Can innovative psychotherapy heal with tapping?
People scarred by trauma or stress can turn to traditional counseling or to medication to resolve their emotional pain. But a pair of California psychologists claim an unique approach combining finger tapping, eye movement, and cognitive therapy, can unblock and heal unresolved personal issues.
The method is called thought field therapy.
TALK AND TAPPING
Devoted practitioners--but not founders--of the approach are psychologists George Pratt, PhD and Peter Lambrou, PhD, of Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California. “Emotional energy gets trapped in the body and by thinking about the emotional distress and then tapping in these points on the body, it releases that distress,” says Pratt. “It’s almost like a boulder gets stuck in a stream and by tapping, we dissolve that boulder and a free flow of energy is re-established.”
Thought field therapy, say Pratt and Lambrou, relies on the idea that energy, thought, emotion, and the body overlap and operate in one fully connected system.
No scientific research has been conducted to know whether or not the method, also referred to as emotional self-management, or ESM, works. The effectiveness of a variety of clinical applications and outcomes involving psychotherapy is judged only by anecdotal reports, not science. While Freudian analysis was once all the rage, today it is under greater scrutiny and has come under attack by some sectors.
The practitioners say negative emotions, which they describe as “lodged” in the body, are released by--literally--tapping into the meridian of nerves that store them.
The tapping is a form of acupressure, a variation of the ancient alternative therapy acupuncture. Acupressure uses finger pressure rather than fine needles to stimulate nerve points.
The licensed psychologists say breathing, visualization, and thought-focusing components of cognitive therapy are also utilized for emotional release and balancing.
In addition to helping people resolve their past, the technique can reportedly be used to soothe PMS ills, overcome phobias like public speaking, and other everyday problems. “We’re correcting unconscious blocks,” says Pratt. “It takes minutes. Fears can be debilitating. We can put ourselves on a path to accomplishing our goals in a way I’ve just never seen before.”
The psychologists’ explain on their book promotion Web site that the technique, classified as energy psychology, can be learned and practiced by laypeople without a therapist.
STRESS RELIEF
Business owner Dona Christensen began thought field therapy after she felt that traditional psychological therapy failed to relieve her stress and anger. “All that stuff helped a little, but it didn’t help it go away. It didn’t release it,” says Christensen. “Understanding why you are angry is one thing, but having it physically released from your body is another thing.”
Dr. Lambrou claims it has helped 95 percent his clients who have tried it in a clinical setting. He does not explain what qualifies as a successful outcome.
“We can apply it to virtually any emotional distress, anxiety, worry, jealousy, guilt, grief, and certainly things like phobias and anger,” claims Lambrou. “By activating these acupoints on the body while thinking about an emotional distress, we are essentially resetting the neurology and allowing the person’s normal functioning to be restored in terms of emotional balance.”
DUBIOUS BENEFITS
Thought field therapy is a little-known technique. Its obscurity, perhaps, has shielded it from widespread criticism, or, for those willing to try unproven techniques, from a mass of adamant followers. Disinterested members from academia or the American Psychological Association have yet to closely examine the practice or write about it in journal articles.
Some mental health professionals who have taken notice of thought field therapy or been alerted to it, like psychiatrist Dr. Ken Khoury, MD, FAPA of the Psychiatric Association North County (San Diego) Medical Group, dismiss its effectiveness.
Khoury challenges the notion that tapping the face and body will erase years of pent up anxiety. “I’ve never seen any treatment modality be 95 percent effective, so I must say I’d be a little bit skeptical without a controlled, double blind study,” says Khoury.
During his three decades in the mental health field, Khoury has seen alternative approaches come and go. “People can spend time and money on treatments that might not be so effective and--perhaps even worse--might not seek treatment in areas that could be very effective,” he says.
Thought field therapy’s viability as a mainstream, widely accepted method for mental health therapy, is far from even being considered. Equally speaking, the method hasn’t yet been categorized by widely accepted mental health organizations and associations as equivalent to faith healing, New Age “re-birthing,” or to various snake oil practices.
But already there are members of the public that are highly concerned that the media will “carelessly promote“--in the words of one skeptic--this method which includes “all the components of magic and ritual” to affect people psychologically. Such critics contend that desperate people needing peace of mind are vulnerable to such unproven practices. The media has a responsibility to adequately challenge practitioner’s claims, some skeptics hold.
Dr. Khoury says, should a person be suffering acute psychological problems, turning to thought field therapy in place of more accepted methods of mental health treatments, could lead to “bad outcomes.”
However, the medical doctor says it’s important to keep an open mind for providing alternatives to patients who don’t respond to traditional therapies. Perhaps under Medicine’s guiding Hippocratic Oath, Khoury calls thought field therapy “safe, a behavioral approach.”
BRAIN RESEARCH
It can be difficult to research the effects of ESM or even acupressure, one component of the method, to the point of convincing its most skeptical critics. With their strong belief in the concepts behind thought field therapy, Pratt and Lambrou are relying on magnetic imaging of brain activity to help show that the brain does respond to such techniques. Ultimately, they will want to demonstrate scientifically that ESM is useful in clinical settings.
For now, they say, proof is in the reported positive responses of patients like Dona Christensen. While her emotion-based tension hasn’t completely been eliminated, it has been greatly reduced. “I found with the tapping, you got immediate relief from the anger you were feeling,” says Christensen. “I’m able to handle things much more calmly and get less upset.”
Please help spread the word by sharing this article with your friends.
