Biofeedback therapy is a special technique of mind and body that includes the use of auditory or visual feedback to show people how to recognize the symptoms and signs of anxiety and stress, like increased body temperature, heart rate, and muscle tension.
By knowing about how to control the mental and physical effects of stress with the help of biofeedback, people can easily learn how they can calm and relax their minds and bodies to cope with the signs of stress in a better way.
The actual goal of this special process known as biofeedback is to make several important changes to the body that may give the desired result.
With the help of biofeedback, an individual can relax specific muscles or reduce the feelings of pain. Some functions that people can control with learning biofeedback therapy are:
- Blood pressure
- Blood flow
- Muscle tension
- Heart rate
- Pain perception, etc.
Types of biofeedback therapy
There are several types of biofeedback. A certain approach depends on what therapy you need or what is suggested by your therapist. Some of those are:
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Heart rate variability
With this type of biofeedback therapy, the patient needs to wear a special device that is connected to the specific sensors placed on fingers, ears or chest, or wrists or torso. This process is useful for problems like asthma and depression.
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Respiratory biofeedback
This includes wearing sensor bands around the abdomen and chest to know about the patterns and rates of breathing. With this, people can control the rates of their breathing and thus control several situations that are related to anxiety.
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Blood pressure biofeedback
This special type includes wearing a special device that gives information regarding the blood pressure of a patient. This can guide the patient through several relaxation techniques.
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Galvanic skin response
This process of biofeedback therapy is also referred to as skin conductance. This includes the measuring of the amount of sweat on the skin’s surface. This process is useful for recognizing the levels of emotional arousal.
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Neurofeedback
This type of biofeedback includes the utilization of electroencephalography to properly measure the activities of brain waves. Here the EEG device is connected to the scalp sensors. This is often used for the treatment procedures of depression, anxiety, addiction, pain hyperactivity disorder, etc.
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Thermal biofeedback
In this category of biofeedback therapy, patients need to wear sensors that can detect the flow of blood to the skin. This process can help the patients to detect if they are starting to feel depressed. A low reading shows that the person requires to know some techniques regarding stress management.
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Electromyography
This special device can detect changes in muscle tension by monitoring electrical activities.
The relation between biofeedback therapy and anxiety treatment
In many cases, biofeedback therapy helps the patients to control their anxiety and stress by realizing when they need to undergo a relaxation technique like meditation, deep breathing to calm their physiological stresses.
Several medical experts have suggested that neurofeedback therapy, along with several other types of biofeedback therapies, can be effective in reducing the signs and symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Several studies have shown that when the brain’s left frontal part is more active than the right part, a person’s mood becomes positive. However, the mood becomes poor when the right part becomes more active than the left one.
Neurofeedback uses this theory to find out the methods of treating anxiety by trying to make the left part more active than the right one. Hence, biofeedback therapy can be a good method in treating anxiety and helping the patients.
