Emotional Freedom Techniques or ‘tapping’ for PTSD

How do EFT sessions work?

It is difficult to explain exactly what to expect in EFT sessions because different practitioners work in different ways.  And even more importantly different clients need different kinds of help.  Practitioners are encouraged to tailor each session to the person they are working with.  Unlike some therapies, there is no fixed rigid protocol for an EFT session.

Tapping is always a key part of the work. But a trauma-informed EFT practitioner will take into account your history, your resources, your symptoms, your needs and your preferences. It will be collaborative work, discussing options and your preferences with you.   

That might begin with checking what resources you have and helping you to add additional ones.  Your practitioner might use tapping on acupuncture points to ease your dread of remembering the traumatic event or events before going to the trauma itself.

They may do much of the processing without asking you to talk about the memory you have of past trauma at all.   Or they may postpone asking you to tell them about it until you can do so without being overwhelmed by emotion. Because EFT does not have a rigid procedure, one of its strengths is that it is so readily adaptable to the needs and preferences of individuals.

What does tapping do to your brain/body?

Tapping on these points calms the amygdala, the area of the brain that acts as the ‘smoke alarm’ and triggers anxiety hormones to stream through the body if it detects, or thinks it detects, danger. That can happen whether the danger is real, or something has triggered a memory of past hazard.  Because people who are living post trauma can be in a state of hyperarousal, this is key.

Trauma memories also have a way of tricking us into us into believing we are experiencing something now when we are really remembering something in the past.  This time distortion is one of its PTSD’s frequent symptoms.

Memory is not like a video recording. It is a construction.  Each time we retrieve a memory we unconsciously edit it in some way to try to make more sense of it. Next time what we recall is this most recently constructed version, not an accurate memory of the actual event.

EFT takes advantage of this mind mechanism. One of the ways it works is that we can retrieve a memory, use tapping to reduce or eliminate the anxiety or fear or terror that is linked with it and produce a new version of that memory’s emotional content.  The story will stay the same, but its emotional impact will  not.

EFT and Complex PTSD (C-PTSD)

EFT can also be used to treat C-PTSD (PTSD caused by multiple, repeated or sustained traumas), although depending on the severity, depth of exposure to trauma, length of exposure, inescapability, etc the work may be more complex and would need to be taken much more slowly with the need for multiple sessions. With patience and persistence however, very good results can be achieved. 

An Advanced EFT Practitioner has so many techniques at their disposal to go gently and indirectly, working at a pace with which the client is comfortable, but at the same time to enable the client to get fairly swift, sometimes even immediate, relief from specific troublesome feelings, even in people who’ve experienced multiple traumas.

Examples of how EFT has transformed the lives of people with PTSD and C-PTSD

You can read several case studies about how EFT has changed the lives of people with PTSD and C-PTSD in this post here. 

In this video below, EFT International Trainer, Naomi Janzen interviews Peter Lloyd, ABC News Australia journalist about his very public journey with PTSD and the role EFT has played in his return to “joy, bubbling over with energy, even mood and not over-responding” and above all, his “special source, his ability to express himself”. Thanks to EFT, he says, he has got that back. And it is very clear from how well he expresses himself in this video that this is indeed the case.