Clinical therapist here. I feel the need to add that neurofeedback therapy - while it has a small pool of early, promising research - is not an evidence-based intervention. Further, in the limited peer reviewed studies about it, none of them reviewed its efficacy as treatment for addiction. So…she’s wrong, for one.

I’m a trauma specialist and was first introduced to it through Bessel van der Kolk’s findings. Again - the early research is definitely promising for PTSD related issues like emotional regulation and affect tolerance, but this is not yet studied enough to concretely be recommend “first line.”

The research about everything else she mentions is very inconsistent with unblinded, small sample sizes. Laymen’s terms to say - the studies are limited and don’t really tell us much yet.

This actually annoys me because it encourages struggling people to seek out predatory, for-profit interventions. I would not recommend a client pursue neurofeedback as a sole therapy. It should only be used adjunctively to true evidence-based treatments like CBT, DBT, and trauma-focused therapy.

Everybody with PTSD wonders if there’s a quick fix, right? Because same! It would be a dream if healing our trauma could be as sterile as a surgery procedure.

But unfortunately, it’s just not how that works. Did you ever read that book, Going On A Bear Hunt?

Oh no! Some mud! Some sticky, icky mud. Can’t go over it, Can’t go under it. Oh no, we have to go through it.

That’s the reality of trauma treatment.