s still nice to know that when brain training focuses on shifting overall energy patterns, good things can happen.