Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Calming the Fear-Driven Brain (10th Anniversary Edition)

These patients are so chronically hyperaroused or shut down, and unable to filter out irrelevant information, that they have trouble engaging in whatever they are doing in a focused manner (except when they are involved in re-enacting their traumas).

In most cases, as neurofeedback training quiets fear, the symptoms of these disorders significantly diminish.

The matter of how neurofeedback works is a very big question that requires a Nobel prize-winning answer, which I don’t have. Sterman (2000) discovered the complexity of neurofeedback in his earliest studies of seizure:

often teach meditation practices to my patients that focus on occupying “the present moment.” I repeat the teaching I received from Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen master, who said, “We fall back into the past and we leap ahead into the future and in that we lose our entire lives.” Living in the present moment isn’t easy

The optimal performance brain is the same brain (physically, not functionally) as the traumatized brain, just regulated.

state. He could then solve the problem that had perplexed his fully awake mind. Theta is the state induced by most hypnosis, and it also relates to some of the deepest states of meditation.

(You can read more about the fascinating history of neurofeedback in the Jim Robbins [2000] book, A Symphony in the Brain.)

The well-regulated brain gives rise to a self unafraid to love. In this way, neurofeedback is a relational technology and intervention.

Fear is the core emotion and the primary dysrhythmia in developmental trauma. Without addressing the brain’s fear circuitry directly, developmental