Jack Thompson

Consultant Psychopathologist and Itherapist @Rethink Mental Illness

iTherapy clinic advises on the clinical use of a mix of biofeedback technologies for supporting self regulation of the nervous system and brain heart coherence Cognitively based therapies are the dominant paradigm in our healthcare system, however, arguably they are of little or no utility until the dysregulated brain has its functional self-regulatory balance restored, and until any underlying visceral hyperreactivity has either been assuaged or extinguishedThe first task of trauma therapy therefore should be to attend to the calming down of fear-driven over-arousal. The regulation of physiological arousal is intimately associated with the regulation of the autonomic nervous system. Both arousal regulation and autonomic regulation are in turn intimately associated with the regulation of the affective domain and this is a matter for the body in conjunction with our ‘self’ consciousness at a pre reflective level. Ideally, the work of trauma recovery is one of transitioning the trauma experience from one that is viscerally felt in all bodily systems, to one that appropriately resides in historical memory, like all other recallable events in one\'s life. Biofeedback is a useful and effective strategy for this purpose, both relaxing and concentrating the embodied mindThe assumption underlying improvements in neurological regulation is that traumas are encoded in functional brain networks not only as memories but in other physiological and experiential aspects too. The peripheral indicators of unresolved trauma can be observed in autonomic response patterns, as well as in hand, feet, neck, head activity and facial tics for eg, establishing visible emotionally driven bodily patterns. Helping to stimulate the systemic restoration of the nervous system’s capacity to re live a calm, relaxed, and well-controlled state is a starting point. This is best accomplished under benign conditions, without any direct and prolonged reference to the trauma history