A revolutionary new psychotherapy reaps results for sufferers of traumas, phobias and addictions

A graphic designer was too nauseous to photograph her boyfriend's bungee jumping because of her long-standing fear of heights.

Although she lived through the destruction of the Los Angeles earthquake, more recent tremors kept Gail from being able to sleep at night.

The childhood memory of being stalked by one of her mother's boyfriends was haunting Debra. She felt she was swimming in a sea of anxiety that was constantly surrounding her in spite of her success as a scientist and researcher at a biotech firm.

After quitting smoking for three years, Kat found herself smoking up to a pack of cigarettes a day, feeling miserable and wanting to quit.

Each of these women came into my office willing to try one of the most baffling, exciting and revolutionary new psychotherapies of the last ten years. Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is an unorthodox treatment that mixes up all standard assumptions about the nature of emotional distress and the practice of psychotherapy. Therapists trained in this procedure can treat anxiety, stress, phobias, trauma, fears, depression, guilt and addictive urges in only a few minutes with a success rate of about 80% and with lasting results. There is no waiting time as required by medication, no reliving one's pains as with psychodynamic work, and no attempt at changing your thinking about the problem as in cognitive therapy. Though it doesn't work for everyone, when it does work, the results are immediately experienced.

There was a time when chiropractors were thought of as "quacks." Perhaps there are people who still believe that but today, the discipline of chiropractic is very much accepted as a reputable practice and many insurance companies now include it in their coverage plans. There are thousands of people who claim "only the chiropractor could help me." Could the same scenario apply to this new method of psychotherapy? As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, I have found that while this treatment method is far from traditional, the results are highly successful, painless and quick.

TFT was discovered in 1981 by Dr. Roger Callahan, a cognitive psychologist who had tried

everything in his repertoire to help a woman with a lifelong, severe and apparently intractable water phobia. He decided to try a variation on a holistic, mind-body healing method he had been studying, based on the theory in Chinese medicine that energy flows along meridian lines in the body. These meridian points appear to act as a governing force in healing and growth. When the energy points are blocked or unbalanced, the person experiences emotional disturbance or what Dr. Roger Callahan calls "perturbations." He discovered that by directly treating the blockage in the energy flow created by a disturbing thought pattern, the disturbance or upset disappears. It virtually eliminates any negative feeling previously associated with a thought. In an attempt to help Mary, his patient with the water phobia, he tested his theory. He asked her to think about water, tap with two fingers on the point that connected with the stomach meridian and much to his surprise, her fear of water completely disappeared.

"The fear is gone!, " she exclaimed and went running around the swimming pool behind his office. Not only had her fear evaporated but the apparent cure remains effective to this day.

Callahan continued to expand on his discovery and has come up with a number of brief treatments or "algorithms." Algorithms are step-by-step procedures or sequences of body taps geared to particular conditions which patients can perform on themselves.

The therapist asks a person to think about a situation or event and rate how uncomfortable they feel at the moment on a scale from one to ten, where ten is the worst you can feel and one is no trace of the problem. Then the patient taps with two fingers on various acupressure points on the body, according to the prescribed recipe pattern (algorithm). The algorithm is based on the particular emotions elicited by the upset. After a series of tapping, which takes only five to six minutes, during which the patient rates the disturbance a few times in the process, the treatment is complete and the distress is eliminated.

Psychotherapy is predictable in many ways. When we finally get up the nerve to go to someone for help, we think we will be expected to sit in therapy and talk about the problem. Then, after a few or many sessions, we expect to feel better. We rarely expect to be cured. Since there is nothing in our culture that allows for a cognitive understanding as to why tapping on the meridian points works, it is very difficult to accept that something we have coped and lived with for years could disappear in minutes. Dr. Callahan calls this the "apex problem," which is that patients and those observing the therapy cannot believe that such a simple technique can work so well. Instead, they try to come up with explanations that they are familiar with to account for the outcome. Typically, they will not credit the treatment for the improvement.

So what happened to Gail, Kat and Debra? Each one of them experienced the remarkable success of TFT. Are they believers? You bet. In fact, the graphic artist who feared heights among other things, recently wrote to me.

"It may sound funny but I'm over my fear of heights. TFT let me experience a situation without fear that in the past had always been one full of anxiety. This feeling has really let me be free to face other situations and not be afraid to make a decision. It helped me to quit my old job and find something I enjoy, be on my own, find more friends and most importantly, live life. Thank you so much for all of your help."

"It's beyond amazing, I have never seen any treatment so powerful." Dr. Martin R. Schwartz,

Research Associate Professor, New York Medical School.

"What's fascinating about TFT is it's quick, painless and its success rate is almost unheard of."

Shad Meshad, President, National Veterans Foundation.

"TFT is one of the most revolutionary and helpful therapy procedures I have ever come across." Dr. Gary Emery, co-author, "Anxiety Disorder and Phobias."

"It is extraordinarily powerful, in that clients receive nearly immediate relief from their suffering and the treatment appears to be permanent." Charles R. Figley, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Interdivisional Ph.D. Program in Family Therapy, Florida State University.

Will Thought Field Therapy become a major therapy of the future? There is no doubt about it, this therapy is new and different and it gets results.