In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) incorporates a number of different alternative healing approaches, including neuro-linguistic programming, acupuncture meridians, and energy medicine. It’s not generally accepted within mainstream psychology, and it’s been described as a pseudoscience, which is something I always love to rant about.
EFT was founded by Gary Craig. He’s not a psychologist, and he reports that when he tried taking psychology courses they puzzled him. His training is as an engineer.
Gary Craig’s EFT manual
Craig’s EFT manual claims that it can treat a wide range of conditions, including mental illnesses, allergies, sexual performance issues, and cancer. EFT involves tapping at certain points to connect with energy meridians, the pathways along which qi (life energy) is said to travel in acupuncture and other Chinese medicine approaches. A key principle in EFT is the discovery statement: “The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.”
The manual is quite nonsense-rich. Consider the following:
“EFT gives you striking evidence that energy flows within your body because it provides the effects that let you know it is there. By simply tapping near the end points of your energy meridians you can experience some profound changes in your emotional and physical health. These changes would not occur if there was no energy system.”
Okay then. If I throw a ball in the air and predict that a purple people eater will knock it back to earth, and then the ball does fall back to earth, that does not in any way prove my purple people eater hypothesis.
The EFT process
The first preparatory step in EFT is to repeat an affirmation three times while rubbing one of the “sore spots” (one is located on either side of the upper chest). This is to address any electrical interference from a “polarity reversal within your energy system.” That may sound fancy, but it’s also not real.
Next is the tapping sequence, which involves tapping each meridian point seven times. Then you do the 9 Gamut procedure – tap the Gamut point on the back of one hand while doing certain eye movements, humming/singing a song, and counting from 1 to 5. Then you repeat the tapping sequence. The idea is to keep going with this sequence until you reach an emotional intensity of zero. Or until you go cross-eyed from the eye movements and your voice gets hoarse from the singing.
Let’s get quacky
A paper by Church and colleagues proposed clinical guidelines for the use of EFT in PTSD. It claims that EFT draws from CBT and exposure therapy. There’s a substantial amount of nonsense (from a scientific perspective), including the central ridiculous feature of surveying EFT practitioners to ask how effective EFT was for their patients. It would be kind of like evaluating the effectiveness of icepick lobotomies by asking Dr. Lobotomy himself how well it worked.
It seems pretty clear to me that EFT is pseudoscientific nonsense. But could tapping still be helpful? Sure, I don’t see why not. It seems logical to think that it could serve as a mindfulness focus and a grounding technique. If you pair an affirmation or positive statement with your tapping, you can probably develop a conditioned response where the act of tapping spontaneously brings up the positive thought. Tapping can also serve as a means of bilateral stimulation in EMDR therapy for PTSD.
So, if tapping is helping you, that’s great; it’s just probably not for the reasons that Gary Craig says it is.
If you’re so inclined, Gary Craig’s website has a Gold Standard (Official) EFT Tapping Tutorial.
Sources
- Church, D., et al. (2017). Emotional freedom techniques to treat posttraumatic stress disorder in veterans: Review of the evidence, survey of practitioners, and proposed clinical guidelines. The Permanente Journal, 21(2017), 16-100.
- The EFT Manual, 6th edition
- Wikipedia: Emotional Freedom Techniques
The Psychology Corner has an overview of terms covered in the What Is… series, along with a collection of scientifically validated psychological tests.
Ashley L. Peterson
BScPharm BSN MPN
Ashley is a former mental health nurse and pharmacist and the author of four books.
I have tried it and it didn’t work at all for me. Thanks for this post. I felt like a failure because it was suppose to work.
I really like the DBT view on therapy not working – a client can’t fail at therapy; the therapy fails to help the client.
🙂 thank you.
I have done EFT a bit off and on. I find it can be good at distracting short term, but it is hard for me to keep it up long term. Maybe I’m just lazy lol.
Nothing wrong with lazy 😉
Hands-on reiki. Say no more. Have you ever done a piece on NLP? The sales manager at a newspaper I worked at was really into it and tried to explain it, but I think you’d do a better job.
On my journey I exhausted most therapies including EFT
Looking back I diligently tried two intuitives, cranial sacral therapy, TFT, hypnosis, CBT, Edit, EMDR
With little or no results
When I discovered ACT or acceptance and commitment therapy things changed some
Healing came when I devoted most of my time meditating, exploring my inner world
The issue I see with some of these therapies is that most sufferers only try one cure if that
Our psychological cabal gives no recommendations on what therapy works best or quickest
It is a crap shoot and 95% of Ptsd people do not try multiple therapies if the first one fails
Yes it’s definitely worth continuing to look for something that will work.
“…and counting from 1 to 5. Then you repeat the tapping sequence, The idea is to keep going with this sequence until you reach an emotional intensity of zero.”
—This is nothing more than a recipe for OCD 😨!!!
I’ll bet you anything that guy just has a severe case of OCD! That entire paragraph was utterly consistent with it! Then he’s projecting that onto everybody else, perhaps even innocently, or out of denial that he has OCD. Christ. Autism, OCD, rigid thinking patterns could explain it all 🤔.
His ‘routine’ is truly horrifying when viewed from the perspective of OCD!
That’s the perfect explanation!
Haha, thanks! It really just fitted more with further inspection, it was hilarious in a way.
I think maybe a lot of things can be explained with various combinations of mental ‘disorders’ like these! Including religion, bible etc—
OOp!
I couldn’t understand. Can you help me how to clear my mind of negative energy?
‘Next is the tapping sequence, which involves tapping each meridian point seven times. Then you do the 9 Gamut procedure – tap the Gamut point on the back of one hand while doing certain eye movements, humming/singing a song, and counting from 1 to 5′.
This sounds like a prank! You know that thing when you’re supposed to rub your belly lets say clock wise and makes circles above your head counter clock wise? Just add some counting and *poof* your sad emotions are not longer there! You’re just totally overwhelmed and out of every loop you were ever in.
It’s such clickbait ’emotional freeing therapy’! It’s a BOO from me!
But then again I’m so happy that my chi corresponds to my medication, it’s a miracle! 😂
It’s like doing the hokey pokey! Maybe that’s the song that needs to be sung during it!
🤣🤣🤣 or do the loco-motion with meeee 🎶🎶🎶
Yes!!!
This is an interesting concept!
Thanks for this post, I’m looking into this some more and your post is very interesting 😊