Mentoring

A good mentor is critical to your clinical success in neurofeedback.  There's so much new information given in a course, it's not possible to take it all in. When you leave a course - even a really good one, you typically end up with more questions than you started with.  You're going to want help with the little "how to's" and the big things - protocol and clinical decisions.  Getting good help can answer all kinds of questions:

• What do you look at on the screen?
• What does the EEG mean?
• What about these ratios?
• How do you tell if the client is learning?
• What do I do when my client isn't responding?
• I have a difficult client.  Where should I start?  

A good mentor makes it easier to get started.  It helps your practice or institution become productive much faster. We've seen many clinicians go through difficult times because the mentor they chose was way over their head, or just couldn't make it simple enough. Many were very bright people who thought it was their fault. It wasn't.

Why the mistakes? 
Well, it's common to want to pick someone who is close by, or to pick someone who knows a lot more than you or seems to have built a good clinical practice.  But teaching neurofeedback isn't that easy. Experienced clinicians quickly forget that they started really basic.  They may have gone through several stages of learning and now combine several different approaches.  But you still don't know what you're doing, and trying to learn from someone discussing several approaches is very difficult.  We're sharing this because we've seen this problem numerous times.  

Our recommendation
Find the best teacher/mentor with whom you are compatible.  He/she should have the same training and the same instrument as you to start out with.   It doesn't matter if the mentor lives across the country.  Most experienced clinicians in the field didn't have anyone close by when they started.  They used the phone and it worked.  The mentor should help you learn to think neurofeedback. That's the challenge.  You can always find someone local to help you learn which keys to push on the equipment. Picking a good mentor is a different matter.  It makes a huge difference in your success. 

Finding who that is takes some effort. Good mentoring is something we can help you with, because it's a critical part of building a successful practice more quickly.