Energy healing/tapping? (Emotional Freedom Technique)

Anyone's therapist try this with them? Its called Emotional Freedom Technique

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) - Emotional Health

Has anyone done this with any success? My T is pushing it, and I feel ridiculous doing it and I'm not sure it's working...

My partner tried it, but it freaked her out and the therapist stopped as a technique.

freaked her out in what way?

I have expressed intense lack of interest in this (and other energy healing) but my T wont let it go, and sometimes we spend the majority of a session with her making me pull positive energy out of the ground or drawing hearts in the air with my arms, or letting her draw whatever shapes in front of my body to align my energy and it just feels ridiculous. And...I dont want to pay $120 a session for it.

my T has tries this as a way to help me relax when I was so terrified in session that I could hardly move. it kind of did wonders with my stomach feeling so upset

and it really works for you? maybe im doing it wrong, then?

Maybe it just doesn't work for you. Time to find a new T, IMO.

Those methods aren't proven and there is no scientific basis that they actually do anything other than a "placebo effect".

i have to say that it doesn't seem very therapeutic for your T to be pushing this or any type of treatment on you. with EFT i find it especially troublesome since it is considered an alternative therapy pretty far outside the mainstream.

energy therapies seem to have a spiritual component to them. i'd want to know what spirituality they stem from and what the energy actually is before considering trying them. i know for myself they would not be something i'd be comfortable with as they don't align with the spirituality i practice.

bottom line: trust your gut on whether or not to do this.

Both my CBT and psychodynamic Ts have worked with me some on EFT, and it hasn't been spiritual at all. My CBT T first presented it to me as a process helpful in letting go of a troublesome feeling, like frustration or anxiety over a particular issue in that moment. It hasn't worked very well for me (so far), partly because I tend to not "feel" my emotions all that well in the first place (and I am also SUPER anxious). So I compartmentalize and then just shut down or block my feelings out.
My psychodynamic T has a bit of a different process and he and I still spend a few minutes tapping each session; he said he is trying to bring my feelings to the surface, which I am sure would be very helpful for me. I mean, the idea sounds good.
Both of my Ts have said they have had good results with people overall, and I do see how it could work very well. However, if you are not comfortable with it, it shouldn't be forced on you. And I doubt drawing hearts in the air makes you take her very seriously, either...yikes. Can you find a new T?

Yes! I only saw this T for a short time when my former T was out of town but I got over some major PTSD using the tapping technique with her. It was enormously helpful.

This type of technique would not work for me, either. I find "talking" psychotherapy to be very helpful, but I am not interested in spiritual, energy-based, or experimental therapies. I respond well to touch, but I find it to be the touch that helps-- not any particular alignment of energy or points on the body. Therefore, techniques like EFT just aren't for me. If you tell your therapist that EFT is not for you, she should respect that. If she doesn't, then I would suggest finding a new T who practices a technique that you ARE interested in. A T who "pushes" her own agenda on a client simply isn't a good T.

If it is not a sort of therapy you would like to try, then, if it were me, I would get a therapist who would do something I wanted to do. But I would not dismiss something just because it was not approved by the majority or just because it has been dismissed as a placebo effect. Frankly everything they do is a guess - if it works then good.
My partner became super anxious and would start crying and dissociating - that was why they stopped.

i wont/cant talk about my abuse issues, so she suggested this as an alternative to talking, but i hate it. id rather work on figuring out how to actually talk about it than waste time tapping or doing qigong in session- i can do that for much cheaper elsewhere if i really wanted to.

QiGong has really helped me. I did not do it with the therapist, but it, along with meditation, are quite useful in my life.

im not against qigong at all, I found a class that happens every saturday for $10.

im totally okay with doing it. what im NOT okay with is using my $120 therapy hour to do qigong. its just unacceptable to me. thats a very expensive class.

i also got a heartmath inner balance sensor (on her recommendation) to help me relieve stress and anxiety and to learn to recognize a meditative state. ive found it helpful.

I would share your concern. I have no problem trying something alternative in addition to my healthcare,on my own time, but never in place of it.

I am personally wary of these "tapping" techniques---it seems like bs to me. You should definitely tell her your concerns and a firm NO to anything you do not want to do. Maybe you need a T that focuses on evidence based treatments.

I wouldn't be able to do this with a straight face. Seems completely goofy to me. I suspect I'm not of the right frame of mind for this kind of thing.

Oh yeah...I have felt pretty ridiculous doing it. It helps that my Ts have done it with me and also that they have changed the language to suit my personality (less mushy and self-love kind of stuff). Also, my psychodynamic T gets me to say "I feel really stupid doing this, but that's okay" while I tap sometimes since I get stuck on feeling totally stupid about it (which sounds silly I suppose, but it helps nonetheless).

The link didn't work, but it went to Dr. Mercola's website?

That's enough for me to know to never try it. Just google his name. There's a reason he's featured on pages like quackwatch.

Things don't get dismissed as having a placebo effect, it is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of science.

Now I don't know about the research available for this particular technique and for all I know perhaps there is just one badly done study that came to the conclusion that it's not more effective than a placebo, again, I don't know that, but generally referring to a placebo effect is not dismissive, it's scientific.

Gary Craig is the "father" of EFT. As for "quackwatch"...that dr. lists EMDR on his "quackery related topics" page. That's enough for me to question him.

I disagree. Use of the term "placebo effect" is used by western medicine to dismiss all sorts of things, often things they are not getting money from, from what I have seen.
And I have found nothing about therapy to be scientific in the first place - which was my point. So if it works for somebody - great - if not - then try something else. All of therapy is the placebo effect, in my opinion.

I know a lot about energy healing and am a big believer in the positive effects IF it is done properly. I had a T try EFT on me once after she had attended a one day workshop on it. I did not find it to be effective but I attribute that to her lack of skill in doing it with me properly. I am sure there are other T's who more successfully integrate EFT into therapy.

I have had other energy healing modalities that have make a huge difference towards helping me process trauma. Just like our bodies hold memories of trauma, so do our energy fields. You've probably heard of the mind-body connection - our energy fields is what makes the connection between mind and body.

Western science does not currently have an effective methodology for testing energy healing quantitatively, nor does the scientific establishment put a priority on funding research in this area. So the fact is that there is simply not enough hard data to disprove the efficacy of energy healing.

As for your T, if you don't want to do it and she still pushes it on you, that seems like a big red flag to me. No matter how effective EFT is, if you aren't willing then you shouldn't be pushed into it.

However, you did say that you haven't been able to access your feelings. You might consider doing some type of energy work outside of therapy (perhaps a qigong class) that will help you move some energetic blocks - that will get your feelings flowing for sure. Once your energy is less stuck, you will be better able to talk during therapy.

i recently saw EMDR listed as an energy therapy and thought that was interesting as i'd not heard that before. at one point i looked into EMDR a bit and the founder of it was into the same sorts of alternative therapies as EFT so i can see how a site like quackwatch would probably consider EMDR either an energy therapy or similar to an energy therapy and thus in their view sketchy.

for me, it's just about being informed. i want to know what the basis of a therapeutic technique is. if it has an underlying spiritual component to it i just want to be aware of that so i don't stumble unaware into something i personally don't want to practice. i once unknowingly did something that i thought was supposed to be a medical treatment and it a) did nothing for my condition and b) was totally freaky and i felt all kinds of whoknowswhat swirling around the room. no thank you!

My T is big in to this and I am in a small way.
We have not tried it yet in session largely as I tend to be very shy about some things.
I do it on my own once a week or so when I am stressed. Usually my own version of it. Some time I will skip one point in favor of another.
I don't know about posting links to youtube here but my T has a few videos their.

Find a different T, is my advice. I have no problem with people who believe in energy lines using the concept if it helps them, but those of us who are not believers should not have to put up with it from our medical providers.