The TFT Foundation is excited to announce the publication of its 2009 PTSD study and work in Rwanda.  It has taken a long time and a lot of effort by many, and led by our board member, and Trauma Relief Committee chair, Suzanne Connolly.

It was a long time coming but, I think, an important article in a well read journal by those interested in helping Africa recover from trauma.  I would also like to thank the Peter C. Alderman Foundation for their assistance in edit corrections.

The entire study can be found on page 24 of the June 2013 Issue of the African Journal of Traumatic Stress, found here: http://petercaldermanfoundation.org/AfricanJnl/AJTS_V1N5.pdf

I wish to thank all the members of the TFT Community, The Paton Family Trust, The PepsiCo Foundation and the Ruth Lane Foundation for their support to complete this work.

The abstract is below.

 

Abstract

The use of Thought Field Therapy (TFT), a brief therapy technique, is examined in a study titled, Utilizing Community Resources to Treat PTSD: A Random Controlled Study Using Thought Field Therapy, to determine if there is a significant difference in the reduction of trauma symptoms between the treated group and the untreated group post treatment.

Study participants in the waitlist group received treatment after having completing the posttest.  One-hundred and sixty four adult survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide received a one-time trauma-focused TFT intervention in this randomized waitlist controlled study. Prior to the study,TFT techniques were taught to community leaders, who then provided them in their native language, Kinyarwanda, to the participants during an individual session. Pre- and post-intervention surveys of trauma symptoms included the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI)

(Briere, 1995) and the Modified Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Scale (MPSS) (Falsetti, Resnick, Resnick, & Kilpatrick, 1993). After one week, significant differences were found in trauma symptoms and level of PTSD symptom severity and frequency between the treatment and the waitlist control groups. Participants in the waitlist group experienced significant reductions in trauma symptoms following their treatments,which took place after the first posttest.  These positive outcomes suggest that a one-time, community leader facilitated trauma-focused intervention may be beneficial with protracted PTSD in genocide survivors.

An 11-year old girl was admitted to the local children’s hospital wing for acute pain, level 10, throughout her body.  Doctors told her parents that based on a CT scan, her cancer had returned and had spread through her entire body and that there was nothing for them to do but to give her a Dilaudid/morphine drip, get the pain stabilized and send her home.

By the time that I arrived she had been on the narcotic IV drip for 18 hours and her pain was still at a 10.  I knew she had to have Massive Reversal or the pain would have dropped.  The young girl didn’t want to tap nor to have anyone to tap her so we treated her reversals through her mother.  We used a combination of CB2, Rescue Remedy, tapping PR spots and a Toxin release over 45 minutes to correct the Massive PR.

Her pain dropped from a 10 to a 3.

I instructed the parents to treat for Reversals every 30 minutes around the clock in order to help her body stay receptive to healing and to allow the medications to work their best.  That evening she walked around the hospital floor two times.

I went again the next day and she smiled.  Her only discomfort, at a level 8, was horrible itchiness from the drugs.  I tested for PR, and she was PR free.  She felt  good enough to tap herself or let us tap her.  We began with CB2,  the toxin treatment, and put Rescue Remedy drops on her itchy legs, arms, chest.  The itch stopped.  She had a bruised feeling on her chest bone.  We put Rescue Remedy there and tapped it for reversal.  The soreness disappeared.

After the itch was gone she got up to use the bathroom, brushed her teeth and asked her daddy to film her getting back on the bed by herself, a big accomplishment.

The nurse asked her to rate her pain and the girl replied that she couldn’t find any even though the morphine had been removed from the drip.  We tested to continue tapping the Reversal spots every thirty minutes.

As we dashed into the hotel lobby, shivering from the freezing wind of a chilly Denver night, my friend and I looked at each other and laughed—remembering the great day we had had.

We were conference presenters together and followed the morning’s proceedings with a calming afternoon of wine, massage, tea and friendship—after briefly visiting a reception for speakers at the conference.

I am a psychologist and TFT practitioner in Los Angeles, and my friend is a forensic nurse with more than 20 years in the medical field.

As we took off our coats, she sighed and revealed, “This cold really makes that pain in my arm hurt like a son of a gun.”

Never having heard her mention it before, I asked, “What pain?”

And with that innocent question began one of the most extraordinary TFT treatment sessions of my career. Read more

-by Genie Joseph, MFA

Soldiers are prepared for combat operational stress. The Army has drilled them, trained them, polished them. What happens when they come home and have to adjust to the “surreal” world of civilian life? Once you have lived next to life and death as your daily reality, and perhaps gotten so familiar with the stress of combat operations, returning to mundane life can make everything feel out of whack. Retuning warriors often feel out of sync with family or civilian life, after what they’ve experienced.

With prolonged exposure to high-stress, the brain may actually adapt to this lifestyle of danger — so that danger brain messages feel normal. The harder part of what they’ve experienced may be coming home!

I teach classes in media and communication at Chaminade University in Honolulu, which offers classes on all the military bases. I work with all branches of the military, as well as their spouses. Many students walk into class in high states of stress. While I am not a therapist, and I don’t do any treatment or diagnosis, as a teacher I need to make sure that students are fully functioning and engaged, in order to make the classroom experience as positive as possible. Sometimes students come to class after just hearing traumatic news, witnessing something terrible or even have just been a part of something very disturbing.

For me, Thought Field Therapy provides me with tools that can calm someone down immediately, and allow the class to go forward as planned.  Read more

– by Barbara Huston

Things have taken a turn here on our horse farm located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in north Georgia. We have always been a magnet for animals that were lost and needed help, but it seems that more and more we are attracting people who are lost and needing help in another way.

horseIronically, it is the very animals that we have taken in and provided hope, health and a home for that are now giving back to troubled and confused children and “bucket list” adults wanting one more chance to do something they have always dreamed of doing.

The atmosphere here is peaceful and harmonious. Even the stray dogs and abused horses innately know there is an unwritten rule that if you want to stay, you have to get along and put their differences aside. That essence seems to have a very positive effect on our visitors and students.

This summer our horse riding camps held more than the average amount of children that grandparents or guardians were desperately seeking a refuge for to help erase or ease troubles and traumatic experiences from their young minds. The trend appears to be growing and we are making an impact, albeit a seemingly small one.

I have seriously been giving some thought to how I can help in a larger way. Horses and dogs have proven over and over again to have special therapeutic healing powers and I can say from experience that when I am with them, the rest of the world goes away during that time.

healing horses

Coupled with some direction using trauma relief tapping, I know I can help make that other stuff fade into the background and there will be relief and even joy where there was none. Repeated sessions bring those feelings back into the normal range of everyday life, not the exception.

Our camps are for troubled children who need to be reminded that the world can really be a wonderful place. Our next camp begins the week of July 16’th.  For more information please contact:  barbarahutson@windstream.net

Barbara Hutson owner/operator of Stillwater Farms in Dawsonville, GA 30534

 

When people download our free TFT Tapping Therapy Stress-Busters Guide, we follow up with a quick TFT survey, to see just how well it works. Each day we get to hear just how well TFT helps people who are faced with overwhelming anxiety, stress, fears, addiction, past traumas… as well as a wide range problems that you can read of below. (If you’d like to provide us with your results, click here.)

Here’s what people that have tried Thought Field Therapy® – for the first time – have shared with us:

“I am a therapist and have been using TFT successfully with clients for the past year. This has worked well with most issues that they have been facing. I would recommend this method as a quick and easy way to resolve problems.  There are times when a trained therapist is needed to help resolve psychological reversal.” Sonia V.

Anxiety: “I used to be a skeptic but now I am a believer.  I have struggled with anxiety for years and even take medication for it I am now better able to control the symptoms of anxiety allowing for logic to take over my emotions rather than my emotions ruling me.  I am so thankful for this technique.” Katrina

“Almost immediate release of negative thoughts with replacement of positive ones” Sonya

“I read the book and used the therapy in the book and I noticed instant relief, I cant believe it was so easy. I have been going through a lot of stress and trauma lately and and going through the simple tapping techniques has brought me instant relief whenever I want it.” Mark H

“Thank-you, I seem to struggle with past trauma which has effected all areas of my life. I feel my main problem is trust in self and other people. I am a victim of abuse, sexually mentally and physically. Although I have had help in many ways I seem to still struggle with anxiety. My day will start great only to be triggered some how and I feel so I shutdown. This is driving me a little crazy as you can imagine. I have worked with a behavior book 3 an 1 concept and I am a practitioner in Bio-Kinesiology, which by the way I am not doing at this time in my life due to the fact my unconsciousness seems to have a hold on me. I am presently unemployed and would love to get back in the world.  I am a person with great care and concern with a great understanding of the Universal principles that govern our world. I believe I have a lot to offer and yet I feel immobilized and frightened with out just cause in the here and now. Read more

The panic key

Solving the Mystery; By Suzanne Connolly, TFT-Dx

At a recent Conference on Panic Attacks, a speaker presented as a fact, that panic attacks do not have their origin in past trauma.

Speaker after speaker asserted that there is currently no cure for Panic Attack Disorder.

While there are undoubtedly cases where this is true, I find that in most cases this upset in the sympathetic nervous system is rooted in past trauma and of course, with Thought Field Therapy is curable.

The following case study offers just one example.

Yolanda’s panic attacks were keeping her from her job as head of housekeeping at a nearby resort, and from her second job of babysitting her friend’s children, and from participating in life in general. She had been referred by her Physician and I began taking a history in an effort to find some specific sources of anxiety to address.

Being around small children seemed to precipitate the majority of Yolanda’s recent panic attacks. Being home alone at night, being around knives, seeing young girls at the resort where she worked, and driving at night seemed to trigger others.

The panic attacks began immediately after Yolanda had seen a news story on television where two young girls had been kidnapped and murdered. A search party had found the girls’ bodies lying in a field. The murder weapon had been a knife.

Before seeing the news story Yolanda had experienced only two panic attacks. Once while in Mexico, visiting her native village, she and her husband had taken a long drive to a forested area. It was nightfall when they finally arrived and Yolanda could not get out of the car to examine the forest.

A car had happened to be following them; Yolanda felt like she was fighting for her life as she screamed until her husband turned around and drove back to their village. She remembers her pounding heart and the feeling of unmistakable danger.

On another occasion, while visiting her mother at her families’ ranch in Mexico, her mother’s big dog attacked a neighbor’s small dog. Again: the pounding heart, the absolute terror.

Yolanda remembers nothing of her childhood before the age of nine. Her first memory is a memory of being on a bus with her mother and younger brother headed to California. She remembers everything about California: living a year with her aunt, the trips to the beach, getting toys, cloths, and attention. Everything seemed good and peaceful and normal. Yolanda tells of her year in California as if it were a story from a fairy tale.

After she and her mother and her younger brother returned to Mexico, it was different. Yolanda’s father had never accepted her. Her mother told her it was because he didn’t like girls. (But later, a younger sister was born and the younger girl was treated, Yolanda says, like a princess.)

Her three older brothers were allowed to treat Yolanda harshly. She was not allowed to eat with the family and had to go outside when everyone else ate. She would sit on the roof and look at the stars, or sometimes; she would visit the homes of neighbors who would give her something to eat. When the family was finished eating, Yolanda’s mother would make her a small tortilla filled with leftovers.

Yolanda would then clean up and do the dishes. Later Yolanda was required to cook the dinner as well. But still she would be banished from the home while the family ate. Often her brothers would throw the family cat on her food and play other pranks. Yolanda says she didn’t think anything was unusual at the time; “It was just the way it was.”

I ask Yolanda about a scar that runs up her arm. She says that it happened when she was about eighteen months old. Her mother has told her that her brothers accidentally cut her with a knife. Her mother had reportedly heard Yolanda yelling and when she found Yolanda, there was blood running down her arm.

Yolanda and I wonder aloud if this could be related to the anxiety round knives that appeared after she watched the tragic news story on the television. Read more

Stress Tapping

The January 2012 Issue of Bottom Line Health reminds us of the importance of minimizing stress. They remind us of the negative effects stress and cortisol (the stress hormone) have on our hearts. And, they state that on-going, low-level stress, from work, relationships, finances and even chronic health problems can increase inflammation in our arteries, increasing our risk of heart disease.

The article tells us of new research in a study of nearly 1000 men, showed that those who experienced three or more major stressful life events in a single year, had a 50% higher risk of dying in a 30-year period.

All of the following physical and health related concerns are negatively effected by stress:

  • Increased blood sugar
  • Physical pain
  • Impaired memory
  • Weight gain
  • Sleep difficulties
  • Anxiety

Tapping is a simple and effective way to melt away stress on a daily basis. It even helps to normalize the cortisol levels in our body. You don’t need to let the effects of our fast-paced, stressful lives, chip away at your good health and well-being.

We provide a free Daily Stress Busting Guide on our web site, www.RogerCallahan.com. The reports we receive on a daily basis show it is effective and helpful to many. Read more

Nearly 80 people volunteered and were treated in our tapping tele-classes…

When I tabulated the demonstration results from our new TFT tele-class series I was amazed. The number of people and variety of problems we worked with and helped, in a brief period of time following each class, was truly a tribute to the healing power of TFT.

We offered a series of five tele-classes, beginning last January and ending in November. Over 1,000 people attended the classes. Each class had a 55-60 minute presentation on TFT and how to use it on yourself at the algorithm level. Then, we ended each call with live demonstrations with TFT Voice Technology (VT) from Dr. Callahan. This allowed participants to experience our most successful level of TFT, Voice Technology. The live demonstrations lasted 20-45 minutes with the average time per class about 30 minutes.

We had 79 volunteers for these demonstrations. Based on 300 minutes of total demonstration time and 79 volunteers, the average treatment time was a mere 3,797 minutes. This is just truly astounding.

During the classes, we worked on many types of problems. We eliminated fears for things like driving, freeways, flying, bridges, tunnels, public speaking and even death. We helped many get rid of cravings or addictive behaviors. Some eliminated a desire for alcohol, others cigarettes and food, and we helped still others stop biting their nails, pulling hair or picking.

Others learned how to easily and quickly control their anger or rage and improve their relationships. Read more

An interesting article on stress and it’s effects from Germany:

Constant stress at work is bad for heart

Aliki Nassoufis, dpa, Hamburg, Germany
The Denver Post

Work is piling up on the desk and in a few hours the presentation must be finished. To make matters worse, the telephone keeps ringing. Job-related stress is common. If it goes on for years, though, it can have serious physical consequences — particularly for the heart.

According to the German Heart Foundation, each year nearly 300,000 people in Germany suffer a a heart attack, often due to stress. So reducing stress at the workplace can be an important means of preventing serious heart disease.

“Stress causes, among other things, the release of more stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream,” explained Ulrich Hildebrandt, head physician in the Cardiology Department at St Irmingard Clinic.

This reaction, he said, was sometimes vital to our forebears: “When in danger, the body went into maximum gear and into a state of emergency to survive critical situations, for example by fleeing from a large animal.”

Stress also ramps up the autonomic nervous system, which “regulates how often the heart beats and how many times a minute it contracts, among other things,” Hildebrandt said. These stress reactions, if persistent or regular, can cause damage to the body.

“Someone suffering from chronic stress is always steamed up, so to speak,” remarked Karl-Heinz Ladwig, a member of the German Heart Foundation’s scientific advisory board. “This means, for example, that the heart rate is constantly elevated and the heart beats more frequently than in its normal state.”

More strain is put on the heart, he said, resulting in more damage. The regular release of stress hormones into the bloodstream can also lead to high blood pressure and irritable bowel syndrome.

“Another aspect is that the psyche can affect the body’s immune system,” Ladwig pointed out. In other words, a person under constant stress gets infections more often and tends to heal from wounds more slowly.

“Work-related stress is a combination of objective and subjective parameters,” he said. Though studies have shown that objective stress factors such as time pressure, constant noise, lots of overtime and a heavy workload considerably increase the risk of heart disease, Ladwig said, “how you react to these objective factors and whether you can try to change them also plays a role.”

Still, the causes of stress are more objective in nature than mental, he noted. But they need not lead to a heart attack or other forms of heart disease.

“You can try to reduce the stress somewhat,” advised Jochen Jordan, a psychocardiologist and member of the German Cardiac Society.

People who are always setting themselves higher goals and putting themselves under pressure are heightening stress, he remarked. “Instead,” he said, “you should ask yourself, ‘Is this work style worth it? Is this the way I want to live?'”

Those who put less stress on themselves are taking care of their cardiovascular system. Read more