Latest / The Voyage Cast: Real Talk on Marriage, Mental Health, & Emotional Growth / “Have You Ever Thought of Just Not Forgetting?” ADHD, Neurofeedback, and the Kid Who Left the Garage Door Open

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“Have You Ever Thought of Just Not Forgetting?” ADHD, Neurofeedback, and the Kid Who Left the Garage Door Open · The Voyage Cast: Real Talk on Marriage, Mental Health, & Emotional Growth

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a kid, I rode my bike to school and I kept leaving the garage door open behind me.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my parents put sticky notes everywhere in the house to remind me, the bathroom mirror, the refrigerator, doors in and out of the house.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And at first that worked fine.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: After a while, though, those notes became wallpaper.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I lived in a house covered in reminders and noticed basically none of them.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now my dad got frustrated, as any father probably would, and enough to tell me to get my head out of my ass.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a parent now, and I know what it is to say absurd things to your kids, especially when you're frustrated.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: But to a kid, what he said comes out kind of like this.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you keep forgetting.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about or considered just not forgetting anymore?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be great.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: The garage door was the part my parents could see.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: They saw the evidence of my forgetting.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: What they couldn't see, however, is me in the classroom.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where things were really bad.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would drift so bad in those classrooms that I had almost zero clue what had been discussed.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was physically present for twelve years of school, and I attended maybe four of them.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I had ADHD so bad, but nobody knew it.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't diagnosed until college.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that is when I found neurofeedback.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm around 20.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: For the first time in my life, I could feel my mind start to drift.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: However, I could bring it back to the room.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now I couldn't do that before.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So after years of floating away like a space cadet, I had kind of a fighting chance.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that kid who left the garage door open uh might be living in your house right now.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not actually living in your house right now.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: If I was, that'd be super weird, and you should probably call the police, uh, or at least make me a meal.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm hungry.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you have a kid like me in the living room, that's something to really consider because maybe they're getting they're maybe they're like I was, undiagnosed.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: If so, this episode is definitely for you.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: The second reason is that I now own a counseling practice and I have for the last 15 years, but over the last year, we offered a neurofeedback line of service.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now I did it, what, 25 years ago or something like that?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in it, and that's why we offer it.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not a neutral view talking about this today, or me even wanting to offer this service here at Voyages Counseling.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is me, however, telling you that I did something that really worked.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I watch it all the time with my clients and it works for them, it works for their families.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to show you some of the research so you can kind of judge for yourself, okay?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think this is a good thing.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think people need to know about it, and I want you to see the research and come to a conclusion on what's best for you in your family and your brain.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So here's where we're gonna go.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I want to start with uh what was going on in me that my parents couldn't see, because it's probably going on in your family too, right?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Given the statistics today, you know, there's a likely, high likelihood that somebody in your family or somebody that you know is experiencing these things or is undiagnosed in some kind of way.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, then I want to go into and explain what neurofeedback is, uh, what the research says about it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you decide to try it, how to do it well.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get back to my parents.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: They couldn't see what was going on in me other than what was at the home.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: They worked all the time, but they couldn't see me in classrooms.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now picture your kid at the kitchen table.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're similar to I am.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they start with uh a worksheet or something like that.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're doing their homework.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they get up for some water, but uh by the time they get up, they can't find the pencil again.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: You tell them to start.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: They say they've already started, nothing's happened, but maybe the name at the top of the page or something like that, right?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that's that's 10 minutes in, and that's as far as they got.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So from where you're standing, it looks like potentially a kid who just won't do a simple task.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the same 10 minutes can come from five different places diagnostically.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: He can't get himself started.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: He lost the instructions, everything else in the room is louder than the worksheet.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So clearly there's a squirrel or a shiny thing or a loud thing that's getting them distracted.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: The work is just too hard and nobody caught it.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's an option.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, or he has failed at the table long enough that he's built like an association with sitting down at the table and doing the work.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he already feels like he's lost.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: You may not, as the parent, know which one it is.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And neither can I, especially from this podcast.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And even sometimes we, it's hard to suss out as clinicians.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have to do full, you know, assessments.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that is the job of a psychologist who's going to do the assessment, especially a good one, uh, to actually check for things like ADHD to see if that's really the case.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: But it may not be.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: It could just be poor sleep.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: It could be an anxiety issue.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a learning problem like dyslexia or dysgraphia or something like that.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it could even be a hearing or visual issue, vision issue.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to be really careful as we're talking about this stuff.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, understanding why he left the garage door open, why I left the garage door open, uh, is not the same thing as deciding it was uh okay that I did it or okay that your kid would do the same thing.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to be careful here because our field has a habit, the psychological field is a habit of turning a diagnosis into an excuse.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my diagnosis when I was a young man explained what was going on in my head, um, but it never excuses the responsibility or the outcomes of my choices.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I still struggle with these issues today, not as bad, because I've done treatment and I've gotten help and I've worked on these things, even just in my own independent uh behavior patterns.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when my disposition frustrates somebody or offends somebody, every single time that's mine to deal with.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need people around me to lower the bar so they can understand me.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, your kid, just like me, has to learn to carry this part of their life and this part that they play within their family and and own it when they let somebody down, when they get something wrong, when they do something that somebody doesn't like.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to understand him so the help can go to the right place, so that he learns to support himself instead of needing everyone around him to adjust to his disposition.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're not called to accommodate everybody's disposition.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the help has to be, the help that he gets has to be uh something he can do or she can do.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, try harder is kind of a polite version of what my dad said to me when he said, get your head out of your ass.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it gives the kid nothing to do.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like the statements that you probably have heard in relationships, like, oh, get over it.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: What does that even mean?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do you get over it?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a bridge?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: How do I do this?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to start changing kind of what we're asking for.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, three instructions become one instruction, and then we check back, right?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, do your project becomes write the first sentence and show me, which is a much better approach to just do your project, get your head out of your ass, you know, get over it, whatever it is, right?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's much more descriptive of the exact task I'm asking for.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it gives a better chance.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a feedback loop of show me.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now we do need to watch how we communicate to our kids or our family or whatever when we're frustrated.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we got to be careful of these words like lazy, careless, or purposeful or anything like that, because these prescriptive words can become an identity.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: They become a picture of who we think we are.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the adults a lot of times that reinforce that.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: The kids are probably already thinking it about themselves.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to be careful what we're reinforcing.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And though those are things that probably would have helped me a lot when I was a young man because I definitely had a lot of these internal dialogues that were difficult to overcome.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now in my 20s, neurofeedback helped me out a ton.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a different kind of help than I'd ever known about or heard about.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was a psychologist that offered it after they did testing and assessment to identify what was going on.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: The way neurofeedback kind of works generally, uh, so you can understand what I'm talking about, is you go to a clinic for it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something, I mean, there's people who will market that you can do this in your own home.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm leery of that.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there's enough oversight for it yet.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: But right now, the best approach to neurofeedback is you'll go to a clinic for it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: It'll cost you some money, but you need a clear picture when you go to these clinics.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you're going to look for a brain map.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: You get a clear picture of what's going on, and you're going to have to pay for it, or maybe insurance sometimes, just depending on how things are going.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: At our practice, it starts initially with that recording, that brain map, uh, where we record your electrical activity of your brain, whether it's your brain, child's brain, whoever's brain, somebody's brain is getting recorded.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um the sensors will go on the scalp.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've seen our other ads on this, you'll see a little bit more description on what that looks like.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but nothing is going into his head.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's no like electrical current or stimulation.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: As much as we want to cattle prod our kids, like we just can't do that.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not ethical or good parenting.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so we just use these kinds of sensors, and these sensors just listen to the kid's brain.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: In listening to the brain, the software that we use records that raw data and we get a readout.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: That recording goes out to be read, and a report comes back on how his brain is functioning.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now we use that information to build a plan that targets the areas of his brain that are essentially either overfunctioning or underfunctioning.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then we move to the training, the actual neurofeedback sessions.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: The sensors go back on, uh, the software watches for the patterns uh the plan calls for.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um when his brain produces the desired responses, there's a signal or a reward that happens.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Either they get to hear the sound of the show they're watching or the screen of the TV in front of them starts illuminating more so they can actually see the show that they want to watch.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's a basic kind of reward response.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when the pattern drops off, the signal or reward goes away.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, over many sessions, the idea is that the brain learns to produce the patterns that we want.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So think of like a guitar being tuned.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: It shows the beginner what he can't hear yet, right?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you put that tuner on the guitar, it shows the new player what he can't yet hear, uh, especially if he's not, doesn't have perfect pitch.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So he can adjust, so he can get into tune.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Neurofeedback is trying to be that tuner for the brain in some kind of way, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because the kid can't, we, you know, in our day-to-day life, we don't see what our brain functioning looks like.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: But when we get that feedback loop or that reward, we can now see it.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we know how to tune our brain.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what it was for me.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I could finally see the drift that was happening.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's my experience and my own personal story.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not proof, but it does suggest that this stuff really can work.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So let's look at the studies.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: When a parent asks whether neurofeedback works, they're really asking two questions.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Does my kid get better?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And does it last?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: The largest American trial answers both those questions, and it was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this study enrolled 144 children who trained for about three months.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: By the end, parents and teachers both rated their inattention as much improved.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I had that when I was in elementary school.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then the researchers kept checking.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: At 13 months, the improvement had held, it sustained, even without the treatment.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And at two years, it held still.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when they set those two-year results beside the best known study of established ADHD treatments, the numbers were very similar.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, the best and most common treatments typically associated with ADHD, uh, this neurofeedback is holding up against it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: The numbers are very similar for success.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: There was a German trial of about 150 children, which found about the same thing.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they even noted it at six months after the training had ended.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they're seeing that longevity.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: In 2025, there was a review out of Jama Psychiatry, the Journal of American Medical Association, uh, which pooled about 38 trials and found a benefit in the ones that use the long-established protocols or the most commonly used or known about protocols.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: On safety, reviewers found no major side effects specific to neurofeedback.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does that mean?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Kids do get better and it does tend to last.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why then do researchers still argue about neurofeedback?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: This might not be something you know, but it is something, a question that we should approach if we're going to be diligent about understanding how we're treating or affecting our brain.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now it comes down to how those American trials were actually conducted.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Half the kids got real neurofeedback.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: The other half of the kids got a sham or a false neurofeedback treatment that just looked like it was neurofeedback.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were in the same rooms, they had the same sensors, uh, the same game or whatever they were trying to uh to manipulate with their brainwaves were on the screen in front of them to get that reward response that we talked about.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Except for some of the group, uh the game was not actually responding to the children's own brain.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was just kind of working by itself.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody in the family knew which one it was.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: The sham kids, the the false study, uh improved by the same large amount of on symptoms, which if you own a neurofeedback practice is not the sentence you really want to hear, you know, at a conference or in anything else.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, most of these places are going to say, hey, neurofeedback's the greatest thing since sliced bread, everybody should do it.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And my opinion is actually that still.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk about why.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: The one place the group split uh was on medication.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: At 13 months, the kids who got the real training needed significantly less uh medication.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So after the studies, the sham kids and the neurofeedback kids seem to present similarly in terms of the benefits.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: However, that longevity after that 13-month mark, the kids who are in the sham studies started needing medication again, whereas the other kids didn't need as much medication, is what these studies are saying.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm a therapist, I'm not a physician, so take that research as it is, right?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not advice about how to treat your child, but it is something to help you have, let's say, some information on what all this stuff is.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Some researchers look at the sham results and conclude that the brain training is not what's doing the actual work, it's the room itself.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my answer to that.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Look at what the sham kids actually got.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: A trained adult sitting with them two or three times a week for three months in a quiet room.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: A screen that asked them to sit still and pay attention.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's not nothing.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: That is a lot of what good treatment is, and it works.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can raise so, like from a from a purely behavioral pattern, that's that's like good behavioral psychology in some sense, right?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: The kid is learning certain behaviors, and those behaviors are going to train the brain, anyways.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you can raise the same objection about anything, though.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that that's the dilemma with this, these objections.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: It could be about therapy, it could be about anything.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you can raise that same objection of what a child is getting in the room from a therapist, tutor, teacher, whatever.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't throw those out because the room is a part of it, because that environment is a part of it, because they're in a controlled environment.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: We don't throw out the results.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you start something new and change follows, the new thing is likely the cause.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now that might feel very elementary or overly simplified, but notice something.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: These kids started neurofeedback and were still better two years later.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, in the sham results, they they had to go back on the medication.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some clear evidence of positive results.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: The medication finding says the brain training did add something on top of the room.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we need to hone in on.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't I don't read the argument um that's challenging neurofeedback as a reason to stay away.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of read it as the recipe.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Put the brain training and the room together, and you get both halves of what worked in those trials.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is what we built at Voyagers Counseling.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: We use the protocols that have been studied uh the longest, and we tailor them to your kid's own brain.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we may even use creative new protocols, but it's specific and bespoke to that brain map that we get or to that situation or to that thing.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um a licensed therapist guides every single case that we get.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the plan for your kid comes from someone who understands the whole picture, not just the brain map.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can make changes on the fly.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of a unique thing for us and at Voyages Counseling.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: A trained neurotech runs each session and the room itself, again, going back to the pushback on the sham stuff the sham part of the study, the room itself is a warm and inviting place.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's just therapeutically useful in general, right?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Your kid is going to spend a lot of hours in that chair and we want them to like being there.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Who wouldn't?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you decide to try it, here's how to do it well.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, here's some things to consider.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ask your provider, whether that's us or anybody else, these three questions.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Which protocols do you use?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, do you use the most efficacious or the most clinically valid uh protocols?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And what does the research say about that?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: How will we know whether or not these things are working?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what do we do if it isn't working?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So to those two questions, I want to address something.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people with ADHD in the beginning stages of their neurofeedback protocols don't see the change, but the people in their life might.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there needs to be kind of a collective experience or monitoring, again, teachers, family, all that stuff to notice those things.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what do we do if it's not getting the results we're looking for?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: You speak to the clinician or whoever's overseeing it and you make adjustments to those protocols.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: We should be able to change those things on the fly, especially if we have good brain maps and we have good understanding of what's really going on.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So ask those same questions to us or to anybody.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And before the first session, pick two or three things uh you can count.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, track two or three things uh of the behavioral changes that you're looking for that you can monitor.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: How many reminders does it take to get out of the door?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: How many assignments get turned in?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, write down where each one stands today.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ask your kid what he wishes were easier and put that on the list.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Start one new thing at a time.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So when he does improve, you'll actually know what's changing.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you do too many things at a time in terms of the behaviors, or if you're trying to monitor too many behaviors at a time, you may not see uh what you're looking for, you may not get what you're looking for.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then set a date to review everything.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: At Voyages Counseling, we have 20 sessions per protocol.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And at 16, we review and then at 20, we review, but we can review at any time fluidly during those protocols.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if again, not if nothing's moved, stopping might be a good decision, right?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not noticing the benefit you're hoping for, you may just need to stop.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: How you explain stopping, especially to a child, is gonna be really important because he might hear that things are going nowhere and that he's just broken, he's not good enough, and he's ill reconcilable.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: So try something closer to this if you're gonna be communicating to a child uh those changes or if there needs to be an adjustment.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're going to try a different kind of training and see if it helps with the stuff that's been really hard.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to be really uh understanding and gentle in that process.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there is a common uh, what would it be, comorbidity of experience with ADHD, where people with ADHD have a low sense of self.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: They have uh they're very self-deprecating, very hard on themselves.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: They just see that they're so different than everybody else.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we're making these adjustments, when we're communicating these changes, we really want to be tender about it.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And whether or not you try this or not, think about everything you said to your kid yesterday.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: How much of it was a reminder, a correction, or a warning, right?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we want, again, back to the idea of being gentle.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be really thoughtful about how we're communicating to our children.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is uh you've been kind of hard on them, then you may just need to change your approach.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe there's nothing that needs to be fixed right now, and you need like 10 minutes of just care and love and hangout time with your kid on something they're interested in.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just good for both of you.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So is neurofeedback going to help your kid?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot answer that from a podcast.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And anybody that says otherwise is selling you snake oil, okay?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: But those three questions when you find a provider is how you can start vetting some of that out.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I am of the opinion, though, clinically, that if it works, do that.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so try new things.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: See if something works.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you know it's a pretty low-risk treatment.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what I can tell you though, again, referring back to the studies, is kids who did it got better and were better longer.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: They held on to the benefit for years after.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's true for me, but for me, it's been like 25 years, and I'm still reaping the reward of that benefit.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a guarantee that neurofeedback is going to help everybody?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's no guarantees in life, especially in mental health.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it gave me a fighting chance to at least try to learn in those classrooms.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I wish I had it when I was a younger man.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you saw yourself in this episode, or you see your kid, or you see your family, check it out.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Check out neurofeedback.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you're local to Denver, come in and talk to us about it.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you don't have to be alone in this process.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for listening to the Voyage cast.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you tuning in for another episode.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, as I say it in every episode, I mean it, it's true.
• 22:11
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• 22:17
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• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because it doesn't hurt you.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a generous thing you can do to help us spread the word, to help those algorithms see the Voyage cast as something useful and helpful for the culture broadly.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a very therapeutically literate culture, but I don't think everybody actually understands what it is they know or think they know about psychology.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: So share this so that people can become actually educated on these topics, even if it's just for 10 or 15, 20 minutes of an episode.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's moving that needle to health, to understanding, to a truer north every single time.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's it for today.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining me, and we will talk to you next time.