Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast

Calming The Anxious Brain: How Neurotherapy Balances Stress, Sleep, And Focus

• Dr. Heather Putney • Episode 9

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How Does Neurotherapy Help Ease Anxiety?

Feeling wired, restless, and “on” even when you want to wind down? We take you inside a practical, science-backed approach to anxiety and chronic stress that retrains the nervous system for balance. Dr. Heather Putney breaks down how an anxious brain often runs in sympathetic overdrive, producing too much fast-wave activity, and why restoring the natural rhythm of delta, theta, alpha, and beta can free you from rumination, tension, and sleepless nights.

We unpack vagus nerve stimulation in plain language—how gentle stimulation near the left tragus engages the body’s rest-and-repair mode, eases GI discomfort common in anxious profiles, and supports calmer reactions under pressure. You’ll also hear how targeted neurostimulation delivers parasympathetic frequencies to specific hotspots, addressing 13 research-backed anxiety profiles, including the insomnia marker along the midline. The focus is precision: reduce runaway beta when it hinders, boost calming waves when they help, and train the system to switch states on cue.

Real-world results anchor the conversation. Clients often report better sleep after a single session, a surprising sense of calm in situations that used to trigger them, and measurable gains tracked with standardized tools like the GAD-7 and PHQ-9. We connect the dots for high performers living in sustained stress—how inflammation rises, focus fades, and how neurotherapy can restore clarity and resilience without guesswork. Along the way, we clarify scope and tools, from LED light therapy to pulsed electromagnetic field tech, and how they complement brain-focused care.

If you’re ready to swap the constant buzz for steady focus and deeper sleep, tune in, take notes, and imagine what your days could feel like with a nervous system that knows when to go and when to let go. Subscribe, share with someone who needs a calmer brain, and leave a review to tell us what changed for you.

To learn more about Transformative Neurotherapy visit:
https://www.TransformativeNeurotherapy.org
Transformative Neurotherapy
570 Lincoln Ave.
Bellevue, PA 15202
412-204-7397

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast with your host, Dr. Heather Putney, founder and executive director of Transformative Neurotherapy. This is the place where healing happens faster. Because let's face it, your brain doesn't come with an owner's manual until now. Here we take a holistic approach to brain health, bringing together science, mind-body harmony, and the tools you need to optimize your well-being. Whether you're a high performer, executive, athlete, longevity hacker, or just someone tired of your brain working against you. Dr. Buddy is here to help you unlock your full potential. From brain fog to chronic stress, we're covering it all. So you can finally experience brain health, mind heart, and total well-being. Ready to get unstuck? Let's get started.

SPEAKER_02:

Learn how neurotherapy calms the nervous system and retrains the brain to respond to stress with clarity and control. Welcome everyone. I'm Julie Schwenzer, co-host and producer in the studio with Dr. Heather Putney, founder and executive director of transformative neurotherapy. Dr. Heather, it's great to be here with you again.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, it's great to be here with you.

SPEAKER_02:

So let's dive in. How does neurotherapy help ease anxiety?

SPEAKER_01:

I love part of your intro because it's when we're working with anxiety, this is really about balancing the sympathetic nervous system. Our last podcast, we talked a little bit about depression. And um that is actually an imbalance in the nervous system where the parasympathetic nervous system is dominant and you're kind of stuck in that kind of like um slow, like kind of slower, more depressive state. Whereas anxiety is kind of the opposite, it's the sympathetic, the fight or flight nervous system that's kind of stuck on. So in this situation, we create a lot more uh fast wave um uh frequencies in our brain. We talk a lot about beta. And um, in the past, uh in our past podcast, I've talked about how the brain has a natural symphony, how it's got a natural balance of different um wavelengths. And when it's in balance and at the right time, then the brain works well. So we need to have delta. We did we create delta when we're sleeping, it's really slow wave. And then you got theta, that's your kind of creative, dreamy state. Alpha is that bridge between the conscious and the subconscious. It also represents like our processing speed. It's it's kind of crucial. Beta is our thinking. Okay. So like when we're focusing on something, we're creating beta. It's also, though, the same type of frequency we're creating when we've got ruminating thoughts that's kind of preventing us from falling asleep at night or excessive worry. So it's, you know, when we're when we've got an anxiety profile, we generally see too much thinking and not enough and not enough dreaming, you know? And so to balance the brain, we want to be able to create more of those kind of calmer, um, get encourage the brain to experience and create more of those calmer wavelengths.

SPEAKER_02:

How does the neurotherapy help reduce the overactivity in those areas? How do you calm it down?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, we've got several several different modalities in the in the way, you know, in the treatment options that we have. One of them that works that I really love to use uh when I've got a profile like this is um vagus nerve stimulation. I actually have one of my my stimulator right here. And um the vagus nerve um is one of the longest nerves in the body. And one of the ways where we can activate that um is actually right here on the left tragus. And so we can actually put a clip right there and we'll send a small electrical current and stimulate the vagus nerve. And as we're stimulating the vagus nerve, it actually helps um encourage the body to rebalance that parasympathetic to sympathetic balance in the body. And it also works on the whole system. So, I mean, you might see people with anxiety that struggle with irritable bowel, you know, lots of stomach and GI issues, you know, with these profiles. So vagus nerve stimulation is amazing, um, is one of the things that we will do, and it will also, like I said, help um some of the somatic or more body-based symptoms you experience with anxiety, and this can help calm it down. Um, the other thing is we can give parasympathetic frequencies through the electrical currents that we use in the brain. And so we can kind of send some of those calming, soothing um frequencies right through the hot spots wherever they happen to be. There's actually 13 in the research, there's 13 different anxiety profiles. So different ways where the brain can show up in anxious places. And some people have multiple. So it's not like, oh, there's just one. It's like, well, I've got and it, and usually it's a beta issue. Too much think, too much thinking, too much fast wave in different regions of the brain. If you have it more globally, it's gonna present with one thing. If you've got it over the middle, the center line of the CZ, that's gonna be an insomnia marker. Um, and um and then and there's just different ways depending on the way it shows up in the up in the body. But it's usually this over-arousal, over-activated kind of on edge kind of experience. Very, you know, people tend to be very tense, very stressed, you know. So it could be anxiety or it could just be stress and chronic stress. So we'll see a lot of people come in and and they will, you know, experience great benefits, you know, even if they're not maybe full-blown anxiety, but they, you know, but we're working with like chronic stress. You might have your executives that are just living in this stressful place. And so we're helping their brain get a little bit more of that like balancing or, you know, kind of um help bring more nutrients to the part of the brain, help uh counteract the the impacts of chronic stress, which can create inflammation in the brain and in the body.

SPEAKER_02:

And you know, this leads me to the next question. Is neurotherapy effective? Then I I guess you in part answered it. It is effective for both chronic and situational anxiety.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, because you're essentially helping balance the nervous system. And it, you know, it's anxiety is one of the ones that uh, you know, depending on the on the profile or whatnot, but it can it can respond. Um it can it can be one of our faster responders for the different types of conditions that we treat. You know, um we'll come in, you know, someone will do, you know, a treatment, uh, and then they'll go home and they may sleep better than they've slept in a really long time. They just feel or they'll just feel they'll walk out and they'll be like, I just feel more calm. I don't know, or I don't know what this feels like. I just, you know, like when when we're when our baseline is like this buzz, right? This like kind of hum, this anxious place, and then we feel more calm. It's like, what is this? It can feel a little bit disconcerting for people where they're used to it, but it's also it's also nice.

SPEAKER_02:

And do you also treat pets? I know you're an animal lover, I am too. I I was curious about that, or is that something that you're looking into?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, well, my degree is not as as not in veterinary medicine. So um my understanding is that you know, we do have uh we do have some some modalities with LED light therapy, we use pulse electromagnetic field, there's things with like inflammation and things. So there are ways that you can use that where um, you know, veterinarians, I have used things for, you know, on animals, you know, so anxiety, like kind of the calm thing. I'm sure they could use it. Me not being a vet, I don't personally do that, but um, but this technology can be used in a variety of contexts. You know, we have a lot of people that, like I said, I'm a mental health therapist and that's my specialty. So I work pretty much, you know, on, you know, on the brain. But there's a lot of these things with the LED light, the pulse electromagnetic stuff that actually can be, you know, used on the body, inflammation reduction on your knees, help uh bones heal at front breaks and things like that. There's different frequencies, but like I said, that's outside of my personal scope of practice, but um the equipment can do that for with the practitioners that know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, thank you for answering that. I'm sure your your dog's ear is perked up. Um well, going back to humans, what feedback do you hear the most often from your clients after treatment?

SPEAKER_01:

Um yeah, I think usually like like I said, a lot of times they'll feel a little bit more calm, possibly in the session, but sometimes they don't notice um notice something in the session. It might be the next day, and they come back in or or or they send a text and like, I haven't slept this well in a long time. Or, you know, I you know, I noticed that I went into this situation that normally I would have been really jittery or it would have made me, you know, kind of really nervous. And I handled it so much better than I expected. So, you know, and so that's the type of stuff that we see early on. We also collect regular psychological measures like the GAD seven, which tracks, you know, anxiety, general anxiety disorder, and the PHQ nine for other mood disorders. And so we actually get baseline of what you know people are experiencing and we track the symptoms with each treatment and watch those numbers come down, and it's really fun.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, thank you for answering all these questions and sharing these insights into calming the anxious brain, Dr. Heather. We'll see you next time on the Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast.

unknown:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

You've been listening to the Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast with Dr. Heather Putney. Remember, your brain isn't supposed to hold you back, it's supposed to power you forward. So stop letting it crash your party and start letting it do its job. If you are ready to optimize brain health, sharpen your focus, and age like a fine wife, schedule your free consultation today at Transformative Neurotherapy.org. Or call us at 412-204-7397. Because here, healing happens faster. See you next time.