3.7.1 Panic Attacks, Stress, and Anxiety
J.B. was a 29-year-old woman who was experiencing repeated panic attacks. She decided to try alpha brain wave training after the discouraging and ineffective
experiences she had while seeking treatment for her condition through the traditional medicine modes, which included medical doctors, therapists, and even hypnotists.
J.B. presented herself to us as a young mother who had experienced a fairly normal, traditional lifestyle and an uneventful childhood. She married and stayed married to
the first wonderful man who entered her life, with whom she had two children. She felt happy and well adjusted, experiencing no emotional problems until suddenly her
life became a nightmare because of the inexplicable panic attacks.
A personal history of potential emotional instability surfaced during brain wave training sessions. Her mother had epilepsy, incapable of caring for herself, much less her family. Her father apparently attempted to take care of her mother but eventually left when JB was in her early teens. Her older sister (about 23 at that time and in a stable marriage) decided to take her in to provide her with a more stable environment during her adolescence. J.B. portrayed herself as having had a happy adolescence and happy marriage until the panic attacks began.
About a year before the panic attacks began, she and her husband had bought a restaurant, which they were operating themselves. They decided
to take a vacation in Mexico during the summer and had a wonderful time until she experienced a major traumatic incident. The evening before they were to return home, she got food
poisoning and heat stroke. She suffered palpitations, shortness of breath, and general weakness.
Her husband rushed her to a hospital, where no one spoke English, and she descended into a state of helplessness and dread. J.B. feared she was going to die, and no one could help her. Nevertheless, the palpitations eventually subsided, even without proper medical care, and by the next day, she was again fine. She and her husband returned home and resumed their work at their restaurant.
She was not originally a high anxiety person but became increasingly anxious because of fear of these attacks, which became a conditioned stimulus for anxiety.
J.B. did quite well with our training protocol and experienced a complete cessation of the panic attacks. One full year later, she still had not had another attack.
Through the use of alpha brain wave training, the patient began to fathom the genesis of feelings of helplessness and ultimate panic and learned how to eliminate the
anxiety attacks and to control her own mind and sense of well being.
Over 20 years after completing her treatment, J.B. has had no further occurrences of the panic attacks that had threatened to disrupt her life completely. The fact that she has remained strong, calm, and centered is all the more remarkable because her older sister (who had been her strength and support) subsequently went through some very traumatic times. Her strong, supporting sister actually became an energy drain requiring J.B. to reverse roles and provide strength to her older sister. She was able to do this while maintaining her own psychological integrity and conducting herself as a wife and mother. She recently remarked that she finds at least one opportunity every day to recognize the powerful effect that the Biocybernaut Process had on her life.
3.7.2 A Paranoid, Hostile, Schizophrenic, Unemployable Man
This 30-year-old man had clinically significant levels of paranoia and schizophrenia. He was so hostile and paranoid that he could not keep a job or maintain a living situation. He quite literally could not get along with people. When he started our program, he had just been involved in a fight with a total stranger at a bus stop. As a result of the fight, his whole body was bruised, and he had 20 stitches over his left eye. Because of the stitches, we were unable to place EMG electrodes on his forehead.
He seemed likely to be a difficult person to train since he bristled with hostility and ill will. It was easy to see that he was a magnet for physical attacks because of his extremely disagreeable nature. The lab assistants had a major argument over who would have work with ‘that one,’ as his bad energy spilled over into our lab personnel. By the time he was nearly through his alpha sessions, he had become more compliant and progressively less hostile. It is a challenge for us to train out both paranoia and schizophrenia simultaneously since each condition is best transformed with alpha energy increases at different places on the head. Increases of central alpha energy reduce paranoia, while increases of occipital alpha energy reduce schizophrenia. However, we provide each patient with four (simultaneous) feedback information channels (left and right central alpha energy, and left and right occipital alpha energy). This patient used that feedback information to his best advantage and increased his central and occipital alpha energy.
This patient reduced his schizophrenia through our training protocol and got rid of his clinically extreme levels of paranoia. He was also less hostile and could now get along better with other people. He found a job shortly after completing his training, and his living situation stabilized. At his one-year follow-up, the patient had lived in the same house, with the same roommates for one year, and he was still holding the same job (almost a year later). He was also pursuing his dream of an acting career by taking courses at a local college. He had not been in a fight since his training.
A remarkable transformation took place within this patient as a result of his experience. A miserable and obnoxious person blossomed into an open, loving
human being. He occasionally dropped by the laboratory, unannounced, to bring flowers to the lab assistants after his training.
3.7.3 Chronic Pain, Stress, Depression, and Attempted Suicide
This patient, a 34-year-old policewoman (B.R.), was referred to us as ‘an emergency’ by her therapist, who feared she would attempt suicide. She had already been
hospitalized for one nearly successful suicide attempt. The therapist sent us an in-depth analysis of the patient that depicted an extremely disturbed person. Her intake personality tests showed she had clinically significant hysteria, hypochondriasis, paranoia, and depression, the most serious acute depression.
B.R. was suffering from a work-related injury, which had left her disabled (unable to perform police work) and plagued by unremitting pain and its attendant psychological stress for seven years. She presented us with her own typed list of over 40 somatic complaints. The patient was bitter, angry, and hostile, almost to the point of physical attack due to the ‘Catch-22’ situation in which she found herself regarding her employment. The Police department had not treated her well. They were manipulating her to avoid retiring her with a disability pension. They said that she was not disabled enough to be retired with a disability pension, and when she said, ‘Then let me come back to work,’ the department responded by saying she was too disabled. In what appeared to be an active ongoing effort to avoid the expense of paying her a disability pension, the department had shunted her from one evaluation to another by the department’s own ‘experts.’ She had only very bitter things to say about the medical doctors and psychiatrists who were being paid by her police department.
B.R. arrived at our treatment facility discouraged, depressed, withdrawn, and in constant pain. She cried continuously for the first two days, complaining of
constant pain, dizziness, and despair at never getting well. She seemed unaware of those around her and was totally self-absorbed. By the third day of training, she
began to acknowledge others’ presence and cry less.
By the fourth day of training, she began to be playful with the training staff, and by the seventh day of training, she stated, ‘I cannot remember back . . . I cannot remember that far [back] the last time before now that I felt peace. All the psychiatrists that I’ve seen and all those other people couldn’t understand what I really wanted when I told them I wasn’t looking for a handout, or this or that.
All I wanted was peace, and yesterday on the way home, I felt peace. . . total and complete peace. In the past 5 years, even on good days, I never felt as good’.
By the end of the 10th training session, B.R. was using the words ‘optimistic’ and ‘joyful’ to describe her state of mind. The battery of personality tests administered after the 7th day of training showed that the clinical scales mentioned above had all dropped to well below the clinical significance level, with an especially significant drop in depression.
A few weeks after the training, B.R. came back for a visit glowing with enthusiasm and happiness. She told us that friends and therapists alike could not fathom the
sudden and remarkable change. A few weeks later, she scheduled another member of her therapy group, a disabled police officer, for the program. A few months after the training, she returned to school, receiving all ‘A’s’ in her first semester.
. . . miraculous’. He added, ‘What you have done is so unbelievable that I have not seen anything like this in over 40 years of my practice. This is so unbelievable that I’d have to see you do this six more times before I could allow myself to believe this actually happened.’ Before the year had ended, this psychiatrist himself had become a trainee and had completed the seven-day alpha one training program to manage the stress which had led him into angioplasty heart surgery.
3.7.4 Depression and Bereavement in an Elderly Widow
When this woman came to us for treatment, she was 73 years old. Her husband had died the year before, and she found herself completely lost and filled with grief since she had been a full-time housewife and mother. She was mourning the loss of her husband and the loss of companionship. She had become addicted to Valium and had just completed a drug detoxification program. However, she was still diagnosed as clinically depressed, with extreme loneliness and isolation. She was a research
the subject in my large federal grant entitled ‘Anxiety and Aging: Intervention with EEG Alpha Feedback.’
She did quite well in learning to control her brain waves. By the time she had completed her alpha training sessions, her depression had left her. She was no longer clinically depressed, and she began to see a new direction for herself. During her alpha training, she began reporting that she was envisioning herself as a leader of people each day when she had her highest alpha scores. This was a role that had never surfaced before in her 73 years. When she finished her training, she almost immediately became head of the Displaced Homemakers organization. She began helping other widowed and divorced women to overcome their grief and begin to grow again. She began teaching courses on stress reduction at a local college, using course material she designed herself.
‘I now feel that any place I go, I have faith, and I can express ME. I have so much confidence in where I’m at, and that makes an impact on other people’s lives. I have
so much solid ground now. I feel centered and stable, more than ever before in my life. I get so much validation now. Through this brain wave training, I can put myself out more for others.’
By the time of her one-year follow-up session, she had not only assumed an active new career as a teacher and a leader in several holistic health ‘networking’ groups, but she had also met and moved in with a 45-year-old man who, reportedly, found her ‘both spiritually and sexually fulfilling.’ She was 74 years old at this time.
