Saturday, May 13, 2017

Stop the Nightmares of Trauma

Stop the Nightmares of Trauma

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Richard Feynmann
Nobel Laureate in Physics

In a celebrated lecture to physics undergraduates at Cornell University, Professor Feynman elaborated on
the quote above. He said, “If it [a new scientific law] disagrees with experiment; it’s wrong! In that simple
statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make
any difference how smart you are, who made the guess or what his name is, if it disagrees with experiment
it’s wrong; that’s all there is to it.”

  IMPORTANT!!! Please keep in mind that the tapping protocols given in this weeks class are for trauma
and complex trauma with anger and guilt, not for other problems such as phobias, which are an irrational
fear.

  Incident: On the first day of one of my diagnostic training’s I asked the assembled group how many
had tried TFT before coming to the training. Most hands went up. I asked if there was anyone who had
been unsuccessful. It is unheard of to hear of no success with this powerful procedure. A high level professional
person who had traveled from across the world to attend my training said that he had been unsuccessful
with my trauma treatment.

  I was quite surprised by this report and asked him to join me at lunch. I asked him to please tell me exactly
what he was doing to treat trauma and much to my surprise he described to me, my phobia algorithm. I
said, “No wonder you had trouble, that is not the correct procedure for trauma!”

  All of the TFT algorithms have been found through what I call Causal Diagnosis (see glossary). Over
three decades of treating thousands of patients with causal diagnosis, common patterns or algorithms have
emerged. These algorithms have now been tested on many people both in self-help applications and with
thousands of trained professionals throughout the world.

  My first trauma victim was cured, believe it or not, by doing nothing more than tapping the beginning of
the eyebrow. However, upon trying this same simple procedure on others with traumas, I quickly found that
most were not helped this easily. I had to make further discoveries to increase the success rate. Each discovery
was tested for efficacy on my trauma clients; this allowed me to quickly develop further treatments and
allow me to help more people.

  The algorithm for trauma presented in this class has been tested on thousands of people all over the world,
young and old, and from many different cultures and the success rate is amazingly good. See, for example,
the report on Embassy Bombing in this week’s handout.


  We urge you to study the trauma tapping protocol and begin by applying it to yourself. We all have past traumas of varying intensity such as being rejected, especially in a love relationship, failing a class, or any upsetting experience from the past. It is best to pick something that still causes a little upset so you can experience how the treatment causes the upset to disappear.

  If you wish to practice on family or friends, it is good to know an important feature of TFT is the person
guiding the treatment does not need any details or even know what specific trauma is being treated.

The Tooth, Shoe, Lump Principle (TSL) 
In a small number of complex clients a complication
may take place which I call the tooth, shoe, lump (TSL) principle. Here is an illustration of this principle.
Consider a person who has a terrible toothache: They call the dentist’s office is called and rush over
to the office. Although there is no opening in the schedule, the dentist will take care of the problem as soon
as she can. The tooth was hurting so badly they had put on the first pair of shoes available, ignoring the fact
these shoes hurt his feet. Due to the intense tooth pain, however, he doesn’t notice the discomfort caused by
the shoes.

  When he gets to the office he sits on a couch directly upon a most uncomfortable lump. Again, this goes
unnoticed due to the severe pain in the tooth. Just then the dentist comes out and indicates she will be able
to attend to the problem in about an hour and a half, but seeing the severity of the pain, she injects a shot of
Novocain to give temporary relief. The tooth is suddenly relieved of all pain and he now becomes aware he
put on the wrong shoes and due to the Novocain effect he is suddenly aware his feet are quite uncomfortable.
He removes the shoes and in a few moments he then begins to be aware of the uncomfortable lump
upon which he has been sitting. He moves to a nearby chair and, at last, feels comfortable.

  Something somewhat similar occurs in some severely complex clients who are only aware of a summation
effect of their problems and do not, or are not able to, discriminate between say, trauma, anxiety and depression
or mixtures of various other problems. There can also be different aspects to one traumatic event that
might need to be treated separately, if the person does not fully respond to treating the trauma as a whole,
though the necessity for this is rare. The person being treated might not be aware of this. All they know is
they feel bad. We may completely remove all traces of the first problem in line, as confirmed by our tests
and supported by the fact no complications such as PR or mini-PR show up on diagnosis. Often we are
actually treating what the client may perceive as one problem but which may consist of a melange of problems.

  Inertial Delay In rare cases, there can be a delayed response to the treatment. This delayed response
can occur anywhere from a few minutes immediately following the treatment to; in very rare cases, a few
days later. Keep in mind, however, this type of delay is unusual and what we usually see are immediate,
dramatic changes.


Is it Desirable to Eliminate All Upset Associated with a Trauma?
This question was a moot issue before there were powerful treatments to eliminate the bad effects of a
trauma. I maintain it is desirable to eliminate all bad effects of a trauma. There are some therapists who
have learned how to use TFT who believe they should not eliminate all suffering but leave some. They have
the belief, quite wrong in my opinion, that leaving some measure of suffering will help protect the person
against further trauma. I suspect this interesting notion likely became introduced through good treatments
which were, nevertheless, not completely effective and that the residue which could not be eliminated became rationalized as a desirable situation.

It is crucial to understand that although TFT can eliminate all traces of a problem the treatment does not
make a person stupid or ignorant. I find a person can use more intelligence the less upset he or she is. This
is the best protection one can have through treatment.

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