Alpha-Theta Training for Chronic Trauma Disorder,
A New Perspective -- Section V. Summary and Conclusions; References

TABLE OF CONTENTS

V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
REFERENCES

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Alpha-theta neurotherapy has demonstrated what the research team of Elmer and Alyce Green and Dale Walters at The Menninger Foundation said in the 1970s: Causing the brain to generate theta activity daily over a period of time seems to have enormous benefits, including boosting the immune system, enhancing creativity, and triggering or facilitating "integrative experiences leading to feelings of psychological well-being." The protocol seems to transcend the patient's lack of motivation to change, initial incapacity to create internal visual imagery, and/or disbelief in the effectiveness of the treatment. Frequently a patient's experience and results far exceed the goals targeted (in the visual imagery).

Entering a deeply altered alpha-theta EEG state of arousal seems to create a link to a subconscious realm where a wider vision of the self without its ego adaptations is contacted. This link may be associated with concepts of context and state-dependent learning and memory. Beyond overcoming the presenting problem, the treatment appears to evoke in the patient more general, adaptive shifts in behaviors, attitudes, relationships, health, mental processing, job performance, and creativity. A large number of psychiatric diagnoses appear to respond to this treatment. In this chapter, it was suggested that this may be due in large part to neurofeedback enabling conscious access to repressed memories and related to affect concerning earlier trauma, especially childhood trauma. With this access may come cathartic reactions, positive changes in neurochemistry, and an "opening" of formerly unconscious realms to the effects of positive imagery and suggestions. Furthermore, it was speculated that when the conscious mind enters the EEG range of theta and "surrenders" to what some call the "mind field" the brain/mind system is enabled to go through a dramatic and profound reordering process much like that described by Illya Prigogine (Capra, 1996) as "escape to a higher order." Such transcendent experiences may involve transpersonal realms that some have attempted to explain through concepts of quantum physics. These transpersonal phenomena include frequent experiences during neurofeedback of a witness consciousness, a resource self, and an inner healer. Whether one ascribes these phenomena to explanations from quantum physics or to dreams or hallucinations, they appear to be important factors in many of the major personality changes seen following neurofeedback.

In the alpha-theta protocol the raising of amplitude of alpha and theta EEG is seen as a precursor to the process of healing. The possibility exists that if one could create a structured meditation program for a patient, over a period of time there would be similar deep shifts in personality and behavior. However, as Walsh et aL (1980) state, meditation training is usually extraordinarily intense and arduous, often demanding decades if not a major portion of life to reach complete fruition. I suspect that with neurotherapy we are compressing time, and, in less than 2 months, achieving results that adepts such as yogis experience only after many years of meditating. Achterberg (1985) states, "Electronic technology used as biofeedback has taught us to enter an altered state of consciousness at will. Shamanism, as it has been practiced in the traditional manner of healing, may become obsolete after 20,000 years."

The broad range of effectiveness of this therapy might lack credibility if it were not for the fact that early childhood trauma has such a wide range of psychological and physiological effects. It is sometimes proposed that addiction is the behavioral expression of an emptiness the addict finds within and the attempt to find a spiritual connection to fill this void. The same might be said for most of those who carry residue of childhood trauma expressed in some complex interaction with the central nervous system. Perhaps, in addition to the theories of the effectiveness of alpha-theta training discussed in this chapter, it is the experience of such a spiritual connection that is a major healing force behind the extraordinary healing so often seen with this training. In other words, one connects with the God within, in whatever terms one wishes to express that, and opens one's heart to love-love of oneself and love of the other.

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