CONDITIONS | MY STRUGGLING KIDS

Neurofeedback for Anxiety in Children, Los Angeles & Pasadena

Everyone experiences a degree of anxiety at some point in their life, children included. However, when these feelings last longer than they should, it’s a sign of anxiety disorder. Anxiety as a disorder can affect many people, including children, and be traced to various sources.

If your child is struggling with anxiety, you need the help of excellent therapists like those at Vital Brain Health. We focus on providing optimal care to children in order to help them succeed.

AT A GLANCE

Neurofeedback is a drug-free, non-invasive brain training. At Vital Brain Health, qEEG brain mapping guides real-time feedback that teaches a child’s overactive stress and emotional networks to calm down and coordinate with cognitive control areas, easing childhood anxiety.

What Is Anxiety?

Childhood anxiety disorders are characterized by an uncommon amount of anxiety in children. This can cause them to develop extreme avoidance tactics, bigger emotional reactions, and show an increased awareness of danger. These feelings sometimes manifest physical responses in the child as well. Anxiety can occur both in young children and in adolescents.

At Vital Brain Health, we are dedicated to providing optimal care to each person who visits our practice. We understand the challenges children and teens face when dealing with anxiety, and we provide them optimal therapies with no medication or invasive procedures.

If you’re looking for therapies that can help your child overcome their challenges and give them the tools they need to deal with anxiety, contact Vital Brain Health today.

What Symptoms are Associated With Anxiety?

Red branching network on black background, resembling interconnected lines and nodes.

Symptoms of anxiety can vary in type and severity. Some of the symptoms that benefit from an evaluation at Vital Brain Health include:

Heightened sense of worry

More prone to crying

Trouble sleeping

Frequent nightmares

Easily angered

Difficulties focusing

Increased or decreased appetite

School refusal

Frequent bathroom trips

Many parents want more detail before they book a first visit, so our clinicians took a closer look at whether neurofeedback helps a child with anxiety, walking through what the training looks like for kids and what families can realistically expect.

Common Risk Factors Linked to Anxiety in Children

Understanding the potential risk factors of anxiety can help you get the support your child needs. Anxiety is often the result of one of a variety of factors:

The Loss of Someone Close

The death of a close friend, pet, or family member can trigger anxiety disorders, especially if that death was sudden or traumatic.

Frequent Moves

Frequently moving to new homes or new schools can create feelings of instability in the child’s surroundings that can lead to anxiety.

Difficulties at Home

Difficulties with getting enough food, parents who frequently fight, divorce, or abuse are all severely traumatic events that can trigger anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other serious related conditions in children.

Bullying

Children who are the frequent target of bullying will often develop anxiety and other related disorders.

If your child struggles with anxiety, Vital Brain Health offers gentle, medication-free neurofeedback that helps their brain learn calmer, more balanced patterns. We care for children and teens in Los Angeles, Pasadena, and beyond.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Vital Brain Health help with anxiety?

Our anxiety protocols use Neurofeedback 3.0 to help overactive emotional and stress response “rooms” in your brain mansion learn to calm down and coordinate better with cognitive control areas. Through our visual feedback system, these brain networks learn to communicate on more balanced frequency channels, developing new nerve connections during sleep that lead to reduced worry, better emotional regulation, and improved stress management in daily life.
How can Vital Brain Health help with anxiety?

Our support for people with anxiety addresses the specific brain communication patterns that create and maintain anxious responses, helping individuals experiencing anxiety develop more balanced emotional regulation and stress management capabilities. We help overactive emotional processing areas learn to modulate their intensity and communicate more appropriately with cognitive control systems in individuals with anxiety. We then strengthen the brain’s ability to regulate anxious thoughts and emotional responses in individuals with anxiety disorders.
How does a child with anxiety act?

Children with anxiety get stuck on high-alert, over-communicating threat signals to other areas in the brain. This dominates communication channels and overwhelms other systems. This leads to issues with cognitive control, specifically in how children regulate or calm their emotions.
How do you identify anxiety disorders?
Using our 19-room mansion model, individuals with anxiety typically experience specific communication patterns:

Emotional processing suite may be stuck on high-alert frequency channels in people with anxiety

Stress response systems might be over-communicating with other brain areas in individuals with anxiety disorders

Cognitive control rooms may struggle to regulate emotional responses in people experiencing anxiety

Executive function areas might have difficulty overriding anxious thoughts in individuals with anxiety.
Is neurofeedback safe for children? Are there side effects?

Yes. Neurofeedback is non-invasive and drug-free, which is a big part of why parents choose it. Nothing enters your child’s brain: the sensors only read brain activity, they do not send anything in. Some children notice temporary tiredness after early sessions as the brain adjusts to the training, and that usually fades quickly. There are no medications and no invasive procedures at any point.
Can my child's anxiety support be done remotely?

Yes. Vital Brain Health runs nationwide remote programs with home training equipment and clinician oversight, so families outside the Los Angeles and Pasadena area can train from home. Your child follows the same qEEG-guided plan they would receive in our office, and our team monitors progress and adjusts the training along the way.

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REFERENCES

1. Gruzelier, John H. “EEG-Neurofeedback for Optimising Performance. I: A Review of Cognitive and Affective Outcome in Healthy Participants.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, vol. 44, 2014, pp. 124-141.
2. Micoulaud-Franchi, Jean-Arthur, et al. “Electroencephalographic Neurofeedback: Level of Evidence in Mental and Brain Disorders and Suggestions for Good Clinical Practice.” Neurophysiologie Clinique, vol. 45, no. 6, 2015, pp. 423-433.
3. Micoulaud-Franchi, Jean-Arthur, et al. “EEG Neurofeedback for Anxiety Disorders and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders: A Blueprint for a Promising Brain-Based Therapy.” Current Psychiatry Reports, vol. 23, no. 12, 2021, pp. 1-15.