David Feinstein, Ph.D.
Well over a decade ago, I was doing a short presentation in Copenhagen in front of 300 people who were part of a larger conference. Most had never heard of energy psychology, acupoint tapping, EFT, or TFT. Even in brief presentations, I try to do a demonstration, and I’ve found that phobias lend themselves well to this. They may have plagued the person for many years, yet they can usually be eliminated in a relatively brief session. When I asked who had a phobia and might be willing to be part of a demonstration, a few audience participants raised their hands, which is usual. I inquired about each and brought one of them up to the stage for the demo. It was a woman who had barely survived the 2004 tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean, destroying many villages and killing some 230,000 people.
During the tsunami, she was tumbled by the waves, and was fighting for her life. She saw others swept into the sea. She suffered a broken hip and subsequently had to have several operations. But she had never really dealt with it emotionally. She would have intense anxiety attacks whenever she thought about it. Now on the stage, she could hardly get her words out. She was shaking and sweating. Soon, she was reliving the experience in a full blown, dissociated abreaction. She was no longer in contact with me or the here and now. I did not expect this; when she initially described her phobia, all she said was that she was afraid of storms. At this point I was thinking, “Why didn’t I choose the one with the fear of cockroaches!”
After I managed to re-establish contact with her, I helped her take control of her breathing. Next I guided her in tapping. Within a few minutes she had stopped shaking. Her breathing had become natural. She was reoriented to the room, to me, and to the audience. She said, with complete composure, “It’s gone.” She could still remember the tsunami in detail, but it was no longer affecting her. She was able to talk about it calmly. The change was so fast, and she was so casual about it, that the conference organizer later asked me, with curiosity and a wink, whether we had staged it. While turn-arounds like this certainly don’t occur so quickly every time—this woman may have been neurologically poised for a major breakthrough—the speed by which energy psychology can lead to major healing of trauma-based emotional wounds is one of the approach’s distinguishing qualities.
Since that could-have-been-a-disastrous demo in Copenhagen, I’ve interviewed many front-line relief workers who have used acupoint tapping following catastrophic events. By 2022, EFT, TFT, or related acupoint tapping approaches had been applied after natural or human-made disasters in more than 30 countries. Everyone I’ve interviewed had dramatic stories to tell about working with people who had survived hurricanes or earthquakes that killed thousands, mass shootings, wildfires, genocide, the impact of warfare on military and civilian populations, or industrial accidents.
