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What is stress, and what does it do to your body?
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Using biofeedback to lead a healthier life
Biofeedback: Success stories of stress management
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Jump to section
What is stress, and what does it do to your body?
What biofeedback procedures are available?
What can you learn from biofeedback?
Using biofeedback to lead a healthier life
Biofeedback: Success stories of stress management
Americans are more stressed than ever.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic took center stage in our lives in 2020, many people were already struggling with anxiety, chronic stress, and feelings of disconnect and loneliness.
But the American Psychological Association’s October 2022 Stress Survey found that 27% of adults say that stress impacted their day-to-day functioning so severely they struggled to function, and 34% reported their stress as completely overwhelming most days. Of the adults that reported stress, 76% reported negative impacts on their health.
When it comes to stress management methods, no method is foolproof. Everyone’s body reacts to and carries stress differently. But learning biofeedback for stress management is a helpful tool for improving your mental and bodily well-being.
Biofeedback therapy is a series of non-invasive tests and procedures that analyze the source of stress and anxiety.
It's still essential to understand the sources of our stress and the messages our bodies send us when feeling anxious. This way, we don’t continue to perpetuate negative feelings through avoidance and can instead address the root causes of these issues.
But body and mind awareness is the central pillar of biofeedback therapy, measuring physiological signals from our bodies to help us learn relaxation techniques we should use for regulating stress and anxiety.
Many of us talk with our friends and family about how stressed we are. Some people even humblebrag about all the stress in their lives: how little sleep they get, how much work they have, how many coffees they need to get through the day.
Despite all this talk, do we really know what stress is?
Stress is our body's natural reaction to potentially harmful events, triggered by situations that make us feel frustrated, scared, angry, or nervous. We all have different stress triggers. Everyone perceives stressful events differently, meaning what affects one person doesn’t necessarily affect another.
In these situations, our nervous systems send out a fight-or-flight stress response.
Our body may respond in the following ways:
Stress can also be a positive motivator — known as eustress — that helps us overcome deadlines, slam the car brakes to avoid an accident, or adjust to major transitions like promotions or cross-country moves.
In small doses, stress can motivate us, sharpen our focus, or let us know that something is wrong. But when stress accumulates, our body begins to channel that into physical and emotional stress that affects our mind, body, and behavior. Possible physical and emotional ailments may include:
Sustained stress increases in our heart rate and blood pressure and can have detrimental effects on our physical wellness and mental well-being. Possible health problems related to chronic stress may include:
Biofeedback is a non-invasive psychophysiology procedure that gives us a better understanding of how our bodies respond to stress. This allows patients to learn techniques to recognize their stress responses and focus their attention on stress management.
Many researchers have contributed to developing biofeedback techniques based on the understanding of our natural stress responses. With this in mind, they have developed procedures to measure our bodies' natural response mechanisms to treat patients of all backgrounds.
Biofeedback therapy is most often performed by licensed medical practitioners, such as doctors, registered nurses, physical therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists who have completed a board-certified biofeedback program. There are programs at accredited universities throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
During a biofeedback procedure, a specialized biofeedback therapist connects electrical sensors to the patient’s skin. These electrodes send information to a monitoring box and are analyzed to understand the way that the body involuntarily responds to stressors.
Which type of biofeedback you use will depend on your mental and physical health goals and conversations with your biofeedback therapist. Some biofeedback examples include:
Our nervous system constantly sends us signals related to our stress levels and emotional state. These signals are difficult to detect if we don't know what we’re looking for. Often, we don't realize that we’re stressed until the problem becomes too big to ignore, like chronic depression, anxiety, or physical pain.
Biofeedback treatments are designed to build awareness of your body’s reactions in real-time and, with practice, improve your ability to detect and regulate your emotions.
Depending on their mental or physical health goals, patients need anywhere from 10–20 sessions to see positive results. During each session, the biofeedback therapist guides patients through stress management exercises.
Sessions typically last an hour and teach a variety of relaxation techniques to practice at home. Eventually, patients will have the proper tools and knowledge to apply these techniques on their own.
Some new biofeedback techniques may include:
With practice, biofeedback constructs an awareness of your body and, with continued use, will make you more effective at self-regulating negative emotions and taking healthy steps toward bettering your mental and physical well-being.
Research has found a number of success stories associated with biofeedback treatments.
Patients in the Polish study represented a broad spectrum of conditions, and the study demonstrated that biofeedback and neurofeedback treatments were suitable for the following mental disorders:
All of the studies confirmed biofeedback is a valuable method for treating people with diagnosed mental disorders. Additionally, it’s an effective stress management tool for people experiencing both normal and elevated levels of stress.
The world is a stressful place. Our lives move quickly, and it's often difficult to understand the stress our minds and bodies are experiencing until the symptoms become overwhelming.
Biofeedback is a proven and safe method for stress management. Here are a few reasons to begin biofeedback training:
Stress is a natural part of life — none of us can escape it completely. But we all deserve to have the tools to better manage stress so when it does rear its head, we don’t suffer.
Biofeedback offers a safe and gentle approach to stress management that teaches you how to relieve anxiety. As an added bonus, you’ll walk away with a better understanding of your mind and body and better equipped to combat stress in the future.
Whether it's overcoming challenges or reaching your full potential, our coaches are here to help.
Whether it's overcoming challenges or reaching your full potential, our coaches are here to help.
Madeline is a writer, communicator, and storyteller who is passionate about using words to help drive positive change. She holds a bachelor's in English Creative Writing and Communication Studies and lives in Denver, Colorado. In her spare time, she's usually somewhere outside (preferably in the mountains) — and enjoys poetry and fiction.
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