This is a message for all ADD/ADHD people who are using Brain EV.
Here is a quote that may interest you....
"In a brain that is functioning normally, theta waves are dominant only when a person is drowsy or on the edge of sleep, the dreamy place called the hypnogogic state. [Sometimes] the brain's regulatory apparatus is thrown out of whack. Theta waves spread across the brain, and beta waves, the higher frequencies, which construct our waking consciousness and sour senses and motor skills, are subsumed by the lower [= theta] frequency. Comas [....] are at the severe end of "too much theta', while head injury falls somewhere in the middle, and attention deficit disorder is at the least severe end of the spectrum."

Now here is the crunch. If you read the posts written by ADD/ADHD people, they claim that their ADD/ADHD plays absolute havoc with their lives. Also the lives of loved ones get pretty messed up. I have read posts on this forum by ADD/ADHD individuals who claim they are desperate to remedy their problem. Yet I have asked each and every ADD/ADHD person I have noticed on this forum to provide regular feedback - daily feedback would be best. Do they do this? Have a look at the forum......

I am not a brainwave specialist (but I am reading everything I can find about the subject), and I know that Brain Ev holds the key to allieviating, if not solving all sorts of problems from ADD/ADHD, insomnia (my problem), depression, anxiety etc etc. However we cannot make any significant progress in giving ADD/ADHD people concrete advice on how best to use the program, if you guys don't provide regular feedback. We need to know what happens to an ADD/ADHD brain at levels 1 and 2 where lots of alpha is coming in - do you wake up? how do you feel? what is going on in that cranium of yours? Likewise when you hit the higher levels of 4, 5 and 6 with lots of theta - ever deepening theta and delta, what on earth happens to a brain "stuck" in theta in a normal waking state. Does ADD/ADHD get worse, does it improve?

I know that I can really relate to the quotation I put in above. I do not suffer from ADD/ADHD, for me it is/was insomnia, circular thoughts ('circular' sounds like a pretty "stuck" brainwave frequency to me), anxiety that ruined my waking day. I identify with the above text because, for me, it is as if Brain Ev hit a reset button in my head. One session at level 1 and I was calm, relaxed, unflappable and a super sleeper. So Brain Ev works if you are observant enough to know what is going on and when. The Brain Ev reset "threw my brainwave profile back into whack" to adapt the quote above.

So, I throw down the gauntlet.
I would love to work with ADD/ADHD people here on the forum (as a user, not as a therapist). I would create a simple form that you fill in every day. We could then collect data to create an ever larger database. At a minimum we could then determine which levels help most with ADD/ADHD.

You commitment would be to have a genuine commitment to self-monitor, and share these results, AND to do Brain Ev to the letter. That means six days on, one day off for four weeks, then change up a level. No messers, no fakers - you will just muddy the data. You all claim that you don't have self-discipline to stick to programs or take notes. I would think that living with ADD/ADHD would make this small contribution (30 mins Brain Ev and filling in a form) an effort that may be worthwhile. Or not. At least you would know Brain Ev does/doesn't help ADD/ADHD.

Of course this isn't my forum.
We will have to wait and see what Karl, Tiffany and the big bosses say.
If they agree, I'm in.
If you suffer from ADD/ADHD, then write a post below. For this to be effective, we need several people. The more the better.

Here is to resetting your brain for the better today and every day, if necessary!
In anticipation of some response, Pure Bliss

Pure Bliss, I know and love you both on and off the forum, but....
Providing regular feedback is more difficult than you can imagine for a person dealing with ADD/ADHD. I know I have attempted various forms of journaling most of my life, sometimes as required portions of treatment programs. I can usually manage it for several days to several weeks, but beyond that it becomes impossible. I don't know why, but it never happens, no matter how much I want it to.
As I have always used routines to help keep me on track. Going back to a very well articulated post by JeDale about working storage memory, routines are a way I can attempt to put things into long term memory so I don't lose bits and pieces along the way. Now why I haven't been able to put journaling into that kind of a routine, I can't say. I will pick up my notebook at the proper time, but can't think of anything to write in it. The same thing happens here in a way. I can come to the forum but as far as posting anything my mind will often go blank.
Currently I have a many other causes of interference. My best friend died suddenly last week and her funeral is this Saturday. The holidays are here and I am trying like mad to figure out how to see my sons, whether I can afford the gifts I would like to give and if not, what else is there to give. My on-again/off-again SO is on again, but he is going through a bought of depression, and I am trying to help him. Plus my work schedule has gone from being quite regular to being totally chaotic. Starting and ending at different times on different days with no rhyme or reason to be found. All of these things combined are making my life quite challenging and I thank Brain Ev for the fact I am not constantly stressing out or forgetting which days I work or what time to go in on the days I do work.
Honestly, if you could create a form to fill in I know it would help me quite a bit in providing regular feedback, though once Christmas is over I think I will have an easier time getting my own posts up on a regular basis. As far as whether Brain Ev is helping with my ADHD, I have been using the self-quizzes on Psych Central which have been showing a steady improvement. I look forward to seeing what you produce as far as a form to fill out.
Blessings
Dreamer
PS, I really think you should be compensated for all you do on the forum. Just my opinion.

Hi there,

Up front, I would like to point out that A.D.D and A.D.H.D are DIFFERENT conditions, but for the sake of brevity I will short hand both of them as simply ADD/ADHD.

I really appreciate Pure Bliss's enthusiasm and dedication about building this database and I certainly want to contribute to the effort to see what data comes out and where the research goes.

Having said this, I do feel that all the "go figure" comments about regular journaling and feedback are unfairly critical, misinformed and out of line. There also seems to be a very subtle insinuation that the pain and suffering that we ADD/ADHD people experience in our lives (not to mention the pain and suffering in the lives of the people that we share our lives with) is somehow exaggerated or untrue, or that we are uncommitted to finding solutions to our own plight, simply because we are not posting regular journal entries or feedback in this forum. 

I think Bliss meant well with her post and did not intend to suggest anything derogatory, but allow me to set the record straight:  The pain and suffering is REAL, and this is not simply a matter of "get your lazy ADD/ADHD butt into gear and get journaling!".

Don't assume that simply because an ADD/ADHD person can write "highly articulate, lengthy posts" (like this one) that this now automatically means that journaling is now as easy to do as it would be for a "normal" person. 

Remember, you only see the end result, which is the finished post itself. You don't see what was happening behind the scenes while it was being written.

It has taken me OVER THREE AND A HALF HOURS to write what you have read up to this very sentence, and my opening post took MUCH LONGER than that - almost the WHOLE DAY. I know about this because I made a point of timing myself.  Emails at work that should take me a few minutes to knock up end up taking half an hour or more to complete, and I am not talking about "multitasking" here either - I am talking about doing nothing else but the task at hand.       

Back at school, I once got a "F" symbol for a Science test which was written in a 45 minute period. My parents and teachers reckoned that I was butt lazy and making excuses for myself. As an experiment - I went home that very afternoon and wrote the same test again - IN MY OWN TIME - without touching a book or looking up any answers. It took me around 2-3 hours to REWRITE THE SAME TEST, and when the teacher marked that test just to humour me, I scored a "B+". Ladies and gents, I am not making this up and I am not exaggerating.   

Journaling uses many of the same cognitive processing and data retrieval mechanisms that writing a test does. With the exception of rudimentary information that is directly available or recorded (such as the start and end time in a time-pressured exam or test) information in the form of memories occur as part of sequences of events or bits and pieces of data that are pegged, linked or associated with one another along a "time track".

The reason that I personally write articulate, lengthy posts is because my mind derails quite often and I am trying to create a hard copy alternative for working memory that I don't have. In other words, I am creating a "map" of sorts - so that when my mind gives me a blue screen or an IQ failure - I can use the hard copy “map” to get back on track. Much of the data that I am working with (for example facts, numbers, images, symbols, memories of events, thoughts, experiences, energy levels, somatic imprints, etc.) return to me distorted, out of time sequence and with polarized emotions that are disproportionate to the data that they are attached to.

Even within the 30 minute BrainEV session, my mind is a quagmire of vast amounts of mental static consisting of thoughts, emotions, symbols, images and imprints from multiple time tracks that I often cannot make sense of, and all of this is tangled and rolled up into opaque, untidy clumps or balls of mental fuzz surrounded by large sections of memory "black outs" or blank spaces. This phenomenon is particularly observable in cases of past trauma where the mind deliberately suppresses memories in order to suppress the painful emotions that come with them.

Day-to-day life for an ADD/ADHD person is emotionally VERY traumatic, so memory suppression happening right there as well, but this is a phenomenon that is mutually exclusive from ADD/ADHD so it is very easy to misread or misdiagnose what is happening. 

I do believe that what I experience is not unique only to me. When any person with ADD/ADHD tries to record their experiences in a journal, they are actually trying to decrypt garbled data being returned from their minds into a form that is accurate and coherent for THEM to understand so that they can find a way of relaying it to YOU in a way that YOU will understand. Attached to all of that disjointed content will be emotions that are powerful and amplified and so it becomes difficult for the ADD/ADHD person to get to the point that they are recalling accurate information within the correct context. Thus, what they record in their journals is usually an inaccurate and misleading account of what *actually* took place, and this has got absolutely nothing to do with them.

Yet … YET ….this does NOT now suddenly mean that A.D.D/A.D.H.D is “all in the mind” and that it is not real. What I am saying here is that the A.D.D. person DOES have impaired cognitive faculties but they often DO NOT have the ability to quantify, express or “self-diagnose” in clear words the exact nature of what they feel or experience.

You have no idea how difficult it has been for me to get to the point where I can actually express myself the way that I do in my posts. I have written thousands of pages of garbled journal ramblings in the past, and together with the many articles and books I have read, I have eventually come up with a way to accurately express what happens in my own mind - and what could be happening in the minds of many ADD/ADHD people out there. Even so, many ADD/ADHD-ers themselves will take what they write at the spur of the moment in their journals with a pinch of salt because of the volatile frame of mind that they were in at the time of writing it. Remember also that they are in constant emotional flux, and this within itself dramatically alters the tone and hue of the memories that they have created and are currently creating.

There is something much deeper that happens with these journal entries. I don't know how familiar you are with the principles of NLP and with the Law of Attraction, but if you focus on ANY memories or thoughts for long enough (like in the case of a "stuck record" that repeatedly rears its head) - ESPECIALLY IF THOSE MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS HAVE POWERFUL EMOTIONS ATTACHED TO THEM - you will literally begin to attract other emotions, thoughts and eventually physical events and people that are of likeness. In other words, what you postulate or ramble on about in your journal entries might have started out as warped or out of context - but it eventually becomes "true" because you are focusing on it so much. Later on, you will form warped memories on top of other warped memories and the situation just escalates out of control.  The highly emotive mind of an ADD/ADHD person is highly auto-suggestible and impressionable because it has no solid ground from which to draw perspective. You may even read other people's journal entries and unwittingly begin to create them in your own mind as your own reality. 

Journal entries are only useful if they are based on memories that are accurate and clear to begin with, and are recalled in a way that preserves the accuracy, context and clarity. Does this happen in an ADD/ADHD mind? Indeed, CAN it happen? With respects, but I think that the answer is a resounding NO.

You will notice that my own level I "journal" entries in this forum were VERY succinct and to the point. That is because I was focusing on ONLY recording change as it occurs with a very small group of VERY specific criteria. I was trying to avoid the many pitfalls that I have mentioned above.
To conclude, I think that a FORM which consists of specific questions and criteria which are clear, unambiguous and have been screened and approved by trained professionals will be FAR more effective than any journal entry can ever be. These questions must be asked according to strict protocols and must not be asked in a way that "leads" the impressionable ADD/ADHD mind into forming ulterior conclusions.

Much of the so-called "evidence" out there that I am personally aware of about ADD and Brain Entrainment is largely subjective and anecdotal. I think by using a form together with proper academic research methodologies will achieve far better responses - and far more meaningful results - than by simply trying to make all of us ADD/ADHD people feel guilty about not completing daily journals.

P.S. the time taken to write this post was 6 HOURS and 28 MINUTES.

Jason