WHAT IS EFT AND HOW IS IT USED IN COUNSELLING?

EFT - A Revolution in Psychological Transformation

Over the past 25 years huge leaps have been made in treating mental and emotional conditions - leaps which go well beyond the possibilities of pure talking therapies for many conditions. Today, counsellors, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and other psychologically-oriented professionals not having EFT as an adjunctive skill are missing something of tremendous benefit for their clients.

 

In the 1980's a clinical Psychologist called Roger Callahan was treating a lady called Mary for a major water phobia, one which gave her night sweats, nightmares and panic attacks. In spite of 6 years of talking therapies with various therapists, she experienced negligible change.

 

Roger had been studying chinese medicine and in a moment of inspiration one day, after 18 months of treatment, he asked her "where do you feel the anxiety in your body when you think of putting water on your face"? She said "my stomach". So he said "Let's try something. Please tap under your eye for me". He said this as he knew that the beginning of the stomach acupuncture meridian was under the eye. After a few seconds, she suddenly got up and said "It is gone. My phobia has completely gone.!" She went to the back of the building where there was a swimming pool and splashed water all over her face. After a lifetime of phobia, it had gone within a few minutes!

 

Using these principles, over the following 25 years, Roger went on to develop Thought Field Therapy (TFT) to treat a huge range of mental and emotional difficulties. This involved using specific sequences of acupuncture points for specific emotional states - e.g. tapping under the eye, below the arm pit and below the collar bone for anxiety. He also made a major breakthrough which prevented self-sabotage from blocking the body from allowing healing to occur - of emotional and physical issues!

 

Then in 1995 Roger taught "Thought Field Therapy" to an engineer called Gary Craig. Gary thought TFT could be simplified and developed EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) which was just as powerful in many cases, but could be used by anyone - even children!

How is EFT Used in counselling?

In talk therapies, talking is used to help clients understand the cause of their problems, and develop new ways of thinking about their issues and hopefully move forwards with a new perspective. This can be very helpful, especially when individuals have held issues inside for a long time. "Emptying out" in the presence of a non-judgmental therapist can be very cathartic.

 

However most of the time there is significant emotional charge connected with past events and experiences, and no amount of talking can release that from the system. This leads to continued emotional wounding, reactivity, hurt and pain, and often the energy of the past and past experiences can make it so difficult to life a joyful life in the present and future.

 

The beauty of EFT (and TFT) is that it can gently yet very powerful release these negative feelings from the system easily in most cases. There is no need to relive past traumas. In fact in my experience of working with thousands of negative past experiences with my clients, it typically takes no more than one or two sessions to be at peace with a specific traumatic experience. This is an extraordinary claim, however it is accepted once one has personal experience of it.

How can EFT be used within counselling to help me?

Part of the counselling process is to be clear about what emotional symptoms are present, what is triggering them, what could be behind them, and then how one can one move forwards to be more peaceful and resourceful and to be able to express oneself more fully.

 

All of our emotional re-actions come from being triggered by people, events and thought, and almost without exception these come from our past. Somewhere inside us are stored imprints which can be triggered, giving rise to negative emotional states. These are usually put in place from early life experiences. They could also come from other places, including from the ancestral tree (see the new science of Epigenetics). To be completely emotionally free these need to be healed and EFT is an excellent tool to facilitate this. Within the sessions it is used often to release these stored repositories of reactive emotional material. It is also used to release limiting beliefs put in place as a result of certain past experiences (e.g. "I am not good enough" or "I am a failure" or "Men are not to be trusted"). These beliefs are the lens through which we experience our world, our reality, and once inappropriate beliefs are released, your perspective on the world changes. But releasing limiting beliefs doesn't make you stupid! Your judgement actually becomes better; you can make decisions from a calm centre.

 

Even though EFT is used within sessions, clients are encouraged to learn it and use it at home between sessions. This can greatly speed up the therapy process and empower the client to help themselves to heal current and future problems.