By Howard Robson, MD, TFT-Adv* Chairman, TFT Foundation UK
In August we were deployed to Jerusalem together with Suzanne Connolly from the USA, to provide diagnostic training to a group of academic psychologists. Training took place at the Herzog Hospital Israel Centre for the treatment of Psychotrauma, including participants from other areas of Israel.
The psychology team there are now undertaking a study assessing the benefits of TFT for treating the many who have suffered psychological trauma in Israel.
During the training, we were able to treat a few patients who consented to attend the group for treatment with TFT. The volunteers included a married couple with long standing PTSD who had been fortunate to survive a suicide bombing, and had been attending the psychologists with little benefit for several years.
They were treated in separate rooms, one half of the trainees treated the husband and the other half treated the wife. We joined the two groups together to evaluate he result of treatment. The smiles and the laughter said it all. The husband invited the men to dance, as is the custom, his wife just smiled and laughed while watching the men celebrating.
Three days later they returned to the centre to tell us how TFT had changed their lives. The lady had taken a bus (which she had never done since the bombing) to visit her sister, to whom she had given TFT treatment with great success. We often wonder how many more people have received treatment from her.
Celestin Mitabu, TFT Kigali Trainer and Director of Rwandan Orphans Project is leading national Radio programs, where even a Rwandan Ambassador called in for help. He is working tirelessly to share TFT Trauma Relief with his country. He has trained University students, the Red Cross teams and many others to assist with the monumental task of healing during the commemoration 100 days.
He urgently needs the funds to continue this work for the last half of the mourning period. Just look at the pictures to see all he’s doing to share healing with TFT.
We have a pledge of three, up to $500, donations for matching funds. Please help us raise the matching $1500 to send to him. He has the first ever national radio shows to teach TFT, is the first one to train Red Cross volunteers and is training teams of university students to help their fellow Rwandans. The people benefitting include the handicapped, the orphans, the prisoners, and families everywhere.
Click here to DONATE. If 100 us each gave $15 we would have the full $3000 needed to continue this healing through the last 50 days of the mourning period. Anyone contributing over $25 will receive a copy of the DVD, From Trauma to Peace. There is no better way to share the healing power of TFT.
The following article is from Sound Medicine News, February 3, 2015, and demonstrates the profound benefits an effective trauma relief therapy like TFT can have on the life of a child who has been traumatized:
Children’s brains are literally shaped by traumatic experiences, which can lead to problems with anger, addiction, and even criminal activity in adulthood, says van der Kolk. Sound Medicine’s Barbara Lewis spoke with him about his book.
BRAIN REGIONS credit: aboutmodafinil.com/cc
Sound Medicine: Can psychologically traumatic events change the physical structure of the brain?
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk: Yes, they can change the connections and activations in the brain. They shape the brain.
The human brain is a social organ that is shaped by experience, and that is shaped in order to respond to the experience that you’re having. So particularly earlier in life, if you’re in a constant state of terror; your brain is shaped to be on alert for danger, and to try to make those terrible feelings go away.
The brain gets very confused. And that leads to problems with excessive anger, excessive shutting down, and doing things like taking drugs to make yourself feel better. These things are almost always the result of having a brain that is set to feel in danger and fear.
As you grow up an get a more stable brain, these early traumatic events can still cause changes that make you hyper-alert to danger, and hypo-alert to the pleasures of everyday life.
SM: So are you saying that a child’s brain is much more malleable than an adult brain?
BK: A child’s brain is virtually nonexistent. It’s being shaped by experience. So yes, it’s extremely malleable.
SM: What is the mechanism by which traumatic events change the brain?
BK: The brain is formed by feedback from the environment. It’s a profoundly relational part of our body.
In a healthy developmental environment, your brain gets to feel a sense of pleasure, engagement, and exploration. Your brain opens up to learn, to see things, to accumulate information, to form friendships.
But if you’re in an orphanage for example, and you’re not touched or seen, whole parts of your brain barely develop; and so you become an adult who is out of it, who cannot connect with other people, who cannot feel a sense of self, a sense of pleasure. If you run into nothing but danger and fear, your brain gets stuck on just protecting itself from danger and fear.
SM: Does trauma have a very different effect on children compared to adults?
BK: Yes, because of developmental issues. If you’re an adult and life’s been good to you, and then something bad happens, that sort of injures a little piece of the whole structure. But toxic stress in childhood from abandonment or chronic violence has pervasive effects on the capacity to pay attention, to learn, to see where other people are coming from, and it really creates havoc with the whole social environment.
And it leads to criminality, and drug addiction, and chronic illness, and people going to prison, and repetition of the trauma on the next generation.
Cyber Bullying and Low Self-Esteem: A Social Nightmare
By Dr. Victoria Yancey, TFT-DX, TFT-ADV
Young people around the globe are taking their own lives because of cyber bullying. Teen suicides have occurred within the past ten years in Missouri, Florida, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Canada, United Kingdom, Italy and numerous other cities and towns.
Cyber bullying has created a social nightmare and has caused far too many teens to hang themselves, jump from bridges or find other ways to harm themselves. The number of suicides continues to grow with the easy access to and the increasing number of social media sites available to teens.
Cyber bullying is using digital technology to harass, embarrass, threaten, torment, humiliate or to make another person feel uncomfortable or scared. A study was conducted in 2010 by Cyber bullying research. It involved approximately 2,000 randomly selected middle school students from school districts in the United States.
The study revealed that of the students 20% reported seriously thinking about attempting suicide. Those figures include 19.7% females and 20.9% males. The results also showed that 19% reported actually attempting suicide with 17.9% females and 20.2% males. In addition, it is suggested that cyber bullying can cause emotional scarring, since it involves threats and humiliation.
Cyber bullying victims were almost twice as likely to have attempted suicide compared to youth who had not experienced cyber bullying.
The TFT Foundation offers its sincere condolences to those in France affected by the recent shootings. Please let anyone you know that has been traumatized by this tragic event about our site, which has the instructions for the TFT trauma relief technique in 14 languages, including French. Here is the link you can pass along: www.TFTtraumarelief.com.
La fondation TFT présente ses sincères condoléances à ceux en France qui ont été affectés par les fusillades récentes. Faites connaître notre site s’il vous plait, à toute personne de votre connaissance traumatisée par cet événement tragique. Il contient les instructions de la technique TFT d’allègement des traumatismes dans 14 langues différentes dont le français. Voici le lien que vous pouvez diffuser largement : http://www.TFTtraumarelief.com.
“You are fat, stupid and ugly.”This is just one example of the taunting that some students endure from peers and classmates. These and other harmful statements are instances of bullying. Bullying is a form of violence.
It is negative, aggressive and unwanted behaviors to cause harm, hurt or humiliation. It is anything that hurts another person, when things are repeatedly said or done to have power over that individual.
There are many types of bullying. There is racial bullying, sexual bullying and cyber bullying. Bullying includes name calling, saying or writing derogatory comments, purposely excluding an individual from activities, spreading lies and rumors, ignoring, threatening, doing anything to make another person feel uncomfortable or scared, stealing or damaging belongings of others, kicking, hitting, slapping, making someone do things they do not want to do.
When Thought Field Therapy (TFT) was taught to a group of students they reported using TFT when confronted with the violence of being picked on or bullied.
Children handle being bullied in many different ways. Those who are bullied are subject to peer pressure. Sometimes they end up doing something they really do not want to do in order to “fit in” hoping that the bullying will stop.
Those who are bullied often feel pain, fear or hurt. They lose self-confidence and feel lonely, scared and sad. They sometimes do not feel safe at school, home or at play and often have poor grades in school.
They may suffer from depression, headaches, stomach aches and other health problems and they may also have thoughts of suicide. Some feel it necessary to fight or bring a gun or weapon to school to stop the hurt of being bullied.
I worked with a group of middle school students who felt they where being bullied. The students where referred to me by their parents because they where getting into trouble in school. Many of the students were receiving declining or failing grades. Some of the students had either experienced detentions or suspensions, in or outside of school, for fighting.
When meeting with the students they explained the reason for their getting into fights was because they felt they were being “picked on.” They explained that a group of students constantly bullied them and they got into the fights because they felt angry and wanted to lash out against the bullying.
Statistics reveal that one out of every 4 students are bullied, picked on, or abused each month. In addition, thirty percent of students in the United States admit to being bullies, victims of bullies, bystanders (those who witness bullying) or have participated in all three roles (Olweus, 2001.
My work with the group began with explaining Thought Field Therapy after their discussion of anxiety and fear of being picked on and bullied and having to fight to try to solve this problem. The students rated their Subjective Unit of Distress (SUD) after tuning into the thought field. The SUD ratings ranged from ten or above for fear and anxiety to seven.
I began leading the students through Psychological Reversal to correct any reversals that may negatively effect the treatment. I then taught them the algorithm for General Anxiety and Stress, e (under eye), a (under arm) and c (collar bone). We checked the SUDs then continued by repeating psychological reversal and the majors since the SUD did not go down by two points for all in the group. We repeated the majors. This was followed with the 9 gamut since the SUDs subsequently lowered by at least two points for all students in the group.
We continued in this way until the SUD for each student was down to zero or one. The students reported feeling better, they explained feeling better meant that they where having fun doing Thought Field Therapy and they did not feel tense and angry when they thought about being picked on.
Studies show that the less confidence a student has the more likely they are to be bullied. The more confidence a student shows the less likely it is that bullying will occur (Fulker, 2010).
They continued to practice the steps of Thought Field Therapy until they learned the algorithms. The students agreed to use Thought Field therapy throughout the week when they felt like fighting, scared or feeling less confident.
When the students arrived the next week they were laughing and talking with a completely different affect from the previous week when they where somber, sad and angry. The students reported using Thought Field Therapy throughout the week. All of them explained that they did not participate in any fights during the week. They all told experiencing of tapping when feeling scared.
One student explained that she was able to concentrate on her school work and was able to pass her math test because for the first time she was able to study. But the most compelling comment came from one student who was constantly engaged in fighting and was on the verge of being expelled from school although she was the victim of bullying.
She stated, “I didn’t fight when some kids where picking on me. I just started tapping and walked away.”
Fulker, B. (2010). Help your child beat bullying and gain confidence. Birthmarks.com USA.
Olweus, D. (2001). Peer harassment: A critical analysis and some important issues. In Peer Harassment in School, ed. J. Juvonen and S. Graham. New Yor k: Guilford Publications.
Salmivalli, C. Lagerspetz, K. Björkqvist, K. Osterman, K. Kaukiainen, A. (1996) Bullying as a group process: Participant roles and their relations to social status within the group. Aggressive Behavior 22 (1-15).
By Howard Robson, MD, TFT-Adv*
