As a coach, your therapist will provide training and suggestions to help you to achieve the desired change and positive feedback, and reinforce (feed-forward) any strategies you discover that are successful in helping you relax your autonomic response system, and reduce anxiety.  Through continuous verbal feedback about your own mental thought patterns and unique emotional processes, as well as through visual and auditory feedback from the computer, you may gain a new self-awareness for self-regulation of the very mental and physical habits which trigger or contribute to unpleasant stress-related symptoms.

           
For example, among clients who experience chronic headaches , EMG biofeedback may help them learn to alter muscle tension in certain areas of the neck and forehead that have been demonstrated to relieve tension-type headaches.  For individuals with chronic anxiety, changes in thinking patterns and maladaptive beliefs may result in a reduction of the very behaviors that support an anxious style.   This type of learning can lead to greater confidence and an improvement in lifestyle.  The client basically learns self-mastery by achieving greater control over thoughts, beliefs, physiological responses and behavior.  Through self-insight and learning, a client may gain a new perspective of the problem, and execute new strategies for positive, lasting change.

           
We will now discuss five physiological processes commonly associated with hyperarousal of the body’s stress-response system include: skeletal muscle tension, blood vessel vasoconstriction (smooth muscle activity), electrodermal activity (sweaty palms), respiration (breathing patterns), and heart rate.  These physiological functions are intimately involved in the emotions of anger, fear, excitement, and arousal.  The overall goal of biofeedback is to recover the body’s normal “idling speed,” homeostasis, balance, and equilibrium, leading to feelings of peace and tranquility.

            Electromyography (EMG): 

           EMG biofeedback is used to monitor muscle contraction.  Essentially, muscle usage results in electrical activity associated with the contractions of muscles. When a muscle contracts, it shortens its bundles of muscle fibers in attempt to pull its two anchor points together.  Muscle fibers become stimulated into action by “motor units,” electrical signals in the nervous system.  The amount of electrical stimulation corresponds to the sum of activity in the muscle fibers.  Electrical activity in the muscles can be sensed with sensor electrodes.  Biofeedback can be useful for treating a variety of disorders resulting from chronic muscle tension.  Chronic muscle tension can result from poor posture, stress, trauma, or certain patterns of thinking.  Such tension can lead to increased firing of the muscles, often resulting in chronic muscle activity and tension.  Think of the end of the day tension headache from being “locked” in a traffic jam, or “bracing for a stressful event, each having clenched fists and tightened muscles.   Through EMG awareness, a client can observe this conditioned response and learn how to release the tendency to “tense up” under stress. 

2. Peripheral temperature: Another way to measure physiological response to anxious thoughts and emotions is through observing hand and feet temperature.  Peripheral temperature biofeedback monitors subtle changes in skin temperature, which result from constricting or dilating smooth muscles surrounding the diameter of peripheral blood vessels to the extremities.  This procedure monitors temperature changes that result from the warm blood being passed through the blood vessels to the hands and feet.  In other words, “warm hands, warm heart” is really, “warm hands, relaxed body.”  Cold hands describe the physiological state of constricted blood vessels resulting from the emotions of fear, anxiety, or general feelings of uptightness.  Migraine headaches often co-occur with cold hands.  Cold extremities can also have other causes including poor circulation (e.g., Reynaud’s disease, low thyroid, blood clots, carpal tunnel, etc.), but you may still benefit from the procedures involved in warming hands and feet. 

3. Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) or Skin Conductance Activity:  The skin contains multiple sweat glands which respond to such emotions as fear and anxiety by excreting sweat, which directly increases conductance of electrical impulses to the outer surfaces of the skin.  Like water, sweat also conducts electricity, but has less is less resistance to electricity as conductive salts are also excreted with sweat.  Thus, sweaty skin is less resistant to electricity than dry skin.  GSR biofeedback measures the amount of electrical impulses on the surface skin of two fingers, the direct result of increased sweat gland activity.  GSR biofeedback is well known as a direct measure of anxiety.  For example, an individual may associate anxiety with “sweaty palms or clammy hands,” “breaking out in a cold sweat,” or “sweating bullets.”  In contrast, a perception of reduced anxiety would yield the phrase, “No sweat.”  An example of a GSR response under anxiety would be sweaty palms at a job interview, or anticipation anxiety.

4. Heart Rate: For many individuals, heart rate tends to increase with anxiety.  Through measuring precise heart rate, and providing spectral analysis, we can train heart rate variability.  Through heart rate biofeedback, we can measure the amount of sympathetic, parasympathetic and combined activity that influences a client’s heart rate.