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EFT for Educational Use

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Using EFT to Advance Educational Skills

By Dr. Patricia Carrington

 Gary Craig's Introduction:

Anyone interested in education and "learning blocks" would do well to pay particular attention to this detailed article by EFT Master Dr. Patricia Carrington.  Although her client, "Martin", is an adult, his challenges with learning a computer programming language (JAVA) parallel those of students of all ages.  Thus, it should be easy to draw ideas from this message that would be helpful to almost anyone.  In Pat's words....

"I hope that you who are teachers, parents, counselors or anyone else imparting educational skills to others (or learning them yourself), will TRY USING EFT to facilitate this process.  I suggest you try it with all kinds of different educational experiences — in this sense you will be "trying it on everything" that is educational in nature."

Please pay particular to the aspects involved in this case and the creative way Pat handles them.

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One of my many interests when exploring the frontiers of EFT is to discover new ways it can be applied to EDUCATION.  I am convinced that EFT is capable of playing an important role in helping people of all ages to acquire new information, and I suspect it can do so easily, painlessly and with many side benefits such as an increase in confidence and self respect. 

Recently on Gary’s site, I discussed the manner in which EFT can be used during the learning of a motor skill.  Today I want to tell you about a different educational experience to which I have recently applied EFT -- -- how to use EFT to master an advanced computer programming skill.

To master some of the computer languages, particularly for someone over the age of 40, can very daunting because such a person did not grow up in the computer generation.  It can be quite a blow to their egos to see the children in the house handling unfamiliar computer tasks with no problem at all (even though they may never have seen these programs before!) while the adult approaches such a task with trepidation.

At age 52, "Martin" is now facing a problem with respect to mastering certain advanced computer programs.  While he originally consulted me because of "career problems" it soon became evident that career per se was not his true difficulty.  Martin actually loves the work he does as a website designer and he handles it extremely well.  He is a highly visual person and to him this occupation is a very creative and meaningful one.

It turns out that his real problem is that he is woefully deficient in the major graphics programs necessary in order to obtain the best paying jobs as a web designer, and that he has in fact balked at learning that major graphics program (known as JAVA), although this is essential for the future of his work.  Because he does not have sufficient skills in this area to appeal to prospective employers, Martin has recently had to take an interim sales job, considerably below his skills, to supplement his income.  His future as a web designer has become uncertain. 

When we first discussed his difficulty with JAVA, Martin was hesitant to talk about it or to remember any past difficulties with math (an important ingredient in learning JAVA.  He finally did recall, however, that as a teenager he had moved to a new neighborhood and new high school where suddenly there was none of the individual attention under which he had flourished in his former school. This had, he said, resulted in his developing severe problems in algebra, although he always done very well in math before that.

To work on his math anxiety, which I supposed might lie behind his difficulties with computer programming skills, I asked him to print out some algebra problems from the Internet and bring them to our next session so we could use EFT for any difficulties he might experience when looking at them.

This seemed a good idea, but it didn't prove to be as fruitful as I had hoped.  Tapping just on his math anxiety did not appear to be helping much with his difficulties with JAVA.   So I then asked Martin to bring his JAVA manual to the next therapy session. We were going to face the lion in its den!

He brought the manual next time.  It was a weighty volume, thick and impressive and chock full of information.  When I thumbed through it, I noticed that it was written in a reasonably user-friendly fashion and I knew that Martin should be able to understand it in light of his considerable intelligence.  What then was the block all about?

Martin answered this question a bit sheepishly, "The fact is that I'm BORED by it." he said, "Studying Java is not my favorite thing to do."  Then he added that the end-product -- -- what you can DO with it -- -- was exciting to him, but not the process.  "I keep thinking –– why am I learning it?”

For the first time we had a concrete issue to work on with respect to the JAVA problem. Martin's intensity level on a 10 point "boredom" scale (where zero was "not bored at all" and "10" was “unbearably bored") was a "7 to 8.” I sometimes vary the standard distress ratings to indicate intensity of emotions other than distress, and this was one of those times — boredom, not anxiety or distress, was the issue he was to rate.

To start off I suggested that Martin try using the EFT Choices phrase:

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