At The Holiner Psychiatric Group, we want you to feel fully informed and at ease before starting transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) treatment. Let us walk you through every step of neurostimulation. By understanding the TMS procedure, you can start imagining how this non-invasive therapy can fit into your daily life while prioritizing your comfort and safety.
Your TMS journey begins with a detailed consultation at our Dallas office, where our psychiatrist will explain the TMS methodology. We review your medical history, current medications, and treatment goals to verify that TMS is an appropriate treatment for you.
Once approved, we schedule a motor-threshold mapping appointment for you. During mapping, a small electromagnetic coil is placed against your scalp, and single pulses locate the exact spot in your brain that moves your right thumb. This thumb twitch pinpoints the part of your motor cortex used to calibrate stimulation strength, ensuring your therapy is powerful enough to activate neurons but gentle enough to avoid unnecessary discomfort.
The TMS process is quite straightforward to understand. A standard TMS course involves five sessions per week for four to six weeks. Some clinics add a brief taper period at the end to ease your transition from daily treatment sessions. Each visit follows the same streamlined sequence:
You sit upright in a reclining chair while a technician secures a cushioned headrest to ensure the coil touches the correct spot on your head every time.
The coil locks into a mechanical arm, and the stimulation strength settings from your mapping appointment automatically load.
Rapid magnetic pulses fire in short trains lasting a few seconds each, separated by equal rest intervals.
Our staff monitors your comfort, talking you through any scalp tingling or facial twitching you may experience.
Once the pulses stop, you are free to leave, drive, and return to normal activities immediately, without restrictions.
Total chair time ranges from about twenty minutes for the newer intermittent theta-burst protocol to forty minutes for standard 10 hertz stimulation.
While exploring the TMS procedure, you may be wondering what the magnetic pulses feel like. Most patients describe the experience as manageable and predictable. Common sensations are a gentle tapping or knocking on the scalp beneath the coil, light facial twitching that fades as soon as the pulses stop, and mild headaches or scalp tenderness after initial sessions, often eased with over-the-counter pain relief.
These effects are temporary and typically subside by the second treatment week as your brain becomes accustomed to the stimulation.
At The Holiner Psychiatric Group, we follow a multilayered safety protocol so each session is both effective and secure. The TMS approach is FDA-cleared and non-invasive, but we also want you to understand the strict safeguards that are part of every appointment. We recheck your motor threshold if your medication changes or weight fluctuates to ensure the pulse intensity remains personalized to your needs.
We are always in a state of emergency readiness; we keep seizure-response protocols on hand, even though the risk is under 0.1 percent (Rossi et al., 2009). Our technicians undergo specialized manufacturer training or continuing medical education and log supervised hours to maintain their competency and ensure they stay up to date with best practices. These precautions, combined with decades of clinical research, allow us to deliver treatment with confidence and peace of mind.
The final element of the TMS process to explain is how we chart your improvement. We do this using brief mood-rating scales that you complete throughout your TMS treatment journey. If your scores plateau, our team may increase the pulse intensity slightly, move the coil’s position by a few millimeters, or extend your total number of sessions, adjustments that may convert some partial responses into full remission (Fitzgerald et al., 2016).
When you finish the acute treatment phase, a common taper schedule is one session a week for two weeks, then one session every other week, although protocols vary among clinics.
By understanding the TMS procedure from start to finish, you can approach your first appointment with confidence. If you feel ready to explore a safe and evidence-based treatment that fits smoothly into daily life, reach out to our team at The Holiner Psychiatric Group today. Let us help you turn possibility into progress.