About 5 months ago, I started QEEG Neurofeedback treatment for ADD, depression, and anxiety. Estimates based on severity indicated that I’d need about 60 to 70 treatments to see the maximum potential benefit (I hesitate to call it a cure even if it works). At this point, I’ve had just over 30 treatments, so I thought I’d post a progress report about my experience.
ADD - Not much change in ability to concentrate, rate of learning, or productivity. However, I have become better at noticing that my mind is scattered or wandering.
Depression and anxiety - I combine these as they are so tightly linked for me. My form of anxiety is not panic attack so much as rumination, worry, and insomnia. Severe depressive incidents occur much less often now. I’m not getting nearly as worked up over stupidity and job frustration, and I’m better able to let it go when I do. Not a lot of improvement in insomnia frequency, but slight improvement in severity. My tolerance for frustration and stress in general isn’t noticeably better, but I’m doing a better job of avoiding it in the first place.
The only medication I’ve been taking this entire time is just to help me sleep on the nights when insomnia gets intolerably bad, which is not very often.
The entire experience is a lot like starting up a gym program after a very long time without any exercise at all. Slow, painful, and frustrating flailing at the very beginning without any impression of useful progress until you finally start to adapt to it. Then, you start to get the hang of it and keep grinding away at it with little effect felt for more than a day or two until one day you realize that it’s become a lot easier and you’re actually a lot better at this that you were when you started. Progress is slow, takes a lot of time and effort, and is almost impossible to notice as you go, but you do progress as long as you keep at it.
I still think that this is worth the expense and effort for me, and I still think that it’s improving my life. I also still think that there will be plenty of other improvements I’ll need to make in my life outside of treatment. Life is far too difficult, complicated, and frustrating to ever be made perfectly satisfying. Progress is still progress, though, and I’ll take every bit of improvement I can get!