Rapid Results with a Long-Standing Case of PTSD

Despite 17 years of psychotherapy for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) tracing back to the Vietnam war, Rich’s insomnia was so disabling that he had checked himself in two months earlier for yet another round of inpatient treatment at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Los Angeles. When he would try to sleep, his mind would race and any of more than 100 haunting war memories might intrude into his awareness. Trapped in these overwhelming images, he was unable take shelter in sleep, where even worse nightmares might await. Every night was dreaded and interminably long. Every day was clouded with exhaustion. He could not function effectively. He also suffered from a severe height phobia that had developed over the course of some 50 parachute jumps he had been required to make during the war.

Rich was one of twenty patients treated by Gary Craig and his associate, Adrienne Fowlie, during a week-long visit after a hospital administrator had invited them to demonstrate the effects of energy-oriented therapy on emotional trauma. Rich’s treatment first focused on his height phobia. He was asked to think about a situation involving heights. His fear level shot up immediately. He was wearing short pants, and he pointed out that the hair on his legs was literally standing up. At the same time, he was directed to stimulate a series of electromagnetically-sensitive points on his skin by tapping them with his fingertips. Within 15 minutes using this procedure, Rich had no fear reaction when imagining situations involving heights. To test this, Gary had him walk out onto the fire escape of the third floor of the building and look down. Rich expressed amazement when he had no fear response whatsoever.

Gary then focused on several of Rich’s most intense war memories, using the same tapping procedure. They were similarly "neutralized" within an hour. He still remembered them, of course, but they had lost their debilitating emotional charge. Gary taught him a technique for stimulating energy points that he could apply to his remaining memories outside the treatment setting. He complied with this homework assignment, focusing on several of the more intense memories. Eventually, there was a "generalization effect," and haunting memories stopped intruding into his awareness, even at night. Within a few days his insomnia had cleared, and he discontinued his medication. He checked himself out of the hospital shortly after that. At a two-month telephone follow-up, he was still free of the height phobia, the insomnia, and the intrusion of disturbing war memories.

Most of the twenty V.A. Hospital patients that Gary and Adrienne worked with enjoyed near-immediate, readily observable results for PTSD symptoms that had in many instances resisted years of psychotherapy. Sessions with six of these men were videotaped and are available for inspection, including the work with Rich (available as part of the EFT Foundational Course through www.emofree.com).

You might think, based on the outcomes described above, that every V.A. Hospital in the country would be experimenting with these methods. That is not how it played out. In professional practice, as in human history, an old way is not necessarily immediately replaced just because a better one appears, particularly when the new way cannot be understood using familiar concepts. Even with the conspicuous, rapid help these men were receiving for the stubborn symptoms of PTSD, none of their therapists accepted invitations to sit in on the sessions. No interest was shown in watching the videotapes. And though most of the patients expressed strong enthusiasm and appreciation, no one on the clinical staff indicated any curiosity to hear more or learn more.

The V.A. hospital episode is a microcosm of the way much of the psychotherapy community has responded to the first two decades of energy psychology. Though unfortunate—people such as Rich who could have been helped haven’t been helped—it is also understandable. Seasoned clinicians have learned through hard experience to be reluctant about embracing new methods before they have been scientifically substantiated, and the methods discussed here are just starting to command the attention of serious researchers. While the professional atmosphere is becoming more receptive—a number of V.A. hospitals, for instance, were a decade later routinely training their clinical staffs in these methods with good results—psychotherapists are of course skeptical upon hearing claims that strange and unfamiliar methods produced near-instant cures of longstanding problems. Therapy is not believed to be that rapid. Time is needed for building rapport, examining the antecedents of the problem, exploring the meaning of the symptoms in the person’s life, assessing which therapeutic modalities are most appropriate for the unique situation, applying them, observing, and revising.

What might account for the contrast between the videotaped outcomes with the patients at the V.A. hospital, corroborated by thousands of similar cases reported by growing numbers of energy-oriented therapists, and conventional wisdom regarding the therapeutic process? If we try to understand the results in terms of the stock concepts of psychotherapy—such as insight, cognitive restructuring, reward and punishment, or the curative powers of the relationship—they make no sense. If we examine electrochemical shifts in brain chemistry that are brought about by stimulating points on the skin that are known for their electrical conductivity, however, a coherent explanation for these rapid shifts in longstanding patterns of mind, emotion, and behavior begins to emerge. Click here for a discussion of The Neurological Foundations of Energy-Based Interventions.

Ten years after Craig and Fowlie’s work at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Los Angeles, Marilyn (Lynn) Garland, LICSW, of the Veterans Healthcare System in Boston, is providing training in energy psychology to other V.A. clinical staff throughout her region. Many of them, she reports, are having "dramatic results in relieving both acute and chronic symptoms of combat-related trauma and other anxiety disorders."