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guilloche
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Default Feb 26, 2019 at 11:23 AM
  #41
I trained last night, and didn't feel sick or have a headache! When I trained earlier in the week at C4 again, I was still getting headaches and feeling sick for most of the next day, which really sucked. I was preparing for that again today...

This time it was C3, and a slightly lower frequency again.

I am incredibly tired though... still not sleeping great, and I had trouble falling asleep last night, I think because I was so excited to not feel terrible after the training !

re: Your last T... oh yikes. I understand, about not being able to imagine your life without that connection. Although I don't think I had a good connection with this T, I had thought about quitting, and worried that it would leave me without anyone to talk to. So, I was sort of trying to hang on to that, at least until the NFB could work.

But in that moment, I just realized that... nope, this isn't going to work.

I'm still thinking through it though, mostly because the thought of trying to do therapy with the threat of abandonment ("if you don't meet the goals, in the time frame, I'll refer you out") - seems insane to me. I don't know how anyone can have a healthy therapy relationship like that?

I also wish that I could figure this stuff out faster... it sucks to have spent the money for a year and a half of therapy and to have it end like this, I wish I could get to the point where I can confidently figure it out in the first few months.

Quote:
Originally Posted by koru_kiwi View Post
i never could fully trust my T either, partially because of his own insecurities that he brought into our relationship, often mentioning how he felt like he 'had to walk on eggshells', so not to upset me or the 'delicate' balance of our relationship. as much as i tried to make it work and come to trust him, things like this and also his inconsistencies got in the way all too often to where i couldn't feel safe enough in myself to fully let him in.
Wow! Yes - this is so familiar to me! I had a previous T, my very first T, who thought that I hated him, because I wasn't really "opening up". It was so frustrating, because me not being able to trust him and dive into my stuff wasn't really about him, it was about me, and he just didn't get that. And, looking back, I don't understand how a therapist could not get that - it seems really basic!

This is the stuff though that gives me hope for the NFB! I feel like some of this has to be... brain-based? Because of the way my brain reacts when I get anywhere near thinking about the trauma, it just doesn't lend itself to talking through... but if I can strengthen the resiliency in my brain so that it doesn't feel like walking through a minefield of triggery stuff... that's got to be helpful.

Thanks for telling me about your experiences with sleep and NFB! I still feel like things got better... at some point in that first week or two... there was definite improvement, so I hope that I can get back to that!

Did you also ever have... I think they're called "hypnogogic hallucinations"? It's when you think you hear a sound (or sometimes see or feel something) right as you're falling asleep or waking up (in that "in between" state) - that is alarming, so you jolt awake?

I get those sometimes, though now that I know what they are I don't panic as much and try to just go back to sleep. It's a really weird experience, but I'm totally expecting that to decrease/disappear with the NFB.

Quote:
just wondering, and i'm hoping that your practitioner would have asked you this prior to starting your NFB, but have you ever had any physical head injury
He asked about it when we talked through the QEEG, because the QEEG showed something like a 95% chance that I had some sort of injury (???) which is kind of alarming, but he said that it's overestimated and unless I had something specific, or a history of sports, that he tended to not believe it.

I'm really not sure re: childhood stuff, lots of holes... there are a couple things that could have been problematic, and a couple falls as an adult. Nothing that's ever been enough of a problem to get diagnosed though.

And, you're right! I remember reading that too...

Thanks again for sharing how your experience started and progressed! It's really helpful to be able to hear another perspective on it... I haven't tried P4 yet or T3, T4. Hopefully those go better.

I think my next protocol is to combine the two that I just did (C3 first, then C4). I'm probably going to ask him about that though - since C4 didn't feel great last time, but C3 didn't cause any problems. I'd rather just repeat the one that didn't leave me struggling to function the next day

Thanks!
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Thanks for this!
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guilloche
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Default Mar 02, 2019 at 09:27 PM
  #42
I'm kind of depressed and slipping in to hopeless.

I did the combined protocol, it was mostly fine. He still thinks I may be over-training, and so this week I'm doing 12m of C3 + 6 minutes of C4. Which is fine.

But, I'm starting to feel like... nothing is ever going to get better. I'm now about a month in (I started in late January). I really wish he did more from a psych background, because I don't think he remembers anything from the initial call (i.e. re: trauma, etc.) It's hard in the short little calls we have, and I don't feel like... like with a therapist you see every week, they know you and remember things you tell them. I feel like he's got too much going on - we had talked about diet stuff a couple weeks ago (I struggle with my weight), but this week he asked if I had low body fat (due to some other issues). Definitely no.

So it's hard. I wish there were more good alternatives. Now that I'm T-less, I wish I had a T who also did NFB, so we could combine the talking and the brain work.

I do think he's getting some things. We talked again about the initial QEEG, and now that he's talked to me a bit, he said that it definitely doesn't show up the way he'd expect for me (mostly everything looks "normal" - except for elevated delta, all over the place, even with eyes open). But, the way he described what he'd expect made me thing he is listening/paying attention.

It's just all hard right now. I hear so many really great stories about how NFB has made significant differences for people, not just Koru_Kiwi here, but in other places online, and in the Dev. Trauma book.

Thanks... just needed to blab a little. I'm also trying to clean up my diet, and I'm guessing that may actually be driving some of the depression (cutting out refined sugars). It just... everything feels hard right now I'm hating my job and my life, and not really seeing any kind of a path forward. It's a little scary with the NFB, I think, since the QEEG isn't actually providing much of a map to go on... and I feel like my moods are all over the place normally, so I'm not a great "reporter" on what's going on for me (to make decisions about how to train).
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guilloche
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Default Apr 05, 2019 at 03:48 PM
  #43
I'm still feeling pretty miserable. There are some things that are better, I'm sure, but... I'm so all over the place and so reactive.

I hate posting the negative stuff here (I don't want to scare people away), but I also feel like there's nowhere else to talk about it. Even on this (psychcentral) forum, it doesn't really "fit" in any of the other forums, as far as I can tell.

We went back to C3-A1 and Cz-A1 last week, and that was OK... I was feeling a bit more "productive", but kind of crashed towards the end of the week. So he added F3.

I can't figure out how to consistently find F3. It's so incredibly frustrating. Like, I want to cry. I can find C3 and Fz, which are supposed to help... and I actually put electro-paste on those spots and then stick a little bit of a papertowel, so I can *see* those spots and not lose them. But trying to accurately triangulate for F3 just... I can't figure it out. I'm terrible with spatial stuff to start with, and since we're talking about a head, not a flat plane, nothing seems to look right. What I see in the mirror looks different than when I try taking a picture from above my head... and even that seems to change depending on the angle of my head. It must have taken me an hour last night... and while my brain-guy was trying to give advice online, based on the pics, he must have walked away from the computer because he just went silent at the end. So after sitting there waiting for about 15 minutes, I just went ahead and assumed it was "close enough".

I think I'm at the point that I wouldn't recommend home training, at least at this stage. I'm a relatively smart person, I think... I've got a masters degree and work in tech. This guy knows his stuff, does weekly check-ins with me, and is available most of the time for questions online... and it's still *really hard*. I just did session #30 last night. And, I'm feeling bad. Really stressful sleep (I kept waking up, thinking that I was supposed to have electrodes on and that I'd forgotten them, and was therefore screwing up the training!) and am back to feeling really depressed, and there's not really anyone to talk to about that.

I haven't decided what to do yet. I keep thinking that I need to call the local woman that I talked to previously, especially since she also does therapy, and I'm therapist-less right now. I think that could be a good combination. But I'm generally overwhelmed with other life stuff right now... and it's not all awful, I go up and down. Like I said, I had some time last week where I was feeling better and on top of things, sort of.

Anyway. That's where I'm at.
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