Jennifer Willemsen - NewMind Journey

Speakers: Jennifer Willemsen, LMFT, Los Angeles, CA

Jennifer Willemsen, LMFT: My name is Jennifer Willemsen. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist located in Los Angeles, California. My practice primarily helps people who are affected by ADHD and anxiety and panic disorders.

Jennifer Willemsen, LMFT: I found NewMind when I was looking for alternative ways to help treat ADHD and anxiety. I had clients who their anxiety was so debilitating that just coming to sessions and talking about it was creating panic in of itself. So I reached out and started looking at alternative options of how to help my clients with ADHD focus. How to help my clients with anxiety their systems to become more regulated, so they could actually address things that were causing the anxiety. I chose NewMind after a lot of research just because talking to Dr Soutar and Jason at NewMind they were so supportive, the level of help, and the course that you take with it. It was just a really comprehensive way to incorporate it and make me feel like I was really knowledgeable, when I actually was ready to start implementing it with my clients. As opposed to just kind of being given equipment and figure it out yourself. It was very the resources were very helpful and they continue to be helpful. So it was a really good choice for me not knowing much about it when I got into it

Jennifer Willemsen, LMFT: I've seen varying degrees of results and success with my clients using NewMind. Depending on what they're coming in for, most of my clients have all felt some sort of relief in their symptoms. And the most overriding thing that most people report to experiencing is just a greater awareness. A greater awareness of what's going on in the moment, of how they're reacting to their triggers. And with that awareness being able to have healthier responses to things that have been difficult for them in the past. The level of emotional regulation is also something that most of my clients experience improvements with. Being able to regulate their emotions, being able to then again respond more appropriately to external stimuli. And see things in a more realistic way as opposed to a clouded way that their anxiety or their ADHD or whatever was kind of fogging them and making them see a situation one sided that they're able to. It opens them up to be able to see situations from different angles and therefore have better responses and feel more relaxed and calm and in control.

Jennifer Willemsen, LMFT: The home training portion of NewMind has opened up my practice to a lot more people being able to do neurofeedback. Neurofeedback is a time constraint and especially living in Los Angeles, the traffic getting to and from offices in between work school, whatever clients may have going in their days can be challenging and quite time consuming. So offering the home training not only allows me to provide the services for my clients at discounted rates to make it more affordable, but it also makes it more feasible in terms of time for them to be able to do it. Because they're able to train whenever it's convenient for them at their home and then check in with me virtually, which alleviates a lot of the pressure of having to train two or three times a week, it makes that much more manageable. And like I said, doing it at home allows me to cut the cost of it a little bit, which makes it more affordable for more people. So it's really opened up the amount of people and things that I can help with

Jennifer Willemsen, LMFT: Neurofeedback in general is a training system that helps people gain relief from symptoms by regulating the way the frequencies in their brain are firing. NewMind has an approach that is great and it's very individualized for clients, for each and for each individual client. It's not a cookie cutter way of doing neurofeedback. The brain maps really help to guide the treatment as do the self assessments that the clients do in conjunction with the maps. They really help to guide and individualize the treatments. So clients are getting the best benefits for whatever their specific symptoms and makeup is. The support and the resources that NewMind provides for clinicians along the way is so valuable. It helps to have the backup and when you have questions to know there's people there that will help support either with technology or even on the clinical side of things. I found it so so resourceful and so useful. I would definitely recommend, if colleagues wanted to look into neurofeedback, I would recommend NewMind just because of the comprehensive format they provide for clinicians, to be able to take the courses, and have the hands on training, and then have the hands on follow up support as needed. I've been with NewMind for well over five years now and there are times now even when I have a clinical or a tech problem and I call and I get the support and help I need right away which is so so so invaluable as a super busy clinician who otherwise wouldn't have the time to figure out how to fix some of these things on my own. So I would definitely recommend anybody who's looking into neurofeedback. The support you get here, if you're looking to do it in a very ethical way, the support you get and the training you get is really, really valuable to make you feel really competent and being able to provide neurofeedback to clients in a really comprehensive way.