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Applying EFT in Clinical Practice

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EFT with an Adult Child of an Alcoholic Page 3

By Dr. Patricia Carrington

She started to do this, but broke off in the middle of this exercise exclaiming, “I suddenly know I won’t be like my father!”  This was in the nature of an “Aha!” experience for her and she spontaneously substituted (for the positive phrase) the words:  “I won’t be an alcoholic!” instead of what I had suggested, repeating this loudly with great confidence.  She had created her own “positive installation”!

At the end of this round she told me about the new understanding that she had just experienced. “My father would never have been sitting here talking to you about this.” she said. “I’ll never be an alcoholic.”

We briefly discussed plans to limit her wine to every third evening, an idea which she suggested and which felt right to her.  Then she said:

“I feel that this was the best hour of therapy I’ve ever had in my life!”

Doris returned the following week to announce that she was now ready to finish therapy.  She looked radiant and told me that she had experienced a remarkable sense of confidence ever since our last session. “I feel I was set free by it” she said.  This triumph has held for her.  The session was apparently a true breakthrough.

Would Doris have achieved this same degree of self-acceptance and self-understanding had she been allowed to flounder in her painful memories of her father during the previous session without being offered relief from them through the Tearless Trauma technique and the use of Choices reminder phrases?  Would it, in other words, have been useful to have followed the “no pain, no gain” maxim and have assumed that re-experiencing the PAIN of the trauma was the best road to healing?

My opinion is that while we might have eventually come to some form of healing over a NUMBER of sessions had we remained only with the negative and not taken steps to remove the pain of the trauma, we would not have seen as rapid or dramatic an improvement as we did.  Also, because we all seek to avoid pain, there is the possibility that Doris would simply have backed off from the issue and buried it once again somewhere within her had the treatment become too painful, rather than face it fully and get to the other side of it as she did.

This is an important question to consider.  Perhaps some day someone will devise an experiment that can test these two possibilities.  Until then, I think the best we can do is to honor our own clinical hunches.  In this case, mine proved fruitful.

EFT Master, Dr. Patricia Carrington

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