Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast

Neurotherapy: A Brain-Based Therapy for Trauma Recovery

• Dr. Heather Putney • Episode 14

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0:00 | 10:52

How does Neurotherapy help with Trauma?

What if your brain could stop bracing for impact and start working for you again? We sit down to unpack how neurotherapy helps trauma move through the nervous system, reduces hypervigilance, and restores the balance that makes real life possible again. Drawing on years of trauma psychotherapy and brain-based care, we explain why pairing neurotherapy with EMDR and Internal Family Systems creates faster, safer results than either approach alone.

We walk through the clients we see most—first responders and veterans exposed to crisis, people with developmental trauma, those navigating sudden losses, and betrayed partners whose sense of reality shattered. You’ll hear how we assess the system using heart rate variability and EEG, looking for sympathetic dominance and region-specific patterns that point to dissociation or overactivation. These markers shape the protocols we choose and help us set expectations: when the brain receives targeted stimulation, sequestered material may surface, and that is often the start of release rather than a setback.

For those in acute distress, we explain the intensive model: two neurotherapy sessions per day with built-in therapy to process what emerges. Clients often feel changes quickly—calmer thoughts, better sleep, less startle—even as deeper work continues. We break down why these early wins matter, how the brain’s glial and neural systems participate in storing and letting go, and the safeguards we use to keep the process within a tolerable window. The result is a clear, compassionate roadmap for turning chaos into capacity, one regulated session at a time.

If this resonates, subscribe for more brain-forward tools, share this with someone who needs hope, and leave a review to help others find the show. Ready to take the next step? Book a free consultation at TransformativeNeurotherapy.org or call 412-204-7397.

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. Putney 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 harmony, and total well-being. Ready to get on stock? Let's get started.

SPEAKER_02:

Dr. Heather, let's dive into today's topic. How does neurotherapy help with trauma?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, neurotherapy is absolutely wonderful to work with trauma. As a psychotherapist, one of my specialties is trauma. And so I have picked up a couple of different trauma tools, EMDR, IFS, which is internal family systems, and it and I was really excited to see how well neurotherapy blends with that. So what I will say is that it can really unpack trauma, like like energy that's kind of stuck in and you know, and kind of creating some of those flashbacks and things like that. It can really unstuff it and move it through. But one thing is that it shouldn't be done. If you have a trauma client, you shouldn't be doing neurotherapy alone. They really need to have, you know, a psychotherapist or somebody to work with because they're going to, you know, have access to, you know, information that they maybe didn't have access to in a different way. And it's able to kind of release and move through. And I see them regulate their nervous systems in ways that, you know, move so much faster through the healing process. But you also want to have a therapist when you're working with trauma. It's not just like, oh, put them on this thing, let's put their brain or whatever. When you're dealing with trauma, there's going to be stuff to process. So, you know, my, you know, my sister company on tether therapy, you know, we so we usually provide both. You know, we'll do neurotherapy and then we'll send them in with a therapist, you know, and they'll unpack or, you know, kind of continue to process, you know, tie a bow on what kind of came up and kind of keep the process moving in kind of a in a healthy way. Um, so that's something to keep in mind. But it's really quite amazing how fast it can move.

SPEAKER_02:

And what are some examples of types of trauma that you see a lot in your clients?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I work a lot with, well, variety, but we see a lot of first responders, you know, and vets, so you know, firefighters, policemen, you know, people that are exposed to, you know, some some pretty horrific things. And then, so that's one kind of group that comes in. And then I'll then I work a lot with, you know, people with developmental trauma. So childhood abuse, things like that that that happened, or even adults that had some sort of traumatic event. Sometimes it's just it's a car, it's a car accident or this, that, and the other, and they're just they're they're unable to even like drive for a season. We have to kind of work through some of those different things. So we so we see a variety. And another little subsection that I that I work with quite a bit are betrayed partners, people that just realize that that their world isn't what they thought it was, is kind of coming crumbling down, and they come in and very raw, very traumatized. Um, their nerd their sympathetic nervous system over arousal, they're hyper-vigilant, and they're kind of living in a war zone at the moment, you know, like that because their reality just shattered and they don't know what to trust and believe, and their partner they just found out that their partner wasn't who they thought they were. So the person's closest to closest to them, you know, was also the person harming them. And that's just extremely dysregulating. It causes them to feel really unsafe. So they are very dysregulated, and neurotherapy is a great tool to help to help them as well. I've also worked with people with unexpected losses, traumatic losses. So we just see we kind of see the gamut on on this.

SPEAKER_02:

So and I was curious too, when they come in, do they, you know, they first share their full story with you? And then, you know, because it it seems like a very heavy session all around with the treatment and from you know why they were there to begin with. Is it um a place where you also have a lot of discussion too with the client?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it it really depends on how we get the referral. If it's coming from a therapist, it's in the practice over, you know, we don't, we as a the as the, you know, if we're just doing the neurotherapy piece, we don't need as much of the story. We don't have to process as much of the story. But when I'm doing the EEG scans and analysis, I do have to ask about a certain level of information so I'll have at least a sense of some stuff, but I don't want to really un-stuff or unpack their trauma without, you know, their therapist there or or something like that. So I need to glean a little bit of what of what we're working with, so I also know what protocols are going to be the best fit and also which, you know, sometimes we'll have people come in and they they don't they you know, they might say I'm really stressed or I'm really depressed or really anxious, and they don't they don't flag trauma as an issue. But there's some markers in the brain. So there's some things that we do with our heart rate variability where we see the sympathetic nervous system at a like like as a you know two to one power compared to the parasympathetic nervous system, you know, that's a pretty solid indicator that they're in hypervigilance. They're kind of the sympathetic nervous system is stuck on, the autonomic nervous system is out of balance. Um, like I said, we see those a lot with first responders and whatnot, but but anybody in kind of like, you know, in pretty active trauma, you'll see that there's some markers in the brain, kind of in this T6 area in the parietal area, or we see maybe excessive power, some things that look like dissociate, like some dissociative signals in the brain. So that sometimes they don't say there's a trauma issue, but there's some markers in the brain. And so then we have to kind of come back with them because, like I said, what's amazing is you know, we we're going to be stimulating the brain. And the glia is kind of like the glue of the brain, and it's kind of what can energetically kind of encapsulate some of the trauma. So as we're stimulating it, some things that have been like the trauma has been kind of like sequestered and kind of like put in the back shelf, sometimes it like it just comes up, you know. And so sometimes people get things they weren't sure was there, you know. So when I see those markers and they're not copying the trauma, I'm gonna, you know, you know, you know, probe a little bit and also encourage them to get with a therapist and let them know it is very possible that once we start this, that the trauma is going to surface. The great thing is is it's going to release it's instead of getting stuck inside and creating all this nervous stuff, the flashbacks, the hypervigilance, like you're going to, you know, you're going to kind of experience it or release it, you know, but you want it to be kind of in a in a safe environment. So they need to know that when we're dealing with this and we're working with certain frequencies and whatnot, that it may absolutely unstuff the trauma. We may be trying to unstuff the trauma. We'll work with a lot of these clients on an outpatient basis, but we also get a lot that will that are in a really bad way and they'll come in and they'll do an intensive. So we'll usually package them up, you know, they'll they'll do a couple of treatments a day, and they've got and we build in a therapist with them. And so, you know, we'll we'll do that for a week or two, up to three weeks sometimes because they're in a really bad state and that and and the frequency of working and the intensity, like they it can just revolutionize from the the difference between how they showed up when they came in and and what they're and what it's like when they leave. So depending on how severe it is, you know, they they might go the intensive model because they just want to rip the band-aid off and get through this and be able to kind of get back to life. Because if you're stuck in hyper arousal and and whatnot, like you're always on edge. It's uh sleep usually is impacted. And so there's just a lot of you know, a lot of parts of your overall well-being and mental health that's impacted. So getting to the bottom of it is is really right.

SPEAKER_02:

And how quickly do you notice some clients seeing improvements after they start the treatments with you?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, some, especially the ones that are really, you know, dysregulated, they may notice a difference the same day. Like just in the sense that, like, whoa, I feel more calm. My brain doesn't feel like it's racing as much. I slept better last night than I have and forever. That's not the end all be all where we're going to get, but it's not uncommon for people to after one or two treatments, which if we're doing intensive, we'll do two treatments in a day with a with some breaks in between. But it's not uncommon for people to to notice a difference even after the first, you know, treatment or two. But they will notice the needle shifting, you know. That doesn't mean we're all the way there, but they generally notice things pretty quickly, which also is encouraging to kind of keep moving because you know, trauma isn't always fun to face, but it's, you know, you can't outrun it. So it's coming for you one way or the other. You can face it with support and help, you know, and help it move through in the most helpful way, or you can try to outrun it, which just ultimately doesn't work, and then it kind of keeps haunting you in different ways at different times.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Dr. Heather. That was incredibly insightful. We'll see you next time for another deep dive into brain health and healing.

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're 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.