photo by Lance Cpl. Jason T. Guiliano
By Constance Louie-Handelman, Ph.D CPT, USAR, MS
Although I have a Ph.D. degree in clinical psychology, I was continually searching for other effective techniques that could help clients. I studied EMDR, Neuro-linguistic Programming and hypnotherapy.
However, after studying and practicing EFT, I found it worked quickly in eliminating fears, limiting beliefs, pain, and releasing traumatic events. Every opportunity I had, I used EFT with family, friends, and clients and achieved excellent long lasting results. I was so confident in EFT that I felt I had something to offer when I read about the high rate of suicide among U.S. soldiers.
I was commissioned as a captain in the US Army Reserve on March 2010, and was deployed to Afghanistan from July 2011 to May 2012. As a psychologist, I was in charge of a forward operating base in Kandahar Province and officially saw 199 individual soldiers (574 sessions).
Once I established rapport, understood their problems and needs, I used EFT primarily for anger, sleep, depression, and stress.
After just one round of tapping, soldiers were noticeably more relieved and calmer. Soon thereafter, soldiers added more details about their problems, or expressed issues that they had kept to themselves for years. Feeling the positive profound result, it was then easy to encourage soldiers to learn how to tap, something they could do themselves in a matter of minutes, in order to release past, current, anticipated problems or “pre-emptive tapping,” as one soldier called it.
The ease to learn and to apply the tapping was an important element of EFT since I often saw a solider just for one session.
I realized the success of EFT when soldiers were able to return to full duty, wanting to learn more about EFT, or having referred other soldiers into my office. Since returning home, I am disheartened to learn that EFT is not an accepted technique in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Fortunately, there is the Veterans Stress Project (www.stressproject.org) that offers free EFT sessions for returning vets
I can only hope that the VA’s powers-to-be will soon realize the effectiveness of EFT in order to help thousands of suffering vets, thus making a dramatic dent in the suicide rate.
