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Stress tends to trigger the fight, flight, or flee response which is supposed to be an emergency state which lasts for only a short time. When there is not a short-term emergency requiring a physical response then the state can last for a long time. It may also be triggered repeatedly over a long period of time. When this happens, negative symptoms including pain, headaches, cardiovascular problems, and insomnia can result.
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Biofeedback Equipment is a process that uses instruments that record physiological signals from a person’s body and then display the information so that a person can learn to change the signal that is being measured. One therapeutic application of biofeedback is for helping people with stress-related disorders. In this context sensors may be attached to a client and signals including muscle tension, breathing, and heart rate is measured and displayed on a computer screen. The client with the help of coaching from a therapist learns to control these signals and bring them to a more relaxed level.
Mental health disorders including anxiety, PTSD, and depression seem to have become more widespread over the past several years. Is it that more information has become available and there is less of a stigma for people to seek mental health services? Is it a combination of effects of the pandemic, mass shootings, and national and international unrest? Whatever the reason is, the fact is that help is needed. Biofeedback training is among the many effective tools that mental health professionals can use to help people suffering from mental health challenges.
Psychologists and other mental health providers tend to do a lot of talking and paperwork as a part of their routine. Some of this can become monotonous. Biofeedback can introduce technology that helps the clients of mental health providers to learn about themselves. It helps them to learn how to make real, physiological, measurable changes. They learn to change how their body reacts to stress using biofeedback.
What supplies do you need to have to use biofeedback technology? Some biofeedback modalities require little or no supplies while others require consumable supplies that you need a ready inventory of.
A Plethysmograph (PPG) sensor which is used to measure Heart Rate, Blood Volume, and Heart Rate variability may use a clip or Velcro band that is permanently attached to the sensor. In this case, there would be no replaceable supplies needed.
The Electrocardiograph (EKG) sensor measures Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability. The EKG sensor uses adhesive disposable sensors that stick to the skin and snap or clip to the electrode cable. These usually come in packages of 50 – 300. Alcohol prep pads are used to clean the skin before applying the sensors.
Most people I talk to agree that we are living in very stressful times. Stress management tools and techniques are more needed than ever. Books about stress are popular. I came across an interesting one recently called Tech Stress, How Technology is Hijacking our lives, strategies for coping, and pragmatic ergonomics by Erik Peper, Ph.D., Richard Harvey, Ph.D., and Nancy Faass, MSW, MPH.
The description on the back of the book starts by saying –“Re-envisioning your relationship with technology to reclaim health, happiness, and sanity in a plugged-in world.”
Is there a need for a stress management book for black people?
There are plenty of books on stress management. They should be good enough for everyone no matter what color right? Stress is stress and how to reduce the negative effects should be the same for everyone, you would think.
There are a lot of differences in our backgrounds, cultures, experiences, and environments. Some of these have nothing to do with the color of our skin and some do.
A biofeedback instrument is a device that uses sensors to measure a signal from the body related to your nervous system that then shows you the information as it is being measured. It is different than getting your blood pressure checked or taking your pulse and getting one reading for one moment in time. The measurement and feedback of information are continuous.
This information can be used for monitoring and might not even be shown to the person that it is being measured from. This is sometimes done in research. Let’s say a researcher wants to find out how a person’s body reacts to watching a scary movie or counting backward by 7’s. They could attach sensors to a subject and monitor signals like heart rate or sweat activity to acquire a measurement related to the physiological reaction of the stimulus. When used in this way it would be more accurate to refer to the process as physiological monitoring instead of biofeedback.
Sleep problems including insomnia are an excellent application of Peripheral Biofeedback and EEG Biofeedback (Neurofeedback). They are also among the major symptoms caused by stress. It is difficult to fall asleep while the body is tense or your brain and nervous system is in fight-fight-freeze (emergency) mode. It is difficult to fall asleep if you close your eyes and your brain is still too busy.
Not getting enough sleep is a problem for between 28.5% – 41.1% of adults in the USA according to CDC 2014 statistics. The term they use is “short sleep duration”, defined as less than 7 hours of sleep per night for adults (see CDC – Data and Statistics – Sleep and Sleep Disorders). People who have short sleep duration also have other health risks at a higher rate than others. Some of these shared risks include obesity, physical inactivity, alcohol use, and smoking. Short sleepers also reported these ten chronic disorders at a higher rate than those who get enough sleep:
Most of us spend at least 8 hours of our day at work. If you ask many people, they will say they hate their job. Even if you don’t hate your job there are usually many moments every day at work that you would describe as stressful. It’s nice to visit a therapy office for a biofeedback, talk therapy, or relaxation session where you sit in a nice comfortable chair and listen to relaxing music. For a moment your troubles can seem to disappear and you feel totally relaxed. This is helpful. It can break the chronic stress condition that many people are stuck in. The problem can be that after the session you go back out into the real world and have to manage until the next visit that may be a week or two away.
People like to think they know what the stress of being black is like.
If you’re not, you don’t.
Think about the stress of having a final exam in high school or college coming up.
You worry about it for two weeks or so leading up to it and it is very hard and stressful. You get to the time of actually taking the exam and it is very stressful. Then, the exam is over.
Being black is not like that because it’s never over. Every morning you wake up you have to deal with the stress associated with being black all over again.
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Biofeedback and Neurofeedback Training for APA Continuing Education Credit