PART I
Dear (NAME),
Thank you for sending me your three case histories and the letter detailing your personal work. I look forward to receiving the rest of your certification materials. Here are my comments on the three cases you have submitted thus far.
Your first client, KM, was clear about her presenting issue of her recent separation from her husband. She seems to have had no trouble relating that to her abuse in early childhood. I am curious about why you waited until session four to introduce EFT; I’m guessing it was because you were just starting out your practice of EFT at that time. The death of her brother was an actual event on which to use the Tell-The-Story technique – it looks as though you applied it exactly as taught, starting at a neutral point and pausing whenever her SUDs became high. She shifted through a variety of emotions, and you tested her several times to determine if her SUD level was dropping. Near the end of the session, you describe her big cognitive shift into empathy for her parents.
Many clients will, like KM, have a difficulty with EFT’s self-acceptance phrase, and your substitutions were right on target. You are also likely to find that the generalization effect may have produced a lower intensity in some of her similar traumas. I am encouraged that she used EFT on her own between sessions. You also showed respect for her in giving her the space to stop dealing with past events until she had more stability in her current life.
Your second case history, HA, responded very quickly to EFT. The book you read with this ten-year-old seems to have paved the way for his acceptance of your interventions. He seemed to accept your guidance as you proceeded with the Movie Technique. This was also an appropriate place for you to use one of the gentle techniques. The disparity between the SUD level he reported and his apparent affect was worth noting, and you used his self-reported SUDs for guidance about when to move on. Once his SUD was low, you had him start telling the story, starting at a neutral point, and you stopped him when his intensity got to a 10. I’m glad to see you using his exact words — this is ESPECIALLY important with children, who have even more direct association. His SUDs dropped rapidly after tapping around his father’s exact words, which, again, is not uncommon for this age group. You appropriately used Sneaking Away when you ran into a time crunch at the end of the session. It’s encouraging that he was able to transition off of his medications, since these medications can have long-term effects on children. He may never be able to address his mother’s role, but he has still made enormous strides with your help.
Case study three, PY, was interesting to me because the client received EFT after EMDR treatment. My guess is that by having your client focus on his early memory of killing a kitten when he was five or six years old also took care of subsequent layers of trauma. It was interesting, too, that his maximum intensity turned out to be elicited by the title of the movie, “I Killed a Kitten”. It was appropriate of you to encourage him to use his own words at any point he chose. Using the 9-Gamut Procedure at that point is something I would have done as well, but I’m surprised that his intensity did not drop. You then rewound and had him tell the story again, stopping at an emotional crescendo. You searched for different aspects, such as the look on the faces of his mother and sister when they saw what he was doing. At that point he made the cognitive shift into self-acceptance, realizing he did not understand the consequences of his actions at that age. Hopefully he has continued to use EFT subsequently, as he intended.
In the letter about your personal work, you describe starting to use the Personal Peace Procedure systematically. I am so glad you gave yourself this gift after the workshop! It’s interesting to see how the big issues were partially neutralized by you tapping on the smaller issues.
Even though you are a mental health professional, you still found it useful to work with your practitioner friend. Thank you for your honest appraisal of your personal issues — I am confident you will continue to find them being positively affected by your own tapping and your tapping with clients. I look forward to receiving your brief case histories, and to seeing you develop as an EFT practitioner!
All the best,
Dawson
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PART II
Dear (NAME),
Thanks for mailing in your remaining individual case studies and book reports. You seem to be working with lots of adolescents, many people challenged by relationship issues, and those with the problems of anger, autism, and bullying. Each practitioner seems to naturally gravitate towards certain kinds of specializations, and your cases provided a fascinating window into how you are applying EFT in your professional practice.
In several cases, like HDA, client number 9 and 17, and KK, client number 18, you comment on how quickly SUD level drops, and I also find this startling at times.
There are several cases in which I would probably have used the 9-gamut technique, such as Client number 6, AL. When a client is this hard to pin down, sometimes the 9-gamut will clean up a lot of trauma quickly, and provide better starting points for detailed work.
You also noted several clients like number 2, JK, or client number 12, HNA, in which you aren’t sure if any progress is being made. While this is rare, it does happen, and sometimes we just need to accept these limitations, wherever they may lie. For clients like JB, number 15, and client number 16, IS, who are sedated or dissociative, you might try the 9-gamut technique.
For a recent trauma like KK, client number 18, who recently discovered that her husband was having an affair, try the Tearless Trauma Technique, or one of the other gentle techniques. You will find a list of clinical EFT techniques at (article id 9096).
For clients like KM, number 22, it’s fine to follow them through rapid shifts in aspects. You tested frequently, and checked for emotional crescendos, so I would tend to trust her experience of having a zero for anger at the end of the session. Either remembering more details of an event, or forgetting them, as client number 30, BK did, are indicative of cognitive shifts.
For a client like number 49, KH, I sometimes have them spend almost all their tapping time tapping on the karate chop point, since I suspect that reversal IS their basic problem.
I‘d like to encourage you to write up a number of these cases as brief stories for the newsletter, so that others can be inspired by and learn form your experience. We have a number of volunteer editors, and Will is going to team you up with one of these editors, if you are willing. Attached are the scans of such case histories. Most contain enough detail to permit a 3 or 4 paragraph write-up. I’d appreciate you working with an editor to develop these for the newsletter. We will then include one every few weeks, which will draw attention to your practice.
I believe you are going to be able to help an even wider range of people as you add EFT to your already impressive list of clinical skills.
All the best,
Dawson
