Anxiety and Stress Relief with Thought Field Therapy

There is a new, excellent article in Vision magazine talking about the benefits of TFT for anxiety and stress relief.  It is an interview with TFT practitioner Sharon Goodlove, whose is trained through the advanced, Optimal Health level of TFT which includes Voice Technology.  Sharon has been a long time practitioner and the interview is great for increasing awareness of the benefits of using Thought Field Therapy for anxiety and stress in today’s chaotic times.

For further information on training in TFT or a listing of practitioners, go to www.TFTRX.com .

Thought Field Therapy Tapping into Emotional Freedom

by Elyssa Paige

If I told you that you could completely rid yourself of fear, anxiety and stress in a matter of minutes, what would you say?

That’s what Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is all about. By simply tapping on acupressure points in a specific order, you balance the body’s energy system and release negative emotions.

I discovered this modality during a stressful time in my life in which I thankfully found my way to the cozy office of Sharon Goodlove, Certified Thought Field Therapy Diagnostician. She showed me how to treat myself in one session. Recently we spoke again—this time to empower others to release negativity and heal themselves through TFT.

Vision Magazine: How does TFT eliminate emotional distress, phobias and traumas?
Sharon Goodlove: For most phobias and simple anxieties, TFT is a process that balances energy and eliminates phobias in one session which takes about an hour, sometimes less. During a session, you show the person how to use their fingertips to tap on certain acupressure points on their body in a set order, which we call an algorithm. It’s like following a recipe; you don’t put the cake in the oven before you start it up. After following that recipe or algorithm, while you’re thinking about whatever the phobia is, you notice that you don’t have that feeling anymore. We use a four-letter word sometimes, which is “cure.” Not too many people in the healing field use that word; they might say they treat or help you. With phobias and simple anxieties, we say TFT will cure them and if it doesn’t, there are no bad side effects, symptoms or drugs involved.

VM: Can you give an example of a successful session?
SG: A recent client said that she wanted to be able to use a new trolley station, but she couldn’t get herself to climb the stairs. As she was telling the story, she was already in what we call the “thought field,” or the field of energy [created] when she thinks about a certain thing. So I asked her two questions: Where do you feel it, if there was any place in your body that resonates with that fear? Sometimes people will say their bellies are churning, their hearts are beating faster, or their palms are sweaty. She thought about it, and then I asked her the second question: on a scale of one to 10, where is your level of upset right now? She said it was about an eight or nine. Then I showed her how to tap on these points on her body while I tap on mine so she can see where the points are. This took about five minutes, maybe a little less. Then I asked her again how she was feeling when she thought about it. And she said, “well, those stairs really are sturdy and lots of other people are walking on them; maybe I can do it too.”

Now what I’ve noticed is that the treatment seems to quell the fear so that the clear-thinking, rational part of the person comes back. And so she decided to give the stairs a try. She gave me a check for $100, which is my fee for eliminating phobias—if it works for the person. I told her I wouldn’t cash it until she gave me a call saying what her experience was. So she went over to the trolley station, walked up the stairs, and called me from the top, saying, “too bad I don’t have anyplace to go right now; I could ride the trolley!” That’s one really amazing example and it happens all the time with as wide a range of phobias as you can imagine.

VM: How does TFT relate to the field of modern medicine and healing?
SG: I think that it’s one of the most groundbreaking foundational levels of good health because when your body is in anxiety, fear, or upset of any sort, it affects your whole system. I believe that the mind, body and spirit are all one unit so if you’re emotionally upset or you’re physically perturbed with some crisis, it affects all of you.

Using a method like TFT to relax the emotions helps you feel better spiritually as well. You become more calm, peaceful, and mindful. It also helps you physically; your blood pressure lowers and your immune system is enhanced because you’re not taxing it with emotional upset.

VM: Have there been any instances of TFT alleviating physical illness, considering, as you say, that our emotions are connected to our physical wellness?
SG: TFT has been used by many people when they have disease processes. I think of it as a hand-in-glove kind of a connector. There have been many people around the world who have reported that their medical treatments have progressed remarkably quickly, according to their physicians, because they’ve been using TFT to relax their emotional upsets. Their physical treatments of cancers or other ailments progress much more quickly. Does TFT do the healing? I don’t think so. There are many adjunctive types of treatments that will help your medical condition improve and TFT is one of those.

VM: Can you talk a little bit about how TFT was discovered?
SG: Dr. Roger Callahan, who I believe is now in his early 80s, was a behavioral cognitive therapist. He was also a fellow with the American Hypnotherapy Association and in good standing in the traditional psychotherapeutic community. At a convention, he saw a chiropractor named George Goodheart presenting a paper about using a series of muscle relaxations and adjustments to help athletes who were trying out for the U.S. Olympic team.

Dr. Callahan noticed that this chiropractor was using muscle testing by [having] the person hold out the arm very steadily and then [applying] light pressure. He noticed that their muscles weakened when they thought of something negative and realized that maybe his [patients] who had various phobias and anxieties might benefit from the same kind of treatment. So he began a study of biokinesiology muscle testing and acupressure. And that’s basically how he started—by learning those two adjunctive methods and giving up hypnotherapy and behavioral cognitive therapy. As a result, he was not well accepted by his peers in the very traditional forms of psychotherapy. However, he persisted and he hit upon—we sometimes say tapped upon (with tongue-in-cheek) a new treatment that immediately gives relief to people’s fears.

VM: You mentioned that Dr. Callahan lost his good standing with the medical community after he made his discoveries. What do you attribute this reaction to?
SG: It’s the same for individuals. If you had a fear of something for a period of time and now within five or 15 minutes—it’s gone? It seems too good to be true. Dr. Callahan referred to this as the apex problem; you’ve reached the top too fast, so it must not have been that difficult to begin with. It’s sort of like you don’t even remember how bad it was. Also, a lot of healing professionals seem to be very good at a narrow range of knowledge. It’s the alternative therapies that I believe have that range of knowledge, plus [these practitioners have] added in one, two or several other ways of looking at a situation. They go outside the box to develop a broader spectrum of knowledge. They try other methods and see whether they are helpful or not. They’re not so closed to one perspective.

VM: What is the difference between Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and TFT?
SG: As I understand it, since I’m certified in both, Gary Craig trained with Dr. Callahan back in the 90s, [after which] he did a spin off; he took that information, sort of clumped the treatments together into one long sequence of tapping points, and called it EFT. And as best as I can tell, there are several other people who have done the same thing. When I took the EFT trainings, I used it exclusively for about a three-month period of time. I found it helpful because basically, the concepts and treatment modalities of TFT are hugely powerful, so even a piece of them is still very powerful. While they’re not the same, I think it’s positive in the sense that the people who have taken some of the technique and applied it to their own [situation] are using a really helpful modality and that’s a benefit to the planet.

VM: Can people practice TFT at home?
SG: That’s one of the great benefits of TFT. I give people homework. I give them printouts of the treatment and ask them to use a log sheet to keep track. I found that when you start using the technique and teaching people how to treat themselves, they don’t need to come back—which is good! And when you don’t have people returning to you, you have to reach a lot more people. In Dr. Callahan’s case, he said that he just about had to file for bankruptcy because people got well so quickly that they didn’t have to come back. It’s no longer necessary when you are doing something that works exponentially quickly, without side effects, and you can do it on your own at home.

VM: What is one thing we could do each day to heal ourselves and create wellness in our lives?
SG: If you focus on what the illness or the upset is in your world, you can focus on that feeling and do a few tapping techniques that take a minute or two. Then do your regular routine of meditating, taking a walk, calling a friend or giving a prayer and a blessing for your day. I see TFT as a basic treatment that you intuitively can go to when you feel things are out of balance.