If you can hear your stress, you can reduce it?

[gitfiddle]

I feel like I heard once that a scientist had created a machine that could measure the stress you felt, and it put out a sound according to the sound. People who heard there stress were then able to lower it.

If that's true, does such a device exist. I would like one.

[ToeJam]

Do you mean something along the lines of Biofeedback therapy perhaps?

[BigT]

While biofeedback exists, it doesn't actually give you any extra ability. It just lets you know for sure they you've decreased your stress, and allows you to then learn how to do that habitually.

There is also some type of device that supposedly uses sound waves to help change brain-wave states. Since brainwave frequencies are often outside the human hearing range, they pull this off by using headphones--one ear hears one frequency, while the other hears another, and it relies on the brain to put them together and allow the extraneous frequencies to cancel out.

Someone else will have to report on whether that actuall works, as I have not seen any studies, just ads.

[gitfiddle]

So, I've gone back and found that it was from the very first part of the first segment from this episode of Radiolab. The description says:

We can’t control stress, but what we can do is understand it. Neuropsychologist Dr. Kamran Fallahpour let’s us listen to the sound of our own stress (a sort of a high pitched whine). His theory is that if you can hear your stress you can control it.

So, it's just his theory. But I remember when I heard this episode, I had felt like I had heard that before, i.e. that if there was a way to make your stress visible or audible, you were more able to control it.

[si_blakely]

As noted in the wiki article, there are a number of parameters that people can learn to control via biofeedback, and many relate to anxiety and stress - not all involve audio feedback, but many do, as it is easier to relax with your eyes closed.

My son had a number of sessions learning to control migraines and related anxiety via a skin thermometer feedback system. The feedback system just reinforces the relaxation techniques being used. It worked somewhat, but I think that a system he could use at home would have been better.

Si

[Zoe]

I used bio-feedback for stress in a hospital setting in the late Seventies. I think the machine measured Alpha waves. I do remember that I was really good from the first session at using the feedback and being able to relax. It was great!

But WTF? When I went home and needed a similar device, there was no follow up.

[jackelope]

In 1989, when I was a senior in high school, I took a psychology class. The teacher, whose name I wish I could remember, had a device that would do what the OP describes. It looked kind of like a two-button computer mouse, and you'd set it down and put two fingers of one hand on the two buttons.

She let a student try it, and it made a whine, and she asked the student to relax; the sound got a little bit lower, but not much. Then the teacher, who had obviously been practicing with the thing for a while, put her hand on it: High whine. Then she did some kind of relaxation technique, and it went:

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzz...

It made a big impression on me, and I've wanted one ever since.