Email to a Friend ►

EFT for Mental Illness & Retardation

Home ► Articles ► Mental Illness & Retardation ► A Murderous Impulse ► Page 2

A Murderous Impulse Page 2

“Even though I wanted to smash my daughter through that glass, I deeply and completely accept myself…”  Over and over again he repeated the set-up and reminder phrases for a number of rounds.  His SUDS level began to come down – to a 7, to a 4, to a 3, and then he finally breathed a sigh of relief, but I suggested he keep going until it came down to a zero.  So he kept going – 2, 1, and then he straightened up, looking steadily and intently at me, and said:

“I feel ok about it now.  That helped” Then he added (in effect, I wasn’t taking notes of every word) “I feel different now.  I’m clear.” (pause) “I know what I’m going to do.”

I expected that he would tell me that he now had an idea of how he would deal differently with his daughter, after doing the EFT.  But instead, staring intently at me, he said slowly:

“I know what I’m going to do.  There’s this guy in my office who’s been bugging me like I told you.  I hate that guy and now I know what I’m going to do.  I keep a revolver in my desk drawer for safety purposes and I know I should take it out and kill him.  It just came clear to me while I was doing the tapping. That’s what I’m going to do.  I feel ok about it now.  I accept myself.”

Fortunately I had been tapping along with him, round after round, for the whole time.  I was deeply grateful for this fact because it allowed me to now have a surprising calm when dealing with this.  I could not have done as well had I not been tapping on myself, I am convinced of that.

I had no doubt that Roland meant what he said and that he was clearly, at that moment at least, intending to shoot his co-worker.  He had given me his own diagnosis – that of paranoid schizophrenia - one which certainly made such behavior possible.  I realized as he talked that after he had done the tapping, the anxiety which had been preventing him from acting on his feelings of being “bugged” by this man up until now, had been removed through the use of EFT, and that he was now in danger of yielding to his impulse to kill.  In effect, this appeared to be an untreated aspect that Roland did not want to address because his delusional system was still in place.

Inadvertently, I had applied EFT incorrectly in this situation in a manner which I came to understand afterwards, but not then.  All I knew at the time was that there was imminent danger – he had told me that the man in his office was away but was returning next week. This didn’t give us much time and I considered the man’s life to be genuinely in danger, but intuitively I felt that it would not be wise to try to argue Roland out of his conviction that shooting the man was the right thing to do, at THIS point.  There was a steel-like determination in his eyes and he simply was not willing to work on that impulse at this moment.

Given his unwillingness, I needed to take another tact.  Instead of responding with surprise or alarm at what he had told me, which I believe he expected me to do, I instead started to discuss with him the usefulness of his getting a handle on the anger he was feeling toward his daughter.  This was, after all, the reason he had come to therapy and I felt that here we had a genuine wish to prevent him from harming someone, a positive intention which we could build on in the treatment.  I make a decision to address only the positive in order to help him motivate himself to seek the more extensive help that I knew he was going to need.

In as relaxed a way as I could, I began to discuss the usefulness of some of the modern medications for the type of anger he had felt toward his daughter.  Roland seemed almost relieved to talk about this and he didn’t veto my suggestion for some tranquilizing medication in the interim, either.  I think he appreciated my having not responded with alarm to his announcement about the gun but, instead, with understanding for the side of him that wanted to institute controls.  I think this because he clearly wasn’t actively resisting my suggestions about other interventions.

I knew I did not want to continue working with Roland because I could not feel safe doing so outside of a clinic or institutional setting where there were other people present in the same building and a measure of ritualized protection. Were I to feel unsafe treating him, but do so anyway, my fear would obviously transmit to him and destroy my effectiveness as a therapist.

The plan I began to formulate in my mind was to transfer Roland to a psychiatrist who would prescribe the necessary emergency medication and who would continue to see him in a controlled clinic setting.  We ended the interview by my arranging with Roland that I would phone him and discuss with him “some helpful suggestions I have in mind” and arrange for scheduling the next session.  I didn’t want to dismiss him too abruptly from work with me.  Rather I wanted to prepare the ground first by finding really good help for him and have the referral phone number in hand before I spoke with him about this.

After he left I went frantically to work to track down an appropriate psychiatrist in his managed care plan.  I wanted someone who would be sympathetic and understanding--someone who would not be overly alarmed by this case but sufficiently alert to the real danger involved to be able to handle it rapidly and well.  I also sought someone who would have enough strength and authority to help Roland institute the necessary controls that were presently missing in his own personality. I felt that probably this person should be a “man,” since the absence of a father figure had been a major factor in Roland’s early life.

Continue Reading Page ► 1 ► 2 ► 3 ► 4