Panic Disorder Success Stories: What Effective Treatment Really Looks Like

Panic can hit like a lightning strike: your heart races, your chest tightens, and your mind starts bargaining with the worst-case scenario. Today we take that terrifying experience seriously and look at it through a brain-based lens, because “just calm down” is useless advice when your nervous system is convinced you’re in danger.

I’m joined by Dr. Tiffany Thompson, founder and CEO of NeuroField Neurotherapy and the School of Neurotherapy, to talk about what clinicians sometimes see in EEG and brain mapping with panic disorders. We unpack spikes and polyspikes as a kind of flickering, unstable brain discharge that can trigger a sudden wave of dread and kick the sympathetic nervous system into overdrive. If you’ve ever wondered why panic attacks can mimic a heart attack and why so many people end up in the ER, we connect the dots between the brain signal, the body response, and the fear loop that follows.

We also get practical about neurotherapy and neurostimulation: how stabilization protocols may reduce that instability, why some clients notice changes quickly, and why Dr. Thompson says she’d run a panic clinic if she could pick only one specialty. You’ll hear a powerful case story of a 40-year-old father of three who reports being “super chill” after his first session, plus a surprising ripple effect Dr. Heather Putney has seen in practice: less road rage after an intensive, hinting at broader emotional regulation.

If you found this helpful, subscribe for more conversations on brain health, share this with someone who feels stuck in fight-or-flight, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What part of panic do you most want explained: the body symptoms, the brain data, or the treatment plan?

To learn more about NeuroField Neurotherapy, Inc. visit: https://www.neurofieldneurotherapy.com/tiff-thompson

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

Transcript

Welcome And What We Solve

SPEAKER_03 0:02

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 bag 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 unstuck? Let's get started.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Panic disorder can feel overwhelming and unpredictable, but with the right neurotherapy approach, the brain can learn new patterns and the transformation can be life-changing. Welcome everyone. I'm Dr. Heather Putney, founder and executive director of transformative neurotherapy. Back in the studio with Dr. Tiffany Thompson, founder and CEO of Neurofield Neurotherapy and the School of Neurotherapy. Dr. Thompson, I'm so excited to jump into this one with you today. Um, so we let's talk about real-world impact. How do you approach teaching panic disorders and what are some of the major success stories that maybe stick out to you?

EEG Spikes Tied To Panic

Neurostimulation As A Stabilizer

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Well, um the impetus for teaching a course on panic actually came from um I the class was on panic, rage, and psychosis, actually. And it was born out of um I had I had my own uh single really but memorable experience of rage. I raged on my gardener. And that's a story, it's probably doesn't cast me in the best light, but it was so wild to me to have this experience of being completely flooded, completely overwhelmed with emotion. And it was, you know, humbling and, you know, um humiliating, and I was embarrassed and I was ashamed, and I was all these things. And so I was like, I have to understand this, right? I have to, I gotta, I gotta look at this more deeply and see what happened within me, right? And what I found was that, you know, there are um there are corollaries between these things, interestingly. Now, you know, I I don't personally suffer from a panic disorder, but what I can say about panic um is that it is one of the uh disorders in which we see abnormal findings. And you find something called spikes, um, uh also called there's another variation called polyspikes. We see spikes and polyspikes and you know, I don't know, roughly one out of five, one out of six clients that walk through the door. Um, but sometimes you you uh you see them as correlated to panic. In fact, I would say 97% of the time when someone walks in the door, they're going to have this one particular finding in their in their AEG. And it's a short circuiting, it's a it's a quick fire. It's a um, it's almost as though there's a portion of their brain, an area that just kind of erratically discharges um spikes. Like if you think about a light that's kind of going out and it's flickering. And when that happens, the individual can be struck by a pang of overwhelm, of dread. Um, they could get flooded, you know, and it's this, it's this deep, um, you know, a deep, deep, oh no, right? Something isn't right. Very often what will happen with individuals is their um their heart will start to beat really fast, right? So they'll they'll start to have a cardiac response, and their system will then believe that it's under duress, that it's under, you know, threat. And so their whole uh sympathetic tone and their entire body is being told that, you know, you're not safe, you've got to take care of yourself. Um, very often people who have this experience feel like they're dying. I'm having a heart attack, right? That's one of the things that we commonly hear from people who have had panic attacks, and many of them find their way into the ER because they think they're having a heart attack, even though they're 30 years old, right? So, what's often happening with that demographic is we're we're seeing isolated epileptiform discharges in their brains, usually in the um in the form of spikes and polyspikes. And so what's so cool about using um stimulation, multimodal stimulation, neurotherapy, um, to address this is that we we can actually um pretty we quickly um take down that um instability in the brain, right, with the stabilizing rhythm as you know. And so and so um I I've said a number of times, if I had my druthers, if I got to pick one disorder to work on, I would have a panic clinic, absolutely panic, because it responds so beautifully and so quickly uh to neurotherapy.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

So if you were a client, uh a potential client experiencing panic, uh and you're like, oh, this sounds really great. I mean, how quick might someone notice a difference? And I know that this like this doesn't mean that it's like completely done and healed, but you know, let's say how many treatments do you expect you know, okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

So the so the longer answer would be it really does depend on the on the origin of the person's panic. But I would say if it's what I've just described, which is again a large proportion of people who suffer from these symptoms, it's fast because we're talking about cortical goings-on, right? And we're talking about instability in the in the cells of the cortex, and the cortex is the bark of the brain, right? And so when we see those discharges, um, we can often stabilize them within within 10 sessions. Um, you know, and and the it will be evidenced not only by the individual's uh lack of panic, but it will also be evidenced by the lack of that finding in their data set.

How Fast Change Can Happen

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Okay, that's that's fantastic. And you know, 10 10 sessions is you know really a fast turnaround compared to a lot of these other, you know, treatments modalities out in there. So it really does respond quickly. Yeah, and any, you know, examples, any cases that kind of stick out to you that you know how it changed someone's life around?

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah, I have one that um just recently actually this individual has just finished up 10 sessions at my clinic for panic, interestingly, conveniently. Um so this man, uh, 40-year-old father of three, um, you know, working professional, but would have, you know, really was worried about his heart because he would be overtaken by intense palpitations. And we went out to dinner with him and his wife. His wife is a friend of mine, and at dinner he's telling us a story, right? Like, oh my God, I'm having these panic attacks. And um, and I'm like, oh, oh my gosh, well, come, you know, come in, come into the clinic. Um, and because he's a friend, he gets the you know, the friend discount um at the clinic. And after his first session, he wrote me a text and he goes, Whoa, he goes, Tiff, I am super chill right now. Um, like almost like a zombie. And I'm like, oh no, you know, was it too much? And so I called him up and um, you know, he was a sensitive and he, you know, really sedated him in a in a positive way. And we just sort of got the idea of what his tolerance was, and he he had a you know, a miraculous response. Um, and that was again with intensions, and he's he's like, that, you know, that's great, thank you. And so what I can say is um I can attest to this with uh individuals, clinicians who are practicing neurostimulation. That that's the that's the professional who can pull this trick off. And you know, the good news is I think almost all of them know how to do this one with a stabilizer.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

I think it's really interesting that you said that the impetus for this lesson was also like on panic and rage and so forth. You know, I just had a really interesting situation with a with a client that came in for um an intensive. And after um, you know, 10 sessions, they felt a lot better. And after uh they did a two-week um intensive. And so on the way, um they noticed one of the biggest things was on the way home that they didn't have road rage because they were driving across the state. So, you know, multiple hours on the way home. And then like over over the times that just they're just like, I did not realize, like I knew I felt so much better in all these other ways, but the road rage was just completely different. They could just be like, Oh, I noticed this, and I used to maybe want to run this person down and have all these hot dogs chill. So I just think it's interesting how he like you how how I never would have thought about like the the panic and rage being so connected, like he like that. But that was one of their, you know, they reached back out to me on the way home.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

It's like, I had the craziest drive home. Like it was so easy. I just is so bizarre to me that my brain doesn't go straight to place. So it was really, really cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

So very neat. Yeah.

Closing Thanks And Consultation Invite

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Well, I thank you for the work that you're doing and pioneering not only the education, but also the treatment in this field to help figure out how to make the treatment um, you know, efficient and effective. So we really appreciate your time. I know you're super busy with all the work that you do, but we appreciate you being here today to help others learn about this amazing work that you do.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, thanks for doing this. Yeah. All right. Have a great one. Thanks, Heather.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

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 wine, 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.