I have had three new clients in my psychotherapy practice in the last few months who revealed they had been in conventional talk therapy of some kind for 3 to 10 years. I’ll call them Sam, Joan and Andrea. Apparently their problems had not been resolved satisfactorily or they wouldn’t have sought me out. Their issues involved traumatic memories that were still plaguing them or they had ongoing anxiety or depression. Yet after learning about and successfully experiencing EFT they decided not to pursue this type of rapid relief.
For most people the thought of psychotherapy brings up an image of sitting with a psychologist, psychiatrist or psychotherapist and talking about life and feelings. You talk about your current or past problems and how they made you feel then and now. You look for the origin of the trouble and try to find ways to eliminate the resulting patterns of negative thinking, upsetting emotions and destructive behaviors. Until recently we were brainwashed to believe that this was the only way to heal.
Both therapists and clients refer to “working on an issue” or “working through it.” You must “work hard” in order to dig out the roots of the problem and find a way to leave it behind without leaving an open wound. Sometimes this requires more than one session each week.
When I met Joan, she explained that she had been in therapy with a psychologist for 7 years. When I asked her what changes she noticed after all this time she had no answer. She could not list anything specific, but said she was still going back for additional sessions. I could see that these meetings with her therapist had become a crutch and a habit. She was so used to feeling bad that she didn’t notice that nothing much was happening.
We live in a world in which science has made enormous strides and changed our lives. We no longer use telephones that have wires that are attached to the wall. We drive cars with airbags and GPS to help us find our way. Science has found the cure for many illnesses that killed people fifty years ago. But when it comes to psychology we are still in the Dark Ages. Most people believe that the only remedies are talk and pills. Unfortunately, this also includes doctors and mental health professionals!
New and effective energy psychology methods have existed for over twenty years. Techniques have been created that can eliminate negative emotions, beliefs and behaviors in record time. Methods like TFT, EFT, REMAP, and TAT balance energy disturbances with simple acupressure-based tapping. Panic attacks can disappear in a few minutes of treatment. Many fears can dissolve in an hour and never return. Disabling traumatic memories can be healed permanently and effortlessly.
When you read this you might think about how much money you could save if you don’t have to keep going for treatment for years. You might be elated to think that you could become free of a problem that has crippled you for years such as panic attacks, fears of flying or driving or procrastination. In spite of that possibility, Sam, Joan and Andrea decided to hang onto their misery a while longer.
Andrea’s friend had suggested that she see me because she had problems with relationships. She had been in love a few times and each time she got close emotionally, she became anxious and described it as fear of commitment. I explained how EFT worked and related how tapping could raise the serotonin in the brain and help heal the earlier life experiences that had led her to fear intimacy.
I taught Andrea how to tap about stress. She brought her stress level down from #9 to #0 in only a few rounds of EFT. As our meeting ended Andrea said that she would contact me for another appointment. A few days later she emailed me and shared that EFT had worked so fast that she was worried that she would not be able to “work through” the “negative parts” of her personality that she had spent years exploring with her other therapist. She believed that she needed to “get to know them better” before she could let them go.
Sam had been seeing a number of psychologists for almost 10 years trying to “work through” childhood abuse and relationship problems. Even though he could talk or write extensively about all the past events that brought him to his present unhappy life, he was still in emotional pain, a victim of his history. I told him how the limbic system of the brain had no sense of time, and that was why the past could take over without him knowing it. In the blink of an eye he could find himself frozen in fear although it was the five-year old Sam that was feeling it, not the fifty-year old. I suggested that EFT could put the past to rest permanently and effortlessly. EFT doesn’t change the past, so Sam would still remember what happened to him. However, he would no longer have any negative emotion as he thought of those times.
When Sam started tapping for the first time to lower his stress, I saw a look of doubt flit across his face. Usually when we tap to deepen breathing most people see a significant change after one or two rounds, but Sam’s level was barely moving. I realized that he had a blocking belief and checked it out with him. Yes, he was very wary. I had him tap about his disbelief and then some more about his stress until it was released.
Next we treated an upsetting memory that went from a level of distress of #7 to zero. Although Sam was surprised when I asked him to revisit the memory and there was no negative charge left, I could see that he wasn’t happy that he felt better. I call this state of mind, “what’s wrong; nothing’s wrong; that’s what’s wrong.” EFT was too far outside his comfort zone. It wasn’t Sam’s fault. He had 10 years of coaching in a system that had become entrenched although not effective. He cancelled his next appointment and never returned.
I am grateful that these powerful energy psychology modalities are spreading throughout the world. My wish is that more and more professionals will be willing to move past their own outmoded training and learn how to use Energy Therapy tapping and other techniques that will give their clients and patients the rapid relief and healing they deserve.