Thawing The Pond

Thawing the Pond The Practice of Energy Psychology © 2005 Fred P. Gallo, Ph.D. In an ideal therapeutic universe, every successful treatment would lend itself to empirical validation. Every question of causation—Why do you do that? Why does it work?—could be answered with scientific precision. The practice of psychotherapy would be tidy and efficient, the way it sometimes seems to be in textbooks. We do not practice in such a universe, however. Our understanding of mental health, and how to enhance it, deepens in fits and starts—sometimes false ones. Research typically confirms the efficacy of treatments only after those treatments are clinically popular. We know “that” something works before we know “why” it works and before the statistical studies prove what we already knew. Such is the case with the so-called power therapies. These treatments have gained prominence in the treatment of trauma, PTSD and phobias because they frequently relieve symptoms much more quickly than traditional approaches. The best known of these is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Others include Thought Field Therapy (TFT), in which the client thinks about the trauma while tapping a sequence of acupuncture meridian points; Visual/Kinesthetic Dissociation (V/KD); and Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR). The jury is still out on how—and some would say if—these treatments work. But practitioners of these methods know that they often produce trauma relief within a single session. Inspired by the success of these treatments and drawing on recent research in kinesiology, physics, and neurophysiology, I have developed Energy Diagnostic and Treatment Methods (EDxTM), which includes an easily applied treatment—the Negative Affect Erasing Method (NAEM)—that can be used for trauma/PTSD, phobias, anxiety, and affective conditions. EDxTM and NAEM are examples of what I call energy psychology. Energy psychology includes TFT, and while it draws on some of the same insights that inform the power therapies, it is based on a distinctive theory about the nature of trauma.

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Energy psychologists believe that a traumatic experience provokes a strong energetic response, partly electromagnetic, that is captured within the body. To imagine what this might look like, picture a pebble being tossed into a placid pond. Then imagine that the pond freezes, capturing the ripples created by the pebble. In a similar way, the distinctive impression of a traumatic experience is frozen within the body. Once a trauma is imprinted upon the nervous system, it is sustained by a complex network of chemical, electrical and magnetic interactions. If these interactions can be interrupted, the physical responses associated with the trauma will not occur. The therapist’s job is to thaw the pond and allow the ripples to run their course. Energy psychology, like the other power therapies, has similarity to the work of Joseph Wolpe, the pioneer of systematic desensitization who discovered that phobias can be successfully treated by maintaining a state of deep relaxation while holding in mind distressing phobic imagery. But power therapies and energy-based methods accelerate the process of counter conditioning in several ways. First, by simultaneous stimulation of the body (through eye movements, hand tapping, etc.) the therapist divides the client’s focus of attention—thus making it difficult, if not impossible to get lost in the world of the trauma. Second, by using a relaxing rhythmic exercise, the therapist produces an effect known as “reciprocal inhibition.” The idea here is that you can’t relax and be anxious or distressed at the same time. If the client is able to remain relaxed while contemplating the trauma interrupts the pattern of the trauma and deactivates the limbic system’s response. The limbic system is the headquarters for stress and emotions. Tapping on specific acupoints is one way to turn off this reaction. I find that therapies such as EMDR and energy psychology are highly effective each in their own way, and can be used together synergistically. The specific merits of energy psychology, however, are its speed and precision in alleviating a wide array of unwanted emotional reactions without risking abreaction. Energy psychology has yet to be embraced by most mainstream therapists, and it is easy to understand why. Because the field is in its infancy, its theoretical framework is still under construction. And in practice, its methods—“Tap here. Now tap there. Hum a tune. Hold this body posture”—can look a little silly. Yet in case after case, I’ve seen it work with astonishing speed.

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Amanda was an attractive 19-year-old female college student who was brought to me by her mother because of PTSD as a result of a severe automobile accident. The intoxicated driver of the other vehicle crossed over the medial strip and struck Amanda’s car head-on, killing himself and his two passengers. Amanda was pinned under the dashboard for over three hours while a rescue team applied the Jaws of Life and cut her out of her car. She was then flown to a hospital and later spent several months in a rehabilitation center and in a wheel chair. She suffered broken ankles, a broken arm and shoulder, back injuries, and facial lacerations. When she came to me eleven months after the accident, she had been experiencing frequent nightmares, flashbacks, panic episodes, generalized anxiety, guilt feelings and anger related to the traumatic event. At the initial session with Amanda and her mother, I took a detailed history and chatted with them to establish rapport, as I always do. History taking is for thoroughness —to unveil the aspects that need of treatment and to get a sense of the client’s personality and concerns. Rapport is an essential aspect of all good therapy. While energy psychology can be effective even without taking the time for rapport, I believe that even this approach is enhanced by establishing and maintaining rapport. In some ways rapport is even more important when unusual therapeutic procedures are being used, since this increases compliance and reduces the chance of drop-out before the therapy has an opportunity to work. Additionally I find that rapport establishes an energetic resonance that is synergistic with the energy techniques. In the same way that metronomes will synchronize with each other, when the therapist and client are in rapport an added balance is created that supports positive therapeutic results. Toward the end of this initial interview, I told Amanda that I had some ways to help people overcome painful memories that often work quickly and painlessly. I indicated that I didn’t know if this would help—since we only had about ten minutes left in the session—but at the very least I wanted to introduction her to the kind of work we would be doing in future sessions. Usually I wait until the second session to introduce energy techniques, since I have found that some clients are taken aback and may not return for treatment. Laying the groundwork is very important. But in this case Amanda’s mother had brought her to me specifically for this treatment approach and I felt

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that if the method did not work this time, she would not be discouraged. Also I was really hoping to offer Amanda some immediate relief if possible. I asked her to bring to mind an aspect of the accident that still bothered her. She chose to focus on the time when she was pinned under the dashboard and she rated her subjective units of distress (SUD) on a zero-to-ten scale as a nine at the time of our session. I then asked her to imitate me as I tapped with my fingers at specific locations on my body. The locations I pointed out were the third eye point on the forehead, under the nose on the upper lip, between the chin and bottom lip, and on the upper section of the sternum in the vicinity of the thymus gland. I chose these points because of their longtime importance in acupuncture and applied kinesiology (the brain child of chiropractor, George Goodheart). Other points can also be effective. These include a range of meridian acupoints, the Bennett Reflexes on the skull, and Chakras. Why one set of points works with some clients while another set benefits others is hard to say, and finding the right points can be a process of trial and error. In most forms of therapy, I would have asked Amanda to call to mind her trauma as she did her tapping. However, I did not do this for two reasons. The first is that abreactions are common when people recall distressing events. We used to think that abreaction was beneficial and necessary for therapeutic results—and some therapists may still view it in this way. But I find that there is a downside, since this can re-traumatize the client and lead to other effects such as panic attacks, depression, etc. Secondly I’ve also found that having the client focus on the trauma is unnecessary. Rather than asking Amanda to hold the traumatic memory in mind and risk abreaction, I asked to dismiss it from her mind and to assume a body posture known as a leg lock or pause lock in order to maintain information about the trauma at a subconscious more comfortable level during the treatment process. The leg lock involves standing or sitting with legs abducted—similar to the second position in ballet—after the trauma has been brought to mind and rated. The idea of “locking in” an emotion is suggested by the work of Alan Beardall, a chiropractor protégé of Goodheart’s, who discovered that this technique could be used to assist in the diagnosis of physical problems. I have found that this method can be used to lock in information at a subtle level so that the client need not consciously process memories and other issues in need of

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treatment. Although this and other locking procedure have many advantages frequently they are unnecessary, since the trauma tends to resonate at a subtle level—like the lingering vibration of a tuning fork—after it has been brought to mind. After one round of NAEM, I asked Amanda not to bring the trauma to mind but to simply guess what the level of distress would be if she were to recall it vividly. At this point she said that she did not think it would be different. “Still a nine,” she said. I told her that was fine and that we should give this another try. Again I guided her through NAEM: third eye point, under nose, under bottom lip, thymus point, after which I asked her to estimate the level of distress if she were to think about the event. This time she said, “I feel more relaxed. I think it might be a six.” I was encouraged by her progress, but knew that sometimes these gains can be fleeting. Goodheart found that sometimes a chiropractic adjustment could come undone if the patient moved their eyes in certain directions, counted, hummed, or chewed. This can be related to any number of factors, but the important thing is that a problem can return under circumstances other than those present at the time the correction has been made in the doctor’s office. Thus redoing the adjustment while the patient engages in such an activity can help the adjustment to hold. The same principle applies to psychological issues. To make sure that Amanda’s improvements didn’t come undone, I took her though what I call the brain balancing procedure by having her follow my fingers in a horizontal 8 across her line of vision while she tapped on the far ends of her eyebrows near her temples and alternated counting to five and humming the scale. I developed this technique from my work with many clients over the years, and it has similarities to treatments used in applied kinesiology and TFT. After this she estimated that the SUD would be a three if she were to really think about the event vividly. Since our goal of treatment is to eliminate all the psychological distress, I took Amanda through two more rounds of NAEM until the distress was down to a 1. After this I used a vertical eye movement technique combined with tapping on the back of her hand between and above the little finger and ring finger knuckles to reduce the distress further. At this point Amanda said that she did not think it would bother her if she were to “really” think about being pinned under the dash board. So I asked her to check it out.

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After reviewing the scene for a couple seconds, she laughed and enthusiastically responded, “Wow! It doesn’t bother me now! How does that work?” I told her that while I would be happy to explain this to her, I wasn’t sure she had given this a fair test yet. So I asked her to review the memory in more detail to be sure that it did not bother her. After about ten seconds she shook her head, laughed, and reported that it still didn’t bother her. Next I asked Amanda to do one more test. I set a timer for one minute and asked her to try to bother herself about the memory while her mother and I talked over a few things. I pointed out that if she could feel distress about any aspect of the event that would mean that we needed to do some more treatment on that memory. To really test it out, I asked her to picture the event as it was—the way her body was positioned in the car, the front seat cramping her in, sounds of the rescue workers cutting her out of the car, and so on. To no avail Amanda tried her hardest to become upset about this vivid memory. She was able to review the event calmly in detail. Her comment was, “It’s amazing! No big deal now! How does that work?” At this point I told her why I thought this worked and we and reviewed how she could repeat the treatment if it became necessary between sessions. The speed of improvement that Amanda showed is typically the case in the treatment of trauma with this approach. And in most case repeating the treatment between sessions is unnecessary. However, some traumas are complex with many facets and interconnecting traumas, and in such cases a single session usually will not be sufficient. Therefore I like to prepare the client to do self-treatment if necessary. Follow-up sessions at one week, two weeks, and two months revealed that after that initial treatment, Amanda no longer experienced nightmares and flashbacks about that trauma. During the course of therapy, other aspects of the trauma, including survivor guilt and anger, were treated in a similar manner. At each session we would enjoy a conversation about her activities and interests, check on progress, and determine other issues that needed to be addressed in treatment. These issues were also relieved efficiently by using either NAEM or, when necessary, an EDxTM diagnostic-treatment protocol that involves manual muscle testing to more precisely diagnose acupoints needed to relieve her distress.

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Although during the first visit Amanda revealed that she had been extensively sexually abused by a relative from ages five through twelve, this was not the initial reason she came to treatment; she first wanted help with the trauma of the automobile accident. So after successfully treating all of the aspects of that trauma, with her permission we transitioned to treating the many distressing memories of her being abused and her self esteem. These traumas were readily resolved in similar ways, without having to intensely think about the events. Even after treating the memories that she was conscious of, she reported a lingering feeling of being “dirty and disgusting,” which was localized in her lower abdomen. Although she could not attach specific memories to this feeling, she said that this made her feel that she was not worthwhile. With energy psychology we were able to dissipate this sensation permanently in a single session and her sense of not being worthy vanished with it. I realize the limitations of anecdotal reports and that experimental studies are needed before energy psychology will be accepted by the scientific and therapeutic communities. However, these treatment results have become quite common and we should not forget that experimental studies are actually anecdotal reports systematically gathered according to statistical guidelines. Also my colleagues and I have similarly treated thousands of clients suffering from intense traumas. The results are generally achieved efficiently and without the client having to experience distress during the process. You might say that therapist enthusiasm is another active ingredient, to which we should extend a hearty welcome. However, I’ve never found enthusiasm to be the sufficient condition for therapeutic success. Like any specialty, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Before adopting this approach, the ethical therapist undergoes thorough training. There are a number of very helpful books and manuals that detail the theory and various energy psychotherapy methods that give the therapist a good start. But there is no substitute for hands-on supervision. Also therapists are wise to integrate energy psychology with good therapeutic practice and traditional modalities that they find helpful. While I primarily practice energy psychology, and increasingly more clients come to me and others for this treatment approach, I don’t practice it on an exclusively tap-here-tap-there basis. And I would not encourage others to approach it that way either. As technical as energy

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psychology is, it is best delivered within the context of a human relationship and should be integrated with solid psychotherapeutic understandings. I enjoy communicating with my clients and I like to help them achieve higher levels of consciousness in addition to tapping away a trauma or a distressing feeling. To simply approach therapy as desensitization and reprogramming exercise is a bit too dehumanizing for me. Therapy ought to assist clients in developing deeper understanding about their lives. How will the results of energy psychology ultimately be explained? As it is often said, “The jury is still out.” As one of the jurors, I believe that energy psychology does basically what the name implies, and then more. By attuning the trauma or other psychological problem and directing energy into the “location” of the trauma (by activating subtle energy systems), the stored disturbing information is released and the person is released to enjoy a better life. Energy psychology warms and thaws the pond. Fred Gallo, PhD, has authored and coauthored eight books: Energy psychology: Explorations at the interface of energy, cognition, behavior, and health (1998, 2005); Energy diagnostic and treatment methods (2000); Energy tapping (2000, 2008); The neurophysics of human behavior (2000); Energy psychology in psychotherapy (2002), and Energy tapping for trauma (New Harbinger 2007). He is the founder of Advanced Energy Psychology (AEP), that includes Energy Diagnostic and Treatment Methods (EDxTM)™, Energy Consciousness Therapy (ECT)™, and the Identity Method (IM) ™. He teaches internationally, maintains a private practice, and is on staff at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) at Horizon. He is also the W. W. Norton Energy Psychology Series editor. He can be contacted at [email protected] and his website is www.energypsych.com .

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