Depression in Tucson

Biofeedback, Neurofeedback, and FSM could be the Integrative Alternative to Medication for Depression. Depression and fatigue are intertwined, and both change your brain. That’s why you don’t feel like yourself. Neurofeedback in Tucson helps your brain release negative thoughts and relax into your happy place. If you’re looking for an alternative to antidepressants, direct neurofeedback may be your answer. For most people, depression will end with neurofeedback, but it will take time and commitment to your personal process with specific and custom recipes in frequency therapies and nutrition and lifestyle support for you to achieve your happiness.

How Long Will Neurofeedback take until I Feel Better?

To answer that question, you need to know what kind of depression you’re dealing with. Where do you fall on the depression spectrum? Take the test to know where you are starting:

1. Normal, situational disappointment in response to difficult events. Temporary Depression.
2. Anxiety-driven depression anchored in ongoing, unresolved brain stress and emotional distress. Long Term
3. Deep depression without anxiety, which has depleted all reserves in the body and left you hopelessly without body resources. Clinical.

How Does LENS Neurofeedback Help Depression?

Neurofeedback clears situational depression immediately. Situational depression, or grieving, is the body’s response when our expectations aren’t met. Ideally, this chemical rush only needs to last a couple of minutes. But our defensive brains set us up to obsess about every loss, trying to protect us from future losses. Neurofeedback typically breaks up these negative thought-patterns so we feel lighter right away. We simply stop taking life’s disappointments personally anymore. Most people feel relaxed, then lighter before they even leave their session. And increased clarity helps them move on with doing things that build confidence.

Neurofeedback Clears Brain-Stress to Recharge Cyclic Depressed Moods

Anxiety-driven depression is the bottom half of an energy cycle. Our bodies know how to rally resources for emergency fight or flight, but modern life triggers stress throughout the day, and on into the night. Stress is activating, but tiring, so eventually our bodies run out of battery power, and demand we shut down. This is anxiety-driven depression. We don’t feel like doing anything, and our mood is low. We take a break; recharge with sleep or relaxation. But we still worry a little deep down, draining our battery, setting up the next low mood. Neurofeedback shows the brain exactly how it constantly wastes energy defending against past emergencies. When given this quality information, it lets go within minutes. We relax into a sustainable state of energy efficiency and spacious clarity that typically lasts for days. Repeated sessions make this our home base.

Chronic Depression

In chronic depression, neurofeedback and a comprehensive treatment and lifestyle plan works to refill reserves so happiness can flow normally. Deep depression is the result of years of stress, pain, loss, trauma, neglect, abuse or all of the above. Often a lingering virus or other health challenge has drained our body resources constantly for years. Our body’s adrenal system and HPA axis has been so overused, that our internal battery can no longer hold a charge. We can’t rally enough to be anxious; there’s no charge left to run alarms. In chronic depression, treatment takes longer, because first the body’s reserves need to be refilled. Neurofeedback and FSM act like a long rainy season to refill the lake that feeds the stream of our happiness and energy. We will return to flow states, but the momentum of our long habit of hopelessness will keep us from noticing until our family and friends finally convince us the worst has past. In this case, people suffering at this level will need to be relentlessly devoted to the length of time their healing will take and unwaveringly gentle and patient with themselves and their brain.

Stage 3 of Depression

You are stage three, if you’ve shown several of these signs for a full two weeks or more and it is not due to substance use or a medical condition.

1. You’re feeling depressed most of the day nearly every day.
2. You’ve lost interest in day-to-day activities and/or find yourself unable to take pleasure in the things you used to enjoy.
3. You’ve experienced significant change in appetite, sleep patterns, or diminished ability to think or concentrate.
4. You feel fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day.
5. You’re filled with feelings of worthlessness, or have recurrent thoughts of suicide.
6. You are in an Apathetic state
7. You're chronically exhausted and nothing brings your Joy that used to

At this point you’ve probably progressed to the third stage, clinical depression. This is an actual illness, not a normal response to difficult life events or stress. Anxious feelings give way to despondence and hopelessness because there is no longer enough energy to run the anxiety. This type of depression requires intervention as it does not tend to resolve without help. You need assistance getting out of a dark hole because your resources are so depleted you simply can’t climb out on your own. Anxious feelings give way to despondence and hopelessness because there is no longer enough energy to run the anxiety.

In the case of normal unhappiness, it’s pretty much a matter of time. Cinderella needs to sit by the well and cry until her tears fill the well. We hang in there for however long it takes, knowing “this too will pass” because “everything changes” and “time heals all.” But In the case of anxiety-driven depression, rather than “pass,” the stress stacks up. To the brain, “change” means “everything could be a threat.”

The brain’s negative bias replays past trauma in hopes of avoiding future pain, leaving us in a constant state of anxiety. We get overwhelmed. Our mental, emotional, and physiological resources get tapped out. The brain essentially gets stuck on high alert, anxiety takes over, and good feelings are harder and harder to find.

At times, there is a layered or multiple layered issues going on a multi-dimensional approach is required to reverse the condition(s). When we are stressed, our reserves depleted, our HPA axis is out of balance we become hyper-sensitive to nutrients, food, environment and other daily exposures which can trigger any of the below. In a chronic state of exposure, our body and brain are unable to “turn off” these epigenetic triggers keeping us in our chronic state of depression, anxiety and overall unwellness. Depleting our body’s reserves to neutralize threats and heal. Through awareness, re-balancing of our bio-chemistry and neuro-chemistry (through Biofeedback and Neurofeedback), neutralizing triggers, re-organizing our neurology and brain pathways we can re-wire our brains and body’s for optimal health.

Brain Chemistry

Below are just 3 chemical reactions that can be occurring in our body and brain:

1. Prostaglandins: Pain, shortness of breath, fast heart rate/heart palpitations, flushing, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, hormonal fluctuations, sensitivity to pain and stress, etc.
2. Histamine: Headaches, itching, burning sensations, crampy abdominal pain, general sense of anxiety with deep, “odd” body sensations. Clients sometimes say, “I feel weird” or complain of “…deep, pricking, or crawling sensation… moodiness, sadness, over-emotional, ”
3. Cytokines: Fever, sense of impending doom, memory loss, brain fog, headaches, loss of appetite, difficulty swallowing, sleepiness, fatigue, depression and anxiety.

These chemicals also trigger the release of more chemicals, creating a cascade effect amplifying and prolonging your symptoms for days to weeks to months.

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