TFT Trauma Relief Helps Woman Move Arm for First Time

The Power of our Beliefs

Just a few months ago I treated one of the most interesting cases of a cure by TFT. It really amazed me, even though I have watched so many cures by TFT.

She was one of the students in my last Algorithm training, let’s call her “Ana”.

Ana had a limitation on the movement of her left arm since she was born. She could move the right arm perfectly but had only limited movement of her left arm.

As she was talking to me about this and some others things she wanted to treat, she mentioned that she had had a very difficult birth. Her mother had to have a cesarean birth in an emergency, without any anesthesia…

She was born premature and was very fragile. She had a problem that the doctors had to stifle all her chest and left arm for six month.

Ana got better and survived but she had this permanent limitation on the movements on her left arm.

When she told me that it just reminded me of the story of circus elephants when babies they are tied by one of the hind legs with a chain to a wooden pole attached to the ground.

The babies elephants try to escape, but they are not yet strong enough to break loose, then eventually end up quitting and never try to escape …

As adults, these circus elephants could very easily break the chain, but because they have developed the belief that they cannot, they just do not escape their shackles.

By this time, I diagnosed with Voice Technology and applied with her two specific tapping sequences, one for the trauma of her birth and the other for the trauma of being unable to move her arm when Ana was just a Baby. She didn’t have the conscious memory of that but she knew it happened as he mother told her, so, I just asked her to think about it the way she normally thinks about it.

After just a few repetitions of these sequences, Ana started to move her arm a little bit better. Then we repeated it some more times, it was around 8 times total.

I asked her to close her eyes and imagine she was moving both arms totally and freely.

She said it was difficult, so we did the sequences again while she was trying to imagine she was moving both arms perfectly in her mind first.

Ana said she could now move them both in her mind!

So I asked her that still with her eyes closed to start moving physically her arms, just the way she was imagining at that time and much to my surprise she started to move it perfectly and freely!

Then I asked Ana to keep moving her arms and just open her eyes and she was very surprised to see she was moving her left arm totally and fully with absolutely no limitation in her movements! We were both very moved and emotional at that moment!

I told Ana the stories about the circus elephants. She understood and was really amazed at how TFT could easily help her to free her mind and her body!

For me it was one of the most beautiful experiences I ever had as a therapist and even after years working and teaching TFT I still got passionate about what it is able to transform in people’s lives!

With joy and love to be able to be sharing this healing tool in Brazil, Leandro

www.tftbrasil.com.br

PS It is my dream and goal to found my own non-profit (NGO) in 2017, so I have to make money for that. I am inspired by the work of TFT Foundation, and it will be dedicated to my mother. Until I have conditions to found my NGO, I am training other NGO volunteers with the trauma and pain algorithm, so they can use it with the people they already help. My goal is to train one NGO group each month.

Excerpted from “Tapping for Humanity,” Summer 2015

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Effects of Trauma on Children’s Brains

BW portrait of sad crying little boy covers his face with hands

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:

Childhood Trauma Leads to Brains Wired for Fear

Last week, a report by the University of San Diego School of Law found that about 686,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect in 2013. Traumatic childhood events can lead to mental health and behavioral problems later in life, explains psychiatrist and traumatic stress expert Bessel van der Kolk, author of the recently published book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

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-aboutmodafinil — 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.

TFT and Cyber Bullying

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.

Young people spend up to 7 hours a day Continue reading “TFT and Cyber Bullying”

TFT and Bullying

“I Just Tapped and Walked Away”

Thought Field Therapy and Bullying

By Dr. Victoria Yancey, TFT-DX, TFT-ADV

“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).

Excerpted from “Tapping for Humanity,” Winter, 2014

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TFT for Rwandan Orphans

July 2014 – Orphans Learn To Tap Away Their Fears, Anxiety and Depression
by Celestin Mitabu (Kigali, Rwanda)

I was invited to the Rutongo Orphanage to treat the children, victims of HIV, malnutrition and parental mental sickness. The invitation came from the Director, a nun who had experienced the results of TFT several years ago while in Kigali. She invited us to practice and teach TFT to the children.

It was not easy to get time because we were busy with tapping during the commemoration but we tried to spare some time so that children may benefit too. Young girls, (the orphanage is only for girls) were suffering from depression and much anxiety.

In fact, during our treatment for this year (20th commemoration) most of what we treated was all about depression and anxiety. From our experience depression has been a big problem affecting many people and we managed to help them with TFT.

One evening as I was revising my TFT notes and trying to read more about depression I even went to Google trying to compare depression symptoms and causes with what we experience. As I was reading about the symptoms of Depression and those of Trauma, they seem to be the same. I came to realize that where there is trauma there may be a possibility of depression.

excerpted from “Tapping for Humanity,” Fall, 2014

TFT and Loss of a Child

The following is a case study submitted to Joanne Callahan as part of TFT-Dx certification:

Case Study:

Female in her mid 30’s: lost her son at the age of 4 due to a rare genetic disorder less than a year ago. It is coming up on the first anniversary of his death. He was completely dependent on his mother and was not mobile at all. Fed by tube feeding, suction machines and continuous 24/7 care. Diagnosis was given with an undefined outcome of not knowing what each day would hold and the outcome being death.

So her life was a ticking time bomb for 4 years.

Current condition: She was feeling anxiety and fear of not knowing, not knowing how she will cope with the first anniversary. Anger for losing her son in the first place, why did this happen to her??

Algorithms used – Complex trauma with anger and guilt and she went from a 10 to 3.5.

I then corrected for level two reversal and repeated the algorithms. Ending SUD was a ZERO- there was no feeling of anxiety when thinking of the first anniversary or thinking of his death.

We finished off with ER- Floor to ceiling eye roll.

Comments: Client B was nervous and found it extremely difficult to hum the tune of Happy Birthday in the beginning. She fought back tears and somewhat choking in her throat. Her SUD dropped steadily and with a great response.

I found that she was humming without a prompt and more ease, without me having to remind her to hum the tune. No evidence of PR or Apex problems and she was extremely open to the treatment and findings.

During the treatment Client was swaying from side to side, she felt at peace, light and carefree.

Excerpted from “The Thought Field”, Volume 23, Issue 3