“If you want to sleep in a coffin tonight it would be alright” and then the undertaker closes the door leaving the girl alone with 4 corpses for the night.

I giggled. (It sounds morbid but it was actually pretty funny in context)

Damn. The movie shut off. Again.

I’m looking at that blue bar on the left. Hmmm. How can I make it go up with out MAKING it go up?

That’s right, soft intention.

Down a little. Boo.

Up a little. Yay?

Up a lot! But not past the yellow line. Yet…

My mind feels funny, kind of like when you think you’re finally actually meditating, and then YES! The bar moves up past the yellow line and the movie clicks back on.

The next time the movie stops I try (but not really) to move the bar again but I don’t have the energy. Not this time. I’m ready to stop for the day.

Whew. How can I feel tired from doing what feels like nothing?? I've just been sitting watching a movie!

But my brain has been working really hard.

All I know is this is super cool.

I can literally watch my brain “trying” things to get that movie to turn back on.

The bar creeps up, try to do more of that. It starts to slip back down? Let’s try something else. All with “soft intentions” and not TRYING to do anything specific.

This is the idea behind this specific neurofeedback system that I tried (and then immediately purchased to practice more on myself!)

​It's the pIR HEG I mentioned a few months ago in this post.

Passive infrared hemoencephalography

The idea is to strengthen the control over my ability to overcome my emotional brain by pulling my frontal cortex back online when that serves me better.

And it potentially has a bunch of benefits! From helping with migraines and head injuries, to ADHD and emotional reactivity. (But to be clear what I have is not an FDA approved medical device, it’s for wellness!)

So why share all of this?

Because I’m falling in love with neurofeedback and now I’m going to have my own equipment to play around with!

I’ll be tracking what I experience and what I see as benefits and challenges and I’m going to share it here with you!

Because maybe you’ll get excited about it and want to try it out too! How great would that be? Pretty dang awesome!

But I don’t know how it’s going to go (I haven’t even managed to get my system all set up yet!) so the jury’s still out on that.

And even though I don’t have any data yet, here are some things to know about this neurofeedback experience:

• This device doesn’t “DO” anything to my brain. It’s simply monitoring perfusion in my frontal lobes to determine how active they are, to tell the program when to start or stop the movie
• It’s my brain’s job to try different things to see how to get the movie back on, even though I'm not aware of what it's actually doing
• Our brains do this all the time already! Trying all kinds of tactics to get a certain desired result, but this gives my brain the visual feedback of how it's doing
• The “negative” data is important too! It sucks to see the bar go down instead of up but that’s still really important feedback for my brain about what clearly isn’t working so it can try other stuff
• And it’s not medication! It doesn’t do anything to my brain or body that it's not already doing! (Just better, with more intention!)

But you know what’s even better than reading my excited ramblings?

​Watching a 4 minute video by someone who’s been doing this for decades!

​

I’m going to be talking about this more often as I work through it myself. And I'll be sharing more resources and research as I go, so we're on the same page with the data and insight piece.

Is there anything you're super excited about right now, Reader?

I just got off a call with a friend who's thrilled with the psychodrama program she's in!

And another who just launched a (much overdue IMO) podcast!​

And a colleague just shared the link for a conference on reproductive psychiatry that she was so blown away by that another friend and I are going to sign up to attend in 2025!

Super cool mental health-y stuff!

Is there anything better than the awe and amazement that comes from learning something new?

Maybe pumpkin ice cream but neurofeedback is ranking super high for me right now!!

Tell me what you're amazed by! I can't wait to get inspired!

Cheers to healthy brains,

Dr. B

Jessica Beachkofsky, MD

Your friendly, online psychiatrist!

P.S. Neurofeedback is cool and usually doesn't require an MD to perform. Some of these devices aren't even considered medical devices so it may be a thing to consider adding to your practice! Just an idea...

P.P.S. I'm getting back to ADHD soon, I promise! We still have to talk about meds!!!

P.P.P.S. I don't have any videos of my first session but once I've got my system running I'll be sure to include some so you know what it looks like in action!