By Carol Look, EFT Master
Testing is not only important, it is
critical for effective EFT sessions and
long term success with your clients. When Gary Craig
talks about “testing” he means using simple and reliable
techniques to measure if your EFT rounds
produced the desired results or not. You are
basically testing what Gary refers to as the
television ZZZZZT metaphor as described in
The EFT Manual and The Basic
Course.
The televeision ZZZZZT
metaphor refers to the level of physical and
emotional discord that occurs in your system when you
tune in to the problem…not unlike what would happen
to a television if you put a screwdriver into the back of
its wiring! When a client presents you with an issue
of anxiety, rated on the 0-10 point SUDs
scale at an 8, testing allows you to know where the client
falls on the scale at the end of your session! Gary
Craig recommends “…Do this when you believe the client
has collapsed the issue…you are searching for other
aspects...”
THE SUDS SCALE:
This brings up the importance of the 0-10 point “SUDs”
(Subjective Units of
Distress) scale. There are plenty
of ways to get the client to evaluate his or her distress,
but to keep it simple, we all use the 0-10 point
SUDs scale. The person evaluates his or her
anxiety on this scale before treatment, and we recommend
that the client return to the original memory and
reevaluate the level of anxiety on this
same scale at the end of a few rounds.
When I use EFT with kids age 8 and
under, I don’t use the SUDs scale, but
rather have them hold their hands apart just a little
bit or a lot, to measure the level of their
hurt or upset.
There are still others who claim they are “not good” at
registering the numbers of the SUDs
scale. In these rare cases with adults, I have them
use the “low---medium---high” measurement.
WHY TEST?
If you want to know how your client feels and whether
the EFT was targeted properly, you will
start doing more testing! I have supervised many
beginning practitioners who are too afraid to test,
fearing their client might not have gotten the desired
results. They quickly show the client out the door,
crossing their fingers and holding their breath, hoping
the treatment worked and will stick.
Skepticism abounds in this field, so it is important to
have this concrete measure (the SUDs
scale) that the client uses before and after treatment.
Oftentimes a client won’t be “bothered” anymore by the
issue, but will discount the dramatic drop in emotional
distress after using EFT. They
don’t intendto discount the results, they just
aren’t aware of or as conscious of the problem anymore.
For many, noticing the “absence” of something is harder to
assess. When you have a headache coming on, you
can’t ignore it --- the pain captures your attention.
When it starts to go away, you are often less aware until
you suddenly think, “Hey, my headache’s gone!”
Someone plagued by anxiety is conscious of it 24 hours a
day, but often sails through the day without registering
the difference after treatment has been successful.
BUILDING BRIDGES:
Hopefully, you have done a more than adequate job
Building Bridges for your
clients. If so, they will be more interested in
EFT, why it is working, how it is
working, and why you are so interested in testing them to
check your results.
When Gary Craig talks about Building
Bridges he reminds us that there is often
too large a leap between how EFT looks
and sounds and a client’s belief system. Clients and
friends aren’t accustomed to tapping on their face or
body, and unless they have visited an acupuncturist, they
haven’t a clue what “accessing the meridian system”
means. This is critical because, without adequate
bridge building, many people simply won’t be interested in
this incredible technique, despite the claims you make
about the effectiveness of EFT. It
won’t make sense in their “world.”
Gary suggests saying something like, "EFT
is an emotional version of acupuncture except that we
don't use needles. Instead, we stimulate certain
release points by tapping on them with our fingertips." Gary’s
advice to the practitioner is: This is particularly
good for those having favorable experiences with
acupuncture. It plugs right into their receptive
beliefs
Gary also urges us to use the “authority and appeal” of
Albert Einstein: "This process should not be
considered unusual because Albert Einstein, through his
famous discoveries, told us in the 1920's that everything
is composed of energy. Unfortunately, western
healing sciences have ignored this obvious avenue ... at
least until now. EFT is a pioneer
in this "new" field and you are on the ground floor of a
new Healing High Rise."
Another simple way to build a bridge is to ask your
clients or workshop participants if they have had any
positive experiences with EFT, other
energy therapy modalities, or acupuncture. At a
recent community business meeting I attended, a man said,
“Oh sure, I heard of that, and watched a demonstration
once years ago…” Now I had his attention as it
wasn’t so foreign to him. Another said, “A neighbor
was talking about how he got over his problem, but it
sounded so strange to me…” Now I could connect with
his skepticism, how strange EFT looks,
and move into other examples of success.
One of my favorite ways to build a bridge for my
clients when their eyes glaze over about this topic is to
tell them how wildly skeptical I was
when I first heard of and was trained in EFT.
I always tell them that I am a conservatively trained
social worker (and not prone to take up each new fad that
comes around) but knew something different was happening
with EFT that I couldn’t deny. I
tell them about some of my early success stories (in spite
of my skepticism) and how I handle clients’ skepticism in
my office today, 10 years later. I also let them
know that I had to learn how to build bridges myself…
Building Bridgessimply means
helping your client to make emotional and intellectual
connections from something they are familiar with already,
to this unusual looking/sounding new therapy, EFT.
Another bridge statement might sound this way: “EFT
is like visualization, although we add the tapping on the
meridians and repeat a reminder phrase.” This
allows you to enter the client’s world, build rapport and
have common ground for this crazy new treatment.
WRITINGS ON OUR WALLS:
Most of you have heard or read about Gary’s wonderful
metaphor, “the writings on our walls.” What he
means by this is that each of us has a whole set of
beliefs, “shoulds” and assumptions about how the world
works based on the beliefs and shoulds and assumptions of
our parents, coaches, teachers, and other figures.
His primary points are as follows: (1) We all have
writings on our walls, (2) We are all largely governed by
these writings, and (3) We can neutralize them through
EFT. Competent testing will help
you help your clients who are being blocked by writings on
their walls.
If you have a client who believes that anxiety is
hereditary and can’t be alleviated without medication
(based on what her parents have said about this topic)
then you will need to test your results to validate the
treatment and help her reorganize her beliefs. If
you have another client who is convinced that it takes a
lifetime of traditional therapy to cure a basic phobia,
then you will want to test her phobia of elevators or open
spaces to show her how EFT works rapidly
and thoroughly IF you get to the core
issues.
PART 2 of this series will be
“How to Test Effectively” and
PART 3 will be “What to Do With the
Feedback from Testing.”
There are many ways to test your results with the
client during EFT sessions. Below
are the most efficient ones used by practitioners:
Remember, you have hopefully asked the client to scale
his or her anxiety on the 0-10 point SUDs
scale before treatment.
(1) Revisit SUDs Scale: Most people
do this as part of their testing. Let’s say the
person’s anxiety was at an “8” before the tapping…now that
you have completed a few rounds of EFT,
ask the client to revisit their SUDs
number on the 0-10 point scale again. “When you think
about that business meeting again, how high is your
anxiety now?” “Where are you now when you think
about the confrontation?” “How high is your anxiety now
when you imagine that event?” Make sure they have
returned to the ORIGINAL scene that caused them to give
you an “8” in the first place. This is where so many
people fail to follow up accurately with testing.
(2) “In Vivo” Testing: You are
testing in real life (“in vivo”) and this is the best test
available. If your client had a phobia of heights,
and your office is on a high floor in your building, this
is a perfect test. Go ahead and lead your client
over to the window (if you see them becoming too
uncomfortable, start tapping immediately…) and see how
close they can get to it before the anxiety starts rising
again. Of course, there are many presenting problems
that you will be unable to test “in vivo” (snake phobias
come to mind…) but if you can lead your client to the
actual situation, it’s a perfect test. (See Gary’s
videos 6 Days at the VA where he tests
the man with the height phobia on top of the VA building.)
With smoking cessation of course, you are able to
conduct an excellent test. Have the client smell the
unlit cigarette, take a dry drag, and see how high the
craving is NOW, before the tapping, and then repeat this
test after tapping on the original craving. With
smoking, it’s important to remember that most smokers
crave cigarettes several times a day (after coffee, in the
car, on the telephone, etc) so unfortunately, you won’t be
able to test these different times of day in your office.
A few years ago, I did something very unconventional.
A businessman contacted me because he wanted to quit
chewing tobacco. His appointment was early in the
morning. His worst cravings however, came at night
when he drank beer. I suddenly remembered that there
was beer in the kitchen of my office left over from a
guest who had stayed overnight a few months earlier.
I brought it out, and had him hold it in his hands and
just pretend he was opening it. This got his craving
to shoot up again, and we had another aspect for tapping
and a real test. Sure enough, despite the “unreal”
aspects of this situation (a cold beer early in the
morning) his SUDs went down when he
thought of chewing and drinking.
With food cravings, again, you have a ready made test
if you ask your client to bring in their favorite or most
“troublesome” food they can’t resist. Have them
retest repeatedly by smelling the chocolate or chips until
they have no desire for them. Again, because you
have a prescribed time for the appointment, you won’t be
able to test their after-dinner cravings if their
appointment is in the morning. But have them imagine
those times and tap…
(3) Reenact the Scene: This is, of
course, just an exaggerated version of #1, but it is much
more effective. I have been told by many therapists
that they don’t want their clients to vividly reenact the
scenes in case EFT didn’t work and they
might become upset all over again. But isn’t that
why they came to your office? To release the upset?
Ask the client to vividly imagine
the scene that made them upset when you first took the
SUDs rating. Ask them to exaggerate
the senses. Tell them to visualize it in complete detail,
including smells, colors, feelings, sounds, anything that
was important or that stood out. Ask them to
try and feel upset.
For example, when working with people who have had car
accidents, have them hear the screeching breaks and see
the bright lights etc…If the SUDs
has not gone down, you need to work on more aspects of
this issue.
(4) Ask Pointed Questions: Gary tells
us to “Ask pointed questions designed to make the
client’s emotional knees buckle.” Suppose the client
tells you they feel disloyal telling you a family secret,
or that they have always felt they deserved childhood
abuse. Here is an opportunity to test by “accusing”
the client of what they feel guilty about. No, this
is not mean or hostile, this is “testing” your EFT
work.
Let’s say your client felt disloyal at a “7” for
telling the family secret to their therapist. After
the tapping, you might say to your client, “You really
shouldn’t have told me that…” or if they feel guilty
or deserving of the abuse: “But it was your fault,
wasn’t it?” and see what reaction you get. Most
likely, you will see evidence of an instant cognitive
shift, and the client will no longer see the incident as
his or her fault.
(5) Test the Body: If a client has
been working with you because of a physical ailment, you
will be able to test very effectively and of course have
immediate feedback. My client came in with knee
pain, but it didn’t bother him when he was sitting.
So our before and after test on the SUDs
scale required that he get off the couch and walk over to
the other side of the office and back. Again, after
EFT treatment was completed, I asked him
to test in this way. (Many clients can become overly
eager to see results and might go too far in testing any
body pain or limitations. Remember to advise the
client never to do anything physical that might harm
them.) When I work with someone who complains
of limited range of motion in their arms or shoulders, I
ask them to see how far they can reach now…or measure how
far back their arm goes now…
(6) Chasing the Pain: When
working with pain, you will often find yourself and the
client “chasing the pain” throughout the body before it
leaves for good. It is critical that you know about
this technique when working with pain management, so you
don’t bail out too early. Oftentimes, the pain (headache,
backache or whatever) moves to a different location,
changes intensity, or changes features and qualities
before dissipating.
For example, a client of mine with sinus pain kept
thinking the EFT didn’t work, because
while she no longer felt the pain over her left eye, she
was now in pain in the middle of her forehead!
Believe it or not, this was a good sign --- we always want
evidence that the physical ailment is movable. The
number of her pain (“8”) didn’t go down for a few rounds,
however, the location and the words she attached to it
kept changing --- a sure sign that EFT
WAS working and that all I had to do was continue to
chase the pain...EFT was working
in an atypical, non-linear fashion, but it was certainly
working. Eventually, the pain subsided,
but not until it had “visited” most of her head and neck.
I encourage everyone to practice testing by trying out
the different methods of testing to discover which ones
you connect to the most. Eventually, you will want
to include all of them as part of your practice.
Part 3 of this series is “What to do with
the Feedback From Testing…”
Once you have done your testing of the EFT
work, it’s time to decide what to do with the feedback!
This is the juicy part…
In general, what you have with the suggestions in
PART 2 is several wonderful feedback
mechanisms, and now you may direct the treatment according
to the feedback you have received.
WHEN NOTHING WORKS:
Gary advises us to address 3 issues if nothing has been
working so far. He says that if your clients report
that EFT has appeared to not be working,
“excellent practitioners ask themselves (1) What’s in
the way here? (2) What have I not seen yet? And, (3) What
core issue have I not been able to find yet?”
BEING SPECIFIC:
Suppose the person visualizes the original problem
raised, (next week’s public speaking engagement), and
testing reveals that their SUDs number
hasn’t dropped at all. One possible explanation is
that this is a sign that you have not been
specific enough about the problem.
Perhaps you have been too global in your description.
For instance, if you have said “Even though I’m afraid
of public speaking…” this is too global, and you need
to tweak it to “Even though next Thursday’s morning
business meeting makes me nervous…” or “Even
though I get sweaty palms just thinking about standing at
the podium…”
I often find people using global statements such as
“Even though I have low self-esteem…” which is far
too general and doesn’t tell us anything. Suffering
from “low self-esteem” is a bit of a catch-all phrase
these days, and we need to play detective and find out WHY
people think they have low self-esteem, what statements
led them to believe it, what incidents gave them this
impression, who told them they were worthless etc…in other
words, get very specific: “Even though my mother
said I would never be more than average…” or
“Even though the coach announced to everyone that I didn’t
have that star quality…” EFT
results will be dramatically improved when you become more
specific.
CHANGING ASPECTS:
Suppose a client comes in with a general problem they
term, fear of success.
Your client clarifies the problem enough so you become
more specific and change the focus to “fear of not
holding on to money once I make it…” After a few
rounds of EFT, they announce that their
fear of success has now changed to “I’m
afraid others will be jealous.” This is evidence that
your client has changed aspects on you, and you will need
to address this new angle of the problem. An
aspect is of course just a different part of the
same problem. Someone who contacts you complaining
of a fear of flying needs to break this down into (a) fear
of closed spaces, (b) fear of turbulence, (c) fear of
taking off, (d) fear of landing, (e) fear of losing
control etc.
Make sure when you are testing that the client is
revisiting the original problem they measured on the
SUDs scale. This is the most common
reason people claim “it didn’t work.” Once you
establish that the client has changed aspects, you may
evaluate the first aspect, continue to neutralize it, and
then move on to the next.
THE SETUP STATEMENT:
Besides being the best rapport-building tool in the
world, the EFT Setup statement is an
incredibly graceful part of EFT
treatment. If, however, through testing
you discover that your client’s SUDs is
not going down, ask your client to be more
emphatic when saying the setup statement.
The two of you may shout the setup statement, slow it
down, add a crescendo or anything else to accentuate it,
just as long as you pay attention and add emotion to it.
THE 9-GAMUT PROCEDURE:
I rarely use the 9-Gamut procedure anymore --- unless a
client is stuck. If testing reveals that the client
isn’t getting anywhere after several EFT
rounds, sometimes I will throw in the 9-Gamut to see if it
allows the client to become unstuck. For those of
you who haven’t used this technique in a while, I
recommend introducing it again to clients who don’t seem
to be changing. It used to be considered a critical
part of The Basic Recipe, but is rarely
used these days.
DIFFERENT DOORS:
One of the reasons EFT works for
physical, emotional and spiritual problems, is that we
have so many options or doors to enter to relieve
suffering. There are many doors into a person’s
world, and eventually, we get to the core. Suppose
you worked with the symptoms of a migraine, and never
addressed possible emotional drivers to this diagnosis or
problem. If you test after treatment and find little
or no movement with the SUDs level, it’s
time to go through a different door. Now you could
address emotional events around the time this syndrome
began. What was happening in your life around
the time of your first migraine? What were you going
through emotionally when you had your first panic attack?
What were you most worried about before you had that car
accident? These are essential questions and will
hopefully give you answers and different doors through
which to approach the presented problem.
CORE ISSUES:
If your testing reveals that your client hasn’t enjoyed
any relief from the presented issue, another possibility
is that you have not uncovered a core issue that might be
in the way. For instance, if someone comes to your
office with anxiety attacks and fears of having another
one, and the SUDs doesn’t move after
several rounds of EFT, the core issue may
be anger. Whenever I ask someone what they were
feeling in the days leading up to their first anxiety
attack, they tell me they were angry at someone or feeling
trapped in a relationship or job. With this
feedback, you start tapping for these feelings instead of
focusing on the anxiety or the anticipatory anxiety.
Maybe someone continues to sabotage themselves, and you
keep tapping on the frustration of this, the fear of
success etc. When testing tells you that the
feelings haven’t been reduced, you might ask them about
big “guilts” in their life, and why they feel the need to
punish themselves --- a typical core issue that is often
missed.
THE DOWNSIDE:
When a client is stuck and EFT doesn’t
seem to be having much of an effect, I always ask my
favorite question, “What do you think is the
DOWNSIDE to your getting over this problem?”
Sometimes you will get an immediate answer, other times it
will invite a lively discussion about a potential gain
from holding onto the problem the two of you have been
working on.
When I asked a client the downside of her losing
weight, she told me that if she stopped focusing on her
body and on degrading herself for being overweight, she
would have to face her deteriorating marriage, and this
felt too threatening to her. When I asked another
client the downside of getting over her panic attacks, she
said she wouldn’t know how to say “no” to all the
invitations she would inevitably get, and would hate how
obligated she would feel to make up for lost years of not
visiting friends and family.
WHAT IF THE CLIENT GETS WORSE:
I always tell my workshop participants that if a client
gets worse, “we must be on the right track!”
Worsening symptoms mean we have triggered more conflict
that is showing up in the body. In other words, we
are getting invaluable feedback. If your testing
reveals that the client feels worse about the issue, you
have most likely hit a nerve, and now have more access to
the problem. Continue to ask key questions about the
issue. Whether the problem is physical or emotional,
concentrate on the new or “worsened” symptom, and keep
tapping. You are likely to see immediate
improvement.
Thanks to all who have helped me become a better
tester…
Warm regards,
Carol Look
