A few thoughts related your learning from Light Years Ahead:

First, the authors do not take into account the fact that clients may have been pushed too far too fast in their recovery. As you are learning in this Course, many people with brain injury have photosensitivity or sensitivity to many, if not all, types of sensory processing (magnetic energy processing).

The optometrists and other professionals, who use Sytonics and other forms of color therapy, will tell you they have pinned down their understanding of the use of color and its effects. Sure, certain colors and intensities (electrical frequencies) have pretty consistent effects on a non-injured nervous system. For example, blue can make people relax; yes, red can excite them.

However, we have looked at the treatment of color from a processing point of view. Now look at it from a more personal side, an emotional point of view. What can we conclude to be happening to a traumatized person (with sensitivity to light) as they are passively receiving the steady flow of electric magnetic energy through their hypersensitive nervous system?

It really does depend on the person. But, it does logically follow that a person who has been traumatized (by a traumatic brain injury, a stroke, an insult to the brain or brain tumor) and may have sensitivity to sensory processing, would not want to (unknowingly) have all of the loss they have experienced stirred up by exciting their limbic system. (More on the limbic system in Chapter 2).

We are all emotional beings and trying to "fix" the client's sensory processing system by passively feeding the client electro magnetic energy at various frequencies is not all there is to recovery for these people. After all, there has been bleeding and swelling in some of these cases making the client hypersensitive.

Second, In Light Years Ahead I found that many of the people treated were resentful of their recovery. One fellow even committed suicide. We need to let people go at their own pace in their own time. I recall what Antonio Demasio, Ph.D., a renowned Neuroscientist, once said, "We believe that we are THINKING beings that feel, when in fact we are FEELING beings first and thinking beings second." From this comment it is important to note that the professionals in Light Years Ahead are not formally trained as psychotherapists. This may in part account for the clients' uneasiness with their recovery process.

Remember, there is a reason that the altered nervous system does not think or feel well after it has experienced trauma to the nervous system. Neuro-Distress, then, is nature's way to nurture us while we are in recovery by keeping us quiet so we can heal and if we respond appropriately to it. However, if not, the continued stress on the system can cause all types of frightening experiences for the client.

As therapists we do need to implement challenges for our clients. But, we also need to teach the client what they are going through while they are in Neuro-Distress. In this way, we educate them about their disability and it empowers them to understand the Neuro-Distress factor. It can actually change the quality of their lives and their caretakers.