Category Archives: EFT

Why is PTSD still a thing?

EFT, Therapy

PT(604 words – 3  minute read)

I came across this article the other day about using the drug propanolol to help the brain get over being traumatized at unknowncountry.com (a great website for news on the edge).

A comment to that post (which I agree with) says:

“Two therapies – EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) have successfully treated phobias for decades – without drugs.”

Amy and I have been successfully treating traumas, PTSD, phobias and compulsions since the 1960’s. The techniques we learned back then still work very well and now we add in  EFT and other energy therapies to make them even more effective.

I worked for ten years in a hospital behavioral health center helping people with severe abuse recover completely from their trauma.

So why is PTSD still a thing?

Continue reading Why is PTSD still a thing? →

The Mouse Story

EFT

(725 words – 4 minute read)

About 15 years ago I came across this new way of treating trauma and phobias. It involved tapping on certain acupuncture points to calm the nervous system and dissolve the trauma.

Sounds too good to be true but I bought the manual anyway and read enough of it to get an idea of what to do.

That evening we were having some friends over and during the conversation it came up that I had this new ‘phobia cure’.

A friend piped up “I’ve got one for you, I’m terrified of mice and I’m visiting my in-laws this week-end, and it’s a farmhouse and its got mice all over the place and I don’t know if I’ll be able to go.”

By now she was shaking and pale. Continue reading The Mouse Story →

Life in the Mainstream

EFT, Meditation, , ,

(681 words – 3 minute read)

I was going to skip this section but Amy said I have to write it, not only because it contains valuable insights but more importantly for my own sake. I needed to get the charge off those incidents.

There is a mechanism here that’s worth describing. Upsetting events disrupt the nervous system. We feel shaky, nauseated, break out in a cold sweat. The nervous system is in turmoil.

Being reminded of a traumatic incident triggers the disruption all over again. The incident, instead of being neutral, has a negative charge on it. It circles around in your head. Writing it down is one way of getting it out of your head and onto the paper.

This exteriorization of our internal processes is the essence of the therapeutic process.

The first thing I learned about running a session was to listen. Sounds simple but to deeply listen, understand and acknowledge without indulging in judgment, “Helpful Feedback”, evaluation, interpretation, comments, or even a slightly raised eyebrow is not as easy as it may seem.

As soon as you do something that interrupts the outward flow of the person’s internal processes you turn their attention back on themselves. “Was that the right thing to do? Did that really happen the way I think it did?” and that easy outward flow is interrupted. Continue reading Life in the Mainstream →

How I Got Into Behavioral Health

EFT, Meditation, , , , ,

(962 words – 5 minute read)

So how did I, Rod, with no university degrees find my way into working in a conservative small-town mental health clinic?

I’d had some slight experience with the university system, a glancing blow you may say, a few years back. Our hospital had about twelve beds and I was working there as a CNA (nurses assistant or “orderly” as my mother would pointedly say). I had a vague intention of becoming a nurse as the idea of earning a steady income had its appeal. It was a bit late in the game, my late 50s, but what the hell, it’s a new game to play.

We had a local university extension; it was a doublewide behind a gas station off the freeway on the outskirts of town. Ah! ”Higher Learning.” Not quite the hallowed halls of Oxford, but it would do just fine for me.

There were about twenty eager faces in the psychology class. It was taught by a retired pharmaceutical employee an ex “Pharma babe.” They were a familiar sight at the hospital, seducing the doctors with their free samples. Good start, my dealer is my teacher.

Our textbook was “Exploring Psychology” by David G. Myers.

Right at the beginning of the textbook David said we weren’t going to study the nature of consciousness or awareness because it couldn’t be understood and wasn’t worth thinking about. There goes 10,000 years of meditation down the drain. We were just going to study behavior, our observable actions. Right there I could feel all the fun being sucked out of this game. Continue reading How I Got Into Behavioral Health →