What Is Needed Here?

What resource, learning, capacity, skill, or experience is missing—and how do we add it? Psychoneurology teaches people to understand and guide patterns of mind, brain, experience, and nervous system toward greater health, wholeness, freedom, fulfillment, and thriving.

The Person Is More Than the Problem

A diagnosis may name a pattern, but it does not define the person. Psychoneurology begins with the whole human being—larger than the difficulty and capable of learning, development, and change.

Add What Is Needed

The work is to identify the resource, learning, capacity, skill, or experience that is needed, add it, and help make it available when it is needed most.

More Life, Not Just Less Pain

Real change is measured by what becomes possible: greater freedom, choice, connection, fulfillment, and the capacity to meet life with more of who you are.

Why. How. What.

WHY — What explains these feelings?

When someone says, “I’m depressed,” many traditional therapeutic conversations ask why. The person searches their history for experiences that explain their feelings. Psychoneurology also watches what that search becomes: repeatedly dwelling on painful explanations can deepen negative judgments about oneself. [1]

HOW — How is this experience working?
Dr. Colbey Forman credits Richard Bandler and NLP with bringing the structure of experience into focus: posture, breathing, and movement interacting with internal pictures, voices, and self-talk. How close or vivid is the picture? How harsh is the inner voice? What is the body doing? Physiology is an active part of this picture: changing posture or breathing can influence how someone feels. [2] [3]

WHAT — What is needed here?
Psychoneurology begins with the premise that the person is inherently whole. Given their history and present patterns, what new learning, experience, or resource would create greater choice? The practitioner actively guides body and inner experience together, helping the person develop capacities directed toward self-worth, empowerment, and thriving.

Psychoneurology in Practice

Open the example below to see how Psychoneurology moves from understanding why, to examining how the experience is organized, to actively developing what is needed.

See How This Works With Depression

Consider someone who says, “I feel depressed, and I keep thinking nothing will change.”

WHY? We might learn that the person has experienced a painful loss. Their history helps us understand their circumstances. We also notice whether repeatedly searching for reasons becomes another round of self-criticism and dwelling on the pain.

HOW? We explore the present pattern. Perhaps the person sits with their head lowered, shoulders folded forward, and breathing shallowly while replaying a vivid picture of rejection and repeating “Nothing will change” in a harsh inner voice. We examine how bodily responses, attention, images, and self-talk interact and reinforce one another. The specific details will differ for every person.

WHAT IS NEEDED HERE? The person may need support in grieving, an experience of their own worth, greater steadiness, or help reconnecting with something meaningful. The psychoneurologist actively guides practice—exploring a more comfortable upright posture and breathing pattern, working with internal images and language, and rehearsing a manageable step toward connection. Practitioner and client notice what helps and adjust accordingly.

The direction is greater choice and resourcefulness. Here, inspiration names the positive experience we are moving toward: feeling more connected, capable, and engaged in life.

Research Behind These Claims

The numbered notes below connect specific statements on this page to original research.

[1] Repetitive Analytical Thinking and Negative Self-Judgment

Rimes, K. A., & Watkins, E. (2005). “The effects of self-focused rumination on global negative self-judgements in depression.” Behaviour Research and Therapy, 43(12), 1673–1681.

In a randomized experiment with 30 depressed and 30 never-depressed participants, analytical self-focus increased negative self-judgments among the depressed participants; experiential self-focus did not. The study supports the specific concern about repetitive analytical self-focus.

Original study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16239157/

[2] Posture and Emotional Experience

Wilkes, C., Kydd, R., Sagar, M., & Broadbent, E. (2017). “Upright posture improves affect and fatigue in people with depressive symptoms.” Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 54, 143–149.

In a randomized preliminary study of 61 people with mild-to-moderate depressive symptoms, adopting an upright posture increased positive affect, reduced fatigue, and decreased self-focus. This supports the specific statement that posture can influence emotional experience.

Original study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27494342/

[3] Breathing and Emotional Experience

Balban, M. Y., et al. (2023). “Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal.” Cell Reports Medicine, 4(1), 100895.

In a randomized controlled study of 111 participants, daily five-minute structured breathing practices were compared with mindfulness meditation over one month. Breathwork—especially exhale-focused cyclic sighing—produced greater improvement in positive mood and a greater reduction in respiratory rate. This supports the statement that particular breathing practices can influence emotional and physiological experience.

Original study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36630953/

From Diagnosis to Development

A diagnosis can accurately name a pattern of difficulty. By itself, it does not tell us what the person needs in order to live differently. That is the developmental question Psychoneurology brings forward.

Name the Difficulty

A diagnosis of social anxiety may accurately name where a young man struggles. It identifies the difficulty, but the developmental work has only begun.

Identify What Is Needed

The young man may need confidence, the ability to regulate his state, and concrete skills for initiating and sustaining social interaction.

Add It. Make It Available.

Those resources are added, rehearsed, and integrated until they become available in the real situations that once felt overwhelming.

A Discipline of Development

Observe precisely. Experience has structure, expressed through physiology, attention, imagery, language, meaning, behavior, and context.

Add specifically. The work is guided by the particular resource, learning, capacity, skill, or experience that is needed—not by a generic technique applied to everyone.

Verify experientially. The measure of change is whether the person can actually access and live the new capacity where it matters—not merely understand it in theory.