EFT Research (Part 8): Efficacy of Acupoints stimulation vs sham points
This was published in the Energy Psychology journal in 2015. It’s called EFT for stress in students: A Randomized controlled Dismantling Study. This present study had two goals:
To determine whether or not EFT could quickly reduce stress symptoms in college students
To compare the efficacy of the acupoint stimulation to the stimulation of sham points. The comparison was between the acupoints that are used in EFT and sham points which are not acupoints.
56 participants were assigned to either EFT or the sham group and these were university students. And they were assessed for nine common stress symptoms before and after a single 15 to 20 minutes group intervention session. And these sessions were held on the campus in groups of five to ten students. Both these groups – the EFT and the sham group – were given a script containing eight sets of stressful cognitions, centered around the feeling of overwhelm and hopelessness and ending with a positive statement. The EFT group participants stimulated the actual acupoints that are used in Standard EFT, while those in the sham group used the sham points.
The pretest showed no significant difference in the stress symptoms. Post test, which is after the intervention, showed that the EFT group had a symptom reduction by 39.3% and the sham group showed a reduction of 8.1%, which shows that the stimulation of actual points is superior to the stimulation of the sham points. And this demonstrates that acupressure is an active ingredient of the EFT protocol, and it is not placebo.
EFT Research (Part 6): Stress and Anxiety Management for Students and Staff in School Settings
I found an interesting chapter in the book called “Promoting Mind-Body Health in Schools: Interventions for Mental Health Professionals”. The chapter’s name is “Emotional Freedom Techniques: Stress and Anxiety Management for Students and Staff in School Settings”
EFT is an effective stress and anxiety management technique that can be used for students and school personnel and employees, and even a few sessions of EFT can help students to reduce their anxiety, the fear of failure, increase their performance, self-esteem, and this chapter “examines relevant EFT research and the use of EFT with school-age children and adolescents, and it also discusses the importance of formal training in Emotional Freedom Techniques for school practitioners and ethical considerations.”
I wish that I knew EFT in school because as a student, I remember the enormous pressure. There was academic pressure, this fear of failure, low self-esteem and what not.
Citation
Gaesser, A. H. (2020). Emotional freedom techniques: Stress and anxiety management for students and staff in school settings. In C. Maykel & M. A. Bray (Eds.), Promoting mind–body health in schools: Interventions for mental health professionals (pp. 283–297). American Psychological Association
Link to the book: https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4317526
Watch a short video on this: https://youtu.be/OU63UICUZ2s
Using only a top down approach in psychotherapy sessions isn’t enough for trauma because:
When a person is experiencing flashbacks or even recalling a traumatic event their body can literally feel like it’s in the past. All the stored survival stress is back in the form of body sensations. These body sensations can get unbearable. And just talking about all of this won’t help because it doesn’t relieve the body sensations. Without a somatic approach to help handle the body sensations, the client can feel like they’re drowning in the gut wrenching sensations.
The body sensations can feel very triggering because the client feels as if they’re reliving the entire traumatic event rather than just talking about it. A cognitive approach to make sense of this doesn’t help until the body feels safer to inhabit, until the client can get a grip on the body sensations. No amount of cognitive processing can make the person understand that it’s in the past. While a cognitive approach can help in observing the body’s sensations, the bottom up approach can help in “recalibrating the nervous system” ( Kolk, 2004, p. 63-64) which is vital to begin with.
During a traumatic event, the body goes into survival mode and the amygdala, the smoke detector of the brain ( Kolk, 2004), only sees the danger and directs the body to escape the danger via FFF. The frontal cortex, especially the medial Prefrontal Cortex goes offline during trauma. Bessel Van Der Kolk calls it the ‘watchtower’ which helps in making important decisions. The trauma is stored in a non linear, fragmented manner and doesn’t have a coherent narrative. So explaining what happened when it’s mostly the fragmented sights, sounds, smell etc of the traumatic event, is very difficult in a talk therapy session.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy by Pat Ogden, Tapping acupressure points (EFT), Alpha/Theta training, Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine, Neurofeedback, EMDR, are some of the techniques mentioned in the book, The Body keeps the Score, that are effective in resol
Reference: van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
How are practise sessions conducted in the EFT training course and how do they help?
1) The practise sessions are not role plays but require students to work with others in the group on real issues. Although smaller issues are taken up, a lot of attendees have told me that it transformed certain areas of their lives.
2) These sessions aren’t recorded and they are held in breakout rooms (online training). In these rooms you can practise the EFT skills that you learn on that day.
3) In each class whatever you learn on that day can be practised in these practise sessions. These sessions are usually in dyads or triads. For example, if you’ve learnt the basic recipe and how to be specific, the concept of shifting aspects etc, you’ll be practising that with the participants.
4) The practise sessions in most classes follow the demo. You’ll be shown how to handle a real life problem in a demo session in a step by step manner.
5) With each class you’ll learn a new set of concepts and skills to deliver more effective sessions. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy – unless you know the basics and then the foundational skills, you cannot deliver effective eft sessions or practise EFT skilfully on yourself.
6) You’ll get personalised and compassionate feedback after each practise session by me and/or my experienced student(s).
These practise sessions are best for trying EFT and making mistakes. In real life situations where you work with clients, you won’t get many opportunities to really learn from your mistakes, as your client may not give you a direct feedback. These sessions are also help to assess and understand your strengths and limitations.
What holds us back? Why do we hold back from shining? Why do we feel we’re unworthy? Why are we uncomfortable with visibility in our respective fields? How does that impact our relationship with money and opportunities that come our way?
Think back to the times when you were told that you should be subdued or that you shouldn’t show off. What about the times you observed that being visible, letting yourself shine and take the spotlight was seen as flashy or something that you shouldn’t do?
In our culture we are taught to be subdued, more so if you are a woman, to hold back, to dim our brightness and to be invisible.
Haven’t we heard these messages from our parents, caregivers, teachers, relatives, media etc while growing up that it’s not okay to be visible? No one tells us we’re unworthy, but these shaming and outdated messages end up making us feel unworthy and undeserving of great things in life. These cultural messages, these limiting beliefs and non-expansive ideas hold us back.
What if we could let go of these limiting beliefs – these restrictive ideas- that stop us from shining, from realising that just by being born we are truly worthy and invaluable beings?
A lot of my work with clients is on recognising these limiting patterns and ideas, and releasing and transforming them. In order to do so, we dig deeper and take a look at the programming that comes from our childhood, the incidents that shaped these beliefs, and start processing them.
For a garden to flourish you need to take out the weeds. In order to take out the weeds you need to pull them out with the roots, and not just trim them. Similarly, in order to recognise our worthiness, we need to uproot the limiting ideas and let go of old conditioning, and we can do that with EFT.
We’re worthy to shine. We’re worthy to share our creativity with the world. We’re worthy to speak up when needed. We’re worthy to say no We’re invaluable and infinitely magnificent.
How can EFT help you in your practise if you are a mental health professional?EFT can be used as an individual as well as an assistive tool to help your clients with emotional and psychosomatic issues.
Here are just a few ways in which EFT can help your clients. I’m highlighting the most common benefits of using EFT with your clients and introducing it into your therapy practise.
1. Clients often get dysregulated while talking about their issues or processing their issues in the sessions. EFT helps in regulating your client’s nervous system during a therapy session. Tapping helps by sending deactivating signals to the limbic brain and that in turn calms the mind and body. Imagine how much more your clients will be able to process, if they were able to get back into a regulated state easily and gently during a session! It also helps them self-regulate in between sessions.
2. Handling difficult persistent negative feelings is easier with EFT. You can creatively combine any modality that you use with EFT to help your clients cope with and manage their difficult feelings, in the session as well as on their own in between sessions.
3. EFT can help in unearthing and transforming limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs keep clients stuck in negative patterns and EFT utulizes a unique method to change these unhelpful beliefs – the unhelpful conclusions the clients have arrived at about themselves, the world and others.
4. Anxiety and stress are two of the most common presenting issues that clients bring to the table in our profession. EFT helps in easing the symptoms of GAD ( Generalized Anxiety Disorder). Clients can also learn the basics of EFT and apply it on themselves while they’re experiencing symptoms of anxiety such as heaviness in chest, increased heart rate, sweating etc. EFT is very effective for social anxiety as well.
5. Most clients have had some form of trauma in their lives. A specific technique in EFT is used for disarming troubling, stressful and traumatic memories and reducing the emotional charge associated with them. This is turn helps in improving their quality of life. There are many emotional and physical consequences of trauma, and working on adverse childhood experiences with EFT has proven to be very beneficial.
6. Goal setting & improving performance is another area where EFT can help either by itself or along with CBT and REBT.
7. Stress management is another area where EFT is very effective. I’ve conducted a lot of stress management classes, and tapping helps in reducing stress rather quickly. Research in EFT shows that tapping can reduce cortisol by approx 43% in a one hour tapping session.
8. EFT can complement the top-down approaches that most mental health professionals practise. EFT is a bottom-up approach which also incorporates cognitive shift and exposure. Since the body component is involved, EFT can help in decreasing body based anxiety and processing stored trauma responses in the body.
9. Talk therapies can sometimes be very overwhelming. I remember being very overwhelmed after a few of my talk therapy sessions. It felt like opening a tap and not closing it before the session ended. EFT can help in closing the tap by the end of each session. It has containment techniques than can effectively lessen the client’s overwhelm by the end of the session.
10. EFT can also help in positively resourcing a client at the start of the session.
EFT is a trauma informed approach and with increasing research backing its effectiveness, it’s time more MHPs considered learning and applying EFT. Since MHPs already have a solid background in psychology, in my opinion, they can master EFT skills easily.
“There is no deadline for recovery” were my client’s exact words in a session. She described how safe she felt during our psychotherapy & EFT sessions. She was able to be open up about her feelings and patterns, and she didn’t feel pushed to change. She felt she wasn’t given a deadline to heal!
Unfortunately a lot of people never experience safe connections with their caregivers while growing up. Because of early childhood trauma and neglect they develop a faulty neuroception wherein their ability to detect safety and danger get mixed up. As a result of this, they may feel safe in risky situations and threatened in totally safe situations.
To develop the ability to detect safety in safe situations and caution in threatening situations requires a therapeutic alliance where they can experience safety and acceptance without the fear of being told off or abandoned by their therapist. If a client starts sensing that their therapist will disown them if they don’t meet the preset goals, they will lose that opportunity to develop a healthy neuroception.
It’s only through a safe therapeutic alliance that the damaging effects of past unsafe relationships can be repaired and clients can begin to heal, grow and seek healthy connections in their lives.
Being trauma informed is not a one time pill that can be taken by attending a single or multiple courses. It requires reflection on our part as therapists after every single session to see whether the client felt safe in the session or not.
For example, do they feel safe enough to bring up their issues with you as a therapist? Do they feel they’re being heard in the sessions?
And most importantly, how do you handle critical feedback from your clients?
Rupture is a part of any relationship and repair is only possible if the rupture is acknowledged.
I made so many mistakes as a rookie therapist when I started out, but I made it a point to keep learning from those mistakes and honing my skills. Becoming a trauma informed practitioner is a life long process and your client is your best teacher.
The following are the EFTi Certification requirements to become an Accredited Certified EFT practitioner.
1️⃣ Attend the EFT Level 1 and 2 course provided by an EFTi Trainer. You’ll receive a certificate of attendance certificate by EFTi.
After this you can choose to take up the certification package.
Sign up for the certification package with the trainer. (I have a short questionnaire for screening candidates who are eligible to become certified EFT practitioners.)
2️⃣ Join EFTi as a student member. Fees to be paid to EFTi = £12 (This is a discounted cost for students from India) Discount code will be provided by Trainer.
3️⃣ Pass the online multiple-choice Practitioner Exam via the EFT International website. Fee to be paid to EFTi = £7 ( after student discount)
4️⃣ Receive a minimum of 6 hours supervision/mentoring with Trainer. ( Part of certification package)
5️⃣ Submit a minimum of 4 case studies: 3 Client Case Studies (on separate individuals) and 1 Personal Case Study to Trainer for review and feedback.
6️⃣ Provide an in-person OR audio OR video demonstration of an EFT session, and discuss this session with Trainer.
7️⃣ Complete a minimum of 50 EFT sessions (or “practice hours”) working with at least 20 different individuals. Each EFT session must be a minimum of 45 minutes in length.
8️⃣ Complete any additional, discretionary requirements as outlined by Trainer. There may be additional case study requirements and book readings.
Please note ❌ EFTi trainers don’t ask you to first become practitioners with their own organisations before applying for EFTi certification. EFTi certification doesn’t require this.
I’ve been associated with EFT international (EFTi) for a long time now. Recently I received my MTOT ( EFT Master Trainer of Trainers) status with EFTi.
In the recent years, I’ve realised that a lot of people in India are not aware of the fact that you can get an internationally recognised EFT certification within India.
Let me tell you a little more about it.
EFT International, previously known as AAMET, was founded in 1999, by Dr Tam Llewellyn-Edwards, who was one of the 29 founding masters (a recognition given by the founder of EFT, Gary Craig), and is the only EFT organisation in the world that is registered as a voluntary organisation, meaning it has a charitable status.
It is run ethically by a board of members and volunteers, and benefits both the members and the public. Two of the original founding masters (awarded by Gary Craig) and earliest members amongst the trustees are Judy Byrne and Jacqui Crooks.
If you haven’t heard about EFT ( Emotional Freedom Techqniues) commonly known as tapping, you can find out more by going to my website. EFT has a solid research backing and the research is steadily growing in favour of EFT being an evidence based practise.
When I first came across EFT, I wasn’t sure about its efficacy. Now that I’ve practised it for 16+ years, I can vouch for its effectiveness, its gentleness and trauma informed approach in helping people resolve emotional issues.
I had the good fortune to have received the EFT course certificates by Gary Craig ( Founder of EFT). After that I went on to further train myself in EFT with EFT international.
I’ve been running internationally accredited EFT workshops in India ( both in-person and online) for the past 5 years and doing 1-1 sessions with clients for 16 years.
If you’re interested in getting an international certification in EFT with an organisation that has a clearly defined syllabus and list of competencies, you can contact me.
The certification process with EFTi requires 3 simple steps, all of which can be accomplished by taking mentoring sessions with me after your EFT L1 & 2 workshop. You’ll need to take an EFT theory exam, finish 50 hours of practise sessions with friends/family/volunteers and submit case studies. Once you finish these EFTi requirements, you’ll become a certified EFT practitioner with EFT International.
I’m looking forward to having more certified EFT practitioners and trainers in India who can deliver skilful sessions and trainings in English and other regional languages within India.
If you are a psychology student, you already know about the importance of supervision. You know that a supervisor/mentor is needed to provide guidance and support, discuss difficult cases, encourage self-reflection, help you understand scope of practise & ethical code of conduct, provide constructive feedback to help you become better in your chosen area of specialisation, help you identify your areas of strength and limitations and a lot more.
EFT is the same. Once you finish your EFT course ( workshop) and desire to become a professional EFT practitioner, you’ll need guidance from experienced mentors for the same reasons as listed above.
The certification process is also like a mini internship where you get to practise EFT with friends/family/volunteers before you start working with clients professionally. In this process, you’ll need encouragement, support and constructive feedback. Students who apply for certification process and mentoring, have higher chances of delivering effective EFT sessions which in turn increases the success rate of EFT than those who don’t go for certification.
EFT may look very simple but like Ann Adams says, EFT is simple, people are complex.
Learning to customise EFT application according to the client’s issues is where the skill comes in. How to use the various techniques in EFT and when to use them is an important part of this skill set. EFT is a client-centric process. It’s not just tapping on some points and saying some words randomly. That would be akin to applying CBT by just listening to 10 hours of lecture or reading a book.
Acquiring knowledge is different from having skills and expertise. Attending a lecture on how to practise EFT is different from sitting down with a client and applying EFT.
What you need in EFT, just like any other modality, is practise and guidance. Mentoring is the best way to achieve that.
All of us, practitioners and trainers, are required to have 6 hours of minimum mentoring hours every year along with 30 hours of CPD to maintain our membership with EFT International. This, in my opinion, is a very good practise to stay current with EFT and keep refining our skills. Contact me to know more.
