Sally deals with chronic pain, anxiety, and depression

Sally came to see me for chronic pain, anxiety, and depression. A woman in her 40’s, she was on Prozac, and had received 17 years of mental health treatment.

After 13 sessions of neurofeedback she reported, “I have had six surgeries on my hands and arms. I was in constant severe pain. I couldn’t do much of anything. My pain overwhelmed me. I would get dizzy, nauseous and throw up. My body would shake. I would get depressed and anxious and have diarrhea. I didn’t have the coping skills to handle the physical and emotional pain that I was going through.

Once I started neurofeedback, there was nothing but improvement. I was noticing differences within a few days. My overall demeanor got better. Now, my pain is noticeable, but it’s not overwhelming my life. I know when I’m in a pain cycle, but I don’t get nauseous or dizzy or shaky. I think all the mental aspects of the pain are pretty much gone. I’m not irritable anymore because of the pain. My physical pain is something that I live with on a daily basis and accept.

There was an unexpected change in my PMS as well. For 2 weeks every month I was emotional, irritable, and cranky. I was not a nice person. That’s all dissipated. I don’t even really notice it any more. It’s basically gone. Since we weren’t predominantly treating that problem, I think the neurofeedback was actually treating pain throughout my body in general.
I stopped taking Prozac after 15 years. I’m taking less Vicodin. It seems like I don’t depend on pain killers as much any more.

I had 17 years of talk therapy and I feel that neurofeedback is more progressive. I used to feel I had to talk to others about my problems, but now I don’t feel this urge. It’s an extremely big change for me as I did that for 17 years. Now, I don’t get any gratification talking about my pain problems or things in my life that are stressful. I don’t want to. I don’t need to, and it’s a pretty good feeling. I just don’t have this need to do talk therapy any more with friends or professionals really.

On the advise of my psychiatrist I went through biofeedback for my irritable bowel 7 years ago for about 6 months. I’ve gone into deep breathing and stress management and all that kind of stuff. This program is more profound, 100 times better. This seems to be the only thing that seems to have really worked. It changed my life.”