How Brain Mapping Is Changing The Game For Mental Health With Angie Noack and Rachel Ragsdale

Discussions on mental health are increasingly becoming more open and destigmatized. With this, people’s knowledge of what they can do for their mental wellbeing increases. Here to talk about a more direct and biological solution for mental health issues are Angie Noack, VP of Business Development, and Rachel Ragsdale, founder of BrainCode Centers. In this episode, they sit down with host Stephen Jaye to walk us through their neurological methods that involve brain mapping, neurofeedback, qEEG, and more. They talk about attacking the root cause and giving you a chance to treat the underlying issues directly in the brain. Take this time to learn more about this novel approach by tuning in.

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How Brain Mapping Is Changing The Game For Mental Health With Angie Noack and Rachel Ragsdale

Those of you who have been reading some of my previous episodes know that I like to talk quite frequently about mental health. It is a major part of the human experience that tragically until relatively has largely been ignored. I think the attitude used to be suck-it-up and do your job and not deal with whatever is bugging you on the inside or whatever’s going on with whatever’s wrong.

That may lead to an existence that gets the job done. Sucking it up does not lead to a very happy existence. I love to hear stories about people who are taking new approaches and trying to help people out with mental health. My guests are Rachel Ragsdale and Angie Noack from Braincode Centers. Welcome to the program.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you so much. We’re excited to be here.

Thank you so much for coming onto this show. The first thing I want to know is Braincoad Centers use a technology called Braincode Mapping. Can you explain to our audience who may be curious about different aspects of mental health and how we can go about improving our mental health? How does this Braincode Mapping process work?

I’ll start us off here. I love that question, and I know Angie also loves that question because that is truly what our company thrives on is looking at the root cause of what’s going on. Very much so classically and mental health, the two main things that people seek out when they’re not feeling well are prescription medications or counseling. Both of those two are good things that you can get involved in. There are no problems with either of them, but we do believe firmly that misses the why, and it misses the root of what’s going on.

We look at the organ that we’re treating, and we do that through that qEEG Brain Map that you were referring to. It tells us where there are areas of under or overactivity, which we know clinically are going to produce symptoms for people. That is where we start. That is the baseline that gives us the direction to everything that we do from a treatment standpoint.

I apologized when I introduced you. I forgot to introduce your specific roles. Rachel, I know you’re the cofounder of the organization and Angie, I know you’re the Vice President of Business Development. Please feel free to answer whatever questions I follow up with, whatever pertains accurately to your specific roles with this organization.

This Braincode Map you’re saying can explain some of the things that a lot of people observe. What I mean is everything from the obvious schizophrenia, the ones that are diagnosed, to the people who more generically say, “I have anxiety, I have trouble focusing sometimes.” All types of ailments that people talk about.

We treat anything from anxiety, depression, ABB, bipolar, trauma, PTSD, brain injuries and sleep issues. I would say more common. Some of the top things that we treat are the things that I mentioned but what Rachel was saying, rather than treating these mental health issues with synthetic substances, medication and things like that or even talk therapy, which we believe in.

Rachel and I both have licenses in clinical mental health. We believe in looking at the organ and treating the underlying issue rather than masking it with medication. We believe there’s a time and a place for medication, but for a lot of people, neurofeedback is an alternative route to solving what they’re dealing with for a long-term answer versus a short-term solution.

In neurofeedback, can you explain how that whole process works because that’s after the mapping is done?

I will go into that. I’m going to give a briefer overview. We do 45-minute consultations, completely free to anyone, as neurofeedback is not necessarily something that’s a super quick explanation, but it is operant conditioning of the brain. We know that operating conditioning is reward-based training. If you have a puppy, we’re not going to try to train a puppy to sit without treats. We’re going to do it with some type of reward. You tell it to sit, and you give it a treat. It’s going to repeat that behavior because it wants the reward.

I have people ask me all the time, “What are the brain treats?” So Brain treats are the reward that we’re giving the brain while they’re training are visual, auditory and tactile. People come in and they have electrodes on their heads. Is there any electrical stimulus going into the brain? Through a series of reward stimuli, we’re showing the brain like a mirror, what it’s doing well, what it can be doing better, and changing those neurological patterns. Rather than putting something synthetic in, we’re teaching the brain to do it better on its own.

With this reward feedback, how would this impact someone that’s suffering from anxiety, and it feels like every little input overwhelms me, ”There was an election on the other side of the country, and somehow I’m still anxious about it type of thing?”

Anxiety is probably the number one thing that we treat day in and day out. That’s a reflection of our culture. Our culture is stressed out and anxious. We are so overstimulated with technology all the time. Anxiety can come from about 50 different patterns in the brain. A common pattern that we see is the overproduction of fast-wave activity, which is beta and high beta, which are the two fastest brainwaves.

When our brain is utilizing all of its electrical energy in fast, we don’t have anything leftover for slow. That’s why people feel like, “My brain is racing all the time. It’s buzzing. I can never slow down.” You get the sematic symptomology of anxiety, chest tightness, brain racing, physical tension, not sleeping or stomach issues. A lot of people experience a sensitive stomach.

That’s a lot of times what we see. In Layman’s terms, the protocols that we’re going to create for a brain like that are to inhibit that fast-wave activity, teach the brain to produce less of that, and teach it to produce more flow. It’s not to make the brain slow, but so that the brain has flexibility. It’s able to access that fast but also to be able to access that flow, giving their brain the ability to utilize what it needs when it needs it.

One of the things I’m curious about is you talked about this idea of getting down to the root of the problem. Some people might hear that and think the root of the problem is what you’ll hear in talk therapy will oftentimes go back to something from your childhood or people will talk about some issue with our culture.

In our culture, you alluded to being one of the things responsible for why some of our brains can’t go slow. We can’t sit down and rest or the neurological equivalent of sitting down and rest. How does the feedback training relate to things like talk therapy or meditation, which is becoming an increasingly popular way for people to get into that slow mode into their brain?

The analogy that I like to give on that one is everything from supplementation, exercise, yoga and counseling. Those are all amazing software that we can upload or get involved in for a practical lifestyle. However, if you are trying to do all of these software updates on hardware that is not functioning properly or optimally, you’re very much going to reach plateaus with that. Neurofeedback, in essence, works more as the software update or hard drive update. The software that you’re trying to put on that new hard drive can be functional for you.

We look at it as that piece of the puzzle. We oftentimes refer out to counselors who work right alongside other doctors, therapists, encourage people to work with their nutritionists that are functional medicine folks. We have a holistic approach from a neuro standpoint and a health standpoint. We are that brain piece of the puzzle.

It’s different pieces of the puzzle. What you’d say is that a lot of people are trying to treat their mental health issues and first of all, I want to point out it’s fantastic that we’re even paying attention to this now compared to where we were several years ago. We’re seeing a therapist even was seen as a sign of weakness, failure or something like that.

It’s great that even to this point where people are starting to actively acknowledge mental health issues as what they are, as opposed to some deficiency of something else. What I’m wondering is people who are working only with yoga meditation, something like that, is there something that’s fighting against themselves, parts of their brain are being over or not active enough?

I want to make sure I understand your question there. There are a lot of people that will say, “I have been practicing yoga for the last decade. It helps me manage my stress and anxiety.” We look more at that keyword manage and we challenge it with, “What if you didn’t have to manage it? What if you got to heal it, get better from it and have a brain that’s strong enough to combat it.” That’s what we stand on our pillars that we truly believe that you are able to change the brain and completely transform your life.

We’ve made pretty bold statements in our company saying, “I truly believe that you don’t have to have anxiety. You don’t have to suffer from depression.” Your brain is capable as it’s capable of relearning how to walk after an accident or learning a new language at the age of 30. You are more than capable of changing the way that your brain fires and thus changing any diagnoses or symptomology that you feel like you’re having to manage on a day-to-day basis.

I think your answer was a lot more clear than my question was when you answered that. That’s like we’re trying to do as opposed to managing it as opposed to saying, “I’m managing it.” When I think of managing things, some people choose way more destructive ways to manage their problems, such as alcohol, booze, self-medication of other kinds.

The possibly most destructive one that we all have is that living a lifestyle where you’re constantly distracting yourself every time you have ten seconds of spare time. You might even get to the point where you’re thinking about something, you immediately shove your phone in front of your face, or you have to schedule out every fifteen minutes of every single day.

I’m glad to hear there are more approaches to some of these issues and some of these common. As you said, “Anxiety is your number one.” What I’m wondering is, you have a couple of different Braincode Center locations, what is the impact that you’re seeing on your patients as well as the community, as a whole, the area around you that you serve?

I would say in the current times, we’ve now been doing this and I’ve been in the field now for almost a little over a decade, which makes me feel aged there if I think about it. There are a couple of things that come to mind. Number one, I love that more people are starting to also talk about mental health. I would say, when I first started in this field as a little old intern, nobody knew what neurofeedback was.

Nobody had heard about biofeedback. Now, if you lined ten people up, maybe half of them have at least heard of it. I think Angie would also agree with us that our culture is moving towards an answer like, “I would like an answer of what’s going on and maybe I don’t want to take a pill. I want to figure out how I can have more of a functional approach to this.” That’s one movement that I’ve noticed.

The second movement is from a kid standpoint. This was pre-COVID-19 loveliness and all the fun stuff that we can talk about on that year for a second, but there is a true pandemic with social media phone addiction. The more complex brain maps that we have seen, I’d say, have occurred over the past several years. There’s a significant increase in child and teen suicide and now is even for the existing COVID-19. It’s now manifested even more. We’ve gotten to see that like quantitatively, our brain maps, you can tell that kids are suffering. There is a pretty significant impact on what’s going on from a culture standpoint, from a generational look at it.

The third thing that comes to mind is COVID-19. Unfortunately, we’re in the mental health business, people aren’t doing well and it’s good for our business. We are very busy. We see hundreds of patients a week at all of our clinics. We’re so glad that we can be a resource and a light. Hopefully, a place where people can come, feel safe and heal from their suffering. Angie and I have done some traumatic consults.

People aren’t doing well for a number of different reasons, while I’m hopeful that there will be changes with that. We’re also looking forward to the progression of more people learning that there are different ways to combat, address your mental health, get on top of it and be intentional with it. I don’t know if that answered your question, but those are the three things that come to mind from a societal and cultural standpoint.

I wanted to jump in as well, Rachel. We do have two main clinics, 1 on 6 in Santa Fe and 1 on 5 in Highlands Ranch. We also work very closely with first responders. I think that speaks a little bit more to our impact on culture. We have such an interesting culture around first responders right now and they experienced so much trauma in their lives and jobs. We see a high suicide rate of first responders when they retire because their brains are truly stuck in that state of hypervigilance and they can’t transition out.

We work with several different departments, whether it’s fire, police department and Sheriff’s departments. We have seen a profound impact on the first responders that we get to work with. Truly it is such an amazing blessing that we can work with that specific population because they are extremely high needs. I think that’s another way that we’re highly impacting a community.

It sounds like what you’re saying is that we have these impacts, whether it be our lives specifically or these cultural impacts that are being discussed quite a bit. I’ve talked in the previous episode about Tristan Harris and the Center for Humane Technology, talking about his documentary in 2020. The Social Dilemma talked a little bit about this teen suicide pandemic as it should be referred to. It sounds like what you’re saying is that when these impacts, these cultural, these external impacts happen to our lives, they show up in our neurological maps and feedback. That’s what you diagnose and see.

I know you probably have some data privacy-related constraints but given the amount of data that you’re collecting of people from different professions, experiences and generations over time. Have you been contacted for any research studies or put together any research studies around how some of the changes to our culture that have occurred for this 21-year-old century have impacted our mental health and impacted how our neurological processes are being altered by social media and everything else?

Many people are genuinely curious about brain health and there’s not a week that goes by that Angie and I are approached by someone that wants to learn more about this specific supplement or this specific CBD and how it impacts the brain or this specific population. Where we’re at right now, it is not that I am not interested in research. I very much so am. We are running 100 miles an hour keeping up. We haven’t had the time or resources to dedicate to something research like that.

We have done some of our own one-off super small little case studies, but nothing longitudinal type study like that. If we had someone that could commit their time and resources to something like that, we would have the data to be able to provide them with but right now, that is an area people could dive into.

I have some hope that people look into that the same way that the Center for Humane Technology and some of these other authors and researchers have looked into the data around some of the things that we’re observing now. I tend to observe not only suicide but some of the increases in violence. There are a lot of things going on, increases in depression, and everything else that’s being observed. I’m glad to hear that people are genuinely concerned about that. One thing I’m wondering is that as you alluded to us becoming more aware of the problem over time that you’re seeing it and people are more paying attention to it.

Over time into the future, as more people seek and get the right treat treatment for whatever is ailing them. What do you see that impact having on our culture in general? Do you see more people being able to live the more fulfilling lives that I’m hoping that they can by reading to things like this blog but in other capacities as well? Do you see a more productive culture or even a healthier culture emerging over the next couple of decades or do you see the impacts of some of these more destructive things like social media and loneliness still pushing things back into the wrong direction?

I think where my mind goes with that specific one is our mission is to provide hope. While we cannot have an impact on every single person in the world, we hope that if we can have a positive impact on one kid and that positively impacts their mom, dad, brother and sister. That will be a revolving door of the positive impact that can make an impression on the world and impact on other people around them. If you are taking more of an intentional approach on your mental health, you probably get along better with your boss, who then gets along better with their other employees. Our goal is to make a positive impact on every single person that walks through our door, which hopefully sheds light, hope, encouragement and health onto the rest of society.

I don’t think we would be in this business if we didn’t have hope that people are capable of changing their lives, finding their passion and living their best selves. Angie and I are both testimonies of that from where we’ve come from and some of the struggles that we’ve overcome and been resilient through. I do truly believe that everyone is capable of taking ownership of their life and creating the best version of themselves. It takes showing up, having the resources and the knowledge to know that things like Braincode Centers or other resources are even out there for them.

One of the things I want to point out based on that statement to anyone reading who is pondering or starting up a social impact type of initiative is that, oftentimes, a good portion of the impact that we have is stuff that we don’t see, like an iceberg. You see the tip, but you don’t see a lot of what’s underneath. You see the people you directly affect. You don’t see the people that they affect or even with the people you do directly affect. Maybe you don’t even see what happens several years down the road with them.

It’s important to realize that what you’re seeing is only a small sliver of what impact you’re having if you truly start making an impact on some people’s lives and some people’s journeys through whether it be mental health, physical health, career journeys, career mapping, community or anything else that any other challenge that we’re encountering at this point.

We don’t get to see that but we are fortunate that a heavy referral source for us is the word of mouth referrals. We’ll hear about clients we had several years ago and a neighbor is like, “I did neurofeedback with you.” They loved it. It changed their lives. It changed their kids’ lives. We’d love to do it. We don’t get to see them necessarily. We don’t get to hear that, but we do get little whispers of the change and the permanency of the change, and how that transformed their lives and their family’s lives and has impacted their communities. We do get a little bit of that sometimes.

A quick chance for any readers out there who is interested in the Braincode Centers process, what would be the best way to contact you all if someone reading wants to get their brain mapped and get some treatment?

We have a website at BraincodeCenters.com. We also have social media @BraincodeCenters, Instagram. I encourage people to go to the website, Rachel and I do 100% of the consultations for our company. Any person wanting to come in is going to talk to one of the two of us. Like I said, “Those consultations are completely free.” It’s never going to cost anyone something to learn more and to understand better.

We’re probably getting a little taster now of what neurofeedback is, but we encourage people to come in and learn more. If there are people who have deeper questions and more personal questions, contact us. We’re going to get you on the schedule within a couple of weeks and do a phone in person or Zoom consultation to learn more.

The one thing I’m curious about given that. Angie, how you’re able to do product development, as well as all the consultations? Rachel, I know you have multiple roles, how you’re all able to manage that time demand.

Just being superwoman, that’s all it is, being driven. Fortunately, we don’t enjoy things like sleeping. We love staying busy. Carli Streich is not on this call. She’s the other owner. I think we work extremely well as a team and delegate jobs where we need to but we love getting stuff done. We love what we do. When you’re passionate about what you do, it’s easy to make it fun, make it work and work hard.

We don’t have a million employees, but we wouldn’t be able to do it without our 25 employees that see clients and work their butts off so that we can do what we do best. We hope we can continue to grow and hire more roles. Angie and I don’t think we would ever want to give up the consults and the face-to-face interactions. I’ve already had to give up so many other roles that I love. There are some roles that you do because they are your bread and butter. It puts a smile on your face every single. It’s a balancing act but I would like to say we have somewhat healthy brains. We are able to juggle it pretty well.

One of the things I’ve observed, I don’t know if you’ve observed this as well, is that it’s possible to have a job or you barely work 30 hours a week, but because it’s misaligned with where your passions are at or misaligned with what you do well, and what you like doing, you’re burned out on only 30 hours a week. It’s also possible to have a job where you’re working double that, but because it’s well aligned, it’s energizing and rejuvenating, it doesn’t lead to burnout. Would you generally agree with that?

Angie and I chat about this all the time because we interview people that want to work. It’s very interesting the language that people use. They want to work from home, take some days off, but they also want to make a good salary and sometimes it’s pretty frank. If you want to make a good salary, you have to typically work hard.

There’s an interesting dynamic between people that have these big roles, but they’re not willing to put in the effort to get there. Now to answer your other question, I also think there’s a large misunderstanding of self-knowledge. The amount of people that don’t know how they’re wired, what their strengths are, what their number one values are, what their drainers are, what their drivers are? They’ve never explored that.

Those are questions we asked oftentimes in our interviews. A lot of people had never thought of these questions. We would challenge people and anybody reading this to know what your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Enneagram are. Do some value work with someone that’s licensed that can work through that with you because if you can figure out what your number one value is, it’s probably not what you even think it is right off the bat. It takes some time to do that work.

When you can get down to that, that gives you directions for a career and moving in the right direction. We’re all about that on our team is getting a team of people. We’re all moving in the same direction with the same purpose and goals. It’s a hard thing to do but I do believe if people were a little bit more intentional about knowing who they are, there wouldn’t be such a big dissonance between the jobs that people are sitting in.

I also want to make sure we cover one other thing. Now you said you’ve been at this for a little bit over a decade. I’m curious about what motivated you to start or what made you decide that Braincode Centers were going to be your path and brain mapping was what you wanted to bring into the world?

Mine is straightforward. It’s from a personal experience like many business owners typically. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, lived a pretty rough childhood, I wasn’t thriving whatsoever. Most people would have said, “Rachel will probably be dead or in jail by age 25.” I ended up seeking out help from my parents. I found some help from me. They ended up finding out about neurofeedback. I went through an entire program.

My before and after brain map after going through the program looks like a new person. I do feel it changed my life. I ended up changing my career from interior design to psychology, neuroscience, and all of that. All of my paths have led to this. It was through overcoming hardship, suffering and wanting to be able to give back to the world the way it gave back to me.

When I was nineteen, I had a skull fracture, traumatic brain injury. That drastically changed my life in a lot of ways. I didn’t want to be a doctor and occupational therapist. I didn’t think that I would get to work with brain injuries but the Lord, the universe, whatever you think that is, led my path through my Master’s, a professor that I was close with introduced me to Carli, Rachel’s business partner. She ended up bringing me on to the team. I didn’t know exactly what that would look like at the time, but I had a lot of faith that it at least felt right. I’m a pretty intense and driven person. Rachel, I and Carly, I would say, are very aligned in a lot of our goals.

When I came on, I learned how to do neurofeedback. I learned about that as a clinician for several years. I came on into different roles along the line, but I think that’s a beautiful thing with Rachel, Carli and me, is we’ve all been practitioners and clinicians. Not one of us has ever done only the business side but hasn’t been hands-on doing neurofeedback. We can speak about it from a very clinical standpoint and have a lot of understanding from it in that way. That’s a little bit of my story and how I got here.

For everyone reading out there that’s in the process of starting, considering starting, pondering all their initiatives, what would you say is the importance of having the right team around you? You talk about being in alignment with your vision and a couple of other things as well.

The most important thing in the world is having the right team and not the right team, but the right people in the right place on the team. You might have the best employee, but they’re not in the right spot and seat on the bus. It’s not even a question. It is hands down the most important thing in the world. If you don’t trust and believe in your team, if everyone’s not aligned on goals, you’re going to have a hard time finding success.

It also makes sense to me in the framework of understanding that many people are on that wrong seat in the bus. It can be a little bit challenging for a lot of people and adds a little bit more to that importance that you’re talking about, about knowing yourself. I know people have many different ways of knowing themselves. My final question I’d have for you is, does brain mapping help people know themselves or does that have to be a completely different process for anyone that still doesn’t know some things about themselves?

It’s looking at your brain, getting to see what your brain looks like how you’re wired because we speak into that during our map reviews. When we’re going over this data with them, we do speak into their lives, “This is what we see.” From a biological level and this is how it’s showing up in your world. I believe that it can help people not only acknowledge and see what they already knew about themselves but maybe hearing it from a different point of view helps them understand themselves that much better. I would say, in general, 100%. It’s a big piece of the puzzle of getting them to have more self-knowledge and confidence.

It’s important to get other perspectives too, because a lot of people think they know themselves, but oftentimes there are things they don’t know about themselves. Angie, Rachel, I would like to thank you both so much for joining us and talking to us about mental health, knowing yourself, brain mapping and neurofeedback, and that whole process.

I would like to encourage everyone out there reading to think about their mental health and get to know yourself. Get to know yourself a little bit better. Dive a little bit deeper into what you think you know, “I like candy.” No, go a little bit deeper than that, which is what we’re getting at and figuring out where you want to be.

Important Links:

• Braincode Centers
• Braincode Mapping
• Time Management Strategies To Be Proactive In Your Advocacy With Liz Krupa – Previous episode
• Center for Humane Technology
• @BraincodeCenters – Instagram

About Angie Noack

Angie Noack is a licensed professional counselor and registered psychotherapist in the State of Colorado. She holds her Masters of Arts in Mental Health Counseling from Colorado Christian University and her undergraduate degree in Behavioral Science and Music from Mid-America Christian University. Her clinical experience includes a range of issues from anxiety, depression, trauma, and addiction, to peak performance and concussion recovery.