The brain is a complex system with many different aspects, and one of its most remarkable properties is its ability to change with repeated opportunities to learn. It is this skill that biofeedback utilizes to improve quality of life in those who seek to improve their mental and emotional health. Biofeedbackis especially beneficial in providing autism help for children at a time when the foundation and skills they learn can drastically impact their life.

What is Biofeedback?

Biofeedback is a non-invasive, safe, and effective therapy that teaches you how to relax and regulate the body’s physiological response to stress.

Many body functions are associated with your emotional state, including heart rate, sweating, and skin temperature. While the sympathetic nervous system typically regulates the control of these functions, imbalanced self-regulation can cause you to enter a chronically hyperactive state, lending itself to multiple problems.

Through just six sessions with a biofeedback specialist, you can master relaxation techniques and learn how to integrate these new skills into your everyday life.This provides children with autism the skills they need to improve their social skills and better control their emotions.

How Biofeedback Helps Children with Autism

Children with autism often struggle with social skills such as maintaining eye contact and communicating wants and needs. These communication problems may then manifest as behavioral problems. It’s estimated that 1 in 44 children in the United States has autism, with many different subtypes of autism and ways in which it manifests. This is because autism is a spectrum disorder, so every child with autism has different strengths and weaknesses.

Biofeedback is recommended for those struggling with stress, anxiety, panic attacks, anger, frustration, and insomnia. Children with autism may find that they struggle in many of these areas, sometimes due to autism symptoms or because of the results of autism symptoms, such as anger from communication problems.

Biofeedback counseling is appealing for autism because of the spectrum nature of autism. Medication is often construed as a one-size-fits-all approach, but every child with autism exhibits different strengths and weaknesses. With biofeedback behavioral therapy, sessions are personalized to the child to focus on their areas that need extra attention.

Biofeedback counseling offers help for children with autism that manifests as:

• better ability to tolerate changes
• less emotional outbursts
• reduced anxiety
• clearer speech patterns
• more appropriate responses to parent and teacher requests
• increased socialization
• improved focus
• initiating touch and contact

Compared to medication, which only offers a solution so long as it is taken, biofeedback behavioral therapy provides a long-term solution that can improve their quality of life. This is because biofeedback retrains the brain to develop new patterns and habits that last long after the sessions have ended.Not only that, but children with autism learn valuable skills and relaxation techniques that help them make a noticeable improvement in their day-to-day behaviors.

In addition, there are online options for biofeedback therapy, making it easier for individuals to make their sessions. Children with autism often find comfort in completing their sessions from home because they get to complete them in a location that they are familiar with, providing an extra level of comfort.

With biofeedback therapy, a biofeedback specialist will teach children with autism valuable skills that they can use for the rest of their lives. If you are interested in how biofeedback can help someone you know, give us a call at (650) 215-6840 for more information.

Sources

[1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disorders-asd

[2] https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism

[3] https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/biofeedback/about/pac-20384664