Dear EFT Community,
In this moving account, Leon Jay tells of how he used EFT to help a boy overcome dyslexia and ADHD. As so many children do, this child learned to use it on his own and even taught a schoolmate how to use it to calm down. Leon concludes, “When one 12-year-old ADHD child can teach another how to use this technique after only a couple of sessions himself and get results, then I believe we need to pay attention.”
-Stephanie M
By Leon Jay
I would like to share one of my earlier cases that I have been keeping an eye on. It was perhaps the first client I had that really demonstrated the limitless possibility and potential of EFT to me. He was a 12-year-old boy who had been diagnosed with both dyslexia and ADHD. He had never learned to read words comprised of more than two to three letters, and even these were a struggle. He had issues with teachers and became easily angered and frustrated in class.
I sat down with him and asked him to describe exactly what he saw on the page. He explained that the words were moving up and down about 1-2 inches on the page, and each of the letters had an outline around it. If that were not bad enough, there were also letters within the letters that were moving around. I asked him what his emotional response was looking at the page, to which he replied he was scared. He became noticeably agitated.
I began to work with him using the Setup Statements that he had given me. We turned it into a game in which he had to follow me tapping different points. We would use either hand on either side on any of the points in any order. The only rule was he had to mirror me exactly. We began:
Even though the words move up and down, I’m still a good kid.
Even though I can see outlines around the letters, I’ve done nothing wrong.
Even though I can see letters within the letters, I can still have fun.
Even though the words scare me, I can be brave.
After 5-10 minutes of work on this, we checked back in. He said that most of the words were much clearer now. We did some more work on the “remaining” outlines and movement. This brought the page into focus clearly for him for the first time in his life. There was some remaining fear, which with a little investigation we discovered came from a particularly strict teacher before his dyslexia diagnosis. Once we dealt with her specifically, there was no longer any emotional reaction from trying to read.
While he still could not read, as he had never really learned how, he felt much more confident that he would be able to. Then he turned around and said he could finally learn to read Harry Potter, with more gratitude in his voice than any other client before or since. This left me surer than ever that I had to work with EFT as my primary therapy of choice.
I followed up a week later to find that only a small amount of movement and a faint outline had returned for him. We spent another 15 minutes on this and he has not had a problem since. Within the next month, his mum noticed some remarkable changes. He was no longer in as much trouble at school, he came in top in his science exam for his class and for the first time ever he started trying to write poetry at home, just for fun! He did, however, get into trouble–for not using the special colored film he previously needed to help him read. When he told his teachers he didn’t need it anymore, they didn’t believe him.
If all this wasn’t good enough, I discovered later that he also began teaching the shortcut technique I had shown him to control his anger in school to another ADD classmate, with great success! When one 12-year-old ADHD child can teach another how to use this technique after only a couple of sessions himself and get results, then I believe we need to pay attention.
