Solving the ADHD Riddle with Connie McReynolds, PhD
This is Wendy Halley, and you're listening to Lucid Cafe. Hi. It's your old pal, Wendy, coming up for air. The last month has been mighty hectic, but I'm happy to report that Lucid Path Wellness is up and running once again. It feels really, really good.
Wendy:The new space is lovely, and my new egg shaped coworker was well worth the wait. Although, in the big picture, it really wasn't a long wait. It felt like it was long because it's been a stressful 7 months, but I can't believe I'm already up and running. Really. So far, the few folks who've had a session in the harmonic ellipse seem well pleased.
Wendy:I know I, for one, can't wait for my next session, which will be, number four later this week. I'll be chatting with Gail Lynn, the inventor of the Harmonic Egg and Ellipse in an upcoming episode which will be super fun, so stay tuned for that.
Wendy:Today's episode is one I've been eager to share with you. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD is a condition that's been controversial and misunderstood for decades. My guest, Dr Connie McReynolds appears to have gotten to the root cause of ADHD and the results of her research and clinical work may surprise you.
Wendy:For those of us who struggle with ADHD symptoms, her findings will likely make a whole lot of sense. And the best part? She's found a way to treat and correct the symptoms, providing a breakthrough solution that's consistently measurable and repeatable using neurofeedback.
Wendy:Connie McReynolds is a licensed psychologist, professor, a certified rehabilitation counselor, and the host of the podcast Roadmap to the Brain. In this episode, we discuss her new book, Solving the ADHD Riddle, the Real Cause and Lasting Solutions to Your Child's Struggle to Learn.
Wendy:So please enjoy my conversation with Dr Connie McReynolds.
Wendy:Connie, thank you so much for joining me.
Connie McReynolds:Well, thank you for having me today, Wendy. It's a pleasure to be here.
Wendy:You recently released a book called Solving the ADHD Riddle, the Real Cause and Lasting Solutions to Your Child's Struggle to Learn.
Connie McReynolds:Yes.
Wendy:Okay. So I was really intrigued reading your book, especially because as someone who has an attention deficit disorder diagnosis, I was seeing myself all over the pages and it was something that I was kind of wondering about myself anyway. Why don't you share the conclusions that you came to about what is going on with people who have that diagnosis? What you suspect is going on?
Connie McReynolds:I'm happy to and thank you for letting me know that this resonated with you. I think that feedback is always so helpful. I have been doing this work for over 15 years and I've been in the field for over 30. So really the exploration started about 15 years ago when I opened a clinic in Southern California as part of a university setting and started kind of uncovering this this situation where, I was running kind of a pilot project to see if the we'll get into what this call which is neurofeedback. I started running a pilot project to understand really how this process could help people, children, and adults with attention problems.
Connie McReynolds:And what I started uncovering, thanks to the assessment that we were using, is that there was a deeper story that wasn't being told or at least I wasn't able to find it. I couldn't find it in the literature. I couldn't find it with people I spoke with. I'd never heard about it at conferences, and I just kept digging because I kept thinking there has to be some other story here. Someone else has to have been looking at this.
Connie McReynolds:And what really I've uncovered, I believe, is the root cause of what gets called ADHD. And with that root cause is really auditory and visual processing problems. And when we get away from that label of ADHD, I think what happens is it opens up the narrative in a broader way so that we can talk about things and dissect this. So there's a colleague out that had wrote this massive book that was 100 of pages in length describing ADHD and I was pouring through that and I thought, I don't think they're necessarily getting at the root cause of this. I think this is a little bit more of the traditional interpretation of what ADHD is and the traditional approach, to quote treating ADHD.
Connie McReynolds:And those traditional approaches tend to be it's just a behavior problem so these are behaviors that we need to get rid of and if we just get rid of those behaviors then everything's going to be great and wonderful. You know, take this medication or do this behavioral intervention, everything's gonna work. Well, what was I was discovering is the people that were coming into my clinics that was not working. And so that really caused me to start looking at this. It's like, well, if if all of this that we know up to this point about 15 years ago, and it it's clearly must be working for some folks, but the people that walked into my clinic, it wasn't working for them.
Connie McReynolds:And so therein lied the curiosity for me, which is what's going on. If all of this is happening, we're using the medications, they're doing the meds, they're doing the behavioral interventions, and they're coming in here, parents are really crying in their hands because this child, they've been down everything that they know what to do and they can't find a solution. So these proposed interventions for at least these children who were showing up in my clinics, it wasn't working and parents were at their wits end. Everyone was suffering with this. So the parents were suffering from the standpoint and I don't use that word lightly because I come from rehab so we don't use that word a whole lot, but it was true.
Connie McReynolds:People were not doing well. We could put it in that terms. The parents weren't doing well. The child wasn't doing well. The teacher wasn't doing well.
Connie McReynolds:No one was thriving in this intervention process. No one was making progress. Punishment wasn't working, you take everything away from this child, you could do all the punishments you wanted to, It wasn't making a difference. There wasn't a lasting outcome that made things better for everyone involved, and I mean everyone. And so that's really where it started.
Wendy:Alright. So that's a lot and quite a journey that you've been on, but I'm really I'm really heartened to hear that your curiosity was peaked because it seems that everyone else has kind of settled for the more mainstream Mhmm. Diagnostic criteria for attention deficit disorder and ADHD. So before we dive in a little bit more, I just wanna ask you, do you see the symptomology applying -- your book is geared towards children and parents of children who have attention deficit disorder. Do you see it applying across the board for adults as well?
Connie McReynolds:Absolutely. I work with with as many adults as I do children, but the focus of this book was to get parents and teachers attention because we've got to start somewhere. And if we can start with the young ones before the damage sets in of low self esteem, anger, frustration, and just all that goes along with not succeeding even though you're trying your best. We can stop some of that at least for some of the children on this planet. That's where it was and same applies to adults.
Connie McReynolds:So everything that's written in here for children, all the diagnosis, the checklists that are in there, the assessments that we use. My youngest is 3 right now and our oldest is 93 that we're working with. So we cover the gamut. The 3 year old's exceptional. He can sit at the computer. The mouse. Typically, it's about age 5 or 6 where we're looking at good functionality of being able to sit at that computer and be there for 30 minutes for these sessions. And so that's really kind of the marker, and I meet with parents.
Connie McReynolds:It's like, oh, I've got a 4 year old.
Connie McReynolds:It's like, well, we'll do the intake. Let's see. But for adults, I can tell you that what has happened for adults is equally as poignant as it is for parents when they get the information that changes their idea about what's going on and changes the direction that they're going to head. So for a quick an example here was an older person. I say older just because he was in his fifties.
Connie McReynolds:He wasn't a child. And he came to my clinics a few years back. I don't even know how he necessarily found me, but he did. And he was telling me in the intake that he was on a trajectory to lose yet another job. So he had had lost multiple jobs in his lifetime because he couldn't remember what his boss was telling him to do.
Connie McReynolds:And the boss would get frustrated with them and they would fire him. And so we did this assessment. It took 20 minutes to get this answer. I handed this to him and went over it and he broke down in tears right there in my office.
Wendy:I bet.
Connie McReynolds:Because he finally had an answer. It was like, sir, your brain isn't hanging on to auditory information. This isn't anything about your intelligence. You're quite capable, but if you can't hang on to this and you don't know that it's that you can't hang on to it, then you think it's something else. And that's what happens is this attribution theory.
Connie McReynolds:If we're gonna get into psychological terms, we have to attribute what's going on to something. And so children and adults attribute their lack of success so many times to not being smart. And it has nothing to do with intelligence. Nothing.
Wendy:What a relief,
Connie McReynolds:Yes. Yes. Just absolutely. Yes. A relief.
Wendy:Well, can you describe what it's like to have an audio and or a visual processing?
Connie McReynolds:Mhmm. Sure. So, first, I like to start with this isn't about your hearing and it isn't about your vision. But for parents, get that checked just so you rule it all out. So starting point, get that all checked out because if that's there then you need to tackle that first because clearly that's going to have an impact on a child.
Connie McReynolds:But set that aside, let's say we've ruled all of that out, then what we're looking at is how does the brain process auditory information and how does the brain process visual information? And so there are telltale signs on both sides of the channel here. So for auditory processing, we can hear people say, oh, it just goes in one ear and right out the other. Doesn't matter what I say to so and so, they don't remember. This child can't remember anything I say.
Connie McReynolds:Or I tell my child to go do 3 or 4 things and they can't by the time they turn around, they can't remember a single thing. Or another one, you know, I call my husband and ask him to pick up 4 things from the grocery store and I might get one of them brought home. And so it cuts across everything. If we don't have auditory recall memory and it isn't about intelligence again, But there's a certain type of auditory processing that either works well for us to retain information or it doesn't, and we can find that. There's also a speed processing.
Connie McReynolds:So processing speed on both of these, we'll stick with the auditory for right now because this is so important for parents and adults to hear, and teachers if you're out there. Because if I have a slow processing speed and someone's talking really fast to me and I can't quite process it because my brain's taking it in at a slower rate, I get termed as being a, quote, slow learner. Now it might be true that I have a slow processing for auditory information, but it does not necessarily equate that I'm a slow cognitive learner. There's 2 very different things happening here. But with the slow processing speed, what I have found is that for children who have this, they are oftentimes channeled in to certain kinds of services at school which are great services.
Connie McReynolds:But if that isn't what this child needs, it's not gonna help. Right. It's a mismatch. And so the problem is the mismatch with what we think we're seeing versus what's really there. And so really the reason I wrote this book is to help uncover that mismatch.
Connie McReynolds:If we're going after one thing thinking it's something, it doesn't matter what the intervention is if we can't get it right. If we don't know what we're going after and we're throwing all these interventions at something, we're just ships passing in the night. It isn't going to connect and then when the interventions don't work, that's where at times the blame game can start. So then we have teachers upset at parents, we have parents upset at teachers and everyone's upset with the child because nothing's working so it must be someone's fault that something isn't working when it's a no fault zone. If I can't remember, it doesn't matter what you're trying to tell me or how you're trying to tell me.
Connie McReynolds:If I can't remember what you're saying, it doesn't matter how many times you say it and it doesn't matter how loudly you say it and it doesn't matter what you take away from me. It isn't going to improve my ability to remember what you've said. So that's auditory. That's just one example. So there are 37 ways we're measuring these auditory and visual processing problems.
Connie McReynolds:Speed is just one. Auditory memory is just another one. For visual, telltale science could be. Alright? This child has very messy handwriting.
Connie McReynolds:Can't get information from the board down to a piece of paper that makes any kind of sense. Backpack looks like an explosion. It's gone off in the backpack all the time. So with the visual processing, messy handwriting, messy room, can't get organized to pick anything up, can't remember where they put anything. This can be important for adults too because maybe they keep losing their keys.
Connie McReynolds:Maybe they lose their purse. Maybe they lose their ID. Maybe they can't figure out where they said something. They can't remember where anything was and they look really disorganized. So disorganization can be a real cue for a visual processing but it doesn't have to be that.
Connie McReynolds:Someone can actually just kinda bump into things all the time. So maybe the child trips over things all the time, bumps into things, knocks things over, and are labeled clumsy. But what if it's actually a visual processing problem? Again, not a visual situation. A visual processing problem is really where the person could be bumping into things.
Connie McReynolds:As I mentioned, they could be tripping over things. They might not be able to organize visually, with tasks. And so this can be very confusing for people. It can look like they're just clumsy. They can look like they just aren't quote paying attention.
Connie McReynolds:And to some degree, the latter one that is true but not for the reason. It isn't a willful bad behavior. It isn't negligence. And so that's where I think it's so important that we open up the narrative about what these processing problems are so that we can get away from, dare I say, a little bit of judgment about someone. We can get away from labels and we can move into really deeper understanding because if we can understand what's really happening here from an auditor and a visual processing problem, there's a way through this.
Connie McReynolds:Whereas with some of these labels and diagnostic conditions, it just feels like, okay. I have this. Now what? And parents walk in the door and say we've been diagnosed with this, and we don't know what to do. It's like, well, who does?
Connie McReynolds:You get this label and it's like, this label of ADHD isn't gonna tell you anything. Because I could have 10 children and adults walk into my clinic on the same day and every one of them's gonna look a little bit different And every one of them is gonna have a unique assessment outcome because they are unique in how all of this is working within their brain.
Wendy:Makes so much sense. And what I'm wondering is how common is it to have both audio and visual processing issues or is it just one or the other?
Connie McReynolds:Well, on occasion, I will have children or adults come in with just auditory processing or just visual processing. But most of the time, it's almost like a hopscotch pattern where there's a little bit of this, a little bit of this, a little bit of this, a little bit of this across, maybe a lot of this, a lot of this. So it really cuts across all of it most of the time. And then there are people who have come in, mainly children. Thankfully, they find us without any measurable processing for either auditory or visual.
Connie McReynolds:And these children really don't have much of a ghost of a chance in a learning situation. That's heartbreaking. It is. When I see that, we've got a long way to go, and I'll tell the parents that is that we can tackle this. We have a long way to go.
Connie McReynolds:And so if you're prepared, we can make a difference with this, but it's gonna take a minute to get there because we're literally helping to build those neuronal pathways and kinda get this child on the right track. And I suspect there are adults walking around with this, but by the time they come to be an adult, I'm not sure how they're making it in the world. Right.
Wendy:And that was one of the things I was gonna comment about is I know I can speak personally to the kind of life skill jujitsu I've developed to try to manage for the deficits that I have or my perceived deficits, the things where I fall short. So like, I never read a textbook through graduate school. I found other ways to kind of get the information into my brain parts and and then regurgitate it or whatever. Just as an example, what I've always marveled at with people who have the attention deficit disorder diagnosis is the incredible creativity that they have around problem solving and figuring things out and just the way their minds seem to work. That's at least been my observation as a clinician.
Wendy:I guess what I wanna ask is, do you notice that these folks kind of perceive the world differently or think differently than someone who doesn't have these processing issues?
Connie McReynolds:Well, I think it's a really good question because what I have seen over the time of working kind of if we look a little bit adults now with this is there's a greater struggle is what I see. It takes a lot of effort to be able to do the things that that person wants to do. I have an adult that we've been working with that he tells me that he can't hardly, you know, he he has changed so much that it it just blows his mind. Now that he's able to process information, It's changed his world. I've often said, and I would never do this because I'm a licensed psychologist.
Connie McReynolds:I would love to have before and after pictures of people because when people and it can be children or adults. When they walk in the door, oftentimes there's fairly downtroddenness. There's anxiety, there's trauma, there's panic, there's stress, there's all of this stuff going on the longer a person has dealt with this. And if we can alleviate that by figuring out what's really going on, then the strengths and the abilities, resourcefulness, and all of this can be used in ways that expand instead of just trying to survive, to get through, to just manage the stuff that's coming out person day in and day out. You become the better version of yourself, not that you're not a good version already.
Connie McReynolds:It isn't that at all. It's like swimming upstream all the time. So you're constantly working harder than the next person. At least this is how it's been described to me is that people say, I feel like when I was in school, I had to work 10 times harder than the person who sat next to me to be able to get these grades that I have achieved. And so they're strong, they're persevere they have a good perseverance, they have a good intelligence, they have a desire to succeed in all of this and they are swimming upstream.
Connie McReynolds:And the brain will actually interestingly for some people create some workarounds that are extraordinary when I run these assessments. I remember the first time I saw this which had to have been at least 12 or 13 years ago. This person came in and had really low areas in some areas of this assessment and then blew the roof off in the stamina area. And I looked at that and I thought this person has to be exhausted. And so they had talked about feeling tired all the time.
Connie McReynolds:They were worn out. And when I showed them this, it's like, well, yes, because your brain has created this workaround to where you are exerting an enormous amount of brain energy under the stamina category to push through to do the things you're doing to compensate for these other areas that are weaker. This will come down as we bring these other areas online. So you get this thing kind of a regression to the mean where these outlier areas, which I always find interesting just the site for sometimes in science they throw away the outliers. It's like, I think that's where the interesting These information is, we need to study that.
Connie McReynolds:What's going on there? And so this the first time I saw it was a complete outlier compared to what I'll the other things I had always seen. And sure enough, as we work with this gentleman, as time went on and these other areas started coming up and they were getting stronger and stronger, that over functioning in the stamina area started coming back down to an average range, which was confirmation that, yes, this is how the brain for him had created this workaround so that he could survive. And this guy rode a motorcycle and he had no visual processing. I saw this, and I I almost wanted to ban him from getting on his motorcycle, because, yes.
Wendy:Should I get rid of my motorcycle?! I hadn't even thought of that. It's, I mean, it's exhausting for me to ride because I am hyper, hyper aware of everything, but I love it.
Connie McReynolds:Well, I have some theories around that because I've known several adults, who have this, who actually ride motorcycles. And I think there's something that drives the attention because you have to focus and there's something that creates the dopamine rush, that makes you feel good when you've done it. And so, yes, I think there's
Wendy:Bingo. Yeah.
Connie McReynolds:Just saying!
Wendy:Yeah. Check some boxes there. Alright.
Connie McReynolds:Yep. Just saying that is an unusual circumstance for people because it focuses and forces attention, but then there's there is the offset with that which is the adrenaline and the cortisol Pump that comes with what it takes to do that.
Wendy:Well, so I just learned something new about myself today. That's good. That explains that! Thank you for that. Yes.
Wendy:Alright. So the question I wanted to ask was, have you noticed if environmental factors, for example, high stress in someone's life, will impact their symptoms? In other words, will their processing issues be worse if they have higher stress in their lives?
Connie McReynolds:Well, I think it's an interesting combination for a lot of folks because I think it's stressful to have auditory and visual processing problems and I think that stress can bleed over. I also think it leads to anxiety and of course I can't pull it apart because we talk about the nature and the nurture and all of that discussion, which came first the biology or the environment and the answer is yes.
Wendy:I was gonna ask that question eventually. Yeah.
Connie McReynolds:Yeah. The answer is yes because they're both in play. And so I don't know that we can ever completely sort that out for someone who has processing challenges because we don't know when it started. We aren't assessing everyone early on in life to see when this started. We just know where we are and people will say, what caused this?
Connie McReynolds:And I'll say, I have no idea, honestly. However, here's the deal. We know where you are today. From today forward, we can work on this because if we can figure out what's going on, the root cause of this, then if there's anxiety, we tackle anxiety and we tackle the auditory and the visual processing challenges. And so it's just brain training.
Connie McReynolds:It's just literally letting the brain learn new ways of functioning that are more effective than what they have been and doing it in a training plan, if you will. Mhmm. I like going to the gym. And so what we're doing is setting that up for a person so that you your brain can learn how to do things differently. It's such an opportunity for people to become empowered in their life and to bring forward the assets that maybe they haven't been able to demonstrate.
Connie McReynolds:Like children in school who are failing out, who are smart. They can't demonstrate what they're capable of because they're swimming upstream Mhmm. Trying to just remember what the teacher asked them to do or to find their homework that they just did 5 minutes ago that they don't know where it went. You know, that's tough when you have to all of that distraction of sorts that keeps you away from tackling the focused goal that you're hoping for. And so it it's just kinda like everything's pulling out people and keeping them pulled away from where they want to be.
Connie McReynolds:And the frustration that comes with that can be enormous and can end up almost as trauma. Some cases it becomes very traumatizing for people. Anxiety, depression can come in there as well. We can get panic disorders. We can have kind of these obsessive compulsive disorders of trying to mitigate all of this that's going on.
Connie McReynolds:If I only do this, this, and this, and this, then it's all going to be okay. It's a lot for people to contend with.
Wendy:Right. So and what I was thinking too is that since it likely has been an early life experience, whether it's you're born with it or you develop it or however it works, we don't know, is what you're saying, that you don't know any differently. You just are dealing with the symptomology in the best way you know how, hence the creative coping skills that you develop and the workarounds. I wanna get into the neuroplasticity and the the way to correct, retrain the brain in a minute, but I wanna just dive in a little bit more into my previous question around overwhelm because there's so much to process and how that can lead to a feeling of being, like, highly stimulated or very overwhelmed. And one of the things I was curious about your perspective on, if you even have one, is do you think the folks who have this diagnosis have a highly sensitive nervous system, meaning that there can be even more sensory overload than just visual and audio.
Wendy:Like, it can be the scents, like smells or tactile, kinesthetic overwhelm that adds to the mix. In other words, their their nervous systems are just on fire and they're picking up so much information and getting overwhelmed with all kinds of things like not being able to focus if someone, asking for a friend, smells patchouli, for example.
Connie McReynolds:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Wendy:Like, if I smell patchouli anywhere around me, I cannot focus on anything. It's the weirdest thing. So I just thought I'd throw that out there.
Connie McReynolds:Mhmm. Well, there is a group and there's some research and I'm I'm blanking on the woman's name who did this. I apologize for that. I apologize to her. But there's, there's been a lot of research done on, 20% of the population actually are considered highly sensitive people.
Wendy:That's what I'm referring to.
Connie McReynolds:Yes. And so folks that fall in that category, it can manifest in different ways. So some people are highly sensitive to perfumes, to any kind of smells of some sort. It just kinda shoots straight into the brain and they just feel like they're, you know, they can't do anything until they get that cleared out. Some people sounds that the sound piece, I actually can pick up a little bit of that in one of my assessments.
Connie McReynolds:It's kind of a persistence and I always when I see this score for people, I'll say, when people are talking to you, does it come to a point where you just want them to stop talking or kind of just shut up? And they look at me and it's like the first time anyone has really said something to them that they can anchor to and they go, yeah. And I'll say, well, this is what I call the auditory irritation marker.
Wendy:So there's an actual marker for that which is different than an auditory processing?
Connie McReynolds:Well, it's part of auditory processing but it's because configure things yeah. I've seen some of this and just ask enough questions over the years that I now honed in on this one in about the last 3 or 4 years when this shows up. So now I can just ask that question to people when I see that. It's like, okay. So for you, when someone just is talking to you too much, do you feel like you just need a time out?
Connie McReynolds:You just have to get away and they go, yes. I'll say, okay. It's this piece right here. And I said, we can help you with that because we can help train that part of the brain to calm down a little bit. And so we can help you kind of get through that to where it's not so annoying.
Connie McReynolds:I think maybe we've saved a marriage or two!
Wendy:Yeah. I could see that.
Connie McReynolds:Yeah. Yeah. That load gets big.
Wendy:So you're you're not necessarily seeing them as the same thing. So a highly sensitive person is not necessarily someone who has these more attention deficit disorder processing issues.
Connie McReynolds:You know, I don't know for sure because there could be that combination out there. Maybe I just haven't worked with them. There's a lot of people on the planet. So the folks I've seen, who in my private therapy, I'll I'll have people come in who are highly sensitive and they don't know what that is. And so once we kind of identify what this is by asking some questions and kind of figuring out how they're responding to things, one of the markers is can you stand to go into any kind of a department store?
Connie McReynolds:It's like, no. I can't stand it. I just have to rush rush in and rush right back out. It's like, okay. You prefer, you know, some of those delivered to your house services?
Connie McReynolds:It's like, absolutely. I do. Like, bring it to my house, I'm perfectly fine with that.
Wendy:Gotcha.
Connie McReynolds:Yeah. So I see that and I see that in folks and it could be an anxiety wiring piece. It's hard to say again what the cause of some of that is. There are a lot of people 20 if you figure 20% of the population considered highly sensitive, obviously, all of them are not showing up in my clinic and they probably won't. And some people have created workarounds.
Connie McReynolds:Others are just struggling because they don't even know what this is called. And I'll be honest, I hadn't heard really much about this or studied much of it prior about 5 years ago, when someone had kinda said, hey. Have you heard about this and what do you know? And I read up on it and studied it and, you know, tried to figure out what this is and sure enough, people are pinging on that.
Wendy:I was just curious, and thanks for going down that little rabbit hole with me. I appreciate that. Alright. So let's talk now. Let's shift into treatment.
Wendy:So well, you do an assessment. How does it work at your clinic?
Connie McReynolds:So it's pretty easy. I love this. I've been doing it for such a long time. I stopped doing a lot of other things once I kinda stumbled into this and figured it out.
Connie McReynolds:These assessments are computer based. So in the intake, which is about an hour and a half, I'll do about 25 minutes of it. We have a little bit more that we do later, but the basic piece of that is just computer based assessments, mouse clicking. And it sounds like it would be impossible, but this assessment that we use has been validated. It's been studied.
Connie McReynolds:It's been published on. It's been around for quite a long time. I've been using it for over 15 years. So it's there and we really are able to just dial in on what's going on. And once we can figure out across those 37 areas, once you figure out what we can do across those 37 areas, then we're able to also look at a little bit of memory, some conceptualization and sequencing.
Connie McReynolds:And that's what we use to build the training plan. And so the training plan gets individualized to each person based on what really I've come to kinda think of as the thumbprint of their assessment. It's unique to each person. And so the training plan is going to be unique to each person, you know, what resonates with them, what do they like, and then how do they go through the training module, if you will. So the training plan is about 30 minutes and we have multiple little segments built in there.
Connie McReynolds:They look like video games. They call them training programs. And they kinda look like video games because they keep the mind occupied while the brain's getting trained. So it's kinda how I think about it. So our brain wants to learn and the brain will figure this out.
Connie McReynolds:So there's nothing being applied to the person which is why neurofeedback, the traditional version and I think the the truer definition of neurofeedback is, we're just reading brainwaves. We're just just like biofeedback where you read the pulse and the respiration, it's biological information. Neurofeedback is neurological information. It's brainwave information. We just read that.
Connie McReynolds:It feeds into the computer. And if you are manufacturing, let's say you're working on auditory attention, if you're manufacturing brain waves that kind of support that approach in your brain then you're gonna win those programs or those games and they're gonna get tougher as time goes on because you're building the muscle. So it's just muscle building activities. It's done through repetition. And so it's just like how the brain has learned absolutely everything you've ever learned in your life you did it through repetition.
Connie McReynolds:From the first time you learned how to walk, to run, to ride a bike, to drive a car, to hold a pencil, to do anything that you've ever done, it came through repetition because that's how the brain learns. You're literally training your brain. The term in the field is that you're wiring in the change. You're wiring in what you want. I also joke it's also why those bad habits are hard to break because they are hardwired in.
Connie McReynolds:So to break a bad habit, you have to hardwire in a new habit so that the bad one kind of prunes itself away and it does. And that's the beauty of this is that once the brain learns and the brain has reinforced this, the person really develops a greater sense of self esteem, self confidence because they're doing it themselves. It's not something that's being administered to them. We have the clinician technicians with them, so they're guiding them through the process all the time so they're never alone, and they have the individualized plan that, you know, we have professional plans that have been developed for us that we choose from. And so it's a training plan.
Connie McReynolds:It's like a gym for your brain.
Wendy:Okay. So I just wanna review. They do an assessment online or on the computer?
Connie McReynolds:Yeah. They do it on the computer.
Wendy:They do it on the computer, and that gives a whole bunch of information. A treatment plan is then created specifically for that person, and that plan involves the person sitting in front of a computer and playing what looks like video games when they're actually going through brain retraining.
Connie McReynolds:Mhmm.
Wendy:And then you're getting information about their progress on the back end as they're doing this game.
Connie McReynolds:Yeah. They're seeing the progress because they're seeing if they're winning or not. And so for example, if we're working with someone who is having trouble with anxiety, let's say. And so they're saying, oh, I'm relaxed and we've got the sensors on and it's flashing excess tension on the screen. Like, well, that may be the sense of relaxation that you have, but relaxation is actually something different that will help you learn what that is.
Connie McReynolds:Because if someone's been anxious for a long period of time or maybe their entire life, they may not know what being relaxed really is like. Kind of back to what you were saying earlier. If this is all you've ever known, you're not gonna know anything else until you have a different experience. And so this gives the different experience and the different opportunity to train the brain so that you have a different way of walking through life and handling the things that come at you. And so people will say, I feel like I have more time to make decisions now.
Connie McReynolds:I feel like I can think more clearly. I feel like, I'm less anxious. And 1 guy, guy we've been working with had a pretty, hair trigger, I would say. Oh, yeah. I like that.
Connie McReynolds:And he kinda had that going on and he walked in my office. We've been working with him for a while and he said, okay. I just have to tell you what happened. It's like, okay. What?
Connie McReynolds:He said, well, you know how you should fly off the handle? It's like, well, yeah. I've heard your stories. Okay. And how that goes?
Connie McReynolds:He said, well, he was in a parking lot backing up and this woman backed into him, hit him in the parking lot, got out. She was brushing her teeth and talking on the cell phone at the same time. Nice. Right. And it had hit him.
Connie McReynolds:And so he told me, he looked at that and he said, oh my gosh. And he said he went home and forgot about it other than, you know, getting the insurance claims. And he said that in the past, he would have perseverated over that for days on end. And he said this is when he knew his brain had changed is that he could let it go.
Wendy:Great example. And I think probably a common one. I know some folks who struggle with that hair trigger temper. So then I'm guessing that each person's treatment plan is it varies. On average, what do most people who go through this treatment, what can they expect? Like, for length of time, frequency, that kind of thing.
Connie McReynolds:Well, I always ballpark it. It's like ballpark because I haven't met with you and we haven't done the assessment. We'll know a little more detail with that. But, typically, it's going to be 20 hours. The brain training tends to be the industry standard.
Connie McReynolds:And for us, we do it in 30 minute segments because I have figured out over time in working with this, at the front end, we were kind of looking at, okay, can we do 45 minute sessions? Can we do hour sessions with this? And what was happening is there's a point of diminishing return just like going to the gym. You can overdo it. So you can overdo the brain training and you just get tired and you get worn out.
Connie McReynolds:And so people typically have a day in between their sessions. Generally, people do twice a week. With that, they're 30 minute sessions. We'll do 20 of those 30 minute sessions which equates to 10 hours and then we're gonna come back and rerun those assessments because when you come in that's a baseline. So we have a good baseline now.
Connie McReynolds:We have data that tell us where you are. We'll implement the intervention, the training program, We'll have you do 10 hours of that and then we're gonna come back and rerun that and now we have a comparison. Here's where you started, here's where you are now. If they've got it all done, great. We'll say, hey, you did great.
Connie McReynolds:Your brain really responded. We're good to go. There generally will be more things that we can address because generally people have a few things going on, some more severe than others. And so we're always gonna tackle the most severe piece. If there's hyperactivity, to get that out of the way because it's a real interfering process in the brain. You know, we'll do another set of 20 sessions and reassess. Now for the person I mentioned that might not have any processing on either one or other or both, it's gonna take a minute to get that going because we're helping that brain build some pathways there that are going to lead to greater success later on, Generally speaking, if you can process things better. If it's not so far to go, you might get it done in the 10 hours.
Connie McReynolds:You might get it done in the 20. Everyone's a little bit different. And so every brain responds a little bit differently. We do have people who are very fast responders to this. We have people that it takes a bit longer.
Connie McReynolds:And, the people who work with her a little bit older. They don't necessarily need a lot more, but it just depends again on how far they need to go. So if you've got some real deficits in here and it's taking your brain a little bit of time to kind of patch that over so to speak to develop and wire in those processes. That's why we're always assessing every 10 hours of training so that we have that comparison, and we can kinda figure out where you need to go next to get you there.
Wendy:Gotcha. And do these changes last, or do you find that the, processing issues might return down the road?
Connie McReynolds:Well, in 15 years, I really had one I think I've had one person come back who'd had a car accident. And when we ran the assessment, we're actually dealing with different things than what where the person had landed and ended before. And so we were then tackling some things. They hadn't really had a concussion, but there was enough to rattle them that it did change kinda how they were processing. And there are good longitudinal studies that have been done on senior citizens, where it has held for 10 years.
Connie McReynolds:They've done 5 year and 10 year studies at University of Florida looking at that. The people I've worked with, I've had some folks that we worked on early on, worked with and 5 years later they call me and say I just want you to know it just keeps getting better and better for me. And it's because when we train the brain, it tends to hold on to the training when it's hardwired in. It tends to hold. We can think about when we were a child, maybe we learned how to ride a bike.
Connie McReynolds:Well, you can be an adult not having ridden a bike in decades. You can still get back on the bike and you're gonna remember how to ride the bike. So that's part of what the longer term effect of this is. Obviously, if there's injury or there's stress or psychological upsets or such, there could be some other things that a person might wanna work on. But generally speaking, the folks that I've heard from and that we've seen don't tend to come back and they tend to go on and do well. That's really what we're looking for when we're working with people is that the 10 hour mark, we're looking for how is this integrating into your life. Are you seeing changes? Can do well on an assessment here, but that's not what I mean, yes, we want that, but that's not the end goal. The end goal is to be able to have this make a difference in a person's life, day to day living.
Connie McReynolds:And so that's what we're looking for for children. Are the behavioral interventions going down? Are the grades improving? Are they listening better? Are they more organized?
Connie McReynolds:And that type of thing. And for adults, similarly, you know, how's your life going? What are you noticing? And is someone around you even noticing things? And so there was a early on there was a mother, we'd work with her son and she'd come in at the end of it. She says, I don't really know that this worked and I'm thinking, gosh, you know, the data suggests that we worked but she's not seeing any changes. And then the next week, she came back in and she goes, I stand corrected and it's like, what happened? She said, I went to a family reunion and she said, everyone was coming up to me asking me what I had done to my son. He was so much better, well behaved.
Wendy:There you go.
Connie McReynolds:And she said, you know, I guess I just didn't see it or I can't remember what it used to be like but everyone else had seen it. Know, it's like, well, good, you know, because we have the data and I'm thinking I'm not sure what's happened here, why this didn't transfer out into life. Well, it had. It was just she kinda forgot.
Wendy:She couldn't see it. Yeah. Well, okay. That's a pretty good statistic though that just one really questioned it and came back later and said, no, actually, you're right. It did work.
Wendy:Is there a correlation between a seizure disorder and these processing issues? Because you had mentioned that in your book briefly. You referenced seizures, and so I just wanted to ask about that.
Connie McReynolds:Well, I haven't treated too many people with seizures in my clinic, but the research where this actually started back in the 19 seventies with doctor Barry Sturman out of UCLA, who really kinda started the whole ball rolling. The first person that he used his neurofeedback program on was his assistant who had epilepsy. And it's documented that after that, the epilepsy had resolved for her, and she was able to get her California driver's license. So Okay. It's been out there.
Connie McReynolds:There's research showing that people have done that. I just haven't had a lot of folks come into my clinics. With that, I've had some Tourette syndrome come along. It's not the same thing, but it's it's kind of a muscular disordered process. We've worked with people with Parkinson's.
Connie McReynolds:I had, a gentleman who was diagnosed, with Parkinson's. It's been probably about 5 years ago. We worked with him for a year. And the good news that when he came back after his first annual, assessment with his physician who'd been in the field doing this for very long time, years, decades, said he was the first person in this guy's practice that at the 1 year mark when he walked in was doing better than when he diagnosed him a year earlier. Oh my god.
Wendy:Alright. So your clinic, you don't deal just with audio and visual processing issues. You deal with, it sounds like, all kinds of presenting issues. Yeah?
Connie McReynolds:We really can because it's neuroplasticity. It's just the brain and it's training the brain. And so if we kinda look at this and kinda figure out what's going on, it's brain training. That's all we're doing and it's non invasive. So the person just learns how their their brain figures out how to do this.
Connie McReynolds:Their brain figures out how to get stronger through the training process. What we do is offer the structure for this and it's kinda like the exercise bike in your living room. You might have a good intention but maybe you don't get on it. You know? Right.
Connie McReynolds:Yeah. And so we can do this and we do remote work and I would I suppose to say this piece of this is that I wasn't going to put the book out until we had a way to help people broader than 20 miles from my clinics.
Wendy:That was gonna be my next question is you're in Southern California, obviously, and not everyone can get there
Connie McReynolds:Right.
Wendy:To work with you and your folks. So you do work remotely with people?
Connie McReynolds:Yeah. It's a telehealth process that we can do , there are some technology requirements that we have to do kind of a tech check to make sure people have all the right tech to be able to do it. And then there's the lease agreement because we have to lease the equipment. We still maintain the training plan development and do the sessions as if the person were sitting in our clinic. So, you know, I guess one of the pluses of the pandemic is we learned we can do a lot more than we thought we could in the past with Zoom.
Connie McReynolds:I mean, you and I are meeting, and I think we're halfway across the country from each other.
Wendy:Yes. I think all the way. I'm on the east coast. I'm in Vermont.
Connie McReynolds:Yep. Probably about as far as we can go. Yeah. So we learned a lot that we can step outside of some of these very rigid structures that we had imposed in the past. And it became painfully obvious that trying to get to a clinic during the pandemic wasn't working for people and people needed help. And so there had to be different solutions. There had to be different ways of thinking about how can we reach people? How can we help? How can we provide support.
Wendy:And it's as effective to do it remotely as it is in person?
Connie McReynolds:It is. As long as you participate. You're consistent. You show up.
Connie McReynolds:You do your part, and we measure. So we've got that and then we're always listening for what's happening in the person's life. How is this translating into the life?
Connie McReynolds:And so the assessment, everything can be done, remotely. Again, there's tech requirements, there's licensure, there's there's more of a front load on that because we're having to get things to you, whereas that we've already have them in the clinic if you walk in the door.
Wendy:Gotcha. Alright.
Connie McReynolds:That's really the only difference that we've done. So I've been doing this for almost 2 years now, helping people. And that came about halfway through the pandemic out here in Southern California. We had quite a bit of shutdown activity going on. And we were at one point facing another potential complete shutdown out here, which just was mind blowing from the standpoint of what was happening to people who were being isolated and just the anxiety and the suicides that were happening.
Connie McReynolds:So I actually called the software developer. I was in a little bit of a a moment. He was kinda late at night. He lives on the East Coast.
Connie McReynolds:I'm on the West Coast. I dialed him up. And I just said, we need a solution and it can't be that they have to drive to my clinic. I need a solution. I need to be able to figure this out.
Connie McReynolds:So we have to be able to get these services. And to his credit, he figured it out. And so our system is one that is not an individual kind of based app kind of thing. This and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just ours is much more professionally driven and you are with someone the whole time you're doing your program.
Connie McReynolds:So you get that individualized attention just the same as if you were sitting in a clinic. You're just miss convincing with us.
Wendy:Right. Okay. So this is not something you have practitioners around the country doing?
Connie McReynolds:No. Not yet. I mean, we may do that in the future. It could be a good goal for us. But right now, we can handle it out of I've got 3 clinics out here.
Connie McReynolds:So, we can run it out of these clinics right now. And as more come in, we I am looking at developing some training materials that we may be able to help other folks kinda get organized. I'm I'm hoping for this word to get out through programs such as yours to where we really start seeing an uptick in people seeking help for this that's a viable solution and alternative that's noninvasive. And I think there are millions of people who could benefit.
Wendy:Yeah. I'm intrigued myself, so I'm extra thankful for this conversation. I know people are gonna probably wonder about this. Does this treatment is it covered by insurance?
Connie McReynolds:Well, there's always a little challenging thing with insurance. So
Wendy:Really? I I've never heard of that before.
Connie McReynolds:Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm not on a bunch of insurance panels. We provide people with with receipts of services that have the codes, the CPT codes, and amount paid, and dates of service so they can file that with their insurance. We sometimes hear people getting some reimbursement on it.
Connie McReynolds:It's possible. You know, I would be considered out of network whether I'm here or there or wherever. So I'm not gonna be filing those papers for you, but you can file directly for yourself. And the question really is does your company insurance company cover biofeedback because that's what this is. It's biofeedback.
Connie McReynolds:And so that's the question to ask. I'd stay away from kind of the convoluted term that they may not recognize which is neurofeedback but it's it's called EEG biofeedback and it's biofeedback. You're getting feedback about your body and how it's working. So it's biofeedback and, you know, that's a term that we're actually working with veterans out here. So
Wendy:Does the VA cover it?
Connie McReynolds:Mhmm. I have a contract with Tri West in California.
Wendy:Again, asking for a friend.
Connie McReynolds:Yes. So I I haven't worked with anyone outside of California with that. I don't know what the instructions might be with it, with that contract. But with TriWest and the VA, honestly, has used neurofeedback. So
Wendy:So they're open to it.
Connie McReynolds:Yes, they have used neurofeedback. I've got a training video that I use. It came out of Fort Hood where they were talking about using neurofeedback with some of the folks that come back from Iraq. There's an interview of this gentleman that was fascinating. And then I actually had a call from a person inside the VA at a certain location who told me they had worked with over 5 100 returning veterans using neurofeedback and have been very successful in health returning veterans.
Connie McReynolds:So it's within the VA. Different VAs have different approaches to it. I'll just say kinda like any hospital or setting anywhere and it kinda depends on who's making some of those decisions, But there have been units that have used the neurofeedback. And the sports industry is big in neurofeedback. So you'll hear Olympians talk about having used neurofeedback for training purposes.
Wendy:It makes perfect sense. I mean, really, any kind of limitation that could be hindering, for example, your performance as an athlete.
Connie McReynolds:That's right.
Wendy:Why wouldn't you wanna use a noninvasive short term treatment but with long term or permanent results. Why wouldn't you? I mean, it seems like a no brainer.
Connie McReynolds:It is. I worked with a major league ball player. I've worked with a gymnast who came back with 5 medals after her, gymnastic meet so she did quite well. And there's a lot of ways that people who just wanna tune up, let's say you've got, you know, your senior needs to tune up a little bit to get ready for some of those tests or you've got someone in college and they're struggling a little bit. I get a lot of college folks coming in out here.
Connie McReynolds:They end up in neuropsych assessments because of things not working and people don't quite know what to do with them. And thankfully, I've got some neuropsychologists here in the area who do the referrals over and say, you really need to go see her. This isn't this isn't this. It's something else. It's this attention problem.
Connie McReynolds:Go see her because she can help you with this.
Wendy:So would you say going to your clinic is the same as going to any other any other practitioner who's who's offering neurofeedback?
Connie McReynolds:There are many different types of neurofeedback and in my book I highlight the kind that I use. There's an appendix in the back that talks about this particular one. I think that's part of why I probably had a pretty good success rate is that a colleague of mine when I moved out here and started this university had told me about this and I was kinda charged with building an institute out here, an assessment center. And he shared with me that he had been using this particular type of neurofeedback in another county helping children who were struggling to learn how to read. And he felt like it was one of the better ones on the market.
Connie McReynolds:Because what this one does is do something that I think some of the others may not do and I'm not an expert in any of the others. I've just done a little research on it, which is this does what we call removes the facial artifact which is eye blinking and facial muscle movement which can mimic EEG signals. So those facial are called EMG signals. And so if this system is not designed, if a system is not designed to account for that and do what we call kind of setting baselines, which is to for each person it's gonna be a little bit different. And so we have to be able to what you might call neutralize or zero out that artifact in order the facial artifact in order to get truer EEG brainwave readings because the EMG can look like EEG, data for some folks.
Connie McReynolds:And so he figured this out decades ago. And I think that's part of why we have a little bit different approach and a little bit different system, than some of the others. Doesn't mean others don't work. I'm not implying that. It's just I feel like this one has worked extremely well for what we've been able to accomplish.
Wendy:It sounds like you trust it wholeheartedly. Yeah.
Connie McReynolds:I do. Well, after 15 years, the results we see. Yes.
Wendy:Yeah. Yeah. It's it's not a faith thing. It's a trust thing. Gotcha.
Wendy:Well, Connie, this has been great, really informative. I'm really heartened to know that you're doing this work and that you're getting the results that you're getting is just phenomenal. And I'm really psyched for you, for all the people who you serve.
Wendy:That's awesome. Yeah. So thank you so much for coming on the show and chatting with me.
Connie McReynolds:Thank you for having me. It's been a great chat. I've enjoyed the time here with you.
Wendy:How about that? There's hope! As soon as I get my post flood feedback on the ground, I have every intention of having some telehealth neurofeedback sessions through Connie's clinic. I'll report back once I do. I was wondering, as I was editing this episode, if treatment would actually make editing easier.
Wendy:You don't know this, but I end up editing the hell out of what I say, because it typically takes me a while to get to the point of a question. There's so many extra words that you're spared from. Unfortunately, my guests aren't, but they're all very patient with me, or at least they pretend to be. If you'd like to learn more about Connie's work or get a copy of her book, please visit conniemcreynolds.com. And thank you for listening, and if you're a regular listener, thank you for your patience in waiting for this episode.
Wendy:I'll be back with another thought provoking episode in a few weeks. Until next time...
