A Psychology Today online blog on February 16 featured neurofeedback as a treatment modality for ADHD. While once upon a time medication was the main showcase when talking about remediation of symptoms, these days neurofeedback is finding itself more and more in the limelight.
For his article titled Brain on Fire ADHD: Diagnosis, accommodation, and resilience, author Stephen Gray Wallace interviewed three national neurofeedback experts, including Center for Brain’s director Mike Cohen.
Using a metaphor everyone can relate to, Mike described neurofeedback as a “high tech gym.” He said: It (neurofeedback) allows you to strengthen circuits of the brain that help to manage attention and gain self-control. Like exercise, it almost always helps. But for some it takes a lot longer to get their ADHD in shape. It’s easy to quit the gym too soon.”
The article also contains some fascinating insight from teenagers about what it’s like to have ADHD.
One 18-year-old girl named Aggie explained: “Every day I need to constantly remind myself to ‘calm down.’ I have this jumpy personality that sometimes looks like me being happy but sometimes can appear and feel like uncontrollable energy that has nowhere to go and nowhere to turn.”
The article poses the idea that having ADHD could be “a gift,” and quotes Ned Hallowell, M.D., co-author of Driven to Distraction, a book about ADHD:
“Often these people (those with ADHD) are highly imaginative and intuitive. They have a ‘feel’ for things, a way of seeing right into the heart of matters while others have to reason their way along methodically…These people can feel a lot. In places where most of us are blind they can, if not see the light, at least feel the light, and they can produce answers apparently out of the dark.”
To illustrate the point about ADHD sometimes being a gift, the article’s author names several high-profile people with ADHD who have managed to do quite well despite their challenge: Sir Richard Branson, Terry Bradshaw, Jim Carrey, Howie Mandel, Michael Phelps, Will Smith and Justin Timberlake – and possibly Ludwig van Beethoven, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, and Wolfgang Mozart.
To find out more about how Center for Brain and neurofeedback may be able to help you or someone you love with ADHD or to book a consultation, call us at: 561-744-7616 or email info@CenterforBrain.com.