What Is Neuropsychotherapy And How Might It Help You?
Neuropsychotherapy is a functional way of looking at client symptoms.
People across time have tried to find frameworks in which to put their conclusions about how their minds work, and for much of recent history, the brain was referred to as the final frontier. However, thanks to new scientific instruments such as the functional MRI and other imaging, scientists are now able to map areas of the brain that are responsible for human behaviors, thoughts, and emotions as well as better understand ways in which each function has served evolutionary needs. Neuropsychotherapy, simply put, is a method of looking at client challenges as issues of brain imbalance, with mental health symptoms reconceptualized as either an overperformance or under performance of different brain areas. For example, if you have an anxiety diagnosis, your brain may be overly prone to use its survival (i.e., flight or flight) responses when faced with stimuli that doesn’t necessarily call for it. Similarly, depression can be linked to underperformance in areas of the brain responsible for energy and motivation, clarity of thought, and social engagement. Trauma disorders are seen as ways in which brains have difficulty putting timestamps on previous adverse events – acting as if the events are happening in the present – and OCD and ADHD are reconceptualized as challenges to brain areas responsible for impulsivity and executive functioning. In taking a more functional and symptoms based approach, neuropsychotherapists can treat clients’ concerns, regardless of diagnosis, using practical exercises that are usually implemented in addition to traditional talk therapies.
Neuropsychotherapists teach specific (and non-invasive) exercises that target key brain functions.
Similar to the way physical therapists may teach someone with an injured knee how to strengthen areas that are weaker and stretch areas that have tightened up or overcompensated, trained neuropsychotherapists teach simple, repeatable exercises that help clients correct brain imbalances that may be responsible for their symptoms. They can be utilized alone or, more often, in combination with other talk-therapy interventions that are specific to client strengths, backgrounds, needs, and preferences. Despite the technical name, neuropsychotherapy does not involve any sort of machines or medical interventions - although concurrent use of medication, feedback devices, or other tools may enhance client results.
Just like knee injury patients need to strengthen or stretch their muscles repeatedly over time, neuropsychotherapy is not a one and done approach. Neuropsychotherapy interventions are most successful when clients take responsibility for spending time between appointments practicing their assigned exercises and building on successes and use it as one of many tools in a larger therapeutic treatment plan co-created with a licensed psychotherapist. While individual brain exercises may help clients to ground during acute situations such as panic attacks or traumatic memories, the overall goal is to improve baseline functionality so that such acute symptoms become less frequent and intense in general. Going back to the example of anxiety symptoms, goals would be to lower the client’s baseline stress over time, teach techniques to rapidly de-escalate symptoms if/when they occur, and develop skills to recognize and prevent symptom peaks before they become problematic.
Neuropsychotherapy is designed to fit your individual needs.
Once your provider has helped you determine symptoms that are most distressing and ways in which they impact you, they will choose a combination of exercises that help change the brain using three approaches.
Top-Down: Perhaps the most familiar of these approaches and one used in many psychotherapy models are top-down interventions which, at their core, involve the brain sending signals to their body to help mitigate symptoms. This is where neuropsychotherapy overlaps with many traditional talk-therapy models. Examples might be de-escalating anxious symptoms by reframing negative thoughts using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Another might be reconsolidating traumatic memories using the Narrative approach in which clients tell stories of adverse events while trying to use language that emphasizes their resilience. Other top-down approaches include meditations in which clients use words to guide themselves to become more relaxed or more aware of their bodies.
Bottom-Up: Anyone who has felt intense anxiety or anger and was told by a friend to “just calm down” will recognize the difficulty in using top-down approaches such as a relaxation exercise once the bodily response has become strong. What is often more effective and more in line with the priorities that the body sets for itself in the interest of survival is for the brain to pay attention to physical signals – called bottom-up approaches. If you’ve ever touched something that hurt and pulled away instinctively before your brain caught up to what was happening, you probably know that the brain listens to the body in a very strong and powerful way. Examples bottom-up approaches include exercises that target the vagus nerve, ones that stimulate areas of the peripheral nervous system that are under-utilized, or interval body scans. Though they take practice, bottom-up interventions are extremely effective and can also promote factors often attributed to physical health such as better cardio-pulmonary health, reduced inflammation, and even a stronger immune system.
Bilateral Approaches: These exercises stimulate the two hemispheres of the brain to send signals to each other – thereby helping the brain strengthen connections between emotional and logical processes. A bilateral approach that has gained a great deal of popularity in recent years has been Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing or EMDR, a modality in which clients change and balance the impact that certain thoughts, memories, and emotions have on them by stimulating and reconnecting neural networks that are determined to be negative to ones that are more positive. Other examples of bilateral approaches include art therapy, walk and talk or other movement-based therapies, and attachment/attunement work.
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While some neuropsych therapeutic interventions can be learned at home, clients may experience better results if they choose to work with a provider who is trained in evaluation, treatment planning, and tracking of progress. Dr. Elisa Woodruff has been studying neuroscience-specific interventions on a general level since 2016 and more specifically over the last two years, including receiving a graduate certificate in trauma informed counseling, and more recently becoming certified in neuropsychotherapy by one of the country’s leading experts in the field. She is currently in the process of receiving training in EMDR for trauma and anxiety. Elisa is currently taking new clients!! Please call us at 630-297-7559 if you are interested in incorporating neuropsychotherapeutic interventions into your talk therapy experience.
