Message from Ms. Joanne & Dr. Roger Callahan (founder and developer of TFT):
While it may be too soon to think about helping with the psychological traumas of the survivors in the after effect of the massive earthquake in Haiti, it is important to begin the psychological healing of the families and friends who are living elsewhere, and providing trauma relief for the rescue crews, first responders, troops going in to serve and their families. Even the press and viewers are being effected by the constant stream of heart wrenching images and reports of losses.
The ATFT Foundation has provided Thought Field Therapy® (TFT), the original meridian tapping therapy for trauma, to victims of wars, genocides and natural disasters including Hurricane Katrina and the floods in Tabasco, Mexico. TFT has been safely used to heal psychological problems for 30 years, and PTSD studies have demonstrated it to be highly effective in quickly eliminating the debilitating effects of even the worst of traumas with lasting results.
Early and regular use of these safe, self-applied protocols, can reduce or eliminate crippling grief, secondary traumatization, compassion fatigue and burn-out of our rescue workers and first responders. TFT can also reduce the stress and fears burdening the families of the rescue workers and response teams on the ground.
To this end, the ATFT Foundation’s TFT Trauma Relief Blog teaches these TFT trauma relief procedures in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. These procedures are the very same powerful tools used successfully in Kosovo with war victims, Rwandan genocide survivors, New Orleans Hurricane Katrina victims, and other traumatized regions.
The tapping techniques are provided in print and video formats to all who are in need. Please, if you have any family or friends that have been affected by the devastating earthquake in Haiti, or have loved ones deployed in the rescue efforts, take advantage of these free, powerful self-help tools.
The following is an article by Nora Baladerian, PhD, TFT-Dx, from “The Thought Field” newsletter Vol. 15, Issue 3:
One day, now several years ago, I received a referral to work with a young man who had recently been raped. He has Downs Syndrome with severe mental retardation, and extremely limited expressive language.
Since the rape, he had been severely depressed, and had acquired a condition of severe pain upon urination. His mother had taken him to the GP, to the urologist, and several tests had been done to ascertain the cause of the pain. They found no physical source for the pain.
His countenance was down, one could almost see the draw down of the depression and trauma he was feeling. Continue Reading »
The following is an article by Sharon Hales, TFT-Dx, rape crisis specialist, from “The ATFT Update”, Issue 11, Spring 2009:
TFT MUCH NEEDED IN RAPE CRISIS WORK
I’ve worked full time in a rape crisis centre for 14 years, counseling women who had been raped or sexually abused. It would typically take about 1- 2 years of weekly therapy sessions for survivors of rape to reach a satisfactory level of recovery, but not a complete cure, from their trauma. For survivors of child abuse, it could take anywhere between 2 and 4 years to stabilize.
In addition to our rape therapy, many of the survivors had previously accessed psychological support through the National Health System.
Repeating The Trauma Is Cruel
Although I accepted the longevity of this work, I equally felt it was very cruel. Throughout those 14 years, I studied as many different techniques as I could, and I strove to develop resources that would speed up this process for survivors.
When I received an invitation in 2002 to train in Thought Field Therapy, I was extremely skeptical and cautious. It sounded too good to be true. But, on the other hand, Continue Reading »
Lynne McTaggart, featured in “The Living Matrix” and author of “The Field” and “The Intention Experiment, describes how TFT transformed the life of a Rwandan genocide survivor who witnessed the brutal murder of her father.
(from Dr. McTaggart’s newsletter “WDDTY” vol 20 no 8, pg 15):
“One 15-year-old Rwandan orphan was three years old at the time of the genocide. Her family hid her inside a church and when the killers broke in, the girl’s father told her to run and not look back, no matter what. She got away, but turned around when she heard her father’s screams–only to see her father being hacked to death by men with machetes.
Every day since, she’d suffered flashbacks of the scene in her waking hours and dreamt about it every night. In fact, she had no good memories of her family; the trauma had blocked them out.
During her treatment, she cried as she worked through each of the traumatic events while tapping but, at a certain point, she began to laugh. She’d suddenly remembered how her father had sneaked sweets for her, even against her mother’s wishes.
Later, when she tried to re-direct her focus onto the events that took place in the church, she said, “I can still remember it, but now it seems like a distant memory, like 12 years ago”. That night, her sleep was uninterrupted, with no nightmares for the first time since her father’s murder, and she arrived at school the next day in cheery spirits. Since then, memories of the good times have flooded back.”
Suzanne Connolly, LCSW, and Caroline Sakai, PhD, have lead several ATFT Foundation teams to Rwanda over the last 3 years for the purpose of developing a model for treating trauma after large-scale disasters. In the following 2 videos, Ms. Connolly tells the story of their August 2009 mission to Northern Rwanda where they used TFT to help hundreds of people traumatized by the genocide, trained over 30 community leaders who returned to their communities to continue the trauma relief work, and conducted a random controlled study to help refine the model for future missions.
This clip from “The Living Matrix” shows Lynne McTaggart, author of “The Field” and “The Intention Experiment”, talking about TFT’s ability to transform the lives of survivors of the war in Kosovo:
“The Living Matrix – The New Science of Healing” is the feature length documentary that transforms your understanding of how to get well and stay well.
TFT trainer and retired fireman Bruce Ramsay describes how a doctor attributed a 60% reduction in seizures experienced by traumatized man in a coma to the TFT trauma relief technique:
TFT even works with people who don’t want to reveal what their upset is about, as Dr. Theresa Gormly, chiropractor, demonstrates in the following story:
I had such a great experience with TFT today with an 11 year old who was very depressed and crying all the time according to his mom. He was begging her not to tell me about his shame related to seeing a sexually explicit picture on the internet. Anyway I told him just to think of the experience (without telling me what it was about) and we tapped it out. Evidently before treating him he was preoccupied with thoughts about it and had alot of shame around it.
He transformed before our eyes. At the end I asked him to think about it and he couldn’t get it to come to mind. He hugged me and his mom and kept saying “thank you”. After I treated his mom I went into the waiting room to say “good-bye” and he looked at me and said “I still can’t think about it” with a “thumbs up”. So nice!
Carl Totton, licensed clinical & educational psychologist, describes 2 separate cases of completely eliminating the overwhelming terror experienced by teenage boys from having guns held to their heads:
Christina Mayhew, TFT-Adv, shares how she used TFT to relieve the trauma of troubled and at-risk teenage boys:
A couple months ago I was asked to present Thought Field Therapy to 16 boys at a local home for troubled and at risk youth. These boys ranged in age from 16 to 21 years old and this was the last stop before going to a youth detention center or to another foster care.
Some of the boys came from some really rough neighborhoods. Others were in trouble with the law for various things or their home life was incredibly negative or dangerous for them.
During the day the boys were in a work program teaching them about construction and then in the afternoon and a couple evenings, they would attend school. The other two evenings were spent with different programs learning ways to deal with their anger, frustration, social skills, etc.
The new social worker was a friend of mine and when I introduced her to TFT, she couldn’t wait to have me come work with the boys. We set aside a night for me to teach them and the other social worker TFT.
Knowing most of them suffered some type of trauma and were angry and may have guilt, I decided to concentrate on the Trauma with anger and guilt sequence. [Note: this is the TFT trauma relief technique]
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived. Sixteen boys in a circle with their heads hung low and looking angry to be there. Continue Reading »
