Stress And The Brain, Retrained

When stress keeps setting off your internal alarm, it can feel like you’ve lost the steering wheel. We take you inside the brain’s response to pressure and show how neurofeedback helps quiet the amygdala, organize sensory processing, and restore flexible focus without medication. Sandra Hooper-Murcott, founder of BRAINTOPIA Neurofeedback Centers breaks down what a QEEG brain map reveals, why chronic stress often starts fast and ends in shutdown, and which patterns signal your system needs support.

We walk through the four-pronged lens we use with every client—environmental influences, metabolic factors, functional brain activity, and psycho-emotional patterns—so you can see exactly how root causes stack up. You’ll hear how stress first speeds brainwaves into hyperarousal, then, if left unchecked, often flips into a low, protective state that looks like withdrawal. We highlight the sensory-kmsotor strip’s role in overwhelm, explain why children and adults show different signs, and unpack the “false alarm” cycle that keeps the amygdala firing when there’s no actual danger.

You’ll also learn how neurofeedback sessions use precise audio-visual reinforcement to reward helpful brain states and reduce unhelpful ones, session by session. Early wins tend to show up as shorter spirals after triggers, fewer panic spikes, and a faster shift from raw emotion to clear thinking. We add practical strategies—box breathing, grounding with the 5-4-3 method, movement breaks, nutrition, and targeted supplementation—and explain why these habits stick better once the brain is more regulated.

If anxiety, ADHD-related overload, sleep struggles, or focus challenges are wearing you down, this conversation offers a roadmap back to control, clarity, and steadier moods. Subscribe, share with someone who needs a calmer day, and leave a review to tell us which insight helped you most. For care across Dallas–Fort Worth, visit online or call 972-640-7022.

To learn more about BRAINTOPIA Neurofeedback Centers visit:
https://www.BraintopiaCenters.com
BRAINTOPIA Neurofeedback Centers 
Multiple locations across the Dallas–Fort Worth area 
972-640-7022 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome to Brainstorm, the Brain Topia Podcast, hosted by Sandra Hooper Murcott, founder of Braintopia Neurofeedback Centers. With locations across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, BrainTopia helps children, teens, and adults improve brain function through advanced neurofeedback brain training. On this podcast, we explore the science of brain health and real-world solutions for symptoms linked to anxiety, ADHD, sleep challenges, emotional regulation, and cognitive performance. This is Brainstorm, where understanding your brain is the first step toward lasting change.

Today’s Core Question On Stress

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Stress reshapes the brain's wiring, but with the right training, those patterns can be calmed, reorganized, and strengthened. Welcome everyone. I'm Chelsea Earlywine, co-host and producer, back in the studio with Sandra Hooper Murcott, founder of Brain Topia Neurofeedback Centers. Sandra, how are things going for you this week? Great. We're happy to be here. Good. All right. Well, let's dive right in. Today's question is how does stress impact the brain and how do you retrain it?

Mapping The Brain & Four-Pronged Lens

The Amygdala And False Alarms

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Great question. So stress is something that is uh the, I mean, number one paramount with so much, and and we're seeing it across the board. So almost everyone who comes through our doors is experiencing some kind of stress. The world, the, you know, just everything that's going on. That's that's a nature of what's going on. So the first thing that we do is again, start with the QEG brain map. We need to see what is causing that, what it, what is the root cause of what's going on with stress. We don't only use objective data from our brain map about how the brain's operating, because we also use the subjective data about symptoms that they're experiencing and why they're feeling these ways, because nothing that we do in neurofeedback is in a silo. We always look at a four-pronged approach. So we're looking at environmental factors, we're looking at metabolic factors, we are looking at uh functional patterns and factors, and then psycho-emotional patterns as well and factors. So we have to look at all of these things to know what is causing the stress. Do we have a gut health issue that, you know, even are we eating too much gluten or, you know, and that's different for everybody. So that's the first thing that we want to show is that stress is our feelings are real, but they don't always tell the truth. So we have to look outside of just how we're feeling and really take both of those factors in. So once we identify what is causing the stress, we go back to a part of the brain which you'll hear me talk about a lot, which is called the amygdala. And the amygdala is our alarm system of the brain, and that can be activated. It's at a location over the temporal lobe called T3. That can be activated for so many reasons. And there's so many things that can cause our brain to think that we're in danger. Whether that's true or not, most of the time it's not true, and that's what we call true anxiety. And so we want to make sure and um isolate what's going on in that area, especially in those temporal lobes, so that we can see what we really need to do as far as kind of turning that amygdala off when we need to. And that's that's part of what the brain training does is helps us to be able to say and to pull out of that spin of stress and anxiety to be able to know what is truly logic, what is true, and what is what I'm just feeling right now.

What Chronic Stress Does Over Time

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Okay. So what happens, Sandra, in someone's brain when they experience chronic stress for an extended period of time?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

So that's a that's a great question. So chronic stress over a period of time can go one of two ways. At the beginning of that, oftentimes it makes the brain waves, well, it does, it makes the brain waves move very fast, right? So we're seeing impulsivity, we're seeing big emotional reactions, we're seeing a lot of feeling like, you know, I'm amped up, whether that's hearts racing or panic attacks or different things like that. Now, the challenge, and the reason why neurofeedback is so important is that we see different phases of this because over a prolonged amount of time, when your brain is in this fight or flight mode for so long, the central nervous system cannot and doesn't want to live like that. And so what it will start to do is start to shut down, right? Not shut down as if like our brain's not working, but shutting down into feeling like I need to protect myself. And so I need to like put this over here in this box and I'm not going to think about this. There's certain clinical terms that I won't use because I'm not a psychologist and you know, can't diagnose that, but it's basically going into a more depressed brainwave pattern, not depression, but a depressed brainwave pattern where the brain is saying, the central nervous system is saying, I can't handle this. And so then we see an opposite reaction of instead of impulsivity, we see more of a disconnecting. And we see someone who used to be very extroverted now want to be at home a lot and to be by themselves. So it's that's why neurofeedback is so important in that kind of stage one in anxiety, so that it helps the brain to not and the central nervous system not get to the point where it says, I'm just gonna shut down because I can't, I've got to protect myself. I can't live like this.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Oh, yeah. So which parts of the what what brain regions are we looking at that tend to become overactive or underactive during stress?

Sensory-Motor Overload To Processing

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Okay, so that can they can affect all of them, but what really happens at the beginning of this is a lot of times we'll see it in sensory motor. So that is basically when you're through the middle part of the brain and then in the central sulcus, where the brain is saying, I'm taking in all of this and I just don't know how to handle it. You know, so that then we're gonna see in children, sometimes that manifests in um sensory issues, like I'm gonna cover my ears or I need to close my eyes and I need to stim because I, you know, my my body just feels overwhelmed. So I need to do something in movement. For adults, it can be, I need to, you know, I need to go off and be by myself, whereas I used to be with my people, you know, it manifests differently, but it it starts in that sensory motor area. And then as it moves along, it can go into the occipital lobes, which is where we're processing things. And so um that that's the challenge is we don't want that to become like a trauma response in our brain, but it can if we let it go on too long. So that's why the idea of just powering through, which in my generation, I'm 47. So in my generation, it was kind of like put some dirt on it, power through. And now we want to say, no, don't do that because you can get help, you can change the way that your brain is processing these things. And that that's ultimately what neurofeedback does. And it doesn't have to do it with um meds that maybe can cause other issues as well. So it's a safe way to really help your brain and support your brain as it is going through the stresses that we will experience in life.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

So let's talk more about that piece of it. So, how does neurofeedback help calm the stress response and restore that balance?

Don’t Power Through; Train Patterns

How Neurofeedback Guides Change

SPEAKER_01 7:10

So, what it's doing is it is it's giving audio and visual feedback that's making the brain change. So it's again identifying that this is an area that's either a good pattern or a bad pattern because the brain likes to stay in the patterns that it's in. So it's going to say if the brightness is high on the TV and the sound is high as you're going through your neurofeedback sessions, it's going to tell the brain, this is good. This is what we want. This is what we're training to do. If it, if the brightness is low and the sound is low during a neurofeedback session, and it's constantly fluctuating the whole time. So it's constantly making your brain work, it's telling the brain, this is not good. This is not what we want. This is not something that this is not something that's serving us. And so over 30 minutes and 30 plus sessions of this, that's what's truly changing the way that the brain responds to things. Much like if we are driving and there's a curb, right? And the curb tells us we're not going this direction. You need to go a different direction. And sometimes that curb, we hit it and it's not always fun, but it always sends us in the right direction.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

That's a good analogy. So, Sandra, what changes do clients typically notice first when their stress patterns begin to regulate?

Early Wins Clients Notice

SPEAKER_01 8:22

The first thing that typically people will see is that they again, we don't stop all of the triggers, right? Triggers are all around us. So those triggers will still come in. What they will typically see is okay, that wasn't as bad as last time. Or once the trigger happens, even if I have a response to it, I can pull myself out of that. And again, not sit in the spin of rumination and saying, oh, this is, you know, this is going to take me down. But again, saying, okay, this is what's happening, and now I can move out of that. So I heard something this week that was really helpful to me. And it was the idea that your brain cannot be reacting in the amygdala as well as processing at the same time. So when you're in this high stress environment, we need to activate what we're noticing. So it was like five things that you see, and four things that you can feel, and three things that you can hear. And when you get into that processing part of your brain, it kind of turns off that emotional spin that you have. And so neurofeedback helps that process. It helps us to be able to transition really quickly into or more quickly, into I'm in this emotional space, but I need to be in this logical space.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, Sandra, before we close out here, are there lifestyle habits or other tips that you have that pair well with neurofeedback for stress?

Habits, Breathing, And Support Network

SPEAKER_01 9:45

I would say there are so many different things that what like box breathing and again this strategy, this this 543 strategy that counselors will really help you with and that trained professionals will give you as far as different strategies to use. I love those. I love learning those because those are things that we can use in our everyday life to move ourselves along. Now, what we say, why we say those will work even more, they will be even more beneficial, is the brain is in a place to be able to receive those much better if it's in a more regulated state. So we always like to say neurofeedback is going to get that, is that functional work that's gonna get you to be able to use all of these other tools that we can learn from amazing professionals uh and have it be that much more effective. So, and that supplementation is another thing that that is very helpful as well. So again, we don't work in a silo. We know that we need all of the other practitioners that are doing amazing work. And we just like to be able to support all of the work that they're doing through helping the brain to be able to respond faster and regulate more quickly with all of the wonderful tools that other practitioners can teach us.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Oh, it's so insightful, Sandra. Thank you so much for all of this really helpful insight. We appreciate your expertise, and we'll see everyone next time.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

You've been listening to Brainstorm, the Braintopia podcast. If you or someone you love is struggling with symptoms associated with anxiety, ADHD, sleep issues, or focus challenges, neurofeedback may offer a safe, non-invasive path forward. To learn more about Braintopia Neurofeedback Centers and our locations across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, visit BrainTopiaCenters.com or call 972-640-7022. That's BraintopiaCenters.com or 972-640-7022. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.