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Multiple Phobias Treated with EFT – 10-Year Follow-Up Page 2

I decided that I dared.  After all, what could we lose by trying it?  I suggested to Louise that she have her mother drive her to the office to try a “revolutionary new technique that was being used for phobias.”  Maybe we could whirlwind our way through to a solution.  I had no idea at that point that I could do an acutapping procedure like this over the telephone – Roger Callahan, Gary, and the others had not yet demonstrated this fact for us.  Today of course I wouldn’t hesitate to use EFT over the phone for a situation of this sort and it would no doubt be highly effective.

Louise’s mother drove her in to see me, waiting patiently for an hour and half in the car while her daughter and I worked on her multiple phobias that revolved around being alone and apart from her mother.  I explained that first things come first.  We’d have to tackle her fear of traveling alone by car first, before we could address her fear of flying to Australia by herself – stands to reason. 

In that first session we handled Louise’s fear of driving on a highway.  Tap-tap-tap, and after about 6 rounds she was down from a 10 to a 2.  In the “olden days” of energy psychology, a “2” was the best I could hope for.  I never expected to have a client get down to a zero, and of course, they didn’t.

Next, we tackled her fear of bridges.  Down to a 2.  Then Louise confided that she was plagued by a fear that her mother would die.  She had obsessive thoughts about this every day which she couldn’t banish from her mind.  Tap, tap, tap and that came down until it was negligible.  Then we tackled her fear of being alone at her place of work.  She couldn’t work after hours without being so frightened of an unidentified danger that she lost concentration.  That came down to a 2.

Louise kept going at this; she had terrific energy, for one and half hours.  Fear after fear was eliminated.  Then she jumped up and asked me -- How could she be sure that the relieved feeling she had now wouldn’t disappear when she got out on the “real road”?

I told her we didn’t know what would happen but that there was an 80% probability that it would last.  I then asked her to drive all by herself to her appointment next time, all 40 miles to my office and back.  Somehow I felt she could do this now and that it would be an important step in preparation for tackling her airplane phobia in the next session.  But she had to promise me that if she felt anxious while driving she would stop the car and pull over to the curb and “tap” the fear down to at least a 2 again.  She said she’d do that and vanished.  Louise moved at an amazing speed! 

The following week she was back, having driven by herself the whole 40 miles.  No mother.  After she sat down she fastened her intent gaze upon me and told me that while she had driven all this way by herself, she nevertheless had had to “stop several times to tap!”  She was scowling when she said this as though the method had let her down.  I asked her if doing that had helped. Had she been able to bring her distress level down?  She nodded but looked dubious.  The fact that she had never before been able to drive alone for that distance, and over bridges too, was apparently not considered too significant.  I was to learn that this type of “Apex” effect (or denial) is typical of certain clients, although certainly not of others.

When I asked Louise whether during this past week she had any of her usual fears about her mother dying, she looked bewildered.  No, she guessed not.  She hadn’t really thought about it.  What about her fears of being alone in the office building where she worked?  As a matter of fact, she said, she had stayed there one evening by herself to finish up some work and come to think of it, she hadn’t noticed any fear at all then.

So far so good, despite the lack of acknowledgement on Louise’s part of her progress.  We started on the plane phobia, which turned out to have multiple aspects.  Louise was afraid of going far from home, of being in a strange city by herself, of being in an enclosed place, of being anyplace where she was out of control or felt “trapped”, of heights, of a plane crash, of the “swooping” feeling when the plane rises or dips.  You name it, it frightened her.

One by one we tackled these fears over the next few sessions and soon she felt comfortable with the idea of flying--at least when discussing it in my office.  So I gave her some “homework.”  She was to go to the airport and watch the planes landing and taking off, tap away any anxiety that occurred as she watched them, and then walk up to the ticket counter and tap away whatever anxiety occurred there.

When Louise came back the next week she had plane tickets to Australia in her purse.  When she had tapped her anxiety down at the airport she had felt a sudden urge to buy the tickets.  She made a decision to GO! Our work on this issue was now almost complete, just a few details to clean up and Louise would, enthusiastically, depart for distant shores.

Or so I thought.

The night before her departure I received a desperate phone call from Louise.  “Dr. Carrington, I’m terribly scared!”  I asked if her fears about the plane trip had come back, feeling quite sure that this was the case.  “Oh no,” she said. She felt absolutely great about the trip, it was the fact that she wasn’t crying at leaving her parents that frightened her, and the fact that she wasn’t scared about leaving her mother.  She wanted to know if it was “normal” NOT to be crying at this point and to be feeling good about going away alone – or if it was a “bad omen.”

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