Attachment Disorders
Attachment disorder is a broad term intended to describe disorders of mood, behavior, and social relationships arising from the unavailability of normal socializing care and attention from primary caregiving figures in early childhood. This impact persists into adulthood if untreated.
This can manifest as oppositional behavior, readiness to go off with strangers, and even ugly threats of violence toward parents. These children often have problems with peer relationships also.
How does Neurofeedback therapy help?
The impact of neglect will vary depending on the age and circumstance of your childhood. When treating very young children I will skip the QEEG and use LENS neurofeedback. The LENS will lower anxiety and seems to be able to restart the developmental process of attachment if it is now safe to do so.
When overt trauma has been part of your childhood we will treat your parasympathetic nervous system. This part of the autonomic nervous system is responsible for helping us feel safe, calm and bonded to others.
The QEEG and ERP then help us target the ways in which the brain adapted to trauma. We can then promote change that supports healthy habits.
Success stories
Meet Lorraine
Meet Loraine. Her childhood was chaotic, to say the least. She had to parent her narcissistic Mother and absent father. As an adult in her 60’s she decided to take on the chronic anxiety and difficulty interacting with others that was holding her back from a rewarding personal life. We used PEMF and tACS to help her parasympathetic nervous system learn to provide that feeling of safety she had never known. We also taught her to use HEG (hemoencephalography) to feel how to get back into the present when she felt herself dissociate. She was very grateful for the sense of feeling grounded she learned to maintain. She made important changes in her social system that made her life much more enjoyable.
Meet Larry
Larry had been adopted from Taiwan at age 5. He had already lived in three different households and was described as loving to wander around his neighborhood, which was an unsafe slum.
His adoptive parents were as understanding, loving, and supportive as they could be. Nonetheless, when any frustration arose, he would rage and threaten them. They had to hide the knives. They could not calm him and he would have to cry it out on his own. In public places, they often saw him approach other adults as if he belonged to them.
Through a mutual friend, they found out about my work. We used the LENS system only and within two months the rage had subsided. We continued another month and he was able to be hugged and comforted. These wise parents put this boy into a martial arts program headed by a sweet man from Taiwan. Knowing that he could protect himself and that there were rules about when and how that was done was an amazing gift that brought him all the way to black belt.