Landscape Art by Susan Szabo - www.susanszabo.com

Exercise for Wandering Minds

A Workout for the Wandering Mind
With Neurofeedback, the client is exercising the pathways in the brain that control attention and mental processing. As these neural pathways are exercised, the client develops a sense of what concentration feels like, and they also realize what it feels like when they drift off. After they practice these exercises over a period of time, the pathways involved in attention and learning seem to work more efficiently. This enhanced brain activity becomes a natural part of the client's functioning. It makes possible things that were very, very difficult before training.

One teenage girl did intensive training during the summer before going to Switzerland for her final year of high school. She emailed her mother in October, "I never knew I could sit in class and pay attention so well!" Another successful girl said after six months of Neurofeedback training, "Now I know what it feels like to concentrate!" A boy who had taken Ritalin for several years was able to attend high school without medication, "For the first time in my life I feel in control."

Practice Makes Perfect
Neurofeedback allows the person with ADD to learn what concentration feels like, much like feedback from the brain's balance system allows the child learning to ride a bicycle to discover how to keep his balance. Learning to ride a bicycle usually takes several practice sessions spread over a few days. Learning to concentrate takes many training sessions, often spread over a period of months, depending on a number of factors, such as other neurological problems, severity of ADD problems, family support and intelligence. One does not learn brain wave self-regulation as quickly as bicycle riding, perhaps because losing ones concentration is not as traumatic as falling off a bicycle. Also, the computer feedback, though fast, is not as quick and accurate as the information one receives from the inner ear about balance. Yet it is much faster than any kind of verbal feedback. If you sit with a child as she does her homework, notice that faraway look in her eyes, and tell her she is daydreaming, the whole process takes a few seconds. The response time for Neurofeedback from the computer is measured in thousandths of a second.

How exactly do Neurofeedback clients learn to control their brain waves? What does it feel like? Most people cannot say what they do, but eventually they seem to recognize the state of concentration and notice when they start to drift off. Much of the learning in Neurofeedback seems to happen at an unconscious level, which explains how young children can set their brain wave pattern, without much conscious awareness of what they are supposed to do.

Some teenagers are afraid at first that Neurofeedback will take away their ability to choose for themselves. In fact, the opposite is true.

Neurofeedback empowers people with ADD to get into the concentration zone just as well as people without ADD. It may take a more conscious effort, but they will be able to focus and sustain their focus once they have learned self-regulation through Neurofeedback. One nineteen-year-old remarked, "I didn't believe this could help. But gradually it came together. I found I was able to concentrate without being distraceted by things around me. It has made school so much easier."

If learning to regulate brain waves to produce desired mental states sounds a little way out to you, remember that people have been doing this in lots of different ways for centuries. When you take a deep breath and count to ten before saying something, you are practicing mental control. When people learn prayer or meditation, they too are learning to control their mental state. Higher levels of martial arts training also call for learning mental control.

You cannot tell a person with ADD how to concentrate. And trying too hard produces tension that actually interferes with concentration. Yet one can "get a feel for it." Learning self-regulation can empower your child by improving certain skills and reducing bothersome symptoms. Neurofeedback is by no means a cure-all. It is a technique that, in combination with other approaches (parenting and educational strategies and possibly medical intervention) can give the child with ADD a way to manage his/her difficulties and make everyone's life a little easier.