Ditch the Drugs: Learn How to Manage Anxiety with Neurofeedback Training

It’s normal to feel anxious on occasion. But when anxiety becomes all-consuming and starts affecting your behaviors and routines, you need to find some relief. 

For many, that relief comes in the form of anti-anxiety medication that helps alleviate symptoms of anxiety. But while it may be a common option for anxiety relief, it’s not the only effective one. 

Neurofeedback training is an all-natural treatment that can decrease your anxiety so you feel like yourself again — without the use of long-term drugs. At Abbey Neurodynamic Center, our team of expert neurologists offers advanced neurofeedback treatments to maximize brain function and help lessen your anxiety. 

What is neurofeedback training?

Neurofeedback is a treatment that retrains your brain to help balance your brain waves. Anxiety is often caused by imbalanced or improper nerve transmission in your brain. Through neurofeedback training, you receive audio and visual feedback that helps to bring your brain back to balance. 

During neurofeedback sessions, we put small sensors on your scalp to help us measure your brain’s electrical activity. You’ll watch a movie or video while we take measurements of your brain activity and work to retrain your brain.

The sensors tell us when your anxiety is activated. When we notice that, we provide a stimulus that diverts your attention until your anxiety lessens. As we do this repeatedly, your brain learns to self-regulate, and your anxiety may disappear completely.

Over the course of several neurofeedback sessions, you’ll find that you feel calmer and that your anxiety symptoms are greatly diminished. 

Benefits of neurofeedback versus traditional medications 

Neurofeedback has many advantages over traditional medications for anxiety. The main advantage is that it’s all-natural, so you won’t have to ingest any prescription medication that may cause you uncomfortable side effects. 

Anti-anxiety medications can often lead to side effects like fatigue, headaches, and decreased concentration. With neurofeedback, you can get the benefits of medications without those distressing effects. 

Neurofeedback is also long-lasting. Once you retrain your brain over the course of several sessions, you’re unlikely to need more treatments in the future. With medications, on the other hand, you may have to take them long-term or go on and off them for your entire lifetime. 

Getting started with neurofeedback training

When you come to our office, we perform an evaluation to determine the severity of your anxiety and to see if neurofeedback is the right treatment for you. In many cases, we suggest neurofeedback when other treatments or relaxation techniques haven’t worked to lessen your anxiety symptoms. 

We may also recommend that you engage in therapy along with neurofeedback to help get to the root cause of your anxiety.

If you have anxiety and are ready to ditch the drugs, neurofeedback may be the solution for you. To find out more, call our office in Palo Alto, California at 650-210-7922, or send us a message online today.