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Using EFT for a Macho War Veteran

By Dr. Patricia Carrington

 Gary Craig's Introduction:

Sometimes it takes great skill just to get someone to do EFT.  This can be doubly difficult when the client is a "macho veteran" whose self image resists help of any kind--let alone something as different as EFT.  Dr. Patricia Carrington steps us through an important case involving a "war flashback" that was easily handled. BUT ONLY after she was able to get through her macho client's substantial resistance to being helped.  This is a real lesson in the art of delivery.  It blends language skills, authority and personal congruence (what one says lines up with what one believes) as convincers for the client.

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Today, I’m going to describe how I used the Tearless Trauma Technique to help a Viet Nam veteran, “Tommy”, accept EFT, even though the standard EFT protocol might well have caused reactions in him which would have run counter to his Self Image.  In that event, he would likely have refused to participate in the treatment.

As you will see, although Tommy was able to pull out of a severe battle flashback through the use of EFT, I am almost certain he would not have responded to this treatment had I not structured the session so that his “macho” Self Image remained intact.

Tommy is an immensely engaging, friendly and helpful man whom just about everyone likes.  He weighs over 300 pounds and has a host of physical problems, some of them remnants of war wounds that leave him handicapped to quite an extent.  On his good days, though, he can lift a metal office desk onto a truck as easily as most of us can pick up a bag of groceries.  He works successfully at every imaginable sort of handyman job and, because of his enormous strength he has worked on and off as a bouncer in a night club.

He is a self-appointed defender of the weak, and last year saved a woman from being raped when he heard her screams as he was walking through a low-income housing development. Tommy ran to the site of the attack, grabbed the assailant by the scruff of the neck and tossed him over an eight foot fence.  The attacker broke both his legs as he landed on the concrete and, by some twist of the law, Tommy ended up having to defend himself in court against charges by this serial rapist of assault and battery. Tommy won his own case when the rapist was shown to have had multiple arrests for this same crime.  Nonetheless, trouble sometimes seems to be Tommy’s “second name.”

Tommy’s Self Image is clearly that of being strong and invincible. However, in actual fact this huge man is also a wonderful surrogate parent to his nieces and nephews whom he supports, cooks for, and acts as the father they never had (he’s never been married himself).  He is also the person who stays up through the night caring for his widowed mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s and a near fatal heart condition.  Further, he is the one who plays Santa Claus for the children in the leukemia wards in Trenton and whom they beg for and call “our Uncle Tommy”.  But, always he is the strong one and the salvation of all.

Tommy has done handyman work around my house for years and in many ways it is as though he were part of my family.  I absolutely rely on him to fix anything and everything cheerfully and immediately.  Thus, I have had plenty of opportunity to observe him pooh-pooh needed medical treatment until it became absolutely necessary to accept.

He claims to be able to recover almost miraculously from injury, and in fact does possess an amazing immune system.  But he will also tell you he is “feelin’ just fine!” even when he can barely move.  His Self Image of being invincible keeps him in good cheer, even amidst difficulties that often seem enough to keep a soap opera running for years.

Because I knew so well Tommy’s pride in coping with anything and everything that happens to him, I was deeply concerned when I heard his voice on the phone about a year ago telling me that he was leaving town forever.  He just had to “get out” and never come back.  There was a tremendous urgency in his tone and he was talking in non-stop fashion, almost incoherently in fact.

It turned out that during a winter snow storm the night before, a fatal accident had occurred on his property.  A car skidded off the road and smashed headlong into one of his trees.  Tommy managed to pry open the car door and lift the driver out, but he was dying and did, in fact, die in Tommy’s arms--just as some of Tommy’s war buddies had done many years before.

When he phoned me the next morning, Tommy told me he was “seeing” his whole backyard aflame with bombs bursting, just as they had on the battlefields during the war. “I don’t know what’s happening!” he kept repeating “But I’ve gotta get out of this place. I’m gettin’ out of here!”

I knew Tommy had called because he respected the fact that I’m a psychologist and because he trusts me.  Clearly, he wanted my help, otherwise he would have simply skipped town as he was threatening to do. I realized I would have to overcome his resistance to accepting medical or psychological help of any kind before I could really help him – his “I’m fine!  I can do it myself!” Self Image could seriously get in the way of any treatment.

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