When people come to me for consultations, I talk about how neurofeedback works and show them a sample of what training looks like on the computer. Sometimes, children and teens want to see what their own brainwaves look like on a screen, so I will connect one channel for them to watch the squiggly lines on the screen. Sometimes, people want the history of neurofeedback to fill in the question of why they only recently heard of it. Sometimes, people have done enough research online that they are only in my office to meet me and schedule their brain map. Always, always, though, the question that is foremost, even if not always asked or if phrased differently, is what neurofeedback can do for them.
The most accurate answer to the question of “what can it do for me?” begins with an explanation of how neurofeedback works. In short, neurofeedback provides feedback to the autonomic nervous system so that it can learn and adjust. But, that’s not really plain English. A more understandable, though incomplete, explanation is that one part of our body’s nervous system is under our conscious control and one part is not directly accessible; neurofeedback works with the part we don’t normally think of as being under our control. For example, if we want to raise one arm over our head, we consciously control a big part of that movement, but if we want to adjust how the neurons are working in our brain, we cannot just squint our eyes and will it to happen. Neurofeedback gets at the brain in ways we cannot, despite our best efforts.
Using just that short explanation of the mechanics of neurofeedback, it can seem that the ability to tweak some aspects of how our brainwaves are working may make the outcomes almost limitless. I wish that were true, but neurofeedback is not a magic wand.
If you are looking to calm down your nervous system, chances are that neurofeedback can do great things for you. This is especially true if you are eating well, getting out in nature and/or moving your body, and at least attempting to get regular sleep (knowing that often, sleep is part of the problem). This is true because the most significant benefit of neurofeedback is to calm the autonomic nervous system, and calming leads to a cascade of other good things: a calm brain can sleep better, process better, get through the work or school day better, react to life better, etc.
Exactly how great the results will be also depends in part on your lifestyle and environment. If you are in a toxic work environment with endless, unreasonable deadlines; your relationships are abusive or non-existent; and you’re punishing your body in some way, getting results may be a bigger challenge. This is true because although neurofeedback can dial back the way you over-respond to the world around you, it cannot change your crazy world.
Then, for some people, their brains are stuck—perhaps due to epigenetics, a bad gut, a health diagnosis (think PANS/PANDAS, autism, Lyme) etc. Such people may also get good results, but it takes more time to make them happen.
Finally, if you are someone who has very slow brainwaves dominant while awake, it can be more of a challenge to get that brain moving faster. Slowing down is, in my opinion, an easier task that trying to fire up a slow brain. It CAN be done, it just takes awhile.
This is a long-winded way of saying that almost everyone can benefit to some degree from brain-training using neurofeedback. It isn’t a cure-all—in fact, no one should consider neurofeedback as a cure for anything—but it does help optimize how you’re functioning in much the same way that going to a gym boosts physical performance. The difference is that once you’ve finished a round of neurofeedback, your brain holds on to those gains in ways that training muscles does not.