positive feedback

words by Amber Wielkins; photography by Stevye Murray

What if there was a way to retrain your brain to feel good again? Magnolia Mind Mapping’s co-owner Bethany Brenes, MPA, LPTA is here for you. Offering neurofeedback to help patients alleviate the symptoms of ADHD, depression, anxiety, and much more, she explains the process (and benefits) of this non-invasive treatment.

Bethany Brenes is passionate on the subject of mental health and neurofeedback, but how does it work? According to Bethany, “The first step is in the qEEG (Quantitative Electroencephalogram), or ‘brain map.’ The map is a non-invasive procedure which records the electrical brain wave activity throughout the brain. It allows us to see where there may be over-activity, underactivity, or an imbalance of specific brain waves. By locating the imbalance, we’re able to identify the functions we expect and are trained to see affected,” she explains.

Take delta waves, for instance. They are slow and abundantly present during deep sleep. The frontal lobe of the brain is responsible for attention, decision making, and cognitive efficiency. If an excessive amount of delta waves is found in the frontal lobe, Bethany is likely to see symptoms of brain fog, difficulty focusing, and trouble with decision making. Alternatively, if there is an underactivity of beta (fast) waves, she’s likely to see decreased motivation, lack of interest, and trouble completing tasks.

After the qEEG, a report of findings is created for the client that correlates their presenting symptoms and the brain map data. “Patients receive so much validation through understanding their brain is making them feel a certain way or identifying the culprit behind cognitive struggles,” Bethany says. “At the end of the report,we provide a protocol designed to stabilize areas of the brain that are stressed during the mapping. Neurofeedback sessions are the ‘training’ which guides the brain into a restorative balance by targeting the specific areas responsible for the symptoms. The typical frequency is twice a week for a minimum of 20 visits.”

As for how the sessions are conducted, the client watches a screen while two sensors read the activity at the brain location being trained. The sensors allow the computer to monitor the natural fluctuation of brain waves, and when the waves go above or below the desired range, the display will dim and the sound will decrease. The client is still able to see and hear the display, but the brain is learning to adjust the waves to receive the reward of the display being brighter. With repetition, the brain creates new pathways and continues to balance levels even after the session is over. The best part?“ Upon completion, these new pathways become permanent and leave the brain with a redistribution of energy and greater cognitive efficiency,” declares Bethany.

Although she sees a wide range of symptoms improve, the most common are anxiety, depression, attention, and sleep issues. However, the story most touching to Bethany was a young man with Down syndrome. “He came to us on the verge of psychosis, struggling to answer direct questions or attend to a task for more than a few minutes,” Bethany details. “After starting neuro feedback, his mother told me he was becoming angry and overwhelmed, behaviors he’d never exhibited before. Due to Down syndrome, he had never identified and processed emotions before, and this was the first time these primitive feelings were able to emerge. After neurofeedback, he was able to keep up with an inquisitive conversation, perform longer tasks with sustained attention, and most importantly, he attended a long-awaited virtual interview for college,” she shares. What a testimony!

Bethany feels she is where she’s meant to be. In 2018, she left a successful career as a clinical director at Industrial Wellness Rehab because she felt called to stay home with her young children. “Leaving that work family was hard, but I followed the voice of the Lord. My husband was my biggest support during that transition,” she claims. For the next year, she used her downtime to create Establish Wellness, a company providing education for a healthy path toward change. “In early 2019, Andrew and Leigh Hurley approached me with the idea of integrating our companies to implement the first neurofeedback practice in Mobile,” she shares. “We partnered with colleagues in Colorado (who had been running neurofeedback successfully for over a decade) to launch Magnolia Mind Mapping. Today, I understand if I hadn’t followed that guiding voice, I wouldn’t have had the extra time with my children and I wouldn’t have been available for this unimaginable opportunity to help others.

This post has been slightly modified for the web. Read the original article in the November 2021 issue of ACCESS Magazine.