Small But Mighty Episode 22: Chris Peacock on helping individuals resolve challenges through Neurofeedback

Chris Peacock’s work in psychology as well as concern over the health and well-being of her own child, brought her down the path to being a Certified NeurOptimal® Trainer. In her work, Chris uses Neurofeedback to help individuals reset their nervous system to help them cope with learning disabilities, anxiety, behavioural challenges, and more. This unique method of training the brain helps calm the central nervous system and helps the brain develop new neural pathways which help people feel better and prepare them for everyday situations. To learn more about Neurofeedback and how Chris may be able to help you and your family, visit her website or like her Facebook Page.  

Full Episode Transcript

Karen Wilson: Hello everyone, I hope you’re having a great day and thanks for joining me for Small But Mighty Biz Stories. Today we get to hear from Chris Peacock of 2Beinflow Neurofeedback Services. I’m super eager to learn more about your work, Chris. Thanks for coming on to share. Why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to everyone?

Chris Peacock: Great. I’m thrilled to be here, Karen, thanks so much. My business is 2Beinflow Neurofeedback. I’m actually, last month celebrated seven years since starting my business, which is great.

Karen: Congratulations.

Chris: Thanks. I’ve worked in health care pretty much all my life, but as an employee, so came late, very late to the business, running my own business, started that at 55 so a whole new world for me. Like I say, I’ve worked in health care all my life and so at least was bringing health care background to what I do now, in terms of Neurofeedback. It is basically a technology-based brain training program, that is really all about calming the central nervous system and helping the brain develop new neural pathways. That sounds all very complicated, but--

Karen: Very science-y.

Chris: Very science-y. If you try to get a visual, people are connected to a laptop with sensors on their five sensors on their head and ears, and what those sensors are doing is reading the electrical activity in their brain. When it goes out of balance for their brain, people start to hear little skips in the audio that they’re listening to.

Those skips are like holding a mirror up to the brain and going, “You’re doing this. Is that what you want to do?” If we look in the mirror ourselves, and we have some broccoli in our teeth or something on our face, we don’t think about it, we just, take it off. The brain is the same, it goes, “Oh, really, I’m doing that?” Then it starts to rebalance itself and reset itself and do something different.

How bringing that down from a sky level to reality is-- I primarily love to work. My passion is to work with families who have a child or children who have additional needs or neurodivergent, that seems to be a new term being used. Their brain just works a little differently from everyone else. One, that I have been working with a number of families over the last seven years and what I’ve found is whether it’s ADHD, or autism, or Asperger’s, FASD that quite often there’s an underlying piece that surround the central nervous system.

Often that shows up as anxiety and many of these children are also dealing with anxiety as well as whatever diagnosis they have. I’ve just learned so much about how when the nervous system is out of balance, a whole bunch of other things are out of balance. That leads to problems with sleep, it leads to reactivity, or not being able to be very emotionally agile. Because for children, I will add adults, it’s like we’re feeling prickly on the inside because our nervous system is vibrating too high. It doesn’t take much from the outside environment to make us prickly on the outside.

Karen: It’s true.

Chris: Then there’s often lots of physical things that go along with anxiety, whether it’s fast heart rate or shallow breathing, sometimes it shows up as a text. All sorts of physical things pain in the joints, and muscles that is more in adult population, and then thoughts that go over and over and over in our head and we can’t seem to move them aside or it feels like our brain and thoughts are on a hamster wheel, and we can’t get off the hamster wheel.

Those are all really good indicators that the nervous system is over activated and so what Neurofeedback is doing is just interrupting that pattern over and over and over and over and over. As that happens, then the nervous system starts to settle down, and we start to develop new neural pathways, and all of those things that I mentioned those symptoms, then they start to improve.

A lot of people think about that they are much more familiar now with the term Fight-Flight-Freeze. When our nervous system is stuck in that pattern, then it means the back of the brain, which is where our emotions are, is running the show, hence, reactivity and all of those things. Literally the front of the brain, which is where our problem-solving ability and an executive function is it’s like, I use the example because I grew up with Fraser, but it’s like Fraser has left the building and there’s no access to that problem-solving part of the of the brain.

Lots of people, whether it be children, or adults who come to see me, they know tools that are out there to help their nervous system to stay more in balance, whether that’s yoga or meditation, or mindfulness or exercise, there’s a whole raft of things that help us stay in a calmer state. When they come to see me, they know those tools are there and it’s like those tools are over on an island and they have no transportation to get there, because of not having that access to the frontal cortex and feeling so activated.

I talked about Neurofeedback being like a bridge to get over to that island, because it’s just calming, calming, calming the nervous system. Some people refer to it as meditation on steroids, because it’s reading the electrical activity 256 times a second, so in a 33-minute session, it can interrupt that pattern of fight or flight hundreds and hundreds of times.

Karen: The thing that is so interesting about that is the fact that you have access to all of these different tools and systems that you can use to cope with whatever is going on. I’m sure it’s a full range of things because life can affect you even everyday things that we’re used to can hit you the wrong way at the wrong time and it heightens that nervous system activity. What causes that break where you can’t access those coping mechanisms, such as the meditation and other things that you mentioned?

Chris: Because those tools do require some capacity to problem solve, so “Oh, I see, I’m really not coping. I need to go to my yoga class. Or I need to sit down and meditate. Or I need to get out to exercise.” We know that and it’s like we’re trapped and aren’t able to do that. I’ll get people, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, I know.” I’m going to go to the yoga studio and then they don’t get there.

Physiologically, it’s always talking to people about separating it from our thoughts and what’s going on actually in the body in our electrical system. That’s what I mean by the nervous system being out of balance. When it’s so out of balance, we actually, physiologically don’t have the capacity to do all those things. That’s how I was.

I haven’t talked about why I am doing this so just because of our son and the issues that he had. Because his nervous system was so out of balance. Ours as parents was as well. I would just feel stupid all the time. We go and talk to the social worker and she’d say, “When things get tough, go and do some breathing. Or go and do this and go and do that.” I just felt like a failure all the time. Like, “Okay, yes, yes, I know I’m supposed to do that.”

Now I understand that literally I didn’t have the capacity because my nervous system was so over-activated. Then once I was able to bring it down, then “Oh, okay, it’s literally a part of your brain that wasn’t functioning before.” It comes on and go, “Okay,” then you can start to catch yourself and go, “Okay, I need to leave the room right now,” as opposed to responding and bring myself down before I re-engage.

So many people and I hear that from parents but I’m so reactive to my child and I’ve learned in a whole new way about our capacity within the realm of how our nervous system is operating. That’s where I see Neurofeedback fitting into the spectrum because there’s all sorts of things out there. There’s no magic bullet for anything. What I found over the years is that it can really speed that process of getting the nervous system more into balance and then people have the capacity.

All of a sudden, a client who has been talking about going to yoga for a year or several months, suddenly they find themselves signing up for a class, or they say, “Oh, well, I seem to be able to sit for 10 minutes of meditation now or whatever it is.” Just having that problem-solving capacity in the brain come back online just gives us so much more options in terms of how we respond to things.

Karen: This is really fascinating. I have a number of family members including my son with autism and just the whole idea around executive function or executive dysfunction for some of us who struggle with that. It sounds similar but yet there’s definitely a difference between what you’re describing and what happens when your executive function is compromised. How would you explain that difference?

Chris: Maybe just cut me off if I’m not getting question correctly. If we use autism as an example, if we look just at the nervous system component of that, that if the nervous system is vibrating up here, and usually, it’s vibrating down here and I’m putting at the top of my head and down past my shoulders. That has an impact on our sleep, on our ability to emotionally regulate, on our ability to focus and all of that. Because at a nervous system level that frontal cortex isn’t engaging to the extent that it can.

If you calm the back of the brain or the emotional part of the brain, as there’s parts to be a balance in the nervous system and in brain function then the tantrums start coming down, the sleep improves. Eye ability to engage with other people whether it be adults or to engage with other children starts to change their ability just for some children to speak who haven’t been speaking or been using a few words, suddenly, they’re able to start using longer sentences.

I think the sensory overload that often happens, like our son, he was diagnosed with ADHD, now that he’s older, we realized that we have been dealing with the FASD or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. In the classroom like anything, pencils, going across the page or a chair moving, or there was a boy in his class who had one of those big balls to sit on and just the sound of it going up and down. All those things were way too much for him.

As his nervous systems started to calm down, then those things stopped bothering him. We hadn’t been able to go to a movie theater for years. Because he didn’t have that sensory overload anymore, we were able to go into movie theaters. We were able to start playing board games again, because he wouldn’t get all upset when things weren’t going well. The board stopped flying across the room with all the pieces and we were able to sit down and have family games again and with friends. Does that answer what you--

Karen: Yes, it’s almost like that, that nervous system response, that heightened activity is blocking. Even if you have executive function that’s diminished, it’s even further incapacitated by the nervous system being so active. That makes sense. It’s something that I found over the years, one of the things that I’ve learned is that the best piece of advice anybody ever gave me during the time when my son was being diagnosed was there’s always a reason.

I try to look for what is it that’s happening that is causing a behavior rather than addressing the behavior. Because if you don’t address the why of the behavior, you’re not solving the problem at all. You’re not creating an environment that someone can actually be successful in, at whatever it is that they are trying to do. I lost my train of thought for a second…it happens every now and then.

Chris: No, worries.

Karen: That shift in the environment in similar ways to what you’re describing with the Neurofeedback can lessen the activity of the nervous system. Where the Neurofeedback comes in and is valuable, it’s just those everyday combination of things. You were describing those little noises that happen in the classroom, the inevitable noises and sensations and a theater that can prevent the enjoyment for someone who feels and experiences those things more acutely than others do.

Chris: That’s exactly right. Coming back to that, they’re feeling prickly on the inside. There’s something going on inside that’s already irritating like my insides feel irritating. Then when there’s that sound or somebody says something to me in a way, then that irritation is magnified 100 times. We’re bringing down that internal irritation so that externally the stresses and noise and things don’t irritate us to nearly the same extent.

Karen: The brain works in some really wondrous ways. That’s what makes this so fascinating to talk about is that whole idea of reconnecting the pathways. How exactly does the Neurofeedback do that? You described earlier having the way it’s set up, being connected to a laptop. What does the equipment do?

Chris: Again, through the sensor, so there’s five sensors on the head and ears. What those sensors are doing in a 33-minute period is reading the electrical activity for that person. When it goes out of balance for that person’s brain because we’re all different, then the feedback itself little skips or interrupts in whatever audio they’re listening to. For children, usually, they’re watching movies because that’s what keeps them sitting in the chair for 33 minutes or playing on an iPad and for adults are usually listening to the default music possibly watching a screen or not.

When I do sessions, I’m usually, working on my email because it’s happening at an unconscious level. It’s happening at an electrical level. The system is having a back and forth conversation with the electrical system and coming back to that neuro analogy, “Oh, you’re doing this.”

The example they use is, “Oh, you just gone into fight or flight. Is that what you want to do?” The nervous system checks in and goes, “Oh, in this millisecond, I’m in a quiet room, and there’s no saber-toothed tiger. I don’t need to be in this state and it calms just a little bit.” Two seconds later, “Oh, you’ve just gone into fight or flight. Is that what you want to do?” That happens hundreds of times in 33 minutes.

Karen: That’s so interesting. Is there an ideal time or place to do the sessions?

Chris: Ideally, it’s nice to be in a quiet space. Like I have a lovely quiet office. Because with COVID now not many people are going to offices these days. The beauty of this system is that it’s a brain training. It’s not a treatment, so because of that anyone can do it. My business is basically turned to renting systems, which is has been great because then I can just teach people either on Zoom or if they do want to come into the office to learn it, then they just take the system home with them and they do the sessions at home.

Then the whole family can do sessions as well. Because when one person in the household, their nervous system is out of balance, usually, everybody’s nervous system is out of balance. I’m always encouraging at least one parent to do sessions as well so that everybody’s system starts to come down.

Karen: That makes a lot of sense. Because you would avoid the dissonance that can happen when you have somebody who’s been balanced and then someone who isn’t or multiple people who aren’t.

Chris: Yes, exactly. I’ve been explaining it lately. Because usually, as we are with our children, “Oh, I got this, it’s here to help my child,” and I’ve been using the analogy on the plane. If something starts to happen with the plane, you put the oxygen mask on you first. Just saying that same thing, get yourself more into balance. That’s going to have an impact on your child as well. Then there’s more capacity to also have the child or children doing sessions too.

Karen: Oh, yes, that makes total sense. Without realizing it, we’re playing off of each other. In the energy, we’re putting out there all the time and children are so perceptive too. They see things so differently than adults and we are so good as adults of packing down the stresses and things and our nervous systems are probably all more active than we are willing to admit.

Chris: Oh, absolutely. Finding Neurofeedback and the impact that it had on our family, it was a gift for our son, but it was a massive gift for me.

Karen: That’s great. Your background is in Psychology, correct?

Chris: Yes.

Karen: How do you see this as a tool for mental health? Because it seems that would be really beneficial to someone who might be struggling.

Chris: Absolutely. Like I said, the vast majority of clients that I see either as children or as adults there’s that underlying anxiety symptoms. I work with a lot of adults who are dealing with anxiety or depression or PTSD and it goes so well with therapy as well.

My wife is a therapist and sometimes there’ll be a client who’s so activated that they’re not going to be able to engage well in therapy at the beginning. They will come and see me, do a series of sessions, bring things down, and then they’re just so much more accessible to therapy. Then the two can work in combination or they can just take off with the therapy. It just works in combination with so many things.

Karen: That’s fascinating. It makes a lot of sense. If you’ve got blockades up already that you don’t realize, how are you going to get the full benefit of any kind of a therapy? That’s interesting.

Chris: Yes. What I was just talking earlier today, I had some children with learning disabilities, and who are getting lots of services and stuff. Then when they do add the Neurofeedback into that mix, suddenly, the providers who are helping them with language or movement, that suddenly say, “Wow, this child is way more engaged.” Like, “I’m actually able to do things with them now and they’re not resisting it now.”

Yes, just to see everything come together. I totally believe it takes a community and a village to raise a child, it takes so many things to support a child who has some extra needs as well.

Karen: Now, I want to bring something up. This is not a cure. This is to help people cope better, have better quality of life, how would you describe that?

Chris: In terms of not being a cure?

Karen: Yes.

Chris: For anything, there’s no magic bullet to anything. I think that’s across the board, but it’s another tool in the toolbox. Adults ask me or parents ask me all the time, “How many sessions am I going to have to do? Then are we going to have to do this for the rest of our life?” My answer to that, for adults, I’ll say, “I know that the Neurofeedback can bring your nervous system down, but then we don’t live in a static world. We’re always, especially now living in stressful environments.”

So, I say, “The more that they’re doing to keep their nervous system in balance, so now that they have more capacity to use other tools, whatever they choose those to be then go off and do those, and you’re not going to have to see me very often. You might just need a tune-up every now and then.”

Some people like the experience of Neurofeedback so much that they go-- that becomes their yoga class or they just like to do it on a regular basis, but we all have to be doing something to keep ourselves in balance. For children, it’s harder for them to use some of the tools so it might be a longer process before they’re able to use other tools.

Karen: Over the years since we found out that my son is autistic, I've really sought to learn more about autism from people who are actually autistic. One thing that's been helpful to me as a parent is their views on various things we do as parents, as professionals, and authority figures in helping our kids. I'm sure you're aware there are certain things that the autistic community is very vocal in their lack of support, especially anything that's about a cure or changing the essence of an autistic person as opposed to helping ease some of those harder aspects in their life experience.

We've discussed the benefits of neurofeedback for people with various neurological differences, including autism, where there are especially strong views. I wanted to give you the opportunity to address this directly. From everything you've said, it's very clear to me that neurofeedback is not and never will be a cure. It isn't changing the person in any way. What would you say to someone if they had concerns along these lines?

Chris: That's definitely not what neurofeedback is about. There is like for autism, maybe ADD, that is their essence and not looking to change that. We're looking to help anyone to function at their best and for their brain to be able to function at its best, but changing some of the circuitry or having new neural pathways is only happening in a way that is going to enhance their capacity as opposed to diminish who they are. Where I see this fitting in is to help-- Particularly, we've been talking all along about the nervous system.

Just bringing that into balance can help them in terms of their capacity to cope in the classroom, to cope at home, to be in relationship with others, and to increase their own confidence. In that type of way, it's part of-- We talked about that earlier, that it's part of the toolbox to help whoever is coming to me to function at what they consider their best. That's not for me to decide. It's what they're wanting.

Karen: I think it's important. You mentioned earlier that life happens and these are neurological differences that are developmental. The brain is always changing in different ways throughout life. It's not necessarily a one-and-done type of therapeutic treatment.

Chris: In fact, this one isn't a treatment at all. It is a brain training. In that way too because it is a training, it's not pushing the brain in any direction. In terms of that question, our brain isn't going to do anything that's going to harm us when it's making its own decision. It's, "Well, do I want to go--?" It's giving information to the brain about what it's doing but then the brain absolutely makes its own decision as to, "Okay, what do I want to do with that information?"

So, how that works is that what I'll tell adults who come is that I can bring the nervous system down, and then it's up to them to figure out what best combination of tools work to keep their nervous system in balance because we're always having stresses these days. We have COVID as a stress in the background all the time, and then there are just events. Our nervous system is always in flux.

It's whatever, once the nervous system settles down, then what are they going to do on an ongoing basis? Some people besides they love doing the neurofeedback sessions. They build that into their tools and they might go once a month for a tune-up or something like that, as long as they're getting out and exercising or they've gone back to yoga.

For children, they're still learning. For some, they don't have as much capacity as when they're younger to take on practices such as yoga or mindfulness, or meditation. Lots of children I work with, the parents are really encouraging exercise as a physical activity as a way to burn off some of that extra energy. For children, what I tend to say is that there'll likely be a longer period of maintenance and every child is different.

Those maintenance or tune-up sessions, we just figure out as we go along. One thing I'm also always careful about, let's say somebody comes to me and does 20 sessions and they're doing well. I don't see them for six months and then they're in touch. Whether it's a parent or an adult saying, "Oh my goodness, everything's gone off the rails and we've got to sign up for another 20 sessions." I said, "Oh, no, no".

It is training. The brain has just gotten a little lazy or that pathway just hasn't been used as often. Usually, one or two sessions brings it back into balance because the brain remembers and goes, "Oh, yes", and then it starts using that pathway again. The nervous system settles down very quickly.

Karen: I can relate to that. I do that all the time. I forget what I'm doing and suddenly I remember.

Chris: Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Karen: That makes a lot of sense. I think about my journey that we have had our family or our journey. When we started talking and you're describing the work that you do, I can definitely pinpoint times where I wish I had known about you

Karen: We struggled, and my son, he'd go through these periods of times where certain things were going on and there were various different triggers where his nervous system was really heightened and he was struggling to cope and I had no idea what to do to help him. I actually think that this would have been more beneficial than anything else that we tried. We meddled through, though, and got past it and I just wonder, what's the youngest? Because I remember one of the first times things came up for him, he was four. How young? Is this effective? What are the signs that people should look for either in themselves or others in their life?

Chris: Well, I think any age is perfect. The youngest I've had actually in my office is four, but it really comes down to, can the child be in the chair or on their parent's lap? Or any way to keep them in the chair? With children on the spectrum because of the sensory issues, often and at the beginning, they don't like the sensors and the paste, so it just might be a longer process to get them started because they send some sensors home with the parents and then the child can play with them.

They can put them on their bear, they can put them on their nails, get used to them. There's tools that you can use to help with that sensory destimulation so that then the sensors don't bother them as much. With younger children, it just depends how ready they are and what preliminary things need to be done to get them to the stage where they could be in the chair. Definitely, for a lot of children, having the movies is a real motivator.

Karen: Indeed.

Chris: That's always good. I say the younger, the better. Our son was 10 when we discovered this system, and if we could have had it five years earlier, yes, we could have saved all of us a lot of heartache and stress. The signs that you're looking for are all signs that the nervous system is starting to be activated. Whether that's sleep, whether that's difficulty regulating their emotions, having focus issues. Just feeling that irritation, that they feel irritated all the time, that just isn't making sense because those are all really good indicators that their nervous system is out of balance.

The earlier you can bring that into balance, then it's so much easier for the child themselves and then it's so much easier for the parents and caregivers and teachers, and it all cascades down. Then they're not experiencing so much pushback in their world, so they feel better about themselves and that's what we're looking for at the end of the day.

Karen: I think what I like about this is that there's a lot we can do to make people's environment better for them, less prickly, to use your word. I really liked that description of it. Then what you can do too is you're working on the brain to help the brain cope with the things that remain prickly more easily, and that just overall improves quality of life, in my view, because you can't avoid some of the things. It's like there's fluorescent lights. There's kids who have sensory processing disorder and no neurological differences other than this sensory processing disorder.

It's clothing tags, and in the fluorescent blue lights. Sunlight was one that my son struggled with too. There's these different environmental factors you can't actually escape. So if it's a fact of the world, then helping people live within that world and not have to do something like hide away in the basement is important because it improves quality of life.

Chris: Just like you say, just the basics. I've had clients who, when they started coming, going to the store to do groceries was excruciating, and for some, they would talk themselves through it, they'd be in and out of the store as quickly as they could, they'd get home. Sometimes didn't have enough energy even to put the groceries away, and that all shifts or terrify. Well, most people don't want to get on a bus right now.

Karen: Yes, true.

Chris: But pre-COVID, being in crowds or getting on a bus really, really difficult. Then those activities causing much less arousal or agitation.

Karen: That's so important.

Chris: Just the, like you said, activities of daily living and just being able to do those becomes much easier if your nervous system is in balance.

Karen: That's really amazing because I remember when my son was younger hearing so many parents struggling with exactly what you're describing. The trip to the grocery store can be so hard because it's not just your worry for your child and their reaction to this environment they're in, it's also all the judgment you get from others, and it's this layer, upon layer, upon layer of stress and you're also just trying to do the essentials of life. That can be really challenging for parents. I'd love that there are certainly options out there that are really effective.

Chris: I always come back to that it's all about being part of a team and sometimes you use this tool at a certain time and this tool at a certain time, or you come back and forth and you find the combination that works for you and/or your family.

Karen: Absolutely. Chris, how can people get in touch with you and learn more?

Chris: Sure. Well, that would be wonderful. My website is 2beinflow. I always say if people can actually say that when I'm saying my business is 2beinflow, then they probably don't need to come and see me. It's the number two, and then B-E-I N-F-L-O-W.com. Definitely see me there. I'm on Facebook as well with 2tobeinflow and on my website, anyone can book a complimentary consult, either over the phone or in the office.

I offer a free demo in my offices as well so that people actually get to experience it because I think that's really important because people know more about neurofeedback than they did seven years ago. At least they've heard of it many times, but it's still good to go, "Okay. Oh, I see", once they really experience it, so I offer that as well.

Karen: Fantastic. Well, I'll make sure that all of that information gets into the show notes so that everybody can easily find you. Thank you so much for coming on. This has been so fascinating to learn more about the work that you're doing.

Chris: Thank you, Karen. It's a pleasure. I've had a great time.

Karen: Awesome. Glad to hear it.