| 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." |
