Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Using Neuro and Biofeedback to Build Resilience with Timothy Royer, Psy.D and Amy Royer, RN

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Using Neuro and Biofeedback to Build Resilience with Timothy Royer, Psy.D and Amy Royer, RN · The Trauma Therapist

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  Speaker 1: Trauma Theverist podcast. Plus listeners can listen to episodes early
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  Speaker 1: going to Apple Podcasts, searching for the Trauma Theaverist podcast
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  Speaker 1: and signing up today. Welcome to the Trauma Nevers podcast,
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  Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
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  Speaker 1: who experienced trauma. My name is Got macpherson and my
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  Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
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  Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us.
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  Speaker 2: Our folks, Here we go, so.
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  Speaker 1: Five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
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  Speaker 1: to the podcast. Very excited to have as my guest
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  Speaker 1: today Timothy, Doc Lawyer and Amy Lawyer. Folks, welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the podcast.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you.
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  Speaker 4: We're really excited to be with you today.
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  Speaker 2: Guy, all right, appreciate it.
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  Speaker 5: So.
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  Speaker 1: Doctor Timothy Lawyer is a clinical neuropsychologist and Amy Royer,
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  Speaker 1: our n is registered nurse. Together they are founders of
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  Speaker 1: Royal Neuroscience. Doctor Royer is also co founder of Inner Armor,
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  Speaker 1: and they both have dedicated over thirty five years to
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  Speaker 1: helping individuals reach their potential with a deep passion for
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  Speaker 1: understanding the human body. Both tim and Amy believe that
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  Speaker 1: quote we are all fearfully and wonderfully made, and the
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  Speaker 1: work is a reflection of this conviction. Their recent book
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  Speaker 1: is called Tsunami, Building Resilience Against Anxiety and Depression. Folks,
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  Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's good to be here.
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  Speaker 2: Awesome, all right.
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  Speaker 1: So before we get going here, I want to ask
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  Speaker 1: both of you kind of separately, where you're from originally
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  Speaker 1: and where you are currently.
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  Speaker 4: Like historically, yeah, now, just like where were you born?
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  Speaker 2: Where are you from originally?
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  Speaker 4: Go first?
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  Speaker 6: You think that could be a simple question, right. I
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  Speaker 6: was actually grew up on a mission field where my
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  Speaker 6: parents were missionaries, so that's a rather unusual part of
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  Speaker 6: my background. But have been back in the United States
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  Speaker 6: since middle school.
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  Speaker 3: Met Timmock College.
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  Speaker 6: Then we both began our practices in Atlanta area. I
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  Speaker 6: was a nurse at a children's hospital, and then we
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  Speaker 6: moved to Michigan, raised our kids there for twenty six years.
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  Speaker 6: Then we started hunting for some sunnier, warmer climates and
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  Speaker 6: we live in Charlotte now Charlotte, North Carolina, and it's
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  Speaker 6: sunny and.
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  Speaker 4: Lovely, yes, nice, nicely. And my past is.
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  Speaker 5: I was born in Concord, Massachusetts. My father was a
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  Speaker 5: college football coach. So he and my mom the first
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  Speaker 5: twelve years of marriage moved thirteen times, so all up
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  Speaker 5: and down the East Coast. As a kid, I can
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  Speaker 5: remember moving down to Annapolis, to the Naval Academy, to
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  Speaker 5: Virginia Tech. We eventually he passed away when I was
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  Speaker 5: about seven, and we settled in Tampa, Florida, and I
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  Speaker 5: grew up in Tampa, went to college in Ohio where
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  Speaker 5: I met Amy, and then our trip to Atlanta where
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  Speaker 5: we did all the graduate work and Amy at the
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  Speaker 5: Children's Hospital, and then, like Amy said, Michigan and now
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  Speaker 5: here in Charlotte.
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  Speaker 2: So okay, how does this start for you?
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  Speaker 1: Both founding in armor neuroscience? You both had this energy together,
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  Speaker 1: You had this energy. Yeah, it's palpable, and I'm not
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  Speaker 1: surprised given what you guys are doing. But how did
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  Speaker 1: this this interest start for you? Let's start there if
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  Speaker 1: we can.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: I think.
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  Speaker 5: For me, I was just going through the paces of education.
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  Speaker 3: You know.
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  Speaker 5: I got out of with a bachelor's degree in psychology,
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  Speaker 5: which you really can't do anything with, went off and
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  Speaker 5: got a master's degree in clinical counseling and realized I
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  Speaker 5: wasn't gonna do much with that along the same time,
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  Speaker 5: I do have an interest in kind of faith based things.
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  Speaker 5: So got a degree in thought, a master's in theology,
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  Speaker 5: and then went on and got another master's in clinical
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  Speaker 5: psych and that's where I really got drawn into testing,
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  Speaker 5: neuropsych testing, personality testing. I really am a data guy,
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  Speaker 5: and so that was really drawn into that, and then
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  Speaker 5: I ended up doing my doctoral work in neuropsychology. So
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  Speaker 5: that journey then left led us to Michigan to do
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  Speaker 5: a year of a doctoral internship, and through that experience,
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  Speaker 5: I had an unbelievable opportunity to be start a consultation
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  Speaker 5: service at a large children's hospital where I actually became
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  Speaker 5: division chief of behavioral medicine. I mean, like the dream job.
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  Speaker 2: It was perfect.
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  Speaker 4: I loved it.
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  Speaker 5: It was so cool and was working, you know, right
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  Speaker 5: next to all these fantastic physicians and surgeons and helping
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  Speaker 5: them understand with these children the psychological overlay and really
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  Speaker 5: using my testing skills to define what was really going
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  Speaker 5: on with these kids neurologically and psychologically, because so much
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  Speaker 5: in medicine in kids a has a psychological overlap, and
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  Speaker 5: so helping these doctors decide what was going on through
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  Speaker 5: various testing or if somebody had a brain tumor, assessing
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  Speaker 5: the brain before they took out the tumor or treated
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  Speaker 5: the tumor was fascinating.
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  Speaker 4: I loved it.
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  Speaker 5: Did a lot of work for me ICU to help
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  Speaker 5: figure out what diagnoses were going on when somebody came in,
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  Speaker 5: maybe in a psychotic episode. But what started happening was
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  Speaker 5: I just started to see more and more kind of
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  Speaker 5: behind the curtain on these kids that were getting over
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  Speaker 5: diagnosed with things that when we would actually test them,
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  Speaker 5: they didn't even have these things. And the big one
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  Speaker 5: was ADHD. I mean, we had about sixty to seventy
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  Speaker 5: percent of these kids that we would see them kind
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  Speaker 5: of in this crisis state and find out they don't
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  Speaker 5: have this diagnosis, they have something else, and then they
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  Speaker 5: were getting just flooded with medicine. So many times on
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  Speaker 5: the ICU, I would see kids on life support because
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  Speaker 5: somebody had gotten too aggressive WITHSOG psychotropic meds.
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  Speaker 4: That's the dark side that nobody hears about.
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  Speaker 5: And that really Amy was you know, at home working
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  Speaker 5: with you know, raising our four kids. But she was
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  Speaker 5: still from her pediatric oncology background.
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  Speaker 4: She has a passion for kids, and.
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  Speaker 5: We would just talk about this stuff, like can you
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  Speaker 5: believe how misdiagnosed and how over medicated. And what really
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  Speaker 5: pushed us out of kind of the traditional kind of
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  Speaker 5: dream job was this isn't working, like this system is broken.
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  Speaker 4: It's just not getting us there.
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  Speaker 5: And it's about that time that Amy started to come
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  Speaker 5: into the scene with when we started to go out
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  Speaker 5: and I started to develop. It wasn't royal or neuroscience
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  Speaker 5: back then, but I needed some help and with her
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  Speaker 5: medical and nursing background, then we started the other companies. Right.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's funny because it probably all started along before
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  Speaker 6: we knew it was started.
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  Speaker 3: But just like way back when I worked.
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  Speaker 6: In the hospital and Tim was in school, just my
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  Speaker 6: learning and understanding of the connection of the brain and
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  Speaker 6: the body and these kids that were acutely ill with
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  Speaker 6: cancer or blood disorders, but then have my own kids
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  Speaker 6: having four different personalities, and watching that and knowing what
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  Speaker 6: Tim was going to work and doing every day, and
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  Speaker 6: we would just talk and talk about this kind of stuff.
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  Speaker 6: And so then when I got back into the workplace,
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  Speaker 6: I just joined him and what he was doing and
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  Speaker 6: the combination of our years of experience to that point,
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  Speaker 6: and then putting my profession with his profession was they're
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  Speaker 6: not connecting the mind with the body.
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  Speaker 3: So that started everything moving forward as.
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  Speaker 6: Far as we were willing to take a risk of
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  Speaker 6: leaving the dream job, so to speak, and starting something
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  Speaker 6: that you know.
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  Speaker 3: Fit us both really beautifully. But it was a leap.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, let me just jump in you for a second.
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  Speaker 1: So in addition to you know, they weren't seeing the
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  Speaker 1: connection between the mind and the body. So what did
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  Speaker 1: you want to do? What was what was the the
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  Speaker 1: initial goal here? We need to do what?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, and so what started happening one was help physicians
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  Speaker 5: and school systems see what is going on upstream. That's
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  Speaker 5: a very common term that we use, is that everybody's
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  Speaker 5: looking downstream. They're looking at behaviors, which is good, and
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  Speaker 5: trying to alter those behaviors with chemicals or how you're
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  Speaker 5: thinking about something. But there's so much more complexity that
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  Speaker 5: real change happens upstream in the brain. And the big
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  Speaker 5: part of this is the autonomic nervous system. So I
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  Speaker 5: initially wanted to come alongside some of the behavioral therapy
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  Speaker 5: I was doing with some biofeedback measurements, and in the
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  Speaker 5: early two thousands, I needed something to measure biofeedback, so
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  Speaker 5: I went and got this device that measured skin temperature,
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  Speaker 5: so I would teach kids to breathe and then do
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  Speaker 5: the therapy with them. But I started to see that
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  Speaker 5: if I kept diving into these physiological measures body temperature,
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  Speaker 5: skin conductance, breathing, heart rate variability, EEG feedback, hormones, sleep cycles,
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  Speaker 5: all of a sudden, it was like, wait a minute,
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  Speaker 5: this is way more than just how I reframe my
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  Speaker 5: perspective of the world.
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  Speaker 4: Can I actually.
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  Speaker 5: Teach resilience physiologically that actually prevents these things coming on?
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  Speaker 5: Or if I'm in the middle of this, can we
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  Speaker 5: actually turn the tide on this? And what was really
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  Speaker 5: interesting was I was so inundated with my training and
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  Speaker 5: coming out of the Jones Hospital that I tried some
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  Speaker 5: of these feedback techniques, especially some EEG feedback or neurofeedback
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  Speaker 5: with this group of adhis I had and I had
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  Speaker 5: some interns and had them track them and then teach
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  Speaker 5: them breathing and heart reat variability at the same point.
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  Speaker 5: So we were doing by feedback neurofeedback, and I was
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  Speaker 5: doing behavioral therapy, and I kind of compared the groups, right,
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  Speaker 5: we got to the end and almost every one of
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  Speaker 5: the kids that had gone through the eight week program
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  Speaker 5: were almost completely off their meds, and their parents are like,
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  Speaker 5: these kids are doing so much better, and here I
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  Speaker 5: am plugging along doing my behavioral therapy, which is good
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  Speaker 5: and I'm not opposed to that, but I'm still banging
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  Speaker 5: my head against the wall. And I went back to
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  Speaker 5: the interns and said, you must have done something wrong.
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  Speaker 5: How are these neuropsych numbers looking so much better on
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  Speaker 5: these kids. I haven't even talked to them yet. You're
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  Speaker 5: just teaching them to breathe, to work on their heart
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  Speaker 5: and their brains. And before I knew it, within two years,
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  Speaker 5: I took a practice of a couple hundred kids and
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  Speaker 5: I completely killed my practice of talk therapy because I
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  Speaker 5: started teaching all these people how to be resilient. And
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  Speaker 5: the parents would come back and like, he's making good decisions.
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  Speaker 5: I'm like, wait a minute, we haven't talked yet about
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  Speaker 5: how he needs to make good decisions. You're like, no,
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  Speaker 5: his nervous system is getting better and he's making good decisions.
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  Speaker 5: So that really kind of we never intended to be there,
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  Speaker 5: but we started to see the power, the power of
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  Speaker 5: the brain's greatest ability, which is to learn. And if
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  Speaker 5: you can teach it through the right types of feedback,
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  Speaker 5: if you can teach it physics, you can teach it
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  Speaker 5: to focus right, and you can teach it how to
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  Speaker 5: be resilient and manage anxiety physiologically.
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  Speaker 2: All right, So.
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  Speaker 1: Amazing, really, really, it's amazing because I I mean, I'm
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  Speaker 1: getting kind of chills because I was working with kids
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  Speaker 1: and just saw a lot of what you were seeing
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  Speaker 1: and just thinking to myself, it's really why I started
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  Speaker 1: this podcast. I need to do something to help move
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  Speaker 1: things along in a certain way. But you talked about
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  Speaker 1: upstream and downstream and resilience. What does it mean when
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  Speaker 1: you say resilient teaching these kids would be resilient. What
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  Speaker 1: do you mean to find that?
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  Speaker 3: If you will, I can go on that.
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  Speaker 6: I think what we mean is with the autonomic nervous system,
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  Speaker 6: that we have a spectrum of response that we would
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  Speaker 6: give in relation to the environment that we're in. So
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  Speaker 6: if we're in an environment where there's a fire, we
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  Speaker 6: want the sympathetic nervous system to take off and so
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  Speaker 6: we can run if we are time to go to bed,
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  Speaker 6: we want the sympathetic the pair of sympathetic nervous system
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  Speaker 6: to take over and lead us into sleep. So what
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  Speaker 6: we've found with a lot of the kids is that
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  Speaker 6: instead of being able to move along the spectrum, they're
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  Speaker 6: kind of stuck. We don't know exactly why they're stuck,
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  Speaker 6: and a lot of what his practice was was to
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  Speaker 6: figure out why they're stuck, right, But what we found
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  Speaker 6: was we could train the autonomic nervous system with the
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  Speaker 6: neurofeedback and biofeedback, and kind of in the end, maybe
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  Speaker 6: it didn't matter so much why it was stuck because
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  Speaker 6: it was now moving.
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  Speaker 3: And it's so interesting.
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  Speaker 6: Because when he was speaking before about teaching the doctors
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  Speaker 6: or teaching the teachers, what we really have been doing
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  Speaker 6: is teaching the parents to recognize how to advocate for
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  Speaker 6: their own children and to understand the spectrum. So as
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  Speaker 6: we taught them to breathe and did some neuro feedback,
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  Speaker 6: their ability to slide along that spectrum between parasympathetic and
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  Speaker 6: sympathetic became wider, So they're not just stuck in a little.
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  Speaker 3: Lane, but they have a wider lane of response.
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  Speaker 6: But it also became more accurate, so that they were
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  Speaker 6: weren't stuck in fright flight when there wasn't a reason
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  Speaker 6: to be in freight flight.
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  Speaker 3: It was.
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  Speaker 6: We call it resilient, but we call it dynamic resilience
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  Speaker 6: because the response changes with the circumstance because it's.
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  Speaker 3: Never going to be static.
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  Speaker 6: So we also, at the same time were raising our
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  Speaker 6: four kids, so we were running into these situations where
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  Speaker 6: the kids might have a poor response to a certain
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  Speaker 6: situation and we want to enable them to have a
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  Speaker 6: better response. And that was when we learned and we
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  Speaker 6: were getting into more of this.
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  Speaker 3: So we were watching our own kids grow.
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  Speaker 6: In resilience, and so it was like, put those leads
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  Speaker 6: on me, because I want it too.
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  Speaker 1: So let's for a second, don't we hear neuro feedback,
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  Speaker 1: we hear biofeed Just give us the what is neurofeedback?
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  Speaker 1: How are you working with these kids? What are they
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  Speaker 1: doing well?
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  Speaker 6: Doc will always say that the greatest thing about being
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  Speaker 6: a human as at we're always learning and we're always adapting,
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  Speaker 6: and it can be the worst thing about a human
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  Speaker 6: because sometimes we make poor adaptations in order to survive.
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  Speaker 3: So we're going to try to teach healthy adaptations.
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  Speaker 6: So when we do neuro feedback, what you would walk
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  Speaker 6: in the office and see was a child with a
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  Speaker 6: lead on their ear, a lead on their head, and
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  Speaker 6: a video screen in front of them, and the video
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  Speaker 6: screen will run when the brain is in a more
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  Speaker 6: calm and focused state. So when the kids would come
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  Speaker 6: in with ADHD or whatever the diagnosis was, the beauty
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  Speaker 6: is it doesn't matter what the diagnosis was, because we're
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  Speaker 6: looking at the balance of brain wave activity. So Tim
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  Speaker 6: had a specific range that he was trying to meet
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  Speaker 6: with his neurofeedback training, and so that was kind of
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  Speaker 6: our protocol. But basically, it's to decrease the stress level
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  Speaker 6: and increase the medium speed waves where you can get
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  Speaker 6: into that calm and focused one and typically then that
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  Speaker 6: will balance out the sympathetic and the pairasympathetic response.
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  Speaker 3: So that's what neurofeedback would look like for us.
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  Speaker 6: We would describe it to our clients as like a
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  Speaker 6: giant sticker chart, like the biggest sticker chart you can
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  Speaker 6: ever imagine, and in your half hour session you're getting
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  Speaker 6: two thousand stickers without even us having to make an effort.
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  Speaker 6: It's just the computer integration with the brain and then
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  Speaker 6: the biofeedback the breathing.
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  Speaker 3: That's real simple.
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  Speaker 6: It's you know, a screen that's showing you if you're
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  Speaker 6: following the breathing pacer. We moved into more things like
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  Speaker 6: temperature increasing peripheral temperature as far as a relaxation marker,
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  Speaker 6: and then heart rate variability. But we would scale those
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  Speaker 6: screens back so that a kid could understand.
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  Speaker 5: Them and they're using device is connected to them, So
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  Speaker 5: breathing isn't just following the pacer, but we're putting a
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  Speaker 5: tension strap around the waist and making them breathe with
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  Speaker 5: their diaphragm in a particular pattern. That will then activate
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  Speaker 5: coherence in the heart, which is what creates that resilience cardiovasculary,
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  Speaker 5: that expandability, that adaptability, and we're reading their heart through
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  Speaker 5: a heart rate sensor at the same point. And what
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  Speaker 5: we started to realize that initially neurofeedback hadn't done a
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  Speaker 5: lot for us, but when we started to combine oxygen
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  Speaker 5: flow and cardiovascular regulation that it was like it created
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  Speaker 5: this perfect resonance of bringing these three things together. And
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  Speaker 5: basically what you're working with is what we all work with,
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  Speaker 5: which is feedback. We use watches for feedback, we use
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  Speaker 5: gps for feedback, we use feedback everything, and we adapt
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  Speaker 5: our behavior to that. But what we're doing is providing
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  Speaker 5: physiological feedback so you can see yourself on the screen.
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  Speaker 5: And the key to behavioral change is decreased latency. So
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  Speaker 5: if there's a delay, like if I do something but
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  Speaker 5: I'm not rewarded for it for ten minutes, Like let's
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  Speaker 5: say I shoot a basketball, but I don't know if
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  Speaker 5: it went in the hoop for another ten minutes, it's
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  Speaker 5: very hard for me to learn to shoot that basketball.
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  Speaker 5: And so this is why a lot of times some
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  Speaker 5: behavioral therapy will fall short because there's too much latency.
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  Speaker 5: This activity has fired in the brain, but it may
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  Speaker 5: take ten seconds before you actually see that the child
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  Speaker 5: is not paying attention. So what we're doing is we're
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  Speaker 5: meeting the behavior before it ever becomes a behavior by
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  Speaker 5: seeing the neurons right when they fire and the electrical
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  Speaker 5: current and adapting that and changing that through the reinforcement.
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  Speaker 1: So a kid, for example, is having this experience and
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  Speaker 1: over time ideally gaining certain mastery over their body, over
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  Speaker 1: their thoughts, their breathing, et cetera, and then able to
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  Speaker 1: take that into another experience.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, they're kind of learning to use a spadometer like
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  Speaker 5: on a car. To go a certain speed. And a
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  Speaker 5: great example has had a kid recently that he was
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  Speaker 5: working on focus, right, And so we had the brain
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  Speaker 5: the EEG hooked up and whenever the brain would get
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  Speaker 5: into focus, which is a certain electrical speed around twelve
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: to sixteen, Hurtz that whenever the brainways would drop into
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: that speed, which all of us do, the question is
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: how long do we stay in it? He'd drop into
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: the speed, then he'd get reinforcement. So his favorite music
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: video was playing every time his brain would drop into that.
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: If he became more anxious and started worrying about something
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: or thinking about the future, the video would stop instantaneously
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: to the mill second. If he started to get more
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: distracted and his brain was going too slow, then the
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: video would stop as well. So we're kind of honing
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: him on this certain speed we want, right, And for
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: a few weeks nothing was happening. Then all of a sudden,
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: like I can hear from the other room the videos,
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: the music's playing. I'm like, what's going on in Johnny's room?
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: And I walk in there and he's like playing an
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: air guitar to this, to this song, and he's like,
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: is this what you meant? By focus and I said yes,
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: And he says, I didn't know focus was this. I
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: thought focus was like grinding down on my teeth and
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: you know, like and he says, I can do this
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: all day long. He's playing the air guitar. So I said, Johnny,
• 21:44
  Speaker 5: next time you go in to take your test, I
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: want you to pretend to play the air guitar. He
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: walks in holding holding an A plus in his hand.
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: Shut up and he's like, He's like, Doc, this is easy.
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: But think about things that we these terms we use
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: that we just assume I know what it means to
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: be calm, or I know what it means to.
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: Be focused or creative.
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: Those are very abstract unless you can see it and
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: experience it.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: So what this is awesome? Okay?
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: So let me just remind everyone here I'm speaking with
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: UH doctor Timothy Royer and Amy Royer. She's a registered nurse.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: The book is called Tsunami Building Resilience Against Anxiety and Depression.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: So having said all this, you know, with all the
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: diagnoses out there, what are you saying?
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: What's your thesis?
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: I'll leave that for doc.
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: What I'm saying, okay, is, first of all, we have
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: to acknowledge there's a significant crisis going on. Okay, we
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: are now at a point that one out of five
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: people have clinical anxiety, not just stressed, clinical anxiety. That's
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: about forty million people in the United States. Then we
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: have another twenty million that have clinical depression. Right, so
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: you know, we have a family of ten, you know,
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: and that means you know, three or four are going
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: to you know.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: Experience something. Right.
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: This has been an astronomical increase in the last thirty years.
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: We were promised in the late eighties early nineties on
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: the front page of Newsweek that prozac would eradicate depression
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: as we know it on the planet. That's what we
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: were promised, and it's been exactly the opposite, with a
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: thirty five percent increase in this and it's estimated in
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: the next twenty thirty years that seventy to eighty percent
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: of the population will be experiencing anxiety and depression. That's
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: going to completely bankrupt our economy as we know it. Okay,
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: So first of all, there's a real problem. Second is
• 24:08
  Speaker 5: we don't really have enough adequate resources. If you do
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: the math just on psychiatrists and social workers and psychologists,
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: you can't even come close to it. Of the clinical people,
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: there's only about twenty seven percent that are actually getting
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: services for their problems, so we.
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: Couldn't even match it.
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: And we work in a lot of universities where we
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: use these kiosk that students can come to and learn
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: these things in eight minute sessions, and they do that
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: a few times a week. These universities they're dying because
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: so many of these kids are dropping out because of
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: anxiety and depression. And they're trying to build more counseling centers,
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: but that's not going to answer the problem here because
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: it's more upstream in the brain and body. And so
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: what we're proposing is anxiety and depression isn't just about
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: the people that are currently suffering anxiety and depression. Anxiety
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: and depression is about me, doc Amy guy, all of
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: us a building resilience so that we can manage those
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: storms and see those stressors as something that actually make
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: us stronger. Right, and that goes back to shoring up
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: the autonomic nervous system. We have a project starting next
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: week at a school in California. We work in a
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: lot of schools and universities, but we're going to be
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: hooking up seventy five third graders to breathing belts and
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: during their school day, every day, they're going to be
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: practicing diaphramatic breathing for seven minutes. And we've done this
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: in other school systems where we've seen reduction in depression
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: and anxiety by seventy eighty percent in these little kids. Right,
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: And I can just see this picture of these seventy
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: five kids all doing their breathing and everybody's like, what
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: are you doing. We're building resilience so that ten years
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: from now, twenty years from now, thirty years from now,
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: these kids have a strong autonomic nervous system, and so
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: tsunami is all about. The thesis is this is about
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: all of us, and we have to be building resilience
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: early on. The answer is not just counseling and more meds.
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: We are not opposed to those things, and we're very
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: thankful for them, but they're not answering our dilemma, our epidemic,
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: and we have to come about it another way, which
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: is building resilience in the autonomic nervous system.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And you don't think that or to what degree do
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: you think that? Talk therapy CBT, although any other name,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: any other modality. To what degree do you think they
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: are affective they are helping?
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a sorry, did you want to
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: jump in?
• 27:06
  Speaker 6: No, I would say that we do have a chapter
• 27:08
  Speaker 6: in the book where we talk about the value of
• 27:11
  Speaker 6: those things, and that we wouldn't want to be quoted
• 27:15
  Speaker 6: as discouraging people from seeking those things out. We do
• 27:19
  Speaker 6: talk about the supply and demand just being completely inadequate,
• 27:23
  Speaker 6: and also insurance coverage difficult to manage.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: So we find them definitely effective.
• 27:30
  Speaker 6: But the funny story is that when Doc was running
• 27:35
  Speaker 6: his clients through the neurofeedback in the biofeedback train, he
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: didn't really need to talk to them as much anymore.
• 27:43
  Speaker 6: They were solving their brains, were solving their own problems.
• 27:46
  Speaker 6: And this was going with kids initially, but then adults
• 27:51
  Speaker 6: because their parents were like, I want to do this
• 27:53
  Speaker 6: program too. So where we had set up our office
• 27:56
  Speaker 6: to be pediatric, we had toys in the waiting room
• 27:58
  Speaker 6: and stuff, now we start having all these parents who
• 28:00
  Speaker 6: had to get bigger chairs to accommodate adults, and so
• 28:05
  Speaker 6: just kind of funny how we ended up in that space.
• 28:07
  Speaker 6: But then adults, when you start talking with adults, they're
• 28:11
  Speaker 6: going to start using the words anxiety depression OCP.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: About their own self.
• 28:16
  Speaker 6: When it's the kids, it's attention deficits, ordered frequently misdiagnosed.
• 28:22
  Speaker 6: But with the adults, they are already like they've got
• 28:26
  Speaker 6: their label and they've been through different treatments and things.
• 28:29
  Speaker 6: So what we would say, and I believe we say
• 28:33
  Speaker 6: it in the book, is that combining is the most
• 28:37
  Speaker 6: effective thing to do, because I'm sure you know that
• 28:41
  Speaker 6: there is always something at the root and it's very
• 28:44
  Speaker 6: hard to get there. But when we have practiced with
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: the neuro feedback of the bile feedback, people have gotten
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: well enough to start exploring further into areas that before
• 28:58
  Speaker 6: they had, you know, the sympathetic nervous system telling them
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: do not go there. Right now, you start to open
• 29:05
  Speaker 6: some more doors. And you know, our own experience with
• 29:09
  Speaker 6: our own kids also was very enlightening to us because
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: we thought, you know, he's a neuropsychologist and I'm a nurse,
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: we should be able to do everything exactly. But we
• 29:20
  Speaker 6: were stymied, you know, multiple times. But watching the kids
• 29:27
  Speaker 6: when they did the neural feedback and the biofeedback, which
• 29:30
  Speaker 6: they were able to do in the elementary school years
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: and just watching things that were barriers to them kind
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: of just crumble down in front of their way. And
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: now even as adults, like we laughed sometimes like look
• 29:46
  Speaker 6: at that, like remember when we were working on that
• 29:49
  Speaker 6: or whatever, but like we were doing the things that
• 29:52
  Speaker 6: nurses and psychologists do, and we were ramming our heads
• 29:57
  Speaker 6: against walls. And then this was like unlocking a code
• 30:03
  Speaker 6: like that and letting their own system the way it
• 30:06
  Speaker 6: was made, function in.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Its own way.
• 30:11
  Speaker 6: So it was, you know, we are conventionally trained in
• 30:16
  Speaker 6: nursing and psychology and this was like outside of what
• 30:20
  Speaker 6: we had been trained to see. So we were like
• 30:23
  Speaker 6: excited obviously, but also like mind boggling have to go
• 30:27
  Speaker 6: into that space and see what's going on there.
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: I think I would add to that.
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: In the towards the end of the book, second to
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: last chapter, we give the stories of a social worker
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: and a college therapist university counselor, and they talk about
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: how they started to integrate this in not one or
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: the other, and it was amazing their story. After a
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: couple of years, the college counselor was like, my sessions
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: are half I need half as many sessions as I
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: ever needed, And then my sessions are actually so productive
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: because they're not coming in running from a lion. They
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: spent eight minutes at the kiosk before they came in,
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: got their nervous system regulated. Now they come in and
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: they're ready to go.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: They're ready to explore.
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: And then the social worker in those elementary schools that
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: we talk about, she'd been doing this for twenty one
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: years for behavioral disorder kids, and she said, I started
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: to do.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: The breathing first.
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: Then everything else happened so easy, to the point now
• 31:32
  Speaker 5: I just do the breathing with these kids because it
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: changes the stomach pain, the anxiety, tax, those kind of things.
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: So it's not a one or the other.
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: It's could we be if we see the mass of people,
• 31:45
  Speaker 5: could there be things that are doing that we call
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: priming that it's priming them to now take these excellent
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: resources we out have out there and use those correctly.
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: Not kind of be oil and water, but actually it
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: can adhere to them and our really good therapists out
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: there can actually do their job more efficiently.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: I love it once again.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: The book is called Tsunami Building Resilience Against Anxiety and
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Depression DOT Timothy Voyer and Amy Voyer. Folks, how do
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: people learn more about what you're doing and reach out
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: and contact you?
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you can get a hold of us through Royerneuroscience
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: dot com or Doc at Royer neuroscience dot com or
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: Amy at Royer Neuroscience dot com.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, we'll have those lips up here at the
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: show notes page at the Trauma Therapists podcast dot com.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Both of you so inspiring. Love it.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Love to have you back at a later date, sure,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: and we'll be in touch.
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: Thank you, Thanks, all right, thank you?
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome, appreciate it In many
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: Common