FOCUS ON THE HARDWARE
Why talk therapy alone does not work.

In this blog, I highlight reasons why therapies that address the "hardware" issues of the brain are the building blocks for better achievement of treatment goals.
BRAINWISE
Engage his WIZARD ...Ignore his LIZARD.
My first years working in residential treatment were spent applying concepts found in a popular curriculum called BRAINWISE . The materials were used at the center and embodied Cognitive Behavioral Therapy principles in a way for children, adolescents and young adults to comprehend. Unique terms were coined to help staff and residents understand the differences between the "upstairs" and "downstairs" brain. Higher levels of functioning (what is referred to in the curriculum as "The Wizard Brain") occur in the prefrontal cortex and lower levels of functioning (what is referred to as "The Lizard Brain"), occur in the limbic system.
For anyone working in dense populations of young people with conduct behaviors, you understand that aggressive assaults usually ending in some type of physical management becomes "the norm". In trainings, we discussed the importance of disengaging when a resident was in crisis because access to the Wizard Brain was virtually nonexistent, if at all. A parody emerged using Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines melody: "Engage his wizard....ignore the lizard".
I became pretty competent at helping my students understand the differences between Upstairs and Downstairs Brain, challenged them to take on assignments that reinforced executive action and even implemented a rewards system to operantly condition these young men to respond more maturely than their "RAD" brains would allow. Results were minimal but who could really say, since we hardly used any means of measurement (other than anecdotal reports, usually delivered by the heavily-medicated population we served), to determine success.
BARE WITH ME, I'M GETTING TO THE POINT.
Fast forward several years. I find myself on the phone with Nick Dogris from Neurofield; I am contemplating the purchase of some brain training gear. During that conversation, he said something so profound that I haven't been able to get out of mind...and I don't want to. For the record, Nick is a Psychologist and developer of a unique type of hybrid neurofeedback amplifier that combines qEEG with intermittent electro-stimulation therapy paving the way for a possible FDA-approved protocol sometime in the hopefully near future. (Research is still being conducted; click HERE for more info).
Anyhow, his comment turned on a light bulb, that thankfully has NOT turned off since. Nick told me that for years he employed intervention after intervention to heal his clients or at best, relieve their symptoms to a degree that they could live a "normal", productive life. Nick has studied under Francine Shapiro, herself and become a master at EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). Still, he observed the limitations that such protocols have on Clients suffering from acute mental illness.
"So many therapies", he said, "focus on the software of the brain instead of the hardware". He went on to explain:
Would it not be ludicrous to bring in a virus-infected laptop computer to my local Best Buy Geek Squad agent and request a repair be made on my Microsoft Office software. Could you imagine the reaction of my Geek Squad consultant as I explained my predicament?
"I can't seem to get "Word" up and running and I have a midterm paper due tomorrow. Can you please fix it? Also, why is the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH appearing whenever I attempt to open up my browser?
Best Buy would begin by working on the hardware issues before focusing on the performance aspects of my computer. They might even suggest I buy a new computer. I am certain their first order of business would NOT be to install the latest version of Microsoft Office in hopes that it would correct the problem.
EEGIinfo
Neurofeedback
Some time last year a fellow colleague approached me with wide eyes and made the following statement: "Zach, I found something that blows therapy out of the water". A couple days later, I find myself sitting in a zero-gravity chair in her office, with electrodes strapped to my scalp, while I watch a television screen and hold a stuffed animal with an implanted vibrator. What dimension did I just ascend to?
I leave the session feeling light, giddy and spend the afternoon with my 3 children coloring the cement pathway that extends from the rod iron gate just a few feet from the street, to the landing at our front door. I also notice that noises don't appear to bother me quite so much, as had been the case for the past few years after a failed cliff jumping accident, resulting in a head injury and hospitalization during a trip to the Philippines in early spring of 2015.
"Okay, okay", I tell myself. "I GOTTA get me one". A few months later, I'm on an airplane, headed to LA to attend Sue and Siegfried Othmer's neurofeedback Bootcamp. The rest is history...
Now to the point: As it turns out, the mental calming that happens SUBCONSCIOUSLY during NF sessions, yields profound results. Reason being: a calmer central nervous system is synonymous with taking that damaged laptop computer to my Best Buy Geek Squad agent for hardware repair. Naturally, the software now performs smoothly, more efficiently...more optimally.
ADDRESS THE LIZARD FOR A BETTER WIZARD.
To think that all this time, we had it backwards in residential. As I said before, I myself observed what appeared to be positive results during those groups I facilitated. These young men would grasp the concepts of our BRAINWISE curriculum, teach it to one another and try their damndest to "stay the course" in hopes of receiving the merchandise rewards I purchased off Amazon if they could make it a week without acquiring an incident report.
A brain becomes hardwired to responding with hyper arousal when it grew up in an environment where that's what was modeled. And for the young men in our program, THAT'S WHERE THEY CAME FROM. That's where MANY people come from.
For this reason, talk therapy alone, will not sustain permanent results because it only focuses on output, not input; behaviors that make it apparent there's an issue without attending to their origins. We, as Therapists take this principle and think that merely talking about WHY things are the way they are accomplishes the goal of addressing origin. What I am referring to, however, is WHERE in the brain, those issues occur, not the events from the past that led to present-day distress. There's a MASSIVE difference.
The term subconscious is key here because it is implicit that we cannot be made aware of the activity occurring in those areas of the brain; hence, we ought not to exhaust too much effort in trying to understand or make sense of why things are the way they are. Rather, we "exercise" those subconscious parts of the brain so that they send less "distress" signals when an unpleasant experience arises, thereby decreasing the over-reactive responses of the conscious brain.
As helpers we MUST be able to digest this concept and focus our attention evermore, on ways of enhancing the connection between the subconscious and conscious; the posterior and anterior; the hardware and the software.
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