Good Neighbor Podcast: Pittsburgh

E32: Brain Renewal with Dr.Heather Putney: Healing Mental Health Through Neurotherapy

• Leila Carter & Dr. Heather Putney • Episode 32

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What makes Dr. Heather Putney with Untethered Therapy & Transformative Neurotherapy a good neighbor?  

Could the breakthrough in your mental health journey be closer than you think? Dr. Heather Putney, founder of Untethered Therapy and Transformative Neurotherapy, joins us to reveal how cutting-edge brain-based interventions are revolutionizing healing for everything from trauma and addiction to cognitive optimization.

What begins as a fascinating personal journey—from aspiring veterinarian to psychotherapist—evolves into a conversation about groundbreaking neurotherapy techniques that work nearly twice as fast as conventional methods. Dr. Putney explains how her unique combination of LED light therapy, pulse electromagnetic field therapy, and transcranial stimulation creates personalized treatment plans that address the root neurological imbalances behind many mental health conditions.

We explore how these holistic approaches benefit not only those struggling with PTSD, trauma, and addiction but also executives seeking peak performance and adults concerned about cognitive aging. Dr. Putney shares her client-centered philosophy that balances efficient healing with personalized care, emphasizing that while she prioritizes rapid results, each person's healing journey unfolds at its own necessary pace. For anyone feeling "stuck" despite traditional therapy or seeking alternatives to medication-focused treatments, this conversation opens new possibilities for brain health optimization through science-based, holistic interventions.

Curious about optimizing your brain health naturally? Visit untetheredtherapy.org or transformativeneurotherapy.org to discover how these innovative approaches might transform your mental wellbeing. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram for the latest developments in neurotherapy and mental health.

To learn more about Untethered Therapy & Transformative Neurotherapy go to: 

www.transformativeneurotherapy.org

www.untetheredtherapy.org

Untethered Therapy & Transformative Neurotherapy

(412) 213 8633


Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Lila Carter.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of a brain boost for your mental health? One might be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Heather Putney, with Untethered Therapy and Transformative Neurotherapy. Heather, how's it going? It's going great, Awesome. We're excited to learn all about you and your business. Please tell us about your company.

Speaker 3:

Great. Well, I'm the executive director and founder of both Untethered Therapy and Transformative Neurotherapy and they work together, hand in hand, so I'll be talking about them, kind of both. Untethered Therapy started in the Bellevue area in traumas and uh addiction, primarily um some process addictions, internet, uh sex and so forth. We work a lot with um betrayal trauma as well as PTSD and trauma, as well as all the whole gamut of mental health issues. So, um and through that work, I, um I recognize that talk therapy is super powerful, but brain based and body based therapies can also, you know, can help when when talk therapy falls a little short, integrating more and more holistic factors into the business to help people heal the quickest. And so the transformative neurotherapy is kind of our most recent addition to help people heal in the most rapid way possible.

Speaker 2:

Beautiful Now. Dr Putney, how did you get into this business?

Speaker 3:

oh, wow, um, it's. It's kind of crazy. I started out planning on being a veterinarian so I had I have a master's in um undergrad in biology and a master's in integrative biology. Um, but kind of along the way, I have to say, I kind of received some kind of like spiritual experiences and inklings and stuff that kind of redirected my path towards psychotherapy. And I was on that path for a long time and have been doing that and got my doctorate in counseling, supervision and education.

Speaker 3:

And it's kind of come back full circle as, like I said, I started having these clients that they were doing excellent talk therapy and they were doing EMDR and other things, and yet they still felt like they were stuck and so I was looking for other solutions and so I did a lot of research trying to figure out how to get them kind of unstuck. And that's what led me into adding neurotherapy, which is, you know, a lot of neuroscience and biology, and for me, since I kind of had that circuitous route to this, it's kind of such a great fit and just get really nerdy about it and it's really exciting. But that's kind of how I got here. It's been a journey.

Speaker 2:

What are some myths or misconceptions in the neurotherapy industry?

Speaker 3:

I think at this point it's so new and so innovative A lot of people just don't even know what it is. Enough to even have a lot of misconceptions. So I think it's just a basic lack of knowledge. A lot of people know about neurofeedback you hear a lot of great buzz about neurofeedback and neurofeedback is effective and is helpful to help balance the brain, but it's just a lot slower and I'm not a very patient person, and so when I was, you know, researching the different modalities to try to help people heal the quickest, you know also looking at evidence-based options, I was drawn more towards neuromodulation and neurotherapy, which just moves the needle almost about twice as fast as neurotherapy, and I mean as as neurofeedback. And so, just thinking about myself, if I'm struggling and I have to pay for a certain number of sessions, I'd like to pay for a lot less sessions and feel a lot better faster. And so that's kind of how I got to neurotherapy, neuromodulation and some of the things people have heard about with that, like red light therapy.

Speaker 3:

That is part of what we do with neurotherapy. So it's LED light, red light therapy, which we add to the brain, which can stimulate and balance the brain, increase blood flow reduce inflammation. We do pulse electromagnetic field, which is another form of stimulation, increases blood flow, which improves neurogenesis and different things like that. And we also incorporate TACS, tdcs, which is low current stimulation in the brain, which we can specifically target imbalances that we see through the EEGs that we collect. And so we do a lot of psychological measures and interviews and we get an EEG and that kind of helps determine the. You know we also detect the symptoms and helps us determine what each client needs, very client specific.

Speaker 2:

So do all of those interventions live under the umbrella of neuromodulation, or is that something different entirely?

Speaker 3:

Nope, they are all that's. Those are examples of neuromodulation and we incorporate all of the above um, as I said, to help people heal, to heal the fastest.

Speaker 2:

Very good, and as we know that marketing is the heart of every business, who are your target customers and how are you attracting them to the practice?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, our target, our target customers are people who are holistically minded.

Speaker 3:

You know, maybe they have gone down the medication route and it hasn't worked for them, or they are on a lot of medications but they would really like to be, they would like to have a more holistic approach or reduce the amount of medicines that they are on.

Speaker 3:

And neuromodulation, neurotherapy, can you know, help the, you know, help teach the brain, help rebalance the brain, and then once the brain kind of gets it, it can, it can hold it itself, it can do it on its own, you know so. So we we really kind of drawing clients that are looking for naturalistic, holistic ways to kind of get unstuck. Or sometimes we also attract peak performers, executives or people that are, you know, just trying to, you know, you know, prevent cognitive decline, you know, kind of have a healthier brain longer. As you know, healthy aging is the word I was looking for, so it can be used for, you know, addictions and trauma, ADHD. We do a lot of work with that. But it's also a very useful tool, Like I said, for many populations looking to be at their maximal health and production.

Speaker 2:

There are so many people looking to optimize their mental health in the ways that you offer and that you know so much about. Have you ever thought about doing your own podcast to share what you know?

Speaker 3:

Um, I haven't yet. Um, we've. I've been in the uh, I've been in the program building stage more than anything in the last, the last couple of years with this, and we literally just launched our website for the neurotherapy program. We've been doing the program for a while but, um, as part of uh, under the therapy, but, um, we've been, you know, kind of working on getting it out there. Really, it's kind of the marketing piece, you know, because it is, it can be a slightly different customer than you know.

Speaker 3:

The clients that come in with you know the mental health practice, so sometimes it's the perfect fit for those clients, but sometimes it's, you know, like I said, someone that's looking more for peak performance and aren't coming in strictly for mental health, but they're really interested in maximizing their brain health and their functionality.

Speaker 3:

So, um, yeah, so I haven't gotten to the part of thinking about doing my own podcast, but we're kind of right on the verge, as we just, like I said, we just finished the website and we're looking into all the ways to market um, which I'll say that's that's been a challenge for me with the, with the mental health agency, through word, you know, through word of mouth and whatnot. We haven't really had to market and we um, we've just done extremely well and we're, we're, you know, um have a very healthy referral supply, so it just was so easy on that side. But this is just something so novel and different, so getting it out there is a slightly different track, and so we're, we're trying to figure that piece out as we go and, like I said, that's kind of brand new. So it's great ideas and I mean we're helping that arena, that's for sure.

Speaker 2:

It's kind of thrilling, though, to have something like that launch online too, though you've been doing it for a while, you know, so it's full steam ahead here. But outside of work, what do you do for fun?

Speaker 3:

outside of work. What do you do for fun? Uh, I've got three kids and two dogs and they keep me very busy, um, but I also like biking and gardening, so I like being outdoors when I can, oh very nice.

Speaker 2:

So um heather, please tell our listeners one thing that they should remember about untethered therapy about untethered therapy.

Speaker 3:

Well, untethered therapy and transformative neurotherapy really are person-centered. We care about your individual experiences and needs and we work very hard to find what you need to heal as fast as possible for you and as long as it takes for you. There's no rush as well, so we just really try to treat everybody as an individual. There's no, there's no specific treatment that it looks like this for everybody. It's very personalized.

Speaker 2:

Right, you said that you prioritize the time aspect within your practice, but there's no rush to actually get there, it's just you're prioritizing that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I appreciate efficiency and healing and we want to use the modalities that get the best and fastest results. But also some things, especially when working with trauma or addictions. Some of those things just take some time to heal, heal or there's just a lot there to unpack and so everybody goes at the pace that they are able to go or willing to go.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love that level of understanding where your clients are at and kind of meeting them there too. So how can our listeners learn more about transformative neurotherapy and untethered therapy?

Speaker 3:

You can find us on our mutual websites untetheredtherapyorg or transformativeneurotherapyorg. We are on Facebook or on Instagram or, if you're in the Bellevue area near Lincoln Avenue, you can just pop your head in and you know.

Speaker 2:

We've got some flyers out there and can ask some questions if you're in the area Very good Well, Heather, I really appreciate your time today and having you as a guest on the show. We wish you and your businesses the best moving forward.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much. We appreciate the chance to kind of explain a little bit what we do, because it's a little different.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, certainly, but it's great. Thank you for all the work that you're doing in the community. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPPittsburghcom. That's GNPPittsburghcom, or call 412-561-9956.