A Modern Integration for the Treatment of Trauma and Disorders of Regulation

Anyone who has worked with survivors of trauma will recognize the scene: they sit before you, but no words come. They are present in the room but absent from it at the same time, bound tightly within a past that refuses to become history. A child whose behaviour is volatile and bewildering cannot explain what drives them. A person living with severe anxiety finds that speaking about their distress only deepens it. Someone in the grip of chronic depression has been estranged from their own body and emotions for so long that they have lost their way back to themself.

Trauma inscribes itself far deeper than the level of language. It does not reside only in the cognitive layers of the mind, but in the brain's most ancient and wordless strata, in the intricate interplay between body and brain, between physiology and perception, between experience and affect. For such people, conversation alone is not always enough. Words, however carefully chosen, cannot always reach the wound.

On Becoming a Neurofeedback Therapist

Sebern Fisher, a seasoned psychodynamic psychotherapist and one of the pioneering clinicians in this field, describes her first encounter with neurofeedback as nothing less than a revelation: "I felt as though I was living in a different brain." What she encountered in herself, she subsequently witnessed in her patients, again and again.

"As a neurofeedback therapist, I stand at the mysterious, ineffable juncture where brain becomes mind. Patients who have lived for years in a constant, unnamed pulse of fear discover one day that it has gone. "I did not know I had been afraid," one man said, "until I was not any more." Others, who had spent years being dragged backwards in time by their own memories, find themselves able, for the first time, to inhabit the present."

Sebern Fisher, M.A.,  On Becoming a Neurofeedback Therapist

Fisher is clear on one essential point: neurofeedback is not another instrument to be added to the clinician's existing repertoire. It is a shift in paradigm. When the brain learns to regulate itself, the change is not merely symptomatic. Patients report inhabiting a different world altogether, one of safety, colour, and openness, in which the capacity for genuine relatedness reawakens and the therapeutic work itself acquires an entirely new dimension.

No less important is the relational dimension. Neurofeedback does not replace the therapeutic relationship; it deepens and augments it. Allan Schore's research illuminates how the human brain is formed within relationships, brain to brain, and how emotional regulation is built through the sustained presence of another. Neurofeedback, offered within a psychotherapeutic frame, operates in precisely this spirit: it helps the brain learn the felt sense of safety that the therapeutic relationship alone cannot always provide quickly enough.

BCIA

The Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA), is a voluntary international organization, whose primary mission is to protect the public by establishing and enforcing rigorous education, training, and ethical standards for certification in biofeedback and neurofeedback.

Ainat Rogel, PhD, MSW, BCN, LICSW

Ainat is the cofounder and codirector of Boston Neurodynamics. She specializes in working with clients who struggle with  developmental trauma, dissociation and PTSD. Her unique holistic approach incorporates neurofeedback (NFB),  biofeedback with psychotherapy and body therapy. She  conducts and analyzes brain mapping (qEEG), supervises clinicians and students (both in  USA, and abroad), and is affiliated with Lesley University, MA. Ainat teaches NFB related courses, gives international presentations and training, and conducts evidence-based research. 

Ainat has a PhD in Computer Science and Neurobiology, and an MA in Social Work. She is a licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, and a BCIA certified NFB provider and supervisor. She was a brain research scientist at various institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH-Harvard, Hebrew University and Ben-Gurion University. She worked as a NFB researcher and clinician at the Trauma Center at JRI. Ainat served as the president and a board member of ISNR  (International Society for Neuroregulation and Research). Ainat initiated a non-profit organization that provides NFB treatment to people who can’t afford receiving it, and to professionals who are in need to get a professional training in neurofeedback in general and specifically, with people with trauma. 

https://www.bostonneurodynamics.com/hybrid-introduction-to-neurofeedback/

Elya Steinberg, MD

Elya Steinberg is a non-binary British-Israeli biodynamic psychotherapist (Gerda Boyesen Centre) who perceives themselves as Buddhist-Jew. They are a medical doctor, UKCP registered, and an EABP member. The, integrating neurofeedback into her psychotherapeutic practice since 2010, particularly with clients experiencing psychological trauma.

They served as co-director of the London School of Biodynamic Psychotherapy for nearly 11 years (2005-2010 & 2014-2019) and headed academic studies from 2014 to 2023. They chaired the EABP Training Standards Committee from 2020 to 2024. They are a lecturer and supervisor at The Minster Centre and Regent's University in London and work in private practice. Additionally, they are an MSc student in applied neuroscience at King's College London and a cancer survivor.