Exploring the Complexity of ADHD: Dyslexia, Trauma and the Promise of Neurofeedback with Dr. Connie McReynolds

Therapy Thursday!!

What if everything you thought you knew about ADHD was just the tip of the iceberg? Join us as we explore this question with Dr. Connie McReynolds, a seasoned expert in rehabilitation psychology. The deep dive into the complex world of ADHD diagnosis and treatment starts with a riveting discussion on dyslexia and its fascinating link to ADHD. We then touch upon the critical connection between auditory and visual processing problems and various learning disabilities, laying the groundwork for an enlightening discussion on neurofeedback.

We further tackle the increasing trend of ADHD diagnosis in children, and the role trauma triggers may play in their behavior. We share our experiences working with veterans and children who have undergone trauma, emphasizing the importance of addressing underlying issues rather than hastily labeling them as ADHD. The discussion then takes a turn towards the challenges parents face when deciding between medication and alternate methods like neurofeedback for their child's ADHD treatment.

As we wrap up this eye-opening conversation with Dr. McReynolds, we delve into her pioneering work in neurofeedback and the impressive long-term cognitive improvements it can bring about. We highlight the significance of understanding and addressing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), trauma, and their connection to ADHD. Ultimately, we advocate for a personalized and comprehensive approach to healing and strengthening the brain. Tune in for an engaging and insightful discussion that aims to change the narrative surrounding ADHD and promote a more understanding and compassionate approach to this complex condition.

 Dr. Connie is a Licensed Psychologist & Certified Rehabilitation Counselor with more than 30 years of experience in the field of rehabilitation counseling and psychology. She is the founder of neurofeedback clinics in southern California working with children and adults to reduce or eliminate conditions of ADHD, anxiety, anger, depression, chronic pain, learning problems, and trauma.

She earned her Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison gaining valuable experiences in the Outpatient Substance Abuse Treatment Program at the Middleton VA Hospital, at the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Neuropsychological Clinic at Meriter Hospital, and the Mendota Mental Health Institute.

Dr. Connie’s whole-hearted mission is to bring hope and resolution to those who are struggling with the symptoms of ADHD, their parents, and teachers. 

Book
Solving the ADHD Riddle: The Real Cause and Lasting Solutions to Your Child’s Struggle to Learn, by Connie McReynolds Ph.D.

Available on Amazon.com for $19.99 and on Kindle for $9.99

Consultation, Assessment and Intervention Program

For ADHD, anxiety, anger, panic disorder, conduct disorder, depression, chronic pain, cognitive decline, trauma and PTSD

In clinic or by remote telehealth services (available in most locations, but some restrictions may apply) 

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Transcript

Candace Fleming: 0:05

Hello and welcome back to Essential Mental Healing, where I am your host, candace Fleming. Joining me today is my lovely mother, janet Hale, my co-host. My heart, heartbeat, heartbeat, hello, hello, hello everyone. We also have a very special guest joining us today, ms Connie McReynolds, who is an awesome woman. She is going to talk to us about solving the riddles of ADHD. I am going to let her tell you a little bit about herself and then I may give a little more about her. We're just going to let it roll, because this is a very interesting topic and this is our season three technically opener, since we had to give our last episode of last season. So hello, dr McRinalds, or should we call you Connie, dr, connie, dr McRinalds, what do we call you today?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 1:07

Whatever you're comfortable with works fine for me.

Candace Fleming: 1:10

Right, Tell us a little bit about yourself who you are, what you do and what you're going to be bringing to us today.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 1:17

Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me to your show today. It's a thrill to be here and I always love talking about this, so it's kind of like willing ears and an open heart is what we were really all about with kind of sharing this information. So I do have a few years under my belt with the work I've done and I've actually been in the field for over 30 years. I started out as a certified rehabilitation counselor several decades ago and then obtained my doctorate from UW Madison about 20, some 30 years ago in rehabilitation psychology, and I've been actually at the university until this past summer when I retired. For 25 years I taught in the university and part of my second career within the university.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 2:14

I was at one university for 10 years and then was recruited to the second university in Southern California, which suited my temperature needs quite well and sunshine needs.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 2:26

So I was here for 15 years in that capacity and during that time I actually was brought in to start building what became an institute, a research institute, an assessment center and a neurofeedback clinic, and it was the work that I was doing within the neurofeedback clinic that really started piquing my interest and I set up some pilot studies 15 years ago to really kind of understand what this whole process was about, and from that has evolved literally the last 15 years, just kind of unfolding and uncovering itself, and that's really what led to writing the book, the work that I've done, and just to want to get this out to people so that parents and teachers and children who are kind of struggling with all of these things, oftentimes called ADHD but sometimes called a lot of other things. It really led to that and so my book Solving the ADHD Rill I went to number one in eight categories on Amazon and won a bronze award for in parenting and relationships, and so I'm thrilled to be here. So thank you again for having me here.

Candace Fleming: 3:41

Absolutely. That is an awesome biography. You have done so much. A quick question when you, during your work, was ADHD something that you struggled with as well?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 3:55

I never did so. A part of what happened, though, is in the book. I write about it.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 4:01

My mother taught second grade for 32 years in the same classroom, so I kind of joke that I grew up in second grade, and part of that was really kind of watching her, obviously, over the years, and I just remembered one little boy who couldn't read, and no one could understand why he couldn't read, and so my mother was particularly worried about him, and over the summer, at her own expense, she drove him 45 miles each way to the nearest university, to a teaching center, kind of a teaching lab, and so she would take I would go I was in tow, of course and so we would go up there, and they did some assessments on him and determined at that time something that wasn't very well known was called dyslexia.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 4:52

So he was really struggling to be able to learn how to read, and thankfully they had some strategies that they were willing to employ and kind of help my mother learn some strategies so that this little boy could learn how to read, and I think that kind of stuck because I taught for 25 years. My aunt was a dean of a college of education for a number of years. I had an uncle who was a professor at a university and just curiosity really started getting behind me when we started doing a pilot project with these children and figuring out the traditional things that parents were being directed to. I guess it worked for some people, but for the ones coming to my clinics it wasn't working, and that was the real struggle is to try and figure out what was going on. I was so curious. So that's really where it all started.

Candace Fleming: 5:46

Wow, so do you find a link between dyslexia and ADHD at all?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 5:54

Well, I'll tell you what I have found a link between Okay, I found a link between what I call auditory and visual processing problems and dyslexia and ADHD and all kinds of learning problems and cognitive delays and learning disabilities. The list kind of goes on and on and on. And so really, what started happening is I had people coming in with all kinds of diagnostic criteria labels, sometimes down the arm. If you were going to print them down the arm, they were so long and nothing seemed to really be making a lasting difference. And so it was really through the use of this particular assessment that's coupled with the neurofeedback system that we use. I started Kind of figuring it took about.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 6:50

I'll be honest, it took about five years for me to really believe that there was something to this, because I kept thinking, oh, you know, we're gonna uncover that. You know it's actually this or this or something else. But after five years of this, I thought you know, there's something else going on here that people aren't talking about. And so what I really started doing was a lot of research. I started digging into the literature because I thought someone has to have written about this somewhere. This can't be some new discovery kind of thing. There has to be someone else.

Candace Fleming: 7:26

That's written about auditory and visual processing problems, but they hadn't so you, you, you do the neural feedback for now, is neural feedback a solution to ADHD or temporary what? What is neural feedback? Tell us a little bit about neural feedback and how it Ties into the solution or solving the riddle of the ADHD.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 7:54

Right.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 7:55

So I always like to begin with a reference back to biofeedback. Okay, because most people have some reference point to that, where they know that you could put a sensor on your finger and you can measure your pulse, you can get some respiration, so you're getting biological feedback about how your body works, and so that has been used to help people Learn how to kind of calm themselves down. So they started learning that if they did breathing exercises in a certain way, they could reduce their heart rate. Maybe they could reduce their respiration rate, maybe they could feel better, maybe they could go to sleep better at night. So there were several things that people were learning through the biofeedback approach. So neural feedback is kind of its cousin, if you will. So Neurofeedback is doing the same type of thing, which is gathering Biological data, the same as a sensor. So we use sensors, but the data that we're collecting is actually brainwave data by using a sensor that goes on the scalp, and so, again, most people have had like an EKG at a doctor's office or have heard of them, where you use a sensor. So there's nothing that goes back to you from the machine that's reading your EKG or your heart rate or whatever it is, there's nothing going back to you, and that's the same with this particular neural feedback system I'll wax for momentarily. There are some systems out there that kind of try to call themselves neural feedback, but if they're applying some kind of a signal or electrical impulse or something to the brain, the industry standard is really that that is something different from neural feedback. That true Neurofeedback is just this feedback loop when we're reading the data from the body in this case the brain, the mind, the, the brain waves that goes into a computer and Then you can see in a nearly instantaneous manner. You may have these little bar graphs going up and down that are measuring beta or theta brain waves. They can kind of see how your brain is operating.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 10:10

You may be hooked into our training programs which look like low-impact video games, and if we're, for example, working on a child who can't pay attention, then they have to pay attention and they can see how their brain is working and it gives them immediate feedback because we're either going to win that game or they're not, and so they want to win the game. If you want to win the game, you have to pay attention so that they learn how to pay attention and the brain then gets trained, if you will. So it's kind of a gem for the brain because repetition of that two or three times a week we tend to do 30 minute segments then over the course of 20 sessions. We'll come back after those 20 sessions and we're going to rerun those assessments that we've run at the front end and we're going to measure progress. So how has the brain strengthened in these areas?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 11:08

And we're also listening for is this transferring out into the child or the adults life? And so I work with children, I work with adults who have all kinds of conditions, and it's great to have data, you know, in our clinics. But where it really matters is does this impact the child or the adults life differently in their day to day life and does it hold, which it does tend to? So longitudinal studies of children and even senior citizens Show that this holds, and the reason is that because once we learn something, once the brain learns something, it tends to hold on to it. It gets what we kind of call wired in.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 11:52

I Also like to joke. It's also where our bad habits are hard to break, because We've hard wired in those bad habits and so we have to create something different to get rid of the bad habit. And so what this does with children and adults is, through this repetitive brain training process, we're literally Strengthening these neuronal pathways and we're able to measure that, and then the good news is, when we hit those goals and they're doing better and they don't need to typically come back.

Candace Fleming: 12:29

So have you had people? Okay, I'm one more question. So when I hear you say it strengthens the brain, so when I hear that, I think about a gym. So we go to the gym and we get stronger, but if we stop going to the gym we stop being strong. So if they go away, if they come for 20 sessions or 40 sessions or however many it take, about how many sessions?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 12:55

Typically it's 40 sessions for most people.

Candace Fleming: 13:00

So 40 sessions and then they're able to go away. Do they come back after like five years and retest to see what how strong their brain still are? Or do you notice that they're losing a little bit of their strength because they haven't been doing the neural feedback? Or is it like after those 40 sessions it's Almost carved like glass or metal or something, so it's something that can't be undone. What? What has been your experience there?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 13:26

Well, the good news about neurofeedback unlike us going to the physical gym for our muscles, our brain muscle tends to hang on to things. That's why we can remember how to do something like riding a bike from childhood and not ride it for 20 years, and we can still get back on the bike and ride bike. So you know, that's really how the brain is designed to work. Thankfully, because otherwise we'd have to be relearning how to pick up a pen every day. We turned around, you know, we would be able to remember how to drive the car from last week to this week. So, thankfully, our brain is wired differently than our body muscles. I'm really waiting for someone to figure out how to do this with our body muscles, because I'm really interested in this that would be nice.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 14:09

I'd like someone to figure that out. But this works and longitudinal studies have been done on senior citizens. There's a great study that came out of the University of Florida that talked about. They had a whole study of like 2600 people in that study and they did neurofeedback and then they came back several years later and it had held for the treatment group. So the treatment group actually had stronger cognitive abilities a number of years later than the non-treatment group and so it was great because they hadn't really done a whole lot follow-up.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 14:46

And I personally in the clinics have had people come back to me and say you know, you really helped me with my anxiety and all of that tension and trauma and everything I had.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 14:57

And I just want to tell you I've had them come back five, six, seven years later and say I just want you to know that my brain just keeps getting better.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 15:05

And I was like this is so good to know. And I had one client I think I put this one in the book where the mother would continue to bring her son back and so every few months she would come back in, like in six months, and we would measure him again and sure enough, his brain was continuing to get stronger and stronger, and so it's been my experience that most people now if you have some kind of an accident or you know there can be a lot of life changes, undue stress and duress and things like that can throw us all off balance a little bit. I had one client who came back after a car accident and so we re-ran those assessments and actually we had to tackle a different part of brain processing for him. So what we had tackled before was okay still, but he did have some other aspects from the trauma of that accident that needed to be we kind of call it tuned up, kind of call it tuning up the brain a little bit.

Janet Hale: 16:09

I wanted to say something. I've listened to you intently when you were talking about your mother being a teacher and noticing a particular student having some difficulty and her taking the time out to try to figure out what was the what was wrong. Why wasn't this child able to keep up with whatever the situation was? And I just think it's really good when we have people like you and others who are willing to step outside the box and say let's look at this, we people are trying all this other stuff, but there has to be another way. Let's figure out how to do that. And it brought to mind for me the Whoopi Goldberg is the Lexin, and so a lot of people don't know that, but she is, and so we know her as Whoopi Goldberg. However, if you, you know, she talks about it and she's very open about it, and when we start taking the stigma away from different things, then people are more open to talk about it.

Janet Hale: 17:14

I had a situation where I had a family I was dealing with and the young lady kept skipping school, and so the mother would bring her into my office and I guess I was supposed to scold her, but anyway I was like so you didn't go to school today? No, and then I would just kind of go on, because the thing is not to shame this child. So I'm sitting here and so what I'm noticing, the child is paying more attention to me and how I'm handling the situation. Right, because she's you know, I'm about to just have, you know, have a little talk with her, fuss at her, all this stuff. So she kept going to the office, and so one day we were talking and she had skipped school again.

Janet Hale: 17:55

She was in high school and all of a sudden a sound of wailings. This young lady was crying and wailing, and so I knew to stay. Still, you know, you don't ban it. You got it Right. And so I asked her. I said what's going on? She said I can't read. I can't read. So she had been struggling with this issue all of this time. She wasn't going to school because she didn't want to be embarrassed, exactly, you see. And so when people like you, folks who are looking for different ways to assist people or to take the shame out of what it is about a person that is different, where we need assistance, come forth and come up with different ideas to help and that's not a cookie cutter idea it sounds to me like your mother was a fantastic teacher.

Janet Hale: 18:54

And I say that because you know so many folks can get into this cookie cutter. Everybody's the same. We treat everybody the same and stay stuck in that. She saw someone was different, but that was okay. It sounds like she was ready to tackle whatever that was the same is what you're talking about in the work that you do, so thank you for that.

Candace Fleming: 19:17

Thank you I do have a question. So children are probably more increasingly being diagnosed with ADHD these days. Do you find that it's actually ADHD or is it a lack of patience with the adults and the children?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 19:44

Well, I'm not sure we can go either, or I think I say yes. I think I say yes Because so much of this just I have discovered cuts across so much, and I think the challenge that I really want to work on you know, changing the narrative about is what is ADHD and how do we deal with it? And so if we can change the narrative around this which really I so want to do, and programs like this, I think, are going to be a big contribution to that, because we have to introduce that there's a different way of thinking about things and a different way of resolving things. So, for example, I can have 10 children walk in diagnosed with ADHD. I can guarantee you, all 10 of them are completely different and when I run the assessment, their assessments are going to be completely different. I kind of think of these assessments almost as a brain print, like a thumb print, because they're unique, because every person has a different way that their brain is working with auditory and visual information, and we just aren't savvy enough or sensitive enough to what this is.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 21:07

Some educational systems or theories have touched on it. So we've heard of, oh, I'm an auditory learner, or oh, I'm a visual learner, or oh, I'm a kinesthetic learner, I have to be hands on with things, and so I think that roughly gets us in the ballpark with this. Because when we run this assessment and we're looking at these areas, these 37 areas of auditory and visual processing, guess what pops up? Well, there are some areas of auditory that are strong, but what is missed in a lot of these other assessments is that there can be parts of auditory that aren't working, and the same with visual, and so you may have some aspects of visual that are working, but maybe not others. So, for example, what I really like to talk about is processing speed, which is what we can look at in this assessment.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 22:03

So let's say that little Sarah is in the classroom, and every time the teacher goes to the whiteboard, the teacher notices that Sarah breaks down and starts crying and has a temper tantrum it looks like a temper tantrum, at least Because she's disrupting the classroom. The teacher has to stop teaching and try and tune in to what's going on with this little girl who's having a temper tantrum, and so this becomes quote labeled a disruption in the classroom. And so here we go, and this actually happened. So I actually had this program.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 22:46

I had neural feedback set up in an elementary school when we were doing a pilot project which is one of the chapters in the book and the co-author was the school psychologist who helped run this and so we actually did an assessment on this little girl who was having these meltdowns all the time, and it turned out she didn't have any visual processing. So every time the teacher went to the whiteboard to write, she couldn't figure out what she was supposed to do and she became very frustrated, she got scared, she got worried and she was embarrassed, and so the only way she had to really communicate all of that was to start crying, because she couldn't put that into words, she couldn't describe that, she just knew that she looked around and saw her peers being able to do something that she couldn't do.

Janet Hale: 23:38

I have a question. When looking at the different behaviors and I agree with you, we're all different and I like what you said about the thumbprint, I'm thinking the fingerprint that they're all unique. I don't think any of them are the same, but do you find that in your studies that some of the behaviors are and I know Ken's just sick of me talking about this word trauma triggers?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 24:07

Absolutely, absolutely. So trauma is one of the other really big things that we tackle and that I've tackled in my clinics. And interestingly, and of course I didn't know in the beginning, 15 years ago, kind of, where I was headed with all of this, but I set up the pilot projects for two groups simultaneously. So we were looking at children with ADHD and we were looking at veterans with PTSD and I thought, okay, let's just. We didn't know for sure if we had something here or not. I was at the university. The good news was we just put the call out to the community and say, hey, we've got this institute, we have this program, we're opening it up, it's free if you wanna come in and let us work with you and we're just gonna see, kind of where this goes. So trauma was one of the really big things and as time rolled on, the veterans and groups got word of this. I would do presentations and there was a veteran who approached me at one of my presentations, boldly, walked right up to me and he said I know all about neurofeedback, what can I do to help you? And I was like, well, hello, he was well connected with the county VA and he secured funding for me to be able to work with 30 veterans even paid for their gas to be able to get to the university and from that I actually published our results on that in an international journal, because we were able to show that the general wellbeing of these veterans improved once we uncovered these auditory and visual processing problems and tackled the trauma. So when we did all of that together we actually I know for a fact we saved a marriage because the veteran told me we did so. There was a lot that can be done and we did and we learned about this.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 26:06

And so trauma triggers are huge for children.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 26:09

We work with a lot of children who come through foster care, but children can have trauma for a whole lot of reasons.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 26:16

Maybe they've lost a parent, they can have all kinds of things going on that have created trauma, and it just shows up in unique ways for each child.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 26:27

And the important thing is really to kind of look at the behaviors. And that's what I learned the most about coming from counseling and psychology and I kind of have an intuition a little bit about this. When I meet someone I can kind of get a feel for it and then I can say and ask just really brief little simple questions of children and sometimes of adults, because I don't have to dig a lot to get to this and it starts rolling out and so I start getting the backstory of what's gone on and then once we can get the really what I call kind of a sketch of what that looks like, then we can target this as long as well as dealing with those auditory and visual processing problems. And so really, what I've noticed in about eight out of nine of 10 people that come into my clinics, regardless of what the label is that brings them in the door, they have auditory and visual processing problems that are buried underneath all of this other stuff that's going on.

Candace Fleming: 27:32

So so do you think this is? I'm leaving so many?

Janet Hale: 27:35

questions. I'm so excited. Thank you so much. Deal with the ACEs? Do you deal with the ACEs?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 27:46

Well, yes, I know exactly what that is, and so that is just huge. I don't necessarily have to do a lot of assessment with people, because sometimes they've been kind of overly assessed by the time they get to me, and so really the goal is okay, what's happening in today's world? What is going on? Where are the barriers, what I call the kind of the speed bumps, where are the speed bumps in your life that are slowing you down or affecting you and being able to be the person you wanna be or do the things you wanna do in life? And so you know these stories start pouring out. That's like okay.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 28:25

If someone tells me that as a child they were locked in a closet for three years, I don't need to really do the ACEs assessment on that. It's like okay, I know exactly where we are here. This is severe trauma and this is so buried inside the brain that this person has no idea what these triggers are or even what's happening sometimes when they do get triggered. And that's how tricky trauma can be for people who've come out of childhood, these adverse childhood events.

Janet Hale: 28:55

Yeah, that's how I wanted to explain what ACEs were.

Candace Fleming: 28:59

So one of my questions possibly I have a couple. So do you find that when? Well, okay, wait, does the neurofeedback that you do focus with the children only on the ADHD, or does the neurofeedback just assess things that's happening with the brain and allow the results to work with ADHD as well as trauma, so that they technically are getting even more healing or more work in not just the ADHD but a lot of other things that are underlining? Did that make that question clear? So we tacked you. You're fine, you're absolutely fine.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 29:41

So I think of it as almost so. You think about ruts in a road. You have two ruts in the road, and so I tackle both of those simultaneously with this. So I will always run this assessment because, as I said, 80, 90% of the people walking in the door have this underlying auditory and visual processing problem that they may or may not have any awareness of, but when they walk in the door, they're walking in because X, y and Z isn't happening, or A, b and C has happened. And so when we get the story of really what's the backstory, what really has happened and we don't have to.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 30:27

I'm a psychotherapist so I can go into a lot of detail with people, but I can also listen pretty effectively and ask targeted questions that don't feel invasive, but just kind of draw out a little bit of that story so I can get the feel for, okay, what kind of trauma has happened here? Is it military trauma? So one of the questions is how many deployments? Oh, I've had four deployments in Iraq. Okay, that tells me right away. I don't have to ask a whole lot more with that. And so, or, you know Vietnam veterans. So I really started working with Vietnam veterans and we know the history with that. So you know those folks who are 60s and 70s when they started working with some of them in this, and now we have all the younger generations of military that have been coming back from these wars. It's really just understanding and getting a feel for what that person is dealing with. And then we add on the diagnostic materials of the auditory and the visual and we also look at some memory and conceptualization and sequencing to kind of round it all out, because it can cut across so many aspects and so someone can do well in some area but fall apart in the other, and oftentimes with these profiles they look like kind of a sawtooth edge with these graphs. So some are up, some are down, some are up, some are in the middle and whatever.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 31:49

And what I'll tell parents for some of this is that for those severe or extreme variations in there, what I found to help people understand and parents to understand is that, well, think of a piece of Swiss cheese. So you have cheese and you have gaps, and so over here, this piece of the cheese is working okay. Right next to it, though, where you would think it might work Okay, well, it isn't, because there's a big gap here. There's not a hole in the brain, but there's a gap in the ability to process the information. And so we have to work with the gap, because that gap is causing this Disruption in the learning process, in the response process and the comprehension process and the memory process.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 32:42

And when we find those gaps, then we literally use the training protocols to strengthen. And I say it's not unlike when you go to the gym, you probably would have a trainer or someone at least at the front end do some kind of an assessment. It's going to kind of figure out which, which machines you need to go to and set up a plan, and so this is similar to that. We figure out the parts that need to be strengthened and Then, with the anxiety or the trauma or the OCD, the panic disorder, whatever it is, that is the part, that's another part of what we do within that training plan, so we can tackle it all together.

Janet Hale: 33:19

It sounds like you do work with people from a holistic Point of view. I really do. Yeah, it's. I can hear it sounds like it. To me it's not just a one thing, it's a, it's a Multitudes of things that needs to be addressed in order to help this person heal and Candice's.

Candace Fleming: 33:40

Because with that statement I wanted to say so. When people come to you, I'm assuming they may have tried meds already or they're currently on meds or trying to figure out whether they should do meds or not Does the neural feedback get people? When we're talking about children and ADHD, does it get them off of the meds? If not, do you or is meds? Do they go along with neural see feedback? What is your take on the ADHD medication versus the neural feedback and the effects after neural feedback?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 34:18

Well, again, kind of all of the above, so it can be almost any combination of what you were discussing. So some parents will call me up and we've been on five different medications, we've gone down this road, the side effects, or he won't take it, or she's refusing to take it. Or Other parents will call and say you know, the schools told us they cannot do this, but I don't know how many times I've heard it. The school will say you got to put your child on medication. Well, they can't do that. They can't say that, but they do. And so then parents are caught between a rock and a heart Place. I've actually had schools tell parents, as reported by the parent, that if they don't put their child on medication they're gonna kick the kid out of school. It's like mmm oh Boy.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 35:03

So you know we're looking for solutions and the key here is to try to find that I am not a psychiatrist, I'm not a medical doctor, so I will always say at the front end I don't do medications. But here's what we can do. We do the neural feedback, which is really cognitive brain training, whatever I call it. But the key here is you may be watching for some breakthrough Side effects. So maybe the medication, maybe your child will say, gosh, I feel like I'm on speed and we have that happen.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 35:38

So I coach parents on really what to look for if they are on medications and I will always say before you make any changes, you need to consult with your physician. Whoever the prescriber is on this. You need to go back in. If you feel like your child is being overly Medicated now, then go back to that source and have the conversation and let them know that you've been doing an alternative process here and that you don't think this child needs as much medication. And and Typically these treaters will listen they will listen when a parent says it's too much. You may get a stubborn one here or there, but you know that's also information the parent needs To deal with.

Janet Hale: 36:22

Yeah, when we talk about medication and children in schools, teachers telling them the children need to be on medications. Sometimes children are just children and they are not meant to sit for eight hours in a chair. They are meant to be active and to do things and to say things and to prank us.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 36:44

I mean, you know, my grandbaby pranked us.

Janet Hale: 36:46

Yes, you know, and so does that call for medication. I have done, I've taught a little bit, and so I remember a child that I was doing a substitute teaching and that baby in the corner and I'm like okay. But then I watch, when she came in and there's this conversation I think she was with the grandmother there's this conversation going on. They're talking horribly about a person I'm assuming was her mother. Then when it's time to sit down, she's sitting in the corner away from the car beers. So I'm watching it, I'm just observing. I'm like, okay, they don't know, I'm gonna be here two weeks. So that was my bonus. Yeah, so to.

Janet Hale: 37:30

First day was the out-of-the-world observation. The second day Was to sit the child and with the rest of the children, and this is what I learned this child was getting the work done in 15 minutes that it took the rest of the class 45 minutes to do. Okay, so I was a busy lady, I had to find things for her to do, and so sometimes I think that we want to medicate folks to keep them quiet. Yeah, so do out of the way so that we do this other thing opposed to Taking the time out Find out what the child really needs.

Candace Fleming: 38:12

So A lot of times with hype I have. My daughter is very hyper, but so was I. But one thing that I noticed, when it comes to Her and the attention span and everything, is that giving her detailed instructions on what's going to happen, like the whole process, allows her to get through things a lot easier because she knows a step by step. So we're gonna do this, and then when we go home, we're gonna do this. You're gonna have to take a shower, then you're gonna have to eat and then we're gonna do this. You got it. Sometimes she'll repeat it back to me, but it makes the process of getting things done a lot easier than getting home. And then now I'm like, oh, go get in the shower. And it's like whoa, I wasn't ready, I was it, I didn't know that's what was happening. So I think Giving children detailed information or a process of what was process, recording of things that's happening, sometimes helps as well. But I have a question, because I have lots of questions Do you think that anxiety is misdiagnosed with ADHD?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 39:18

Yes, in the simple word yes. But I also want to qualify that a little bit, because when we do so, a child comes in, they're looking anxious, they're reported as anxious, you know, they're describing, they're using their language to kind of talk about what their life is like and see you listen. For that too and I'm always in the back of my mind, curious at that point about it, are their auditory and visual processing problems. And so if we just kind of drop the whole ADHD label, let's just kind of walk away from that for a while here. And so let's say this child's coming in, the parents are reporting anxious, no, I can't concentrate, not sleeping, well, whatever it might be. And so we're going to run that assessment and we 20 minutes, 30 minutes later we're back in the room with the parents and I've uncovered that there are all these auditory and visual processing challenges, and so what this will show is that it can cause irritability.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 40:20

Some of these processing problems can cause someone to have gaps in understanding what's happening.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 40:27

So when we take a look at that profile for that particular child or adult, then we can start peeling this back and saying, well, is the anxiety really the anxiety because of anxiety or is it as a an artifact of the fact that I can't pay attention or I'm not able to remember things, or you know, this particular auditory processing makes it really irritable for me to try and listen to people, because my brain can't keep up with something and so processing speed can affect this, stamina can affect this, and so the question to me becomes then, as I pose it to the parents, like well, let's tackle this, we're going to tackle the anxiety, we're also going to tackle the auditory and the visual processing and let's see where we are After 20 sessions here.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 41:18

And so we'll do those 20 sessions and if the child's old enough there I can run the general well-being scale on them. We will do that just kind of measure. You know how they're doing, but I can tell you that after the neuro feedback, particularly if there have been pretty significant findings on auditory and visual, when we get that working, this child relaxes and the people around this child relax because suddenly this child can remember what's being said or shown and they're feeling much more confident. Because one of the other artifacts you can say of neuro feedback is that by Learning how to run this computer with your brain, it suddenly becomes a very self-empowering process because suddenly, when a child who hasn't been able to succeed very well in school starts winning games, because they're using their brain to do it and that inherently has its own reward structure to it and they want to keep doing it because it feels good. It feels good to win your games, it feels good for your brain to start working in a way that it hasn't before, that you couldn't even describe to people.

Janet Hale: 42:26

I have a question. Have you been in situations where a child is brought in to you because of whatever behavior they're having and as you get to know the family, you recognize that maybe it's not the child that needs to be sitting here, but maybe the parents. I'm just asking the question.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 42:47

It does happen, and it's not an infrequent response in parents who, when I bring in the results for the child and I'm going over those, they're looking at me going. I think you're describing me too. It's like, yeah, it can be. Someone asked me the other day well, is this biology or is it an environment? I say yes because there's really no way to pull that apart. Yet At least, I haven't gotten a way to pull it apart. We just tackle this where we are. This is where the person is. They walked in the door. This is where they are today. This is what we have. Let's figure this out.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 43:30

If it was a child born prematurely, it was in the NIC unit for nine weeks. That's a factor, but we can't fix that. We can't go back and undo any of that. We can't undo the things that have already happened. We can only move forward. The process of this is let's figure out where you are today and let's see what we can do about this and see if we can improve this so that your tomorrow is a little bit different than your today is.

Candace Fleming: 43:54

That's a perfect statement to pause and end on, because we are at time. I don't know how we got here. I feel like we've only been talking for five minutes. I want to ask so many more questions. I want to hear so much more. Unfortunately, we are unable to. I do want you to let people know where to find you, what the cost is if you take insurance, what that part looks like and how people can start getting signed up with you.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 44:27

People can find me on my website. It's pretty straightforward. It's just my name. It's wwwconny, which is C-O-N-N-I-E. My last name, mac Reynolds, which is M-C-R-E-Y-N-O-L-D-Scom, so connymcrenaldscom. The book is on there on the homepage. You can click and go straight through to Amazon.

Candace Fleming: 44:49

What's the?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 44:49

name of the book Solving the ADHD riddle is there. I do encourage people. If you're curious, there are checklists in the back of a couple of those chapters, so one on auto-term, one on visual that people can learn a little bit more about. And then for pricing, I do offer a little bit of a sliding scale so I try to fit that to people and have different options available for them. So we try and work with anyone that we can. Is it a good buying chance In California? Not so much. So it's a little bit of a rough go out here with these insurance companies, unfortunately, but we do offer things such as care credit. So that's why I just want people to know their options. They can pay as they go. I do offer a sliding scale so we try to make this doable for as many people as possible.

Candace Fleming: 45:41

And this is an in-person only treatment, correct?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 45:45

No, the good news is, I can do this with anyone.

Candace Fleming: 45:50

So not only in California.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 45:52

Not only in California. I do not diagnose. I just want to let people know that I do not diagnose. So what we will do is figure out what parts are working. Okay, and we can build training plans, and I do work with people around the country, but I don't fill out insurance claims for anyone out there because that's not what I'm doing. So, again, I try to make it feasible for most people and because I'm not filing all that insurance paperwork, we do keep the rates down.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 46:21

So it's called remote neurofeedback and there are some leads in the book about that. There's information up on my website as well. There are some startup costs if you're not in the clinics, because we have licenses and equipment and supplies and things like that, but we're picking up more and more people to be able to help them and certainly I've been up and down the state of California for sure with this, but it's completely doable and it's clinician driven intervention. So this is not something where we just ship it to you and turn you on to an app and have you try and figure it out. You know we're with you the whole way. So it's just the same as if you're sitting in my clinics.

Candace Fleming: 46:58

And how about social media? How can people find you on social media?

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 47:03

Someone leaked in Instagram and Facebook, so those links are up on my website too, so you can get over to them from my website.

Candace Fleming: 47:10

They'll also be in the show notes, of course, so you guys can just click it directly from the notes of the show. I want to thank you so much for coming and giving us this awesome information and giving us ways and solutions towards these. I don't want to call them issues, but diagnosis that people have given themselves or others have put on them that we can take off of ourselves. We don't have to be defined by a diagnosis or I don't want to say problem, but something that's going on with us. We don't have to be defined by that. Go ahead, ma.

Janet Hale: 47:52

I just wanted to say thank you for finding another way to heal.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 47:59

Thank you.

Janet Hale: 48:00

And that's what I think Ken is saying too. People have to help find another way to heal, like there's more than one way to do this and you're an alternative, you know, through that healing process, for those of us who need that.

Dr. Connie McReynolds: 48:19

Right, and I just want people to know that there's hope out there and that we can change the narrative on this story that has been fairly hopeless for a lot of people and it doesn't have to be that way anymore, absolutely.

Candace Fleming: 48:32

And of course, if you or anyone you know?

Candace Fleming: 48:35

is struggling with suicide or having any ill thoughts towards yourself. You can definitely reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988. You can text 988 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also find us at essentialmotivation. com. You can email me at CandaceFleming C-A-N-D-A-C-E, f-l-e-m-i-n-g At essentialmotivation. com. Facebook, essential motivation, instagram, essential motivation LLC. Of course, click all of the links that you need and we thank you for listening. Like, follow. Make sure you go get Dr McReynolds book. You can get on her website or Amazon. It's $20. For the book On Kendo it's $10. And go ahead, get that, because she is changing the lives of people, changing people's lives around the world, around the nation. So, everybody, thank you so much and again, always remember to forgive often, laugh frequently and love always. Thank you guys so much. Bye, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Candace Fleming: 49:42

Thank you for having me. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining Bye, bye, bye.

Janet Hale: 49:48

Bye, bye, bye, bye.