By: Susan M. S. Lindgren with Brain Training Lounge
recover (verb): to get back or regain (something lost or taken away)
Life inevitably serves up change, and change can be challenging. My mom’s rapidly declining health in 2010 proved to be a life altering change for me.
My mom & I had a very close relationship, but several states physically separated us from one another. At the time, I was raising two young children in our complex, demanding society and was unable to directly support my parents with mom’s health conditions. These combined pressure points were incredibly hard on me.
I didn’t know what anxiety really meant until I experienced a complete “nervous breakdown” at age 38 during those difficult, early months of mom’s abrupt decline. Amidst my unraveling, I had my first panic attack in a dental hygienist chair during a routine cleaning. I suddenly found myself struggling with anxiety after a lifetime of not fully understanding how debilitating, irrational, and frustrating it could be to live with it.
I now understand that acute emotional stress and the anticipatory grief I was experiencing while I slowly lost core parts of my mom to vascular dementia caused my “mental breakdown.” She died in January 2014.
Navigating life immediately after my mom’s death was excruciating. The “year of firsts” without her (even though I had been losing her mind for years already) was emotionally intense as I reoriented to life without my mom’s physical presence. I became a person who struggled with and actively managed anxiety for nearly a decade. Activities that never bothered me in the past, suddenly felt challenging.
For many years, I immersed myself into healing what ailed me and heeded well-known, conventional advice. I allowed myself to ‘feel the feelings’ and gave myself permission to grieve on my own timeline. Afterall, grief healing cannot be rushed and is not a singular, linear experience.
During the years after my nervous breakdown, I continued with my dedicated physical fitness routine. I overhauled my nutrition and cut excess sugar. I sought out Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with a licensed professional counselor. I joined a loss/grief group a year after mom died. Our group worked through ‘The Grief Recovery Handbook’ by John W. James and Russell Friedman (Highly Recommend). I continued with my routine acupuncture treatments and had ear seeds routinely placed for support. I tried the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT or tapping) for a time. Without noticeable benefits, my motivation to do EFT and other somatic, nervous system regulation techniques fell away. I learned a lot from a year-long, daily meditation practice with the Headspace app. But, knowing isn’t always healing. These conscious and dedicated practices didn’t bring about the change I’d hoped for. I never fully felt like myself.
I avoided & declined prescription medications from doctors. I wasn’t that bad. I was managing and meds didn’t feel like a viable, long-term solution for me. I did carry a fast-acting, anxiety-relief prescription in my wallet “just in case” I had another panic attack. Just knowing it was available to me was helpful, and I faithfully requested that it be re-filled at my annual wellness visits for years. At the time, I felt less confident without access to it.
Eventually, I had to acknowledge I was different, and then I grieved the person I used to be.
One fateful day in 2018, our pediatrician suggested we try neurofeedback to help my kids with stress, anxiety, and overwhelm. She had seen research that demonstrated neurofeedback’s effectiveness and thought it was worth a try. We had already tried “last resort” prescription medications, but meds did not offer my kids the support we desired. Meds were a trial-and-error process and added to the stress we were trying to manage with it. Side effects often made things feel notably worse.
After our pediatrician’s suggestion, I was on my own. I found a local NeurOptimal® Dynamical Neurofeedback® provider, and my daughter trained first. Her literal lifetime of challenging sleep regulated in under 20 sessions. Her sleep became much easier and recuperative. Her face held less tension. My son trained next. His anxiety could be 5/10 intense at the beginning of a session and drop to a zero 33-minutes later. After several months of brain training that was clearly supporting my kids in many ways, I decided to invest in a system for our family. That’s when I finally put my “oxygen mask” on and trained myself in April 2019.
Within 15 sessions, my nearly nine years of incredibly frustrating, anxious tendencies completely fell away. I felt like myself again for the first time in nearly a decade! I was much more resilient. I worried less, didn’t (over)react to everything, started sleeping better, felt calmer (particularly under pressure), and started to regain my confidence in handling whatever curve balls were thrown in my direction. I felt more at ease, rested, confident, hopeful, and genuinely happy again for the first time in years.
During that Memorial Day weekend family trip, my husband remarked, “Nothing is bothering you.” He noticed that I felt & carried myself more like the person he had dated and married decades prior. He started brain training and experienced better sleep as well.
As I settled into a less frequent, consistent brain training routine, I forgot to ask for a prescription refill at some point and stopped carrying meds in my wallet just in case I fell into panic. That’s when I knew I had truly recovered part of myself that I had lost and desperately missed for years.
Life stress and change kept coming, but after NeurOptimal®, I handled it differently. My dad had Alzheimer’s Disease (along with two of his three sisters) and died (we now understand) from the first wave of COVID in early April 2020. As the world was just coming out of COVID disruption, my middle brother was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in May of 2021, and our family was sent into a whirlwind of tumult. I traveled without fear to visit him in the Midwest (I had developed a fear of flying after my nervous breakdown which also resolved after NeurOptimal®), deeply felt the emotional pain of grieving him while he was still alive without feeling completely overwhelmed, remained remarkably clear-headed & grounded, and navigated his death just six weeks after diagnosis with a resilience I never thought was possible after my mom’s poor health & death changed the core of my being for nine years.
My family’s experience with NeurOptimal® compelled me to open Brain Training Lounge in 2019. I wanted to offer access to NeurOptimal® to other people who felt like they’d run out of options to feel & live better. This truly innovative and unparalleled tool has positively impacted my family, friends, and many of my clients’ lives. NeurOptimal® is a sophisticated and unique nervous system *self-regulation* tool that promotes the brain’s optimal functioning, inherent flexibility & genuine resilience which leads to a natural reduction in wide-ranging mental and physical concerns.
NeurOptimal® was an essential tool in my grief journey. It could be a tool that enhances your ability to meet, confront, and adapt to change without change negatively & irreparably changing you.
If you are grieving, struggle with change, or are simply curious to learn more about a truly unique healthy lifestyle tool that works directly with your central nervous system for mind-body wellness benefits, visit www.BrainTrainingLounge.com or book a free Discovery Call with Susan. Given my personal and professional experience, I’m driven to promote & offer this formidable wellness tool in collaboration with other NeurOptimal® Trainers around the world.
Note: NeurOptimal® is a product of Zengar Institute Inc. This publication is not reviewed or endorsed by Zengar®. NeurOptimal® was designated a low-risk General Wellness Product by the U.S. FDA in 2018 and is intended for general wellness use only. NeurOptimal® is a training tool for more optimal brain function and does not diagnose, treat, mitigate, prevent, or cure any disease, disorder, or abnormal physical state, nor does it restore, modify, or correct the body’s structure or functioning. User experiences vary.
All views shared in BTL Perspectives are the opinion of the authors. The views expressed are intended for educational & informational purposes only and are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of a qualified and licensed physician or mental health counselor for diagnosis and treatment options.
