Mom on a Mission: How Neurofeedback Saved my Son’s Life with Special Guest Dianne Kosto

Digital Audio Health by Cymotrax. Welcome back, No Problem Parents. Today's episode is from one of the most amazing mothers I have ever met in my life. This podcast episode is titled, Mom on a Mission, How Neurofeedback Saved My Son's Life.

Listen in as I interview Diane Costo. Diane is the CEO and founder of Symmetry Neuropathway Training, which provides neurofeedback services and systems to individuals, families, therapeutic programs, and professionals across the USA, Canada, and Mexico. With the knowledge that neurofeedback saved her son's life and restored hope for her family, Diane is a mom on a mission to make neurofeedback technology available to individuals and families so they can avoid the trauma her family experienced as a result of her son's brain dysregulation.

From an early age, Diane's son was kicked out of schools and programs. Diane continually sought an environment that would help her son thrive. While physicians, psychologists, therapists, counselors, and education professionals gave her advice, no one told her about neurofeedback. For over 13 years, Diane has trained and provided clinical and technical support for programs and professionals who utilize neurofeedback and symmetry neuropathway training systems.

I am excited to get into this interview and also very excited to share with you that our second book, Volume 2 of No Problem Parenting, Resources and Stories to Create Confidence and Connection, has hit international bestseller. Thank you for everybody who's already ordered the book. We definitely have a link in the show notes for you to get the newest book and the first book. I'm excited to share all of these resources with you in this No Problem Parenting community.

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If you're interested or know someone else who might be a great fit, call or text 320-492-7083 or go to Sheardynamicsmn.com. Thank you, Sheardynamics and Linda Wander for sponsoring the No Problem Parenting Podcast. All right, so welcome to the show, Diane.

I'm super excited to have you here today to tell us your story. I love this topic. your mom on a mission, how neural feedback saved your son's life. And I'm super curious about your story. So welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jackie. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here and chat with you. Well, I'm going to want to get into all the benefits of neural feedback and all of this, but I really am intrigued by your particular story with your son who could have otherwise been diagnosed with ADHD or oppositional defiant disorder or a host of other things. But let's just start from the beginning and fill us in on how you came to find neural feedback and how it helped your family. All right. That's a pretty long saga, but I'll try to condense it as much as possible.

The bottom line was my son was impulsive off of the charts, you know, and very volatile. And from the time he was about five years old, going into first grade and Montessori program until he was 12, I tried multiple different school environments for him. And it seemed to be a failure in each one of it. You know, I would get a call. We really love him. He's not following the program. You need to come and get him. And some of them didn't do the, we really love him part of it because he came across as a 110% boy with a bad attitude. So, you know, from that very young age, I'm trying to figure out what to do for him. So I'm picking up every different parenting book. I'm trying point systems. I'm, you know, very tough disciplinarian because I was a single mom with two boys. He was the youngest. And I thought, okay, I'm not, he's not going to be the kind of kid that's going to walk all over mom. And, you know, I'll be judged as that mom who can't,

you know, discipline her kids kind of thing. So I really just did everything from private school, homeschool, boarding school, homeschool again, multiple times we tried that. And yes, he got kicked out of there a couple times and uh when he was 12 going on 13 i sent him to a military academy and by this point i couldn't like hold him down to keep us safe in the house there were holes in the walls you know in between he's a great delightful witty kid it's not like it was constant monster right so he was really fun and awesome to be around and smart but you just if something set him off there there was just no pause and it was all over and you never knew what was going to happen so it got to the point that I couldn't he was refusing school he got addicted to games that his kid his friends introduced him to you know just outright refusing to cooperate with anything and it was very unproductive and I'm like this can't go on and so I found a military academy for him and I'm like this is going to be great for you because outdoors hands-on you know shoot things, do all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, you've really got to make this work for you,

buddy, or you're not welcome back here. That's how bad it was disrupting our home. And so off he goes and I'm pretty, every time I had so much hope and I was so confident that this would be the right place for him. You know, I would find that environment that he would thrive in because I wasn't providing it, you know, and he gets there and a couple months in, he gets in trouble and they call me to come and get them. And I was like, no, I told him he wasn't welcome back if he didn't make, you know, make this work for him. So then I'm scrambling to figure out what to do. Cause here's this 12 year old that has no other options. And I find out, you know, all those years I was trying to avoid him becoming that troubled teen, you know, and having to go to one of those programs for quote unquote troubled teens. And here we were, he's just about to be a teenager. And that's what I ended up with. I actually literally did one of the hardest things in my life and had him transported directly from that military academy to a therapeutic residential program. And it was heartbreaking, but I was like, again, here we are now, at least they know how to help him.

They're going to be able to put him in an environment, come around him, surround him, give him the tools he needs. And, and he's got it this time. This will work. and it doesn't no a few months into the program i get that call again and i have families i bet i get i'm 10 families a year if not more that are in that boat where the next i just talked to one last week and the next step is residential but they put them in residential and they blow out residential and every time it's go back home well how is a parent without all of the therapeutic skills and you know all like how is a parent supposed to parent 24 7 when residential facilities who have you know staff that aren't around the clock that have breaks that have you know all these other skills if they can't take care of a child how is a parent supposed to i know and it's a really scary thing happening in the industry right now too because there are many that get a really bad rap and some publicity that talks about it and, you know, how strict of an environment it is and everything. But I am so grateful throughout all of those years to be able to have somewhere to give a, give a shot and other people to surround him and keep him safe and keep an eye on him.

Because you're right. What do you do as a parent when it's, they're wreaking havoc in the house, disrupting all everything and destroying things and in danger. So yeah, there's like, it's tricky in that field, but I do, I have, I was so hopeful again that, okay, they, they know what to do now. And at that point I got a call from the CEO and he's like, he's not cutting it. What are we going to do? I'm like, you're the expert you found at this place, you know? And he was too volatile for wilderness therapy too. So thank God, whatever you believe in higher power, God, miracle, anything.

I was introduced to the founder of a neurofeedback company and I listened to what he had to say. And it made sense to me. There might, there's something, it might be something brain related, you know, that's going on. That's not allowing him to pause and before he reacts. And so I was like, let's, let's do this. And I went through the training and he trusted me with a $22,000 system. And I drove from South Carolina to, I call it nowhere, Utah in the middle of Utah, where this program was and I set it up in that program and started running sessions on him.

I shared the information with the parents of what I was doing. You know, it's non-invasive, it's brain training, using technology, no harmful side effects. And so they were like, bring it on. You know, we're spending more money than we have. We don't like the medications.

We've tried everything too. Let's, let's give it a shot. And so was he in like a foster home at that point when you say you shared it with the parents? No, but other parents came to that facility for a parent conference. Their kids were also enrolled. It was residential treatment, I guess they call it or yeah. Okay. So you actually learned the neurofeedback and you were trained in it so that you could go to where your son was staying and have him and do this with him. A parent can do this with their child. Yes. That's what I did. Yeah.

I went in there and set up, started running the sessions, started seeing positive improvements in him and the other students that were enrolled and some of the staff that said, hey, I want to give it a shot. You know, I'm on ADHD meds. I don't like them either. And it really blew me away how everyone had some type of positive response to this.

And I was like, why didn't somebody mention this before? You know, I'm in all this debt. my family's been traumatized just from, you know, all of this, sending him everywhere back and forth and your son who has a big heart and is in there, you know, emotionally in there. And it has no idea what to do, obviously. And the adults around them don't, I mean, just all of that pain.

You hit the nail on the head with that for sure, because that was part of it. He was so emotional and did have such a big heart and he was hurting underneath there, but he put up this front, this, this tough guy front and came across as, you know, this boy with a bad attitude and oppositional kind of thing, but he was, his body was trying to protect him, you know, cause he was hurting and he wasn't able to apply these things that he learned because there was a physical reason in his brain. And once we were able to measure his brainwave activity and identify a pattern that was off. Um, and that was the other thing I went in there, not believing in all the diagnosis and the letters, the ADHD, ODD, all of that. I just didn't. Well, how could you? Because if that,

if, if there were, if there, if those diagnoses were true and they had treatment for those diagnoses and then the treatment wasn't working, I mean, how could you really believe in the diagnosis itself? Right? Like, okay, then, you know, this can't be my kid because everything they're doing to treat that, that the experts are saying works was not working for my son. Right. The therapies, the different environments, the different techniques that didn't matter. And the interesting thing was this school had kids from single parent families like mine. There were kids that came there from intact families that looked ideal and perfect. You know, there were some kids that were adopted, some kids that were not kids from different countries, tribal, all of this mixture of kids. And guess what the common factor was? Their brainwave activity was dysregulated.

so when I put that sensor on I started measuring their brainwave patterns I could see similarities and the and the communication in the brain was off there was a physical reason they were all labeled and they were challenged you know and yeah so that blew my mind as well and and I was just like there's no reason that like this is wrong that we did not hear about this sooner So from there, I set off and started different offices and the company to actually put it in programs like that to help providers provide neurofeedback.

And we also will send equipment and coach you in the home. So thankfully, we had remote services before COVID hit because we're still able to help families in their homes before they have to send kids off like I did. so knowing this how long has neurofeedback been around and why isn't it more right that's such a good question because it was founded in the research labs back in the 60s it's not a new thing it but it it was in those research labs pretty expensive to get your hands on this equipment right um there was kind of a hit or miss process of figuring it out along the way but at this point there are so many studies. There are a lot of different styles of neurofeedback too, though.

There's not a real consistency because everybody's always wanting more and faster. And, you know, so there are some styles of neurofeedback where you're actually using a low level current or a magnetic stim to try to reset the brainwave communication. The form that I was introduced to was just mapping the brain. You put a snug cap on the brain and measure the brainwave activity.

so then you can identify the areas of the brain that are communicating well in the areas that are not and then based on that information you do a series of neurofeedback what we call sessions where the brain can be retrained and learn to produce healthier patterns so ours is totally non-invasive and it's technology-driven learning we're using the technology to measure the brain wave activity and reward the brain when it's producing a healthy pattern and it's fun because they're just kicked back, relaxed, watching something online that streams Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, listening to music. And when the brain produces a healthy pattern, the software detects that and we'll play it a little bit brighter and louder so they can hear it and see it better.

And when the brain is not producing a healthy, well-balanced pattern, it just goes dimmer and quieter. So you're just giving that brain that little bit of reward. You naturally want to see and hear things better that you're interested in. So your brain will learn to produce a healthy pattern. So that was sort of a side note on how it works. There's a bunch of different reasons why I don't think it's mainstream yet. You know, I do think because it started in the research labs, it was clunky. Finding the training might've been difficult early on, the hit and miss kind of aspect of it, but that's all changing. You know, we can train someone to be competent within a couple of days and really change lives with this technology, with our help.

Let's talk a little bit about how expensive is this? So if there's a parent listening, that's going, oh my gosh, I need this. You're describing my child and our situation. How would they get started?

What would they do? Yeah. So we are trying our best to reduce the pricing. I had brick and mortar offices, but with our remote services, we've really gotten it down to about a third of what most brick and mortar that you go into are going to be charging.

But in the industry across the board, usually the sessions average 100 to up to 250 or 300, depending on where you are per session. And it's not a quick fix or a magic pill. It takes time for the brain to relearn the patterns that were disrupted along the way. So you want to get in 30 to 40 sessions.

I really prefer 40 minimum. and and so you have to be ready to be committed to doing the actual sessions right and you know coming alongside of us and our coaching team to be there with you price wise though if you really want me to give a number right now our our mapping is only six hundred dollars to do a full qeg brain mapping and that can range across the country up to a couple thousand as well but we'll start with that. And then our unlimited six, I think it's five weeks now, five weeks of unlimited use for our system is just under 2000. So we're really, I mean, to me, I paid way more than that for one month. And I was just going to say, yeah, take, take care of, um, I mean, it, that is, it's,

it's extremely reasonable. I mean, if you, as you know, if you have your child in a residential program or you send them to some sort of a camp or have them, you know, even doing respite care, any of that it's, it's, you know, quadruple the price of that. So it is, it is, it is to me, it's a drop in the bucket. Cause I experienced all of that. That was 13 years ago. And I was, you know, it was ridiculous and we'll continue to develop technology and we have other modalities that can supplement and help balance the nervous system. If it's a more complex case where it's, you know, you're dealing with different diagnoses like autism, or you do have that ADHD or reactive attachment, all of those things that may have additional factors in it where the entire nervous system, your body and brain are dysregulated, then we can bring in some other technologies as well that are kind of fun to help retrain and reset some of the nervous system. So then these kids can actually respond to their environment better. You know, their bodies are doing what they're meant to do to protect them. Like you said, there's, there's still, you know, they've got that big heart under there and the human body just does what it has to do to survive.

And when your nervous system or your brain is just not communicating properly and the signaling is like fear and fight or flight mode, that's what your good body's going to do, you know? And it's hard to fight that. You can't just like, I, I was just one of these kind of tough black and white, you know, I don't know what disciplinary and kind of people. And I thought you could just change if you set your mind to it. Right. That's not the case when you had, and then I guess I had to go through what I had to go through to, to have that proven to me. That's not the case. You know, if my son could have changed, he would have done it in a second, but we needed this to help reset so that he can then make his own choices, you know? Right. So the program includes five weeks.

Are you going to see a difference in that five weeks or, you know, like, is it 40 sessions in that five weeks or is. Yes. Yeah. We can work with you. Most people can tolerate, like, we'll start with just 10 minutes and move up to 15 and then 20.

And then we have people that can actually train twice a day for even an hour and a sitting in their brain will still engage. And because my coaches are watching the sessions, you know, kind of in the background behind the scenes and checking in with you. we'll let you know, you know, if, Hey, if you're going a little bit too long, just back off a little bit, but we can see your brain's fatiguing a little bit, but as long as, you know, you're not getting too extremely tired, if you're well hydrated and, you know, had a snack around the time of the, of the session, you're fine because it is just allowing the brain to learn. It's kind of like cramming for an exam, you know? And so this can be done virtually. Yes. That is perfect.

We send the equipment to you at home. We coach you through how to get it set up and zoom in as needed. And then, yeah, the technology really is very user-friendly. It's meant to be used at home.

And as it's being used, even without being on a zoom or anything, the coach can see the activity? Right. Yep. We go in every so often and look at the different sessions.

As I said, it's not a quick fix or a magic pill. So you need a series of sessions to start to see what's happening in the brain. And then we're always tracking the outward symptoms. You know, what are you looking to improve in?

And we're always having you and somebody else, you know, depending if it's your child, a parent, and if they're old enough to self-report, we want to hear how they're feeling too. And we'll be watching that along with what's happening in the actual sessions and kind of coach you along the way. But yeah, even within that time period, it's the same as if somebody came into the office two to three times a week. It's just more frequent.

Like if you were learning to play a musical instrument, if you practiced every day, you'd get better at it a lot quicker than if you only did it twice a week. Right. And so you can do this every day. It's just you're going to work your brain up to kind of like building that muscle. Right.

Exactly. To tolerate it. So then with your son, how long did you see improvement and when was he able to come back home? And so he did, yeah, about 40 sessions at that program.

And then I realized he still needed to, you know, continue through the program to be prepared to come home. So, but he did come home later that year. And we still had our ups and downs. I want everybody to know he did not become the perfect person in 40 sessions, but the difference was that pause before reacting, he could now make his own decisions.

so when he did come home he was homeschooling and different things and he got in with the wrong crowd because he was still like 13 14 and had his teenage years and was mad about everything that we went through didn't always agree with my decisions to send him in different places so I had to kick him out of home at one point again but this time I knew his decisions were his own it wasn't just him reacting to his environment he was making his own choices and the great thing was he kind of came back around full circle and was like, I need to get away from this group. I need to get out of here. I want to move to Hawaii, you know, and I'm like, how can I help? And he did. And at age 19, he was very, he was independent. You know, he had finished up this homeschool diploma. He crammed like three years of math in one year and, um, got a job that he'd loved working, um, managing a crew,

had his girlfriend there, his dog, his apartment, you know, all that, all the things he was, he was success very successful at that age um so yeah i'm pretty proud of him he went from being one of those kids that i always say would have been locked up or accidentally have killed himself that's how extreme it was to one of the most disciplined people i know now he's um special forces in the army green beret wow he's just and he just got married and oh wow awesome like yeah on monday it was crazy i you know i've got goosebumps just i do too about it because it is so great and um and there's just this part of me that oh it's like if i had the energy i'd be you know heading to the state to legislature to you know government and being like what are we doing spending thousands and millions of dollars on programs and things when we're not let's let's look at the root of the problem and let's, let's get to the source because our mental health system,

yes, it is helping some people, but these severe kind of situations, we are not helping more and more programs are closing. We can't keep them staffed. You know, even the experts don't know what to do with the kiddos and the behaviors. And we're focusing on the physical behaviors.

And that is just not right. You've got it exactly. And I hope there's someone out there. If you don't have the physical energy and I don't, cause I'm doing my part of it, but If we come together and spread the word, there has to be a way to make some change, you know, and the change has to be made. It doesn't make sense what we're doing. Even as far as like you said, the mental health system, yes. And the, but our schools even, why don't we just have this in the schools, right?

That's the first part where you start to see the challenges and the teachers are noticing it. And then it goes straight to diagnosis and medication and managing medications for a lifetime and not knowing what's going to happen there. So that I think in our schools, just having a room, a neuro room where you go and you regulate your body and your brain so that you can accept the information better and apply it. And that would make the teacher's jobs a lot easier, too.

And then, as I said, in the families, our mission is to get this in the households where everything starts as well. So there's got to be people out there listening that know people that, you know, and if we network and come together, I think we can make some serious change with this. And we should. It's like the obligation to do it.

We know the technology works now. We know what this can do. There's no reason that it's being held that day other than a little bit of big pharma, you know, and bureaucracy. Yeah, absolutely. And so how, how soon can we start neurofeedback with kids?

We've had, well, the youngest I ever had was a nine month old baby with brain damage because the mom had done everything else she could imagine to do. And they basically wanted her to give up on this kiddo and she wouldn't. And I, I, what was she experiencing at nine months or how did she know? He had an injury where he had been, his head had, it's like not good to talk about, but he was deprived of oxygen in his brain for a short time period in an accident.

And that she took him to hyperbaric chambers. She did all kinds of physical therapy, anything she could think of. She learned about neurofeedback. And I was like, there are no studies on babies and neurofeedback.

And she's like, but please, you know? and I'm like, well, you're okay with it. I am. Cause I know it's technology driven learning.

It can do no harm. And so I was willing to, you know, we had him just on her lap and have him watching a screen a little bit, measuring his brainwave activity. When his brain produced a little more of a, the healthy one, he could see the screen a little bit brighter. We weren't even sure at first that he could see the screen, you know, but over time he started his central nervous system started to calm a little bit. He was able to get his feeding tube out. She sent me a picture months later, this was not a quick process. Months later, she sent me a picture of him like jamming on the floor to electric dance music. And, you know, so she, thank God there are moms on a mission out there, right? I know we go through a lot, but it was pretty miraculous. And there were so many other things that she was doing as well. But hey, so that was a very young list. And I don't normally recommend that, but about age five and up is more typical, five to 95 year olds.

we all have a brain you know um and it's not always just for someone that has a challenge or an issue we have peak performers businessmen um you know professional athletes that are using the technology now wow so when uh so when it is an adult or you know an older older person um coming to you what are they usually coming how are they hearing about it and why are they seeking support? Is it like stress? Is it anger? Is it, you know, we've had post-stroke we've had, yes, sleep issues, stress, I guess people usually consider they don't just come in thinking it's stress, but it's anxiety, right? Depression, sleep issues, trouble focusing, memory issues.

Yeah. Just the kind of across the board we've had because, because when I had, I had like a half a dozen offices at one point. So they would hear about it from whoever referred in that location or somebody that they know of tried neurofeedback for somebody that they knew and, and it would come, you know, would get somebody here and there that way. But like you said, it really wasn't mainstream. So more often than not, it ended up being those people that kept searching and searching and all of the other things failed them. So now they wanted to try neurofeedback. And it just, It's crazy to me because it should be the other way around.

Let's try the non-invasive one first, you know, that we know that can, you know, or at least take a look at what's happening in the brain. Daniel Amen talks about it's the only profession like counseling and psychology is the only profession that we don't measure something before diagnosing. The doctors do. They take x-rays.

They do, you know, heart EKGs and all of that. Why don't we take a look at what's going on in the brain before we slap a label? I agree. And same with medications met some. So often medications are trial and error. You try one medication, it doesn't work or it gives you massive headaches, but maybe your other symptoms were eased. And then they say, Oh, well, we'll try this other one. That's not going to provide, you know, that's not going to cause headaches, but then that one causes constipation or a host of other things. And, and then now we're on two or three or four other medications.

It's just baffling to me how we don't, we don't scan the brain or take a look at the brain before we, we do any kind of therapy and or inner medication. So, yeah, I totally agree. Does this help with concussions as well or trauma, traumatic brain injury? Absolutely.

Anytime we have a bump to the head, fall off a bike or a traumatic brain injury. And a lot of times we ignore the little ones like the fall off the bike or the slip on the ice or the, you know, little bit of a car collision that, you know, if we're not graded with a, you know, full concussion or knocked out, we ignore that. But the brainwaves get disrupted. Any type of activity like that, roller coasters can disrupt brainwave activity. So we do a lot of things and I have never seen a perfect brain yet. We all have some type of, you know, dysregulation in our brain and the ability to learn and improve that.

And so if you, so let's say you do the five weeks and you're seeing significant improvement. I mean, do you continue to do this? Do you hang on to that machine forever? Does it?

Yeah. So the science shows that after 20 sessions, there is permanent change in the white matter of the brain. And I like to say 40 because our stressful environment, you know, we really want lasting changes. So what happens is when your brain learns, anytime your brain learns. It's making changes. When you learn to ride that bike or learn to play a musical instrument, your brain does make physical changes in the communication and the synapses in there.

So that's just the normal learning process. They call it neuroplasticity. And we know that that sticks because if you learn to ride a bike and then you don't ride for 20 years, but you hop back on it, you still kind of remember how to do it. You might be a little wobbly, but it's in there. So the same process happens with this technology. So it's not something that you have to keep doing. Although some people love how they feel and they have more things that they want to continue to improve on. So they'll extend the time that they use it, or maybe they'll come back for a period for a booster if they want to work on something else. There's no reason. I mean, we're using so much technology in our world and we've got these phones and everything that we're doing. Why wouldn't we use it to better regulate? We need it now more than ever. Like before the pandemic, I was already seeing in the brain maps, higher levels of anxiety and people just a pattern. There's a specific pattern when the brain has too much fast wave on one side versus the other. And we were seeing more and more of that and then the pandemic hit and all of these other weird things are happening to us. And just almost everyone that we, that comes into us, even if they're coming in from memory or focus issues, we'll see patterns of that fight or flight, that hypervigilance, that anxiety type pattern. And why wouldn't we use the technology to kind of

calm that down and function better? It just doesn't make sense. So you're seeing results with anxiety and then people that have anxiety, once they go through this, they're, it's gone. Yeah. We see people coming off of medications, done with panic attacks. We've seen suicidal ideation go away. It's a lot of that stuff that's just being managed by medication.

there's an underlying pattern in the brain that's related to it. And the brain can learn to change that pattern. So even with like learning disabilities and things like things like dyslexia or things like that, because your brain learns, I recently learned that with dyslexia, a lot of that is that the parent has dyslexia, which is past. Dyslexia is passed down typically that it's the reason the child will have it is because their parent is role modeling the way to learn things, right?

And so then they'll pick up on that. So I would imagine that this would help with learning disorders as well. Yeah, yeah. And when you get into this and start naming off all these different things that it can help with, it seems weird.

Like, how's that possible that one modality can help so many different things? So I really like to focus on the fact that the whole goal of neurofeedback is to help better regulate the brain. It doesn't matter what's going wrong, what kind of symptoms, what we want to call it. But when the brain isn't well-regulated, there are symptoms that happen, right?

So anytime we can start to coach the brain towards those normal, more healthy, balanced patterns and communicating well, then it's better regulated and the whole system functions better and things will fall by the wayside that we're concerned, right? So we just want to help better regulate the brain. That's the goal of neurofeedback. So your company is called Symmetry Neural Pathway Training or SymmetryNeuralPT.com.

Yes. Tell us a little bit more how people can reach out and get in touch with you. Yeah, the website is the best. If you go to SymmetryNeuralPT.com, we have buttons on there.

Whether you're interested in the neurofeedback services for yourself or a family member, you can click on that and schedule with us. Or if you're interested in providing it or helping to put it in your school or one of the therapeutic programs, there's one to help to click on that and just schedule a call with us to talk about providing. And you've also partnered with? Oh, right. And I recently partnered with Sensorium and they also, they're doing a lot of the testing in the rest of the nervous system, different modalities and assessments to identify what areas in the body may be sending the wrong signaling up to the brain. And so we are pooling our resources together to really do that all encompassing body and brain assessment and modalities to help better regulate.

Love it. Super exciting. Yeah. And we're developing more technology too, to bring into the homes and the families. And that's really what I love. I think that the most out of all of this, because like you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, having to send your son somewhere is heart wrenching. And yet when you can't keep him or yourself safe, you feel like there's no other option. And you just have to kind of almost shut down as a parent relationally with your child, because it is so hard to have to do that. And you can, you can appear to be the frustrated, you know, drill sergeant, angry, whatever parent on the outside, but really you're breaking inside and you have no clue how to help your kid. And then having to send them somewhere. It just,

I've witnessed this with parents. I've had social workers say, oh, this, this, these parents are so harsh and they're strict and they're, you know, and okay. So we send the child somewhere else and those providers, oh, everything's roses for the first 30 to 60 days. Right. And then the honeymoon period's over, or sometimes it's not that long, but you know, and then they struggle and now, but we're still blaming the parent. We're still saying, well, because they were your child and they were in your home for however long you cause this damage in your, in your child. And oh, it just irks me to my core. Yeah. There's a big, I mean, all of it is important and related.

So imagine if you can go in with the families that are reaching out to you with the, you know, troubled teen or whatever, and map all of their brains and sit down and show them, Hey, this is why you respond this way. And this is why she responds that way. And look, you guys, you know, cut each other a break and try to, you know, if I would have known what was happening in my son's brain, I still would have needed help for him because we couldn't just let him do what happened in the household, but I could have handled him differently. Had I known that, that there was a physical reason he was responding that way. Right. And so the people around him too, that just shook their head and didn't know what to do. If we had that information back then, because I didn't even have the brain maps like way back then. But that we could, we could definitely change the approach and help families understand why they respond the way they do and interact as they do.

And I love that because you can also the parent themselves. I mean, I work with a lot of parents who have secondary PTSD because of the trauma that their child has endured themselves and brought into the family or, you know, it's, it's just, it's so hard. And so the parents, you know, I help parents to respond. I call it prepare for the worst, to prepare for those behaviors that, you know, are going to happen day in and day out there. You know, when you pick them up from school or you get home from work or right before bed or first thing in the morning, there are certain behaviors. So I help you prepare for those so that you respond instead of react. And that's really hard. And I can imagine if we had these, you know, this map of your brain and you could tell your anxiety level going up or your panic going up because you can predict this extreme behavior that your child's going to have, you know, being able to, as like the whole family,

getting some of this treatment and care so that everybody's ability to pause, which is one of the first things I teach in no problem parenting is to pause hand on your heart, hand on your stomach before you respond to your child, when your amygdala is hijacked, right? When you're feeling that it's like, okay, hold on. And that's so hard to do. It takes a lot of practice because the muscle memory of the brain, you know, is, has been taught to be triggered, uh, and reactionary. So, um, I just love this tool as a way for parents themselves, you know, and the child to be able to see how their, how their brain is functioning, uh, in those situations even, right. Absolutely.

and using the biofeedback tools to measure that, what you're talking about, you know, when they're that response period that they can start to actually better regulate that so that it gets a little bit easier. We're still always going to be, it's going to be a little bit difficult, but you really can change how you respond and react to your environment when the signaling from your body and nervous system and brain is more balanced. It just changes everything.

Right. And then we stop feeding the problem of, you know, that it's behavior and it's intentional and the defense and the resistance and, you know, all of that. We stop feeding, feeding that problem. We're actually getting to the root of what's going on.

And right. And it takes the stress off of the pressure off of the parents to to to perform and to have the control. Give yourself a little break here. You've been under some stress, too.

So, yeah. And it shifts that whole, all the labels and the shame and the blame as well, because, you know, we see people, adults, you know, that have struggled with something most of their life when they come in and see their brain mapping and we show them, Hey, you know, this area is highly dysregulated. No wonder you've struggled with that. It's like, you see tears, you know, you see this sense of hope. Okay. I know I'm not, I wasn't, I'm not crazy. You know, there was a reason why that always kept surfacing and, you know, giving them that hope that now that we've identified it, we know what it is and we can help your brain learn to change that. It's just, it's really rewarding and we all need to have access to it. I love it.

Let's start here. And then, like you said, you still had other things, your son, you and your son either had to work on together or he had to deal with on his own, right? Right. Kind of comes down to that. In my mind, it's always about just better regulating the brain when you start there, you know when you know that there's something dysregulated and you start to better regulate it life is easier and you don't have to go through as much intense struggles as you were you know so that's it i mean some of the first things that usually start to improve for people will be like their sleep cycle we don't realize how much that has an impact on us and how disrupted our sleep cycles are in our current you know society so that's one of the first things we kind of watch for improvements in, usually we'll start to see that, that they're actually resting a little bit better. And then gradually you'll see things like maybe their reaction time, like they might still get mad at something, but it'll, it'll pass by a little quicker, right? Or the intensity might start to be just slightly less intense when they do have that outburst. And then over time,

it's just gone or different altogether. I love it. I really appreciate all this info, Diane, thanks for connecting with me today and being on the show. And we're definitely going to send people to symmetryneuropt.com. Any parting words for us today? My parting word is just keep in mind that your family members not deliberately trying to torment you. There's a physical reason why they respond the way they do. And it is their body trying to protect itself, whether it appears to be right or wrong, or it fits into the current environment or not. Have a little bit of compassion and understanding and seek out something that can help better raise your income.

Oh, I love that. I love that. Thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you, Jackie, for having me.

All right, parents, that's it for today. Make sure you head over to the website, noproblemparents.com. Sign up to get our emails.

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